citation_inspection: 173

Consideration of Alternatives. 1. Protocol #14-05 included a procedure that would be considered more than momentarily painful or distressful and the written narrative of the animal use proposal referenced the use of a database in the search for alternatives. However, the database search included in the proposal that was approved by the IACUC in August 2014 had been conducted by the principal investigator in the year 2002 and therefore did not describe a search that was adequate to determine that alternatives were not available for the procedure. Per this Section of the Regulations, whenever a proposal for animal use contains procedures that may cause more than momentary pain or distress to the animals, the investigator is required to consider alternatives to those procedures and provide a written narrative description of the methods and sources used to determine that alternatives were not available. Whenever a database search is utilized to fulfill this requirement, it should be conducted closer to the time the proposal is submitted in order to determine that alternatives were not currently available. The IACUC needs to address this issue that was identified for this protocol. Correct by 6/29/15.