Animal welfare

Severity, suffering and supervision protocol

It is essential to assess the severity or potential suffering of the animals before starting a procedure, in order to contrast the potential benefits provided by the procedure and the "damage" caused by the procedure itself, understanding this to be the intensity and duration of the suffering experienced by the animals used.

Based on this assessment, we can establish the appropriate supervision protocol to detect suffering during the performance of the procedure and thus determine quantifiable parameters that allow us to apply the appropriate corrective measures to reduce suffering as much as possible.¿

Severity classification

• Non recovery 

• Mild  

• Moderate  

• Severe 

Evaluation of suffering

In all experimental procedures, and especially in those of moderate or high severity, it is necessary to include a protocol for the supervision of animals that allows corrective measures to be applied to suffering, such as the use of analgesics or slaughter for humanitarian reasons.

One of the most useful protocols is the one by Morton and Griffiths (Morton D B & Griffiths P H M 1985 Guidelines on the recognition of pain, distress and disconfort in experimental animals and an hypothesis for assessment Veterinary Record 116: 431-436).

Supervision protocol

Each monitoring protocol should be established considering the type of procedure and the species to which it will be applied.