December 2001 News

CAAT Board Issues Statement on Regulatory Status of Rats, Mice, and Birds

December 13, 2001

Members of the Advisory Board of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) recently issued a statement arguing that rats, mice, and birds should be included among the animals regulated under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the principal law governing the care and treatment of research animals in the United States.

Rats, mice, and birds account for about 90% of all laboratory animals in this country. Yet these animals -- upon whom we rely so heavily in our biomedical research and product safety testing -- are not covered by the regulations designed to enforce the AWA.

The AWA spells out certain requirements for the humane care and treatment of animals; it requires investigators to search for alternatives to procedures that may be painful or distressful to the animals; and it stipulates that Institutional Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) must review experimental protocols involving animal use. Research institutions also must report annually to the USDA on their use of AWA-regulated animals. Rats, mice, and birds are excluded.

"The CAAT Board sees no scientific or ethical basis for this exclusion," the statement says.

The majority of laboratory-bred rats, mice, and birds in the United States are in facilities that follow guidelines that already meet or exceed AWA standards, the Board members note. But many are not.

That needs to change. At the same time, the Board says, care needs to be taken to "ensure that the inclusion of rats, mice, and birds does not detract from enforcement of the AWA for the animals already regulated and that the regulatory burden be no greater than that already applied to other rodent species."

For full text of the statement, please see this page.

For more information regarding the regulatory status of rats, mice, and birds, see Altweb news items here, here, and here.