Credit: Lexy Roberts/Vet Image Lab

Cornell's animal care and use program, which accounts for the well-being of all the animals in departments across campus, has received full accreditation from the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC International) and exceeded standards across the board.

Pursuing association accreditation is a voluntary peer-reviewed process. A team of working veterinary and other scientists visited Cornell in July and inspected every facility under the domain of the Ithaca campus, including the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Transgenic Mouse Core Facility, Shoals Marine Lab and poultry and dairy facilities. (The accreditation does not include Cornell's Weill Medical College.) Aside from one condition regarding record keeping, Cornell's facilities surpassed all the standards.

"AAALAC did not provide a single suggestion for improvement of our program," said Michele Bailey, associate vice provost for research animal resources, who was hired by the provost's office in 2001 to centralize and oversee the care and use of animals at Cornell. "This is virtually unheard of for a program of the magnitude of Cornell's animal care and use program, which is one of the largest in North America."

Added Charles R. Fay, vice provost for research administration: "This is a testament to the high degree of cooperation and participation we have throughout the organization, from the staff who care for the health and welfare of the animals right up to Associate Vice Provost Michele Bailey and the department chairs and college deans with whom she works."

The association's stamp of approval is especially important because many federal funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, perceive an institution's compliance with the National Research Council's "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" (that AAALAC follows) as the gold standard for animal care programs. Loss of accreditation would potentially put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research support for Cornell at risk.

The association's Oct. 20 letter to Cornell granting full accreditation highlighted its approval of Cornell's commitment to the future with its new construction (East Campus Research Facility and Life Sciences Technology Building) to improve the quality of animal facilities. The letter also noted Cornell's wisdom in deciding that the Center for Animal Resources and Education (CARE) "have direct input in all animal-related building projects." Other commendations included "the complete and well-functioning lines of communication among the CARE veterinarians, ambulatory care veterinarians, the veterinary technical staff and the various facility managers and supervisors" and "the enthusiastic, knowledgeable and experienced facility managers and animal care personnel in this broadly diverse program."

The one suggestion noted in the review concerned animal use protocols, which are forms that are filled out whenever an animal is used in research. The form documents the purpose of the research, rationales for procedures, use of species, what alternatives might be taken into account and more. As Cornell has transitioned from a paper- to a Web-filing system, some errors have resulted in incomplete and inaccurate records. Since the July site visit, Cornell has corrected data-entry errors on protocols that were manually loaded into the new system.

AAALAC International is a private, nonprofit organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in science through voluntary accreditation and assessment programs. More than 700 companies, universities, hospitals, government agencies and other research institutions in 28 countries have earned AAALAC accreditation.