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NSM-6838; No. of Pages 4
Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Neuroscience Methods journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jneumeth
Basic Neuroscience
Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers Penny Hawkins ∗ Research Animals Department, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, UK
h i g h l i g h t s • • • •
Laws and guidelines on animal care and use require suffering to be minimised. To achieve this, good recognition and assessment of pain and distress are essential. Behavioural researchers can help to make welfare assessment more effective. The paper explains how and suggests some action points.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 November 2013 Received in revised form 3 January 2014 Accepted 4 February 2014 Keywords: Welfare assessment Three Rs Refinement Animal behaviour Animal welfare Animal experimentation
a b s t r a c t Recent revisions to international legislation and guidelines on the care and use of animals in research and testing emphasise the importance of minimising suffering and improving welfare. Achieving this requires effective systems for recognising, recording, analysing and assessing animal behaviour, in order to identify relevant indicators of pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm so that any suffering can be rapidly recognised and ameliorated. Behavioural researchers can assist by disseminating information on developments in techniques and approaches for recognising, observing, monitoring, analysing and interpreting behaviour, both within their own facilities and more widely. They can also help to facilitate better welfare assessment by continuing to develop systems for measuring behaviours – including indicators of positive welfare – while also ensuring that harms within behavioural research are minimised. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction – principles within legislation and guidelines Many laws and guidelines that regulate animal use in research and testing include a requirement to minimise pain, suffering and distress. For example, the US Government principles for the utilisation and care of vertebrate animals used in testing, research, and training emphasise that ‘proper use of animals, including the avoidance or minimization of discomfort, distress, and pain when consistent with sound scientific practices, is imperative’ (National Research Council, 2011). The same approach is incorporated into Directive 2010/63/EU, which regulates animal care and use throughout the European Union (EU). This directly refers to the Three Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement) as a guiding principle, and requires Member States to ‘ensure refinement of breeding, accommodation and care, and of methods used in procedures, eliminating
∗ Tel.: +44 1403 793231. E-mail address: [email protected]
or reducing to the minimum any possible pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm’ (European Commission, 2010). These requirements clearly reflect the need to minimise animal suffering, taking the animals’ entire lifetime experiences into account. For example, suffering may be caused not only by scientific procedures and their effects, but also by many other factors including suboptimal housing, husbandry and care; transport; identification techniques; and euthanasia. Efforts to reduce pain or distress associated with all of these factors are taken into account by regulators and ethics or animal care and use committees, when weighing harms and benefits in order to make decisions about the justification for individual research projects. Besides the legal and ethical imperatives to minimise suffering, it is widely accepted that better welfare equals better science, as physiological and behavioural responses to avoidable suffering can act as experimental confounds, to the detriment of scientific quality (Poole, 1997). In order to achieve the goal of minimising harms to animals – for all of the reasons outlined above – it is clearly essential to be able effectively to recognise, assess and monitor indicators of pain,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008 0165-0270/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
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P. Hawkins / Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
suffering or distress. The recent revisions to both the US Guide and EU Directive recognise the need to assess welfare day to day, to review the nature and level of harm caused to the animals during their lifetimes (e.g. as a component of prospective and actual severity assessments, which are legal requirements in several countries), and to identify opportunities to replace, refine and reduce animal use in future studies. For example, the 2011 US Guide defines and explains postapproval monitoring (PAM), the continual oversight of animal care and use by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). In its broadest sense, PAM includes reviewing observations of animals made by animal care, veterinary, and IACUC staff and members, as well as any adverse or unanticipated effects on the animals (National Research Council, 2011). Directive 2010/63/EU expands upon these principles, with a number of requirements that depend on the effective assessment of animal behaviour and welfare (European Commission, 2010). For example, • the Animal Welfare Body (AWB1 ) must establish and review internal operational procedures regarding monitoring, reporting and follow up in relation to the welfare of the animals housed or used; • the AWB must follow up the development and outcome of projects, taking into account the effects on the animals used; • any ‘defect’ or avoidable pain, suffering or distress discovered must be eliminated as quickly as possible; • ‘retrospective assessment’ of projects must include the actual severity of procedures; and • actual severity must be reported annually. 