Exploring University Students' Perspectives on Animal Experimentation: Insights From a Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction Attitudes toward animal experimentation are rapidly evolving with time. This cross-sectional study intends to assess the attitudes of university students at Eastern Mediterranean University toward animal research based on different factors and lifestyle choices. Materials and methods Stratified random sampling was used. A total of 215 participants were chosen from the Faculties of Medicine, Pharmacy, Law, and the Department of Psychology (Faculty of Arts and Sciences). An open-access, self-administered, 14-question questionnaire was used. Mann-Whitney U tests were used for score comparisons. Results The response rate was 213 (99.07%). Eighty-eight (41.31%) of the participants were male. The mean age was 21.72 ± 2.23. Mann-Whitney U tests revealed significant differences for Q4, Q10, and Q14 (p = 0.012, 0.020, and 0.016, respectively) with respect to gender. Being a pet owner significantly affected the mean scores of Q7 and Q10 (p = 0.046 and p = 0.000, respectively). Conclusion The present study reveals nuanced student attitudes toward animal experimentation, balancing concern for animal welfare with the necessity of research. Gender and pet ownership significantly influence these views. The findings underscore the need for continued education on humane and ethical research practices. Future studies should broaden the demographic scope to better understand and track these attitudes over time.

A Legal Ban on Dog Meat Production: Political Decision-Making for an Ethical Community.

For over 40 years, the human consumption of dog meat has been a controversial issue in South Korea. While some defend it as cultural tradition, others criticize the act as unethical treatment of dogs. This study examined the public perceptions and opinions driving the legislative efforts to ban dog meat through an online survey of 1000 participants assessing their experiences with dog meat, awareness of related issues, and support for institutional bans. The results revealed a widespread negative view of the dog meat industry, largely due to concerns over animal cruelty, and a negligible demand for consuming dog meat, which points to the expected demise of the industry. However, there was notable resistance to the ban from the view that it restricts personal freedom, with anthropocentric attitudes hindering progress in animal welfare. Regression analysis identified gender, political affiliations, animal experiences, and perceptions of dog meat as key predictors of support for the ban. As beloved pets, dogs influence human ethics, and the growing awareness of animal ethics has led to a 'political turn' enabling policymakers to enact bans. This study highlights how animal welfare benefits from political actions backed by societal consensus.

Laboratory animal ethics education improves medical students' awareness of laboratory animal ethics.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we added laboratory animal ethics education into both didactic sessions and practical sessions the general surgery laboratory course, with the didactic sessions focus on teaching the fundamental principles of laboratory animal ethics, while the practical sessions emphasize the application of these principles in laboratory classes and have assessed the changes in medical students' perception of laboratory animal ethics following medical students exposure to such education. METHODS: One hundred and eighty-nine third-year medical students from Wuhan University's Second Clinical College completed a laboratory animal ethics awareness questionnaire and a laboratory animal ethics written examination before and after laboratory animal ethics education. RESULTS: After receiving laboratory animal ethics education, the percentage of students who supported euthanasia for the execution of animals and humane treatment of laboratory animals were 95.2% and 98.8%, respectively, which did not differ from the 94.9% and 96.4% observed before the education. Moreover, there was a notable increase in the proportion of students who knew about regulations related to laboratory animals (from 39.9% to 57.1%), welfare issues (from 31.9% to 50.0%), and the 3R principle (from 30.4% to 58.9%) post-education, all statistically significant at P < 0.05. Test scores also showed improvement, with students scoring (93.02 ± 11.65) after education compared to (67.83 ± 8.08) before, a statistically significant difference. CONCLUSIONS: This research helps to provide information for the good practices of laboratory animal ethics education. After receiving laboratory animal ethics education, students are better able to treat laboratory animals in a correct animal ethical manner. Laboratory animal ethics education helps improve students' knowledge of laboratory animal ethics. Students' perception towards how the laboratory animal ethics course should be delivered may vary. Still, new courses or better organized courses on laboratory animal ethics education are required in order to provide students an in-depth understanding.

Perceptions of Animal Welfare on Livestock: Evidence from College Agronomy Students in Costa Rica.

