LEASHING ANIMAL RESEARCH

While biding their tormented time in laboratory captivity and awaiting biomedical experiments by their cagers, some primates and dogs are likely to be suffering less in coming years. A ruling by Judge Charles R. Richey in federal district court in Washington on Feb. 25 found that officials in the Department of Agriculture were ignoring the Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act of 1985. The law, an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, requires "the humane handling, care, treatment and transportation of animals by dealers, research facilities and exhibitors." Some 1,000 research groups receive NIH grants, under regulation by USDA.

From the forceful, bracing language of his 22-page decision, Judge Richey sounds as if a few USDA officials deserved to be stuffed into cages themselves. He referred to them as "bloated bureaucrats," people full of their own power. Richey wrote: "'A dog is a man's best friend' is an old adage which {the USDA officials} have either forgotten or decided to ignore" in their responsibility to oversee animal research.

Much of the ruling turned on whether the department was protecting the animals from mistreatment or allowing the medical experimenters, universities and drug companies to do as they pleased. It was the latter, in Richey's opinion: "Former Judge J. Skelly Wright of our court of appeals once said, in essence, that the regulators in Washington are regulated by the regulated. This may well be the case here."

The law was broken because research labs were permitted by the USDA to cut as many financial corners as they wished. This meant saving money by not exercising the dogs or failing to create, as the 1985 act required, "a physical environment adequate to promote the psychological well-being of primates." Richey, his judicial bite as mean as his bark, suggested the violations were "based more on the almighty dollar than the welfare of the animals."

Aside from the obvious relief to the animals, the Richey ruling is a major advance in animal welfare law. Predictably, the research industry, more at ease with the law of the jungle where anything goes than the law of Congress, denounced the decision as unnecessary and excessively costly. That was the argument that special interests made throughout the regulatory process, which the USDA then made to Richey. He didn't buy.

In context, the defeat to the labs imposes only the mildest of restraints. An estimated 20 million animals are killed, tortured or confined annually in experiments that are often duplicative, extravagant or of dubious worth. The Richey decision offers protection only before the experiments, not during or after them. That limitation was written into the 1985 law.

The lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Society for Animal Protective Legislation is Valerie Stanley, a 1982 graduate of Catholic University Law School and one of only a few animal rights attorneys in the country. Since taking the case in 1988, she has put in hundreds of hours in legal research, learning the arcane regulatory process, submitting comments on proposed regulations and developing a strategy that would hold up against the political might of the animal experimentation industry and its governmental allies in the USDA and NIH.

"In my investigations," Stanley said after celebrating her victory, "I went back to examine the debate when the first version of the Animal Welfare Act was under consideration in 1962. Guess what? Animal experimenters used the same arguments to stonewall then as now. One, there's no problem. Two, the law will cost too much. Three, there's no evidence a new law would improve conditions. Four, let us devise our own standards. And five, trust us to treat the animals humanely."

Congress said no in 1966, and now a federal court says no again. The message to the USDA about the research industry is the same as neighbors send the owner of an unruly dog: Put it on a strong leash.

Research groups plan to ask the department to appeal the decision. In other words, let the laxness of the Reagan-Bush era continue. The Richey ruling, affecting thousands of research centers, is a major victory for animal welfare. The Clinton USDA ought to support, not resist, the success.

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