Animal Welfare Body

The animal welfare body shall:

• Give advice in acquiring, housing, care and use of animals
• Give advice on compliance with the 3Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement)
• Provide information on technical and scientific progress on replacement, reduction and refinement
• Develop and review internal operation routines to monitor, report on and follow up animal welfare issues, person health and safety and impact on experiments.
• Monitor how experiments impact animal welfare, person health and safety and impact on experiments.
• Identify and give advice on factors that contribute to further replacement, reduction and refinement
• Give advice for rehoming of animals (less relevant at UiB)

A record of all advices and decisions made by the AWB shall be stored for minimum of 3 years and be available on the request from Mattilsynet

• Use of painkillers after surgery
• Humane endpoints and Scoring Sheet - what do we expect!
• Microbiological health-status - ensures quality, classification and risk assessment
• Services provided by the Animal Facility for breeding
• Single housing of animals 
• Aseptic procedures for surgery     
• Use of and change of P2-dust masks
• Project staartup meeting - review of protocol
• Riskevaluation

2016

• Aseptic routines for surgery
• Batch anesthesia
• Cleaning of the pig house
• Testing cell cultures of human origin
• Use of facial grimace score for evaluation of pain
• Transport of animals between the units
• Training of summer-substitutes

2017

• Enrichment program for pigs
• Enrichment program for rodents
• severity assessment and scoring for neurosurgical models in rodents
• Procedures for sentinel animals
• Use of cleaning and disinfection
• Procedures for unpacking animals
• Regulations for breeding at the animal facility

2018

• Infections in immundeficient animals
• Alterntil nesting material for mice
• Administrative procedures for animals use that do not need authorisation from Mattisynet
• Administrative procedures for breeding that do not need authorisation from Mattisynet
  • Level of Phenotypecharacterization
• Review of enrichment progam
• Practical training

2019

• Review of tap water quality at Vivarium
• Rodent handling made easy
• Equipment for bulk sterilization of gods – alternative to autoclaves
• Dispensing category A and B drugs for use in animals
• Evaluation of routines for PPE in barriers

2020

• Update contingency plan in light of the Corona-pandemic
• Rehoming of pigs meant for trauma course
• New organization of work task
• Improve solution for storage of pig carcasses – with focus on ergonomics
• Policies for the use of physical restraint procedures or devices
• Use of PCR for health monitoring

2021

• Acclimatization vs Single housing
• Stressfree handling of rodents
• Prescription on regulated drugs
• Water quality for rodents
• Revision of Score sheets
• Enrishment for rats
• Improve animal welfare without compromizin standardization
• Producing webinars for internal re-training

• Suzanne Brandt – Clinical vet (Chair)
• Helene Otterå - Animal Care ingeneer/OHS-officer
• Gry Bernes – Animal Care ingeneer
• Tine Veronica Karlsen  - Associate Professor, IBM
• Lise Skålvik Amble - Senior Executive Officer, Study Adviser
• Aurora Brønstad - Chief veterinarian/Reserarcher (Secretary)

Contact the Animal Welfare Body

The AWB can be contacted using dve@uib.no