Opinion: Promoting the Welfare of Research Animals: The Need to Expand the Roles and Views of Laboratory Animal Veterinarians
Within an institution’s animal research oversight program, laboratory animal veterinarians occupy mandated roles such as the attending veterinarian and/or veterinary member of the IACUC, but they may also provide clinical services without serving in the attending veterinarian role, or serve as compliance resources.16 As articulated by many individuals over many years, and through personal experience, laboratory animal veterinarians are collectively seen (and see themselves) as advocates for animal health and welfare.16 This animal welfare advocacy role for laboratory animal veterinarians is not unique within the broader veterinary profession, but the definition and scope of animal welfare as described and acted upon by laboratory animal veterinarians can be improved and expanded through a better understanding of the complex nature of the concept of animal welfare.
The Veterinarian as an Expert on and for Animal Welfare
Veterinarians have a unique relationship with the concept of animal welfare because they must manage both societal expectations for animal care and societal expectations for their role in animal welfare.4,7,16 Regulations for the appropriate veterinary care of research animals represent societal expectations for laboratory animal veterinarians and, several decades ago, were thought to succinctly outline the role attending veterinarians had for laboratory animal welfare.16 This relationship, and society’s view of it, stems from the training, knowledge, credibility and expertise, trustworthiness, empathy for animals, and scientific knowledge that veterinarians possess, combined with their access to animals and animal caregivers.2,8 In an ascending scale of importance and action, veterinarians are seen by the public as advocates, promoters, protectors, and moral authorities on animal welfare.4
However, even though society holds these expectations of a veterinarian’s role in animal welfare, scholars and others have consistently noted that veterinarians in the United States have not fully been considered leaders in the field of animal welfare.7,8 If one examines the history of modern animal welfare concepts and science, they developed largely in England, Canada, and Europe. Other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, have been leaders in veterinary education and animal welfare specialty certifications for veterinarians. The United States is a relative newcomer on the world scene, bolstered by the establishment of the American College of Animal Welfare, which achieved provisional recognition in 2012 by the American Board of Veterinary Specialties and full recognition as a specialty college in early 2021. However, continuing education sessions focused on animal welfare, other than those held at gatherings focused on the use of animals in research, are infrequent at veterinary association meetings in the United States.
Conversely, many veterinarians do view themselves as animal welfare advocates.3,16 Because veterinarians tend to overemphasize animal health when discussing and assessing animal welfare, most of their descriptions of welfare are indeed health related.4,5,8,10 For laboratory animal science, descriptions of welfare can also overemphasize regulatory requirements.16 When health is overemphasized, animals in good health may be automatically considered to have good welfare without further consideration or assessment.5 Environmental assessments and regulatory compliance metrics may be overemphasized in other situations.10 As discussed later, animal welfare is more than animal health and regulatory compliance, and animal welfare is more than assessing the health of individual animals or herds, advocating for improved health care, or meeting regulatory expectations.
Although veterinarians may see themselves as stakeholders and experts in animal welfare, this characterization may imply a more passive role than those roles of advocator, promoter, protector, and moral authority, concepts that will be expanded on later in this opinion piece.4
What Is Animal Welfare?
Animal welfare is a well-established science, but the concept of animal welfare continues to be described as “complicated,” and controversy exists over how to exactly define animal welfare.5,9 Animal welfare exists because humans affect the health, environment, and behavior of animals. Human presence and actions drive the need for the consideration of animal welfare. Without that human impact, animal welfare is not a consideration.
Animal welfare is not synonymous with animal health or regulatory compliance, nor does it encompass only animal health and regulatory compliance. Finally, animal welfare is not animal rights, although animals are recognized to have a set of legal rights (compared with moral rights) in the United States and several other countries; legal rights, also known as protections, encompass the utilitarian arguments for the need for ethically based animal research and can contribute to a “hybrid” version of animal research ethics.6,11,18
Common animal welfare models (frameworks).
