WATERLOO, Ont. -- When MGI Packers recently closed its beef slaughterhouse in Kitchener after a deal to sell the company fell through, the shutdown affected more than the 350 plant employees.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo's School of Optometry were temporarily left without a source of cattle eyes which have been provided by the company for nearly 10 years. The school has since found a new supplier: Better Beef Ltd., of Guelph.

But while the search was on for a new supplier, the shutdown of the Kitchener company was "causing havoc" in laboratories, which use some 1,000 eyes a year for research, says Prof. Jake Sivak, dean of graduate studies and an optometry researcher.

The use of bovine eyes from slaughtered cattle is part of an ongoing effort to find a reliable replacement for the controversial Draize test, which uses live rabbits to study the impact of chemical irritants on the eye.

Researchers at the optometry school have developed an alternative process in which a scanning laser is used to quantify changes in the focusing ability of the cattle eye lens after a chemical is introduced.

"The short-term aim is to reduce use of the Draize test," says Sivak. While no alternative has yet been adopted, his process using bovine eyes is being used to perform preliminary screening of new products.

Finding a Draize substitute is the long-term goal, he adds, and research is now focused on demonstrating the effectiveness of the test on cattle eyes in an industrial setting and on its use with non-transparent products such as toothpaste and shampoo.

"Getting rid of the Draize is a difficult task," says Sivak. "It's still the recognized method of validating a new chemical product. Efforts have been made in Europe to outlaw the Draize, and in fact, it's a lousy test. It's subjective, and it only works if a substance is very damaging."

Animal rights activists have charged that the test is inhumane and causes needless pain and suffering to the rabbits.

Under an agreement with MGI, the optometry school paid a fee per eye for the packers to remove and refrigerate eyes from cattle.

Optometry researchers picked up the eyes with an hour or two following slaughter, and placed them in a special culture container in an incubator to keep them alive for testing.

With funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and industrial partners such as Bausch and Lomb, the cattle eyes are used not only to develop an alternative to the Draize eye irritation test, but also for research into the effects of ultraviolet light on cataract development and for contact lens solutions.

-30-

Release no. 192 -- November 23, 2000