WASHINGTON – The HSUS and other leading animal protection organizations are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to restore to its website key documents concerning the use of animals in research. USDA removed these documents in February at the request of several pro-animal research organizations.

Ten animal protection organizations, including the American Anti-Vivisection Society, American Humane Association, Doris Day Animal League, Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group, National Anti-Vivisection Society, New England Anti-Vivisection Society, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, joined The HSUS in making this request. Together, the groups represent a constituency of over eight million Americans.

The USDA enforces the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), the primary federal law governing the treatment of animals used in research and other settings. On February 28, 2002, the USDA removed from the Animal Care Division website both its inspection reports of research facilities and the annual reports submitted by research facilities to the USDA.

Inspection reports include information generated during site visits made by USDA inspectors at research facilities as well as animal dealers and exhibitors such as circuses and zoos. These reports address issues such as veterinary care, husbandry, record keeping and research activities. Annual reports include information on the numbers of animals of regulated species used in research, broken down according to whether the research involved pain and/or distress and whether pain- and/or distress-relieving drugs were provided. For cases in which pain or distress relief were withheld, the reports include explanations of the nature of the research and why the relief was withheld.

It has been reported to The HSUS that the USDA removed these documents from its website following action and requests by various research advocacy organizations, such as Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, National Association for Biomedical Research, the American Physiological Society, and the New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research.

Organizations have reportedly cited domestic terrorism as the reason for requesting the removal of information, arguing that these documents might provide information that could make the facility or an individual scientist a target. However, HSUS staff do not ever recall seeing such information on the reports. Where such information does appear is in scientific literature, which contains massive amounts of information on the animal research that is being carried out by individual researchers at institutions around the country. This information is readily available in libraries and online.

“It is clear that the real reason that these organizations want information removed from the USDA’s website is to keep information that is potentially embarrassing to its institutional clients from entering the public domain,” said Martin Stephens, Ph.D., HSUS vice president for animal research issues. “Inspection reports, by design, reveal the names of research institutions that are violating the AWA and the nature of those violations. Annual reports reveal, for example, which institutions are using large numbers of animals in experiments that cause unrelieved pain and distress.”

The HSUS recognizes that interested parties can submit written requests to the USDA for these documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In The HSUS’s experience, however, these requests often take up to two years to be fulfilled. This long delay, coupled with the fact that annual reports typically are not even subject to FOIA until several months after the close of the calendar year, essentially block animal protection organizations and concerned members of the public from having timely access to how animals in the laboratories are being treated. Ironically, it is the tax-paying public that is funding much of this research.

Recent polls commissioned by The HSUS, the National Science Foundation, and others clearly demonstrate that the American public is concerned about animals used in research, particularly when the research involves pain and distress. Such public concern led to the passage of the Animal Welfare Act in 1966 and its subsequent amendments. More generally, concern about government operations and oversight of regulated activities led to the passage of the Freedom of Information Act and the Electronic Freedom of Information Act amendments of 1996.

“The USDA may have felt that it was responding to legitimate national security concerns when it removed these documents from its website,” according to Stephens. “Despite what may have been good intentions, the reality is that the agency responded to thinly veiled appeals to an industry’s self-interest. It is our hope that the USDA will reinstate these important documents in a timely manner. The system of government oversight of animal research is largely one of self-regulation by the research facilities themselves. Inspection reports and annual reports provide key ‘windows’ into what is actually happening in research facilities.”