AM: Introduction to Animal Ethics and Welfare

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Plenary presenter: Professor Peter Sandøe (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Title: Ethical perspectives on the use of animals in behavioural and welfare research

The use of animals in behavioural and welfare research may appear to differ from mainstream use of animals in biomedical research in one of two ways. Firstly, it may be seen as mostly not invasive, and mild in terms of its welfare impact (this is primarily the case with behavioural research). Secondly it may be seen as being conducted in the interest of animals rather than in the interest of humans (this is primarily the case with welfare research). For these reasons, many of those who use animals in behavioural and welfare research typically consider themselves to be in a different ethical situation compared to those who use animals in studying human diseases, for safety testing and the like.
However, there is a growing awareness that using animals in behavioural and welfare research in fact presents ethical concerns like those arising from other forms of animal use. Furthermore, behavioural and welfare research must comply with the same regulatory requirements as other forms of animal research – even though there are large regional and national differences between these requirements. Behavioural research, in addition, may involve human owners and other human research subjects, giving rise to a separate category of regulatory requirements.
In this introductory talk I aim to: 1) discuss to what extent the use of animals in behavioural and welfare research differs from other forms of animal use; 2) introduce the main ethical principles relating to the use of animals for research and testing, notably the 3Rs and the requirement of a positive harm-benefit assessment; 3) highlight some of the regional and national differences in regulatory requirements and the problems this gives rise to when collaborating and publishing internationally; and 4) introduce the specific requirements arising when behavioural and welfare research involves human research subjects

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Presenter: Dr. Shelly Volsche, Boise State University 

Other Authors: Holly Root-Gutteridge, Anna T. Korzeniowska, and Alexandra Horowitz 

Title: Centring Individual Animals and the Ethical Citation of Past and Future Research

Modern behavioural scientists have come to acknowledge that individual animals may respond differently to the same stimuli and that the quality of welfare and lived experience can affect behavioural responses. However, much of the foundational research in behavioural science lacked awareness of the effect of both welfare and individuality on data, bringing their results into question. This oversight is rarely addressed when citing seminal works as their findings are considered crucial to our understanding of animal behaviour. The purpose of this review is threefold: First, we critique seminal papers in animal behaviour as a model for re-examining past experiments, attending to gaps in knowledge or concern about how welfare may have affected results. Second, we propose a means to cite research in a way that is transparent and conscious of the abovementioned problems. Third, we propose a method of transparent reporting for future behaviour research that 1) improves replicability, 2) accounts for individuality of nonhuman participants, and 3) considers the impact of the animals’ welfare on the validity of the science. With this combined approach, we aim to address the ethics of past work in behaviour scholarship while providing sociohistoric context and identifying potential impacts on past and future data. This serves to drive open engagement in future science as we learn to do better.

Ethics statement. This work did not involve direct work with humans or animals. As such, no ethical approval was needed or sought. It was funded by the Culture & Animals Foundation. 

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Presenter: Dr. Rebecca E. Nordquist, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, The Netherlands 

Other Authors: Christian Nawroth and Anna Olsson

Title: Overlaps between animal welfare concerns in farm and laboratory animals and the ethics of animal use

Despite many overlaps in welfare issues in research on farm animal and laboratory animal welfare, these scientific fields have evolved largely independently. Both involve animals in commercial and/or large-scale settings, in the service of humans. There are highly similar challenges, e.g. long-distance transportation from breeder to farm or research facility, issues with surplus animals including transgenic breeding stock, or surplus males in many farm animals, and suboptimal housing conditions that do not fulfill behavioural needs. Both fields have seen scale increase, with consolidation of farms into larger operations, and centralisation of animal facilities within (or even across) research institutes causing both detriments and benefits to welfare. However, there is little discourse between the two fields; international scientific meetings usually involve researchers from either laboratory- or farm animal welfare, research is often published in field-specific journals, and we are aware of few collaborative projects spanning farm- and laboratory animal welfare. In addition, farm- and laboratory animals are separated at regulatory and governance levels. The welfare issues that both farm- and lab animals face as commercially-produced and kept animals are interwoven with the ethics of their use, including human view of whether benefits to humans outweigh the welfare implications for the animals involved, and whether there are feasible alternatives available or desired.