Ethical considerations regarding our treatment of animals have gained strength, leading to legislation and a societal focus across various disciplines. This is a subject of study within curricula related to agri-food sciences. The aim was to determine the perceptions of agronomy university students concerning animal welfare in livestock production systems. A survey was conducted to encompass various aspects, from participants' sociodemographic attributes to their attitudes and behaviors regarding animal welfare and the consumption of animal products. Statistical analysis, performed using R software, delved into the associations between participants' characteristics and their perspectives on the ethical, bioethical, and legal dimensions of animal welfare. Associations between demographic factors and ethical viewpoints among students were identified. Gender differences emerged in animal treatment perceptions, while rural and urban environments impacted perspectives on various animals. Bioethical considerations revealed distinctive disparities based on gender and education in concerns regarding animal welfare, value perceptions, evaluations of animal behaviors, and opinions on animal research. It is crucial to distinguish between animal welfare and the ethical considerations arising from coexisting with sentient beings capable of experiencing suffering. Ethical theories provide a lens through which we perceive our obligations toward animals. The responsibility to ensure animal welfare is firmly rooted in recognizing that animals, like humans, experience pain and physical suffering. Consequently, actions causing unjustified suffering or mistreatment, particularly for entertainment purposes, are considered morally unacceptable.

The Ethics of Life as It Could Be: Do We Have Moral Obligations to Artificial Life?

The field of Artificial Life studies the nature of the living state by modeling and synthesizing living systems. Such systems, under certain conditions, may come to deserve moral consideration similar to that given to nonhuman vertebrates or even human beings. The fact that these systems are nonhuman and evolve in a potentially radically different substrate should not be seen as an insurmountable obstacle to their potentially having rights, if they are sufficiently sophisticated in other respects. Nor should the fact that they owe their existence to us be seen as reducing their status as targets of moral concern. On the contrary, creators of Artificial Life may have special obligations to their creations, resembling those of an owner to their pet or a parent to their child. For a field that aims to create artificial life-forms with increasing levels of sophistication, it is crucial to consider the possible ethical implications of our activities, with an eye toward assessing potential moral obligations for which we should be prepared. If Artificial Life is larger than life, then the ethics of artificial beings should be larger than human ethics.

Zoofolkloristics: Imagination as a Critical Component.

Nonhuman animal protagonists of folklore texts in the European space have tended to be perceived primarily as performing a symbolic and metaphoric function. But behind the symbols and the metaphors hide real flesh-and-blood nonhuman animals, and flesh-and-blood humans interacting with them, mostly from a position of power. The emerging discipline of zoofolkloristics considers nonhuman animals in their own right. Through critical analysis of folklore material, zoofolkloristics examines the role of animals and power relations within the interspecies entanglement with the aim of deconstructing the oppressive system and establishing multispecies justice. We begin this paper with a brief reflection on the 'historical animal' as an embodied being and a human construct. We then perform a critical re-reading of three animal-related folklore texts from the Slovenian tradition and, applying Hubert Zapf's concept of imaginative counter-discourse, consider the potential of imagination as a methodological tool in the transformative program of zoofolkloristics. Implications for animal ethics, liberation, and conservation are also discussed.

Uncontrolled pain: a call for better study design.

Studies assessing animal pain in veterinary research are often performed primarily for the benefit of animals. Frequently, the goal of these studies is to determine whether the analgesic effect of a novel treatment is clinically meaningful, and therefore has the capacity to improve the welfare of treated animals. To determine the treatment effect of a potential analgesic, control groups are necessary to allow comparison. There are negative control groups (where pain is unattenuated) and positive control groups (where pain is attenuated). Arising out of animal welfare concerns, there is growing reluctance to use negative control groups in pain studies. But for studies where pain is experimentally induced, the absence of a negative control group removes the opportunity to demonstrate that the study methods could differentiate a positive control intervention from doing nothing at all. For studies that are controlled by a single comparison group, the capacity to distinguish treatment effects from experimental noise is more difficult; especially considering that pain studies often involve small sample sizes, small and variable treatment effects, systematic error and use pain assessment measures that are unreliable. Due to these limitations, and with a focus on farm animals, we argue that many pain studies would be enhanced by the simultaneous inclusion of positive and negative control groups. This would help provide study-specific definitions of pain and pain attenuation, thereby permitting more reliable estimates of treatment effects. Adoption of our suggested refinements could improve animal welfare outcomes for millions of animals globally.

Slaying the Swiss Unicorn of Animal Dignity.

In this article, we describe and analyse the Swiss legislation relating to animal dignity. We conclude that previous criticisms of the law do not go far enough: far from protecting animal dignity, the Swiss law not only undermines such dignity but itself serves as a means to ensure that animals can be used merely as a means, and not treated with respect. As such, the Swiss Animal Welfare Act is deeply unethical and undermines the constitutional requirement to treat animals with dignity.

The importance of animal specificity in animal experimentation, part II: Physiological challenges and opportunities in relation to pediatric urology.

When performing animal experimentation in Pediatric Urology studies, it is important to be aware of physiological differences between species and to understand when relevant disease models are available. Diseased animal models may be more relevant in many cases, rather than performing studies in healthy and normally developed animals. For example, they may be more appropriate for the study of congenital malformations, to investigate the secondary effects of prenatal urinary obstruction, to study the effect of prenatal exposure to endogenous or exogenous factors which may lead to disease, or in testing bioengineered structures. In this short educational article, we aim to describe some disease models that have been used to simulate human pathologies and how, if properly designed, these studies can lead to important new knowledge for human translation. In addition, we also highlight the importance of formulating a research question(s) before deciding on the animal experimental model and species to choose.

Guidelines for the establishment and functioning of Animal Ethics Commitees (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees) in Africa.

Animals are used for scientific purposes across Africa to benefit humans, animals or the environment. Nonetheless, ethical and regulatory oversight remains limited in many parts of the continent. To strengthen this governance framework, the Pan-African Network for Laboratory Animal Science and Ethics brought together experts from 12 African countries to create an Africa-centric practical guide to facilitate the establishment and appropriate functioning of Institutional Animal Ethics Committees across Africa. The Guidelines are based on universal principles for the care and use of sentient animals for scientific purposes, with consideration of the cultural, religious, political and socio-economic diversity in Africa. They focus on 11 key elements, including responsibilities of institutions and of the Institutional Official; composition of the Committee; its responsibilities, functioning and authority; ethical application and review processes; oversight and monitoring of animal care and use and of training and competence; quality assurance; and the roles of other responsible parties. The intent is for African institutions to adopt and adapt the guidelines, aligning with existing national legislation and standards where relevant, thus ensuring incorporation into practice. More broadly, the Guidelines form an essential component of the growing discourse in Africa regarding moral considerations of, and appropriate standards for, the care and use of animals for scientific purposes. The increased establishment of appropriately functioning animal ethics committees and robust ethical review procedures across Africa will enhance research quality and culture, strengthen societal awareness of animals as sentient beings, improve animal well-being, bolster standards of animal care and use, and contribute to sustainable socio-economic development.

Opinions of Turkish veterinarians on the termination of unwanted pregnancies in dogs.

BACKGROUND: No time constraints exist in Turkish veterinary law regarding the termination of unwanted pregnancies in dogs. Having undergone limited ethical debate, opinions on this issue vary among veterinarians. This study aimed to determine appropriate indications accepted by veterinary practitioners for the termination of unwanted pregnancies in dogs and the cut-off point preferred by these professionals for performing this medical and surgical intervention. METHODS: A qualitative methodology was used for the collection of the data. Interviews were conducted with 40 veterinarians (13 practitioners and 27 academics). RESULTS: The main reasons for performing pregnancy termination were 'institutional obligations' and 'demand of the animal owner'. Meanwhile, the cut-off points for veterinarians were 'possibility of pregnancy', 'implantation/diagnosability/visibility', 'heartbeat' and 'viability'. LIMITATIONS: The inclusion of ethics experts among the authors may have caused bias in the comments of the participants on ethical issues. CONCLUSION: The fact that animals are legally relegated to the custody of humans not only adds a unique character to the veterinary ethical debate but also creates a comfort zone for veterinarians not willing to examine compelling ethical issues.

Based on respect for life:A brief talk about Laboratory Animal Memorial Day and Monuments / 中国比较医学杂志

As the basic carrier and key condition for research in the fields of life science,medicine and pharmacy,laboratory animals have played an extremely important role in the development of modern science.Animal welfare ethics is built on the moral foundation of human civilization and is a product of social and economic development to a certain stage.From a scientific point of view,treating animals well is both a humanitarian need and a need for scientific experiments.This paper elaborates the role and significance of laboratory animal welfare from the aspects of the development of laboratory animal welfare ethics and the content of regulations and policies,whether and how to establish a memorial day and monument for laboratory animals,and calls on experimental personnel to follow the"3R"principle and enhance their sense of responsibility and awareness of norms.

