Laboratory Animals and the Law

Each state in Australia has its own Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act . However, there is also a national code, called the Australian code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes . This is usually called "the Code of Practice" for short. It is incorporated into the laws of all states, except for Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

You can download (in pdf format) a copy of the Code of Practice from the NHMRC site .

New South Wales is the most organised state. Apart from its general Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, it also has a specific Animal Research Act. It is the only state that has an Animal Research Review Panel to oversee the operation of the Act and to inspect laboratories and animal houses.

In South Australia there are 2 parts to the law:

  1. the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1985), amended in Novermber 1999

  2. the Code of Practice, which is a regulation under this Act.

To find out more about the law in South Australia generally, go to Animals and the law . The document here will deal only with the law as it applies to animals used for scientific purposes.

SA Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1985)

Part IV of the Act deals specifically with teaching and research involving animals. It sets out general requirements, such as:


The composition of Ethics Committees must be as follows:

  1. at least one will be a veterinary surgeon; and

  2. at least one will be a person who is engaged in teaching or research activities involving animals; and

  3. at least one will be a person who is responsible for the daily care of animals kept for use in teaching or research; and

  4. at least one will be a person with an established commitment to the welfare of animals.

According to the Act, the Minister is supposed to ensure that as nearly as possible equal numbers of people from each category are appointed.
The functions of Ethics Committees include:


You can see a copy of this PCA Act online, supplied by the Australasian Legal Information Institute. The Act was updated in November 1999.

The Code of Practice 1997

The Code of Practice is a set of guidelines for AECs, institutions, and researchers/ teachers. The Code is much more detailed than the PCA Act.

General principles in the Code

The Code of Practice is supposed to be based on the 3Rs:
Replacement of animals with other methods;
Reduction of the number of animals used;
Refinement of techniques to minimise the impact on animals.

Section 1 of the Code elaborates on these principles. Some key points are:

Animals are only supposed to be used when they are essential to gain significant knowledge or to achieve educational objectives (1.1).

The scientific or educational value of a study is supposed to be weighed against its effect on the welfare of the animals used (1.2).

Alternatives to animals must be used wherever possible (1.9).

Studies must use the minimum number of animals necessary (1.10).

Pain and distress must be minimised (1.16). Pain killers and tranquillisers should be used as they are in medicine and veterinary practice (1.19).

Special sections

The remaining sections of the Code of Practice give guidelines in specific areas.

Do Ethics Committees work?

A member of the public reading the Code of Practice might think that animal experimentation is very tightly controlled, that only highly valuable research is allowed to go on, and that alternatives to animals are used at every opportunity. Animal Ethics Committees are supposed to ensure that this is the case. Are they doing their job? To a large extent we believe the answer is "no".

Animal Liberation (SA) had members on 4 AECs in South Australia. Three have now resigned after making their dissatisfaction known over a long period of time. Some animal welfare members in other states have similar complaints.

An experienced animal welfare AEC member in NSW has said: " Essentially the ethics committee system has been put in place to ensure the continuation of the use of animals in research. It serves to ensure that a relatively 'clean' image is presented to the public" .

Researchers use the system to deflect criticism. They want the public to believe that all experiments must be acceptable because they have been approved by an AEC. Not only that, an AEC with animal welfare members! The reality is:

Because of the way committees are set up, they are biased towards accepting proposals. It is not surprising that very few proposals are ever rejected, or that little or no pressure is put on researchers/teachers to justify their use of animals.

AECs should be doing much more to encourage the 3Rs, and to ensure that the Code of Practice is followed. For example:

Assessing the value of a study

According to the Code of Practice, AECs have to weigh the value of a study against the suffering caused to animals. This is rarely done. Some researchers believe that all research is inherently valuable, and there is a general acceptance that proposals to use animals are valid. Apart from such beliefs, there are many proposals to get through at meetings, and there isn't enough time to consider the value of each one. Some examples are discussed in the general document Animals and the Law and Dunnarts as models for humans? .

Using alternatives to animals

According to the Code of Practice, animals may be used only when they are essential, and alternatives to animals must be used wherever possible. However, AECs don't require researchers/teachers to show how they went about looking for alternatives, what they found, and why these alternatives were rejected. In the section of a proposal asking what alternatives there are, researchers can still get away with just saying "None available". In contrast, before US researchers can get funding from the National Institutes of Health, they have to produce a literature search showing how they looked for alternatives. In other words, they have to produce evidence of which databases they searched, how they went about searching for alternatives, and what they found. There is no such requirement in Australia.

Contrary to the Code of Practice, AECs are approving the use of animals when they are not essential, and when there are suitable alternatives. Obvious examples are in teaching, where animals are still dissected in biology, and rats are trained and then killed in psychology (for more details see Dissection and Animals in Tertiary Education ). There are alternatives to harming animals in all teaching areas if there is a will to develop and use them. For example, in the US there are students even in veterinary science who have qualified without harming any animals. Their experience comes from animals who have died of natural causes (as in human medicine where people donate their body to science), and animals who need veterinary treatment. Yet in Australia AECs are still routinely approving the killing of animals for reasons as inane as high school dissections.

Another obvious example is using mice to produce monoclonal antibodies. In this painful procedure antibody-producing spleen cells are injected into the abdomen of mice, with the result that the abdomen becomes distended with fluid. In some cases the mice also develop tumours. The fluid is sucked out with a syringe to harvest the antibodies. The use of mice has been banned in Switzerland, Germany and The Netherlands since the early 1990s because monoclonal antibodies can be produced in cell cultures. However, AECs in Australia continued to approve the use of mice until NH&MRC intervened in 1999 and stated that it was unacceptable to keep using mice.

This example highlights the general problem. The non-technical members of AECs don't have enough knowledge about alternatives, so they can easily be persuaded by the technical members that there are none. However, the technical members have little motivation to look for alternatives and have a vested interest in not using alternatives - they can then continue to use the animal methods they have mastered over the years and don't need to learn new skills. In the case of the monoclonal antibodies, many researchers vigorously asserted that the new methods used in Europe didn't work, but their criticisms were only relevant to a method developed in 1975 . This made it very clear that that hadn't bothered to keep up to date and were quite happy to keep subjecting mice to an extremely painful procedure.

One possible way to deal with this problem is to have a research assistant, for example, someone on the library staff, to conduct searches for alternatives on each proposal and to present the results to the AEC. The AEC would then be in a better position to make a judgement about the proposal, and there is some chance that the Code of Practice might be implemented.

Animal housing

According to the Code of Practice, animal housing must ensure the comfort and well-being of animals. It must take into account the behavioural needs of each species. However, some AECs still allow animals to be kept on wire floors, which hardly ensures their comfort. Some AECs allow large rabbits to be kept alone in small bare cages, where they have nothing to occupy their time and they can scarcely move. Where improvements have been made to housing, it is usually due to conscientious animal house staff rather than AECs. Much more could be done to increase the comfort and enrichment of laboratory housing.

AECs largely focus on technical matters, such as which anaesthetic should be used, and in which part of the body injections should be given. These are important questions for the animals involved. However, AECs don't ask the big questions that the Code of Practice requires them to ask:

Is this project worth doing?
Could it be done without using animals?

References:

  1. Edwards, K. (1996). "Against animal experiments - together", Animals Today , May-June (28-29)

  2. Oogjes, G. (1994). "Are animal experimentation committees delivering?" in R. Baker, J. Burrell & M. Rose (eds), Effective Animal Experimentation Ethics Committees , ANZCCART: Adelaide

  3. Russell, G. (1996). "Ethics committees: the solution or the problem?" Ethics Committee News, December (3-4)