History of legislation
The use of animals for experimental purposes is a controversial subject.
In Ireland, this use has been controlled using a statute enabled in 1876 called the 'Cruelty to Animal Act.' and amended by SI 566/2002
This law requires that any person wishing to use an animal for a scientific purpose is required to have an authorization issued by the Minister for health.
The Council of Europe (in 1986) felt that this area needed to be controlled throughout Europe in the interest of animal welfare.
It drew up a document detailing the conditions under which animals may be used for a scientific purpose. It also laid down guidelines for the accommodation of animals with specific regard to space and temperature.
These are detail in the Council of Europe document ETS 123 (http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/en/treaties/html/123-a.htm)
This convention became available for ratification by countries. This was a voluntary measure signifying the intent of a country to implement legislation which would enshrine the articles contained in the convention.
With the increasing harmonisation of law as within the European Community, the commission decided to implement the Council of Europe Convention as a whole and agreed an EC directive (EC 86/609) which required local member states to have in place by 1/11/89 laws which would protect the welfare of all animals used for scientific purposes.
Many member states had to draw up legislation de novo to satisfy this directive. The UK because of internal political pressure decided to develop a new act. Ireland on the other hand had in place a working piece of legislation and opted to use the old 1876 Act to implement the directive. Consequently it was comparatively painless to move from national legislation to European Legislation. The new legislation has been in operation since November 1989. However, the only difference that the average researcher is likely to see is a greatly expanded application form with a lot of searching questions requiring detailed justification of projected experiments and specific details of procedures with the possible effects on the animals.
Scope of legislation
It would be reasonable to say that despite the widespread use of animals in our society, the majority of people would abhor any deliberate cruelty to animals.
The welfare of domestic species of animals is protected by the 1911 Animal Welfare Act. This makes the infliction of any suffering on animals an offence.
If a researcher needs to use animals in a scientific procedure which will benefit mankind or animals and this procedure has a likelihood of causing pain then this procedure must be licensed by the Minister of Health. These licences are not given easily and before the Minister will grant a licence he must be satisfied that the procedure is necessary, that it will advance scientific knowledge, benefit mankind and will not cause unnecessary suffering.