Contreras and Rollin (2021) on the Disregard of Lab Rats

Elena T. Contreras and Bernard E. Rollin, “The Convenient Disregard for the Rattus Species in the Laboratory Environment: Implications for Animal Welfare and Science.” Journal of Animal Ethics 11(2): 12-30, Fall 2021.

• In nature, “rats live in colonies. They are very social and playful animals....[p. 13].” 

• Rats roam a bit, over blocks and neighborhoods; they forage and dig and burrow and climb and, frequently, stand up!

• Rats display a wide variety of emotions.

• Rodents dominate the US animal research industry, with tens of millions used for research annually.

• Rats bred for research are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act, nor are they counted in official laboratory animal stats.

• If we conditionally “accept” that rats will be used for research, we still want to know about (and control) the conditions under which they are kept. Their current living space typically is in a “shoebox” container, often with one or two rats, and is, of course, completely inconsistent with their natural range and sociability.

• The conditions under which lab rats are generally kept is bad for their wellbeing and bad for the validity of the experiments they are subjected to. “One might wonder how the rats feel about living in small rat boxes for eternity [p. 16].” The trend toward “enriched” environments provides little improvement for the living conditions of lab rats.

• “Satisfaction of telos leads to happiness” while “impediment of telos leads to unhappiness [p. 16].” (Five Freedoms and Five Domains (nutrition, environment, health, behavior and mental state) are indices of telos.) In research labs, “rats live in a constant state of deprivation of their telos and positive experiences [p. 18].”

• Just moving rats around, along with other types of handling, leads to stress and fear. Lighting and daytime experimentation are other sources of discomfort.

• The barren environment of lab rats does not reduce variance in behavior, it doesn’t make them more comparable or useful to science: Replacement, Refinement, Reduction – better lab rat welfare is also better science.