Severity of suffering
The nature and level of suffering that animals experience in research and testing is a serious concern for everyone concerned with animal welfare. Animal suffering must be effectively recognised and assessed, not only so that it can be effectively avoided or alleviated but also for recording and reporting purposes. The RSPCA is working to achieve better assessment and reporting of animal suffering.
Better welfare assessment
Assessing welfare and recognising suffering should be an integral part of every project using animals. However, this is not as easy as it might seem, because many commonly used laboratory animals are 'prey' species that are adapted to conceal signs of pain, distress or anxiety. It also takes time and experience to observe individual animals properly so that signs of suffering are not overlooked.
More work needs to be done on defining and implementing practical, objective and effective systems for monitoring animals. A report on defining and implementing protocols for the welfare assessment of laboratory animals has recently been published by the UK Joint Working Group on Refinement (JWGR).
Describing any welfare concerns in a standard way, using consistent language, will help to ensure that suffering is rapidly identified and alleviated. The Mouse Welfare Terms project includes a list of terms for laboratory mice.
Better severity classification and reporting
Meaningful reporting of severity is important for several reasons. Information on the nature and level of suffering actually experienced by each animal helps to focus efforts to apply the 3Rs in areas of particular concern. Better reporting also encourages those involved with animal use to become more effective in assessing and preventing pain and distress. In addition, it leads to greater openness and transparency regarding animal use, for example by enabling progress in reducing suffering to be monitored.
Recent progress
The RSPCA and The Boyd Group jointly produced a report: Categorising the severity of scientific procedures on animals (2004) (PDF 377KB), which provides more information on the current severity classification in the UK. The report was developed from a series of workshops involving a range of stakeholder perspectives - scientists, vets and animal care staff and animal protection organisations.
The report came to many wide-ranging conclusions, including that there was a need for a severity classification system, but better guidance on its use was needed. It also stated that the whole life experience of the individual animal should be considered when categorising severity and that retrospective reporting would provide more accurate information.
Following on from the RSPCA/Boyd Group report, the Animal Procedures Committee and the Laboratory Animal Science Association (LASA) worked together to develop an improved system that would provide for better public reporting of animal suffering. The resulting report of the Suffering and Severity working group on The strengths and weaknesses of the current system of severity limits as a way of prospectively assessing suffering and severity (2009) (PDF 53.1KB) recommends retrospective reporting of actual severity. This would require a change in the Home Office returns system currently used by UK licensees, because the outcomes of welfare assessments would have to be recorded centrally and reported to the public.
To the future
The new European Directive on the Protection of Animals used for Scientific Purposes includes a requirement for retrospective reporting of severity. It also includes a severity classification for procedures based on four categories: non-recovery (where animals are used under anaesthesia and not allowed to regain consciousness), up-to-mild (including mild), moderate and severe. This is very similar to the current UK system.
The European Commission convened an Expert Working Group to agree on the criteria for each of the categories and also on the approach to assigning categories to individual procedures. The Group, which included a range of stakeholders including the RSPCA, representatives from the scientific community and EU Member States produced a report in July 2009:
