Future improvements and implementation of animal care practices within the animal testing regulatory environment

Animal welfare is an increasingly important concern when considering biomedical experimentation. Many of the emerging regulations and guidelines specifically address animal welfare in laboratory animal care and use. The current revision of the appendix of the European Convention, ETS123 (Council of Europe), updates and improves on the current animal care standardization in Europe. New guidelines from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Association focus specifically on safety testing. These guidelines will affect the way toxicity studies are conducted and therefore the global drug development process. With the 3Rs principles taken into account, consideration regarding animal welfare will demand changes in animal care practices in regulatory safety testing. The most significant future improvements in animal care and use practices are likely to be environmental enrichment, management of animal pain and distress, and improved application of the humane endpoints. Our challenge is to implement respective guidelines based on scientific data and animal welfare, through a complex interplay of regulatory objective and public opinion. The current goal is to work toward solutions that continue to provide relevant animal models for risk assessment in drug development and that are science based. In this way, future improvements in animal care and use practices can be founded on facts, scientific results, and analysis. Some of these improvements become common practice in some countries. International harmonization can facilitate the development and practical application of "best scientific practices" by the consensus development process that harmonization requires. Since the implementation of good laboratory practices (GLP) standards in safety testing, these new regulations and recommendations represent a new way forward for animal safety studies.