Control of SPF Conditions: FELASA Standards

Only experimental animals of a good microbiological quality will give any kind of guarantee of an experiment undisturbed by health hazards. It is for this reason that so-called (specific pathogen free) SPF animals are used for animal experiments. Certain requirements are necessary to maintain the desired SPF organism. Physical barriers together with appropriate operating methods aim at preventing contamination with pathogens and penetration by wild rodents. As a consequence, barrier units are not easily accessible for personnel, which is sometimes considered a disadvantage by experimenters. Finally, monitoring programs help to detect and control potential sources of contamination and may therefore be of crucial importance for the management of a facility housing animals of a good microbiological quality. The main purpose of health monitoring is to detect or prevent infections, which might influence physiological characteristics of animals or their health. Appropriate health monitoring helps to avoid imprecise results and allows all the experiments necessary to be carried out with a minimum number of animal. It is found that sufficient number of animals have to be monitored to obtain relevant information on a given population. It is important that the monitoring must be performed on a regular basis to detect unwanted microorganisms in good time. The recommended frequency is every 12 week.