Fudan University worried about lab animals' 'dread and upset'

OK, you all know Shanghaiist is an animal lover, or at least you should, since we have written about it a lot. We're still pissed about the Fudan University cat torturer Zhang Liangliang and the fact that he got off so easily. But there isn’t much we can do since there is no animal protection law in China.

Fudan's lax attitude about the ordeal also put us in fury. Obviously, Zhang didn’t receive any punishment, not even a warning in his profile, but was being given “psychological treatment”. Anyhow, thisreport in Shanghai Daily, originally reported by the Oriental Morning Post, changed our impression ... ever so slightly. The report says that Fudan University has set up an ethics committee to protect laboratory animals' welfare and rights. The committee was set up after some international publications turned down papers written by teachers and students from pharmaceutical college in the university, because they lack the ethical checks on laboratory animals:

So from now on, researchers should treat laboratory animals as follows:

* The living space for laboratory animals should meet the standard.

* Animals can't be starved, dehydrated or fall sick;

* Use other methods instead of testing on animals if possible;

* Train dogs, cats and monkeys before experiments to reduce their dread and upset;

* Kill the animals mercifully after the experiments if they can't be recovered;

* Treat the animals kindly and mercifully and be grateful to the animals.

While the thought of animal testing gives us the shivers, we suppose it's good they finally have some standards in place, vague as they may be. But it makes us wonder just what they were doing to these animals before they drew up this list.