‘Culture of Care’ is a term that describes an establishment-wide commitment to improving animal welfare, scientific quality, and care of the staff.

In the use of animals for research, the RVC’s Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (AWERB) is tasked with defining core values to promote a good ‘Culture of Care’. These Culture of Care commitments are based on the outputs of a workshop conducted at the RVC which included input from a range of personnel including AWERB members, researchers, animal care staff, and students.

The RVC is committed to:

Improving animal care and welfare

Caring for staff

Delivering high-quality science

Promoting transparency for all

Improving animal care and welfare

We will:

• Treat all animals with dignity, compassion, and respect, and ensure animal welfare and animal feelings are central to decisions being made
• Improve animal welfare by providing environments that allow them to perform natural behaviours and using positive reinforcement training
• Value the animal-human bond and encourage positive interactions where these are beneficial to both animals and staff
• Rehome animals wherever possible
• Ensure all those working with animals are educated, trained, and kept up to date with best practices

Caring for staff

We will:

• Respect and understand the roles of all staff and students when using animals in research
• Promote a culture of inclusiveness, compassion, care, and respect for all people, and provide appropriate support for the mental and emotional welfare of staff
• Create a culture that encourages engagement between researchers and animal care staff and ensure that staff and students have the confidence to challenge practices and suggest improvements
• Educate staff working with animals in research and teaching about our Culture of Care values and practices
• Update our knowledge and best practice by enabling access to continuing development and training

Delivering high-quality science

We will:

• Recognise the importance of Culture of Care in robust scientific outcomes
• Carry out research that embraces the principles of reproducibility and good study design
• Ensure a true understanding of the 3Rs and that they are implemented wherever possible
• Only use animals where necessary and actively seek to replace animals with alternatives wherever possible
• Carry out a detailed ethical review of all research studies and ensure that all research at the RVC is justified and aligns with our core values

Transparency for all

We will:

• Ensure people within and beyond RVC understand what we do and why
• Create an environment for open discussion and positive, effective communication between researchers, students, and animal care staff
• Be open about and provide regular updates on our ethical review processes and Culture of Care practices and initiatives and encourage feedback from animal care staff, researchers, and management
• Give feedback on project outcomes to all staff to enable them to better understand the purposes and benefits of the animal use they are supporting
• Maintain and communicate our culture and values through our interactions with external researchers to enable science delivery in a manner that meets our vision.