Through public scrutiny and political agendas, animal-free research is the future in Europe. What’s missing is a benchmark tool to both show a comprehensive listing of potential activities organizations can engage in and demonstrate and compare the progress of organizations moving towards animal-free innovation. The Beyond Animal Testing Index (BATI) was designed to fill this gap. The index is a collaboration between Leiden University Medical Center, the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. Its intent is to encourage and inspire organizations to make the transition.

Using the 3Rs concept of replacement, reduction, and refinement, the BATI framework is also modeled on the Access to Medicine Index (AMI). The AMI benchmarks pharmaceutical companies for making medicine more accessible to lower-income countries and has been successful in contributing to improvements in that sector.

The BATI analyzes an organization’s progress in the following domains:

• Management and stakeholders: an organization’s governance and management structure from the top down, alongside the organization’s goals and strategies for animal-free innovation;
• Research and development: how an organization’s research and development are organized, and how embedded the transition to animal-free innovation is;
• Education and training: the education of students as well as staff training in animal-free transitional activities;
• Investments and grants: how an organization finances or uses funds for animal-free innovation in research projects; and
• Intellectual property: an organization’s policy on intellectual property and the number of patents they hold in focus areas.

These domains are further broken down into themes and each theme is represented by at least one indicator. For example, in the education and training domain, themes include continuing professional development and training needs assessment, while indicators range from student curriculum to internal knowledge exchange. An organization is then assessed via these indicators, themes, and domains and given scores for commitment, transparency, and performance — the pillars of the framework.

In 2019, a BATI prototype gained feedback from a range of medical centers, health funds, politicians, and universities in the Netherlands. It was then finalized into a beta version and field tested in three organizations in the Netherlands between 2020 and 2021: Leiden (a medical center), Groningen (a university and associated medical center), and Utrecht (a university and associated medical center). These were anonymized for the presentation of results using the code names Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie.

The field test involved collecting data on the 3Rs, new methodologies, and animal experimentation for each organization. The researchers used public and internal sources of information from annual reports, policy statements, organizational websites, and legal accountability reports to interviews and questionnaires with staff to interpret and confirm information from other sources. The data was analyzed and scored against the framework. The research team shared initial results with the organizations to gather feedback that might inform re-analysis.

Overall, Charlie was ranked first, Bravo second, and Alpha third. However, the BATI revealed that organizations can excel in different areas. For instance, Alpha scored higher than Bravo in the education and training domain. The field test also demonstrated the effectiveness of the BATI at identifying and monitoring the impact of activities and policies, while highlighting areas for improvement in the transition to animal-free innovation. The feedback from the field-tested organizations also enabled the research team to update the BATI. The newest version will be used to benchmark additional academic medical centers in the Netherlands over a period of two years.

It’s still early days and the framework and scoring matrix may need adjustments, such as factoring in additional criteria like progress towards human-derived materials or considering the weighting of indicators to prevent bias towards certain domains. The index also needs to be applied to a greater number of organizations, as well as other European countries. However, the BATI is an important tool for animal advocates to be aware of, as it could prove very valuable in hastening the move towards the abolishment of vivisection and other research using animals.