Share thisSimplify Processes and Reduce Biosecurity Risk at Your Facility
Animal facilities share a common goal of delivering a clean fresh cage at every cage change. Central to this process is material management; caging, bedding, water, feed, and other supplies. It is critical that clean, fresh cages with uncontaminated bedding are always available when the cages require changing. This is an on-going and demanding cycle. This is all done within a well-defined workflow that is governed by standard operating procedures (SOPs) designed to minimize the risk of cross-contamination and maintain a safe workplace for the staff. Any simplification of this process accrues meaningful benefits by removing opportunities for breaches in SOPs and thereby minimizing risk.
Disposable caging has been rapidly adopted around the world at facilities of all sizes as an improvement over washing and sterilizing cages on site. Driving this adoption is the desire by institutions to simplify operations, standardize cage change protocols and reduce the burden on animal care staff.
Disposable cages streamline vivarium processes by eliminating the trafficking and processing of soiled cages. This simplification of process and material flow means a smaller, less complicated facility layout, an easier operation to manage, and an improvement in biosecurity. A comparison of the processes and material flows between a traditional and a disposable caging facility reveals, step-by-step, how clean and soiled cages are managed.
Reduce Work, Reduce Risk
The process/flow chart diagram (Figure 1) illustrates the reduction in process steps when one makes the switch from a traditional vivarium to one that runs on disposable cages.
This reduction is meaningful for many reasons. First, there is significantly less work to be performed so less labor is required, training is easier, and the facility is simpler to manage. It is not uncommon for a facility to reduce their husbandry and cage processing labor by as much as 75%. Second, the simplified operation results in fewer opportunities for a breach in the process, improving the biosecurity profile of a facility. Facilities utilizing disposable cages can eliminate cage washing, sterilizing, cage bedding, and cage dumping activities. Eliminating these key “dirty material” processing steps relieves the operation of the highest risk activities by reducing the ability of pathogens to permeate the facility and cross contaminate the larger colony.
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