TUESDAY 1 MAY 2001

THE REVEREND PROFESSOR MICHAEL BANNER, DR MAGGY JENNINGS PROFESSOR IAIN PURCHASE AND MR RICHARD WEST

  20. Can I come back to Dr Jennings' remarks. She said there was a difference between the health of an animal and its sociological wellbeing. She also said there were differences in the principles of animal welfare in different parts of the world. First of all, I will use the anecdote of a racehorse. There is no way if you stick a racehorse in a box and it has to run three, three and a half miles at Epsom, an immature horse with a crippled jockey on top of it, that that is in tune with the sociological habits of wild horses. I find this concept quite difficult to differentiate between sociological welfare and the health of the animal. Secondly, you say that the principles of animal welfare are different in country A to country B, but how do we know that our principles are superior to those of somebody else?  (Reverend Professor Banner) Can I just help my colleague by giving a lay person's example which I found very striking on visiting a laboratory last year. We were shown rats caged, singly or in twos. If you drop a piece of food into a cage with two rats—it was not done—I am assured that they would almost kill one another. On the other hand, if you put 30 rats in a large case you can drop a piece of food in—they will have established a social system—and the dominant rat will take the food, there will be no squabble about it, and to the lay person they are much easier to handle and so on. I think that is the sort of social needs difference that good laboratory practice is sensitive to. To a lay person that was a very striking example.

  21. I remember my father saying that about rat catchers, that if you put a terrier in a corn bin and if there were lots of them they would all run into the corner until there were only two left and then there would be a punch-up. I am trying to get to the root of this whole moral question as to what questions we are asking. It is not an easy question, I do not think, that is why I am picking up on what could be regarded as esoteric questions. I am still not happy because I do not understand the answer and, frankly, I do not know what the answer is myself.  (Reverend Professor Banner) There is a distinction, I take it, to be drawn between morally how important an animal's welfare is and how one establishes welfare. About the establishment of welfare, there are detailed scientific disputes and the committee only recently, in looking at a report that will be out very shortly in relation to biotechnology, was considering the merit of certain tests of welfare and whether they really did show better welfare or not. Obviously on the establishment of whether it is poor or good welfare, some of it might be obvious, there are some fine judgments to be made which are backed by scientific reason of a persuasive or unpersuasive sort depending on your estimation of it. You are absolutely right to say that one has to be very sensitive to the question of how welfare is established and what is supposed to be good welfare is often not good welfare. What one thinks might be kind to an animal is not the same as what constitutes it.  (Dr Jennings) I would like to emphasise the very big difference between health, health on its own, and the overall welfare of the animal because I think that is really crucially important. Health is a part of welfare. You will not have an animal with good welfare if it is not healthy. The word "health" tends to encompass physical health but this is not the sole consideration. Another very simple example, I think, is if you look at the husbandry of rabbits in laboratories. In the past, and still in a lot of laboratories, rabbits would be kept in a cage, they would be given food and water and they would be kept clean, and their health would be fine by most of the parameters by which you would examine these animals. However, rabbits are social animals: they do not spend all their time sitting in a barren cage, they spend their life doing things. The Farm Animal Welfare Council drew out the principles of the five freedoms, one of which says that the animal should have freedom to perform most of its natural behaviours. If you give a rabbit its freedom to perform its natural behaviour, it wants to hop around and jump all over—

  Earl of Onslow: We all know about rabbits!

  22. I think we should follow the illustration of more than two rats where possibly the presiding rat can allocate rations fairly.  (Dr Jennings) If you are going to keep animals for experimental purposes you cannot just consider health, you have to consider their overall welfare and consider their social and behaviourial needs as well.

  23. Could I just pick up that point and go back to the first question from Lord Onslow. It seems as if you have been talking about these animal welfare issues involved in agriculture and welfare issues involved in animal experimentation, and you operate entirely within a statute associated with animal procedures. There are other statutes and Acts to do with agriculture and there are many aspects of agriculture, battery chickens and so on, that people are concerned about. Is there some connection between these two areas? Are the definitions of welfare used the same for you as when you operate for MAFF, or are we really talking about two completely different areas?  (Reverend Professor Banner) As you say, they are different statutory responsibilities. The Farm Animal Welfare Council has a responsibility for advising on the welfare of farm animals. The Scientific studies which have been done which relate to welfare are relevant to the work of those who are concerned with both, although of course the particularities of the experiments and studies may vary. The question of the definition of welfare came up previously. The word which is key for the committee on the legislation is cost. One of the costs to the animals may be in harm in a very obvious sense although that could be a harm to welfare. Yes, we consider it. It is not a word that we grapple with the definition of but we would be concerned with the scientific evidence for good and bad welfare.

