VERO submission on European Directive 2010/63/EU

Consultation on Options for the Transposition of European Directive 2010/63/EU on the Protection of Animals used for Scientific Purposes

Names: Dr Matthew Simpson and Dr Katherine Morris, representing Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford (VERO)

Address for correspondence: 3 Dove House Close, Oxford OX2 8BG

Nature of the Organisation: Voice for Ethical Research at Oxford is an organisation founded in 2006 by members of Oxford University in order to promote awareness and discussion of the University’s animal-based research, and of the scientific, ethical, and other questions raised by that research. VERO represents concerned people within and beyond the University, but it equally aims to provide a forum in which the University’s animal-users can explain their work to others. VERO has a mailing list rather than a formal membership. It has invited comments from that list both before and after drafting its submission.

General submission:

1. We urge the Home Office to use this opportunity to show confidence in the much-respected ASPA by maintaining as a minimum the standards of animal protection and ethical purpose required by that act.
2. However, as Recital 6 of the Directive concedes, scientific understanding of animal experience steadily increases, and always with the effect of finding more awareness and sensibility in animals than was formerly acknowledged. The Animal Welfare Act of 2006 is one recent consequence of this steady development. Since the consultation document mentions this act (re Article 23) exactly because of the need to exempt researchers from its provisions, it is only just and logical that the law which they will be required to conform to should equally recognise our raised awareness of animal capacities for suffering: ie. that the UK law which replaces ASPA should where practical improve upon its ethical standards.
3. VERO wholly supports the submissions made by the national animal advocacy organisations which we have studied - those of Animal Aid, the Doctor Hadwen Trust, FRAME, NAVS, and the RSPCA. In particular we would like to express our concern about the following points mentioned variously by them:
   Re Article 55(3), the Safeguard Clause, allowing for a special category of severe and prolonged suffering: as FRAME has said, this would be scientifically unsound, morally injurious to those relying on it, and quite unacceptably cruel.
   Re Article 39 (Question 46), retrospective evaluation: we believe that this should be required for all projects, especially in view of Professor Patrick Bateman’s recent report on the varying value of experiments using non-human primates (nhps).
   Re Article 34 (Question 54), inspections: undercover reports and images have from time to time shown that even the present UK inspection regime has not been impressively successful in ensuring compliance with the law. The Directive’s proposal is more bureaucratic and far less rigorous, and should not be transposed.
   Re Question 58(a), thematic reviews: we strongly support the suggested introduction of thematic reviews as an orderly and prescribed means towards replacing animals in different categories of research.

Particular submission, based on VERO’s own experience at Oxford and our estimate of the likely impact of possible changes to the law:

1. Article 23, Question 41, personal licenses: we believe that these are absolutely necessary if every individual who handles animals in research is to feel personally responsible for doing that properly. Even with personal licenses, there have been scandalous instances of ignorance or callousness since 1986. VERO supporters have been dismayed to find, among some of Oxford University’s scientists, impatience or even hostility towards ethical disciplines. If these disciplines were to be in any way relaxed, there would certainly be more scandals, more animal suffering, and reduced public trust. Again, these scientists are to be personally exempted from the provisions of the AWA, 2006; if we are to allow them that privilege, we have every right and reason to bind them to an equivalent personal responsibility.
2. Articles 26 & 27, Question 52, Animal Welfare Body: As the Home Office says, the system of ERPs developed in the UK has worked well, and we agree that the AWB as transposed should indeed be modelled on that. Especially (at least in user establishments), it should have the wider membership of ERPs, including lay people and ethical specialists, which should ensure that the values it will use are not narrowly professional. Among other advantages, a well-balanced committee of this sort can provide support for the supervisory vet, in what is sometimes a difficult and even hostile environment for that person. In the professional discussion of ERPs over the years, and in some of the guidance consequently given to them, there have been suggestions that they should do more to engage with the lay public. VERO strongly believes that such an obligation should be attached to the new AWBs. Aloofness, secrecy, professional scorn for lay concerns: these are the natural default positions, but they produce suspicion and frustration, and help to discredit science in general. The European Parliament used the word “transparent” to characterise the provisions which it hoped to see in the new regulations governing animal experimentation (see Recital 4). The new law should be such as to make AWBs more democratic in habit and outlook than the ERPs have had to be.
3. Article 8, Question 8, and Article 55(1) & (2), Question 56, non-human primates: these animals form an especially controversial group at Oxford (as elsewhere). It is well-known there that at least one of the University’s leading scientists working with nhps does not share the special respect and concern for them that is felt by the general public (and acknowledged in Recital 17), and some reports coming from the University’s laboratories have caused alarm and anger. VERO believes that no nhps should be used in “basic research”, where benefits are wholly uncertain. Even in disease-related research, we regard the Directive’s defining term “debilitating” as much too vague and permissive. Finally, we find the two “safeguard” clauses, which foresee special exceptions even to these controls, alarming and dishonourable: they should not be transposed into UK law.