Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

ABOUT Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)

ABAC’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) oversees all research conducted on non-human vertebrates. The goals of ABAC’s IACUC are to facilitate undergraduate and faculty/staff research opportunities by ensuring compliance with Public Health Service Policy and Animal Welfare Act regulations and enable research results to be published in peer-reviewed literature where IACUC approval numbers are often required.

All faculty, staff, and students teaching or conducting research on non-human vertebrates must review this page.

About IACUC

The IACUC is appointed by the Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs (PVPAA) and has broad regulatory and advisory authority with respect to proper care of animals used for research and teaching. The PVPAA also appoints the Chair. The IACUC is charged with developing guidelines that ensure faculty, staff, and students comply with federal and state guidelines and generally accepted best practices concerning the use of animals in research and teaching. The IACUC consists of one faculty member from each of ABAC’s four schools, one internal member at-large (faculty or staff), and two external members at-large, one of whom is a veterinarian. 

2021-2022 IACUC Members

Chair: Dr. Vanessa Lane 
School of Agriculture and Natural Resources Representative: Dr. Vanessa Lane 
School of Arts and Sciences Representative: Dr. Ben Gahagen 
School of Nursing and Health Sciences Representative: Debra Owings 
Stafford School of Business Representative: Dr. Ryan Currie
Internal Member at Large: Mr. Trey Davis 
External Member at Large: Mr. Justin Hand (Tift County Extension Agent) 
External Member at Large: Dr. Lee Jones (Veterinarian) 

Animal research under Public Health Service Policy is defined as follows: “Research conducted on any live, vertebrate animal used or intended for use in research, research training, experimentation, or biological testing or for related purposes. A study that entails the eggs and embryos of vertebrates are not covered until those eggs hatch. However, the larval forms of fish and amphibians are covered.”

Animal research under the Animal Welfare Act is defined as follows:
“The term ‘animal’ means any live or dead dog, cat, monkey (nonhuman primate mammal), guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm-blooded animal, as the Secretary may determine is being used, or is intended for use, for research, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes, or as a pet; but such term excludes (1) birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for use in research, (2) horses not used for research purposes, and (3) other farm animals, such as, but not limited to livestock or poultry, used or intended for use as food or fiber, or livestock or poultry used or intended for use for improving animal nutrition, breeding, management, or production efficiency, or for improving the quality of food or fiber. With respect to a dog, the term means all dogs including those used for hunting, security, or breeding purposes.”

Application and Approval Process

Step 1

All faculty, staff, and students planning to do animal research as defined above, must first complete online CITI training. At a minimum, you must take the “Working with the IACUC” module. If taxa-specific training exists (i.e. “Wildlife” or “Birds”), you must also take that/those module(s) if relevant to your project. Your application will not be reviewed until all project investigators (including students who are primary investigators, temporary volunteers are excluded) have completed their CITI training certificates. CITI training certificates must be renewed every two years, take approximately two hours to complete, and must be submitted to the IACUC Chair via email upon submission of an IACUC application. 

Instructions for CITI training are below:

• Go to www.citiprogram.org
•  Click “Register”
• Choose Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College under “Select Your Organization Affiliation”
• Check the box for “I AGREE”
• Click “Add a Course” in the box “Learner Tools for ABAC”
• There will be 7 main questions. For IACUC applications, scroll down to Question 5
• Take the mandatory “Working with the IACUC” course.
  Examine the taxa-specific training available and check the box(es) relevant to your project
• Under Question 7, you must choose yes or no for the Conflicts of Interest Course. This is recommended but not required for IACUC applications
• Click Submit

You should be automatically redirected to a page listing the courses you just enrolled in. Take each course and save your course certificate upon completion. You need to submit your course certificate(s) with your IACUC application by emailing them to the IACUC chair.

Step 2

Review the following documents if relevant to your study organism(s) and be prepared to justify your research project and methodology using these citations:

• Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, 8th Edition
• Guidelines of the American Society of Mammalogists for the use of Wild Mammals in Research
• Guidelines to the Use of Wild Birds in Research
• Guidelines for the Use of Live Amphibians and Reptiles in Research
• Guidelines for the Use of Fishes in Research

Complete your IACUC application for review. The research and teaching applications are included below as Word documents. Be aware that even if your project is not planning to harm any animals, you must plan for a worst-case scenario and have a plan in place for the safety of the researchers and the animals themselves.

Research applications expire one year from approval and renewal is not automatic; you must resubmit your application as a new document. Teaching applications expire three years from approval. If changes to any protocol must be made (including personnel changes, such as long-term undergraduate research projects), please fill out the Change in Protocol form, available below. Please note that changes to protocol do not extend the expiration date of that protocol.

IACUC will not accept or review applications that will require living laboratory rats and mice to be housed on campus. Please use invertebrate surrogates when and where possible, especially for genetics studies (i.e., Drosophila spp. have been used for decades successfully). If you are using purchased, dead specimens for dissection, no IACUC review is necessary. However, if you are pithing live animals to study living tissues (commonly done with frogs), IACUC review is necessary. Studies that confine vertebrates for longer than 12 hours in captivity may be reviewed but must be thoroughly justified by the researcher and appropriate housing must be ready and available before any vertebrate is purchased or captured. Proof of additional state and/or federal permits will also be requested during IACUC review if relevant.

If you have questions while completing the application, contact Dr. Vanessa Lane, IACUC Chair.