  24. You say you do not grapple with the meaning of the word welfare—  (Reverend Professor Banner) The definition.

  25. But you then apply scientific rules to it. How can you apply scientific rules to something which you do not know the meaning of?  (Reverend Professor Banner) I did not say I did not know the meaning of it, my Lord, I said we did not grapple with a definition.

  26. If you cannot define it ergo by its nature you do not know the meaning of it.  (Reverend Professor Banner) I would not say that.

  27. No, you did not say it.  (Reverend Professor Banner) I said I would not say it.

  28. What you said was "I cannot define welfare".  (Reverend Professor Banner) I said we do not, as a committee.

  29. If you do not define it you cannot know what it means.  (Reverend Professor Banner) I would quibble with you, my Lord. I cannot define night and day but I know the difference between them.

  30. Yes, you can. I am sorry if I am being beastly and I am sorry if I am giving you a hard time but the point is unless we get the definition of what we are talking about right at the beginning we will not get anywhere, we will start producing waffle. I do not know the answer myself, I do not understand the answer, that is why I am asking for you lot, who are cleverer people than me, to give it to me.  (Reverend Professor Banner) A characterisation of welfare has already been given, which is the ability of an animal to express its normal behaviour and I would add, I think, to cope with the environment in which it is placed. I would call that a characterisation, I would not call it a definition. I would say that characterisation is a working definition or characterisation which is sufficient to have a meaningful discussion.

  31. I have great sympathy with you saying that you know what it means but you cannot give a definition of it, the two things are not incompatible. Surely what is constantly in the minds of people who are trying to decide whether the welfare of the animal is being given due consideration is the negative criteria if it turns out for some inexplicable reason that the welfare is not good enough, because every species of animal expresses itself differently and, therefore, you may not know in advance what behaviour for a particular species of animal is going to show that its welfare has been overlooked, even if it is healthy. I absolutely accept that distinction. In a way one does not need a definition because one just needs criteria for judging whether the welfare is going down.  (Reverend Professor Banner) Typically that would be so in a licence application where one would see "end points" or less formally "indications of poor welfare" which would be a sign of a problem, for example if an animal becomes withdrawn or declines to eat or starts pulling out its fur, whatever it might be.

  32. That would be a sign that the welfare was not all it should be. I tend to think that we will be wasting our time if we try to get a definition that is clear cut because it is almost a defeasible concept: the animal is okay if it is behaving as normally as it can and it is not okay if it is showing signs of distress. Would that not be right?  (Reverend Professor Banner) Can I ask whether my colleague, Professor Purchase, would like to comment on this because he has an interest and expertise in this.  (Professor Purchase) I recollect about two years ago we had a retreat for the Animal Procedures Committee and I think it was Professor Dawkins who made a presentation to us. The thrust of her presentation was right at the heart of this question and it was that we should be wary of using anthropomorphic values and imposing them on the animals and that we should actually observe the animals. In particular she gave us the example of the question about battery farming of chickens and said that chickens, because of their nature of how they live in the wild, might actually be happier in battery cages than they would be on an open floor because they were used to being in confined spaces. If that is the case you have to go and make observations to see whether an open floor is better than a battery cage, rather than saying "I, as a human being, would prefer an open floor than a battery cage". I think that maybe helps in distinguishing the two features.

  33. I just want to pick up on the remarks of Professor Banner that he had seen a marked difference in standards. Who plays the role of Chief Inspector of Prisons and reports on these and makes them public?  (Reverend Professor Banner) Not the Animal Procedures Committee. I think that would be a matter in the first instance for the Animal Inspectorate, who are responsible for granting licences not only for projects and to individual experimenters but also to establishments, and have a responsibility for setting standards for good practice. I will just turn to my Secretary to see whether he wants to add anything. I would not suggest that standards are not being observed but rather saying the best practice is much better than the practice which I hope conforms, and I expect conforms, with the regulations and requirements. The difference between the very best practice and less good practice is quite marked to a lay person.  (Mr West) That was my point, there was no suggestion that those lower standards were in breach of the regulations.

