Canadian Council on Animal Care: Its Role

Abstract

Every year in Canada about 2,000,000 animals are used in research (85.5 percent), mandatory testing (9.5 percent), and education (4.7 percent). Ninety percent of these are rats, mice, fish, and fowl. Surveillance over the use of experimental animals, including wild vertebrates and invertebrates such as octopi and squid, is the responsibility of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), a national, voluntary peer-review organization, founded in Ottawa in 1968. Funded by Canada's two major granting agencies, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the CCAC comprises 20 member organizations from academia, government, industry, laboratory animal science, and the animal welfare movement. Assessment Visits Both scientists and animal welfare advocates are included on CCAC panels, which assess every three years (or more often if needed) Canada's universities and community colleges, government laboratories, and commercial laboratories. The evaluations are based on CCAC's Guide to the Care and Use of Experimental Animals, volumes 1 and 2 (1980, 1984), and supporting monographs. Institutions that continue to fail to comply with CCAC requirements face loss of funding from the MRC and NSERC. Since this policy was published in 1985, those found in noncompliance have actively addressed CCAC's concerns, and it has not yet been necessary to withdraw grants. The imposition of Noncompliance Status is the responsibility of the CCAC as a whole, acting on the recommendations of the assessment panels. It should be noted that where the health of the animals is involved, an assessment panel has the authority to order the animals immediately relocated and to close the facility until it can be brought up to CCAC standards. This rather drastic measure has been necessary only a handful of times. There has been, however, a difficulty in perception on the part of some in the animal welfare movement who have asked: If this institution has been declared in Con