Beyond Animal Testing Index: Benchmarking tool for a world beyond animal testing

Abstract

While the original definition of replacement focuses on the replacement of the use of animals in science, a more contemporary definition focuses on accelerating the development and use of predictive and robust models, based on the latest science and technologies, to address scientific questions without the use of animals. The transition to animal free innovation is on the political agenda in and outside the European Union. The Beyond Animal Testing Index (BATI) is a benchmarking instrument designed to provide insight into the activities and contributions of research institutes to the transition to animal free innovation. The BATI allows participating organizations to learn from each other and stimulates continuous improvement. The BATI was modelled after the Access to Medicine Index, which benchmarks pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to make medicines widely available in developing countries. A prototype of the BATI was field-tested with three Dutch aca­demic medical centers and two universities in 2020-2021. The field test demonstrated the usability and effectiveness of the BATI as a benchmarking tool. Analyses were performed across five different domains. The participating institutes concluded that the BATI served as an internal as well as an external stimulus to share, learn, and improve institutional strategies towards the transition to animal free innovation. The BATI also identified gaps in the development and implementation of 3R technologies. Hence, the BATI might be a suitable instrument for monitoring the effectiveness of policies. BATI version 1.0 is ready to be used for benchmarking at a larger scale.

Plain language summary
The use of animals for research is being scrutinized by the public. The transition to animal-free methods is on the political agenda in and outside the European Union. This requires accelerating the development and use of useful and reliable animal-free methods. The Beyond Animal Testing Index (BATI) is designed to provide insight into the activities and contributions of research institutes to the transition to animal-free innovation. The BATI allows participating organizations to learn from each other and stimulates continuous improvement. A prototype of the BATI was field-tested with three Dutch academic medical centers and two universities in 2020-2021. The field test showed that the BATI could be used to monitor how effective policies are and to show where more work is needed towards the full replacement of animals in research.