USDA animal welfare warnings dip
In 2016 they issued 192 warnings, and only 39 warnings in 2018
Two years ago, the Agriculture Department issued 192 written warnings to breeders, exhibitors and research labs that allegedly violated animal welfare laws, and the agency filed official complaints against 23, according to agency data.
This year, those figures plummeted: The department had issued just 39 warnings in the first three-quarters of fiscal 2018, and it filed and simultaneously settled only one complaint — with a $2,000 fine for an infamous Iowa dog breeder who had already been out of business for five years.
In August, USDA issued no warnings, filed no complaints and imposed no penalties through settlements with any of the 8,000 or so facilities it licenses and inspects under the federal Animal Welfare Act, according to documents obtained by an animal rights group.
The agency says the drop is the result of a suspension of hearings due to litigation, as well as a revamped enforcement process that emphasizes working more closely with alleged violators rather than a protracted investigative process that numerous internal audits have faulted for ineffectiveness.
But the result is less transparency into an increasingly opaque enforcement system. In two years, the agency’s records have gone from being publicly searchable online to often available only by Freedom of Information Act requests and in redacted form. And the enforcement changes, critics charge, favour regulated animal businesses while further eroding public accountability.
“It’s all part of this proindustry, anti-regulatory agenda,” said Eric Kleiman, a researcher who has tracked the USDA’s animal care enforcement for the Animal Welfare Institute, an advocacy organization.
“We’ve never seen this kind of attack on the fundamental tenets of the most basic precepts of a law that has enjoyed long-standing bipartisan and public support for over 50 years.”
USDA’s animal care division employs more than 100 inspectors who conduct surprise inspections at licensed facilities at least every one to three years. In addition to the Animal Welfare Act, it is also tasked with enforcing the Horse Protection Act, which bans painful “soring” practices used to encourage the high-stepping gait of Tennessee walking horses. Inspection and enforcement records were available to the public online for years — something the USDA itself had touted as a valuable deterrent .
The agency stopped posting enforcement records in August 2016, replacing them with a numerical summary of activities. In February 2017, it abruptly removed all animal welfare and horse protection records from its website, citing litigation — an apparent reference to a show horse lawsuit. That blackout was assailed by animal protection groups and Congress, as well as some regulated industries and prominent conservatives.
The agency later restored some records to its public database, many with heavy redactions. FOIA requests for others can take months or longer to be fulfilled.
But as the records became less visible, enforcement actions were also slowing. USDA judges began suspending all hearings over alleged animal welfare and horse protection violations in 2017 because of the potential impact of an unrelated Supreme Court case on the agency’s administrative law judges, Bernadette Juarez, deputy administrator of USDA’s animal care program, said in an interview.
Some enforcement activities continued, but at a much lower rate than in previous years. According to documents obtained in a FOIA request by the PETA Foundation, for example, USDA in March fined Delta Air Lines $10,000 for allowing a cat to escape its carrier and later die while in transport, and it sent an official warning to a dog breeder accused of 39 violations between 2014 and 2016, including giving a goat deworming product to canines.
But the agency says no administrative proceedings — complaints filed or hearings — took place between May 2017 and September of this year.
“The thing that’s pernicious about the drop in administrative complaints is that those are the ones that have the most deterrent value,” Kleiman said. “Those are the ones where USDA is trying to send a message not only to the respondent of the complaint, but to the general regulated community. To have this kind of drop says to the regulated community, we’re kind of on your side.”
The agency disputes that, saying it is committed to ensuring humane treatment of animals. Following a ruling in the Supreme Court case in June, Juarez said nine horse protection hearings have been scheduled before November 2019, and about a dozen other suspended cases must also be reheard by the agency’s two judges.
“We can’t rely on the enforcement process alone to achieve compliance,” Juarez said. “The entire goal here is to ensure compliance of all licensees as quickly as possible.”