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New animal welfare and caging standards
Higher standards of animal welfare and caging will be mandatory and lead to substantial additional costs
As expected, it is proposed that compliance with the Council of Europe ETS123 standards of animal caging and welfare should be mandatory. This is inevitable and it will be very expensive. However, it will produce a major increase in laboratory animal welfare across the EU, which is obviously worthwhile.
The EU has signed up to European Convention ETS123 so it is inevitable that these standards will become part of the revised Directive. Currently, the Directive contains non-mandatory guidelines identical to the old ETS123 guidelines. These were quite basic, but were recently revised and updated and many establishments across the EU have started to implement the new ETS123 standards.
Actually, it is unlikely to make much difference whether the ETS123 standards are implemented in the revised Directive as guidelines or made mandatory. In either case, the vast majority of EU establishments will implement them in the next few years. However, this will produce a very significant one-off cost (estimated to be in excess of a €1 billion) and a substantial increase in ongoing costs, to meet the lower stocking densities in the new ETS123 standards.
Making these standards mandatory will mean that all establishments have to implement them sooner than if they were only guidance, but the Directive will specify a phase-in period. Bearing in mind that the new Member States have only recently had to implement the old ETS123 standards and that the academic sector has significant problems finding the funding to meet new capital requirements, the minimum sensible phase-in period should be 5 years, and the ideal period should be 10 years.