Care & Welfare Officers (NACWOs) to be responsible for the day-to-day care of
the animals and one or more Named Veterinary Surgeons. The certificate holder
must establish a local ethical review processes.
At the end of an experiment, birds normally have to be killed by a humane
method. However, the Act does allow for release to the wild in certain circum-
stances, for example, following minor procedures on free-living birds (plucking
a feather for DNA analysis or taking a blood sample for a doubly labeled water
study). In this case, this has to be stipulated in the Project License and written
permission must be obtained from a veterinary surgeon stating that, following
such a procedure, the animal is fit to be released.
Normally, scientific studies will be done at the establishment holding the
Certificate of Designation. Exceptionally, a place specified in the personal and the
project license may be a place other than a designated establishment (PODE). This
will often be the case with ornithological research. In such cases, the project license
holder is required to notify the Home Office prior to any procedure being
performed. This allows a Home Office inspector to be present when the work is
carried out, should he or she so wish.
The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act in the United Kingdom implements the
requirements of the European Directive 86/609/EEC on the approximation of
laws, regulations, and administrative provisions of the Member States regarding the
protection of animals used for experimental or other scientific purposes. In theory,
legislation in other European countries should be similar to that in the United
Kingdom. This is true for several countries. For example, in Sweden, there is a
national committee for experiments on animals (Centrala Försöksdjursnämnden),
which coordinates the activity of seven “local ethical committees for experiments on
animals.” In some other European countries, however, legislation is considerably
less stringent.
In the United States, birds (and rodents) are (at the time of writing) excluded
from animal welfare legislation. Nevertheless, there are welfare procedures that
must be followed when birds are used in scientific experiments. The institution
where the work is to be done has to be accredited by the Association for the
Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care and then it is self-
policed by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). In general
inspections occur every few months and each procedure on every grant has to be
approved by the committee. Each person performing a procedure has to be trained
and has to pass a test, although the test varies from institution to institution.
A protocol has to be written for each procedure and this has to be approved by the
IACUC before work can start. Alternatives have to be sought, especially for surgical
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