Facilitating the Research Process: Limiting Regulatory Burden and Leveraging Performance Standards

Abstract

Animal care and use program administrators and managers are responsible for both promoting animal well-being and facilitating the research. However, since animal welfare laws and regulations primarily articulate edicts intended to mitigate harm to animals, it can be difficult to see how an institution’s regulatory compliance activities can both protect animal subjects and serve the research enterprise. While it can be a challenge to balance these seemingly competing goals, one should not conclude that ensuring high program achievement in terms of compliance precludes concomitant highly productive research.In this chapter, we explore how the expanding environment of compliance”“driven by both legal requirements and the associated institutional regulatory processes”“drives the development of programs for oversight of animal care and use and impacts the work of scientists using animals. We describe some opportunities and strategies that program administrators and managers can use to facilitate the research enterprise without compromising compliance demands. Two general approaches are presented: (1) alleviating unnecessary regulatory burden, which conserves institutional and researcher resources, and (2) selecting appropriate standards and methods for assessing outcomes, which promotes program flexibility. It is worth noting at the outset that whatever the approach, it is crucial for the program manager or administrator to engage with the institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) and other institutional oversight entities, such as the responsible institutional official (IO) and attending veterinarian (AV), as well as other program stakeholders. (Note: The term institutional animal care and use committee, or IACUC, is used in a generic sense to denote the institutional body, regardless of name, charged with oversight and evaluation of the animal care and use program.)