May 5, 2006
By Bernard Unti, PhD
The supply of dogs and cats to laboratories by Class B animal dealers has been a contentious matter for decades. The subject generates a heated debate whenever it surfaces. Now, with bills to end the Class B animal trade pending in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, a battle that began nearly half a century ago has again been joined.
The Pet Safety and Protection Act (S. 451/H.R. 5229), introduced in the Senate (in February 2005) by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), and in the House (in late April 2006) by Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Phil English (R-PA), amends the Animal Welfare Act. The bill would make it impossible, as a matter of law, for institutions to buy dogs and cats from any dealer who has not bred and raised those animals. If passed, it would prohibit random source dealers from selling dogs and cats to laboratories and would effectively prevent stray animals, who may be lost family pets, from being sold to laboratories.
The bill focuses on Class B dealers, forestalling concerns of breeders, animal research facilities, and shelters. It would permit breeders to continue to supply dogs and cats to labs, and permit research facilities to breed animals for their own use or to supply others. The legislation would also allow registered public "pounds" or shelters that receive animals relinquished by their owners (with consent) to provide those animals to research facilities if they choose (where this practice is not already banned by state or local law).
Class B: Living Up to Its Name
The Class B animal dealer is a USDA-licensed agent allowed to purchase and collect animals from random sources—such as "pounds," shelters, auctions, flea markets, and private individuals—and sell them to laboratories, institutions, and other dealers for research, testing, and education. Unless the animals come from pounds or shelters, the Class B dealer is obligated by law to buy animals from individuals who breed and raise the animals on their own properties, or from other dealers who can provide paperwork showing that the animals originated from such a source.
It doesn't necessarily work like that, though. Over the years, many Class B dealers have been caught receiving stolen animals or fraudulently obtaining animals, including pets, and falsifying records to make the transactions stick. Working alongside the Class B dealer in such transactions is the "buncher," typically a shadowy, unlicensed individual who gathers animals from various sources, like "free to a good home" advertisements, or by engaging in outright theft. The falsification of names, addresses, and sources isn't hard to accomplish if you're serious enough about obscuring the means of acquisition and disposition of animals.
Historically, the Class B facility has been disturbingly similar to the one exposed in "Concentration Camps for Dogs" by LIFE magazine in February 1966 during the political debate over the Animal Welfare Act. Many B dealers, over the years, have maintained ramshackle operations, with inadequate enclosures and housing, poor drainage, substandard sanitation, little food and water, no supply storage, and no serious veterinary care or exercise of the animals. Their cruelty flourished, ironically enough, even after the passage of the Animal Welfare Act. The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research estimated that approximately 400,000 dogs were being used annually by American research institutions during the late 1960s, and most of those were "random" source.
Today, there are far fewer Class B operations as the biomedical community has largely moved away from using random source animals, and enforcement actions have driven many of the worst offenders out of the business. Nonetheless, poor conditions and horrendous animal suffering are still prevalent in the Class B system, where disease is a constant problem, leading to significant health care problems, including diarrhea, heartworms, and sarcoptic mange. As an investigator in Missouri for many years, HSUS staffer Curtis Ransom personally witnessed "dead, injured, emaciated, lethargic, flea-infested, mange-ridden, hair-matted, parasitic, hairless, and unhealthy animals" at Class B facilities. Class B dealers also routinely transport animals in a manner that causes behavioral stress, physical harm, and sometimes even death. USDA inspectors have cited dealers for stacking arrangements that endanger animals and for failure to keep their transport vehicles clean and in order. For example, C.C. Baird, the disgraced owner of a Class B facility in Arkansas cited for numerous AWA violations, was involved in at least one horrific case of mass animal death in 1994, when a shipment of animals to Mississippi included 42 dead dogs in their cages.
Numbers Game
For a variety of reasons, it is hard to determine the exact number of animals handled by Class B dealers, a complication that has not made it any easier to address the issue in the U.S. Congress. Our understanding is necessarily imperfect because of poor compliance by dealers and institutions with USDA reporting requirements, inadequate and falsified records, difficulties with procuring institutional records through the Freedom of Information Act, multiple sales of the same animal, the exclusion from totals of animals who die in the custody of dealers, and other factors.
According to an estimate by the California Biomedical Research Association, which opposes the Pet Safety and Protection Act, there were approximately 32,492 dogs and cats from Class B dealers used in American laboratories in 2001.
A sketchy formula provided by the USDA [Federal Register 69 (134), July 14, 2004] puts the number of dogs and cats supplied by B dealers to the laboratory at 18,500, with about 13,000 being dogs. Cathy Liss of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), who has studied the issue for many years, believes this figure is in line with data obtainable directly from dealers' license applications to the USDA. A USDA insider recently told Liss that 10,000 dogs would be a fair estimate based on current reports. Moreover, the documents released following The HSUS's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the USDA should make it possible for the public to derive more accurate estimates of the Class B trade in the future.
In a real sense, the argument over numbers misses the point. Whether it is hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, no animals should suffer the conditions exemplified by the Baird operation or similar operations where grave violations of the Animal Welfare Act have surfaced again and again. Animals destined for experimentation in the laboratory may face pain, suffering, and death, but that doesn't mean that it's all right to impose additional suffering and mistreatment upon them while they are in the custody of Class B dealers.
What's more, Class B dealers are the sources of other mischief from which, one would think, our nation's biomedical research community would want to distance itself. As the C.C. Baird case revealed, many animals die or are killed at Class B facilities before they ever get sent to a laboratory. And Class B dealers have on occasion acquired animals fraudulently through other means besides theft. A few years ago, a Class B dealer was found to be defrauding the owners of racing greyhounds, convincing them that he was running a shelter, rescue, and adoption program.
