Content
Animal Care and Use Committees (ACUCs)
The federal Animal Welfare Act mandates the existence of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at every research institution that uses vertebrate animals and is registered with the US Department of Agriculture. The charge of the IACUC is to oversee and ensure the ethical and humane use of vertebrate animals. This oversight is achieved in multiple ways, three of which are initial and ongoing review and approval of all activities involving animals (usually by way of written animal use protocols submitted for review by investigators), semiannual inspections of all areas where animals are housed and undergo procedures, and semiannual reviews of the overall Animal Care Program. Deficiencies found during reviews and inspections must by law be resolved. If not, an institution can forfeit the ability to use animals and lose all federal funding for animal research.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is somewhat unique in that multiple Committees perform this regulatory oversight of the very large and active teaching, research, and outreach programs that involve vertebrate animals. Therefore on our campus the Committees are generally referred to as ACUCs instead of IACUCs.