Pascalle van Loo becomes new head of the Animal Welfare Body

As of 1 January 2024, Pascalle van Loo is the new head of the Animal Welfare Body of Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht. She will succeed Wim de Leeuw, who will take on a new role as Programme Leader of Sustainability at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Pascalle van Loo has been working at the Animal Welfare Body (Dutch name: Instantie voor Dierenwelzijn, IvD) as an animal welfare officer and quality assurance officer. In this role, she already co-designed the overarching policy on animal experiments and she was one of the initiators of the rehoming policy, in which former laboratory animals can be adopted by private individuals. Since 2022, she is also the President of DALAS, the national association for everyone who is professionally involved in laboratory animal science. "The Animal Welfare Body Utrecht really has a leading role in the Netherlands," Van Loo says. "We are very transparent and the license holders give us much space to really take steps forward.