Interview transcript

Eric White What exactly is at stake here with the enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act? Just give us an overview of What it is and then we can kind of get into what’s going on here.

Joanna Makowska So [it’s] the first law in the United States that protects animals. It’s from the 60s. It is the only one protecting — or the first one protecting — animals in research as well. What it mandates is that USDA [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)] should be doing inspections of all the licensees and registrants once a year, and they should be enforcing if there are violations. It also mandates an [Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)], which is a institutional organizational-level committee that will approve what’s being done with animals.

Eric White Gotcha. You all did some analysis of the actual enforcement of that rule recently. What exactly are you all finding when it comes to issuing those fines and enforcement measures?

Ashley Ridgeway Yeah, I can take this one if you want, Joanna. Our analysis revealed that following the Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Jarkesy, and that was in June of 2024, there was a steep drop in the issuance of fines by USDA-APHIS. So to put this into perspective, we saw just five Animal Welfare Act fines go out in the 14 months after the Jarkesy decision. And this is compared with 63 in the preceding 14-month period. And if you look at a graph of those fines on a month by month basis, you can really see that the drop occurred in late June, early July of 2024, which as I mentioned is right after the Jarkesy decision was released.

Eric White What protections do animals have in laboratories currently under the AWA? Joanna, this one may be more geared towards you. What exactly are you not allowed to use animals for these days when it comes to testing?

Joanna Makowska Yeah, I think the biggest problem with protections for animals in labs is that not all species are covered. And in fact, the species that make up about 90% of the animals that are used are not protected under the Animal Welfare Act. And that’s rats, birds, and mice who are bred for research, as well as fish and other invertebrates. So that’s the first issue. The second issue is that there are fewer mechanisms for enforcement when it comes to research facilities at the hands of the USDA. For example, labs get a registration, not a license. USDA cannot pull registration, they can pull licenses or revoke licenses. So one of the primary mechanisms that the USDA has for enforcement with research facilities are fines. And so if we’re finding that they’re no longer really issuing fines, that is a problem because that’s the primary enforcement they have for these guys.

Eric White Has there been any reasoning that you’ve been given for why that’s occurring? Is there understaffing of actual inspectors and enforcers? And also, what does that entail? Does that include somebody just doing an unannounced visit? Or what does an inspection usually look like when it comes to animal welfare?

Joanna Makowska Yes, the inspections are unannounced, so they will show up and they are expected to conduct an inspection at the time when they show up and it’s supposed to be one per year per facility. Understaffing is an issue and it has long been an issue. In a 2025 report from the USDA’s OIG, we saw that several inspectors noted that there was a lack of sufficient staffing. That they say was a contributing factor in not being able to complete inspections in a timely manner. And a recent article in Science Magazine reported that there were only 77 inspectors in APHIS in late August. And we know that there are about 17,500 licensees and registrants in 2024. So that means that each inspector would have to inspect on average 227 facilities per year. That’s just an unsustainable number. And we also know that APHIS has conducted 9,700 inspections, or just about, in 2024, which means that about 45% of facilities weren’t inspected at all. So we know that staffing issues are impacting USDA’s ability to conduct the inspections. The numbers show that, and reports from staff confirm that. But then a report also revealed that the numbers of actions that the department takes against violation[s] that it actually does document when it does conduct an inspection hasn’t dropped. It’s really the type of action that they take that has changed. So while understaffing impacts their ability to find and document animal welfare violations, this may be a separate issue from how the department chooses to enforce the violations that it does find.

Eric White Are there are restraints and issues inspectors face? I imagine they’re not exactly given a parade every time they show up. Is there an issue there with the growing number of licensees and registrants? Obviously there’s probably not enough of them to cover that all of them but even when they do come out, What sort of challenges are they facing there?

Joanna Makowska We’re not at those facilities; we’re not in those inspections, so we can’t really speculate about what’s going on. We do know from whistleblowers or anonymous people who talk to media that they find that Jarkesy has hamstrung them. They have said that. Why exactly or how we can’t speculate, unfortunately.

Eric White Ashley, getting back to the actual Jarkesy decision, can you just fill us in a little bit on the legal interpretation that you see these court cases? SEC v. Jarkesy, that doesn’t seem like it should have anything to do with the USDA, but how does it apply to the ability to issue fines under the Animal Welfare Act?

Ashley Ridgeway Yeah, you’re exactly right that, you know, on its face, this case would would not be interesting to every animal advocate out there, and you wouldn’t necessarily know the potential connection there. The Supreme Court in Jarkesy held that the Seventh Amendment entitles a party accused of securities fraud to a jury trial if the SEC is seeking to impose a fine on that party. So, now, you know, the SEC cannot continue to use that internal administrative adjudication process to impose fines because that process doesn’t afford the accused a jury trial. So that’s the background there. And there have been some questions more broadly about whether or how this decision might apply to all administrative fines rendered without a jury trial or those outside of the securities fraud context. But I do wanna be clear that the court’s decision It is not automatically applicable to USDA’s enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act. And in fact, you know, the opinion doesn’t state that USDA’s issuance of fines against Animal Welfare Act violators without a jury trial is unconstitutional. And to the contrary, there is some precedent for distinguishing SEC’s administrative enforcement from that of APHIS. But as Joanna mentioned, you know, our data and some quotes from USDA insiders in the media suggest so far that the vision is influencing APHIS’s enforcement activity now. So the way that we can kind of link this is that the USDA also uses an internal administrative process to resolve violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including by issuing fines without a jury trial. So that’s where we can see the comparison. But again, to be clear, the decision in jarkesy is quite specific and it pertains to an agency’s issuance of fines for securities fraud. And we may see courts looking to tailor their analysis in the Seventh Amendment cases like this to the nature of the alleged violations. And of course you can imagine that violations pertaining to animal welfare are gonna be different than securities fraud. So we can’t automatically assume that a court will treat it the exact same way.

