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Laboratory Animal Welfare
Kathryn Bayne, Patricia V. Turner
Verlag Elsevier Reference Monographs, 2013
ISBN 9780123851048 , 335 Seiten
Format PDF, ePUB
Kopierschutz DRM
History, Philosophies, and Concepts of Animal Welfare
Emily Patterson-Kane and Gail C. Golab, Animal Welfare Division, American Veterinary Medical Association, Schaumburg, IL, USA
Abstract
A sound understanding of laboratory animal welfare should be grounded in a general knowledge of some of the major events, organizations, and philosophies that have shaped how animals are used and cared for since the industrial revolution. This overview includes the evolution of animal protection and advocacy movements, the development of professional animal science associations, and the creation of laws and regulations governing the use of animals in research. Throughout this period the dominant philosophy has been a form of utilitarianism. However, deontology, animal rights, and ethics of care have also been influential. Scientific inquiry has evolved to increasingly engage with topics such as animal distress and welfare, although the questions of how to best assess the subjective elements of well-being and balance the various measurable parameters remain. There is a general pattern of expanding regulation and increasing public discourse, and a need for harmonization, collaboration, and high standards of care in support of ongoing animal-based activities.
Keywords
Animal rights; Animal welfare; Animal Welfare Act; History; Philosophy; Regulation; Utilitarianism
Concerns about how animals should be treated are pervasive throughout all cultures and periods in history. However, the modern “animal welfare” movement, which most often attempts to respond to questions about how animals are doing both physically and mentally, dates to more recent events occurring in Europe and, specifically, the United Kingdom. Activities in the United Kingdom have been echoed in the United States (and many other nations), at first with considerable delay, but as technological advances in communications developed, with increasing alacrity. By the 1980s, similar activity took place almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic and within most first-world nations. Animal welfare is now debated in a global context, with local considerations and applications understood against a shared concept of animal welfare as a legitimate subject of ethical concern and scientific investigation.
Standards of care for treating animals humanely are correspondingly complex, involving overlapping laws, regulations, guidelines, and professional codes influenced by a diverse body of philosophy, science, ethics, and law. Global trade and collaborations, and international acceptance of safety data, have required attention to harmonization, but awareness of local history and cultural influences remains crucial to successfully addressing laboratory animal welfare concerns now and into the future. Public consensus about matters as fundamental as whether and which animals have moral standing can and has changed. And, while most regulations share a similar basis in law, utilitarian ethics, and community standards, even these basic pillars are under constant challenge and review.
This introduction first provides a brief history of some major events shaping the animal welfare movement, then discusses the emergence of some philosophies, and, finally, provides background on the concepts that contribute to the current framework for animal welfare–related activity as it applies to animals used in the laboratory. As such it illustrates some of the complex forces that must be married to create a valid mandate for researchers to operate and a standard of care for the animals they use.
Events
During the industrial revolutions (1800–1850, 1870–1914) the populations of parts of Europe and the United States (as well as other developing nations) began to move from rural to urban areas. Movement away from agricultural lifestyles prompted a shift in attitudes toward animals. Animals began to be appreciated more as companions, and their use in urban settings (e.g. draft horses, animals used in research) came under increasing scrutiny and criticism.
The first organized and mainstream activities to promote the humane treatment of animals began to emerge, generally with a focus on the treatment of horses, as reflected by the founding of the British Society for the Protection of Animals (1824) and its American equivalent (1866). Subsequently the American Humane Association (1874) and many other humane societies were also created.
During this period approaches to animal use became more “industrialized” in both urban and rural settings, resulting in advances in nutrition, efficiencies of food and fiber production, and research breakthroughs—but also increasing ethical concerns. The practice of vivisection, whereby animals were restrained and operated upon while conscious, became a flashpoint for debate and protest. This led to the formation of antivivisection societies focused specifically on ending inhumane teaching and research practices (UK: 1875; US: 1883).
These groups and their supporters took part in public demonstrations, which sometimes devolved into riots, reflecting how questions about vivisection exposed deep divisions within Victorian-era society. Efforts to reduce animal suffering aligned with other emerging movements supporting the rights of women, children, and slaves. A Royal Commission in Great Britain investigating vivisection led to the passing of the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which licensed researchers using animals and specified that painful research should be carried out only when necessary for instruction or research to benefit human health, and that anesthesia should be used whenever permitted by the scientific goals of the work.
This did little to allay public concern, and protests continued to occur. One of the most persistent and disruptive was known as the Brown Dog Affair. It was predicated upon the erection of a statue in 1906 to commemorate a particular dog that had been used in research—the statue was intended to represent other animals that were used in painful research. The brown dog in question had been used in a demonstration for students by William Bayliss, a faculty member in the Department of Physiology at University College London and a pioneer in the study of hormones. There was vehement debate over whether effective anesthetics were used during the demonstration. “Anti-doggers” and students clashed sporadically at and around the site of the statue until 1910, when it was removed. (It should be noted that during the Victorian era riots in London were not particularly uncommon, motivated by issues such as Sunday trading, unemployment, and voting rights. A new brown dog statue was placed in the Old English Gardens of Battersea Park in 1985, and has its own small legacy of controversy.)
As a result of the open conflict, many of those who used animals in the laboratory had a heightened appreciation of the need to address public concerns in order to continue using animals in research. Prominent figures from within and outside the scientific community (such as Charles Darwin) became involved in a movement to curb cruel practices in research, an activity that remained arguably self-regulated under relatively permissive oversight. (The Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which remained unchanged for 110 years, was the basis of only three prosecutions and one conviction; Dolan, 2008.)
Around this same time the first major shelters for stray animals were established (UK: 1860; US: 1866) as a humane alternative to the often brutal practices of city “poundmasters” who collected and killed stray dogs by methods such as mass drowning. The use of animals from shelters in research began to attract criticism because of concerns about the potential for stray or stolen pets to end up in laboratories. These concerns endured well into the twentieth century and contributed to the development of the U.S. Animal Welfare Act in 1966. By 1874 shelters began to be directly operated by humane associations, and this became the norm in the United States and the United Kingdom toward the middle of the twentieth century.
The next major period of change occurred after World War II. Several new societies arose with joint interests in animal welfare and the animal sciences (PRIMR [Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research], 1974; NABR [National Association for Biomedical Research], 1979). The founder of one of these, Charles Hume of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (1926), initiated the creation of the first systematic approach toward promoting the welfare of animals in the laboratory. The “Three Rs” (Russell and Burch, 1959) proposed that wherever possible the use of animals should be replaced, refined, and reduced. The Three Rs made little impact at the time, but have gradually grown to become an international core doctrine in protecting animals' welfare as it applies to animals in the laboratory.
Approaches to laboratory animal husbandry and laboratory animal medicine also became progressively more professional. The American Association for Laboratory Animal Science was founded in 1950, and laboratory animal medicine was recognized as a specialty of veterinary medicine with the founding of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (1958). That veterinary specialty college was followed over the next several decades by the establishment of others around the world (e.g. ECLAM [European College of Laboratory Animal Medicine], 2000). Professional desire for better conditions for laboratory animals and interest in public assurance led to the establishment of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory...
