Senate Votes Tighter Safeguards for Lab Animals

Amid increasingly militant protests from animal welfare groups, the Senate approved legislation Monday that would significantly boost safeguards for the 100 million animals used in scientific research each year.

The legislation, tacked onto a massive farm aid bill by voice vote, would increase the number of laboratory inspections, provide stricter penalties for violations and require use of painkillers or euthanasia on animals that suffer in experiments.

Measure’s Requirements

The measure would also require scientists to have prior training in animal care, set up a computer information service to avoid duplication of experiments and require that caged dogs and primates be given adequate exercise.

“Laboratory animals deserve humane treatment,” Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said in offering the legislation, which would amend the 1966 Animal Welfare Act. “Their contribution to human health can only be repaid by ensuring that the pain and distress they suffer is minimized.”

The measure, introduced earlier in the House by Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), is a compromise reached after lengthy negotiations between animal welfare and medical research groups.

Backed by Humane Society

It is supported by the Humane Society of the United States and the American Physiological Society. The latter represents the largest group of scientists who use animals in their research. The bill is opposed, however, by anti-vivisectionists, who object to the use of any animals for research, and by some scientists who are against further regulation of experiments.

The Senate acted in the midst of an increasingly well-organized, well-publicized campaign being conducted by animal welfare groups to call attention to research practices. Protests have included break-ins at the University of Pennsylvania, where raiders made off with 60 hours of videotapes showing the bashing of baboon brains, and at UC Riverside, where 470 cats, rabbits, rats and mice were spirited away last spring.

No one spoke against the bill during a brief discussion of it. Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) said: “The suffering of these creatures, under appalling conditions, is unconscionable. Under the current law, researchers are only required to meet minimal standards of care in research. The amendment before us would make proper standards the norm.”

Congressional aides said that many research institutions and animal handlers already have responded to public pressure and are paying more attention to federal guidelines for the treatment of animals.

In May, nine federal agencies adopted tighter guidelines for the care of animals. However, compliance with a new policy of the National Institutes of Health, requiring institutions receiving federal grants to set up review committees--whose members must include at least one outsider--will depend heavily on good-faith efforts on the part of institutions, handlers and satellite laboratories.

The Senate-passed amendment, in contrast to the national institutes’ policy, would apply to all research institutions and provide for tougher enforcement of the improved standards of care.