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Laboratory life: Germany proposes to give animals constitutional rights as individuals. Credit: CORBIS/RICHARD T. NOWITZ

Proposals to modify Germany'sconstitution to include a provision protecting the rights of animals have come under fire from the country'smain research agencies, as well as pharmaceutical and chemical companies.

The change is being proposed by the governing coalition of Social Democrat and Green parties. The addition would state that animals have the right to be “respected as fellow creatures” who have an individual right to be protected from “avoidable pain”.

Similar changes have also been proposed by two opposition parties: the Free Democrat Party and the reformed East German Communist Party.

Vocal resistance to the change has come from the research community, with opposition expressed by Germany'slargest research council, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Max Planck Society, the Conference of University Rectors, and the Conference of Mathematical and Scientific Faculties. They argue that it would damage biomedical research — a position supported by the Association of the Chemical Industry, and the pharmaceutical company BASF.

In a statement, the DFG questioned the need to change the constitution, saying that Germany'sanimal rights legislation is among the strictest in Europe. They also claimed that such a provision would conflict with the constitutional protection of research freedom.

“If animal rights become a constitutional issue then the scope for legal challenges to experiments could be immense,” says Hubert Markl, president of the Max Planck Society. This could result in approval procedures being delayed for “months or even years”, he claims. “Scientists in highly competitive fields would either change the direction of their research or move elsewhere.”

The Conference of University Rectors warned that constitutional protection of animal rights risks legitimizing and encouraging the activities of militant groups opposed to animal research (see Nature 396, 505; 1998 ). And one observer argues that in practice such a measure would do little to alleviate animal suffering through intensive farming and long-distance livestock transport.

At a first reading in the Bundestag, Germany'sfederal parliament, last month, the moves were challenged by speakers from the main opposition party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), who backed scientists' arguments that such a change could damage the country'sbiomedical research base.

Without support from the Christian Democrats, this constitutional change is unlikely to obtain the two-thirds majority vote required at the final second hearing.

A question mark also hangs over the support for the proposal within the Social Democrat party itself. The chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has expressed commitment to such a change, but observers point out that this was before the party came to power, and that a unanimous ‘yes’ vote from Social Democrats is unlikely.

In a bid to attract support within the party and from the Christian Democrats, the government is considering a watered-down proposal which would affirm the need to protect animals, but would stop short of giving rights to individual animals.