Topic: Animal Welfare Act: Application of the Animal Welfare Act regulations to birds; potential new bird-specific regulations
OC
Comments
... on the 1998
petition to include birds under the Animal Welfare Act regulations (.pdf
file)
(click
here)
.... on the 2004 Advanced
Notice of Public Rulemaking (.pdf file) on
the potential development of
bird-specific
regulations (.pdf file) (click
here)
Update January 2005:
Consistent with the amendments to the Animal Welfare
Act (The Farm
Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002), the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service changed
the definition of the word "animal" in the regulations that implement
the AWA to exclude:
birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for
use in research
Note the critical qualification: "bred for use in research"
Previously, the AWA regulations excluded all birds, rats, and mice. The
USDA has decided that the
legislative change that was intended to exclude rats, mice, and birds
from the Animal Welfare Act regulations actually only excludes those
animals bred for use in research.This change means that wild birds held
in captivity or studied in the
wild (subject to the vaguely-defined exemptions for field studies) or
other birds bred in captivity but not specifically for the purpose of
research are no longer excluded.
As a practical matter, this change should have little impact on
laboratory facilities where birds are studied, as most, if not all,
were already inspected - either because the insitutions are
AAALAC-accredited and AAALAC standards include all vertebrates, or
because the institution receives funding from one of the federal
agencies that require adherence to the Public Health Service Act
standards, which also include all vertebrates (or simply because the
institution required such inspections for reasons including concern for
animal welfare and occupational health and safety of the workers).
Also as a practical matter, this change won't make a
different in the
sense that institutions already require submissions of research
protocols to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (for the same
reasons that facilities inspections were required).
Indeed, it was for these very reason that there was no need for
duplicative regulation and oversight that most research organizations
opposed the efforts by some animal rights and animal welfare groups to
compel the USDA to include rats, mice, and birds in the coverage of the
AWA regulations.
NONETHELESS, THERE IS A POTENTIAL THAT THE USDA ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH
INSPECTION SERVICE WILL PROMULGATE SPECIFIC REGULATIONS THAT COULD
AFFECT LABORATORY FACILITIES BEYOND WHAT IS ALREADY REQUIRED; IT IS
ALSO POSSIBLE THAT THE REGULATIONS COULD IMPACT STUDIES OF WILD BIRDS
IN THE FIELD. FOR INSTANCE, INSPECTIONS OF FIELD SITES MIGHT BE
REQUIRED. THEREFORE, THE ORNITHOLOGICAL COUNCIL, AFTER CONSULTATION
WITH NUMEROUS ORNITHOLOGISTS, INCLUDING THE 22 MEMBERS OF THE OC BOARD,
FILED THESE COMMENTS.
(.pdf file)
Background: The Secretary of Agriculture, through the regulations that implement the Animal Welfare Act, determined that the regulations did not apply to birds (or rats and mice). An organization known as the Alternatives Research and Development Foundation, which is affiliated with the American Antivivisection Society, filed a petition with the USDA/Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)/Animal Care program, asking the USDA to amend the definition of "animal" in the AWA to eliminate the express exlcusion of birds, rats, and mice. In a Federal Register notice dated 28 January 1998 (64 FR 4356), APHIS requested comments on this petition. APHIS had taken the position that the Secretary of Agriculture (through the delegation of AWA authority to APHIS) has broad power to include or exclude certain animals in the regulation. According to that Federal Register notice, the primary reason APHIS excluded these taxa was a lack of resources (funding and inspectors) to carry out additional enforcement. APHIS believed that extending AWA coverage would significantly affect overall AWA enforcement. Furthermore, APHIS asserted that at least 90% of rats, mice, and birds being used in biomedical research are already protected by the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the Animal Welfare Assurance required of research institutions receiving PHS funding. Private accreditation by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International involves inspections and reviews of accredited laboratories that meet or exceed the animal care standards set out in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, a publication of the National Research Council.
These same petitioners also filed a lawsuit in the
U.S.
District Court, trying to compel the USDA to change the AWA regulations
to include birds, rats, and mice. In 2000, the USDA, believing that it
would likely lose the lawsuit, decided to settle by agreeing to
promulgate regulations for rats, mice, and birds. That same year, in
the Department of Agriculture appropriations bill, Congress put a
one-year hold on the development of these regulations by prohibiting
the USDA from using appropriated funds for this purpose.
FARM BILL CODIFIES EXEMPTION OF
RATS, MICE, AND BIRDS FROM
ANIMAL WELFARE ACT - President George W. Bush on 13 May 2002 signed the
Farm
Bill (Public Law 107-171). The law included a Senate amendment by
Jesse Helms
(R‑NC) that codified the existing regulatory exclusion of rats, mice,
and birds
from oversight under the Animal Welfare Act.
As noted in the past, this change
is unlikely to have significant effects on ornithological research,
because:
(1) Both the Public Health Service
(PHS; which includes NIH) and NSF require
adherence to the Public Health Service Act regulations, which apply to
all
vertebrates. Even if your funding is not from NIH or NSF, if your
university
receives funding from these sources, it is required to provide the
Public
Health Service with an "assurance document" that states that the
university will comply with the PHS regulations;
(2) Despite an express,
existing exclusion of rats, mice, and birds in the Animal Welfare Act
regulations, most, if not all, universities have been regulating these
taxa via
both the site inspection process (for lab‑based research) and the
research
protocol approval process. In part, this is because of the Public
Health
Service Act regulations, but it is also because the universities and
the
individuals who serve on the Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committees feel
it is scientifically inappropriate to distinguish among vertebrates;
(3) The
primary difference would have been periodic site inspections by the
USDA, so to
the extent that these inspections will not occur, there is one less
inspection
and one less fee to pay;
(4) Many labs are already accredited by AAALAC
[http://www.aaalac.org], which is not only very exacting, but which
includes
rats, mice, and birds.
The one key benefit of this statutory exclusion is for field biologists. Assuming that field sites would be subject to inspection, the fees could have been very high. More significantly, it is unlikely that USDA would have been able to hire or train inspectors with the appropriate knowledge and expertise to evaluate research conducted under field conditions. Had the USDA been forced to regulate rats, mice, and birds, there were indications that the regulations would adopt the standards of professional societies; specific reference was made to Guidelines to the Use of Wild Birds in Research, which is published by the Ornithological Council.
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