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Congress on the ethics of animal experimentation
Early in 1995, EBRA and the Federation of Laboratory Animal Science Associations (FELASA) submitted an application for a grant to Directorate-General XII of the European Commission, proposing that they should hold a meeting to bring together speakers and delegates from both the scientific community and the animal protection movement, with the purpose of looking for areas of common ground between the two sides of the debate about the use of animals in research and testing.
After careful consideration within the DG XII, right up to the level of the Cabinet of the Commissioner, the application was eventually approved and we started working on the organisation of the Congress itself.
Although it was held only a week or so before Christmas, the European Congress on the Ethics of Animal Experimentation managed to attract over 250 delegates from over 20 different countries to the Palais de Congrès in Brussels. About 100 delegates arrived in time for the opening ceremony on the Monday evening. As with all the catering for the event, the food and wine were of a very high standard. However, despite our clear instructions that there should be an adequate supply of vegetarian dishes, the caterers seemed to have a distinct preference for meat and fish.
The first session of the following morning was designed to set the stage for the rest of the meeting. Under the title, 'The Classical Debate: Animal Research and Animal Protection', this session had four speakers who set out the traditional positions in this long-running debate. The first speaker was Dr Herman van Cauteren of Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Belgium who explained the reasons animals were used in the development and safety testing of medicines. He also explained the progress that had been made at the International Conferences on Harmonisation to reduce the amount of animal testing required by the various national and international regulatory authorities for the licensing of new pharmaceuticals.
Professor Robert Naquet of CNRS in France was the second speaker, presenting a robust defence of the use of animals in fundamental research. The two scientific speakers were followed by Professor Tjard de Cock Buning of the University of Leiden, who outlined the ethical and philosophical objections to the use of animals in experiments. The final speaker in the morning session, was Dr Richard Ryder of the Political Animal Lobby who spoke against any use of animals in research or testing. Dr Ryder is an internationally known author and campaigner against animal experiments. In his 1975 book 'Victims of Science' he coined the term speciesism, which has since become one of the central concepts of animal rights thinking.
The afternoon of the first day was devoted to two plenary sessions examining firstly the different international regulatory systems which control the use of animals in experimentation and secondly the use of animals in biotechnology. The first speaker in the session entitled 'The Regulation of Animal Experimentation: Europe and Beyond' was Dr Paul de Greeve of the Netherlands Veterinary Public Health Inspectorate speaking about the Council of Europe Convention on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. As the Chairman of the Multilateral Consultations which take place under the aegis of this Convention, Dr de Greeve presented a strong case that the basic principle upon which the Convention was founded, the three R's of Russell and Burch, was the main area of common ground between animal research and animal welfare. The second speaker in this session was Mr Phillip O Donoghue, the former President of FELASA. He discussed the European Union Directive 86/609 on the approximation of laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States regarding the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. The third and final speaker in this session was Professor Franklin Loew, the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in New York, who presented a paper on the comparisons between the European systems of regulating animal experimentation and the system in the USA.
The final session of the first day examined the use of animals in biotechnology. Professor Graham Bulfield of the Roslin Institute in Scotland was the first speaker, discussing the uses of transgenic animal technology and highlighting its considerable scientific potential. He also presented some interesting data from his institute showing that the welfare status of their transgenic sheep was indistinguishable from that of normal sheep. Mr Bo Hammer Jensen of Norvo Nordisk in Denmark spoke next, discussing the patent system and the current debate about the patenting of transgenic animals. The final speaker of the day was Micheal Linskens of the Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals who presented an uncompromising description of their campaigns against the genetic engineering of animals.
At the Congress Dinner, Prince Laurent of Belgium, the Patron of the Congress, gave a thoughtful and sensitive speech about the importance of the two sides of the animal experimentation debate making the effort to look for ways of working together.
The second day of the Congress started with the poster session, followed by four parallel workshops. The workshop on the use of primates in experiments, which featured Jane Goodall, Ton Kos from the Biological Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands and Dr Gerard Eder from Immuno in Austria, started with something of a surprise when a television crew turned up and started to film it. However, the crew, who were simply taking some background footage for a documentary about Jane Goodall, managed to complete their filming and departed before the session started.
The workshop on the Public Understanding of Animal Research included presentations from myself, about the work of the RDS in the UK, from Ivar Aune of Gesellschaft Gesundheit und Forschung about public attitutes to animal experimentation in Germany and Dr Antoine Goetschel of Stiftung fur das Tier im Recht in Switzerland discussing the situation in his country. This was the largest of the three workshops despite the fact that, in some ways, it was dealing with the most difficult issue on which to find common ground between the two sides of the debate.
Perhaps the most productive of the workshops was that on the Refinement of Animals Experiments which featured presentations from Dr Maggy Jennings of the RSPCA, Professor Bert van Zutphen of the University of Utrecht and Dr Michael Festing of the UK's MRC Toxicology Unit. The fourth parallel workshop covered the issue of replacement alternatives and regulatory toxicity testing with presentations from Professor Michael Balls of ECVAM in Italy, Dr Iain Purchase of Zeneca in the United Kingdom, Professor Horst Spielmann of ZEBET in Germany and Dr Line Mattthiessen of the European Commission in Brussels.
The afternoon session was split into two halves with the first consisting of reports from the Rapporteurs and Responders from each of the workshops. We had very deliberately structured this session so as to encourage the maximum consensus amongst all those presenting reports. As far as possible, we had selected a Responder who held slightly differing views from the Rapporteur and made them speak after the Rapporteur. The Responders were given the task of listening to the description of the conclusions of the workshop as reported by the Rapporteur and, if they considered that the description was incomplete or one-sided, they could correct it when they spoke. We hoped that this mechanism would encourage Rapporteurs and Responders to present converging, rather than diverging, reports. The final session of the meeting was a panel discussion featuring all the speakers, chairmen, Rapporteurs and Responders. The only problem here was that there were so many people on the Panel that, to include enough contributions from the delegates, we had to ration the debate very carefully.
Overall, the Congress identified one clear area of common ground in the principle of the three R's and two other areas of considerable importance on which there was not yet consensus. These were the use of primates in research (and in particular the use of wild-caught primates) and the use of transgenic animals (and in particular the question of the scientific value of transgenic animal models).
If it is possible to judge a meeting by the number of people who suggested that it should be repeated, then we would have to regard the Congress as a great success. We do plan to repeat the Congress in a few years, but before that we would like to attempt to make some progress on the three issues identified above. EBRA and FELASA are currently examining the idea of holding three workshops on these topics. For the subject of the three R's, which has been identified as an area of agreement, we are considering a workshop to search for practical ways forward. What can the animal research community and the animal protection community do together to help Reduce, Refine and Replace animal experiments? On the other two topics - primates and transgenic animals - we would need to use the workshops to continue the search for common ground.
The proceedings of the Congress will be published, we hope during 1997, and copies will be sent to all delegates.