Two of the most widely used models of animal welfare are the 5 Freedoms and the 3 Circles. The 5 Freedoms is a foundational model that was “formulated” in the 1990s with tenets from food animal production that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.12 The 5 Freedoms are 1) freedom from hunger and thirst, 2) freedom from discomfort, 3) freedom from pain, injury, and disease, 4) freedom to express normal behavior, and 5) freedom from fear and distress.9 The 5 Freedoms are always presented in this order with this specific language. A follow-on model called the 5 Domains was later developed, which focuses on the domains of nutrition, environment, health, behavior, and mental state and their contribution to an animal’s welfare.9,13
The 3 Circles model is a more modern and adaptable model first appearing in the literature in the late 1990s. This model is widely used to provide a high-level overview of 3 main components of animal welfare, that is, animal health, animal affective states (emotional or mental health, or wellbeing), and animal environments (natural state).15 Many academics use the 3 Circles model when teaching animal welfare, and it is readily understood and is well received by a variety of audiences.19
The 5 Freedoms are not meant to be aspirational because the model began as a way to outline basic welfare requirements for animals, with a focus on agricultural animals, rather than as a way to promote environmental factors that contribute to an overall improvement of an animal’s welfare assessment. Welfare assessment programs for agricultural animals often use the 5 Freedoms as a framework to ensure that minimal animal welfare standards are achieved and maintained. The 3 Circles model could, therefore, be considered a more aspirational framework.
The 3Rs, often simplified as the reduction, replacement, and refinement of the use of animals in research, were first discussed in Russel and Burch’s eponymous 1959 manuscript and are many times viewed as a model of animal welfare for research animals, although that strict application may not be fully warranted9,15,17 Of the 3Rs, the element that comes closest to animal welfare is refinement, but the 3Rs do not articulate the need for comprehensive behavioral considerations, an essential element of animal welfare, nor do they define animal welfare or animal wellbeing.9,15 Even though the 3Rs have been widely incorporated into discussions involving animal stewardship and animal welfare, they are now also firmly ensconced as study design and interpretation tools.6,9 Given the critical link between animal behavior and welfare along with the extensive use of the 5 Freedoms, the 5 Domains, the 3 Circles, and other animal welfare models, laboratory animal veterinarians should try to broaden their knowledge of animal welfare, and to understand how veterinary, husbandry, research staff, and the public conceptually view animal welfare. Reliance on the 3Rs as the sole lens of animal welfare in animal-based research can limit and simplify a laboratory animal veterinarian’s discourse on animal welfare.
Animal welfare is typically assessed, and the outcome of such assessments are usually placed on a continuum of good to bad welfare. The continuum approach never establishes an absolute pinnacle of good welfare (in other words, welfare can always be improved, even if assessed as optimal). On the other hand, absolute poor welfare is much easier to identify and define. A significant challenge for laboratory animal veterinarians is to accept that many animals will, at times, be in a disease state, resulting in poor welfare assessments, even though most other aspects of welfare from their surrounding environment are optimally addressed.6
The Roles of Laboratory Animal Veterinarians in Animal Welfare
Stakeholder and expert—policy.
Perhaps the most important role of veterinarians is the establishment of policies meant to ensure and promote good animal welfare. In situations where veterinarians do not directly author policies, they should have significant input into their development, or be represented as stakeholders within a policy making group (e.g., the institutional animal care and use committee, or IACUC).
Beyond individual institutions, policy development for laboratory animal welfare occurs in a variety of settings including not-for-profit organizations, veterinary associations (state, national, specialty/practice/interest-based associations), government and regulatory agencies, transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and educational groups.2,3,8
Inclusion of aspirational requirements that encourage optimal welfare is important, and common, for policy development, although aspirational requirements may not be desirable in institutional-level policies meant to be strictly enforceable at the time of implementation. Often, new policy requirements must be phased in over a period of time along with relevant training to be impactful.
