As of July 27, 2025, Bernadette Juarez officially resumed her role as Deputy Administrator for Animal Care (“Animal Care”) at the USDA. 

And that should alarm every single one of us.

Because if we remember what happened the last time Juarez held this post, we know exactly what might be coming: ever more secrecy, ever more surrender to industry, and ever more animal suffering.

Juarez previously led Animal Care — the division of the USDA responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act — from 2016 to mid-2019. She was the first non-veterinarian ever appointed to that position, tapped initially under President Obama but fully unleashed only under President Trump.

In short: Juarez took a blowtorch to her own agency’s enforcement power.

Animal welfare advocates remember Juarez as a chief facilitator of Trump 1.0’s dismantling of federal animal protections. Under her leadership, animal research labs and other regulated animal exploiters (including animal dealers) all got a reprieve. That’s because the USDA stopped even pretending to be a regulator and openly became a friend and enabler.

Indeed, Juarez’s first tenure was marked by an open and unabashed prioritization of industry interests.

Hints of what was to come appeared at the tail end of the Obama administration, though Juarez’s tenure coincided mostly with President Trump’s first term, and it was then that she dealt her biggest blows.

Essentially, Juarez’s Animal Care prioritized a cooperative, advisory approach and de-emphasized regulation and enforcement. Translating the Trump administration’s deregulatory ethos into agency practice, Juarez prioritized industry collaboration and emphasized partnership with “regulated” entities — while gutting public accountability and handicapping actual oversight. 

Key hallmarks of Juarez’s leadership — described broadly as evidencing “systemic failure” at the USDA, and as efforts to “systematically dismantle[] and weaken[] the inspection process,….” (with the result of increased animal suffering) — include:

➢ The “Teachable Moments” Initiative:
Shortly after Juarez took charge, Animal Care expanded its use of “teachable moments” — treating certain observed infractions as informal opportunities to “educate” facilities rather than cite them as violations. By agency policy, such “teachable moments” were not supposed to be “applied to violations that affect animal health or welfare”, but records show that Juarez’s Animal Care applied them to even the most serious violations (e.g. animal deaths). When a “teachable moment” was invoked, the violation was noted privately to the facility and omitted from the official inspection report, rendering it invisible to the public. Data confirm that, under Juazez’s leadership, the USDA’s enforcement of animal welfare laws plummeted, with both the number of inspections and the number of documented violations dropping sharply after 2016. 

➢ The Self-Reporting Incentives:
In 2018, the USDA introduced a policy that allowed facilities to avoid citations entirely if they self-reported an Animal Welfare Act violation — no matter how serious. Inspectors confirmed that such self-reported violations were no longer documented on inspection reports at all.

➢ The Transparency Rollbacks:
In early 2017, shortly after President Trump took office and under Juarez’s watch at Animal Care, the USDA abruptly removed from its website thousands of Animal Welfare Act inspection reports, enforcement records, regulatory correspondence, and research facility annual reports that had long been publicly searchable. Although Congress mandated a partial restoration of these records in 2020, the information blackout remained in place throughout Juarez’s tenure.

➢ The Regulatory “Customer Service” Mindset:
Under Juarez, Animal Care increasingly cast the industries it regulates as “stakeholders” or even “customers” — with internal communications explicitly using the term “customer service” to describe USDA interactions with regulated entities. Inspectors were directed to work collaboratively with licensees to address issues (“to emphasize education, not enforcement”) and to treat labs and other regulated entities “more as partners than as potential offenders”. (In March 2018, Juarez even led an APHIS “listening session” to explore recognizing inspections by private accrediting organizations — like industry-allied lab accreditation groups — as evidence of compliance and, thereby, forcing federal regulators to defer to private industry. And, Juarez was at the helm when the USDA instituted the secret, industry-deferential inspection policy that we sued the USDA over.)

Taken together, these moves had a direct and dramatic effect of weakening (if not outright handicapping) regulatory oversight across the board — including of animal research facilities.

And, here’s the most critical part: they didn’t have to. 

It is important to understand that Juarez’s moves were policy decisions — not legal mandates. They were never required by statute or formal rulemaking; rather, they were discretionary administrative choices. This means that Juarez had significant leeway, and she used it to further gut enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act and reduce agency transparency.  

Of course, Juarez’s leadership didn’t take place in a vacuum. It both reflected and reinforced the Trump administration’s agenda to deregulate various sectors — including animal welfare. But, inside the USDA, Juarez was the one who implemented that agenda. She was the point person making collusion with industry not just permissible, but standard.

That, among so much else, is what makes Juarez’s return deeply disturbing for anyone who cares about animals.

Because if Juarez’s past tenure is any indication of what lies ahead, here’s what we can expect to ramp up again:

• “[W]eakened welfare guidelines, causing animals to ‘suffer immensely.’”
• A “‘systematic dismantling of [the] animal welfare inspection process and enforcement,’ ….”
• A “practice of prioritizing business interests over animal welfare”.
• An agency culture that pressures inspectors “not to list certain infractions or to downgrade the severity of the citation”, and that reprimands and “stall[s]” the “careers” of inspectors who “speak out”.

None of this serves the general public interest, of course. Not even close. But, it does serve the interests of industry — and its allies and enablers inside the government.

Unsurprisingly, “[i]ndustry advocates” have been Juarez’s biggest champions. 

And, sadly, her first tenure made one thing crystal clear: the federal government has, in many ways, openly become just that — an advocate for industry.

Lest there be any remaining doubt, we need look no further than the USDA’s own announcement of Juarez’s return. The agency describes her as an experienced leader who has “established engagement with [Animal Care] stakeholders”. “Stakeholders”, of course, includes the very animal-user industries — like animal research labs — she’s supposed to oversee; and the subtext is clear: Juarez is trusted to work smoothly with those industries, because she already did. 

But — hush. The government doesn’t want us to see any of this.

It wants us to swallow its empty PR spin instead.

The USDA describes Juarez’s leadership — the same industry-captured train wreck just unpacked — as “protecting and ensuring the welfare of millions of animals nationwide”. 

Only we already know better.

And we won’t be silent.

Your call to action:  Juarez’s return follows a clear pattern: deregulate, deflect, and disappear the truth. Using the links below, share this exposé to help more people see what’s really happening inside USDA Animal Care. 

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