Who monitors animal use in education in Queensland?

Animals used in your education must be used according to legislation and after approval has been given to use them.

1. In Queensland education, live animals may only be used for educational purposes if there are no other alternatives that meet the educational objectives.
2. All live animal use MUST have approval from Education Queensland' Schools Ethics Committee. The teacher organising the activity is responsible for lodging an application form to use animals with this committee. Information about the Queensland Schools Ethics Committee can be found at this address: http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/area/science/qsaec.html.
3. The use of live animals is regulated in Queensland under two pieces of legislation. These are:
   (a) The Australian code of practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes (7th edition, 2004) including teaching published by the National Health & Medical Research Council and available on the NHMRC website.
   (b) The Animal Care and Protection Act 2001, which is the Queensland Act for the protection of animals.
4. If you have any concerns about animal use in your education, you should discuss this (1) with the Principal or Director of your institution to ensure that approval has been given to the school, college or university for the activity to take place
   (2) with the Education officer at Animal Liberation Qld if you want to try to do something about it. The Officer can help you contact the relevant people about how to deal with your concerns.
   

The cultural, economic and scientific norms of our society today involve exploitation, violence, unbridled consumerism and global environmental destruction. We live in a society that exhibits a high tolerance level for violence and cruelty and where little protection is offered to human victims. But these are often not the first victims of violent or cruel behaviour. Very often it is animals - animals in homes, on the streets, in shelters, in classrooms and in laboratories - who are the first victims of neglect or abuse.

Research shows that animals are all too frequently scapegoats or 'practice runs' for the perpetrators of domestic and public violence. In the USA and the UK, students who were involved in the slaughtering of their classmates and teachers were well known by friends as torturers of dogs, cats and farm animals. In schools, colleges and universities students can become desensitised to the exploitation and suffering of animals by being required to perform dissection (cutting up a dead animal) or vivisection (performing invasive procedures on a live, healthy but anaesthetised animal that is then often killed). Students doing higher degrees are often involved in animal experiments which require animals to be burned, blinded, deprived of food and water, subjected to severe stress and other questionable practices. Yet there are other ways to successfully achieve desired learning outcomes[2].

There is legislation that attempts to offer some protection to animals used in research and teaching. The Australian Code of Practice for the care and use of animals for scientific purposes (2004)[3] has, however, slightly different legal standing in each Australian State. In Queensland, this Code is regulated under the Animal Care and Protection Act 2001 and is therefore enforceable in law. In Australia, courses in the life sciences - medicine, biology, veterinary science, zoology - still rely on the use of animals for teaching purposes. Often, harmful animal use is undertaken simply to demonstrate KNOWN information that could well be demonstrated by using alternative means. Any use of animals is monitored by Animal Welfare Ethics committees whose task it is to ensure that researchers and tertiary teaching staff reduce the numbers of animals used, refine clinical techniques to ensure suffering is minimised and to REPLACE the use of animals with alternative learning methods.

It is this latter requirement of the legislation that continues to be of concern. Although there has been an exponential growth in the development of very sophisticated, viable alternatives to animal use in the last ten to fifteen years, Australian researchers and educators have yet to adopt these as quickly or as readily as they have been in Europe, the UK and the USA. All six UK vet schools have for many years used alternatives and no undergraduate teaching involves the use of animals procured solely for the purpose of teaching - practical and clinical expertise is developed through an internship system. Thirty one vet colleges in the USA offer alternatives to conscientious objectors and over half the 136 medical schools have entirely eliminated animal use - of the remaining schools, only one does not offer alternative learning pathways [2].

If education is all about processes that are designed to change people's behaviour for the betterment of the individual and/or the group, then it is imperative that Australian schools and tertiary institutions continue to move in the direction that legislation demands. Furthermore, there is growing public debate and concern over the issue of animals being regarded as and used as tools in the service of human wants and desires5. Thus, there is also an ethical imperative that requires society to rethink it's approach to the use of animals as educational tools6. Not only students and educators, but animal procurers, laboratory assistants, animal house attendants and others involved in the network of animal use in education must be encouraged to respond to this ethical imperative in the most positive ways possible. It is to be hoped that the Australian education system will soon be 'animal-free' and 'alternative-rich'.