Are There Only 2Rs in Agricultural Animal Research and Production?

Care of agricultural animals is a topic increasingly addressed through a lens and language identified as animal welfare. Welfare inherently is about how animals should be treated. Thus, animal care oversight is unavoidably normative; meaning the topic is undeniably one of ethics. Oversight of USA animal care arose first in publically funded laboratory animal use with the adoption of principles, codes and standards of practices. More recently, oversight has expanded to include agricultural animal research. While the goal of ensuring appropriate animal treatment is common to both lab and agricultural research, there are differences. Consequentially, principles initially implemented for lab animals with specific purpose and positive outcome can be shown to have a counter intuitive outcome when broadly applied. As an example, the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) were initially specific to lab animal research but are mandated for all animal research today. Lab animals serve only one purpose. They are solely research subjects. Agricultural research animals have utility beyond serving as data points. Specifically, when not contrary to health food standards, they are marketed as food. Thus, an IACUC that attempts to Reduce the herd size may be acting in a manner contrary to both better research numbers and also the maintenance of brood cow numbers necessary for a viable operation. Attempts to expand the application of the 3Rs beyond public institutions and to private animal agriculture raise even more questions. Production of beef or pork and not poultry would considerably Reduce the number of animals used in food production. But a question that remains unanswerable is how to compare the value of an animal life of one species to another. Thus, a measure of total harm using animal numbers alone becomes problematic for both science and ethics. Futurists suggest it may become possible to Replace the food animal altogether. But is a steak without the steer a higher moral position? Is the Replacement of animal discomfort and death through their non-existence more ethically defensible? Yes, Refinement in care animals regardless of purpose should be employed to attain appropriate animal quality of life. Additionally, Reduction of animal numbers would be consistent with better welfare, e.g., sexing offspring in dairy breeding. In summary, the 3Rs proposed by Russell and Burch in 1959 have continued application to lab animal oversight, but a simplistic application of these principles to animal agriculture can be shown to not always be the most defensible position.