Contemporary Issues in Laboratory Animal Welfare

At the beginning of the third millennium, many contemporary issues are influencing the scientific community to promote and adopt laboratory animal welfare initiatives more vigorously. These issues include increased emphasis on a balanced and ongoing ethical review of animal research, globalization of research and ease of sharing information via the World Wide Web, enhanced corporate and academic social responsibility and transparency, a greater focus on finding the most translational and predictive research models, significant advances in research technologies, an unsteady global economic climate, and the growing consciousness from the scientific community that good animal welfare is essential to good science. This chapter provides a brief overview of these contemporary issues and proposes a variety of strategies for institutions to develop a robust animal welfare culture with a strong foundation to endure despite budgetary constraints, as well as ways to promote best practices both within and beyond their institutional programs.