The literature available to schools on animal experimentation in the biomedical sciences has increased both in quantity and quality over the last few years. Organizations which support animal experimentation and the animal welfare/anti-vivisectionist societies have put much effort into preparing clear and attractive, well-argued booklets on the cases for and against the use of animals for scientific purposes.

In 1996, a Working Group comprising representatives of the British Veterinary Association (BVA), the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the Local Government Association, was set up to substantially update guidance on the licensing of dog breeding establishments. The Group's report was published recently and provides a comprehensive and valuable set of guidelines.

In humans, psychological manipulations such as hypnosis, behavioural modifications, relaxation training and cognitive behaviour therapy have all been used to reduce pain intensity. One thing these treatments have in common is selective attention. Work on attention-based cognitive coping strategies has shown that they have potentially useful analgesic qualities in pain therapy. In animals, there have been few studies on the effects of attentional shifts on pain perception. There is extensive literature on stress-induced analgesia and it is likely that, in some of the experiments, attention could be an important variable. This paper will present some of our recent work on selective attention and pain perception using the sodium urate model of gouty arthritis. Birds are naturally prone to articular gout and the model we have developed mimics acute gouty attacks in a single joint. Experimental sodium urate arthritis produces a tonically painful inflammation lasting for at least 3h during which time the animals show pain-related behaviours. Changes in motivation can reduce these pain-related behaviours and it has been hypothesized that these motivational changes act by way of altering the attention of the animal away from pain. The motivational changes investigated included nesting, feeding, exploration and social interactions. The degree of pain suppression ranged from marked hypoalgesia to complete analgesia and as such demonstrates a remarkable ability to suppress tonic pain. These shifts in attention not only reduced pain but also significantly reduced peripheral inflammation. These results are discussed in terms of the limited capacity models of attention.

There are conflicting views about the humaneness of the handbow as a recreational hunting method for deer. Some claim that it is the most humane hunting method, whilst others report higher wounding rates and crippling losses than with the rifle. This commentary summarises the factors affecting the likelihood of a quick death, the types of equipment commonly used, the vital target areas, the influence of blood loss on blood pressure and brain function and the prevalence of wounding during routine bowhunting. Some requirements in Bowhunters Association Codes of Conduct are also described. It is concluded that where bowhunting is allowed, Codes of Conduct should emphasise the hunters' responsibility to track and despatch injured animals, and adherence to the Codes should be encouraged, if not enforced.

Tests for assessing the animal-human relationship in tied dairy cows have been used in experimental research, but the reliability and feasibility of the measures in the on-farm context has not been studied yet. Therefore we investigated the between-experimenter repeatability of avoidance reactions in dairy cows housed in tie-stall systems. Nine farms in Austria with 15-60 tethered dairy cows were visited. Two to three out of four experimenters were testing the avoidance reaction of the individual cows in a balanced order. Cows were approached slowly from the front and the reactions recorded on an 11-point score. The avoidance reaction of each cow was assessed twice by each experimenter and averaged. Also, a farm value per experimenter was calculated (median). Repeatability between experimenters was assessed within farms and at farm level by calculating Spearman rank correlation coefficients. The average between-experimenter correlations within farms ranged from 0.37 to 0.88. At farm level, median of scores ranged from 2.5 to 6.75 and correlated moderately to highly between experimenters from 0.65 to 0.80. Testing the animals on all farms was relatively simple.

The between-experimenter repeatability within farms differed substantially and reasons for this merit further investigation. At farm level repeatability was moderate to sufficiently high. Due to the high feasibility, this measure seems to be promising and should be developed further.

The common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), introduced from Australia about 150 years ago, has become a major pest threatening the native biota of New Zealand. It is also an important disease vector, acting as a wildlife reservoir of infection. Conventional methods of control have had little effect on reducing the national population, so there is a quest to find more effective and humane methods. This has led to an upsurge in research aimed at increasing our knowledge of the biology of this marsupial, with an attendant increase in requirements for access to colony-housed animals.

Possums kept for research purposes have often been housed in individual cages, and several colonies have experienced high mortality rates. After capture, possums have shown inappetence, weight loss and a predisposition to infection, suggesting that this species is susceptible to post-capture stress. For our reproductive studies, research animals are only useful if maintained under conditions that ensure behavioural and physiological processes remain normal. We have adopted an ‘animal husbandry’ approach for our possum colony, where social interaction and the ability to exhibit instinctive behaviour patterns are considered as important as adequate nutrition and housing.

In this colony, group-housed possums show no signs of post-capture stress, and mortality rate has been less than one per cent (of > 600 animals housed to date). Virtually all possums gain weight over the first month of captivity. Procedures for monitoring, handling and the collection of data from these animals, are carried out with little apparent stress to either animals or staff.

Outdoor sows with nose rings can perform most of their natural behavioural activities except rooting. The prevention of rooting through surgical intervention (nose ringing) may be detrimental to welfare, although the behavioural and welfare consequences of rooting deprivation are not well documented. The present experiment examines exploratory behaviour in unringed, ringed and deringed gilts by repeatedly exposing the gilts to a sandbox supplied with bark chips. Four months prior to the experiment, 16 gilts, eight with nose rings and eight without, were housed in four fields. Over a period of 12 days, the 16 gilts, in pairs from the same field, were walked to the sandbox; each gilt visited the sandbox six times in total. After deringing of the ringed gilts (and a control procedure for the unringed gilts), all of the gilts were exposed to the sandbox twice. During each visit, the exploratory behavioural patterns of rooting, sniffing, manipulating, and chewing were observed using 30 s scan sampling. The ringed gilts showed no rooting behaviour in the sandbox; on the other hand, their mean frequency of chewing behaviour was significantly higher than that of the unringed gilts (19.89 versus 13.54; P < 0.05). When all of the exploratory behavioural patterns were summed, no significant differences were found between ringed and unringed gilts. On the second day after deringing, the previously ringed gilts started to root, and no significant difference in the incidence of rooting behaviour between unringed gilts and newly deringed gilts was found. We discuss whether rooting behaviour can be substituted by chewing in order to explore an environment. Gilts that are prevented from rooting are found to explore as much as rooting gilts, and they achieved an adequate knowledge of the sandbox (as demonstrated by the fact that they did not show increased exploration after deringing), although rooting was the preferred exploratory behaviour. In this study, we did not find serious symptoms of chronically reduced welfare as a result of nose ringing.