Several blood products used in medical research and diagnostics are obtained from live animals in ways that raise significant welfare concerns, including horseshoe crab bleeding and fetal bovine serum production.
Blood and serum production for biomedical use represents a welfare problem that is largely invisible to the public. Fetal bovine serum involves the death of bovine fetuses without anaesthesia in a process that has been described by welfare scientists as causing significant suffering. Horseshoe crab bleeding causes significant mortality in a species that is ecologically important to migratory shorebird populations that depend on crab eggs as a food source. In both cases, validated alternatives exist: recombinant FBS alternatives and synthetic LAL replacement (rFC). The barriers are inertia, cost, and regulatory conservatism in requiring validated alternatives. Advocating for faster regulatory adoption of alternatives and researcher awareness of existing options drives meaningful welfare improvement.