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Animal Care Committee   Justifying Exemptions to Standards

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Frequently in research, it becomes necessary to balance the needs of the researchers and the need to follow the federal or institutional regulations.  The Animal Care Committee (ACC) can be a valuable resource to investigators when they find themselves in this position.

Regulations are "there for a reason"; namely, to ensure animal health and well-being.  Exemptions to these standards requires scientific and/or medical justification and ACC approval.  Cost savings and/or research convenience are never  adequate reasons for an exemption to regulatory standards.

How to start?  Determine the scientific or medical reason(s) you need to do what it is you plan to do.  For instance, why is it you need to keep the animals in your laboratory for more than 24 hours?  Convenience would not be a good answer;  your laboratory would not be able to provide evidence of adequate temperature and humidity control the way the CLAC rooms do.  However, if you need to perform blood draws every 6 hours throughout the night and over the weekend, and monitor the animals' biological responses- that would be an adequate justification for the animals needing to be in your laboratory.

The following situations would require ACC approval for exemption to standards (this might not be an all-inclusive list, but it is a start):

Single housing of rodents;

Housing animals outside of the CLAC facility for more than 12 hours of USDA regulated species and more than 24 hours for non-USDA regulated species;

Multiple major survival surgery;

Food and/or fluid restriction more than what is usually done for pre-operative measures;

Prolonged restraint;

Non-standard caging (e.g., wire-bottom, metabolic);

Physical methods of euthanasia without anesthesia or sedation (e.g., decapitation, cervical dislocation, perfusion);

Not providing standard enrichment strategies to the animals;

Withholding psychological enrichment from non-human primates;

Withholding exercise for laboratory dogs.