On the importance of working party reports

摘要

Working party reports are essential for updating current practices in animal welfare, research and experimentation. A recent Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations (FELASA) report published in Laboratory Animals, by Dahlborn andcolleagues,1 summarized reliable identification and tagging methods. In many domains of animal research it is essential to identify individual animals and keep track of their development. However, the new EU directive (2010/63/EU) does not apply to animal identification practices and, hence, it is left to the national authorities to decide what methods are acceptable. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard. Not every method is equally accepted across Europe, which must have led to some interesting discussions among the party members during the establishment of this report. But how important are such reports? For one, it is essential to have consensus on the importance of the different methods. This provides a guide to the best choice, dependent on experimental conditions and whether identification can be combined with a need for tissue sampling. Such reports certainly help to improve experimentation and planning of experiments and to avoid mistakes and unnecessary repetitions of experiments when individual animals cannot be correctly identified.