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Institutions that conduct high-containment agricultural research involving domestic livestock represent a specialized category of programs that are accredited by AAALAC International. The accreditation process includes a comprehensive assessment of the overall program of animal care and use. However, the complex design of these facilities and the unique care required for animals in this type of environment often mean that additional attention will be directed at areas regarded as higher risk when the programs are evaluated. Specific issues that may stimulate additional discussion and interest include animal housing practices, environmental conditions inside the facility, maintenance of procedure and support areas, methods for obtaining and safely transporting healthy research animals, strategies to minimize animal pain and distress, unusual protocol review challenges, and institutional policies relevant to personnel training and safety. These issues are further discussed to inform institutions of potential concerns that should be reviewed and assessed during internal preparations for accreditation visits by AAALAC site visit teams.

Globalization of the biomedical research enterprise is occurring at an accelerating pace. Increasingly, scientific collaborations and contracts cross national borders. Assurance that the caliber of animal research and animal welfare are consistent among countries and that such animal use is done in a humane and conscientious manner is of significant concern to the scientific community, the general public, and other stakeholders. Bridging these international collaborations is a clear scientific imperative for statistical validity of the data and reproducibility of results to ensure the animal use is both meaningful and impactful. One way to mitigate the potential confounding effects that the welfare of the animals may have on the research data is to harmonize animal care and use practices and procedures worldwide. By harmonizing the care and use of animals, using high standards that are internationally accepted, research animal welfare and high-quality science will be achieved.

The provision of environmental enrichment to numerous species of laboratory animals is generally considered routine husbandry. However, mouse enrichment has proven to be very complex due to the often contradictory outcomes (animal health and welfare, variability in scientific data, etc.) associated with strain, age of the animal when enrichment is provided, gender of the animal, scientific use of the animal, and other housing attributes. While this has led to some suggesting that mice should not be provided enrichment, more recently opinion is trending toward acknowledging that enrichment actually normalizes the animal and data obtained from a mouse living in a barren environment are likely not to be representative or even reliable. This article offers an overview of the types of impact enrichment can have on various strains of mice and demonstrates that enrichment not only has a role in mouse husbandry, but also can lead to new areas of scientific enquiry in a number of different fields.

Many countries, professional organizations, and nongovernmental organizations have issued guidelines for adequate veterinary medical care for laboratory animals. They are thus considered internationally to be an essential component of animal care and use programs. In the United States, the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the Guide; NRC 1996), a publication of the National Research Council through the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR), provides guidelines that serve as the basis for the US Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Among the critical topics included in the Guide is veterinary medical care for laboratory animals, and the report’s recommendations outline key fundamental issues for institutions. While the Guide primarily provides guidelines for use in

Increasingly, scientific collaborations and contracts cross country borders. The need for assurance that the quality of animal welfare and the caliber of animal research conducted are equivalent among research partners around the globe is of concern to the scientific and laboratory animal medicine communities, the general public, and other key stakeholders. Therefore, global harmonization of animal care and use standards and practices, with the welfare of the animals as a cornerstone, is essential. In the evolving global landscape of enhanced attention to animal welfare, a widely accepted path to achieving this goal is the successful integration of the 3Rs in animal care and use programs. Currently, awareness of the 3Rs, their implementation, and the resulting animal care and use standards and practices vary across countries. This variability has direct effects on the animals used in research and potentially the data generated and may also have secondary effects on the country's ability to be viewed as a global research partner. Here we review the status of implementation of the 3Rs worldwide and focus on 3 countries–Brazil, China and India–with increasing economic influence and an increasing footprint in the biomedical research enterprise.

The IACUC is one of the most important committees at a research institution and plays a critical role in the success of an animal care and use program. It is the responsibility of the institution to provide IACUC members with adequate and appropriate training. The authors explore various IACUC training options.

I n this issue of the ILAR Journal we present lessons learned by colleagues who experienced different types of disasters, both natural and deliberate, in varying animalrelated settings. The authors recount their experiences with a variety of types of disaster not only at research facilities—a devastating hurricane and tropical storm (Goodwin and Donaho 2010), violent threats from animal rights activists (Bailey et al. 2010), even persistent viral outbreaks in a laboratory rodent colony (Smith 2010)—but also at an animal shelter (wildfi re evacuation; Arms and Van Zante 2010) and a poultry farm (avian infl uenza containment; Flory and Peer 2010). We hope the information will be of practical use for extrapolation to a variety of situations.

The fundamental raison d’etre of the laboratory animal veterinarian, institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC 1 ), IACUC administrator, institutional compliance office/officer, training coordinator, and other related positions and groups at institutions that use animals for research, testing, and teaching is to ensure the humane, responsible, and productive use of animals in those activities. All of these people and groups support both science and animal welfare. The US system of animal welfare oversight has been covered in several review articles in recent years (Garnett 2005; NRC 2003), and all of the authors in this issue of the ILAR Journal allude to or cite key components of the policy and regulatory framework of oversight. Therefore, rather than an exhaustive review, we provide here a brief summary of the relevant documents and oversight bodies. The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) regulations (9 CFR), enforced by the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Animal Care unit, apply to registered research facilities that use species covered under the act. The Public Health Service (PHS) Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, authorized by the Health Research Extension Act (HREA), is implemented by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW 1 ) and is applicable to all PHS-supported activities involving live vertebrate animals. The PHS Policy includes, by reference, the NRC Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the Guide; NRC 1996). Eligibility for NIH (and other PHS) grant and contract support requires compliance with the

Because some trainees are not university employees, regulatory agencies, oversight committees, and investigators may overlook those who work with animals when it comes to training related to animal care and use. The authors draw attention to a common problem facing universities and suggest ways to close the gap in training.

Many aspects of the research animal's housing environment are controlled for quality and/or standardization. Of recent interest is the potential for environmental enrichment to have unexpected consequences such as unintended harm to the animal, or the introduction of variability into a study that may confound the experimental data. The effects of enrichment provided to nonhuman primates, rodents, and rabbits are described to illustrate that the effects can be numerous and may vary by strain and/or species. Examples of parameters measured where no change is detected are also included because this information provides an important counterpoint to studies that demonstrate an effect. In addition, this review of effects and noneffects serves as a reminder that the provision of enrichment should be evaluated in the context of the health of the animal and research goals on a case-by-case basis. It should also be kept in mind that the effects produced by enrichment are similar to those of other components of the animal's environment. Although it is unlikely that every possible environmental variable can be controlled both within and among research institutions, more detailed disclosure of the living environment of the subject animals in publications will allow for a better comparison of the findings and contribute to the broader knowledge base of the effects of enrichment.

An interview with Kathryn Bayne, MS, PhD, DVM, DACLAM, CAAB, Global Director, Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) International, Frederick, MD.