The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research has completed an update to its 1992 report Recognition and Alleviation of Pain and Distress in Laboratory Animals. The pre-publication version was released in late 2007, and the final version of the report came out in early 2008. The full report can be viewed online or purchased from the National Academies Press. A seven page executive summary is also available as a free download.
According to the executive summary, the updated report “focuses specifically on the scientific understanding of the causes and the functions of stress and distress, the transformation of stress to distress, and the identification of principles for the recognition and alleviation of distress.” The authoring Committee said that it “approached its task from the perspective of performance standards without describing—among others—factors such as intensity, duration, or types of perturbations.” The Committee did so because the report is intended as “an advisory document about an insufficiently understood phenomenon.” Consequently, the members of the Committee “believe that—within the current state of science—the best approach to recognize and alleviate distress is through best practices and professional judgment.” The Committee stressed the importance of a team approach involving veterinarians and animal care personnel in the assessment and treatment of potentially distressed animals.
The executive summary also notes that there is little agreement about what constitutes distress and how to measure it: “Most definitions of distress characterize it as an aversive, negative state in which coping and adaptation processes in response to stressors fail to return an organism to physiological and/or psychological homeostasis.” However, there are “philosophical differences” about whether the definition of distress should also encompass “emotions and feelings affected by this state of being.” In addition, the Committee noted that “while it is accepted that the failure of the organism to return to homeostasis adversely impacts an animal’s well-being and leads to poor welfare, defining well-being without relying on some form of anthropomorphic measures is a challenge.”
“Scientific research does not yet support objective criteria or principles with which to qualify distress,” the Committee wrote in explaining its approach. “Objective scientific assessment of subjective emotional statues cannot be made.” Furthermore, “while there is often a measure of agreement on the interpretation of physiologic and/or behavioral variables as indicators of stress, distress, or welfare status, there is not always a direct link” between the intensity, duration, or type of stressor and a resulting state of distress.
The executive summary highlights the following recommendations of the report:
- Strategies involving replacement, refinement and reduction should be employed wherever possible to identify, modify, avoid, and minimize causes of distress in laboratory animals.
- Animal research protocols should incorporate strategies for enrichment, animal training, and socialization to improve housing and husbandry conditions.
- Institutional support and commitment to animal welfare is essential to ensure that veterinarians and animal care personnel have adequate time to evaluate animals’ well-being on a daily basis.
- The use of appropriate statistical methodologies will help avoid, minimize, and alleviate distress.
- There is a need for a centralized repository of published research on the prevention and alleviation of distress. Examples of topics to include are distress itself, the effects of enrichment strategies on animal physiology, and identifying humane endpoints. Peer-reviewed biomedical journals should be encouraged to accept articles on animal welfare issues. This will engage the broader scientific community and keep it informed. This recommendation is also intended to make it possible for “concerns about research interference or unjustified expenses [to] be debated on scientific, ethical, or regulatory grounds.”
- Federal agencies and other entities that support biomedical and behavioral research should make funds available for research into topics relevant to distress.
- More frequent communication is needed between researchers who study animal welfare and those who work with animal models.