USDA documents suggest what a 'focused inspection' entails. Instead of taking a full look at an institution’s records, animals, and the facility itself. An inspector could just look at a sampling of paperwork, and not a single animal.
DAVID GRIMM: In February 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made a significant — and apparently secret — change to how it oversees laboratory animal welfare, Science has learned. Instead of fully inspecting all of the nearly 1100 facilities that house monkeys, rabbits, and other creatures used in biomedical research, it mandated partial “focused” inspections for labs accredited by a private organization of veterinarians and scientists called AAALAC International.
Such partial inspections violate the Animal Welfare Act, argues Katherine Meyer, director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic, which discovered the change after law student Brett Richey combed through more than 1000 pages of internal USDA documents. The federal law states that USDA must enforce “minimum requirements for handling, housing, [and] feeding” of research animals, as well as adequate veterinary care, Meyer notes. “How do you ensure that labs are in compliance with those standards if USDA is doing incomplete inspections?”…
Harvard’s animal law clinic obtained the USDA documents—including PowerPoint slides, FAQs, and email exchanges—via a public records request, in the course of a separate effort to force the agency to update its welfare standards for research monkeys. In one document, USDA, citing concerns about workload, says it has “made it mandatory … for inspectors to perform focused inspection at AAALAC-accredited research facilities unless the research facility requested a full inspection.” And, in a redacted line that Science has since uncovered, it adds, “This focused inspection counts as the facility’s annual inspection.”
Other USDA documents suggest what a “focused inspection” entails. Instead of taking a full look at an institution’s records, animals, and the facility itself (such as air conditioning units and surgery rooms) every year, an inspector only needs to look at one of those aspects or a sampling of them, according to a USDA PowerPoint. “An inspector could just look at a sampling of paperwork—and not a single animal,” Meyer argues…
The internal USDA documents also imply the new policy is confidential. The guidelines are “for official use, internal only,” reads one FAQ. “There will be no stakeholder announcement,” and the details will not be included in USDA’s official inspection guidelines, it continues. The agency also made no mention of the changes at a conference last month for heads of animal care facilities and others responsible for lab animal welfare…
Meyer argues that AAALAC itself is problematic. She and others in the animal advocacy community have long contended that the organization is not an appropriate substitute for USDA because it only inspects institutions every 3 years, is made up of many of the same people that run animal research facilities, and—unlike USDA—schedules inspections in advance rather than showing up unannounced. (AAALAC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
Over the past 5 years, USDA reports have cited several AAALAC-accredited facilities for critical violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including pain relievers not given in a timely manner and unmonitored animals bleeding to death inside their cages… Because AAALAC inspections are confidential—even to USDA—the agency could be giving such labs a minimal inspection and a “clean bill of health” under the new policy, Meyer says.
Whether that is actually happening is unclear. USDA has inspected 322 research facilities since its new guidelines took effect, an internal document reveals. Of the 151 that the agency believed were AAALAC accredited, 91 got focused inspections… But inspectors are not to note in their report what aspect of a facility they looked at, internal documents indicate. So an outsider would not be able to tell whether USDA missed potentially critical animal welfare violations because, for example, it didn’t look at animals that year. SOURCE…
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