1288 
THE USE OF ANIMALS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION 
1 of 1973 when the first report is due, and it 
will be the calendar year with the report due on 
February 1 following the calendar year each 
subsequent year. In other words, the calendar 
year 1972 will be the first period covered by 
your annual report, which is due on February 
1, 1973. 
Nathaniel P. Ching, St. Vincent Hospital 
and Medical Center, N.Y.C. : I have a question 
concerning manpower. The Agriculture inspec- 
tor assured me that we can use our local veteri- 
narian without any problem at all. 
Dr. Parker : The way I understand the regu- 
lations, a veterinarian who is working in the 
community could be hired. He doesn't neces- 
sarily have to be involved with the research, but 
I think he's sticking his neck out when he signs 
as a responsible veterinarian of the committee. 
He's going to have the same kind of responsibil- 
ity to see that the guidelines have been adhered 
to. Therefore he should be informed on the re- 
search. 
There have been programs to train veteri- 
narians in animal care but there are many 
veterinarians now supervising facilities who 
have not had formal training. As a professional, 
it's his responsibility to see that he knows the 
guidelines and that he and that committee see 
they're enforced. 
Dr. Conner : Dale, do you want to augment 
the statement? 
Dr. Schwindaman: Essentially what Dr. 
Parker said is true, the institution may have a 
veterinarian on a consulting basis, a part-time 
basis or a full-time basis. This can be someone 
that is in general practice or in small animal 
practice in the area. I think it behooves the 
veterinarian who does sign a contract with an 
institution to take some of these refresher 
courses and become more familiar with the 
animals that are used for research and some of 
the problems that are involved in the use of 
these animals for research. But yes, a practition- 
er can be utilized for this purpose. 
Robert M. Lewis, Tufts-New England Medi- 
cal Center, Boston : I'd like clarification on one 
point. If hogs, or farm animals, are excluded 
and yet they're used in research projects funded 
by NIH, they are then included under the NIH 
policy. Does this not also include rats and mice 
which are excluded specifically by the Act, but 
are funded by NIH in a number of different 
diverse projects? 
Dr. Conner: These are diflficult points to deal 
with now because we are in a transitional 
period. At the moment the NIH policy, as it's 
written, applies to just the same six species 
to which the Act applies. But if the law takes 
the direction that I am quite sure it will, if a 
man proposes and gets support for a project 
that will use any kind of warm-blooded species, 
then you will have to have your university com- 
mittee look at it or be sure that AAALAC ac- 
creditation applies. 
I could raise a question here with Dr. 
Schwindaman ; does not the Act make a distinc- 
tion between animals that are and are not be- 
ing used for production research? Isn't there 
a distinction in the law in that respect that 
would apply to pigs as well as horses, calves, 
etc.? I thought that this was the case. 
Dr. Schwindaman: Well, the law itself did 
make a distinction between animals who were 
going to be used for production research and 
animals that were going to be used strictly for 
basic research protocols and designs. However, 
when we wrote this definition in our present 
regulations, we wanted to exclude all farm ani- 
mals across the board, so this was the way the 
attorneys told us to write it ; put the commas 
in the right place, conjunctions in the right 
place, and the periods in the right place, so that 
legally it would be interpreted to mean that 
farm animals are excluded across the board. 
Now, as I mentioned previously, when warm 
animals are designated by the Secretary, then 
we will have this problem. I can see that it's 
going to be a problem of determining when 
farm animals are used entirely for basic re- 
search or when they're used for purposes of im- 
proving their health or some other reason. 
Dr. Harmison: I was wondering, since we're 
defining what a pig is and when he's a pig, 
could you tell me the difference between produc- 
tion research and research? 
Dr. Schwindaman : Well, I'd like to give you 
the advantage of our present thinking in con- 
junction with a USDA committee that we con- 
vened for this purpose prior to writing the 
regulations. We felt, and we still feel, that, at 
