The issue of animal welfare can be debated dispassionately. Although it is a rare event, it has been achieved twice recently over the delicate matter of laboratory animal experiments.
The reasons for opposition to animal experiments are readily understood by looking at the statistics. The number of animals used in Britain alone numbered 4,579,000 in 1980 and 4,340,000 in 1981. The figures for this year will be about the same.
Dogs and cats used for laboratory work last year increased by 3,160 to 21,460. Experiments on guinea pigs (159,000), mice (2,616,900) and rats (908,600) for the same period were a bit lower than for the previous 12 months.
More important, the active anti-vivisection and animal liberation protesters have shown what those statistics can mean in terms of pain and suffering for animals.
But the tide of emotion does not flow solely from the protesters. A publication of the Research Defence Society, which campaigns in collaboration with the Chemical Industries Association in defending experimental work, is entitled "For all our sakes - science still needs animals".
The controversy was examined in a different way by Dr Judith Hampson of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals when speaking to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Although she regretted the fact, she said animal experimentation would not go away, and her aim was to eliminate the unnecessary experiments and to ensure that suffering was reduced.
Many senior scientists in the biological research field accept that the number of animal tests can be drastically cut.
Indeed, recommendations from the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (Frame), which are about to be circulated to MPs and to advisers to the Home Office, would remove at least 500,000 tests a year at a stroke. It would come by abolishing the much criticized LD50 test, required for virtually any new product, such as cosmetics, drugs, detergents, paints, soap powder, shampoo, food flavours and colourings.
The LD50 test involves force-feeding a substance to large batches of animals until half of them die.
The question of humane treatment of animals apart, the LD50 test is almost as discredited as a procedure among scientists as the use of a medieval ducking stool to detect witches.
The proposals by Frame have been derived from two years of research by six groups of experts into alternative tissue culture tests as substitutes for animals, improvements in laboratory methods to avoid bad scientific procedures, measures to ensure pain is averted and ways of screening out useless substances before embarking on biological experiments.
One of the senior toxicologists in Europe, and an adviser to the Government and to Frame, Professor Denis Parke of Sussex University, describes the LD50 test as a revolting and old-fashioned dead body count which is almost meaningless.
But animals will continue to be subjected to this death unless the advisory committee to the Department of Health, on drugs, to the Ministry of Agriculture, on food additives and pesticides, and to the Home Office adopt a different procedure for assessing the safety of a new substance. The first two ministries are the target of proposals by Frame to restrict tests to those needed to extract only absolutely relevant information about the biological safety properties of a new chemical or product. At present an industrial contract research laboratory or a firm's own research department conducts every conceivable test on animals without regard to the relevance of most of them.
Alternatives to the much reviled Draize test used by drug and cosmetic firms, in which bleach and shampoo are among products which have been dropped into rabbit's eyes, are also proposed by Frame.
By abolishing the LD50 test, the use of cell culture alternatives, increased testing on human volunteers under strict controls and computer modelling to predict the biological activity of a new chemical molecule from the scrutiny of its structure, the number of animal tests could probably be reduced by more than 50 per cent.
But the crucial question of defining the level of pain and suffering which is unacceptable under law remains a difficulty. And this creates a bed of nails, for the Home Office, because it supervises the regulations under the Cruelty to Animals Act (1876), to dissatisfaction from almost all sides.
One snag is that all the questions of animal protection and welfare, including hunting and animal farming, come under this piece of legislation. Unfortunately it has been overtaken by political, social, agricultural, industrial and scientific developments. Hence it is no longer an ideal instrument for regulating any one of those areas of animal protection.
Dr Hampson says that if the Home Office advisers could produce some clear definitions of what is meant in the Act when reference is made to unacceptable levels of pain, then those scientists seeking major improvements might not pursue new tougher legislation.
