December 2001 News

One Small Step for Rats, Mice, and Birds

December 13, 2001

Congress recently approved an agricultural spending bill that clears the way for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to move ahead with a rulemaking process aimed at extending the protections of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) to include rats, mice, and birds.

The AWA is the principal law governing the care and treatment of research animals in the United States. Under current regulations, however, this law does not apply to rats, mice, or birds -- which together account for more than 90% of all laboratory animals in this country.

The USDA had agreed last year to an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit charging that this exclusion is "arbitrary and capricious" and asking the USDA to amend its definition of "animals" to include rats, mice, and birds, thereby granting them protection under the AWA. The agreement stipulated that the USDA would initiate and complete a rulemaking on the regulation of rats, mice, and birds under the Animal Welfare Act.

Congress, however, quickly voted to block implementation of that agreement for fiscal year 2001. Several biomedical research organizations opposed the inclusion of rats, mice, and birds, contending that regulation of these animals would result in a substantial increase in cost and paperwork. At their urging, Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), then the Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, introduced a rider to the agricultural appropriation bill that prohibited the USDA from spending any money to carry out the rulemaking.

When Democrats took control of the Senate earlier this year, however, Senator Herb Kohl (D-MI) took over the subcommittee that oversees agricultural spending, and he helped work out a compromise in this year's bill. The Agriculture Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2002 allows the USDA to begin writing the regulations and soliciting public comment on the matter -- but it cannot finalize any rules before September 30, 2002, when the annual measure expires. This leaves the door open for further negotiations next year.

For more information regarding the regulatory status of rats, mice, and birds, see Altweb news items at here and here.