Application and challenges of NHP laboratory animals in neuroscience / 中国比较医学杂志

Non-human primates(NHP)are becoming increasingly important laboratory animals,especially in the field of neuroscience,where many significant breakthroughs have been made,including research on brain development,neurodegenerative diseases,and psychiatric disorders.However,as their breeding and use grows,biosafety and animal ethics issues should be considered.This review summarizes the application and challenges of NHP laboratory animals in the neuroscience field from the aspects of an NHP overview,feeding and operation,biosafety,and animal ethics.

Integrating one health: exploring the global dialogue on bioethics.

Unesco's World Bioethics Day, whose theme this year is the protection of future generations, reveals the centrality of the concept of one-health, as the main way to guarantee a future for the planet seen as the common home of all living beings. The recent pandemic has sufficiently shown how animal health is linked to human health and how only the balance of the entire planet guarantees both. Living on earth as human beings, no longer blinded by the Anthropocene's arrogance, but conscious of having a fundamental responsibility for the health care and well-being of every species is the imperative that should guide scientific research, education and social life. Thus, a renovating of the education system is essential to break down rigid boundaries between disciplines and promote complex and critical thinking.

Review: Animal husbandry and sustainable agriculture: is animal welfare (only) an issue of sustainability of agricultural production or a separate issue on its own?

The terms "animal welfare" and "sustainability" have become major keywords in agricultural politics due to increased public concern about our treatment of animals (particularly in the context of food production) and our treatment of the environment, for example regarding our use of natural resources in farming. Agricultural agendas must therefore address both aspects (among others). What is striking is a problematic tendency within the literature of agricultural science and politics to closely link these issues by declaring animal welfare a part of the concept of sustainability. This joining of both concepts is usually defended on one hand by referring to empirical reciprocal influences between the promotion of animal welfare and the development of more sustainable husbandry systems. On the other hand, the linking of both concepts is promoted by its advocates as a promising strategy to protect current animal welfare standards from being rolled back in favour of economic or ecologic human interests. I will argue that the notions of animal welfare and sustainability need to be understood as independent and at times even competing issues. I will closely analyse both notions and illustrate that they are based on different value assumptions and that conceptually joining them means to blur their differences. Such mixing makes it harder to understand the ethical implications entailed in animal welfare and sustainability which will lead to misguided agricultural political decision-making.

Animal Welfare Science: Why and for Whom?

There are, in the literature, distinct ways to approach animal welfare. The objective of this work was to study the value attributed to farm animals in the scientific papers published in animal welfare and animal production journals at three different points in time, separated by a decade each. The first ten papers mentioning "animal welfare" or "animal well-being" in their objectives or hypotheses from each journal and each focus year were selected. The 180 papers were blindly scored by five assessors between 1 and 10, according to the degree of intrinsic value attributed to animals. The overall mean score and standard deviation were 5.60 ± 2.49, with 6.46 ± 2.29 and 4.74 ± 2.40 for AW and AP journals, respectively, and 5.37 ± 2.44, 5.68 ± 2.52 and 5.75 ± 2.41 for the focus years of 2000, 2010 and 2020, respectively. There was an interaction between focus year and publication area: papers from AW journals scored better over time, in contrast with papers from AP journals, for which scores remained similar over decades. The inter-assessor agreement is moderate, which may reflect the subject complexity, as the language used in the papers studied was ambiguous in relation to why and for whom it is performed. The low overall mean score evidenced that the animal welfare scientific publications are, on average, not prioritizing the interests of the animals. Thus, our results evidenced the presence of animal welfarism in animal welfare science, a problem that seems not to be intrinsic to animal welfare science itself, but rather to the way research is frequently conceived, conducted, interpreted, summarized and applied. Therefore, it seems urgent to further study the motivation for animal welfare research. The statement of the main justification for animal welfare papers, with an explicit declaration of the motivational priorities that constitute each scientific animal welfare study, may be an interesting recommendation for the improvement of animal welfare science.

What Is Wrong with Eating Pets? Wittgensteinian Animal Ethics and Its Need for Empirical Data.

