The New York Times
Lawmakers Aim to Protect Farm Animals in U.S. Research
Farm animals used in federal experiments to help the meat industry would receive new protections against mistreatment and neglect under legislation introduced on Thursday by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress.
The bill aims to extend the federal Animal Welfare 
Act to shield cows, pigs, sheep and other animals used for agricultural research at federal facilities, including the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., a unit of the Department of Agriculture. The act, which became law in 1966, excluded those animals, focusing largely on cats and dogs used in laboratory research.
Sponsors of the new legislation, called the Aware Act, said they were prompted by a Jan. 19 article in The New York Times that raised concerns about the treatment of farm animals at the center, a 50-year-old institution that uses breeding and surgical techniques to make the animals bigger, leaner, more prolific and more profitable. Interviews and internal records showed that experiments and everyday handling there have often subjected animals to illness, pain and premature death, and that the center lacked the oversight that many universities and companies have adopted for their research on animals.
“As stewards of taxpayer dollars, we felt a responsibility to present a legislative fix that holds the U.S.D.A. to the same humane standards that countless research facilities across the country are held to,” said Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, who sponsored the House version of the bill with Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat. The Senate sponsors include Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who wrote on Twitter last month that the article in The Times “speaks to a level of cruelty to animals that is unacceptable.” The bill has been endorsed by the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Since the article was published, Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, has ordered increased protections for farm animals used in research at the center and other agency facilities. The department named an ombudsman to hear internal concerns about animal welfare, and started a review of its research.
“We will use this opportunity to enhance and improve our agency by taking a look at our protocols, re-emphasizing our priorities, and recommitting ourselves to animal welfare in our labs and in our research,” the administrator of the department’s Agricultural Research Service, Chavonda Jacobs-Young, wrote in a Jan. 23 email to employees.
Catherine Wotecki, the department’s undersecretary for research, education and economics, said Thursday that Mr. Vilsack intended to examine practices at the Nebraska center and elsewhere so the agency could recommend changes in animal-welfare policy. “We take this issue very seriously and are taking action to ensure animals are respected and treated humanely,” Dr. Wotecki said.
Center officials have defended their work, saying they keep animal welfare in mind as they strive to better feed a growing world population.
But the center’s critics, including several veterinarians who have worked there, say the Agriculture Department has failed to heed the growing demand from consumers — and, increasingly, grocers and meat producers — that farm animals be treated more humanely. To create leaner pigs, for example, the center weaned piglets from their mothers at just 10 days old, while some retailers are phasing in standards that would require suppliers to postpone weaning to 56 days, to avoid trauma and stress on the animals.
Some of the strongest public reaction came in response to the center’s continuing effort to develop an “easy care” sheep that could cut costs by giving birth to triplets, instead of the usual single or twins, in pastures without the usual spending for shelter or labor. As many as one in three of the easy-care lambs at the center have died, mainly from starvation, exposure to cold rain and predators, records show.
“The BIG problem with both this center and modern trends in livestock husbandry is that the husband is more and more scarce,” an Illinois sheep farmer commented on The Times’s website. “We want maximum food and maximum profit with minimum husbandry, and that will always mean cruelty.”
Several members of Congress, including Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Representative Louise M. Slaughter of New York, have written to Mr. Vilsack, urging him to adopt new policies for farm animals.
Still, animal research experts expressed reservations this week about the new bill’s intent to increase oversight by the Agriculture Department, which already enforces the Animal Welfare Act through its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The legislation would require inspections and close monitoring of experiments.
“One branch of a department inspecting another branch strikes me as a classic conflict of interest,” said Christian Newcomer, executive director of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, whose accredited organizations include a growing roster of universities and companies that conduct research on farm animals. The Nebraska center has not sought accreditation; it relies on its own scientists and staff to monitor its research.
In an interview on Wednesday, Temple Grandin, the renowned animal welfare advocate, praised livestock producers for making great strides in handling animals more humanely, but she said she has become increasingly concerned about research that is causing a “biological overload” on farm animals being developed to be more productive. “We’re making pigs that have 14 piglets, with low-birth-weight pigs that just die, and I’ve got a problem with that,” she said.
She said that researchers and producers should open their operations to full transparency, including videotaping their activities, and adopt what she called the wedding-guest standard. “Bring your wedding guests in and show them the pigs with too many piglets, and see what they would say,” she said. In other words, she said, the self-imposed test for anyone working with farm animals should be: “Would I show what I’m doing to my wedding guests?”