Research & Accreditation

AAALAC International runs a voluntary, performance-based accreditation program for institutions that house and use laboratory animals. Assessment teams evaluate veterinary care, housing, enrichment and institutional oversight on-site, against international guidelines and national law, on a recurring cycle. Used across dozens of countries, it is treated as the global gold standard for laboratory-animal care.

Mexico’s official standard (Norma Oficial Mexicana) for the production, care and use of laboratory animals, which expressly reaches dogs and other carnivores. A mandatory technical standard issued under federal animal-health law, it requires each facility to run an internal committee for the care and use of laboratory animals, and sets conditions for the facility, housing, welfare and humane euthanasia.

The national standards for animals in science in Canada, including dogs, set by the Canadian Council on Animal Care. Its Guide and guidelines cover housing, care, humane treatment and the work of institutional animal care committees. Institutions that use animals in research, teaching or testing are assessed by expert panels and certified, and that certification is in practice a condition of public research funding.

ISO/IEC 17065 is the international standard that certification bodies must meet in order to certify products, processes and services credibly. It demands demonstrable competence, structural impartiality, freedom from conflicts of interest and a proper appeals process. In effect it is the dividing line between a body qualified to issue meaningful certificates and one simply awarding its own badge.

Bodies such as UKAS in the United Kingdom and ANAB in the United States are the national authorities that accredit certification bodies and hold them to standards like ISO/IEC 17065. They do not certify dogs, hotels or breeders themselves; they vouch for the organizations that do. This is the top of the chain that turns a certificate into something an owner, a regulator or a court can rely on.

This Act controls the use of animals, including dogs, in scientific research in the UK. It operates a triple-licensing system for the researcher, the project and the establishment, and requires a harm-benefit assessment justifying any potential suffering before work can proceed. Enforced by Home Office inspectors, it is widely regarded as among the most stringent laboratory-animal regimes anywhere in the world.

Brazil’s federal law on the scientific use of animals, including dogs, in teaching and research, known as the Lei Arouca. It created the national council CONCEA to set the rules and accredit institutions, and requires every institution to run an ethics committee that reviews and approves protocols and the conditions in which animals are housed and used, replacing a much older statute from 1979.