Animal Housing Facilities: Session Introduction

Abstract

I t’s a pleasure to moderate this session on animal housing facilities. When I first got involved in the care of labora­ tory animals (I think it was 1950), our facility was called the Animal House. It was located next to the Residents’ Housing on the VA Station where I lived until I was 8 years old; I was taking care of guinea pigs on weekends for about 50 cents. Twenty-eight years later, I became the director of the Biological Resources Laboratory (BRL) at the Univer­ sity of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). I hope none of you postdocs out there take that long to achieve success. The BRL, often called the animal hospital by many of the users, was in fact a state-of-the-art facility for the time, having been the initial facility where the Illinois Cubicles were devel­ oped and used. By the time I retired from the UIC, the BRL had undergone many major and minor renovations to be­ come what it is—and what most other animal housing fa­ cilities are today—an extension of the investigator’s laboratory. In putting this session together, my goal was to call at­ tention to the progress that has been made in managing the environment in which laboratory animals are maintained. There are many reasons for this improvement but, based on my experience, the primary driver has been to minimize the impact of the housing environment on the data generated us­ ing animal-based models. The principal goal of an institu­ tional animal care and use program should be to optimize the well-being of animals that are cared for and used in that pro­ gram. Optimizing animal welfare will ensure compliance with the regulations and standards of the USDA, the PHS Policy, and the accreditation requirements of AAALAC In­ ternational. Optimizing animal welfare will also minimize nonexperimental variability and thus facilitate the research that must use animals. Today’s speakers have been chosen to highlight how far we have come in terms of the physical environment in which we house animals; to discuss how we got there by improving the facilities in which the animals are maintained and the equipment that is used to support that maintenance; and finally to look at trends in facility design and construction. I will keep the introductions brief so our speakers can con­ centrate on what you came to hear. Dr. Betty Goldentyer is the Eastern Regional Director for the APHIS Animal Care program at USDA. Betty has been with the Animal Care program since its organization as a standalone program in 1988. She will present the USDA’s perspective on how far we’ve come in terms of facility issues. Dr. Chris Newcomer is the Executive Director of AAALAC International and has participated in its review ac­ tivities for the past 25-plus years. He will present AAALAC’s perspective on how far we have come. Dr. Lauretta Gerrity is the Associate Vice President for Research Operations and Compliance and a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB). She was previously Director of the Ani­ mal Research Program there. I was lucky enough to have some exposure to that program and that’s why I asked Lauretta to speak. She is going to talk about the commitment that institutions must make when they seek to obtain funding for facility improvements. Dr. Willie McCullough has been a Health Science Ad­ ministrator at NCRR since 2001. He served as Director of the Animal Facilities Improvement Program and the Re­ search Facilities Improvement Program from January 2001 to March 2010. He will talk about NCRR’s tremendous commitment to the process of improving animal housing facilities. And Dr. Steve Leary is the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Veterinary Affairs and Director of the Division of Compara­ tive Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He has over 30 years of experience in laboratory animal medicine and management of laboratory animal fa­ cilities. He has coauthored chapters on animal facility design and the use of interstitial mechanical space in animal facility design in the most recent edition of Laboratory Animal Med­ icine in the ACLAM (American College of Laboratory Ani­ mal Medicine) book series. He will address trends in facility design.