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The peer-reviewed journal Science recently published an article about the lack of Animal Welfare Act (AWA) oversight in laboratories by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). The agency is trying to manage with fewer inspectors, who visit facilities to check for AWA compliance, but are doing so with a sizable increase in the number of regulated facilities. Thanks to an AAVS lawsuit, APHIS is also now responsible for an additional class of animals newly covered under the AWA (63,000 birds used in research alone), and a Supreme Court decision has stopped APHIS from using fines to compel regulatory compliance. Eric Kleiman, AAVS's Senior Policy Advisor, told Science that “APHIS’s current challenges are a recipe for disaster for any agency, even one with the best record of enforcement. What we’re seeing now is a turbocharging of trends we’ve been seeing for decades.” AAVS is concerned that APHIS will try to fill the void by relying on third-party organizations like the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC), a voluntary research accreditation program that has no legal authority if an animal welfare violation is uncovered at a facility. Kleiman’s analysis found that just 42% of all inspected lab facilities are accredited by AAALAC but that they make up 73% of those cited with critical or direct AWA violations. AAALAC had also accredited Envigo, a dog breeding facility where 4,000 beagles were removed due to gross violations of the AWA, following an investigation by the Department of Justice. While AAALAC did not respond to requests by Science for comment, a representative at the pro-animal research group Americans for Medical Progress admitted that AAALAC accreditation is “not a magic guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong.” However, a former APHIS administrator who worked at the agency for more than four decades, Kevin Shea, is not so callous about the seriousness of this situation. “It’s the most challenging time I’ve ever seen for animal care,” he told Science. If APHIS can’t do its job, he said, “animals will suffer.”
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