Health Delivery and Quality Assurance Programs for Mice

This chapter covers health care delivery for individual mice, quality assurance (QA) programs for research colonies of mice, and infectious outbreak sources and management. Comprehensive health care must be provided in all of these areas to be effective. An unwanted infectious agent that does not cause clinically evident signs could still have a major adverse impact on research results if allowed to disseminate. As a result, the program for providing health care must include detection and care of individual mice that are ill, routine colony surveillance to guard against the undetected entry and spread of previously excluded infectious agents, and a response plan if such agents are detected. Such programs result in humane care of animals and the best protection of experimental repeatability and validity. As infectious agents, detection and treatment methods, and the research environment evolve, the veterinary and husbandry staff caring for research animals must strive to keep themselves educated and informed. Animal health and QA programs are not static but are always a work in progress and must also evolve in response to the challenges and needs of the research community.