2. How to achieve these principles Achieving all of the requirements outlined above will clearly require a process of welfare assessment and classification, beginning with making good day to day observations of animals, using effective protocols for assessing appropriate behaviours and clinical signs (e.g. body weight, reduced rearing, decreased social interaction, changes in faeces). These protocols should be tailored to the species, strain (where appropriate) and procedure; for further explanation see ILAR (2008, 2009), Joint Working Group on Refinement (2011) and European Commission (2012, 2013). 2.1. Identifying and observing behavioural indicators of animal welfare Careful review is necessary to identify the behavioural indicators and other clinical signs that are most relevant for each project, with input from people with a range of different expertise and perspectives. Good teamwork involving animal technologists and care staff, the researcher and the attending veterinarian, should help to identify sources of suffering and the most effective indicators of pain or distress (Joint Working Group on Refinement, 2011; European Commission, 2012, 2013). This is where additional input from behavioural researchers can contribute further towards ensuring an effective protocol to recognise and alleviate suffering, because of the expertise behavioural researchers can provide in understanding and interpreting behaviour, in addition to raising awareness of new techniques for monitoring animals and identifying novel indicators. A look back at past guidance illustrates the recent progress that has been made with defining and recognising clinical signs, which
1 Known as the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body in the UK, this is a local committee which advises on matters related to animal welfare and the Three Rs.
has been assisted by developments in behavioural research. For example, some 1996 guidance on recognising suffering in rodents suggested indicators for routine use that would be associated with severe suffering today, including hunched posture, piloerection, laboured respiration, vocalisation (presumably audible) and self mutilation (National Research Council, 1996). Today, there is a growing literature on more subtle behavioural indicators of animal suffering – and wellbeing – much of it produced by researchers using rapidly developing technologies for observing and analysing animal behaviour and physiology. In the case of mice, rats and rabbits, new ways of looking at animals, such as analysing animals’ facial expressions (e.g. Langford et al., 2010; Keating et al., 2012), or monitoring previously unnoted indicators such as ‘flank twitching’ post laparotomy (Roughan and Flecknell, 2001), have provided valuable insights into the presence of acute pain. There is also greater emphasis on observing the enclosure environment; e.g. faecal pellet production, reduced burrowing and nest building behaviour have all been evaluated as indicators of discomfort, pain, distress or sickness (see Jirkof, this section). Other techniques such as gait analysis are primarily used to characterise relevant animal ‘models’ (e.g. motoneuron disease, Wooley et al., 2005), but there is scope for using such techniques in other fields. There is often a knowledge gap with respect to the above types of approach, in that many researchers are unaware of the range of techniques that could be at their disposal to help them improve both science and welfare. However, it is important to note that an effective, objective welfare assessment protocol will always use a combination of methods, and each new technique should be critically considered regarding its applicability to the species, strain and procedure, and how it could further understanding of the animal’s experience. Behavioural researchers could play a vital role in both disseminating information about new approaches and helping with their interpretation; a point well made by the National Research Council (2008): ‘animal welfare scientists, and researchers and scientists who use animal models, should communicate with each other more frequently in order to compare objectives and progress and to identify opportunities for dialogue’.
2.2. Balancing human vs. automated observations Those new techniques and approaches that have made it to the ‘cageside’ have provided useful, objective tools for observing animals, some of which lend themselves to automated detection and analysis to further enhance objectivity (see van der Harst and Spruijt, this section). However, note that automated assessments should only be used to complement, and not supersede, the judgement of a properly trained, competent, empathetic human observer (e.g. Wright-Williams et al., 2013). This is particularly important with respect to implementing humane endpoints, which can be defined as ‘criteria that allow early termination of experiments before animals experience significant harm, whilst still meeting the experimental objectives’ (see http://www.humane-endpoints.info). As a simplified example, the humane endpoint may be a nest quality score of ‘1’, denoting very poor nest quality; but an experienced animal technologist may use other criteria to judge that an animal is suffering excessively, and should be removed from the procedure, while nest building ability has not completely deteriorated and the score is still ‘2’. The technologist’s judgement should be respected in cases such as this. In addition to considering how to achieve a balance between human judgement and automation, it is also necessary to take account of technological and practical limitations associated with both the use of new technologies, and with monitoring animals per se (Table 1). It is necessary to consider the potential harms and benefits of different approaches, with the aim of selecting that which is
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
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P. Hawkins / Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of examining animals and using behavioural recognition systems. Welfare advantages . . .
