US debates care standards for small laboratory animals

HOUSTON The current US Animal Welfare Act for humane care of research animals specifically excludes rats, mice and birds, which make up more than 95 per cent of all laboratory animals. In response to a 2000 lawsuit filed by the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) agreed to extend existing protections for other laboratory animals to mice, rats and birds but implementation of these guidelines continues to be delayed.The new regulations require that laboratory animals must have adequate space, air, food, water and clean cages and that they should suffer as little pain as necessary. These standards match those already covering rats, mice and birds kept in laboratories of researchers receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health or Public Health Service. However, the federal government estimates that 800 laboratories currently have no oversight for their treatment of the smallest warm-blooded animals.The new USDA standards were originally planned to take effect last October. However, the chairman of a Senate agriculture panel at the time, Senator Thad Cochran, blocked them for a year by inserting an amendment into the Farm Spending bill after lobbying by the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), a group representing laboratories. The new chairman of the panel, Senator Herb Kohl, has not yet said whether he will continue trying to block implementation of the new standards. If there is no opposition, they will take effect from the 1 October 20001 — start of the next fiscal year. But lobbying by the NABR and other organisations continues.The NABR argues that the standards the government planned to introduce last year were unnecessary, costly and would have delayed the development of cures for a range of diseases. "What we're trying to do is avoid duplicative regulation which does nothing to address the actual care and treatment of animals, but does drive up the cost of research," said Frankie Trull, the Association president. She said that complying with the new standards could cost laboratories $80 million to $280 million annually.W. Ronald DeHaven, the USDA veterinarian who oversees enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, generally agreed, noting most laboratory rodents and birds were already covered by some regulatory body. "If in fact most of the rats and mice are already covered by other regulations, then the only additional burden would be reporting animals to the USDA," he said.The American Association of Medical Colleges also opposes the addition of rodents and birds to the regulations, stating that coverage of these animals "opens the door to an increased regulatory and paperwork burden on the scientists and their institutions that use rats, mice, and birds to conduct vital biomedical research." The Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology representing researchers agreed.However, not all scientists are in opposition to tighter animal welfare regulations. Alan Goldberg, professor of toxicology at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, suggested: "There should be ways for the animal protection community and the animal research establishment to work together to minimise and/or eliminate pain and distress in research protocols, where possible, and to document our success and failure in doing so."Former US Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole supports the implementation of the new standards, according to an open letter he wrote last March, stating that Congress intended that rats, birds and mice should be covered when it passed the Animal Welfare Act in 1970. Even with expansion of USDA regulations to include rats, mice and small birds, US rules would still fall short of those applied in many European countries. The UK, considered to have strictest rules and oversight of laboratory animals, has both local oversight committees and national regulations on the use of animals in research.

US debates care standards for small laboratory animals

The US Animal Welfare Act for humane care of research animals excludes rats, mice and birds. Efforts to remedy this are in progress.

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