Team Animal Care of Companion Animals winner Culture of Care Prize 2025

The team, consisting of Ewout Hoogendoorn, Doenja van Mourik, Nadine van der Hoeff, Bob Danckaarts, Magali Heuvelmans and Patricia de Wit, was praised by the jury for its cooperation, in which care for the animals as well as the team comes first. “You establish a culture together,” said Claudia Vinke, who presented the award with Mieneke Luijendijk. “By working together, you have achieved a lot, more than each of you could do on your own. I hope this award is therefore also an inspiration for other teams to connect.” The presentation was part of a mini-symposium on Culture of Care, in which Chantal Kapteijn gave a presentation on reducing stress in animals and humans.

Promoting Culture of Care

The Culture of Care award was created by the Animal Welfare Body in 2021 to promote a culture of care. Animal caretakers and biotechnicians can be nominated for the prize because they play an important role in monitoring and improving animal welfare and the responsible use of laboratory animals. With this award, the AWB wants to reward and stimulate ingenuity, initiative and ambition among animal caretakers and biotechnicians in the field of improving the welfare of laboratory animals, the quality of research and open communication.

To choose the winner, the assessment committee looked at the following aspects: Care and welfare of laboratory animals, 2. Innovative ideas, small or large, leading to improvement in welfare and/or quality of research, 3. Inspiration for colleagues, creating openness and conversation, 4. Transparency, sharing ideas with colleagues across the country.

The nominees were:

• André Verheem
• Sabine Versteeg
• Mirjam Veninga
• Tara van Erp
• Team Animal Care of Companion Animals, individually also including Ewout Hoogendoorn and Nadine van der Hoeff

The assessment committee this year consisted of Ellen Deelen (DEC Utrecht), Melissa van Velthoven (3Rs Centre Utrecht), Kim van der Waaij (winner 2024), Claudia Vinke (Veterinary Medicine, Animals in Science and Society) and Mieneke Luijendijk (Animal Welfare Body).