. . . and disadvantages
Behavioural recognition systems can monitor animals for longer periods than a human observer; they can also improve objectivity The absence of a human observer could be an advantage if animals are liable to conceal signs of suffering when a human is present
May require single housing if unable to track multiple animals, or may not permit environmental enrichment if temporary disappearance of animal would confound the system Over-reliance on these systems, and under-recognition of human observational skills, may result in important indicators being missed
Regular and frequent examinations (e.g. weighing) provide plenty of information to help assess welfare
Animals can be disturbed and stressed by frequent capture and handling, or even by observations (e.g. when breeding) Examinations are normally performed during the human working day, which risks missing important behaviours in nocturnal animals (e.g. mice and rats)
best for animal welfare overall, i.e. provides maximum information with minimum disturbance. 2.3. Recording and analysing observations – during and after procedures Day to day observations of welfare indicators are recorded, either on paper (e.g. in the form of ‘score sheets’) or electronically, and used to help make a judgement on the nature and level of suffering, and how this may be developing (European Commission, 2012). Better indicators and recording systems lead to more effective detection of suffering, which can then be acted upon more expediently, for example by providing analgesia, humanely killing the animal or ending the study. The day to day records are also used retrospectively, once the procedure has finished, to assess the actual severity of any suffering experienced by the animal. This is a judgement based on observations of the animal, taking the nature of the procedures into account. Its purpose is to (i) identify aspects of the animal’s life experience, including procedures, that represented welfare problems and could be refined in future studies, (ii) identify successful refinements, so that these can be further applied and disseminated, and (iii) provide data for statistical reporting purposes, where relevant. 3. Indicators of positive welfare This paper has so far emphasised the legal, ethical and scientific requirements to minimise suffering, but the Guide and Directive also both mention the importance of providing for animals’ physical, physiological and behavioural needs, with the Directive Recitals actually referring to ‘enhancing the life time experience of the animals’ (European Commission, 2010; National Research Council, 2011). This is welcome from an animal welfare aspect, and a desirable ideal would be to achieve a good quality of life for animals used in research and testing, notwithstanding the fact that experimental procedures will often impact on this. The concept of including indicators of positive welfare when monitoring animals has been neglected to date, but it would be helpful in assessing the quality of life of experimental animals, understanding the impact of non experimental factors such as housing, and evaluating refinements (JWGR, 2011). This requires indicators of good welfare, or positive ‘affective’ (emotional) states in animals (see McCormick, this section). Some
3
examples that have been suggested are: good self care; a normal activity budget, including sleep; interacting well with human carers; interest in pleasurable things, such as treats; play; and ‘anticipatory’ behaviours, where animals are looking forward to pleasurable events. Behavioural researchers could help to define robust, species specific indicators of positive welfare, and this was identified as a valuable research topic in discussions at a previous Measuring Behavior meeting (see Hawkins, 2010). 4. Conclusion and action points Accurate recognition, recording, analysis and reporting of animal behaviours are all critically important in order to conduct a proper assessment of the level and nature of suffering. Behavioural researchers are clearly in a good position to provide information, and develop techniques, to help achieve this. They have also contributed greatly to our knowledge of behaviours associated with negative welfare states, such as discomfort, pain, anxiety and distress – and positive wellbeing – in a wide range of species, as well as to the development of accessible techniques for observing and monitoring animals. Increased dialogue between behavioural researchers and those working in other fields would therefore be helpful in improving the standard of assessments of laboratory animal behaviour and thus welfare. On an immediate, practical level, this could take the form of: • Offering your services to the local animal care and use or ethics committee, with respect to identifying, observing and understanding behavioural welfare indicators for projects, or helping to understand animal behaviour in general at your facility. • Ensuring that new techniques for recognising, observing and monitoring behaviours are brought to the attention of relevant staff and committees. • Encouraging learned societies that focus on animal behaviour to increase outreach and dialogue with other societies for those using animals in different fields, e.g. by presenting at their meetings or convening symposia. • Contributing towards the work of laboratory animal societies, or international/umbrella bodies such as the Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations (FELASA), which may offer the possibility to work in expert groups that will benefit from the knowledge of behavioural researchers. • Talking to colleagues within behavioural research about minimising the impact on animals in your own field, e.g. by working to overcome any constraints on group housing or enrichment associated with some monitoring systems; or conducting studies on animals already undergoing procedures when evaluating indicators of suffering (Hawkins, 2010). Acknowledgements Thank you to Noldus Information Technology for including laboratory animal welfare within their conference, and to all the presenters who spoke at the symposium. References European Commission. Directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. OJ EU 2010;L276:33–79. European Commission. Working document on a severity assessment framework; 2012, Download at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/ lab animals/interpretation en.htm [last viewed 15.11.13]. European Commission. Examples to illustrate the process of severity classification, day-to-day assessment and actual severity assessment; 2013, Download at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab animals/interpretation en.htm [last viewed 15.11.13].
