Great Eastern University, a PHS Assured and USDA registered institution, was facing a problem. For many years its IACUC had reviewed and approved a teaching protocol covering piglets and yearling sheep that were used to teach basic agricultural animal skills and procedures in the College of Agriculture. The protocol included animal restraint, hoof trimming, simple injections, piglet castration, and the like. Dr. Roger Gooding, a new faculty member, was to teach the course and he had no desire to fill out IACUC protocols and annual reports and have the IACUC approve any new techniques he wished to add to the course. Gooding had taught a similar course, without IACUC oversight, at the school from which he came, so he reviewed the Animal Welfare Act and its regulations (AWAR) and wrote to the IACUC that the definition of an animal under the AWAR excluded the sheep and pigs he was going to use because they are farm animals that would not be used for biomedical research1. The committee’s rationale for its oversight requirement was based on the same definition, but with a different interpretation. The IACUC replied that the AWAR definition of an animal included any “warm-blooded animal, which is being used, or is intended for use for research, teaching, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes, or as a pet.1” Because there was no disagreement that Gooding’s animals were to be used for teaching in a formal university course, the IACUC believed it was appropriate to require a teaching protocol. Of course, the committee was aware, as Gooding contended, that the word ‘animal’ excluded farm animals such as livestock intended for use as food or fiber or intended for use for improving animal nutrition, breeding, management, or production efficiency1. However, the IACUC had previously concluded that the teaching protocol had nothing to do with those topics and therefore the animals were not excluded from IACUC oversight. The IACUC’s reply also included the AWAR statement that “where a school or department of a university or college uses or intends to use live animals for research, tests, experiments, or teaching, the university or college. . . will be considered the research facility and will be required to register with the USDA.2” That, claimed the IACUC, further supported the requirement for IACUC oversight. Gooding, as part of his reply to the committee, said that the section of the AWAR quoted by the IACUC only applied to animals used in research facilities, and his teaching had nothing to do with research or research facilities, and even when the animals he used would mature, they would be used for agricultural purposes only. The IACUC was becoming frustrated with Gooding’s resistance and as a final statement, the committee also wrote that the College of Agriculture was the recipient of many USDA research grants, and even though Gooding’s course was not directly funded by a grant, he was working in a research facility and an IACUC protocol was required.

What do you think? Does Gooding’s course require an IACUC protocol? If you believe it does not legally require a protocol, do you think that the College of Agriculture’s leadership should nevertheless require Gooding to submit a protocol?