Policies adopted by associations often serve to underpin the establishment of standards within a community or profession (e.g., standards in practice, the profession, veterinary licensing7). Although practices may change after standards are established, the process of change admittedly can take a long time, but it does nonetheless happen.4 Examples of this include the changing attitudes in the veterinary profession on cat declawing, dog devocalization, dog tail docking, and analgesic use in food production animals, and within laboratory animal medicine, canine disarming in nonhuman primates.
Stakeholder and expert—education and guidance.
Laboratory animal veterinarians have a key role in the areas of education and guidance. Educational efforts are directed toward research sponsors, employees, students, members of the public, government officials, and other stakeholders.20 Laboratory animal veterinarians can provide these functions either as individuals or through the organized outreach efforts of associations whose missions focus on educating the public about the need for and care of animals used in research, and their welfare.
Stakeholder and expert—animal welfare assessments.
Many laboratory animal veterinarians may limit their view of animal welfare to the assessment of the health of specific animals or groups of animals. Although assessment of animal health is an important aspect of animal welfare, it is only one component of animal welfare.20
In order to appropriately conduct animal welfare assessments, veterinarians must understand the differences between clinical assessments, environmental assessments, and welfare assessments.10 Clinical assessments are focused solely on clinical observations and medical tests. Welfare assessments, on the other hand, include an animal’s behavior, affective states, environment, and lived experience.4,8 Small animal private practitioners, as an example, may not be able to fully conduct welfare assessments if they cannot observe an animal’s environment and see how the animal interacts with and behaves in the environment; this insight is necessary for determining how the environment influences the animal’s affective states and behavior and whether changes can be implemented to improve an animal’s welfare. Veterinarians who work with animals used in research have an advantage when conducting comprehensive welfare assessments because they are knowledgeable about the health, environment, and behavior of the animals in addition to the policies that describe their care.
Promoter and advocate—6 areas for advocacy.
An examination of societal expectations surrounding animals and veterinarians in concert with the concept of animal welfare suggests 6 areas for advocacy efforts by laboratory animal veterinarians: 1) advocating for an animal’s best lived experience, 2) ensuring that societal, regulatory and institutional expectations for animal care are upheld,7 3) educating researchers and the public on what is best for animals,20 4) assessing animal welfare,20 5) advocating for more research focused on the science of animal welfare,4 and 6) promoting the development and application of new knowledge and technologies that can improve animal welfare.2,4 These areas for advocacy efforts arise in the work that veterinarians do as individuals, employees, members of society, and members of professional associations.2
Conclusions: Two Considerations for Improving Promotion and Advocacy of Research Animal Welfare
Laboratory animal veterinarians must also do a better job of defining animal welfare in policies, training materials, documents, presentations, publications, and conversations. Because of the varied definitions of animal welfare that appear in the peer-reviewed literature and related discussions, the absence of a definition when talking about animal welfare can generate confusion as to what is actually being discussed. For example, when training personnel, are trainers referring to animal health when they use the term animal welfare? In a peer-reviewed manuscript, do the authors assume a communal understanding of animal welfare and therefore do not provide their definition, thus requiring the reader to apply their own view of animal welfare to the content? Misapplication of either the phrase animal welfare or the indicators of animal welfare (e.g., behavior vs. health vs. regulatory compliance) together with differing moral and ethical standards can influence a person’s definition of animal welfare and thereby lead to differences in animal care and animal welfare policies.5,10,14 However, this lack of clarity could be mitigated by including definitions more frequently than what currently appears in laboratory animal publications and presentation..
All individuals with a role in animal-based research have a responsibility to fully recognize the differences between animal health and animal welfare. These individuals also have a responsibility to extend the concept of animal welfare beyond animal health and the 3Rs by incorporating basic principles of other widely accepted models of animal welfare into educational activities. Doing this can lead to better animal health and welfare assessments, facilitate a culture of care, and further promote regulatory compliance.1