Ethics and legislation in animal experimentation in France: Food from thought from experiments on cattle

Abstract

Animal experimentation is accepted provided that no other means of gaining important knowledge is possible and animal suffering is limited. Each researcher should evaluate the potential harms on the animals and weigh these harms against the benefits expected from the results. There are now grids for assessing pain in many species, including farm animals, and means to know how constraining a situation may be perceived by animals. The 3Rs (replace, reduce, refine) rule calls for minimizing the constraints on animals by refining procedures, reducing animal numbers to the minimum necessary to obtain exploitable results, and using methods not requiring animal experimentation. It remains difficult to balance between constraints for animals and expected benefits from the results. We propose to evaluate the relevance of an experiment using five criteria: i) existence of a 3R strategy, ii) application of the 3R in the planned experiment, iii) constraints imposed on animals, iv) importance of the expected results, v) probability of obtaining exploitable results. We recall current European regulations: approval of establishments housing animals, training of personnel, and setting-up of structures responsible for animal welfare within establishments and of ethics committees to evaluate experimental projects. We provide a few important elements that will help researchers to prepare their applications for authorization of an experiment.