It was only when animal rights groups began to put pressure on airlines and ferry companies to stop transporting laboratory animals that this came to our attention.

Researchers are concerned that research on non-human mammals, as well as studies involving frogs, insects and fish, could be hampered if companies refuse to transport animals which will be used in labs. This, according to scientists, could even disrupt the fruit fly research used to study genetics.

Interestingly, scientists and policymakers in India managed to convince Air India to reverse an earlier decision to stop transporting animals.

From a European perspective, one wonders whether researchers and politicians in India are more willing to publicly support medical research by working with transport companies and animal welfare groups to find solutions.

What do you think?

Now that the issue is on the agenda, it prompts a number of thorny questions. If animals could not be transported to labs, resulting in a decline in medical research, would this be a price we’re willing to pay?

Should animal welfare campaigners focus on the conditions under which animals are transported – and the length of the journeys they take – rather than on banning transport altogether?

Let us know…

The people who work with laboratory animals are a compassionate bunch who would gladly use alternative methods if they could deliver the same results.

Like many people who do what I do, I’d quite like to become redundant. That is, I’d be content if my current job were made obsolete by advances in science.

As a vet in charge of laboratory animal science at a large research-based pharmaceutical company, I would be delighted if other mechanisms were available that could answer the questions we need to answer.

Nobody becomes a vet without first having a love for animals. For those of us who work with laboratories, we are the ones who guarantee round-the-clock care for the animals and safeguard their welfare.

Some people wonder how one can describe themselves as an animal lover yet do this kind of work. I give the example of my own wife who is a heart fibrillation survivor. Thankfully she leads a normal life, having taken a drug for 20 years now, and she is in great shape.

However, the reality is that the drug that has helped her stay healthy was developed through research on animals. We love cats in our house and I have to explain to my kids that a lot of the basic research that led to better treatments for their mother’s disease was actually done on cats and dogs.

The promise of unimaginable

As things stand today, it’s hard to imagine a world where animal research has been replaced with alternative methods. To be frank, I don’t foresee this happening any time soon, but such is the beauty of science that it tends to throw up all manner of unforeseen – even unforeseeable – advances.

Using animals is complicated but for much of our research, they are the best we have.

Advances in cell culture have taken us a long way but there are times when we need to see how a potential therapy responds to hormones and biochemicals from several organs of the body. The only option is to test the drug in a whole animal.

Of course, the research methods of the past are not as good as those available today. Perhaps in the future we’ll look back and think today’s methods to be primitive.

As I said in my last post, the beauty of science is its uncertainty.

At the core of the issue is the increasing refusal, as reported in the Daily Telegraph and elsewhere, of ferry companies and airlines to carry live mice, rats and rabbits intended for scientific research, following pressure from animal-rights campaigners.

UK Science Minister David Willetts has said that “it would be a pity” if the animal-transportation process was forced to be handed over to the military but, with Stena Line reportedly now having followed DFDS Seaways and P&O Ferries in prohibiting the carriage of test animals and thus closing the last available sea route for medical, researchers are despairing of the situation, given that no UK-based airline nor the Channel Tunnel operators will operate such a service.

The proportion of imported animals used in UK research is relatively small, but researchers stress that access to genetically modified strains bred overseas is vital for certain advanced research techniques. According to scientists, as they strive to improve understanding of diseases and to develop new treatments and cures, alternatives to using animals in research are sometimes not available. Moreover while the vast majority of animals used in the UK for research are bred in the UK, modern scientific research is highly collaborative and global. For example in certain research programmes it is essential that scientists share specific genetic strains of animals, which take a long time to breed. If their transport is stopped then researchers will have to recreate them, requiring the unnecessary use of many more animals over successive generations.

Most headlines put it stridently, with ‘not importing animals puts human lives at risk’ being the gist – Willetts, also speaking with BBC Radio 4's Today programme said that it was is “a serious problem that we do need to tackle”. He added that Britain should be proud of the fact that it developed many of the world's top drugs, and that scientists carrying out animal testing needed to be done so in carefully-controlled conditions complying to "high standards of animal welfare", which the UK Home Office is also very keen to stress. The European Commission, citing Regulation 1/2005, is also keen to stress the “effective monitoring tools in place”. So what are the animal rights campaigners trying to stop?

