Do you think of customer service when you think of IACUC Administration? No? Well, maybe you should! I recently attended a fabulous session at PRIM&R’s 2018 IACUC Conference entitled “Incorporating Quality Customer Service into IACUC Administration”. We don’t often think of customer service as applying to regulatory compliance. But if instead of viewing regulatory compliance as enforcement, we view it as a service, we may begin to see compliance increase. Read more
The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the Animal Welfare Act Regulations describe rules and best practices for animal care and use professionals to follow in order to ensure high welfare standards are upheld for animals used in research. When an IACUC finds something that diverges from these regulations and standards, it can be a challenge to know whether and where to report the issue. To complicate matters, OLAW and USDA APHIS use differing terminology to describe these occurrences, and have different requirements for reporting. A solid, systematic framework for understanding, sorting, and managing “exceptions” and “departures” can help IACUC administrators more effectively sort through complex issues of compliance. Read more
The use of aquatic species is increasing in a range of scientific fields, including biomedical research, evolutionary biology, and environmental research. In December, PRIM&R hosted the webinar Research with Aquatic Species: New Strategies for Health and Welfare to address common concerns and emerging issues for researchers and animal care and use personnel involved in research with fish. Presenter Victoria Braithwaite, DPhil, professor of fisheries and biology and the co-director of the Center for Brain, Behavior and Cognition at Penn State University, addressed considerations related to social housing and environmental enrichment as well as the minimization of pain and distress through innovative methods of administering analgesia, anesthesia, and euthanasia. Read more
This week’s Research Ethics Roundup looks at how researchers can learn about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from living mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, why scientists are increasingly providing research primates with cage-mates, how research misconduct is handled in Canada, and the argument for more Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of stem-cell clinics. Read more
In September, PRIM&R hosted the webinar Mouse Anesthesia for IACUCs and Researchers, presented by Dr. Jim Marx, DVM, PhD, DACLAM, a veterinarian and researchers whose own research focuses on improving the care of mice in biomedical research. This basic-level webinar, ideal for researchers and IACUC staff, explains the fundamentals of administering and monitoring anesthesia in mice, including how to determine the proper anesthetic depth for a given protocol, how to make basic recommendations about anesthetic protocols to achieve the different planes of anesthesia, and how to understand the basics of anesthetic monitoring as an indicator of correct administration of anesthesia.
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