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Medical researchers are strongly opposed to a recent settlement agreed to by the US Department of Agriculture to add laboratory rats, mice, and birds to species protected under the Animal Welfare Act. This agreement was reached in October to settle a lawsuit filed in federal court by an animal activist group, Alternatives Research and Development Foundation (Eden Prairie, MN). The act already covered larger animals such as cats, rabbits, and primates.

Activists say that this agreement would ensure humane treatment of these animals, but researchers believe this move will make "the use of mice, rats, and birds prohibitively expensive and extremely burdensome," said Estelle A. Fishbein, vice president and general counsel, Johns Hopkins University, in an editorial in the February 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "This raises the distinct possibility that such research is in danger of experiencing the strangulation by red tape that is threatening medical research in the United Kingdom."

Animal rights activists argue that if research institutions are already providing humane care to mice, rats, and birds, application of the USDA regulations would not be burdensome. This is not true, explained Fishbein, because there has been an enormous increase in the numbers of these animals because of the success of the Human Genome Project and the "consequent ability to develop transgenic mice that model the symptoms of human diseases. Application of the USDA regulations to the accelerated growth in the numbers of species would divert scarce grant funds from actual research use, distract researchers from their scientific work, and overload them with documentation requirements that would not improve" humane care, she noted.

Changes can still be made in the agreement until this fall. The fiscal 2001 Agricultural Appropriations bill prohibits the USDA from spending any part of its appropriation to change the regulatory definition of "animal" in the regulations promulgated under the Animal Welfare Act. This prohibition gives the research community a year to obtain a permanent solution from Congress, explained Fishbein.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:50 AM