• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Is the new EU directive a step in the right direction?

perke

O. vulgaris
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Joined
Dec 14, 2002
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As some of you are aware there is a new directive that is being implemented into the eu states in regards to cephalopods. This means every eu country will have to place into legislation and then regulate the care and experimentation of cephalopods where there is risk/stress or harm to the animal when undergoing a procedure. This means different things in different countries for example in the UK it will fall into very similar procedures that are in place for O.vulgaris (the only protected invert in regards to research in the UK) but in other countries they may need to implement a whole framework to deal with this new regulation.

What I was wondering is how the rest of the world views this, as somebody researching in europe I do not have any choice but to follow the legislation now(well in 2013), but is this a step in the right direction? Do people think that as a community cephalopod researchers could regulate themselves better and that actually inhumane experiments are relatively unpublishable anyway? or that we do need to make sure that cephs are being treated and used in a manner so that we use less for more meaningful data? What are people's view on this do they think it is a good or a bad idea? and what makes it so?
 
I am against laws that limit researchers to different standards than the fish mongers. That being said, self-regulation or rules for grant money should be part of a research effort and I don't think it should be different for fish than it is for cephalopods but where do you draw the line (does an ameoba feel pain, bactera?). There does seem to be an issue with a lack of standards and Robyn makes a good case for using legislation to promote a commonality and publishing standard to achieve comparable results but does this belong to a legislative body that has no understanding of the animal involved? How many is too many and how many are not enough? The only people who can come close to answering this is the researcher and in the case of understudied animals who knows? Certainly not a general overseeing govenmental branch.
 

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