December 2000 News

AWI Offers Refinement Databases

December 6, 2000

Refinement may be the most overlooked of the three Rs. Replacement and reduction are easier to describe and define as alternatives. But refinement is perhaps the area where the most progress can be made to reduce pain and distress in lab animals over the short term. A new online database compiled by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) can help make information on these important alternative methods more readily available.

AWI has just posted Part II of its "Annotated Database on Refinement of Housing and Handling Conditions and Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Animals." Part II includes 401 entries relating to farm animals: cattle, chickens, goats, horses, quails, pigs, and sheep. The web address is here. Part I, posted earlier, covers the smaller lab animals: rodents, cats, dogs, rabbits, fishes, pigeons, and reptiles. It includes 409 entries, with 47 online full-text documents, and can be found here. AWI also offers a database on "Environmental Enrichment for Primates," with 1495 entries, including 314 online full-text documents. The URL is here.

The AWI database defines refinement as "the attempt to enhance animal welfare and control extraneous variables which may increase research data variability." This includes methods aimed at alleviating or eliminating potential pain, distress or other adverse effects, as well as such animal husbandry concerns as housing, bedding, and handling. Environmental enrichment, a subset of refinement, is defined as "the provision of stimuli which promote the expression of species-appropriate behavioral and mental activities."

Refinement alternatives can make for better science as well as for more humane treatment of the animals. A distressed animal generally is not the ideal research model (unless the researcher is studying distress-related topics). Studies using distressed animals may be confounded by stress hormone increases, immunosuppression, and a greater likelihood of behavioral pathologies, such as self-mutilation.

Refinement should be included in any literature search for alternatives. Section 13 of the Animal Welfare Act dictates "that the principal investigator consider alternatives to any procedure likely to produce pain or distress in an experimental animal." The USDA Animal Care Policy #12 adds that "Reduction, replacement, and refinement (the three R's) must be addressed, not just animal replacement."

Searching for refinement alternatives may require a new approach, however. Investigators tend search within their respective disciplines when they look for alternative methods. But refinement techniques tend to transcend such disciplinary boundaries. The AWI databases can help researchers find the refinement alternatives they need.