Central Animal Facility

At work, we had a tour of the Central Animal Facility today. Experiments on animals is a controversial subject, so it’s good to see how these experiments are actually conducted and what the laws and rules are that are in place to achieve the highest possible animal welfare during the experiments. In fact, the number of experiments and with that the number of animals used has been decreasing steadily for years now.

I was impressed by all the measures that are taken, but at the same time the realization that none of the animals will leave the facility alive does make it very awkward to walk around there. I’m glad I went on the tour though, because it’s always better to be well informed on subjects like this.

For the image I’ve chosen to show (part of) the operating room where surgery on the animals is performed. I do have images of fish, mice and rats that are in the lab, but decided not to use these.