Severity degree 3 experiments

6. Withdrawal criteria defined

The law also demands that suitable withdrawal criteria already be defined when the application for approval of the animal experiment is submitted. These withdrawal criteria can be easily modified so that new findings immediately feed into the ongoing studies. In this way, excessive constraints on the animals can be avoided. In the autumn of 2018, the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) published new guidelines for the prospective assignment of severity grade to an animal experiment. In these guidelines, for example, the severity grade for experiments in brain research (neurodegeneration as in Parkinson’s) was raised from 2 to 3.