Dr Leilani Walker (Te Whakatōhea, Thai), Professor Eloise Jillings (Ngāti Maru Hauraki) and Dr Kimiora Hēnare (Ngāti Hauā, Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa) discuss how they implement the Three Rs of animal ethics within their fields of research and teaching: replace, reduce, refine.
Please note that the video footage of the laboratory mice is from the United Kingdom and not from the University of Auckland.
It is recommended that educators view this video before showing it in the classroom. It includes the dissection of mouse tissue.
Questions for discussion
- How does having models of animals protect both the vet students and the animals they are training to work with?
- What does Leilani mean when she says “that the question you’re trying to ask is actually worth asking”.
- What examples of replacement, reduction and refinement are mentioned in the video?
Dr Leilani Walker (Te Whakatōhea, Thai, lecturer in the Faculty of Health and Environmental Science, Auckland University of Technology)
Animal ethics regulations are a really important part for how myself and my wider set of colleagues and other scientists work because animal ethics impacts how you can treat the animals.
Professor Eloise Jillings (Ngāti Maru Hauraki, veterinarian and educator, Massey University)
Here in the vet school, the big thing for us is educating students around teaching, so every interaction that our students have with animals from the very beginning when we’re teaching students how to handle animals, how to do physical examinations on animals, all of that is covered by animal ethics and therefore the desire is to improve and maintain animal welfare to the best standard at all times.
Dr Kimiora Hēnare (Ngāti Hauā, Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Research Fellow at Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland)
The mice we use are bred specifically for research under really strict regulations and are really well looked after. The welfare of the animals is the most obvious reason. We need to make sure that we’re taking care of all living things and that they’re not suffering. And so there are really strict guidelines to make sure that they’re well looked after, that the work that we’re doing doesn’t hurt them.
Professor Eloise Jillings
If we think about animal ethics from a Western framework of the Three Rs of replace, reduce, refine, we use a lot of model practice now to reduce the amount of animal use. We have simulations and models so that, before students get to doing things on a real animal, they have practised from really low-fidelity to high-fidelity simulations.
The nice thing about it too is it protects animals, but it also protects students in that it enables them to practise and do things in a much lower-stress environment before they’re actually doing it with an animal where they could inflict pain or harm. It makes it as safe for the animal as possible.
Dr Kimiora Hēnare
We also work hard to find replacements. If an experiment can be done in the cells in a Petri dish, then we wouldn’t use an animal.
Dr Leilani Walker
If you are going to be working with animals, you only use the number that you absolutely need to get the answer that you’re wanting – that the question you’re trying to ask is actually worth asking.
Dr Kimiora Hēnare
To reduce, we work with as few mice as possible to get the results of the experiment or the work that we’re doing. To find out whether a drug works or whether a drug doesn’t work, for example, we would use the lowest number we can possibly use to demonstrate the effect.
Other ways that we work to reduce the number of animals that we use is we might share tissues. So other people are doing work using animals and so we would use tissues that they’re not using for the type of work that we’re doing.
I like to use mouse immune cells from spleens. I don’t obviously want to get a whole animal just for that, but I will go and talk to my colleague and make sure that I can use theirs so that we don’t have to use more animals. So that’s the principle of reduction.
And the last one is on refinement. So we always try to find new ways to work best with the animals to minimise any potential discomfort or harm during that process. For cancer research, often what we do is put a cancer on the flank, so when the animal moves around, it doesn’t inhibit its movement. And we do that to make sure that the animal is not suffering when they have a tumour growing in them.
If for whatever reason they’re not doing well, then we need to euthanase that animal and make sure that we find out why they’re suffering so that we can really make the most out of their amazing contribution.
Dr Leilani Walker, Auckland University of Technology
Professor Eloise Jillings, Tāwharau Ora – School of Veterinary Science, Massey University
Dr Kimiora Hēnare, Waipapa Taumata Rau – University of Auckland
Advisors: Professor Georgina Tuari Stewart and Dr Sally Birdsall
Vet checking cow, Tāwharau Ora – School of Veterinary Science, Massey University
All footage of laboratory mice and rats, Understanding Animal Research. CC BY 4.0
Three Rs poster and Tissue Sharing brochure, ANZCCART New Zealand