Eric White Gotcha. So it’s almost as if this decision came down, it’s more ammo for — if it’s not a priority for whoever’s in charge of actually issuing those fines, it’s something that they may be able to go back to and say, well, you know, I’d like to, but I’m kind of hamstrung here.

Ashley Ridgeway So I can’t attribute any type of, you know, motive to, to what we’re seeing. All I can say is what the data shows, which is that, you know, after this decision came down, we’re seeing far fewer fines come out. And, and like I said, we are seeing USDA insiders or staff members saying that this is the reason why.

Eric White What can be done here? What would the AWI like to see done in order to rectify this? Obviously, I imagine you’d like to see a little bit step up in enforcement and hiring of inspectors. But is there, you know, strengthening of the actual Animal Welfare Act that could be a fix here? Or what do you all have in mind?

Ashley Ridgeway Sure. So first, I will point out that we have seen recent attempts by USDA and APHIS to, you know, hire more staff. So it’s possible that we will see staffing numbers rebound at least a little bit in the near future. That would be great. The more staff that APHIS has to work with, hopefully the better enforcement may follow from that. But there are a few legislative initiatives out there that could improve, could strengthen the Animal Welfare Act or its enforcement. So the first of a few that I can talk about is the Animal welfare Enforcement Improvement Act, which could soon be reintroduced … It could soon be reintroduced. A prior version was introduced in the 118th Congress. So this act would strengthen the licensing process to hold dealers and exhibitors more accountable for violations by, for instance, prohibiting USDA from issuing or renewing a license for a dealer or exhibitor found to have repeatedly violated any federal, state or local animal welfare law, and that’s including the Animal Welfare Act. USDA, under this law, could also permanently revoke a license following a hearing if a dealer or exhibiter has committed multiple animal welfare violations. And then those businesses would, importantly, under this act, be barred from receiving a new license under a different business name or through another business partner — it’s their cousin or their friend. And this is like a current loophole that we often see under the existing law. Another is the Better Care for Animals Act and that stands for Better Collaboration, Accountability and Regulatory Enforcement. This act would require a memo of understanding between USDA and the U.S. Department of Justice, commonly referred to as DOJ, to facilitate better collaboration between the two on federal cases. So that could be a strength there. It would also clarify that the DOJ has the same authority as USDA to enforce the Animal Welfare Act, including seeking license suspensions, revocations, civil penalties or fines, which DOJ would do in a federal court. The final one that I’ll mention is Goldie’s Act, and This would kind of inspire more communication, cooperation between USDA and local authorities. And it would do so in part by requiring USDA to provide a copy of its inspection reports that show violations to local law enforcement officers within 24 hours of the inspection. So you can imagine that that might prompt local authorities to take action for the animals. Everything that we’re talking about here, these are complex problems. This will not all be solved overnight, but certainly strengthening the Animal Welfare Act itself or trying to motivate better enforcement legislatively is a great starting point.

Eric White Joanna, I just want to finish up here with — I’m curious, you know, what exactly are businesses getting out of still using animals for testing? It was an issue that we saw, I would say probably in the early 2000s that had a lot more media representation behind it, but it’s kind of dropped off a little bit. Is it still as prevalent as, you know, it was back then, and if that’s the case, obviously there are going to be more cases for abuse, right?

Joanna Makowska Correct. We haven’t seen a drop off in the numbers of animals used. It’s very much still the case that animals are used in laboratories. We don’t even know the number in the U.S. Because all these species I mentioned aren’t covered, and because they constitute the vast majority of animals used, nobody’s reporting how many are used, right? And we’ve had estimates that count them up to 110 million per year in the U.S. There is a push right now to use alternatives. We have seen increases in technologies that are often referred to as NAMs, which are non-animal methods or novel approach methodologies, depending on who you ask. There is a shift to fund more of these and develop more of these, but they’re not there yet. And if you speak to scientists, they will adamantly say that they cannot fully replace animal use with these models. These models are not developed enough. We don’t have, like, a full replication of a full animal yet. So there’s a big debate in that space right now that’s occurring. You’ve probably seen announcements from the FDA and the NIH who are saying that they’re gonna phase out animal use and use more NAMs. So that’s a huge revolution happening right now. We’re gonna see where it goes. We definitely need a lot of scientists working on development and strengthening of these new methodologies. Yeah, we need to prioritize that if we want to see a decrease.

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