3Rs - search page

The Biosciences Federation Animal Science Group was established in December 2002 and launched in September 2003 as an umbrella organisation to promote interaction within the biosciences community, particularly in areas of research and teaching; to provide information to assist the formulation of scientific policy; and, perhaps most challenging of all, to debate the ethical issues surrounding recent advances in the biosciences (see previous report by Nancy Rothwell).

The issues addressed in this Report have been a subject of intense public debate over at least the past four hundred years. Feelings are strong on all sides of the issues, and in recent years reports of violent action against those conducting animal research in the UK have brought the matter to the forefront of public attention.

A key aim of the Group is to encourage people to take account of the whole lifetime experience of laboratory rodents, ensuring that every potential impact on their wellbeing has been reviewed and refined.

These photographic guides should be used in conjunction with our Welfare Monitoring Tools to identify behaviours which indicate positive and negative welfare. Video guides to behaviour are also available. 

This page provides access to searchable, hypertext listings of inbred strains of mice and inbred strains of rats. Both sets of information were provided by Dr. Michael FW Festing (MRC Toxicology Unit) and were converted for Web presentation by the Mouse Genome Informatics Group at The Jackson Laboratory.