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
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Hawkins P. Refinement through better animal monitoring: how behavioural researchers can contribute. In: Barakova E, de Ruyter B, Spink A, editors. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on methods and techniques in behavioral research. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Noldus Information Technology; 2010, Download at: http://www.measuringbehavior.org/ mb2010/presentations-index-author [last viewed 15.11.13]. ILAR. Recognition and alleviation of distress in laboratory animals. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2008. ILAR. Recognition and alleviation of pain in laboratory animals. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2009. JWGR (Joint Working Group on Refinement). A guide to defining and implementing protocols for the welfare assessment of laboratory animals. Lab Anim 2011;45:1–13. Keating SCJ, Thomas AA, Flecknell PA. Evaluation of EMLA cream for preventing pain during tattooing of rabbits: changes in physiological, behavioural and facial expression responses. PLoS ONE 2012;7(9):e44437.
Langford DJ, Bailey AL, Chanda ML. Coding of facial expressions of pain in the laboratory mouse. Nat Methods 2010;7:447–9. National Research Council. Laboratory animal management: rodents. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 1996. National Research Council. Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals. 8th ed. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2011. Poole T. Happy animals make good science. Lab Anim 1997;31:116–24. Roughan JV, Flecknell PA. Behavioural effects of laparotomy and analgesic effects of ketoprofen and carprofen in rats. Pain 2001;90:65–74. Wright-Williams S, Flecknell PA, Roughan JV. Comparative effects of vasectomy surgery and buprenorphine treatment on faecal corticosterone concentrations and behaviour assessed by manual and automated analysis methods in C57 and C3H Mice. PLoS ONE 2013;8(9):e75948. Wooley CM, Sher RB, Kale A. Gait analysis detects early changes in SOD1(G93A) mice. Muscle Nerve 2005;32:43–50.
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
ARTICLE IN PRESS
NSM-6838; No. of Pages 4
Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Neuroscience Methods journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jneumeth
Basic Neuroscience
Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers Penny Hawkins ∗ Research Animals Department, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, UK
h i g h l i g h t s • • • •
Laws and guidelines on animal care and use require suffering to be minimised. To achieve this, good recognition and assessment of pain and distress are essential. Behavioural researchers can help to make welfare assessment more effective. The paper explains how and suggests some action points.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 November 2013 Received in revised form 3 January 2014 Accepted 4 February 2014 Keywords: Welfare assessment Three Rs Refinement Animal behaviour Animal welfare Animal experimentation
a b s t r a c t Recent revisions to international legislation and guidelines on the care and use of animals in research and testing emphasise the importance of minimising suffering and improving welfare. Achieving this requires effective systems for recognising, recording, analysing and assessing animal behaviour, in order to identify relevant indicators of pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm so that any suffering can be rapidly recognised and ameliorated. Behavioural researchers can assist by disseminating information on developments in techniques and approaches for recognising, observing, monitoring, analysing and interpreting behaviour, both within their own facilities and more widely. They can also help to facilitate better welfare assessment by continuing to develop systems for measuring behaviours – including indicators of positive welfare – while also ensuring that harms within behavioural research are minimised. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction – principles within legislation and guidelines Many laws and guidelines that regulate animal use in research and testing include a requirement to minimise pain, suffering and distress. For example, the US Government principles for the utilisation and care of vertebrate animals used in testing, research, and training emphasise that ‘proper use of animals, including the avoidance or minimization of discomfort, distress, and pain when consistent with sound scientific practices, is imperative’ (National Research Council, 2011). The same approach is incorporated into Directive 2010/63/EU, which regulates animal care and use throughout the European Union (EU). This directly refers to the Three Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement) as a guiding principle, and requires Member States to ‘ensure refinement of breeding, accommodation and care, and of methods used in procedures, eliminating
