Animal Welfare Policy: Implementation in the Context of Wildlife Research-Policy Review and Discussion of Fundamental Issues

作者：Paul Ellen^*; Sikes Robert S; Beaupre Steven J; Wingfield John C

来源：ILAR Journal, 2015, 56(3): 312-334.

DOI：10.1093/ilar/ilv073

• animals
• animal care committee
• animal experimentation
• animal oversight
• animal welfare
• Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
• wild
• wildlife

The use of vertebrate animals in research and education in the United States is subject to a number of regulations, policies, and guidelines under the immediate oversight of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs), which are charged with ensuring the ethical and appropriate use of the animal subjects. In almost all instances, this regulatory and oversight landscape of animal use has been developed around domesticated animals in biomedical research environments. When the research activities involve wild species, especially in their natural habitat rather than a laboratory, oversight personnel and investigators alike struggle with determining what constitutes ethical and appropriate activities. These difficulties stem from fundamental differences in biology between wild and domesticated animals and from the differences in research objectives and methods in wildlife compared with biomedical research. Here we discuss the various policies, regulations, and guidance documents for animal use in the context of wildlife research. We compare the expectations of the various oversight agencies and how these expectations are met when working with wild vertebrates. We make recommendations for how IACUCs can use available resources to ensure that activities involving wild species are conducted in compliance with existing regulations and policies and in ways that are biologically appropriate for these nondomesticated species.

• 出版日期2015
• 单位国家自然科学基金委员会