Home » Archive 1997
Multilateral Consultations at Council of Europe
In addition to the European Union's Directive 86/609, the other European legislation concerning animal experimentation is the Council of Europe's Convention EST 123. Almost all of the provisions of the Directive and Convention are the same, except that, under the Convention, there are regular meetings of the representatives of the Council of Europe Member States and invited observer organisations convened to consider "the application of this Convention and the advisability of revising it or extending any of its provisions."
In May 1997, the third of these Multilateral Convention was held in Strasbourg. EBRA is an invited observer at these meetings, along with several other laboratory animal science and animal welfare organisations. Government representatives for Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Poland, the Slovak Republic and the USA attended the meeting. In addition, the European Union was officially represented. However, there were important differences in the status of each country. Only those Member States which have formally ratified the Convention, binding them to implement it (usually as national law), are Parties to the Convention. Formally, the Multilateral Convention was a meeting of the Parties to the Convention. However, most of the other Member States - and the EU itself - were Signatories to the Convention - ie their governments had signed the Convention to indicate their intention, in the future, to become Parties. These countries had a status somewhere between the Parties and the observers. Almost everyone else was simply an observer - including the government representatives from the USA, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovak Republic.
After the formal opening of the meeting, Dr Paul de Greeve, one of the representatives of the Netherlands, was elected Chairman. De Greeve has chaired the previous Multilateral Conventions and his experience was apparent. Chairing a meeting of so many national representatives is not any easy task, but he carried it out with considerable skill and diplomacy. The first main item on the agenda was for each of the representatives of Member States to report on the implementation of the Convention in their country. This was followed by statements from the observer organisations describing any new initiatives relevant to the regulation of animal experimentation. Perhaps the most interesting item on the agenda was the consideration of a Draft Resolution on the Accommodation and Care of Laboratory Animals. The origins of this document go back to the Berlin Workshop on this subject held in 1993. The report of this workshop was considered at a previous Multilateral Consultation and a drafting group set up to write the draft resolution placed before this meeting. The draft resolution highlighted a number of points where the existing guidelines for accommodation and care of animals in the Convention could be improved and recommended a thorough revision of these guidelines within five years.
The resolution was discussed at length and a second and third draft were produced. The version which was finally adopted included a new section on the need to encourage further research on the biological requirements of laboratory animals and to validate the minimum cage sizes, floor areas, etc for the various species. The recommendation to revise the guidelines was removed from the resolution, where it would have been technically inappropriate. Instead, the formal Report to the Committee of Ministers recorded that the meeting agreed on the need to consider revising the guidelines and it is understood that this will be on the agenda for the next Multilateral Consultations.
The meeting also adopted a resolution on the acquisition and transport of laboratory animals which set out important criteria and principles aimed at improving the welfare of laboratory animals in transport. In particular, the resolution agreed that, before approval was given to obtain animals from somewhere which was not an approved breeding or supplying centre, the need for the animals should be justified, efforts should be made to check whether suitable animals were available from registered breeders or suppliers, and assurances should be sought about the adequacy of the care and accommodation at the non-registered supplier. The resolution also contained some principles of best practice which those transporting laboratory animals should be encouraged to adopt.
In all, the meeting lasted for three and a half days and after the second day, it began to look as if we might not get through all the items on the agenda. At many points in the various resolutions under consideration, it was taking a lot of discussion to agree a form of wording acceptable to all those concerned. However, with the firm chairmanship of Paul de Greeve, the meeting managed to increase its rate of progress and complete the agenda in time