Canadian Council on Animal Care issues new guidelines

[Laura Bies]

The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) has released a new guidance document, CCAC guidelines: Categories of welfare impact. These new guidelines apply to all animal-based scientific activities that fall within the CCAC’s mandate, including research involving wildlife.

This new guidelines document establishes a new system for categorizing welfare impact, focusing not solely on the procedures performed but also considering the animal’s experience of the world, with a goal of more accurately reflecting the experiences of the animals used in scientific activities

The new categories take into account that not all animals experience similar procedures in the same way, and also acknowledges that animal welfare is affected by elements other than the experimental procedures, such as living conditions, phenotype, researcher experience, transportation conditions, and the animal’s cumulative lifetime experience.

Along with the new guidelines, the CCAC released supporting documents, including frequently asked questions, examples of how to categorize procedures, and an automated scoring tool (with instructions for use).

Learn more here.

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