∗ Tel.: +44 1403 793231. E-mail address: [email protected]
or reducing to the minimum any possible pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm’ (European Commission, 2010). These requirements clearly reflect the need to minimise animal suffering, taking the animals’ entire lifetime experiences into account. For example, suffering may be caused not only by scientific procedures and their effects, but also by many other factors including suboptimal housing, husbandry and care; transport; identification techniques; and euthanasia. Efforts to reduce pain or distress associated with all of these factors are taken into account by regulators and ethics or animal care and use committees, when weighing harms and benefits in order to make decisions about the justification for individual research projects. Besides the legal and ethical imperatives to minimise suffering, it is widely accepted that better welfare equals better science, as physiological and behavioural responses to avoidable suffering can act as experimental confounds, to the detriment of scientific quality (Poole, 1997). In order to achieve the goal of minimising harms to animals – for all of the reasons outlined above – it is clearly essential to be able effectively to recognise, assess and monitor indicators of pain,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008 0165-0270/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
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P. Hawkins / Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
suffering or distress. The recent revisions to both the US Guide and EU Directive recognise the need to assess welfare day to day, to review the nature and level of harm caused to the animals during their lifetimes (e.g. as a component of prospective and actual severity assessments, which are legal requirements in several countries), and to identify opportunities to replace, refine and reduce animal use in future studies. For example, the 2011 US Guide defines and explains postapproval monitoring (PAM), the continual oversight of animal care and use by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). In its broadest sense, PAM includes reviewing observations of animals made by animal care, veterinary, and IACUC staff and members, as well as any adverse or unanticipated effects on the animals (National Research Council, 2011). Directive 2010/63/EU expands upon these principles, with a number of requirements that depend on the effective assessment of animal behaviour and welfare (European Commission, 2010). For example, • the Animal Welfare Body (AWB1 ) must establish and review internal operational procedures regarding monitoring, reporting and follow up in relation to the welfare of the animals housed or used; • the AWB must follow up the development and outcome of projects, taking into account the effects on the animals used; • any ‘defect’ or avoidable pain, suffering or distress discovered must be eliminated as quickly as possible; • ‘retrospective assessment’ of projects must include the actual severity of procedures; and • actual severity must be reported annually. 2. How to achieve these principles Achieving all of the requirements outlined above will clearly require a process of welfare assessment and classification, beginning with making good day to day observations of animals, using effective protocols for assessing appropriate behaviours and clinical signs (e.g. body weight, reduced rearing, decreased social interaction, changes in faeces). These protocols should be tailored to the species, strain (where appropriate) and procedure; for further explanation see ILAR (2008, 2009), Joint Working Group on Refinement (2011) and European Commission (2012, 2013). 2.1. Identifying and observing behavioural indicators of animal welfare Careful review is necessary to identify the behavioural indicators and other clinical signs that are most relevant for each project, with input from people with a range of different expertise and perspectives. Good teamwork involving animal technologists and care staff, the researcher and the attending veterinarian, should help to identify sources of suffering and the most effective indicators of pain or distress (Joint Working Group on Refinement, 2011; European Commission, 2012, 2013). This is where additional input from behavioural researchers can contribute further towards ensuring an effective protocol to recognise and alleviate suffering, because of the expertise behavioural researchers can provide in understanding and interpreting behaviour, in addition to raising awareness of new techniques for monitoring animals and identifying novel indicators. A look back at past guidance illustrates the recent progress that has been made with defining and recognising clinical signs, which
1 Known as the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body in the UK, this is a local committee which advises on matters related to animal welfare and the Three Rs.
