Most people considered Dr. John Ballantine to be a seasoned swine veterinarian, set in his ways and not afraid to speak his mind. Some people called him crusty. Others weren't so kind. But one thing people did agree on: he knew pig medicine and surgery. So, it wasn't surprising that Conquer Pharmaceuticals hired Ballantine as the consulting swine veterinarian at its new midwestern research facility.
Ballantine was given copies of the Animal Welfare Act regulations1 and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals2 (the Guide), even though Conquer did not have an NIH Assurance. Much to the surprise of some people, he read pertinent sections of the guidelines and seemed to understand how research animal care can differ from farm animal care. All went well until Ballantine needed to castrate piglets for an IACUC-approved study. Rather than follow the IACUC protocol by providing a local anesthetic to the 2-week-old piglets before the castration procedure, Ballantine castrated them as he had done on farms: he used a scalpel blade to cut the scrotum and then pulled out the testicles. When the farm manager learned what had happened, he immediately notified the IACUC and asked Ballantine why he had not followed the protocol.
“What protocol?” said Ballantine. “Was that from a meeting I missed? “You told me the piglets had to be castrated when they were 2 weeks old, so I castrated them. You didn't tell me they were part of some study. If you wanted me to use an anesthetic you should have said so. Anyway, that Guide book you gave me says that castration is a routine minor surgical procedure that usually doesn't cause much pain2 and I agree with that. So why would I inject into the scrotum and cause more pain to the animal?”
The IACUC met to discuss the incident and subsequently notified the USDA, although the vote to do so was not unanimous. One member, who raised pigs on his own farm, referenced the position statement of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC), which states that the IACUC, the principal investigator and the veterinarian should use a performance approach to determine whether agricultural or research standards should apply to a study (http://www.aaalac.org/accreditation/positionstatements.cfm#ag). This member believed that Ballantine had used the correct standard. The IACUC was aware of the AAALAC position statement and the passage from the Guide that Ballantine had quoted, but most committee members interpreted these statements differently, understanding that the approved protocol had not been followed and that this was a reportable incident.
How do you interpret the AAALAC and Guide statements? Do you think Ballantine's typical farm method of castration was humane?
References
Animal Welfare Act Regulations. 9 CFR, Chapter 1, Subchapter A, Parts 1–3.
Institute for Laboratory Animal Research. Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals 8th edn. (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2011).
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Silverman, J. Using farm techniques for agricultural species. Lab Anim 43, 193 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban.539
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/laban.539
