Volume 1

The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. European Union Committee
Date:
2009
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    (e) Permissible species 61. Similarly, it is clear that the public is particularly concerned about the use of NHPs, cats and dogs, because of the additional suffering these species are liable to experience in the laboratory setting and (in the case of NHPs) before they get there. Some female dogs and cats are forced to breed repeatedly, with obvious welfare detriment, as demonstrated by the BUAV’s undercover investigation at Harlan-Hillcrest, a multinational laboratory animal supply company.”° (f) Permissible suffering: severe suffering 62. Animal suffering lies at the heart of the public’s concern about vivisection. The concern is almost certainly in direct proportion to the level of suffering. 63. A key question is whether there is a level of suffering which should not be allowed, irrespective of hoped- for benefit. At present, the UK does have such a level. It does not permit “severe pain or distress which cannot be alleviated’ .”® This is based on the Government’s interpretation of Article 8 of the existing directive. 64. In Article 15(2) of its proposal, the Commission prohibited the infliction of severe suffering which is prolonged. This is the equivalent to the UK’s “severe pain or distress which cannot be alleviated’. The Parliament has passed two contradictory amendments. One, drafted by the BUAV, would prohibit severe suffering which was more than transient. The second, proposed by the Agriculture Committee, would allow suffering which was both severe and prolonged (subject to the weak safeguard of additional ethical scrutiny). The Parliament’s officials have purported to resolve the contradiction by coming up with their own wording, but one which in fact favours the principle behind the Agriculture Committee’s wording. The Parliament also passed an amendment (an amalgamation of amendments 71 and 185) stipulating that the criteria which the Commission is to develop for severity classification “shall include an upper limit of severity beyond which procedures on animals will be prohibited’. This is unsatisfactorily vague—the position needs to be clear on the face of the directive—but it does at least acknowledge the principle that there is a point beyond which suffering should not be tolerated, irrespective of hoped-for benefit. 65. The notion of allowing suffering which is both severe and prolonged is obscene in a civilised society. This would in principle allow severe suffering indefinitely. The YouGov poll shows that European citizens are firmly opposed to the infliction of any duration of severe suffering. 66. Important medical research involving animals for chronic illnesses such as cancer, arthritis and multiple sclerosis takes place in the UK without their being any suggestion that the bar on particular levels of suffering acts as a restriction. Nor need it elsewhere in Europe, with proper use of pain-relieving methods and monitoring. 67. It is important to understand that, in the UK, which has similar classification labels as is proposed for the EU, so-called “moderate” suffering can involve a very high degree of suffering. At Cambridge University (the subject of the BUAV undercover investigation), for example, individual marmosets received multiple surgical procedures including painful craniotomies followed by the inducing of strokes or Parkinsonian symptoms (as a result of which some were unable to self-care), sometimes with multiple seizures, and were then forced to undergo a stressful series of tests over a period of months whilst on a severe water restriction regime—the Home Office categorised these experiments as “moderate”.?’ There is every reason to fear that the UK approach would be replicated elsewhere. 68. Asa flavour of what a “severe” (or “substantial” under the Home Office nomenclature) experiment looks like, here is the description given by the chief inspector to the High Court in the BUAV judicial review of a licensed experiment: “The systemic administration of the neurotoxin MPTP to non-human primates produces the full-blown clinical condition as seen in human clinical practice [Parkinson’s disease] although, contrary to the human experience, the clinical signs may improve rather than worsen with time. This model produces, even with treatment, persistent, severely disabling and distressing clinical signs (with rigidity, tremor, and paucity of spontaneous movements being the main hallmarks of the condition) requiring a prolonged 2° Please see the outcomes of this investigation here: http://www. buav.org/investigations/makingakiling e a nae mig subparagraph of paragraph 5.42 of the Home Office’s Guidance on the Operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) c . 77 Please see the outcomes of the BUAV investigation in Cambridge here: http://www. buav.org/investigations/cuttingedge