Today, the first new piece of legislation in 110 years governing animal experiments will receive the Royal Assent. It has taken David Mellor, junior minister at the Home Office, two White Papers, numerous compromises, hours of negotiations and three years of endeavour - and he is elated.
In the camp of the animal rights movement, however, the Act is hardly seen as a cause for celebration. It is felt that it will make the situation worse, or at best no different. "It will protect the experimenters, not the animals," says Jan Creamer, director of the National Anti-Vivisection Society.
In 1876, when the Cruelty to Animals Act came into force, fewer than 300 animal experiments were taking place annually. In 1983, the numbers had grown to three and a half million and public opinion had become increasingly vociferous. The Government decided more regulation was required.
"Most people do not want animal experiments to be stopped," David Mellor told the Royal Society of Medicine. "They want the purpose of the work to be rigorously scrutinized and the pain of suffering to be kept to a minimum."
The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 will not end experiments in certain areas - such as cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol, and behavioural, psychological and warfare research - which the animal rights lobby has sought. Its success will very much depend upon the commitment of the junior minister responsible, particularly as the Act's enabling powers will mean that future changes can be made without fresh legislation.
Under the 1876 Act, almost anyone could obtain a licence to carry out experiments without an obligation to justify the methods used or the amount of pain inflicted. A team of 15 Home Office inspectors, doctors and vets now inspect establishments and have the power to prosecute (the last case was brought in the 1970s). They can also order the humane death of an animal which they feel has gone beyond the criteria laid down for acceptable pain.
Under the new Act, two licences will be required: a personal licence and a project licence. The project licence will be granted for a specific experiment only if it is considered essential that animals must be used. Methods are approved and the degree of pain is proportionate to the value of the experiment: pain with a purpose.
Bands of pain will be established, and if the animal goes beyond that stipulation it will be humanely killed. In addition, in each place of research a member of staff, aided by a vet, will be appointed to care for the animals' welfare.
The Animal Procedures Committee will replace the present Advisory Committee on Animal Experiments. It will advise the minister, monitor the issuing of licences and make its first report after two years.
The issuing of licences for projects will have a system of appeal and the number of inspectors responsible for issuing the licences and for inspecting 500 premises where experiments take place will increase eventually to 21. For the first time, too, the Act will allow the re-use of animals in experiments and micro-surgery.
"What we have now clearly said," Mellor insists, "is that no pain is acceptable unless it passes very stiff criteria."
The objectors say that those "stiff criteria" are going to be decided by scientists who have a vested interest in the continuation of animal experiments. "It is scientists who will decide on the issue of project licences," says Steve McIvor of the British Union Against Vivisection, "and it is they who will decide what is an acceptable level of pain even though two government committees have said it is impossible to lay down objective criteria."
Clive Hollands, founder of the Campaign for Reform in Animal Experiments and an animal welfarist who sits on what will become the Animal Procedures Committee, believes that it is wrong to underestimate the change which has taken place within the scientific community itself and he hopes that this peer pressure will ensure that the new law is properly applied.
"A few years back it was a matter of the sovereign state of science. A lot of scientists were saying there was no need to change the 1876 Act. Now, a different attitude is emerging. A number of organizations - the Biological Council, the Royal Society, and the Institute for Medical Ethics - have each issued guidelines on working with animals or have set up working parties to examine the issues."
After the Bill has become law, in about three months' time, it will take from two to five years before its effect becomes apparent. Animal welfare organizations, such as the RSPCA, who have given the Act "cautious support", will make their final judgement once practice matches David Mellor's commitment.
