First project in Belarus

For the first time, we carried our successful Ukraine project to Belarus and signed a contract with university lecturers. We have been active in Ukraine since 2008 and have already supported 46 departments to switch to animal-free teaching.

The contact with the Polessky State University in Pinsk, Belarus, came through our trilingual project website.

The university in the Southwest of the country is located near a large nature reserve and was built in 2006. "The lecturers are young and open-minded", reported our project leader Dimitrij Leporskij during his visit in April 2015. Some of the usual animal experiments had already been replaced by field studies on their initiative; for some, however, they needed our help.

So far, frogs were decapitated to study the physiology of nerves, muscles, the cardiovascular system, and the central nervous system. Blood tests were performed on mice, pigeons were used to study the nervous system, and cattle – to examine the digestive system. To replace the experiments, the institute received from us a laptop and numerous DVDs and CD-ROMs with computer simulations. Thus, 1,460 vertebrates (760 frogs, 260 rats, 180 mice, 180 cattle, 80 pigeons) are saved from death annually.

Our projects in Eastern Europe are carried out in cooperation with InterNICHE.