Essentially, research-animal transport supporters are asserting that a moratorium, as has been actively supported by animal rights groups, would in fact not improve animals’ welfare, given that longer routes and organisations with less experience would have to be used.

So which way now? Scientists are adamant that stopping the transport of animals would harm UK medical research but, with an issue that is as emotive as animal testing, and its opponents seemingly not prepared to budge an inch, Britain’s already overstretched armed forces may soon find themselves providing an unusual kind of taxi service.

Is this kind of animal rights activism improving or aggravating the welfare of animals? What’s your view?

As animal experimentation and dissection continued, opposition to it grew. First recorded in the seventeenth century, those against vivisection argued that an animal’s physiology could be affected by the pain caused during an experiment, therefore rendering the results unreliable. Others saw animals as inferior to humans and so different that results from animals could not be applied to humans.

In 1954, Charles Hume, founder of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) in the UK made an original proposal to UFAW to take into consideration alternatives for animal testing and change scientific study in laboratory animal experiments.

The microbiologist Burch and the zoologist Russell were chosen to further develop the Hume’s proposal. "The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique" was published in London in 1959, and the book defined animal testing alternatives as “The Three R's: Refinement, Reduction, and Replacement.”

• Replacement refers to the preferred use of non-animal methods over animal methods whenever it is possible to achieve the same scientific aim.
• Reduction refers to methods that enable researchers to obtain comparable levels of information from fewer animals, or to obtain more information from the same number of animals.
• Refinement refers to methods that alleviate or minimize potential pain, suffering or distress, and enhance animal welfare for the animals still used.

Over the past 40 years the 3Rs have become widely accepted ethical principles, and are now embedded in the legislation and conduct of animal-based science.

Before any research can be performed, an independent panel must consider whether animals are required or whether suitable replacement alternatives exist. When animals are used, the investigator must consider how best to decrease the number of animals used to a minimum and/or how to maximize the amount of information obtained per animal (Reduction alternatives), and must identify potential harms and ways to minimize these (Refinement alternatives).

Also read:

Finding the right balance between animal welfare & human welfare

Zebrafish at the cutting edge of heart research

Thanks to European legislation over the past 20 years, animal experts with specialized training are required on site to provide care and manage the welfare of animals used in research. The animal welfare team work in parallel with the scientific team, looking after the animals, while the scientists focus on research.

The animal welfare officer helps facilitate research and optimize techniques for the best results, so finding the right balance for the animals. This isn’t a passive relationship with the scientists; along with strict regulation that surrounds the use of animals in research, animal welfare officers review new scientific studies before they are sent for ethical review.

Surprisingly he went on to explain that his company is actively looking for and investing in alternatives for certain research. They need further development but hoped that within 10 years or so it would be a real possibility.

However, as I’ve heard several times already, it’s the authorities, who put human safety first, are the main audience to convince in relation to alternatives. Animal research and testing is required by-law before clinical trials can take place. He admitted that even if legislation didn’t demand it, the biomedical community would still use animals, but they’d do it differently.

So from an ethical standpoint, where does a person like this stand? Doing animal research does expose a dilemma, a personal dilemma he told me; even within industry people are reluctant to use animals. They understand that to produce good vaccines, they need to go through necessary testing on animals before being testing on humans, but still no one is happy to use animals.

He went on to explain, “If we must use animals we do, but from ethical point of view, animals aren’t a perfect model of humans, they don’t mimic humans, so there are some uncertainties. It’s not 100% perfect and is has limitations.”

Discussing the perception of animal research verses the reality, the vet explained that the problem starts with the lack of visibility of animal facilities. These centres are generally closed to the public so one’s imagination simply fills in the gaps. Moreover industry has never communicated on the improvements made over the past 20 years, so naturally our perceptions are stuck in the past and is far from today’s reality.

“While there is so much emotion and extremism around the use of animals in research, it’s decreasing the opportunity to have a dialogue and transparency.
If industry could be more open, the dialogue would be much more easy.”

So in fact, as a vet he was committed to ensuring animals were used ethically in research and that his company upheld, and often exceeded, the 3R guidelines.

Also read:
What’s in a name? Animal research vs testing vs experimentation

How did we arrive at the 3 Rs: Replacement, Reduction, Refinement?