2009 Animal Care and Experimentation Committee Report
During much of 2008,
the ACE committee developed recommendations submitted on behalf of the APS
to a National Academy of Sciences committee charged with updating the
Institute for Laboratory Animal Research’s Guide for the Care and Use of
Laboratory Animals. The APS recommendations emphasized the advantages of
performance-based standards to ensure animal welfare and the need to take
approaches that minimize regulatory burden. Other points of emphasis in the
APS statement included:
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the need for
IACUCs to make informed determinations about study design;
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that references on
minimizing pain and distress should be updated and made accessible
through the web, but the updated Guide should not try to offer uniform
or objective ways to measure them;
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that the updated
Guide should retain the current guidance on providing environmental
enrichments. This guidance states that such enrichments should be used
when they are known to be beneficial without compromising animal welfare
or study design, and that it is permissible to exercise professional
judgment in making determinations about whether or not to implement
enrichments;
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that the current
definition of major survival surgery as the penetration ofds a body
cavity should be revised in light of new minimally invasive surgical
techniques to emphasize instead the actual pain or distress caused by a
given procedure;
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that
recommendations concerning housing densities, temperatures, humidity
levels, and environmental enrichments should be revised so that these
factors are seen as part of an integrated environment.
The Committee to Update
the Guide began its work in September 2008. Members of the ACE committee
participated in a September 26, 2008 open forum where the individuals and
organizations offered comments to representatives of the Guide update panel.
Representatives of the ACE Committee also attended two other public hearings
on the Guide that were held in Irvine, CA (October) and Chicago, IL
(November). The comprehensive APS position statement was submitted in
January, 2009. The Guide update is expected to take about two years with the
updated Guide completed in September 2010.
Transition team
recommendations: In January 2009, the APS contributed recommendations to the
Obama administration transition team’s NIH review committee. The APS urged
the new administration to publicly acknowledge the need for research
involving animal models of disease and to provide protection to researchers
engaged in these activities.
Concerns about a
presidential appointee: The APS raised concerns about President Obama’s
selection of Cass R. Sunstein as the Administrator of the Office of
Information and Regulatory Analysis. On February 12, 2009, APS wrote to John
Holdren, the Director-Designate of the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, about Sunstein’s position that animals should be granted legal
rights and that the use of animals in research requires additional
regulatory restrictions. On May 19, 2009, APS wrote to Chairman Joseph
Lieberman and Ranking Member Susan Collins of the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Government Affairs, requesting further clarification
of Sunstein’s views on these subjects prior to his confirmation. Although
the Senate Homeland Security Committee supported his nomination, but a vote
on his confirmation was delayed until at least September because several
Republican Senators were concerned by Sunstein’s positions on agriculture,
animal rights, and hunting.
Clarifying OLAW
requirements: The ACE Committee wrote a letter to the editor that was
published in the February 2009 issue of Lab Animal. The letter challenged a
column about protocol review that appeared in the June 2008 issue in which
several commentators voiced the opinion that IACUCs are required to
re-review every instance in which an investigator performs fewer procedures
than were contained in the original protocol. The APS letter argued that
since experimental work is inherently dynamic, re-review should not be
required for minor protocol deviations that have no impact on animal
welfare. NIH’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) published a
companion letter in the same issue of Lab Animal stating that it leaves to
the IACUC to “clearly define and communicate to investigators what it
considers to be a significant change, or its mechanism for determining
significance.”
Random source dogs and
cats: The ACE Committee is reviewing the recommendations of the ILAR
Committee on Scientific and Humane Issues in the Use of Random Source Dogs
and Cats in Research. This report found strong evidence of an ongoing need
for random source dogs and cats animals in several important areas of NIH-funded
research. However, due to continuing problems with Animal Welfare Act
enforcement, the panel also called for the replacement of Class B dealers
with other sources of supply for these animals. This recommendation was
tempered with an acknowledgement that it may be difficult to obtain certain
kinds of animals from sources other than Class B dealers.
EB 2010: The ACE
Committee will sponsor a public affairs symposium slot at EB 2010 in Anaheim
on Trends in Animal Rights Activism and Extremism. Speakers will include
UCLA Senior Counsel Amy Blum (Federal Freedom of Information Act and
California’s open records law); Univ. of Iowa Director of Animal Resources
Paul Cooper (How institutions should respond to an animal rights attack);
and UCLA researcher and US Pro-Test founder David Jentsch (Responding to
threats against science by going on the offense).
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