About EBSA17 - Course E -Animal facility operations

Course Instructors

Karen van der Meulen, University of Ghent/B
Piet Dierckx, Janssen R&D, Beerse/B

The pre-conference course on "Animal facility operations" aims at biosafety professionals that are or will be involved in activities with small and/or large animals at different containment level. The main driver of the course is the question how the interaction between animal, pathogen and experimental set-up affects biosafety and biosecurity.

During the course, there will be classroom presentations by the course instructors and extensive discussions of case studies in discussion groups. For the latter, all participants are requested to submit their case study related to biosafety in animal facilities maximum two weeks before the conference to karen.vandermeulen@ugent.be. A template for the case studies will be provided by the EBSA secretary upon registration for the course. Additionally, a visit is scheduled to the Veterinary Research Building at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University. This building will accommodate BSL2 and 3 laboratories and housing for large animals. It is currently under construction and will become operational early 2015.

At the end of the course, the participant should be able to:

• understand the impact of working with animals on biosafety (and biosecurity) management, including risk assessment and risk management,
• define the specific biorisks,
• understand and apply appropriate biosafety (and biosecurity) measures related to experimental set-up and procedures in animal studies, as outlined in CWA 16335:2011.

Main Topics:

Risk assessment in facilities with experimentally infected animals
How working with animals affects biosafety
Occupational health issues associated with the use of animals
Risk management in facilities with experimentally infected animals
Animal care and use
Housing and containment of experimentally infected animals