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New EU report on laboratory
The EU 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 excludes, from the legal definition of an experiment, the killing of an animal carried out to collect blood or other tissues if it is carried out using the least painful method in modern practice. Such killing is therefore outside the scope of the Directive.
A new report has been produced by Directorate-General XI of the European Commission to provide recommendations as to what constitutes the least painful methods of euthanasia in modern practice. The preface to the report indicates that it was produced "to assist personnel concerned with animals...in assessing which method of euthanasia is the most humane and appropriate to the species of animal...". However, since the Directive operates by telling Member States what they should introduce in the way of regulations controlling animal research, this report is probably best regarded as a statement of the Commission trying to inform the relevant authorities in Member States what methods of euthanasia will be considered acceptable to be excluded from their national regulatory control as far as the Directive is concerned. It is not clear whether the Commission regards the contents of this report as definitive or merely a starting point for discussion.
If this report is seen as setting the EU definition of what methods of euthanasia are acceptable, the regulatory authorities in each Member State should examine the definition (or lack of definition) of acceptable methods of euthanasia in their own regulatory systems and assess whether, they are in step with the EU definition.
The Working Party which wrote the report was chaired by Bryony Close, a former Research Animals Officer at the UK's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Although not widely known within the animal research community, she is respected for her sensible and practical approach to laboratory animal welfare issues. The other membership of the working party is noted below:
The methods classified as 'acceptable' in this report are those which the working party considered humane for use on conscious or lightly sedated animals. Other methods were considered acceptable only if used on heavily sedated or unconscious animals. There were also a number of methods, including decompression, hypothermia, hyperthermia, drowning and a range of chemical agents, which were not considered acceptable methods of euthanasia. The reasons for this classification varied: in some cases it was because of suffering caused to the animal and in other because of the risk to the human operator.
The report itself is divided into five main sections:
Information on audio-visual training materials.
The concept of best practice in any area of laboratory animal science is not concrete but evolves as the science and technology progress. At any one time there is usually a range of views about best practice in many aspects of any area of animal experimentation. This range of views is not often acknowledged in this report, which tends to give hard definitions of what is acceptable and what is not. Other reports on best practice in euthanasia which have been produced, of which the two most important are from Australia3 the USA4. All three reports are considered to be important and useful contributions to the evolving concept of best practice in laboratory animal euthanasia.
References
- Council Directive 86/609/EEC (1986)Official Journal of the European Communities, L 358, 1-28
- Euthanasia of Experimental Animals, European Commission, DGXI, July 1995
- Euthanasia of Animals Used for Scientific Purposes. Edited by J S Reilly. ANZCCART 1993
- 1993 Report of the American Veterinary Medical Association Panel on Euthanasia. JAVMA 202 (2) 229-249