Abstract
The FELASA 2019 congress took place on 10th–13th June in Prague, Czech Republic and marked the end of the FELASA 40 years’ celebration. This triennial conference benefitted from a record attendance of 2015 participants from 68 countries.
The scientific programme was particularly busy with 534 abstracts split into 238 posters, 70 sessions, four severity workshops, three key notes, and 13 exhibitors’ workshops. The abstract book is freely available on https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/lana/53/1_suppl. Speakers, poster authors, and attendees came in numbers from the largest FELASA member associations: GV-SOLAS (Germany), LASA (UK), and AFSTAL (France). Overseas countries such as the USA were also strongly represented, and we welcomed participants and abstracts from all continents.
Two poster awards were given. The Scientific Committee awarded Royford Mwobobia, Klas Abelson, and Titus Kanui for their poster entitled “The naked mole rat as a model for research - Improving its welfare under captivity”. Following congress participants’ votes, Arthur Humbert, Phoukham Phothirath, Gisele Ferrand, Isabelle Barde, and Xavier Warot were awarded for their poster titled “Health monitoring in a rodent facility: implementation of the Exhaust Air Dust system”.
Feedback from the sessions of the scientific programme was very positive, and some successes will hopefully be reproducible at future FELASA conferences. For example, the Tech Day welcomed over 200 attendees for sessions given in English and translated into Czech, German, and French. The six streams on education and training, reproducibility and translation, model management, defining good care, compliance and communication, and severity classification often ran with a full room.
The commercial exhibition was very popular too, and allowed over 100 exhibitors to entertain the shrewdness of the congress attendees. FELASA also welcomed other LAS organisations willing to share some space in the poster area to create an association village with AALAS, AFSTAL – FELASA 2022, ANZLAA, EARA, ESLAV, European Commission incl. ETPLAS, EVMS, FGB, International Basel Declaration Society, ICLAS, and LAL. This triggered some discussions between participants who rarely meet in European LAS conferences. Similarly the gala evening surely allowed lots of socializing.
The next FELASA congress will take place in Marseilles, France, on 13th–16th June 2022. Visit http://www.felasa2022.eu/ to get the latest information. In the meantime, remember to browse on the FELASA website http://www.felasa.eu/ to follow FELASA’s activities, access latest Working Group recommendations, or watch some free webinar recordings.