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Toney v. Glickman |
Plaintiffs were in the business of selling animals to research facilities. The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that they had committed hundreds of violations of the Animal Welfare Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 2131 et seq. The ALH then imposed what was, to that point, the harshest sanction, $200,000, in the history of the Act. The Judicial Officer affirmed the ALJ's findings and denied the Plaintiffs' request to reopen the hearing for consideration of new evidence. While the 8th Circuit affirmed most of these findings, it held that the evidence did not support all of them. Accordingly, the court remanded the matter to the Department for redetermination of the sanction. The court also affirmed the Judicial Officer's refusal to reopen the hearing and denied the Plaintiffs' Request for Leave to Adduce Additional Evidence. The Plaintiffs were free, however, to seek leave to offer this additional evidence on remand to the extent it was relevant to the sanction. |
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THE PET THEFT ACT: CONGRESSIONAL INTENT PLOWED UNDER BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE |
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The Least of the Sentient Beings' and the Question of Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement |
The subjects of this article are biomedical research and animals. In raw percentage terms, the animals involved in experimentation are now overwhelmingly rats and mice, and, perhaps because they are rats and mice, they are used in large numbers, numbers in thousands and tens of thousands at some institutions. Legal, ethical, and practical accommodation to this fact on the ground presents a host of questions. There are questions of the cost of care. There are questions of the training of veterinarians, principal investigators, and laboratory personnel. With mice particularly, there are questions about the creation of conditions in an animal that do not yet exist, a future animal, by knocking out a gene and, as we say, "seeing what happens": new questions, really, that move us away from the traditional focus on the details of how an investigator treats a living animal. Then there are the central questions of weighing costs and benefits, of justification and the application of the three R's of reduction, refinement, and replacement, where it is not dogs or primates or marine mammals that are concerned, but rats and mice - for many, the least on the scale of concern for animals. Rats, mice, and birds have of course been recently exempted from the Animal Welfare Act. But that may be viewed as making the questions only that much more difficult, thrown back into the laps of researchers themselves and review boards, veterinarians, laboratory assistants, and university and corporate administrators, who for the moment can expect to have that much less outside guidance or mandate in deciding what to do. The overarching problem, which is how to think about rats and mice, not a new problem at all, but newly pressing. |
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The Animal Welfare Act at Fifty |
Part II summarizes the background of the law, its enactment, and its amendments; Part III discusses the species covered, or not covered, by the AWA; Part IV considers the effectiveness and necessity of current animal testing procedures in light of growing technological advancements; Part V compares laboratory testing in other countries; Part VI explores the fates of laboratory animals no longer needed by their facilities; and Part VII offers some recommendations for improvements to the AWA. |
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The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) |
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The Animal Welfare Act |
The Animal Welfare Act is a federal statute that directs the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture to "promulgate standards to govern the humane handling, care, treatment, and transportation of animals by dealers, research facilities, and exhibitors." This article summarizes the original 1966 act, all its amendments, and bills to amend it that are pending in the 109th Congress.
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Terranova v. United States Dep't of Agric. |
Petitioners seek review of a decision and order of the USDA/APHIS determining that they violated various provisions of the Animal Welfare Act (“AWA”) and its implementing regulations, imposing civil penalties, and revoking the exhibitor license granted to Terranova Enterprises, Inc. Petitioners were licensees who provide wild animals like tigers and monkeys for movies, circuses, and other entertainment. In 2015 and 2016, APHIS filed complaints against petitioners that they willfully violated multiple provisions of the AWA and knowingly violated a cease and desist order issued in 2011 to avoid future violations of the AWA. After consolidating the complaints, the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") found that petitioners willfully committed four violations, so the ALJ issued a cease and desist order, suspended petitioners' license for 30 days, and assessed a $10,000 penalty and an $11,550 civil penalty for failing to obey the prior cease and desist order. On appeal by both parties to the Judicial Officer of the USDA, petitioners' exhibitor license was revoked and the penalties were increased to $35,000 and $14,850, respectively. On appeal here to the Fifth Circuit, petitioners claim that the determinations of the Judicial Officer were not supported by substantial evidence and that she abused her discretion in revoking their exhibitor license. This court found there was sufficient evidence to support the violations, including failing to allow APHIS officials to conduct compliance investigations and inspections, faulty tiger enclosures, insufficient distance/barriers between tigers and the public, failure to make an environmental enrichment plan, and failings involving tiger enclosure and protection from inclement weather, among other things. With regard to petitioners' claim that the Judicial Officer abused her discretion in revoking the exhibitor license, this court court found that petitioners committed more than one willful violation of the AWA so revocation was not unwarranted or without justification. The court concluded that the USDA Secretary’s order was not arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law, and that it was supported by substantial evidence. Therefore, the court denied the petition for review. |
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Taub v. State of Maryland |
Maryland Court of Appeals held that animal-cruelty statute did not apply to researchers because there are certain normal human activities to which the infliction of pain to an animal is purely incidental and unavoidable.
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State v. DeFrancesco |
After the USDA went to the defendant’s house to perform a prelicense inspection for an Animal Welfare Act permit for a rabbit, the USDA discovered the defendant also kept a Bengal cat, a Jungle cat and a Bobcat on the premises; the USDA then notified the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) about the three cats. After the defendant’s attempt to sell the three cats, the DEP confiscated them and placed them in the care of an expert; the DEP also charged the defendant with three misdemeanor violations of General Statutes section 26-40a. After trial and appellate court determinations, the Connecticut Supreme Court found the three cats to be included on the list of prohibited felidae in General Statutes section 26-40a and found General Statutes section 26-40a did not violate Due Process.
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Slavin v. US |
Plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of the Animal Welfare Act after it created a regulation that prohibited the interstate or foreign commerce transport of birds that would be used in fighting ventures.
She argued that the regulators did not consider whether fighting ventures were legal in the state where the birds were being transported to.
However, the regulation was considered constitutional since under terms of section 2156(b), only the foreign and interstate transport of the birds was prohibited.
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