European Directive

EU flagIn 1986 the European Council of Ministers adopted Directive 86/609/EEC on ‘the protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes’. The Directive sought to improve the controls on the use of laboratory animals, set minimum standards for housing and for the training of those handling animals and supervising the experiments.

The Directive also aimed to reduce the numbers of animals used for experiments by requiring that an animal experiment should not be performed when an alternative method exists, and by encouraging the development and validation of alternative methods to replace animal methods.

This legislation is largely a framework, and laws governing animal experiments in the UK, for example, are very much stricter.

A few years ago, it became clear that officials within the European Commission wished to revise the Directive to promote improvements in the welfare of laboratory animals and to further encourage the development of alternative methods. Since 1986 important progress has been made in science and new techniques have become available, such as use of transgenic animals, xenotransplantation, and cloning. According to the Commission, these require specific attention, which the old Directive does not provide.

The process of revising the Directive has been going on for several years, and draft legislation was only available to the European Parliament and the public at the end of 2008. The Parliamentary process can take at least two years, and implementation in the Member States a further two, so national legislation to implement the Directive may not be in place for some time.

See also the European Biomedical Research Association

 

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