Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A dairy-cattle feeding trial evaluating a new ration's effect on milk yield and herd health is an agricultural-purpose study on a covered species -- reviewed against the Ag Guide.
- Is an instance
The same swine species used as a translational biomedical model to test a cardiac device is reviewed under the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals instead, because the purpose is biomedical, not agricultural.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Purpose-bred laboratory mice used to study a nutritional supplement are not covered by the Ag Guide despite the agricultural framing of the research question -- mice are not an agricultural species within the Ag Guide's scope, and the work falls under the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and PHS Policy instead.
Editorial commentary
The Ag Guide — formally the Guide for the Care and Use of Agricultural Animals in Research and Teaching — is the primary US reference standard for the humane care and use of livestock, poultry, and other agricultural species used in agricultural research and teaching contexts. It is published by the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS), jointly on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association (ADSA), the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), and the Poultry Science Association (PSA). It is functionally the agricultural-species counterpart to the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the “Guide”), and the two are frequently confused because they share nearly identical titles and both govern research animal welfare — but they apply to different research contexts, not simply different species.
Operational definition
An institution is expected to follow the Ag Guide, rather than (or alongside) the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, when agricultural animals — cattle, swine, sheep, goats, poultry, horses, and other livestock or food/fiber species — are used in a study whose purpose is agricultural: for example, research or teaching intended to improve animal nutrition, breeding, management, production efficiency, or food/fiber quality. The determining factor is the purpose and context of the work, not the species alone: the same species (swine, for instance) used in an agricultural-production study follows the Ag Guide, while that same species used in a biomedical study (e.g., a cardiovascular-device trial using a pig as a human-relevant model) typically follows the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals instead. Some institutions with both kinds of programs apply both standards side by side, assigning the applicable document at the protocol level based on the study’s aims.
Publisher, editions, and structure
The Ag Guide has been revised roughly once a decade since it was first published in 1988, with subsequent editions in 1999, 2010, and the current 4th edition, published in 2020. Each revision has been produced under FASS’s umbrella with joint authorship from ADSA, ASAS, and PSA, reflecting the document’s coverage of dairy and beef cattle, swine, sheep and goats, and poultry alongside other agricultural species.
The 4th edition is organized into subject-oriented chapters (covering topics common to all agricultural species, such as the animal care and use program, the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee’s role, personnel qualifications, husbandry, and environmental enrichment) followed by species-specific chapters addressing the distinct housing, handling, and management needs of each major agricultural species group.
How it is enforced
Like the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, the Ag Guide has no independent statutory basis of its own — it becomes binding through the institutional and accreditation mechanisms that reference it, not through a standalone federal regulation:
- Fills a gap left by the Animal Welfare Act (AWA): the AWA’s statutory definition of “animal” (7 U.S.C. §2132(g)) explicitly excludes farm animals (livestock and poultry) used for food, fiber, or agricultural-production-improvement purposes, so USDA/APHIS inspection under the AWA generally does not reach agricultural-research use of these species. The Ag Guide is the field’s own answer to that regulatory gap — a peer-developed welfare standard for exactly the population the AWA does not cover.
- One of AAALAC International’s Three Primary Standards: AAALAC International, the voluntary peer-review accreditor for animal research programs, evaluates agricultural-animal programs against the Ag Guide (alongside the Guide, used for most laboratory species, and the European Convention ETS 123, used outside North America). An institution seeking or maintaining AAALAC accreditation for an agricultural-animal program is assessed against the Ag Guide’s standards directly.
- Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) oversight: institutions that receive PHS/NIH funding for agricultural research route that work through IACUC protocol review under PHS Policy, the same way biomedical animal work is reviewed — PHS Policy’s baseline reference document is the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, but institutions running agricultural-research programs commonly adopt the Ag Guide as the applicable husbandry and management standard for that specific population, consistent with how OLAW and AAALAC both recognize the Ag Guide as the field-appropriate reference for agricultural species and purposes. Institutions should confirm the applicable standard for a given protocol with their own IACUC office and OLAW Assurance, since the exact mix of standards an institution applies is set at the institutional level.
Worked examples
Example 1 — clearly an Ag Guide case: A university animal-science department runs a feeding-trial study on dairy cattle to evaluate a new ration formulation’s effect on milk yield and herd health. The purpose is agricultural (production efficiency and animal nutrition), the species is a covered agricultural species, and the AWA does not reach this use — the Ag Guide is the applicable husbandry and welfare standard, and the institution’s IACUC reviews the protocol against it.
Example 2 — the same species, a different standard: A biomedical research center uses domestic swine as a translational model to test a novel cardiac stent before human trials. Even though swine are also a covered agricultural species, the purpose here is biomedical device development, not agricultural production — this protocol is reviewed against the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, not the Ag Guide.
Counter-example
A protocol proposing to use purpose-bred laboratory mice to study a nutritional supplement, described loosely as “agricultural nutrition research,” would not fall under the Ag Guide despite the agricultural framing of the research question — mice are not an agricultural species covered by the Ag Guide’s scope, and this work would instead be reviewed under the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and PHS Policy, since purpose-bred mice are themselves excluded from AWA coverage on separate grounds.
Related terms
See also Animal Welfare Act (AWA), PHS Policy, AAALAC International, IACUC, Research Animal, 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement), and CASRAI’s guide to the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and IACUC Training.
References
- Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS), Guide for the Care and Use of Agricultural Animals in Research and Teaching, 4th edition (2020).
- American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), “Ag Guide” program page, asas.org/services/ag-guide.
- AAALAC International, “The Three Primary Standards,” aaalac.org.
- Animal Welfare Act, 7 U.S.C. §§2131–2159, definition of “animal” at 7 U.S.C. §2132(g).
- PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare).
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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