INTRODUCTION

Farm animals in research and education are protected under two main Federal laws: 1) the Animal Welfare Act administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 2) the National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service Policy. Both laws require persons caring for or using farm animals in research or education to receive specific training. This "take-home" module is designed to meet these requirements.

In addition, these two laws have minimum requirements for aspects such as: housing conditions, sanitation and manure removal from pens, feed and water, humane handling and restraint, veterinary care before, during and after surgery, use of anesthetics, and methods of euthanasia. Routine visits to university farms and animal facilities are made by members of University Animal Care and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee to be certain that all areas are in full compliance.

The University of Arizona is a member of the Association for Assessment & Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) which requires additional training of personnel in occupational health hazards and animal management. Unlike the Federal laws which designate minimum standards, AAALAC seeks to continually upgrade an animal program. Therefore, to remain AAALAC approved, the facility and personnel must provide the highest standards of care, as judged by published information in scientific journals. It is for this reason, that you may be required to make improvements to a housing area, modify a surgical procedure, or otherwise change some aspect which was earlier considered to be acceptable.

Farm animals are fundamentally different from more traditional laboratory animals. One obvious difference is their size. The surface-to-mass ratio of a 100g rat is much greater than a 1000kg bull, making the rat much more sensitive to thermal changes than the bull. (Of course, small farm animals such as newborns are also sensitive to temperature stresses and any good farmer knows to protect newborns from drafts and extremes of heat and cold). Genetics is an additional consideration. In general, the outbred and hybrid livestock are immunologically "sturdier" than the highly inbred laboratory rat and mouse, allowing them to more readily resist disease agents. It is partially for this reason that surgery in the field, under less than optimal conditions, poses no significant risk for cattle.

Perhaps the most important difference is the process of domestication. Humans have been able to domesticate only a tiny fraction of the species on earth, despite thousands of years of trying! Many ethical and scientific debates have centered on which "traits" support the process of domestication, but most authors agree that one common theme is "animals which are able to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions and feed sources". It is for this reason that standards written to ensure adequate care for these species are not as rigid nor narrow, as those written for more traditional laboratory animals. Common sense dictates that if cattle have prospered wherever man has settled, from sub-arctic snow fields to steamy jungles, than cattle must be able to adapt to a wide range of living conditions.

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Last updated: 01/02/2008 gea