Recognition of Pain, Suffering and Distress (EU5)

PIL AB Article

Being able to recognise animal pain, distress and suffering is an essential skill for anyone working with laboratory animals.

PIL AB Article

Pain and distress cause changes to the animal’s body systems, either directly or indirectly, and this can increase the variability in your research data.

PIL AB Article

In order to recognise any pain, distress and suffering, we need to recognise the positive signs of health and good welfare in the animals that we work with.

PIL AB Article

Careful records of what is abnormal in an animal, and also what is normal need to be made.

PIL AB Article

Once you have recognised signs of poor health or welfare, you need to take corrective action.

PIL AB Article

The EU Directive and the national legislation (A(SP)A in the UK) requires you to avoid using death as an endpoint in studies.

PIL AB Article

Often humane endpoints are set to prevent an animal exceeding the severity limits assigned to a particular research protocol.

PIL AB Article

Although a judgement of the severity of a procedure may simply look at the most painful or distressing technique to be applied to the animal, this ignores the overall effect of all of the techniques involved in a research procedure.

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