Animal Advocates Watchdog

"More openness needed on research involving animals " says Canadian Council on Animal Care

The letter below, published in today's Vancouver Sun, was written by a former member of the Canadian Council on Animal Care.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/More+openness+needed+research+involving+animals/3630176/story.html

More openness needed on research involving animals

By Stephanie Brown, Vancouver Sun
October 6, 2010 12:17 AM

Re: UBC adheres to standards for use of animals in research, Letters, Oct. 2

The Canadian Council on Animal Care's Clement Gauthier writes that academic institutions must hold a CCAC certificate of Good Animal Practice to receive research funding from granting agencies, but what does the certificate mean when all aspects of animal-based research -- including the functioning of an institution's animal care committee, the assessment panels from the council that visit the institution and the council itself -- are confidential?

Yes, there are public representatives on those committees. I served on the council, on two hospital animal-care committees and on CCAC assessment panels, representing the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. I was bound by confidentiality, unable to discuss animal experiments or decisions affecting animal experiments at institutions.

Believe me, it was frustrating not to be able to discuss publicly my concerns about conditions and experiments at the institutions, which are mostly funded with federal-government money.

Is the system closed because of concerns about the public's reaction to what goes on in animal laboratories in Canada?

The CCAC system needs to be open, not confidential.

Stephanie Brown

Toronto

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