The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is extremely disappointed by the revised meat and poultry guidelines released yesterday by the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
On February 3, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) abruptly removed from its website inspection reports and other key documents relating to enforcement of the Horse Protection Act (HPA) and the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).
Thomas Vilsack has returned as secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, a post he held previously during the Obama administration. Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, spent the past four years lobbying for the US dairy industry.
The US Department of Agriculture recently proposed new “routine uses” of records under the federal Privacy Act that determine disclosure of information outside the department. The USDA seems determined to make permanent the drastic limitations on the information it makes available to the public regarding the compliance history of licensees under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Horse Protection Act (HPA).
On November 4, 2014, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Administrator Kevin Shea filed a 10-page complaint alleging a plethora of willful violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) by Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. (SCBT), one of the world’s largest suppliers of research antibodies.
The US Department of Agriculture is making significant changes to the licensing requirements under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), and is increasing requirements for dogs at the premises of dealers, research facilities, and exhibitors. The final regulations, published in the Federal Register on May 13, will go into effect in November.
After the public outcry regarding the US Department of Agriculture’s scrubbing of inspection records and other important enforcement documents from its website, the department began to restore selected records online.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has filed a lawsuit against USDA for its failure to protect the public from antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella.
Today, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Farm Sanctuary sued the US Department of Agriculture in federal court for failing to require humane handling of poultry at slaughter, resulting in adulterated (i.e., damaged or contaminated) products that violate the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA).
An administrative hearing is underway with respect to allegations of Animal Welfare Act (AWA) violations leveled by the US Department of Agriculture against Moulton Chinchilla Ranch (MCR), a supplier of chinchillas for experimentation.
Imagine 3,000 dead chickens piled in a truck after a company failed to protect them from freezing conditions during transport, or watching someone at a slaughterhouse place the heads (instead of the legs) of live birds into shackles and intentionally pull on their bodies to decapitate them.
In response to a string of recent natural disasters, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service published a rule in December making it mandatory that all dealers, exhibitors, intermediate handlers, carriers, research facilities, and other entities regulated by the agency under the Animal Welfare Act have an emergency or contingency plan—the better to save the lives of employees and animals in the event of an emergency or natural disaster.
Due to AWI’s efforts, thousands of records about the treatment of animals at slaughter are now publicly available on the US Department of Agriculture’s website. The documents include records related to enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act that expose inhumane treatment of animals at slaughter facilities across the country.
The US Department of Agriculture’s case against Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. (SCBT), one of the world’s largest research antibody suppliers, is scheduled to be heard by an administrative law judge beginning Tuesday, August 18. The USDA case against SCBT is unprecedented: it is the first time that three separate complaints for willful violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) have been filed and are pending against a research laboratory.
In a huge win for transparency and accountability, the US Department of Agriculture has agreed to publicly disclose on its website records related to the treatment of animals in US slaughter plants to settle a lawsuit filed by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and Farm Sanctuary.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) have petitioned the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to amend the US animal export regulations to include “fitness to travel” requirements for all farmed animals exported to any foreign country except those traveling overland to Canada or Mexico.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) are leading more than 15 other organizations, farmers, and companies in urging the US Department of Agriculture to finalize the Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards (OLPS) rule.
A new report by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI)—Humane Slaughter Update: Comparing State and Federal Enforcement of Humane Slaughter Laws— indicates that, more than two years after the shocking depiction of inhumane practices at the Westland-Hallmark slaughter plant in California, enforcement of humane slaughter laws has increased at both the state and federal levels, but remains inconsistent and low in comparison with other aspects of food safety inspection.
Once again, we are forced to highlight the abysmal state of enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and the Horse Protection Act (HPA) in recent years. As made plain by the graphs on this page, the US Department of Agriculture has all but abandoned its duty to protect animals under these vital laws. We hope that there will be better news to report from the new administration, but first we want to acknowledge the huge task newly appointed Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and his staff have ahead of them if they are to address this (in addition to the steps they should take to correct course on farm animal welfare issues—see page 4).
A pending lawsuit supported by a potent segment of the walking horse industry appears to be the major impetus for the US Department of Agriculture’s egregious decision to remove untold thousands of online Horse Protection Act (HPA) and Animal Welfare Act (AWA) records, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) stated today.
A little-known US Department of Agriculture (USDA) program is using brutal methods and taxpayer dollars to indiscriminately kill wildlife across the United States. This program, ironically entitled Wildlife Services (WS), kills approximately 5 million animals each year in the name of “managing problems caused by wildlife.”
