Animal Welfare Act
(AniWA)

In this Act:

a.

dig­nity means the in­her­ent worth of the an­im­al that must be re­spec­ted when deal­ing with it. If any strain im­posed on the an­im­al can­not be jus­ti­fied by over­rid­ing in­terests, this con­sti­tutes a dis­reg­ard for the an­im­al’s dig­nity. Strain is deemed to be present in par­tic­u­lar if pain, suf­fer­ing or harm is in­flic­ted on the an­im­al, if it is ex­posed to anxi­ety or hu­mi­li­ation, if there is ma­jor in­ter­fer­ence with its ap­pear­ance or its abil­it­ies or if it is ex­cess­ively in­stru­ment­al­ised;

b.

well-be­ing: the well-be­ing of an­im­als ex­ists if:

1.

hus­bandry and feed­ing are such that their bod­ily func­tions and their be­ha­viour are not dis­turbed and ex­cess­ive de­mands are not made on their ca­pa­city to ad­apt,

2.

spe­cies-spe­cif­ic be­ha­viour with­in the lim­its of their bio­lo­gic­al ca­pa­city to ad­apt is guar­an­teed,

3.

they are clin­ic­ally healthy,

4.

pain, suf­fer­ing, harm and anxi­ety are avoided;

c.

an­im­al ex­per­i­ment means any pro­ced­ure in which a live an­im­al is used with the aim of:

1.

test­ing a sci­entif­ic hy­po­thes­is,

2.

ob­serving the ef­fect of a par­tic­u­lar pro­ced­ure in the an­im­al,

3.

test­ing a sub­stance,

4.

ob­tain­ing or test­ing cells, or­gans or bod­ily flu­ids, ex­cept when this is in the con­text of ag­ri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, dia­gnost­ic or cur­at­ive activ­it­ies in­volving the an­im­al or to de­term­ine the health status of an­im­al pop­u­la­tions,

5.

ob­tain­ing or rep­lic­at­ing or­gan­isms ali­en to the spe­cies in ques­tion,

6.

teach­ing or train­ing.