User:Gioborrero/Animal Welfare Act of 1966

The Animal Welfare Act (Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966, Pub.L.  89–544) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 24, 1966. It is the main federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research and exhibition. Other laws, policies, and guidelines may include additional species coverage or specifications for animal care and use, but all refer to the Animal Welfare Act (otherwise known as the "AWA") as the minimally acceptable standard for animal treatment and care. The USDA and APHIS oversee the AWA and the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have primary legislative jurisdiction over the Act. Animals covered under this Act include any live or dead cat, dog, hamster, rabbit, nonhuman primate, guinea pig, and any other warm-blooded animal determined by the Secretary of Agriculture for research, pet use or exhibition. Excluded from the Act are birds, rats of the genus Rattus (laboratory rats), mice of the genus Mus (laboratory mice), farm animals, and all cold-blooded animals.

As enacted in 1966, the AWA required all animal dealers to be registered and licensed as well as liable to monitoring by Federal regulators and suspension of their license if they violate any provisions of the Animal Welfare Act and imprisonment of up to a year accompanied by a fine of $1,000. As of the 1985 AWA amendment, all research facilities covered by the Animal Welfare Act have been required to establish a specialized committee that includes at least one person trained as a veterinarian and one not affiliated with the facility. Such committees regularly assess animal care, treatment, and practices during research, and are required to inspect all animal study areas at least once every six months. The committees are also required to ensure that alternatives to animal use in experimentation would be used whenever possible.

History[edit]
Worldwide, the first law to regulate animal experimentation was Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It established a central governing body that reviewed and approved all animal use in research. After that, numerous countries in Europe adopted regulations regarding research with animals.

Although Congress discussed laboratory animal welfare in the early 1960s, there was not enough interest to pass legislation until articles published by Sports Illustrated and Life in 1965 and 1966, respectively, generated a public outcry.

The first article, written by Coles Phinizy, appeared in the November 29, 1965, issue of Sports Illustrated. The piece detailed the story of Pepper the Dalmatian, a dog that disappeared from the yard of the Lakavage family home in Pennsylvania. It was later discovered that Pepper had been stolen by "dog-nappers", was bought by a Bronx hospital, and had died during an experimental surgical procedure. On July 9, 1965, Representative Joseph Y. Resnick introduced H.R. 9743 into the House of Representatives, a bill that would require dog and cat dealers, as well as the laboratories that purchased the animals to be licensed and inspected by the USDA. A hearing was held on September 30, 1965, and similar legislation was sponsored in the Senate. The (Laboratory) Animal Welfare Act of 1966 was signed into law on August 24, 1966.

In 1966, Life magazine published an article documenting the housing conditions at animal dealer facilities. The article, titled "Concentration Camp for Dogs", featured pictures of skeletal dogs and described the neglectful conditions that the investigative journalists and Maryland State Police found at a Maryland dog dealer's farm. As a result of these articles, the public lobbied Congress to pass a Federal law that would institute animal housing and care standards.

There was increasing evidence that dogs and cats kept as pets were being stolen by dealers, taken across states lines, and resold to research institutions for scientific experimentation. Many sportsmen supported national legislation because it was their hunting dogs that often went missing.

The Horse Protection Act (public Law 91-929) was passed in 1970 and protected horses against various damaging practices designed to produce aesthetically appealing horses, for example, "soring" the ankles to produce a high-stepping gait. Marine mammals as a class (whales, porpoises, seals, and polar bears), for the most part, found protection under the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (Public Law 92-522) of 1972, which prevented extinction or depletion from indiscriminate taking, including hunting, harassment, capture, and killing (permitted takings, including for subsistence and research purposes, must be accomplished humanely, with "the least degree of pain and suffering practicable to the animal"). Endangered and threatened species were also protected with the passage in 1973 of the Endangered Species Act (Public Law 93-205), which made illegal the purchase, sale, or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce any species found to be endangered, and also closely regulated commerce in any species threatened with extinction.