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In practice, poultry have their feed with drawn several hours before being collected and put on transport to the slaughter plant. With the exhaustion of their internal energy stores, the chickens may lack energy to cope with the conditions to which they are subjected. Meat quality is affected by the energy stored in the muscle at time of slaughter and its rate of decrease postmortem. Of 320 broiler chickens, half were subjected to 5 h feed deprivation whereas the others had access to feed until transport. In both groups, half the chickens were transported for 1.5 h, and the rest were transported within 5 min to the on-site slaughter facility. Twenty chickens were equipped with an ultrafiltration-collection device for monitoring glucose and lactate profiles. After slaughter, liver pH was measured. Stimulation of muscle metabolism was minimized by avoiding plucking. Breast muscle samples were taken at 0, 1, 2, 4, and 6 h and analyzed for pH and metabolite concentrations, and meat quality was measured at 96 h. Although liver glycogen was depleted in feed-deprived chickens, feed deprivation and transport for short periods were not found to affect blood glucose or lactate levels nor glycogen levels in the muscle at slaughter. Muscle carbohydrate metabolism was found to come to a complete halt after 6 h, which was not caused by exhaustion of the glycogen store but by the muscle's ability to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) after 4 h. At this time, rigor mortis had set in and deboning could be done without risk of cold shortening.

A survey among scientists into the current practice of searching for Replacement, Reduction and Refinement (Three Rs) alternatives, highlights the gap between the statutory required need to apply the Three Rs concept whenever possible and the lack of criteria for searching for Three Rs alternatives. A questionnaire was distributed to 342 scientists (Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations [FELASA] Category C and B individuals), of which 67 responded. These scientists are customers of the Central Animal Laboratory of Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. The results indicate that there is room for improvement in searching effectively for the Three Rs: skills in searching biomedical databases for Three Rs alternatives are limited, knowledge of specialised Three Rs databases is very limited, and satisfaction on the availability and accessibility of Three Rs information is low. None of the respondents allocate budget for a specific Three Rs alternatives search, although 50% do spend, on average, two hours engaged in this search for each application to their animal ethics committees. The majority of the respondents expressed the wish that the search for alternatives could be easier and less time consuming, and prefer to achieve this through the service offered by specialists at the Central Animal Laboratory. On the basis of the results from the questionnaire, the 3R Research Centre was established, with the aim of providing services and support for bio-medical scientists, to improve the search for, and subsequent implementation of, the Three Rs.

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