Transportation of Laboratory Animals: Proceedings of a Workshop (2017)
Chapter: 8 Interactive Sessions
8
Interactive Sessions
During two interactive sessions at the workshop, David Kurtz, head of the Quality Assurance Laboratory, Comparative Medicine Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), led the attendees in exercises designed to engage the audience in thinking about appropriate journey planning to support animal welfare during transportation. In the process, Kurtz derived a list of tasks individuals need to complete before transporting animals, including the questions and issues listed in Box 8-1.
After walking attendees through a hypothetical shipping scenario and pointing out how complex such a scenario can be, Kurtz gave attendees a quiz, asking how they might proceed under different situations. In a manner similar to the interactive session that led off the workshop, this session allowed participation of on- and off-site attendees by means of Poll Everywhere. A sampling of the questions is below:
- A new investigator is moving to your institution in Alabama from Canada and would like to bring his colony of 10 cynomolgus macaques with him. What is the first document that you should obtain for this shipment?
- An airway bill?
- A CITES permit?
- A packing list?
- An animal health certificate?
- Can these animals be shipped directly from Toronto into Alabama?
- Following a routine 31-day quarantine, the animals were released by CDC and FWS and are now en route to Alabama, 2 hours away. Midway along the route, however, you get a call from the truck driver. The truck has overheated and cannot continue. What should the driver do first?
- Call for a tow to a local garage?
- Pull into a parking lot and go to lunch?
- Pull over to the side of the highway, check the animals, and call you, the consignee?
- Pull off the highway to a discrete location, check the animals, and call his dispatcher?1
Kurtz ran through a number of other scenarios, explaining that this exercise was meant to illustrate the need to anticipate the unexpected. “Things will happen,” he said. “Even though we plan as best as we can, we need to be prepared to act if something new arises.”
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1 Answers:
1. Get the CITES permit first, because it takes a minimum of 90 days to process.
2. No, these animals cannot go directly to Alabama. Unless special permission is obtained from CDC and FWS, the animals must be imported through a designated FWS port. Furthermore, because they must be quarantined, they need to go to a CDC-approved quarantine site. Luckily Atlanta has both, so they can be sent to Georgia, traveling the rest of the way by ground.
3. Most people picked the last choice. It is a good idea, especially when transporting NHPs, to stop in a quiet, discrete location.
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