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Hello, I'm Judy MacArthur Clark
and I'm the Director
of the Animals
in Science Regulation Unit
in the home office in London.
My unit is
responsible for the regulation
of all the use of animals
in research in the UK.
And as such,
we assess people's licenses,
we inspect and we have
the policy responsibility
which relates
to the policy in Europe.
And today I'm going to talk about
legal and ethical aspects
of using animals in research
in the European Union.
Of course, UK is one
of 28 member states
of the European Union.
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So first of all,
I wanted to summarize
the European Union regulations
very briefly.
And the main regulatory piece
is European directive 2010/63
and I've given you the reference
to the final text of that
at the bottom of this slide.
This directive replaced
the older directive from 1986
and its title is "a directive
on the protection of animals
used for scientific purposes."
It was agreed between member
states in November 2010
and as with all
European directives,
it needed to be accepted
by each member state
and introduced
into the national regulations.
So each member state
was required
to complete
that by January 2013.
We didn't actually
all hit that deadline
but all member states now have
implemented this directive.
So at this stage,
this is now applying
in all of the European Union.
There were three key aims
to this new directive
which I've listed out here.
Firstly, an aim to harmonize
the regulations across
the European Union,
including
not just the regulations
as to how animals would be used
but also the standards
of their housing and their care.
Secondly, the directive includes
very clear promotion of the 3Rs,
that is, the replacement,
reduction and refinement
of the use of animals
in research.
And thirdly, the directive
has an overarching aim
of raising standards
in animal welfare.
So it's not just
about harmonizing
but also to aiming
to raise those standards.
And it is now, as I said,
effective in all
28 EU member states.
