The goal of eliminating pain and distress in the animal laboratory is one that few lay people or scientists would argue against, although some critics might challenge its feasibility. Public opinion surveys indicate strong concern about pain and distress in laboratory animals. Perhaps most importantly, the laws, regulations and guidelines governing the conduct of animal research emphasize the need to minimize pain and distress. The HSUS campaign seeks to focus these concerns and policies into more urgent action to eliminate significant and avoidable pain and distress.

Scientists and laboratory personnel themselves generally support the idea of minimizing pain and distress in laboratory animals, but they have sometimes been slow to translate that support into action. For example, the use of painkillers in laboratory rodents has become accepted practice only in the past decade or so. Also, laboratory staff have to first recognize when animals may be suffering. Animal distress that is not the result of pain (e.g., anxiety, depression or fear) is still largely not assessed or quantified, and so is often  ignored or overlooked by research institutions.

Our knowledge of when animals experience pain and distress, and how much suffering is caused by such pain and distress, is surprisingly limited. Good, workable measures to gauge levels of distress in the common laboratory animal species are not available. For the most part, lab workers rely on ad hoc observations or on relatively insensitive measures such as weight loss or lack of grooming (which occurs when an animal is in severe distress) to ascertain whether animals are experiencing pain and distress.

There have been no systematic attempts to develop more careful and sensitive measures of laboratory animal discomfort that might provide an indication of the severity of the pain and distress experienced by lab animals. We need to identify the procedures that cause pain or distress, and the relative severity, so that we can set appropriate priorities and allocate our energy where it would be the most productive.

Components of the Pain and Distress Campaign

1. Educating and Mobilizing the Public: The HSUS encourages students, parents, and alumni at colleges and universities to pressure and hold their schools accountable for eliminating animal suffering, pain, and distress caused by research that is paid for with their tuition and tax dollars.

2. Conducting Outreach to the Research Community: The HSUS proposes to work with those who will ultimately develop the techniques that will make our goal possible.  The HSUS has and will continue to focus on specific practices and research techniques that cause pain and distress (such as toxicity testing and carbon dioxide euthanasia) where we believe that immediate changes are possible.

The HSUS will also assist Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs)—committees that are self-appointed at each institution to review research protocols and conduct evaluations of animal care and use—by promoting an exchange of information and policies so that new ideas and initiatives can be disseminated quickly to encourage the rapid spread of "best practices." For example, The HSUS convened a group of experts to produce a technical report to be the "go-to" source on pain and distress for the research community. The report addresses:

• definitions of pain and distress
• the recognition, assessment, and alleviation of pain and distress
• current techniques that cause significant pain and distress and how these can be replaced by more humane methods
• the capacity for experiencing pain and distress in the various species used in the laboratory; and other topics

The HSUS also analyzes research institutions' reporting of unrelieved animal pain and distress to the USDA to determine patterns and highlight areas needing immediate attention in regards to development and implementation of alternatives.

3. Working to Improve Animal Research Legislation and Strengthen Existing Regulations and Oversight: The two key oversight agencies of animal research are the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which enforces the Animal Welfare Act, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees implementation of the Public Health Service policy on animal research through its Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW).

We are working with the USDA to modify its pain and distress classification system, to provide a better tracking system for pain and distress trends so that the most severe pain and distress could guide the focus of much-needed alternatives development.

We are also calling on Congress to amend the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to bar the use of live animals in sales demonstrations, increase maximum penalties for animal research facilities that violate the AWA from $2,500 to $10,000, calculate penalties based on the number of animals affected per violation when relevant, and require the USDA to submit an annual report to Congress regarding Animal Welfare Act enforcement activities of research institutions and other regulated entities.

The  "Three Rs" 

The Pain and Distress Campaign is the latest example of The HSUS's longstanding support of alternative methods of biomedical research and testing. Alternative methods, also known as the Three Rs, are those procedures that can replace or reduce animal use, or refine animal use so that the animals experience less suffering. This campaign clearly emphasizes refinement, but in some cases, pain and distress will be eliminated by replacing procedures with a non-animal alternative. This is what is occurring with respect to the production of monoclonal antibodies.

The HSUS knows that those who use and care for laboratory animals are concerned about animal pain and distress. However, while IACUCs have played a significant role in addressing these issues in the past ten to 15 years, we believe that much more can be done. The goal of eliminating significant animal pain and distress, while ambitious, is not beyond the ingenuity and skills of the scientists, veterinarians, and technicians who use and care for laboratory animals.

Some animal activists may see our goal of ending all pain in distress in animals in research by the year 2020 as far too distant, and would argue that animal research should simply be eliminated forthwith. However, we see this as a very unlikely outcome, and prefer to focus on achievable goals. We anticipate that the Pain and Distress Campaign itself, though focused on refinement, will help reduce animal use.

Though government statistics are incomplete, approximately 20 million vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish) are used annually in biomedical research and testing in the United States. Although some argue this number is declining, the recent drastic increase in the use of transgenic and genetically modified mice whose numbers are not included would greatly increase this total. We at The HSUS would like to see the day when animals are no longer used in harmful research; however, we believe the most urgent public priority is eliminating pain and distress among laboratory animals.

Updated June 2008