EAC Experimental Animal Center

ABOUT EAC

Background to the Experimental Animal Center

The veterinarian of today is required to manage infection and food safety risks accompanying the increased global movement of people, flora and fauna, and food products.
For veterinarians to be able to deal with these issues, they need to go through a training program that endows them with internationally transferable skills. To establish such a program, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology took an initiative to set up collaborative veterinary education meeting global standards across the vet schools at four national universities through 2012 to 2019.
Kagoshima University’s Experimental Animal Center (EAC) was established as one part of that initiative, on September 1, 2015.
The EAC has a wide remit: the animals involved range from small laboratory animals to patients receiving veterinary treatment, and it enables education and research from basic concepts to clinical application.

The EAC’s Program for Animal Care and Use aims to ensure that such use is conducted in accordance with relevant global standards giving full consideration to animal welfare.

EAC Overview

The EAC consists of six stories, with housing for large, medium, and small animals and teaching laboratories on the first to fourth floors. The small animal rooms are compliant with Animal Biosafety Level 2 (ABSL-2), and the EAC has the capability to act as education and training hub for production animal clinical practice and animal hygiene. The fifth and sixth floors are equipped with experimental laboratories and seminar rooms, thus forming a practical research environment.

【 Floor-by-floor Configuration 】

1^st Floor:

A production animal training area that has capacity for establishing four treatment stalls, with animal housing rooms.
The layout comprises anterooms and teaching laboratories equipped with medical gas supply and anesthetic gas-scavenging devices.
Facilities on this floor allow hands-on training on production animal clinical practice for small-groups.

2^nd Floor:

Housing rooms for dogs, cats, swine, and poultry
Outdoor Dog Run
Equipment and facilities enable animal room usage and animal welfare-based husbandry.

3^rd Floor:

Small and medium animal teaching laboratories
An X-radiography suite is adjacent to the medium-sized animal teaching laboratory.

4^th Floor:

Small animal housing rooms for mice, rats, rabbits and ABSL2-capable animal housing for infection experiments.

1^st Floor : A production animal training area

2^nd Floor : Outdoor Dog Run

3^rd Floor : Small animal teaching laboratory

3^rd Floor : Medium animal teaching laboratory

Full Accreditation by AAALAC International

The EAC is part of Kagoshima University’s Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, and its Animal Care and Use Program received full accreditation from AAALAC International on June 9, 2017.

AAALAC International

AAALAC International is a private, a nonprofit organization that promotes the humane treatment of animals in animal testing and is the only international accreditation and assessment body that verifies the appropriateness of animal testing through voluntary accreditation process.

Full accreditation confirms that the use of animals in a research program and/or research activities meets international standards and that the relevant institution (the EAC) has achieved excellence in animal care and use based on animal welfare.

In the News

“Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine Seeks Alternatives to Animal Testing for Training”

Featured in Minami-Nippon Shimbun newspaper, May 9th, 2018

—Kagoshima University and Yamaguchi University

　Veterinary Schools in Japan are making progress on initiatives for Humane Veterinary Education—training which avoids the use of live animals. Influenced by trends in global thinking that any harm to animals should be avoided whenever possible on welfare grounds, the Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Kagoshima and Yamaguchi Universities is developing simulation-based study and research, and making efforts to track the relevant centers of excellence in veterinary research and education overseas.

“Expand Simulation-based Training and Reduce Harm to Animals”

　Previously, vet school found the use of live animals indispensable for research and training on animal treatment and surgery. However, research involving stress or pain and discomfort for animals is losing credibility in the eyes of the global community.
Kagoshima University has introduced veterinary simulators to replace live cattle and swine in hands-on training for students in an effort to reduce the number of dissections. Furthermore, the environment for laboratory animals was found to be well managed when the university’s vet school was given full accreditation by AAALAC International in 2017.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Experimental Animal Center (EAC)
Joint Faculty Veterinary Medicine, Kagoshima University
1-21-24 Korimoto, Kagoshima City,
KAGOSHIMA 890-0065 JAPAN

Hours: Mon-Fri, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. JST (EAC Office)
Phone&Fax: 099-285-7697

E-mail: veteac-office@vet.kagoshima-u.ac.jp (For facility use)
veteac-tech@vet.kagoshima-u.ac.jp (For lab equipment and device use)

Experimental Animal Center

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