By purchasing from B dealers, biomedical institutions perpetuate the very operations that the AWA sought to eliminate 40 years ago. Their purchases continue to make the substandard care and mistreatment of animals in decrepit facilities a profitable enterprise for individuals who are none too particular about how the animals are acquired or handled. In addition, these institutional purchases contribute to the widespread perception that there is an illegal interstate traffic in stolen pets for research.
Pet Theft a Blind Alley?
The argument that we still need legislation to outlaw the B dealer—in order to halt the problem of rampant pet theft—remains potent even after four decades. Today, there are animal advocates who continue to claim that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dogs and cats are stolen and sold annually for medical research. While this claim does not have the factual foundation it did in the 1960s or 1970s, there are still documented examples of stolen pets ending up in the hands of Class B dealers and hence in research facilities.
Today, however, those who populate the illegal animal fighting underground may be more responsible for pet thefts than Class B dealers. A single fighting dog has likely killed dozens of animals before entering the ring for competition, and most of the victims used in this "blooding" process are believed to be former pets.
Some observers believe that a 1990 amendment to the Animal Welfare Act virtually foreclosed any possibility that a stolen animal might be sold to a laboratory, at least through the Class B network. The amendment required that dealers provide paperwork to link each randomly obtained animal to his or her original owner, and established stricter fines and penalties for illegal transactions. For their part, lobbyists for the biomedical research community continually stress that pet theft is an "urban legend."
If that were only true. In June 2005, a microchip scan revealed that a dog slated for use in a University of Minnesota research laboratory was actually someone's pet—named Echo, who was stolen two months earlier from a backyard in Arkansas and sold to the university by a Class B dealer from Michigan.
Nor do the findings in the Baird case inspire much confidence. The USDA's 2003 raid on Baird's Martin Creek Kennels, conducted after an undercover operation by Last Chance for Animals (LCA), resulted in the recovery of a dozen animals whose owners were looking for them. Presumably, all 12 animals would have found their way into the laboratory supply chain but for the enforcement action prompted by LCA's investigation.
In response to public concern, the USDA has increased its efforts to prevent the possibility that stolen animals might end up in research. In 1993, according to the American Physiological Society, only 40% of the animals sold by Class B dealers could be traced back to the original owners. By 1998, Animal Plant and Health Inspection Services administrator Terry L. Medley claimed in a letter to the House Committee on Agriculture that USDA efforts to trace-check animals back to their original owners had a success rate of 90%. In 2001, the USDA claimed that the rate of audited animal acquisition records traced back to the original source had reached 96%.
Yet questions about the USDA's claims remain, mostly because some of the agency's successful "tracebacks" have only tracked one B dealer selling to another. Moreover, Echo's case and the presence of stolen pets on Baird’s property make it clear that pets still wind up in research institutions where they ought not to be, victims of a law and a regulatory system whose flaws have never been properly fixed.
Life Without Class B Dealers
Licensure by the USDA isn't like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. It's more like a driver's permit, establishing the basic privilege to operate, subject to suspension or removal for failing to pass periodic inspections. And yet inspection by the understaffed Animal Care Division of the USDA is not a guarantee that all's well with a given operation. Many dealers with dozens of recorded Animal Welfare Act violations have not lost their licenses or faced serious sanction.
It ought to count for something in the debate over Class B dealers that the USDA has, in the past, expressed support for a two-year phase-out of these dealers. By its own admission, the agency lacks the necessary resources to track the interstate activities of Class B dealers. Thus, the USDA cannot provide assurances that illegally acquired pets are not being sold, or that animals in the hands of such dealers are being well cared for.
The biomedical research community has not exactly embraced the idea of phrasing out Class B dealers. It has frequently defeated such legislation by arguing that prohibitions will force them to pay a lot more for animals from other sources. But these arguments conveniently overlook the costs of keeping an eye on B dealers, a substantial burden to the American taxpayer. What's more, with so many other responsibilities, attempting to regulate Class B dealers is a poor use of USDA inspectors' time.
Nor is there any worth to the argument that random source animals—larger and genetically diverse, for example—fill a crucial need for research, testing, and education that can't otherwise be satisfied. There's no reason to imagine that Class A dealers who breed animals (and typically have information on their genetic background and health status) can't meet this demand for as long as it should continue.
Moreover, their claims neatly overlooked the reality that Class B animals are poor subjects for sophisticated modern research, and that many of them end up in training and educational programs where suitable alternatives are available. There simply is no evidence that the absence of the Class B system would impede education, testing, or research.
There are signs of hope in the biomedical research community, though. Despite its continued resistance to the Pet Safety and Protection Act, the research community looks to be waging only a rear-guard offensive on the Class B issue, fighting off the inevitable disappearance of the random source animal dealer. Dr Robert Whitney, who eventually became the top veterinarian at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has long argued that the Class B dealer should be eliminated, and a number of research institutions have switched to a policy of buying only from Class A permit holders. In addition, there are a lot fewer Class B dealers; in 1993 there were 100 of them selling to research, but in 2001 there were just 20. Now there are 15, six of whom are currently under investigation by USDA.
There ought to be none. When it comes to the supply of dogs and cats for research, testing, and education, the issue that should govern legislation and public policy is how animals are treated. Whether the number involved is 10,000 or ten, animals shouldn't suffer the indignity, cruelty, and mischief of the Class B pipeline.
Bernard Unti, senior policy adviser and special assistant to the president, received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States, is available from Humane Society Press.
