Volume 1

The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. European Union Committee
Date:
2009
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The revision of the EU Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes / House of Lords. European Union Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/260 (page 3)
    establishments, and have one of those inspections unannounced. That, it was felt, would give enough security and assurance. Qll Viscount Brookeborough: What are the issues and problems with today’s registration? Ms Louhimies: Problems and issues. Please correct me if I have misunderstood the question. We felt that we needed to have a deadline there, and that is linked to the competitiveness of the EU research and EU industry vis-a-vis the outside world. When we look at other regions, regions where there is no authorisation or in regions where there are authorisations in place, we would want to make sure that our industry or research community is not disadvantaged by extremely long implementation of authorisation deadlines. However, the issue is with the Member State authorities because they are the ones who have to deliver, and obviously we may receive some resistance from some of the Member States who are to implement this. Viscount Brookeborough: | am sorry; | used the wrong word; I meant “authorisation” not “registration”. Thank you. Q12 Earl of Caithness: Could you tell us something about the consultation process you entered into before you published your proposals? Ms Louhimies: The consultation process has been very lengthy and very thorough. We started in 2002 already with this Technical Expert Working Group, and, as I have just mentioned, it consisted of representatives of Member States and all the key stakeholders. They worked for about six months to cover all the main elements we felt should be covered during this revision process. The results of that consultation process were then fed into the preliminary drafting, and the preliminary drafting was put under an impact assessment which was carried out by an expert outside contractor. That impact assessment study included yet another round of consultations—it included questionnaires to the national authorities; it included questionnaires to the stakeholders—and once the preliminary analyses were drafted or rather identified they were then put out in the open in a public internet consultation. Alongside with that, we had a public consultation with the general public on general issues, and then we had the expert consultation specifically on these elements. We had a huge number of responses. We had over 12,000 expert comments. What is important to underline here is that the expert comments were coming from the users, so it is really the users who use animals on a day-to-day basis; over 50 per cent were from animal users. From the 51 per cent, the majority was from the public institutes and the rest from the industry. Then there were breeders involved, other stakeholders and NGOs, etc. All those consultation results were then fed into the final drafting and, also, to redirect our impact assessment. Q13 Earl of Caithness: Did you consult outside the EU? When you have got your consultations, how do you balance something in which there is huge public interest against the scientific community’s interest? Ms Louhimies: 1 will cover first the issue of consultation outside of the EU. We had consulted other regions like the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Japan is very limited in terms of the legislation they have in place currently)—so to obtain all the information that was available. Also, the impact assessment did a search on the situation with the different Member States, and that is made available in the annex of the study. So we have looked at the situation vis-a-vis the EU and the outside world. The second question was about how do we reconcile the animal welfare and the public wishes, and then the science. The public consultation we organised for the general public was, in fact, the third largest public consultation the Commission has ever carried out, which indeed indicates there is a huge public interest in this matter. NGOs represent the public and they have been active from the very start in this process, but equally we have the European Parliament representing the public and they have a number of concerns they have produced an own initiative report back in 2002 by MEP Jill Evans as the rapporteur. So, based on all this information we have gathered, the Commission started off with a very ambitious proposal and was looking at, also, answering the concerns of the public. Then that was put through this impact assessment, as I mentioned earlier, and this impact assessment then looked at the feasibility of these proposed provisions as well as the cost implications, as well as the benefits to the animal welfare where there are really some benefits to be harvested and, also, benefits to science because in some areas we are hoping to receive benefits for science. So that was the process that was balancing up these two parts. Then, asa result of this consultation, we have either abandoned some of the proposals we originally had or we have fine-tuned them or we have changed them, so it was taking this feedback from the consultation into account. Q14 Earl of Caithness: Could you just send us a list of the people you have consulted in the UK, if that is at all possible? Ms Louhimies: | will do my best. The issues for the public consultation and the expert consultation— some organisations, some respondents, preferred to remain anonymous. So we have a number of groups or respondents who have not given their names. | will try to collect a list as comprehensive as possible.