The USDA is opening a 60-day comment period on potential updates to the license requirements under animal-welfare laws for people who breed, sell, or exhibit animals for commercial purposes. At the same time, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) says the USDA’s new “search tool” for accessing animal-abuse records “is still virtually unusable in many cases” because the names and addresses of violators are blacked out.
Early this year, the USDA was criticized for removing thousands of files on investigations of animal-welfare complaints from its website. The agency said it had acted to preserve privacy rights and that the documents could be requested under freedom of information laws. Last week, it announced the new search tool and told groups, including the HSUS, that it had put additional animal-welfare inspection data on its site. HSUS chief Wayne Pacelle said the limited material on the website “still makes it impossible for the public, animal-welfare organizations, or businesses that use and sell animals from regulated facilities to know who the worst animal-welfare violators are or whether the USDA is enforcing federal laws as it should.”
Some 6,000 licenses are issued annually under the Animal Welfare Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on Aug. 24, 1966. The USDA oversees the treatment of warm-blooded animals that are exhibited in public, such as circus animals, as well as those that are bred for commercial sale, used in medical research, or transported commercially.
The USDA said it would consider changes in the licensing rules to promote “sustained compliance” with animal-welfare rules, to reduce license fees, and to strengthen safeguards to keep unfit operators from obtaining licenses or working with animals. Options include the expiration of licenses after three to five years, and requiring applicants to show they are complying with the law before they can get a new license.
To read the Federal Register notice on licenses, click here.