Animal welfare, ethics and the 3Rs: teaching materials, best practice and ideas for training provision from across the UK

Dave Lewis1,2, Terry McAndrew1,3. 1University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom, 2IDEA CETL, Leeds, United Kingdom, 3HEA Centre for Bioscience, Leeds, United Kingdom.

The Bioscience Federation and ABPI report “In-vivo sciences in the UK: sustaining the supply of skills in the 21st Century” highlighted the need for future in-vivo scientists to be provided with training in animal welfare, ethics and the 3Rs. To provide maximum benefit to animal welfare, it is essential that this training is provided as early as possible within an individual’s career and that providers work together to share best practice and teaching materials. Given the nature and extent of training in animal welfare and ethics within UK undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes is unknown, the aims of this project were to survey provision, to gather best practice and teaching materials and to disseminate this information.

Online surveys were utilised to determine the nature and extent of undergraduate and postgraduate student exposure to animals or animal tissues within different degree programmes, the training in animal welfare, ethics and UK law provided, and to ascertain what training Staff thought should be provided. Undergraduate surveys were distributed to the Heads of all UK Life Sciences, Biology and Psychology Departments via Learned Society, HEA Psychology and Centre for Bioscience email distribution lists. The postgraduate survey was sent to all Directors of Graduate Schools or Postgraduate Research Training and via Home Office Liaison Officers, Named Veterinary Surgeon and Home Office email distribution lists. Respondents were also asked to identify examples of good practice and materials within their teaching. 57 and 24 responses were obtained from the UG and PG survey respectively. For postgraduates, the key findings were the lack of training in experimental design, statistical design and harm/benefit analyses, limited use of debates on the use of animals in research or knowledge of alternatives. There was also limited training in the ethics and law for postgraduate Schedule 1 users. In contrast, there was increased provision of training in these areas within undergraduate degree programmes, with the exception of harm/benefit analyses and the debating of the use of animals in research.

Examples of best practice included structured discussion sessions to teach ethics and law to undergraduate students who use isolated tissues in their studies, using role-play in debates to provide “Science and Society” training in the arguments for and against animal experimentation for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, using case studies to provide training in the workings of ethical review committees for personal licence holders and to get these students to reflect on their application of the 3Rs within their own research.

The implementation of the findings of this study, particularly the adoption of the identified best practice and teaching materials in training, should result in significant improvements to animal welfare nationally.