The absurdities of animal ethics applications

I am a strong supporter of animal rights. I would like to see more animal rights enshrined in the law. Although I am vegetarian and do not eat animals, I do perform animal research - because there is real medical value that can only be gained through animal experiments. To rectify the discontinuity between these positions, I support the animal ethics procedures, where every experiment to be performed on an animal needs to be carefully examined by an animal welfare committee prior to approval, and only important experiments with the minimal pain necessary can be performed. This principle should be strengthened and even extended to other instutitions that work with animals, such as farms, pet stores and zoos.

That said, I do not support the massive amounts of paperwork that are required to run an animal research laboratory. This is the paperwork that I needed to submit just to determine which forms need to be filled out in order for me to breed mice:

That right - that pile of paper is the pre-application just to breed mice, not to do any actual experiments. Any person can buy mice at a pet store - put a male and a female in a cage and they breed, yet no forms are needed. Did you know that mice even breed in the wild - and without filling out forms first!

Animal ethics application forms should be about ensuring animals are not mistreated, they should not be a covert attempt to shut down all animal research by making it impractical for scientists to run their experiments. By making animal ethics applications so absurdly bureaucratic, they actually decrease the scrutiny and fail to do what they are meant to achieve - decrease the suffering of animals. A simple stream-lined procedure would actually increase animal welfare while still allowing key medical research to be performed.