Ethics statement. No animal experimentation was directly conducted for this research; we will review the animal experimentation cited and comment on ethical aspects of the experimentation.

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Presenter: Dr. Birte Nielsen, UFAW 

Other Authors: Anna Olsson; Irene Camerlink; Péter Pongrácz; Jen-Yun Chou; Maria Camila Ceballos; Alexandra L. Whittaker;  Huw D.R. Golledge; Birte L. Nielsen

Title: Ethics assessment in animal welfare research: the dilemmas of reviewers and editors

Ethics review mechanisms for animal research have long been established but processes differ between countries and sometimes even across institutions within a country. The authors of this abstract comprise the Editors-in-Chief of the journals Applied Animal Behaviour Science (IC, PP) and Animal Welfare (HDRG, BLN), the current and former Ethics Officers of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE; AW, IASO), and the current ISAE Development and Assistant Development Officers (MCC, J-YC). Like most of the ASAB workshop participants, we all regularly review scientific manuscripts on animal welfare research from a variety of sources and are confronted with studies with or without ethics assessments. Here, we will focus on one aspect: the role of reviewers and journal editors in an internationally publishing world. For research that is not physically invasive, it is often up to the researchers themselves to decide whether ethics approval is needed, which is clearly not ideal. One solution is to demand ethics approval for all protocols and experiments to be published, but this is not without its own problems. Even when a manuscript is presenting work done under approval, should we – as editors and reviewers – be uncritical of the ethics of the work that has been carried out? The answer to this is clearly no. Together, we need to find practical and effective ways of ensuring that ethical issues are considered and dealt with in animal welfare science internationally.

Ethics statement. All authors have approved the abstract and the submission of it for this workshop. No animals or humans were involved as study subjects, as the abstract is an overview on the subject with no experimental input (survey or otherwise).

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PM: Laboratory Ethics and Welfare

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Plenary presenter: Dr. Esther Pearl (NC3Rs, United Kingdom)

Title: Key considerations and resources for designing rigorous animal experiments

There is increasing concern that biomedical animal studies are not always reliable or predictive. Contributing factors to inconsistent results include poor experimental design, inappropriate analysis methods and incomplete reporting. The NC3Rs Experimental Design Assistant (EDA, https://eda.nc3rs.org.uk) is free-to-use online software that helps researchers design more rigorous animal experiments by providing bespoke feedback on experimental designs. This feedback highlights the implications of particular design decisions and enables users to make informed choices, tailored to their experimental objectives. The EDA is endorsed by major biomedical research funders worldwide as a tool to help researchers design experiments that are more likely to yield robust and reproducible data, while using the minimum number of animals consistent with scientific objectives. Detailed experimental reporting is key to reducing irreproducible results. The ARRIVE guidelines (www.ARRIVEguidelines.org) can help researchers ensure they are reporting experiments comprehensively and transparently. Recently revised, the ARRIVE guidelines are accompanied by an explanation and elaboration document providing more information about each item in the guidelines, and examples of good reporting from the scientific literature. This talk will discuss main causes of reliability issues in animal experiments and how the EDA and ARRIVE guidelines can help address these.