  34. I may say, my Lord Chairman, some of this discussion I have heard before about what welfare is and how you define it. Perhaps I should declare that I was a member of the APC in its first four years of existence. What are the current trends in scientific procedures involving animals? The needs for technologies have changed substantially over the last ten or 15 years. Has the work of the committee changed over that time under the Act since it has been in force? Finally, how do you see the role of the committee changing with the vast changes in biological sciences that are taking place right now?  (Reverend Professor Banner) I can answer that question by saying I could not relate all of the changes in the committee and the way it operates to the biological sciences. If I could separate out those two. There have been changes in how the committee operates. The present Government has increased the committee in size and I would say, and as Chairman I am certainly happy with this, has increased the width and breadth of representation on the committee so we now have, I would say, a very wide representation of points of view on the committee. That is one change in the committee. In terms of how we operate, and I cannot comment on the early existence of the committee, I think compared with previous years to my becoming Chairman in 1998, we have become more proactive as a committee, we are taking on more issues to investigate and identify for ourselves rather than reacting to events and business that come to us. You will know that there was a review of the Act[3] and we have an agenda of investigations of various key areas which is ongoing. In terms of how our work relates to the changes in the biological sciences, I might ask my colleague, Professor Purchase, to comment. One trend up to now has been that the number of animals used has been decreasing but I think there is every expectation that will not continue and that the development of genetic modification and the possibilities that offers for experimenters will mean that the numbers increase. I am not sure I can suggest immediately how that will affect the work of the committee. I think the committee feels that it must be sensitive to developments and adapt its work as necessary in the light of those developments. I think that the perception that there will be an increase in the number of animals used is one which is shared quite widely by the scientific community.

  35. You will have more specifically designed animals as a result of your ability to do genetic modification so although the number of animals may go up, the number of nondescript animals that are not, in fact, specifically designed for the work will go down, hence your results will be much more meaningful.  (Reverend Professor Banner) I am sure that could be argued, yes.  (Professor Purchase) It would be argued by some, yes.

  36. Does Professor Purchase want to say anything?  (Professor Purchase) Thank you, my Lord Chairman. It is interesting that the numbers have been declining over the last more than ten years. It is equally interesting that I do not know of anyone who has done a systematic study of why that has happened. I suspect that if you look at the figures, the majority of reductions have been made within industry, and I suspect what has happened is that the pharmaceutical industry has become more efficient in the way it does its experiments, relying more on modern in vitro genetic methods rather than using whole animals. I am sure of that. There is a problem here: it is frequently expressed that the number of animals used experimentally in some way reflects the effectiveness of the Act. I would like to say that must be far from the truth because it does not measure any output. If the number of animals increases two fold but the research output increases ten fold then we are in a better position than we were before. The factors that do influence the number of animals are the excitement of the research, the opportunity it provides, and what we are seeing now is an increase in the opportunity provided by the use of genetically modified animals. The second factor, which derives from that, is the amount of funding that is being spent in this area of research. We have seen the big funding agencies in the UK wanting to exploit the knowledge from genomics, so it follows that you would expect to see more animals used for that purpose if animals are the only means of exploiting it. Finally, it is the way in which the research is done and that comes to the use of alternatives. I believe that there is pressure on people to use alternatives, both legislative and moral pressure, and we will see that continuing. The use of alternatives will not necessarily reduce the number of animals.  (Reverend Professor Banner) If I could add a very quick supplement to that. It seems to me what is very important when I talk to people about this committee and its work—I should add as a rider in terms of our working the Animal Procedures Committee has adopted, along with other Non-Departmental Public Bodies, use of good practice in regards to openness and consultation and so on—is that the Act as such gives no purchase to the regulators to reduce the numbers, except in the key provision that a licence shall not be granted where an alternative is available. The Act as such does not give purchase to the regulator to reduce the number of animals as a total. That is a brief way of saying what Professor Purchase said more expertly than I can.

  37. May I ask a question on the number of animals. Presumably most animals are rats and mice, is that right?  (Reverend Professor Banner) The majority, my Lord, yes.

  38. If you need more animal experiments you just breed more rats and mice whose sole purpose in this life, in their short and transient existence, is to be an object of experimentation. So they only come into existence because somebody wants to do something to them. Actually, the number of animal experimentations is not as relevant as if one was going, say, to capture a wild chimpanzee and do experiments on that. There does seem to me to be a very serious difference between taking monkeys out of the wild, which I know there has been some of, and actually breeding rats and mice. You put a male rat and a female rat in a cage and lo and behold in a nanosecond you will have hoards of them. There does seem to me to be a difference in this numbers game. The numbers game in itself is not really very relevant.  (Reverend Professor Banner) Certainly there is no mechanism in the Act for controlling or capping the numbers. Obviously in terms of the different considerations about costs, as it were—

  39. I am not asking costs, I am asking a woolly moral question.  (Reverend Professor Banner) I meant in the wide sense, I did not mean financial. I meant costs in the sense of harms, burden to the animals.