Wittgensteinian approaches to animal ethics highlight the significance of practical concepts like 'pet', 'patient', or 'companion' in shaping our understanding of how we should treat non-human animals. For Wittgensteinian animal ethicists, moral principles alone cannot ground moral judgments about our treatment of animals. Instead, moral reflection must begin with acknowledging the practical relations that tie us to animals. Morality emerges within practical contexts. Context-dependent conceptualisations form our moral outlook. In this paper, we argue that Wittgensteinians should, for methodological reasons, pay more attention to empirical data from the social sciences such as sociology, psychology or anthropology. Such data can ground Wittgensteinians' moral inquiry and thereby render their topical views more dialectically robust.

The Life and Death of Freya the Walrus: Human and Wild Animal Interactions in the Anthropocene Era.

Freya the Walrus, who often climbed onto docked boats to sunbathe and frolic, was euthanized by the Norwegian Department of Fisheries in the Oslo fjord in August 2022, sparking international outrage and media attention. Since walruses are social animals, and since the Anthropocene era of climate change has displaced animals from their Arctic homes, forcing them to migrate, we can expect more human-animal interactions at such places as marinas, where Freya met her end. This paper asks and attempts to answer how we can make such interactions just going forward? In cases such as Freya's, we need to reconcile three competing interests: the animal's interest in living a flourishing life as best they can in a changing climate; the public's interest in a safe and fulfilling wildlife encounter with an animal they have come to know intimately enough to name and follow devotedly on social media; and interests in maintaining private property. Examining these interests through the philosophical lenses of co-sovereignty, capability, and individuality, however, will yield more just results for animals in similar situations of conflict and co-existence with humans in urban spaces. We argue that, going forward, state resources should be expended to safeguard the public from marina access if safety is a genuine concern, while private money should be spent by marinas to enact safe animal removal with a no-kill policy.

It Is Not Only Data-Freshwater Invertebrates Misused in Biological Monitoring.

The article presents and discusses the issues of the use of free-living invertebrates to assess the ecological status of freshwater environments with different methods of biological monitoring. Invertebrates are excluded from ethical consideration in the procedures of environmental protection, which results in the killing of many more individuals during sampling than necessary. Biomonitoring is used as a routine method for environmental protection that results in the cruel death of even millions of aquatic animals annually. In many cases, the mortality of animals used in such types of activities has been shown as excessive, e.g., because the vast majority die due to unnecessary subsampling procedures. Improperly planned and conducted procedures which result in excessive mortality have or may have a negative impact on the environment and biodiversity. Their existence as sensitive beings is reduced to an information function; they become only data useful for biomonitoring purposes. The main problem when trying to determine the mortality of invertebrates due to biomonitoring activities and its impact on natural populations seems to be the lack of access to raw data presenting how many animals were killed during sampling.

Severity Classification of Laboratory Animal Procedures in Two Belgian Academic Institutions.

According to the EU Directive 2010/63, all animal procedures must be classified as non-recovery, mild, moderate or severe. Several examples are included in the Directive to help in severity classification. Since the implementation of the Directive, different publications and guidelines have been disseminated on the topic. However, due to the large variety of disease models and animal procedures carried out in many different animal species, guidance on the severity classification of specific procedures or models is often lacking or not specific enough. The latter is especially the case in disease models where the level of pain, suffering, distress and lasting harm depends on the duration of the study (for progressive disease models) or the dosage given (for infectious or chemically induced disease models). This, in turn, may lead to inconsistencies in severity classification between countries, within countries and even within institutions. To overcome this, two Belgian academic institutions with a focus on biomedical research collaborated to develop a severity classification for all the procedures performed. This work started with listing all in-house procedures and assigning them to 16 (sub)categories. First, we determined which parameters, such as clinical signs, dosage or duration, were crucial for severity classification within a specific (sub)category. Next, a severity classification was assigned to the different procedures, which was based on professional judgment by the designated veterinarians, members of the animal welfare body (AWB) and institutional animal ethics committee (AEC), integrating the available literature and guidelines. During the classification process, the use of vague terminology, such as 'minor impact', was avoided as much as possible. Instead, well-defined cut-offs between severity levels were used. Furthermore, we sought to define common denominators to group procedures and to be able to classify new procedures more easily. Although the primary aim is to address prospective severity, this can also be used to assess actual severity. In summary, we developed a severity classification for all procedures performed in two academic, biomedical institutions. These include many procedures and disease models in a variety of animal species for which a severity classification was not reported so far, or the terms that assign them to a different severity were too vague.