LARC provides quality animal care through high quality housing, care in restricted controlled environment that promotes the quality of life of the animals and minimizes variations that can modify animals’ response to experimentation.
Qatar University IACUC and the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) Qatar duly approve LARC animal care and use program. We believe that excellence in research and teaching requires high quality animal care and use program.
Responsibilities and Service Provided by LARC
- Provide facilities for housing laboratory animals such as rat & mice at present
- Training programs (HCULA)
- Animal/Feed/Bedding procurement
- Provide daily animal husbandry
- Colony health surveillance- Sentinels Program
- Institutional compliance with animal welfare regulations, standards and policies
- Veterinary support
Caging
Rodents are housed in individually ventilated caging (IVC) systems equipped with automatic watering system. The experimental procedures should be performed under HEPA filtered laminar flow hoods or BS 60 bio safety cabinets. All the animal holding room and procedure rooms are equipped with BS 60 biosafety cabinets.
Social Housing
Every effort is made to house rodents in compatible groups unless it is in conflict with the scientific goals of the approved IACUC protocol. This allows for mutual grooming and other social interactions among cage mates. In addition, species specific environmental enrichment is provided that allows the animals to express normal behavior such as digging, burrowing and gnawing.
Animal Identity
Every animal cage identified using specific cage cards, depend upon the activity such as experiment, quarantine, breeding, and sick animals. The cage cards containing the following information:
- Name of the Principal Investigator,
- IACUC Protocol Number,
- Date animals were received,
- Animal species
- Number of animals initially placed in the cage
- Any other pertinent information.
The Principal Investigator identifies individual animals within a cage as long as such marking is consistent with methods approved in “The Guide”.
Individuals performing procedures or injections on rodents should note the details and date of such manipulations on the card.