PRIMACYT is committed to the 3R principle (Replace, Reduce and Refine the animal testing) established by William Russel and Rex Burch in 1959. In 2008, we have received the Research Award of the Germany Ministry of Nutrition, Agriculture and Consumer Protection for the development of a standardised serum-free long-term human hepatocytes culture system to analyse pharmaceuticals, chemicals and food stuff.

As an EU Reference Laboratory for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EURL ECVAM) appointed by the European Union in 2013 we take the debate on animal experiments and animal welfare very seriously.

At PRIMACYT, we provide scientists and researchers at universities, academic and governmental research institutions, food protection agencies, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and chemical companies including cell-based meat producing companies with products and biological assay systems mainly obtained from slaughterhouse waste.

Our products are highly environmentally sustainable as we use non-eatable by-products from food-producing animals which ensures a more or less complete use of the animal. Beside this, we cooperate with other companies and retrieve material from control animals in animal studies to produce biological test systems that are used in drug development for human, farm animals and pets.

Despite all efforts, there are not enough human liver cells available to conduct all primary liver cell experiments exclusively with them. In addition, human hepatocytes are simply not the assay system of choice in the development of medications for animals and for environmental safety testing of chemicals. Therefore, we also have a tiny animal facility of our own where we maintain a very small number of mice and rats.

However, these animals are not subjected to any experiments. As we only perform organ removal from anaesthetised animals to obtain the biological tests systems used for applications in human and animal health and environmental safety testing, the animals do not suffer any pain. Since we are highly committed to the animal welfare enshrined in law, we gently treat our animals with care.

Our staff is aware of the ethical debates and is regularly trained and is taking classes in animal welfare and animal handling, which is very time consuming and also cost-intensive.