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Standardized Welfare Terms for the Zebrafish Community.


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Authors

Goodwin, Nicola 
Karp, Natasha A 
Blackledge, Samuel 
Clark, Bradley 
Keeble, Rosemary 

Abstract

Managing the welfare of laboratory animals is critical to animal health, vital in the understanding of phenotypes created by treatment or genetic alteration and ensures compliance of regulations. Part of an animal welfare assessment is the requirement to record observations, ensuring all those responsible for the animals are aware of their health status and can act accordingly. Although the use of zebrafish in research continues to increase, guidelines for conducting welfare assessments and the reporting of observations are considered unclear compared to mammalian species. To support the movement of zebrafish between facilities, significant improvement would be achieved through the use of standardized terms to ensure clarity and consistency between facilities. Improving the clarity of terminology around welfare not only addresses our ethical obligation but also supports the research goals and provides a searchable description of the phenotypes. A Collaboration between the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cambridge University (Department of Medicine-Laboratory of Molecular Biology) has led to the creation of the zebrafish welfare terms from which standardization of terminology can be achieved.

Description

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Mary Ann Liebert via https://doi.org/10.1089/zeb.2016.1248

Keywords

Animal Welfare, Animals, Terminology as Topic, Zebrafish

Journal Title

Zebrafish

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1545-8547
1557-8542

Volume Title

13

Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert Inc
Sponsorship
This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant no. 098051), the National Institutes of Health Office of Research Infrastructure Programs award (P40OD011021), the National Institutes of Health (grant no. A154503), National Institutes for Health Research to the Biomedical Research Centre (grant no. RG64229), and a Wellcome Trust Personal Research Fellowship (103950/Z/14/Z).