3R - Kompetenzkolloquium NRW | Animal experiments with cephalopods: The epistemic limits of legislation and administrative procedures put to the test

“No one may inflict pain, suffering or harm on an animal without reasonable cause.”

(Section 1 sentence 2 of the Animal Welfare Act
[Germany])

This basic rule of animal welfare law is demanding because it requires reliable knowledge of the sentience of an animal species. Even under the conditions of animal experimental research, this is not always guaranteed, as the normative borderline case of animal experiments with cephalopods (cuttlefish, squid, octopuses) shows.

Klaus Gärditz has published a case study that examines how to deal with the challenges posed by cephalopods in animal experiments. The case of cephalopods illustrates the functions of model organisms in the life sciences and illustrates how difficult it is for legal regulation to intervene in complex fields of research. European Union law has included cephalopods in the European animal welfare legislation of Directive 2010/63/EU. This political decision is normatively based on the precautionary principle of animal ethics, but less on proven neuroscientific findings. Unresolved consequential problems have thus been shifted to the application of animal welfare law, which is intended to prevent suffering, but about which only highly uncertain knowledge is available.