A Case for Open and Mobile APHIS Data - VACoder/APHIS.info GitHub Wiki

It was sometime in the fall of 2003 when the USDA issued license 48-A-2069 to a kennel wanting to breed dogs for sale to families and pet stores around the Midwest and across the country. The first litter of poodles came and went and the process repeated, over and over and over again.

Inspectors from the USDA’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) made visits to the kennel in order to confirm that the licensee was maintaining them in compliance with the standards of the Animal Welfare Act. (http://1.usa.gov/H0zjnW). The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) became law in 1966. It is the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers. Other laws, policies, and guidelines may include additional species or specifications for animal care and use, but all of them refer to the Animal Welfare Act as the minimum acceptable standard. APHIS inspectors are these animals’ best friends.

It wasn’t very long before the inspector began to write up the kennel for violations. At the end of each visit a report stating the details of each violation and the section of the AWA which the owner fell short on was handed to the licensee. This is usually enough for a licensee to take corrective actions. The puppies kept coming and going and the American public continued to bring them home from pet stores and sometimes from the licensee’s own home never guessing they had come from such a place.

The Inspector returned to the site time and again only to find that the conditions were not improved or, if they had, new ones had taken their place. They did what they were required to. Write up an administrative report and provide it to the licensee in the hopes that they would fix the non-compliance issue. Meanwhile, families were discovering that the little ball of fur they brought home had parvo, hip dysplasia, mites or any one (or two) of a hundred different forms of physical and behavioral maladies that manifest in animals raised in these conditions. The APHIS inspector knew something was very wrong and the frequency of visits made by them, as evidenced by the dates on the reports, make it very clear that they were deeply concerned about what they were seeing at this kennel. Monthly visits are required, but these officers returned sometimes within the same month. They reported on emaciated dogs, pregnant dogs with swollen eyes and some without teeth. Some had fur in great clumps packed with fecal matter and urine. It’s all in the inspectors’ notes that were recorded until November of 2012 when the license was finally cancelled.

So for nine years the American public sent money to this licensee, directly or through the pet stores that sold their puppies never knowing the conditions from which these dogs came. The dogs had to live with daily, unremitting suffering and the inspector had to follow the law and continue to write up the licensee until such a time as the license could be cancelled. In the state where this took place there are only 2 APHIS inspectors for the entire state! How much sooner could that suffering have been ended had citizens been able to discover that the puppy they were buying was from a place like this and opt to wait and find another pet from a licensee who operated in compliance? What if a pet store owner could easily get a summary of providers’ past performance and be able to make a decision about purchasing an animal while making out orders? What if shoppers could have checked on a breeder’s history at the pet store, as a part of their decision making process? The problem is not that Americans can’t get to this information. It’s that they can’t get to it when they need it.

People tend to make good choices when they have the right information at the right time. If the USDA improves the delivery of their data, protects the privacy of the licensees and comes into conformance with Federal law by providing their data in a ready to consume format that is readable even by the sight impaired, it could take a great deal of pressure off inspectors, compliant providers of America’s pets and help put an end to the needless suffering of animals and those who profit by it.