ABSTRACT
The trend to provide larger, social, more complex and enriching, naturalistic housing for research animals is driven by growing expectations or requirements from the public, changes in the scientific knowledge regarding animal welfare needs, animal care and research staff, funding and accreditation agencies, and national or regional animal welfare regulatory entities. Animal welfare, the state of an animal's quality of life, is measured on a continuum of poor to good. The concept of Five Freedoms has been considered and widely discussed and applied to the care of farmed livestock to assess animal welfare. The practical husbandry aspects of laboratory animal housing must also be considered. The increased complexity and size of animal housing choices may pose challenges to effective sanitization and have a major impact on the capacity of the facility. The animal housing and management styles should not interfere with or compromise the scientific goals of the research.
