ABSTRACT
The pig was domesticated from wild swine by the Chinese more than 7000 years ago. Within the last few centuries, the pig has increasingly been used in biomedical research. Today, more than 60,000 pigs are used in the EU every year for scientific procedures. The number of minipigs used for scientific purposes is relatively low. The minipig was introduced in Europe in the early 1970s for scientific purposes. In the mid-1980s the minipig was introduced in toxicology as an alternative to nonrodent species because of the many biochemical, anatomic, and physiological similarities with humans compared to other nonrodent species (Swindle and Smith, 1998). Their extensive use since then has highlighted details of the areas in which the minipig has become a particularly useful animal species for toxicological studies and toxicity testing.