has been assisted by developments in behavioural research. For example, some 1996 guidance on recognising suffering in rodents suggested indicators for routine use that would be associated with severe suffering today, including hunched posture, piloerection, laboured respiration, vocalisation (presumably audible) and self mutilation (National Research Council, 1996). Today, there is a growing literature on more subtle behavioural indicators of animal suffering – and wellbeing – much of it produced by researchers using rapidly developing technologies for observing and analysing animal behaviour and physiology. In the case of mice, rats and rabbits, new ways of looking at animals, such as analysing animals’ facial expressions (e.g. Langford et al., 2010; Keating et al., 2012), or monitoring previously unnoted indicators such as ‘flank twitching’ post laparotomy (Roughan and Flecknell, 2001), have provided valuable insights into the presence of acute pain. There is also greater emphasis on observing the enclosure environment; e.g. faecal pellet production, reduced burrowing and nest building behaviour have all been evaluated as indicators of discomfort, pain, distress or sickness (see Jirkof, this section). Other techniques such as gait analysis are primarily used to characterise relevant animal ‘models’ (e.g. motoneuron disease, Wooley et al., 2005), but there is scope for using such techniques in other fields. There is often a knowledge gap with respect to the above types of approach, in that many researchers are unaware of the range of techniques that could be at their disposal to help them improve both science and welfare. However, it is important to note that an effective, objective welfare assessment protocol will always use a combination of methods, and each new technique should be critically considered regarding its applicability to the species, strain and procedure, and how it could further understanding of the animal’s experience. Behavioural researchers could play a vital role in both disseminating information about new approaches and helping with their interpretation; a point well made by the National Research Council (2008): ‘animal welfare scientists, and researchers and scientists who use animal models, should communicate with each other more frequently in order to compare objectives and progress and to identify opportunities for dialogue’.
2.2. Balancing human vs. automated observations Those new techniques and approaches that have made it to the ‘cageside’ have provided useful, objective tools for observing animals, some of which lend themselves to automated detection and analysis to further enhance objectivity (see van der Harst and Spruijt, this section). However, note that automated assessments should only be used to complement, and not supersede, the judgement of a properly trained, competent, empathetic human observer (e.g. Wright-Williams et al., 2013). This is particularly important with respect to implementing humane endpoints, which can be defined as ‘criteria that allow early termination of experiments before animals experience significant harm, whilst still meeting the experimental objectives’ (see http://www.humane-endpoints.info). As a simplified example, the humane endpoint may be a nest quality score of ‘1’, denoting very poor nest quality; but an experienced animal technologist may use other criteria to judge that an animal is suffering excessively, and should be removed from the procedure, while nest building ability has not completely deteriorated and the score is still ‘2’. The technologist’s judgement should be respected in cases such as this. In addition to considering how to achieve a balance between human judgement and automation, it is also necessary to take account of technological and practical limitations associated with both the use of new technologies, and with monitoring animals per se (Table 1). It is necessary to consider the potential harms and benefits of different approaches, with the aim of selecting that which is
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
G Model
ARTICLE IN PRESS
NSM-6838; No. of Pages 4
P. Hawkins / Journal of Neuroscience Methods xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of examining animals and using behavioural recognition systems. Welfare advantages . . .
