FACT SHEET - Pain and Distress Categories
Animal Welfare regulations define a painful procedure as “any procedure that would reasonably be expected to cause more than slight or momentary pain or distress in a human being to which that procedure is applied, that is, pain in excess of that caused by injections or other minor procedures” (9 CFR § 1.1).
If multiple categories may apply, you should report each animal only once in the category consistent with the greatest amount of pain or distress they experience
| USDA Category | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animals subjected to procedures that cause no pain or distress, or only momentary or slight pain or distress and do not require the use of pain- relieving drugs***** no clinical or health issues | Animals subjected to potentially painful or stressful procedures for which they receive appropriate anesthetics, analgesics and/or tranquilizer drugs [or nonpharmaceutical methods of relief] | Animals subjected to potentially painful or stressful procedures that are not relieved with anesthetics, analgesics and/or tranquilizer drugs [or nonpharmaceutical methods of relief]. Withholding anesthesia/analgesia [or other form of relief] must be scientifically justified in writing and approved by the IACUC | |
| Husbandry Activities | |||
| Most basic husbandry activies such as breeding, holding, weighing, observations, ear notching/punching, injectable microchipping, point or automated tattooing, tail snips in mice ≤ 21 days old | x | ||
| Drug administration and blood/fluid collections | |||
| Most basic injections or oral administrations and blood or fluid collection techniques that incur none or only momentary pain/distress or restraint (manual or anesthetic) performed per approved UCSF SOP* | x | ||
| Retro-orbital injection and/or blood collection | x | ||
| Hydrodynamic delivery in anesthestized mice | x | x (if no anesthesia) | |
| Behavioral Assays and Tests | |||
| Non-invasive or low-impact tests such as voluntary locomotor, cognitive, and/or emotional tests (eg. open field, rotarod, spatial mazes, place, social, or food/fluid preference tests, elevated mazes). | x | ||
| Minimally invasive, escapable, or predictable aversive tests: passive avoidance with escapable shock, allodynia/hyperalgesia tests (e.g. hot plate, tail flick, Von Frey), Morris Water Maze, fear conditioning with escapable or predictable shocks | x | ||
| Forced or inescapable aversive stimuli testing (eg. tail suspension, forced swim, fear conditioning with inescapable or unpredictable shocks, sleep deprivation, resident/intruder assays, chronic unpredictable mild stress, forced excercise) | x | ||
| Euthanasia | |||
| Euthanasia followed by postmortem physical verification (per UCSF Policy***) | x | ||
| Surgery | |||
| Non-survival surgeries (including perfusions), major or minor survival surgeries with potential pain/distress treated with vet-reccommended intra- and post- operative analgesia | x | ||
| Major or minor survival surgeries, as described above, where potential pain/distress is NOT treated per vet-reccommendation | x | ||
| Induced disease models | |||
| Genetically engineered and/or chemically and/or surgically induced models with no clinical phenotype and/or a phentotype that does not cause pain and/or distress | x | ||
| Genetically engineered and/or chemically and/or surgically induced phenotype that causes pain or distress (eg. Hindlimb ischemia, EAE, stroke, LPS, bleomycin) that will NOT be alleviated at first appearance of pain and/or distress (eg. hunched posture, BCS = or < than 2...). | x | ||
| Genetically engineered and/or chemically and/or surgically induced phenotype that causes pain and/or distress (eg. Hindlimb ischemia, EAE, stroke, LPS, bleomycin) that IS alleviated at first appearance of pain and/or distress (eg. hunched posture, BCS = or < than 2...). | x | ||
| Behavioral models of depression or anxiety induced by aversive stimuli (eg. Environmental or social) | x | ||
| Tumors | |||
| non-surgically induced or spontaneous tumors within UCSF guideline** endpoints (depending on the model) | x | x | |
| induced or spontaneous tumors >2cm in any direction, ulceration, or models affecting normal function or causing unaleviated pain or distress | x | ||
| Environmental factors | |||
| Environmental conditions outside of the standard of care | x | x (extreme models (eg. hypoxia, cold...)) | |
| Absence of environmental enrichment (based on duration and model as described in the Environmental Enrichment and Social Housing Policy*** | x | x | |
| Momentary restraint | x | ||
| Prolonged restraint within parameters described in IACUC office Fact Sheet**** (eg. duration, acclimation, criteria for removal...) | x | ||
| Food regulation | |||
| meeting criteria of standard of care (per SOP*) | x | ||
| outside of standard of care (per SOP*) | x | ||
| Fluid regulation | |||
| meeting criteria of standard of care (per SOP*) | x | ||
| outside of standard of care (per SOP*) | x |