Locked doors can be a hassle. You need to remember your fob and if you are lucky enough to remember it, you then need to use it while juggling the pile of items you are carrying with you. It can be annoying! So, why do we lock the doors in the BSF?
Ultimately, the locked doors are there to protect the animals and provide the BSF staff and the researchers the peace of mind knowing that we can work in a secure environment.
The animals in the facility are our valuable research animals. They are a life and on top of that, we have invested part of our lives into caring for them and incorporating them into our research experiments. The locked doors help us do that. Here are a few scenarios how the locked doors do that:
- The locked doors prevent people who don’t know the BSF procedures from entering. All new BSF and CBTC users must first undergo an orientation with the BSF director, Christine McCaul. In this orientation, Christine outlines the personal protective equipment (PPE) and the work flow within the BSF. If someone enters without this orientation, they may, for example, walk into the dirty cage area and then into the clean cage area, thereby contaminating the clean cage area. Or, they may walk in from the alley, where they accidentally stepped in wild rat feces, and walk into a colony room without PPE, thereby exposing the animals to the pathogens in the wild rat feces.
- The locked doors prevent theft or damage to the animals or property.
- The locked doors minimize the amount of people walking around the facility which provides a quieter and more stable environment for our research animals.
For these reasons, do not prop the doors open or allow people to “piggyback” in behind you. If someone you don’t know asks you to open the doors for them, politely tell them you are not allowed to or make an excuse such as, “I don’t have access to that area.”
Do you have more questions about the security in the BSF? If so, reach out to one of the BSF staff members.