Lisa Doar and her team within the Biological Resources Unit recently introduced cable tie “swings” as an additional form of environmental enrichment to improve the welfare of experimental mice in the facility. Following some validation work, they presented a poster entitled “The introduction of cable tie swings and its impact on animal welfare” at the Institute of Animal Technology Congress 2017 meeting.

This work was identified as having the potential for significant impact on animal welfare and was submitted as an entry for the Janet Wood Innovation Award, run by the Datesand group. We are delighted to announce that BRU won the award and that the swings are now being adapted into a commercially available product in partnership with Datesand. This is an outstanding outcome and could have far-reaching implications for animal welfare, for which the BRU should be incredibly proud.