Last week, our co-plaintiff and expert counsel, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to fight for what the USDA has tried desperately to avoid: transparency, accountability, and the rule of law.
This is Rise for Animals v. Washington, our ongoing legal battle to stop the USDA from quietly rewriting the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in deference to the very industry it’s supposed to regulate.
Here’s the backstory:
In a clandestine move, the USDA abandoned its legal duty to conduct routine, annual inspections of all registered animal research facilities. Instead, the agency secretly directed its inspectors to perform only limited (so-called “focused”) inspections of facilities claiming voluntary accreditation by a private industry trade group: AAALAC International.
By doing this, the USDA effectively outsourced federal regulation to the animal research industry itself – and, it did this:
- After Congress refused to give AAALAC regulatory power;
- After the public voiced overwhelming opposition to a similar proposal; and
- Without publicly disclosing its revised policies or changed practices.
This isn’t regulation. It’s regulatory capture – and, it’s corrupt.
Though a lower court dismissed our case without even reaching the merits, the Fourth Circuit granted us the opportunity to argue our appeal, which is exactly what ALDF just did brilliantly.
While we wait for the court’s decision, we’re continuing to peel back the layers of lies told by the USDA to justify its actions – and we’re using the agency’s own data to do it.
By cross-referencing USDA inspection report data with AAALAC’s lists of accredited facilities, we now know this:
About 75% – 3 out of 4(!) – of all direct and critical citations issued by the USDA between 2014 and March 2025 were issued to AAALAC-accredited labs.
This means that the very facilities the USDA claims need less oversight are, in fact, 3-times-more-likely to be cited for serious animal welfare violations.
And that’s despite the fact that AAALAC-accredited labs made up less than half of the facilities inspected during the same period.
Bottomline: The USDA’s own data destroys its own narrative.
- AAALAC accreditation doesn’t reduce animal welfare risks – it increases them.
- The USDA’s decision to defer to AAALAC wasn’t based in evidence – but, rather, in bureaucratic convenience and industry allegiance.
This is corruption in action.
And we must expose it.
We must challenge it.
And we must keep going – until there are no more caged animals for the USDA to ignore.