Behavioral Testing in Rodents Given Food Additives

This chapter is devoted to an examination of the experimental procedures by which food additives have been tested for adverse behavioral effects in immature animals and a review of the results produced by these methods. The US Food and Drag Administration sponsorship took the form of a contract awarded to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation. A principal mission of the investigators was the need to design a testing procedure that was comprehensive, sensitive, and usable. For the tests of adult performance, the test battery matched the committee’s recommendations closely by the inclusion of rotorod, running wheel, open-field, appetitive position discrimination, and both active and passive avoidance testing. In the mid-1970s, the Japanese, British, and French governments revised their teratology and reproductive premarket safety assessment guidelines and included requirements for the evaluation of behavioral teratogenicity. The inclusion of additives in the diet obviously assumes the appropriateness of the oral route of administration.