Abstract
The biomedical industry relies on the skills of animal technologists (ATs) to put laboratory animal welfare into practice. This is the first study to explore how this is achieved in relation to their participation in implementing refinement and reduction, two of the three key guiding ethical principles––the “3Rs”––of what is deemed to be humane animal experimentation. The interpretative approach contributes to emerging work within the social sciences and humanities exploring care and ethics in practice. Based on qualitative analysis of participant observation within animal research facilities in UK universities, in-depth interviews with ATs, facility managers, and other stakeholders, and analysis of regulatory guidelines, we draw a contrast between the minimum required of ATs by law and how their care work not only meets but often exceeds these requirements. We outline how ATs constitute a key source of innovation and insight into the refinement of animal care and the reduction of animal use, hitherto not formally acknowledged. Exploring AT care work as an example of ethics in practice makes an original contribution to broader debates within health care and animal welfare about how technology, regulation, and behavior can foster and sustain a “culture of care”.
Highlights
Ethical review procedures for animal experimentation rarely hear the voice of the animal technologists (ATs)1, who carry out the day-to-day care for research animals
We describe in detail the work of ATs and its relation to the guiding ethical principles for humane animal research known as the 3Rs: reduction in the number of animals used, refinement of housing conditions and experimental procedures to improve animal welfare, and seeking out replacements for animals in scientific research
This article builds on recent work in Science and Technology Studies that demonstrates how care is relational, performative, and multiple (Mol 2008; Mol, Moser, and Pols 2010; Puig de la Bellacasa 2012) and argues that ethics in animal research needs to be understood through normative, utilitarian values and through the moral activity of caring-for experimental subjects and how this is shaped with and through the laboratory and animal houses’ regulatory, technical, and affective environments
Summary
Ethical review procedures for animal experimentation rarely hear the voice of the (junior) animal technologists (ATs), who carry out the day-to-day care for research animals. Existing interview-based studies report AT work as challenging (Birke, Aluke, and Michael 2007) Their workplace is heavily regulated and controversial within society at large, which impacts on their day-to-day practices and emotional well-being (see Davies and Lewis 2010). They are not scientists or budget holders yet they carry “the technician’s burden” (Birke, Aluke, and Michael 2007, 99) acting as “buffers between the scientists and the animals” (Ibid., 103). ATs often position themselves as advocates for the animals in their care and correspondingly see a concern for animal welfare as central to what they do
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