Wednesday, 01 Oct 2008 14:06
BUAV Chief Executive Michelle Thew said: ‘The BUAV has long been calling for retrospective assessment and reporting of lab animal suffering so strongly welcomes the recommendations in today’s report from the LASA/APC working group as a step in the right direction. Where research is reported in journals, full information about animal suffering should be given, and retrospective reporting should improve the annual statistics issued by the Home Office.

However in order for these recommendations to have a meaningful impact on the suffering of animals in our laboratories we must have independent assessment, which also needs to take into account the suffering animals experience during their whole lifetimes as laboratory animals, not just during experiments. Suffering resulting from experiments must be realistically assessed, with the benefit of any doubt given to animals. The current mild, moderate and substantial bands are far too vague, with no more than 2% of licences categorised as substantial, despite the high number of very unpleasant experiments – this inevitably misleads the public.

As ever, the BUAV is willing to work with the Government to ensure that an effective system of retrospective reporting is put in place.’

Detail

Retrospective reporting will suffer from the same defects as current prospective assessment unless the following changes are made:

the how: Suffering resulting from experiments must be realistically assessed, with the benefit of any doubt given to animals. The current mild, moderate and substantial bands are far too vague, with no more than 2% of licences categorised as substantial, despite the high number of very unpleasant experiments – this inevitably misleads the public

the when: Animals have to be monitored properly, to detect whether they are experiencing symptoms. In relation to the BUAV’s recent undercover investigation into neuroscience research on marmosets at Cambridge University, the animals were left for large portions of a 24-hour period, which inevitably meant that episodes of intermittent pain and seizures etc could not be picked up

the what: All types of suffering must be taken into account, not just that resulting from the experiment itself. Re Cambridge, Prof David Morton said in a report for the APC that the animals would have been experiencing ‘moderate’ suffering as a result of the unnatural confined conditions in which they were kept even before invasive experiments on their brains started – and yet the Home Office took no account of this in making the key cost:benefit assessment when deciding whether to grant the licences

the who: it is clearly in the interests of researchers to downplay suffering – prospective or retrospective – for PR reasons and to increase their chance of getting a licence/new licence. There has to be a proper system of inspection, properly resourced and truly independent of the animal research industry. Ultimately, only proper parliamentary scrutiny and overall transparency can satisfy the public that suffering is being assessed properly. At present, the system is extremely secretive.

Ends

NOTES TO EDITOR

Copies of the LASA/APC report are available from the Science Media Centre www.sciencemediacentre.org

The BUAV has been campaigning for over 100 years to achieve a world where nobody wants or believes we need to experiment on animals. We are committed to achieving our aims through reliable and reasoned evidence-based debate. We are proudly non-violent and respect the quality of life for all – animals and people.

For more information contact: Media Manager Mary-Louise Clews 020 7619 6978/Out of hours mobile: 07850 510 955 / mary-louise.clews@buav.org

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