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U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Welfare Information Center offers one-day workshop

From: Vicky Ratcliffe, Research Education and Development

Target audience: The workshop is targeted for Principal Investigators, members of the IACUC, information providers, administrators of animal use programs, and veterinarians. This workshop is not compulsory, however this course satisfies the VT IACUC Core training requirement.

To register go to https://www.fdi.vt.edu/public/modules/selfenroll/_viewevent.php?eventPk1=9680.

This free workshop will address the following information that is federally required in IACUC protocol submissions:

• Providing appropriate literature searches and similar documentation to satisfy consideration of animal use alternatives, and,
• Documentation of avoidance of unnecessary duplication of animal use through the use of literature searches and other sources.

The regulations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) require that investigators provide Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) with documentation demonstrating that alternatives to procedures that may cause more than momentary pain or distress to the animals have been considered and that activities do not unnecessarily duplicate previous experiments. A thorough literature search regarding alternatives meets this Federal mandate. An alternative is any procedure which results in the reduction in the numbers of animals used, refinement of techniques, or replacement of animals.

Objectives:

The objectives of the workshop are to provide:

• An overview of the AWA and its information requirements;
• A review of the alternatives concept;
• A review of services provided by Virginia Tech, AWIC, and other organizations;
• Instruction on the use of existing information databases/networks; and
• On-line database searching experience.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC) teaches this one-day workshop for individuals who are responsible for providing information to meet the requirements of the AWA, but the information provided is applicable to all protocol submissions at Virginia Tech.

To view the workshop agenda please see the attached flyer.

For questions regarding registration please contact Cindy Montgomery at cmontgom@vt.edu. For questions regarding content please contact Laura Noll at lnoll@vt.edu.

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