Training and instruction of personnel are important components of animal care and use programs because they help to ensure the health and welfare of the animals and the integrity of the research or testing results. Training also helps to promote the consideration of alternatives, recognition of animal pain and distress, appropriate use of pain-relieving agents, aseptic technique, pre- and post-procedural care, and personnel health and safety. While individuals who provide the care for or conduct research or testing in laboratory animals should take personal responsibility for ensuring that they have the skills to perform their duties, the institution is ultimately responsible for ensuring their competency. The institution is also responsible for providing the training or instruction that is required by federal legislation, regulations, and policies. The institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) is responsible for ensuring, as part of their review of research activities, that the personnel are capable of performing the procedures described. The IACUC must also assess the institution's training program as part of their semiannual animal care and use program review and make recommendations regarding training to the institutional official. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the US regulatory mandates for training and personnel qualification.
Public trust demands that individuals who do research, testing, or teaching with animals use humane, ethical, and scientifically sound methods. Furthermore, the Animal Welfare Act and the Public Health Service Policy require research institutions to provide basic training and to ensure that anyone who cares for and/or works with laboratory animals has the appropriate training or experience relevant to their job responsibilities. Institutions accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International must also provide training programs and ensure the qualifications of personnel. The primary goal of this training is to provide individuals with basic knowledge and to reinforce attitudes and behaviors that help to ensure humane animal care and use. This article provides an overview of the core training module outline and content from the 1991 report of the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, Education and Training in the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals: A Guide for Developing Institutional Programs, as well as pertinent updates for introducing personnel to information regarding the care and use of laboratory animals. Both mandatory and suggested training topics are reviewed, including relevant regulations and standards, ethical considerations, humane methods of animal experimentation and maintenance, and other pertinent topics. Although the fundamental training course content and delivery will vary depending on the nature and complexity of an institution's animal care and use program, this basic training provides the foundation for more in-depth training programs and supports humane and ethical animal care and use.
The strategies used to control or eliminate opportunistic microorganisms from an animal colony depend on these organisms' risk to institutional research programs. The research benefits of controlling or eliminating the microorganisms must be balanced against the control measures' cost, complexity, and probability of success. A nonessential control strategy may be so complicated, expensive, and time consuming that it is circumvented (intentionally or unintentionally) by those expected to use it. In this paper, we outline an approach for analyzing the risk associated with each organism and for developing a control strategy that includes consideration of the research requirements, numbers of animals at risk, and available facility resources.
RISK ASSESSMENTFor this discussion, risk assessment is the process of analyzing the nature and relative importance of a microorganism to a research program. Certainly, all risks are relative. For example, a virus such as sialiodacryoadenitis virus (SDAV 1 ) produces clinical signs in naive animals and can affect various physiological and metabolic functions (Bhatt and Jacoby 1985). Such a virus is likely to be of concern for more research programs than a bacterium such as Corynebacterium bovis (otherwise known as hyperkeratosis-associated coryneform species), which may cause disease and research effects only in glabrous mice (Clifford and others 1995).In very general terms, microorganisms can be ranked according to their established potential to cause disease and research interactions. This ranking should be based on data in the peer-reviewed literature coupled with the organism's ability to cause disease or research interactions in the absence of predisposing factors. A simple ranking scheme is provided in Figure 1. To evaluate the risk imposed by a William J.
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