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Presenter: Dr. Kimberley Jayne (PETA)

Other Authors: Julia Baines and Emily R Trunnell

Title: The role of the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body in ethical discussion: use of the forced swim test

As a part of an establishment’s ethical review process, the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (AWERB) is responsible for overseeing, reviewing and approving research involving animals, including critically evaluating projects for any ethical and welfare issues, and ensuring a commitment to good quality science. Using the Forced swim test (FST) as a case study, we discuss factors that AWERB members should consider to ensure compliance with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA). The forced swim test is a behavioural experiment used to model acute stress in small animals and its severity is categorised as ‘moderate’ under ASPA due to its impact on animal welfare. The test measures an animal’s latency to become immobile in an inescapable beaker filled with water. Its historical use in depression research has been widely criticised, however the FST is commonly used in stress research in an attempt to understand stress-related mental health conditions in humans. While the relation to stress is clear, human stressors that contribute to poor mental health are typically chronic in nature, involving psychological symptoms that are not measurable in animals. Moreover, the wealth of evidence on the increased levels of baseline stress experienced by animals housed and used in laboratories undermines the integrity of the data collected from these animals and the relevance of the FST for human stress research. A number of institutions have policies that prevent the FST being carried out at their establishment, however, use of the test is common, raising concerns for both animal welfare and scientific output. We propose that AWERBs have the responsibility to advise against the use of the test at their establishment, in compliance with the conditions of ASPA, and must encourage the use of more valid methods for human mental health research.

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Presenter: Dr. Penny Hawkins (RSPCA)

Title: Are we really ‘doing ethics’ - and what do we mean by the term?

Within animal research and testing, the term ‘ethics’ encompasses analysis of the harms and benefits of animal use, together with animal welfare aspects and the 3Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement).  Wider issues concerning what, all things considered, should be done, also need to be taken into account. However, ‘ethical review’ is often interpreted solely in terms of implementing the 3Rs, particularly Refinement, the easiest ‘R’ to fulfil. Why? It can be difficult to identify and consider ethical issues; for example, members of Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Bodies (AWERBs) in the UK have reported struggling with the concept. The practical outcomes of a full ethical review may not be clear, whereas the outcome of implementing each ‘R’ is simpler to predict. People may think that they need to be an expert in ethics to contribute to ethical review. And crucially, challenging whether (as well as how) animals should be used, once a project licence application is submitted for review, may be unwelcome. It is therefore essential for all those responsible for ethical review, including animal ethics committees, to critically consider whether they really are ‘doing ethics’, and strive to overcome issues that are preventing this. Solutions may require time and resources, but will be a worthwhile investment to help ensure a better Culture of Care and public accountability.

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Presenter: Professor Adrian Smith (Norecopa) 

Title: Experiences with planning animal studies: how to improve scientific output and animal welfare

If the use of animals in research and testing is in any way to be considered morally justifiable, the greatest possible effort must be made to ensure that such studies deliver robust, reproducible data which is translatable to the target population (usually humans). The pathway to better science consists of many ethically challenging steps which begin with adequate planning and should end with an honest description of the results obtained. Pressures to publish can easily affect the quality of the work at all of these steps. Reporting, although it is a vital part of the scientific process, can never improve the quality of a study which was poorly planned or performed. Many of the scientific papers offering suggestions on how to improve the scientific rigour and reproducibility of animal experiments focus on improved reporting and so-called "experimental design" (i.e. the more "mathematical" elements such as randomisation, blinding and adequate statistical power). While these are extremely important, experience from managing accredited laboratory animal facilities shows that there are additional issues which are crucial to success: these are related to the animals themselves and to the facilities in which they are housed. This presentation will give examples of steps that can be taken to improve all these aspects of research, from the conception of an idea to the submission of a manuscript. We have produced a set of guidelines (PREPARE, https://norecopa.no/PREPARE) to help scientists remember and consider all these critical steps, and to provide them with resources to address them. PREPARE consists of a checklist (available in 29 languages) and a website which provides more information on each topic on the checklist. PREPARE should make it easier for scientists to answer the questions that will be posed to them during manuscript submission and review. Attention to all the issues which may affect the quality and outcome of animal studies will improve their ethical standing, data validity, reproducibility, animal welfare, and the health and safety of all those involved.

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