Projects involving Vertebrate Animals

DEFINITION:  Ver­te­brate ani­mals, as cov­ered by these rules, includes all live, non-human ver­te­brate, non-human mam­malian embryos or fetus­es, bird and rep­tile eggs with­in three days (72 hours) of hatch­ing and all oth­er non-human ver­te­brates at hatch­ing or birth.  Any project involv­ing ver­te­brate ani­mals must have clear­ly defined objec­tives requir­ing the use of ani­mals to demon­strate a bio­log­i­cal prin­ci­ple or answer a spe­cif­ic sci­en­tif­ic proposition.

ALL projects involv­ing research with ver­te­brate ani­mals must be pre-approved by the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Sci­ence Review Com­mit­tee (SRC) before exper­i­men­ta­tion is begun. Any stu­dent research involv­ing ani­mals must com­ply with the require­ments of the State of Cal­i­for­nia Edu­ca­tion Code Title 2, Divi­sion 2, Part 28, Chap­ter 4, Arti­cle 5, 51540.

Research that NEEDS NO PRE-APPROVAL

The use of Pro­tista and oth­er inver­te­brates is encour­aged for most research involv­ing ani­mals and NEEDS NO PRE-APPROVAL.

Pro­hib­it­ed Research:

ln the pub­lic ele­men­tary and high schools or in pub­lic ele­men­tary and high school spon­sored activ­i­ties and class­es held else­where than on school premis­es, live ver­te­brate ani­mals shall not, as part of a sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ment or any pur­pose whatever: 

    • Be exper­i­men­tal­ly med­icat­ed or drugged in a man­ner to cause a painful reac­tion or induce painful or lethal patho­log­i­cal conditions.
    • Be injured through any oth­er treat­ments, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, anes­theti­za­tion or elec­tric shock.
  • Be involved in induced tox­i­c­i­ty stud­ies such as those using alco­hol, acid rain, insec­ti­cide, her­bi­cide, heavy met­als, cos­met­ics, clean­ing prod­ucts, etc.
  • Be exposed to behav­ioral exper­i­ments involv­ing oper­ant con­di­tion­ing with aver­sive stim­uli mother/infant sep­a­ra­tion or induced helplessness.
  • Predator/prey exper­i­ments where one ani­mal is delib­er­ate­ly being encour­aged to hunt and eat anoth­er ani­mal, with the excep­tion of behav­ioral obser­va­tions in the wild.

Stu­dents will NOT be involved in the sac­ri­fice or euthana­sia of a liv­ing ver­te­brate or cause pain, for what­ev­er rea­son, to a ver­te­brate animal.

HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS

Live ani­mals on the premis­es of a pub­lic ele­men­tary or high school shall be housed and cared for in a humane and safe manner. 

Show evi­dence of a prop­er CA State Fish and Wildlife Col­lect­ing per­mit for col­lect­ing wild vertebrates.

Below are the resources need­ed for Research involv­ing Ver­te­brate Animals:

Ver­te­brate Ani­mals Online Pre-Approval tem­plate  (This a fil­l­able PDF. Please down­load this doc­u­ment to your device and enter your respons­es in the giv­en box­es. You do not need to com­plete the form in one sit­ting. Choose Save to save your progress. Once you com­plete the form, get it approved by your adult super­vi­sor and site coor­di­na­tor BEFORE you go online to com­plete the online pre-approval form. You can then copy and paste your respons­es in the appro­pri­ate sec­tions of the online form.)

In addi­tion, Senior Divi­sion stu­dents work­ing with human sub­jects need to com­plete the ISEF Human Informed Con­sent form and bring it to the fair.