The 'Five Freedoms' and laboratory animals
P. Hawkins
Research Animals Department, RSPCA, Horsham, West Sussex, United Kingdom
The concept of 'Five Freedoms' - freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury or disease; freedom from fear and distress; and freedom to express most 'normal' behaviours - was initially used to develop and promote improved husbandry systems for farm animals [2]. This ideal has subsequently been applied to animals kept by humans in a broader range of contexts including zoo, circus and companion animals. Its application to laboratory animals can be particularly challenging, however, as scientific procedures also necessitate compromising one or more of the 'Freedoms', sometimes to a substantial degree. This compromise can often be partly redressed by focussing on the fifth Freedom and trying to encourage 'normal' (but not necessarily entirely 'natural') behaviour. Definitions of 'normal' (or desirable) behaviour often vary, however, and may be based on ethograms, motivational tests or comparisons with feral animals or ancestral species. In practice, dividing housing into separate areas for different activities and providing items for environmental stimulation makes space more complex and interesting, encouraging animals to use all three dimensions of their pens or cages [1]. This is especially important as many experimental animals spend the majority of their time in their holding pens or cages, not undergoing procedures, so they need to have a good quantity and quality of space.
The BVAAWF1, FRAME2, RSPCA3 and UFAW4 Joint Working Group on Refinement is producing a series of publications that explore the potential for applying all of the Five Freedoms to research animals. The reports produced to date are:
The RSPCA and UFAW also hold joint annual meetings on rodent and rabbit welfare which focus on refinements in husbandry and procedures. All of these initiatives enable those involved in laboratory animal care and use to improve welfare and reduce suffering with the added benefit of improving experimental results.
Poster presented at Measuring Behavior 2000, 3rd International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 15-18 August 2000, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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