Ten years of the Animal Welfare Charter

5. Involvement of academic institutions –working together internationally

The pharma industry’s Animal Welfare Charter set milestones that academic researchers also saw as pointing the way ahead. The charter substantially influenced the wording of the principles and objectives of the Basel Declaration – a call by academic institutions for more trust, transparency and communication in animal research. The Basel Declaration was adopted on 29 November 2010 during the first Basel conference “Research at a crossroads”. Like the Declaration of Helsinki, which sets out the ethical principles for clinical research in humans, the Basel Declaration Society aims to help ensure that ethical principles such as the 3Rs are applied worldwide in research involving animal experiments. The Basel Declaration was initially signed by more than 60 academic researchers from Switzerland, the UK, France and Sweden. In the meantime, more than 4700 representatives of academic research from 65 countries have signed up to it. Together, the Animal Welfare Charter and the Basel Declaration lay down an important marker for the promotion of laboratory animal welfare in industrial and academic biomedical research. The international spread of commitments by industry and academics is particularly important because in many other countries around the world, unlike in Switzerland and Europe, research in animals is inadequately regulated by law and, in some cases, not regulated at all.