The identification of effective welfare indicators for laboratory-housed macaques using a Delphi consultation process

Abstract

Despite the importance for both animal welfare and scientific integrity of effective welfare assessment in non-human primates, there has been little or no consensus as what should be assessed. A Delphi consultation process was undertaken to identify the animal- and environment-based measures of welfare for laboratory-housed macaques and to determine their relative importance in on-site welfare assessments. One-hundred fifteen potential indictors were identified through a comprehensive literature search, followed by a two-round iterative electronic survey process to collect expert opinion. Stable group response and consensus about the validity, reliability, and feasibility of the proposed indicators (67.5% agreement) was achieved by the completion of Round Two. A substantially higher proportion of environment-based measures (72%: n = 44/61) were considered as valid, reliable, and feasible compared to the animal-based measures (22%: n = 12/54). The indicators that ranked most highly for assessing welfare were the presence of self-harm behaviours and the provision of social enrichment. This study provides an empirical basis upon which these indicators can be validated and then integrated into assessment tools developed for macaques and emphasises the need to include both animal- and environment-based indicators for accurate welfare monitoring.

Harmonisation of welfare indicators for macaques and marmosets used or bred for research

“…First, participants were presented with the scenario in Table 1a . They were then presented with the top ten welfare indices identified as valid, reliable, and practicable (≥70% consensus) for assessing macaque welfare in the Delphi consultation of Truelove et al ., 2020 ( Table 1b ) and asked:…”

“…can be measured with limited time, resources, and within facility constraints). Truelove et al . (2020) conducted a Delphi consultation to identify laboratory macaque welfare measures and their relative importance.…”

“…The ten indicators with the highest composite respondent percentage agreement score following two rounds of ratings included only one animal-based indicator (self-harm behaviour). These 56 indicators were presented as part of the current study, in part to gauge validity of the measures found in Truelove et al . (2020) , as well as to uncover any indices that a different group of experts might accept or reject as useful in assessing macaque welfare.…”

The Promise of Behavioral Tracking Systems for Advancing Primate Animal Welfare

“…Behavioral imaging has a clear role in identifying pain and distress in animals, but it also has the potential to help actively improve welfare by creating more enriching environments. Historically, attempts to improve the welfare of zoo or laboratory-housed animals have focused on environmental "inputs" (e.g., cage/enclosure size, the addition of enrichment, allowing for social interactions), with less focus on evaluating the animals' "output" (i.e., their physiological, health, or behavioral response to these environmental inputs) [60][61][62]. A focus on environment over physiology, health, or behavior may partially be caused by the challenges of measuring these responses (as outlined above).…”

Social housing status impacts rhesus monkeys’ affective responding in classic threat processing tasks

“…What studies exist are limited to assessing the impacts of social context on monkeys’ behavior at home (in their home cages) 18 , 37 – 44 and physiological measures (e.g., cortisol levels, creatinine levels, absolute numbers of total T cells) 45 – 49 . While home cage behavior and physiology are critical measures for the successful maintenance of appropriate animal welfare in captive monkeys 50 – 52 , in order to best assess the potential impact of social context on past and future behavioral neuroscience experiments carried out on laboratory monkeys, it is essential that we directly assess the impact of this variable on the same outcome measures that these studies report, using task-based studies.…”