Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 experiments licensed under the 1986 Act. The 1986 Act defined "regulated procedures" as animal experiments that could potentially cause "pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm", to "protected animals", which encompassed all living vertebrates other than humans, under the responsibility of humans. A 1993 amendment added a single invertebrate species, the common octopus ("Octopus vulgaris"), as a protected animal. The Act applied only to protected animals from halfway through their gestation or incubation periods (for mammals, birds and reptiles) or from when they became capable of independent feeding (for fish, amphibians and, the common octopuses). Primates, cats, dogs and horses had
Pain in animals policy all allow for the conduct of what are often called “Category E” studies – experiments in which animals are expected to undergo significant pain or distress that will be left untreated because treatments for pain would be expected to interfere with the experiment.” Eleven countries have national classification systems of pain and suffering experienced by animals used in research: Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The US also has a mandated national scientific animal-use classification system, but it is markedly different from other countries in that it