Farm animals used in federal experiments to help the meat industry would receive new protections against mistreatment and neglect under legislation introduced on Thursday by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress.
The bill aims to extend the federal Animal Welfare Act to shield cows, pigs, sheep and other animals used for agricultural research at federal facilities, including the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb., a unit of the Department of Agriculture. The act, which became law in 1966, excluded those animals, focusing largely on cats and dogs used in laboratory research.
Sponsors of the new legislation, called the Aware Act, said they were prompted by a Jan. 19 article in The New York Times that raised concerns about the treatment of farm animals at the center, a 50-year-old institution that uses breeding and surgical techniques to make the animals bigger, leaner, more prolific and more profitable. Interviews and internal records showed that experiments and everyday handling there have often subjected animals to illness, pain and premature death, and that the center lacked the oversight that many universities and companies have adopted for their research on animals.
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In an interview on Wednesday, Temple Grandin, the renowned animal welfare advocate, praised livestock producers for making great strides in handling animals more humanely, but she said she has become increasingly concerned about research that is causing a “biological overload” on farm animals being developed to be more productive. “We’re making pigs that have 14 piglets, with low-birth-weight pigs that just die, and I’ve got a problem with that,” she said.
She said that researchers and producers should open their operations to full transparency, including videotaping their activities, and adopt what she called the wedding-guest standard. “Bring your wedding guests in and show them the pigs with too many piglets, and see what they would say,” she said. In other words, she said, the self-imposed test for anyone working with farm animals should be: “Would I show what I’m doing to my wedding guests?”
