Cleaning, animal testing

Affected animals should be destroyed and carcasses burned or buried. Premises should be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. In contact animals should be quarantined and tested. 

Proper facilities and care for test animals is not only a matter of regulatory compliance (and a legal requirement), but also essential for a scientifically sound and valid study. Husbandry requires clean cages of sufficient size and continuous availability of clean water and food (unless the protocol requires some restriction on their availability). Environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, and light-dark cycle) must be kept within specified limits. All of these must, in turn, be detailed in the protocols of studies. The limits for these conditions are set forth in relevant NIH and USDA publications. 

Whole body Variety and number of animals Chronic studies possible Minimum restraint Large historical database Controllable environment Minimum stress Minimum labor Messy Multiple routes of exposure skin, eyes, oral Variability of dose Cannot pulse exposure easily Poor contact between animals and investigators Capital intensive Inefficient compound usage Difficult to monitor animals during exposure Cleaning effluent air Inert materials Losses of test material Even distribution in space Sampling Animal care Observation Noise, vibration, humidity Air temperature Safe exhaust Loading Reliability... 

On the day prior to dosing, the fur of the test animals will be clipped from the dorsal area of the trunk using a small animal clipper, then shaved clean with a finer bladed clipper. 

Mature, oocyte positive, female Xenopus laevis are kept in (mesh) covered grey plastic tanks in tap water (depth 15-20 cm, 3-4 L per animal) at 16-19°C under constant light regime (12-h day/night cycle). The quality of the tap water should be tested at the beginning and care should be taken on the chlorine and heavy metal content. A simple way to eliminate excessive chlorine from the water is storage of the water for 24 h. Clay tubes in the tanks allow the frogs to cover themselves. The animals are fed a commercially available pellet diet twice a week, and occasionally they receive small pieces of bovine heart. The tanks have to be cleaned after each meal. 

Parts 58.41 through 58.51 cover the physical facihties of the laboratory. The inspector must determine whether or not the facilities are of adequate size and design for completed or in-process studies. The physical parameters and systems of the facilities as they are used to accommodate the various operations employed in the GLP studies are examined. Investigators also deal explicitly with the environmental control and monitoring procedures for critical areas, especially the rooms used for animal housing, the test article storage areas, and the laboratory areas in which biohazardous material is handled. The procedures and methods for cleaning equipment and areas critical to study conduct as well as the cur-... 

Detergency is about the theory and practice of the removal of foreign material from solids by surface-active substances. This definition excludes pure mechanical cleaning. Also a pure chemical cleaning, e.g., by solvation of the foreign material, is not considered. In textiles oily substances usually attach to the fibres (animal fats, fatty acids, hydrocarbons, etc.). Also dust, soot, and other solid particles have to be removed in a washing process. In order to test the effectiveness of a surfactant, textiles are often polluted with standard dirt mixtures and cleaned with a standard washing procedure (launderometer). Often cleanliness is measured on the basis of optical reflectivity of white textiles. 

Good animal care is critical at all times because toxicity has been shown to vary with diet, disease, and environmental factors. Animals should be quarantined for some time before being admitted to the test area, their diet should be optimum for the test species, and the facility should be kept clean at all times. Regular inspection by a veterinarian is essential, and any animals showing unusual symptoms not related to the treatment (e.g., in controls or in low dose but not high dose animals) should be removed from the test and autopsied. 

Other food samples like egg, animal fat and fish oil appear to behave very similarly to milk fat and extensive validation has not been carried out thus far. The suitability was, however, demonstrated by inclusion of positive or spiked samples. The assay was validated for blood samples from wildlife species for high concentrations of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs.13 A special clean-up procedure was developed and validated for sediment, pore water and other environmental samples, allowing the use of the assay for official testing of these type of samples.14... 

Mice can develop less arthritis in a clean(er) animal facility. Other factors, like stress, may also influence the development of arthritis. When moving to a new facility, first test whether the model still works before conducting new experiments. 

Use a new clean cage with fresh bedding for each animal. Wash the marbles with ethanol after each test. 

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