The IACUC Administrator's Guide to Animal Program Management

The IACUC Administrator?s Guide to Animal Program Management supports IACUC administrators who assist with developing, managing, and overseeing a program of animal care and animal use. It provides many options and possibilities for specific operational practices (e.g., how to build a well-functioning IACUC, what a functional protocol template looks like) to satisfy regulatory requirements.

The material provided is a compilation of several years of Best Practices (BP) meetings among IACUC administrators across the country. The BP meetings included representatives from the NIH/OLAW, AAALAC, and the USDA, whose presence and dialogue assured the BP discussion met or exceeded all regulatory or accreditation minimum standards. BP meeting attendees from private, public, governmental, and academic organizations have helped to shape and develop the information offered herein. It is through the insight of several hundred colleagues?their successes as well as their failures?that the authors have distilled suggestions and considerations for your local animal care and use program.

This handbook complements other useful references and manuals regarding programmatic function?it is not intended to replace them. The primary difference you will find is the transparent and open nature of describing processes that have been time tested and proven to help you and your organization satisfy the regulatory requirements.

"The IACUC Administrator?s Guide to Animal Program Management is tailored to meet the needs of IACUC Administrators, Attending Veterinarians (AVs) and/or Animal Research Directors involved with developing, managing, and overseeing a program of animal care and use. While the Federal regulations (AWA act) and standards such as the guide for "The care and use of laboratory animals" help set the expectations for lab animal programs they do not provide clear guidance on the methods that need to be in place especially at the IACUC level to help balance compliance and animal welfare adequately. The authors have tried to bridge this gap by compiling shared best practices from animal program administrators across a wide spectrum of institutions ranging from academia, government and private organizations. ?

A special feature of the book is the inclusion of chapters on FOIA, Sunshine laws and the DOD/VA regulations. This has not been traditionally addressed in other books of this nature. We especially loved reading chapter 4, The Animal Care and Use Program and chapter 5, Protocol Review and Approval for the content and concise detail. ?The authors have done a great job highlighting the issue as well as providing different practices that IACUC?s can adopt to overcome this situation. Chapter 8, Animal Care and Use Program Review was also very well written and could act as a significant resource for administrators to use when training IACUC members on how to conduct and participate in a program reviews.

Overall the details, real life scenarios and wide range of topics makes this a must have book for IACUC administrators and program directors. This could be especially valuable to individuals new to the field, lab animal residents and a resource book for those seeking certification as a professional IACUC administrator."

Jennifer McElroy, RVT, CPIA and Dr. Jeetendra Eswaraka, DVM, PhD, DACLAM in Laboratory Anima