. . . and disadvantages
Behavioural recognition systems can monitor animals for longer periods than a human observer; they can also improve objectivity The absence of a human observer could be an advantage if animals are liable to conceal signs of suffering when a human is present
May require single housing if unable to track multiple animals, or may not permit environmental enrichment if temporary disappearance of animal would confound the system Over-reliance on these systems, and under-recognition of human observational skills, may result in important indicators being missed
Regular and frequent examinations (e.g. weighing) provide plenty of information to help assess welfare
Animals can be disturbed and stressed by frequent capture and handling, or even by observations (e.g. when breeding) Examinations are normally performed during the human working day, which risks missing important behaviours in nocturnal animals (e.g. mice and rats)
best for animal welfare overall, i.e. provides maximum information with minimum disturbance. 2.3. Recording and analysing observations – during and after procedures Day to day observations of welfare indicators are recorded, either on paper (e.g. in the form of ‘score sheets’) or electronically, and used to help make a judgement on the nature and level of suffering, and how this may be developing (European Commission, 2012). Better indicators and recording systems lead to more effective detection of suffering, which can then be acted upon more expediently, for example by providing analgesia, humanely killing the animal or ending the study. The day to day records are also used retrospectively, once the procedure has finished, to assess the actual severity of any suffering experienced by the animal. This is a judgement based on observations of the animal, taking the nature of the procedures into account. Its purpose is to (i) identify aspects of the animal’s life experience, including procedures, that represented welfare problems and could be refined in future studies, (ii) identify successful refinements, so that these can be further applied and disseminated, and (iii) provide data for statistical reporting purposes, where relevant. 3. Indicators of positive welfare This paper has so far emphasised the legal, ethical and scientific requirements to minimise suffering, but the Guide and Directive also both mention the importance of providing for animals’ physical, physiological and behavioural needs, with the Directive Recitals actually referring to ‘enhancing the life time experience of the animals’ (European Commission, 2010; National Research Council, 2011). This is welcome from an animal welfare aspect, and a desirable ideal would be to achieve a good quality of life for animals used in research and testing, notwithstanding the fact that experimental procedures will often impact on this. The concept of including indicators of positive welfare when monitoring animals has been neglected to date, but it would be helpful in assessing the quality of life of experimental animals, understanding the impact of non experimental factors such as housing, and evaluating refinements (JWGR, 2011). This requires indicators of good welfare, or positive ‘affective’ (emotional) states in animals (see McCormick, this section). Some
3
examples that have been suggested are: good self care; a normal activity budget, including sleep; interacting well with human carers; interest in pleasurable things, such as treats; play; and ‘anticipatory’ behaviours, where animals are looking forward to pleasurable events. Behavioural researchers could help to define robust, species specific indicators of positive welfare, and this was identified as a valuable research topic in discussions at a previous Measuring Behavior meeting (see Hawkins, 2010). 4. Conclusion and action points Accurate recognition, recording, analysis and reporting of animal behaviours are all critically important in order to conduct a proper assessment of the level and nature of suffering. Behavioural researchers are clearly in a good position to provide information, and develop techniques, to help achieve this. They have also contributed greatly to our knowledge of behaviours associated with negative welfare states, such as discomfort, pain, anxiety and distress – and positive wellbeing – in a wide range of species, as well as to the development of accessible techniques for observing and monitoring animals. Increased dialogue between behavioural researchers and those working in other fields would therefore be helpful in improving the standard of assessments of laboratory animal behaviour and thus welfare. On an immediate, practical level, this could take the form of: • Offering your services to the local animal care and use or ethics committee, with respect to identifying, observing and understanding behavioural welfare indicators for projects, or helping to understand animal behaviour in general at your facility. • Ensuring that new techniques for recognising, observing and monitoring behaviours are brought to the attention of relevant staff and committees. • Encouraging learned societies that focus on animal behaviour to increase outreach and dialogue with other societies for those using animals in different fields, e.g. by presenting at their meetings or convening symposia. • Contributing towards the work of laboratory animal societies, or international/umbrella bodies such as the Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations (FELASA), which may offer the possibility to work in expert groups that will benefit from the knowledge of behavioural researchers. • Talking to colleagues within behavioural research about minimising the impact on animals in your own field, e.g. by working to overcome any constraints on group housing or enrichment associated with some monitoring systems; or conducting studies on animals already undergoing procedures when evaluating indicators of suffering (Hawkins, 2010). Acknowledgements Thank you to Noldus Information Technology for including laboratory animal welfare within their conference, and to all the presenters who spoke at the symposium. References European Commission. Directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. OJ EU 2010;L276:33–79. European Commission. Working document on a severity assessment framework; 2012, Download at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/ lab animals/interpretation en.htm [last viewed 15.11.13]. European Commission. Examples to illustrate the process of severity classification, day-to-day assessment and actual severity assessment; 2013, Download at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab animals/interpretation en.htm [last viewed 15.11.13].
Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
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Please cite this article in press as: Hawkins P. Progress in assessing animal welfare in relation to new legislation: Opportunities for behavioural researchers. J Neurosci Methods (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.02.008
