Welcome
to the Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC)
The
ACUC is the institutional animal care and use committee at U.C. Berkeley.
Its activities are mandated by the U.S. Animal Welfare Act and Public
Health Service Policy. The ACUC is charged with reviewing and approving
all proposed uses of live vertebrate animals in teaching and research.
For
information regarding animal purchases and acquisition, animal care,
animal shipping, pharmacy and animal supply purchases, veterinary care
and/or accessing animal facilities please contact the Office
of Laboratory Animal Care (OLAC).
The
assignment of campus animal housing and procedure space falls
under
the purview of the office of the Vice
Chancellor for Research (VCR) and the Committee on Animal Research
Space Assignment (CARSA), a faculty advisory committee charged with
recommending plans for accommodating requests for animal housing
or procedure space. Please read the VCR's 07/25/01 administrative
memo "Commitments
for Animal Space" for additional information regarding
the use of space in the campus's centralized animal facilities.
**News** International
accrediting organization gives the animal care and use
program an enthusiastic “thumbs up”
The organization that examines and accredits animal care and use
programs around the world has given the UC Berkeley's animal care
and use program another thumbs up, awarding
it the prized accreditation it has maintained through five site
visits since 1994.
Three representatives of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation
of Laboratory Animal Care International, known as AAALAC, visited
the campus Oct. 2 and 3 last year, touring every animal facility
on campus, reviewing many animal care and use records and visiting
many faculty laboratories.
The team's comments were uniformly
positive, and their recommendation for full accreditation was approved
by the AAALAC Council on Accreditation.
In a March 21 letter to
UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside, Dale
G. Martin, president of the Council
on Accreditation, wrote, "The Council commends you and
your staff for providing and maintaining an exemplary program
of laboratory
animal care and use."
AAALAC is a private, nonprofit
organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in
science through a voluntary accreditation program. The AAALAC
accreditation program evaluates organizations that use animals
in research, teaching or testing. Those that exhibit excellence
in animal care and use are awarded accreditation. Formal site
visits are conducted at three-year intervals and are a method
of ensuring that animal care and use programs maintain the highest
of standards.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Public Health
Service look for AAALAC accreditation among the institutions
that receive
government research funds, including those from the National
Institutes of Health. Both federal agencies conduct their own
reviews, however,
while the campus ACUC committee also evaluates UC Berkeley's
overall program for animal care and use, inspecting all campus
animal facilities
at least twice yearly, investigating specific complaints about
animal use and recommending institutional animal care and use policies.
Thanks to everyone who worked
so hard to help the campus achieve this very positive outcome.
It is the fourth successive triennial site visit by AAALAC that
has resulted in a recommendation for full accreditation, and it
is a testimony to the consistently high quality of our animal care
and use program!
For more information about AAALAC and why AAALAC accreditation
is a critical component of the successful management of our
animal use program,
please visit their Website at: http://www.aaalac.org.
The
Animal Care and Use program at the UC Berkeley campus is
serious about setting, achieving and maintaining high standards
for animal care and use. When
conducting their annual unannounced site inspections of
the campus animal care and use program, USDA inspectors thoroughly
observe and document all areas of the campus's animal care
and use program for compliance with the U.S. Animal Welfare
Act and its Implementing Regulations. The Animal
Care and Use Committee is proud to report that the recent
USDA inspection on October 23, 2007, has resulted in a
completely clean report!
The
faculty members and their laboratory personnel who use animals
in research, Office of Laboratory Animal Care, Animal Care and
Use Committee and Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research all
can be proud that our campus has ~ for
the seventh year in a row ~
received an annual USDA inspection report with no
non-compliances identified. This
report is an example of UC Berkeley's dedication to achieving
the highest
standards for animal care and use
