Congress made important progress last year addressing serious gaps in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's enforcement of key animal welfare laws by providing the agency much-needed funding to allow for better inspection programs. The USDA's own Inspector General had issued damning audits in late 2010 regarding the agency's woefully lax oversight of puppy mills under the Animal Welfare Act, and its weak efforts to rein in the cruel practice of "soring" show horses (deliberately inflicting severe pain on the horses' legs and hooves to make it hurt for them to step down, so they will exaggerate their high-stepping gait and win prizes), which is prohibited under the Horse Protection Act. Despite intense budget pressures, Congress responded to these concerns and in November 2011 enacted significant increases in USDA's budget to improve enforcement of both the AWA and the HPA.
Now Congress is gearing up to consider the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bills. Every agency program has some political support in Washington, or it would never have been funded in the first place, and those programs and their supporters are competing for finite dollars. The budget pressures haven't gone away, but neither have the terrible problems at puppy mills or in the horse soring industry, nor the pressing need for adequate oversight of other facilities covered by the AWA, such as laboratories, roadside zoos, and circuses. It would be a severe setback to lose the critical gains from last year.
There are other areas that Congress can cut, as we proposed last fall to the Super Committee considering ways to reduce the deficit -- for example, warehousing chimpanzees in costly laboratory cages; rounding up wild horses to keep them in long-term holding pens;busing inefficient, unreliable, very costly and cruel animal testing when much better alternative methods are available; taxpayer-financed poisoning of wildlife; and massive subsidies for wealthy operators of huge factory farms.
Congress can achieve macro-level cuts while still taking care to ensure that specific small and vital accounts have the funds they need. Whether an animal welfare law will be effective often turns on whether it gets adequately funded. Having legislators seek that funding is crucial, especially when there are as many strong competing budget pressures as there are now. Our fortunes are intertwined with those of animals, and proper enforcement not only helps these creatures but also helps to protect consumers and improve food safety, public health, disaster preparedness and other social concerns.
Congressmen Chris Smith and Earl Blumenauer as well as Senators Barbara Boxer and David Vitter are circulating letters to the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, seeking funds in Fiscal Year 2013 to hold the line on last year's funding levels for enforcement of key animal welfare laws. They are asking their colleagues to co-sign these letters and lend their support. The funds requested in the letter are modest, but are critically needed to implement and enforce the Animal Welfare Act, the Horse Protection Act, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the federal animal fighting law and programs to help prepare for the needs of animals in disasters and to address the shortage of veterinarians in rural and inner-city areas and USDA positions.
Your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. representative need to hear from you today. You can find your federal legislators' names and contact information here.
Please urge your two U.S. Senators to co-sign the Senate animal welfare funding group letter being circulated by Senators Boxer and Vitter, or make their own parallel individual requests, before the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee's deadline of March 30th. And please urge your one U.S. representative to co-sign the House animal welfare funding group letter being circulated by Representatives Smith and Blumenauer or include these items among his/her own individual requests, before the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee's deadline of March 20th (Note that over 100 Representatives have already joined on the House letter -- so if yours is on the current list, you can thank him or her for stepping up.).
This is just the latest installment in a multi-year effort. The HSUS and HSLF have been steadily building the enforcement budgets for these laws, recognizing that laws on the books won't do animals much good if they're not enforced. Over the past 14 years, for example, we've succeeded in boosting the annual funding for enforcement of the AWA by 195 percent (a cumulative total of more than $102 million in new dollars to the program). Today, there are 122 AWA inspectors, compared to about 60 during the 1990s, to help ensure basic humane treatment at thousands of puppy mills, research laboratories, zoos, circuses and other facilities.
With your help, Congress can sustain these efforts to protect animals from cruelty and abuse. It's an investment in the animals' future -- and our own.