• What alternatives can be used instead of higher order animals?
• When is it appropriate scientifically to use alternatives to higher order animals?
• When is it not appropriate scientifically to use alternatives to higher order animals?

What alternatives are available?

Non-animal alternatives
• Computer models
• Chemical models
• Charts, diagrams, manikins and physical models
• Mathematical and statistical models
• Use of plants.

Alternatives derived from animals
Lower order animals:
• micro-organisms
• cells derived from invertebrates and lower order vertebrates
• intact invertebrates and lower order vertebrates.
Higher order animals:
• tissue culture using cells derived from higher order animals
• videos of procedures conducted on animals to avoid repetition.
Human beings:
• voluntarily donated human tissues (e.g. the placenta and other tissues)
• human volunteers.

When can alternatives to whole animals be used?

The answer is: when the alternative to animal use can genuinely reveal new knowledge or demonstrate particular features of the body organ or tissue or the whole body processes of interest. To date, replacement alternatives have been used extensively in teaching and during some stages of drug and cosmetic testing, but less extensively during research designed to understand how the body as a whole works. Computer, mathematical and other models are helpful for analysing, presenting or accessing knowledge we have already obtained about body processes, but they are less helpful in generating new knowledge.

When is it not appropriate to use alternatives to whole animals?

• When chemical or computer or physical or mathematical models cannot reveal relevant new knowledge or demonstrate the known fact or principle.
• When microbial or tissue cultures cannot be applied to achieve the desired goals.
• When the processes to be studied or demonstrated cannot be effectively modelled using non-vertebrate or lower vertebrate animals.
• When the processes to be studied or demonstrated can only be modelled effectively using the chosen species of higher order animal – e.g. when functions in the particular chosen species (e.g. sheep) closely parallel functions in another animal species (e.g. goats, cattle) or in human beings.
• When the processes to be studied relate explicitly to the chosen species of higher order animal (e.g. studies of pregnant sheep to reduce death or sickness in newborn lambs).