While government agencies, animal-rights advocates and researchers wrestle in United States courts and Congress, a winner has emerged -- the animals themselves -- according to one American scholar of research-animal issues.

Increasing federal oversight of research-animal use clearly has made life better for the research subjects, Franklin M. Loew, D.V.M., Ph.D., dean of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca, N.Y., told the European Congress on the Ethics of Animal Experimentation today (Dec. 17) in Brussels. Some European nations are beginning to implement local "ethical committees" to oversee animal-based research, a protocol that has been in place in the United States for some time, the Cornell dean observed.

Loew spoke in a plenary session on "Regulation of Animal Experimentation" on the topic: "A Tale of Two Continents: Differing Approaches to Research Animal Regulation in Europe and North America." He was the only American representative to the two-day congress, where other topics included animal biotechnology, use of primates in research, public perceptions of animal-based research and alternatives to the use of animals. The meeting in Brussels' Palais des CongrŽs was organized by the European Biomedical Research Association and the Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Associations.

Despite the increasingly stringent regulation of animal-based research by multiple federal and state agencies, the subject remains controversial in this country, Loew said, noting that animal welfare is one of the top three mail-generating issues in the U.S. Congress.

"Supporters of animal research complain that a number of animal-related bills introduced by animal groups appear to protect animals when their real purpose is to curb and eventually eliminate any use of animals in research -- sort of a Trojan Mouse," Loew said. He recounted the evolution of regulations aimed at researchers and their institutions since the 1985 amendments to the federal Animal Welfare Act and the oversight by federal agencies such as the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Public Health Service's National Institutes of Health.

Mandatory standards set forth by the Animal Welfare Act for the care and treatment of laboratory animals address housing, feeding, cleanliness, ventilation and veterinary care, the dean noted, and many American institutions voluntarily comply with even stricter standards of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALACI).

Loew, who began comparing national approaches to animal-use regulation as early as 1981, said that much inter-agency discussion in the United States has focused on the well-being of primates and dogs. While agencies debated "engineering standards" versus "performance-based" standards -- and court decisions were handed down, reversed and handed down again -- the scientists were not idle, he said. "These performance-based standards stimulated considerable research into environmental enrichment for primates and dogs that have improved housing conditions for these animals," Loew said.

The United States is still the only nation with laws requiring the intervention of local

animal-care committees, beginning with individual researchers' proposals to conduct animal-based studies. In most other countries, the researchers deal directly with the government agencies. The American local committees, which can stop a research project at the proposal stage and which maintain oversight throughout the project's life, must include at least one representative who is not affiliated with the institution where the research is conducted.

However, European animal-welfare protocols are coming to resemble those of North America, Loew observed, with the establishment of local "ethical committees" to evaluate experiments in advance. He credited Canada with popularizing reliance on local animal-care committees, although that country still has no national law to that effect.