60 years of the Animal Welfare Act and dogs are still suffering

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60 years of the Animal Welfare Act and dogs are still suffering
We recently marked 60 years since the enactment of the Animal Welfare Act — landmark federal legislation that requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to license and oversee commercial dog breeders who produce puppies to be sold wholesale to the pet trade, pet stores or research labs. Congress passed the law in response to public outrage over the horrifying conditions under which dog dealers were housing animals.
Yet six decades later, the cruelty persists. Although the recent removal of dozens of dogs from an Iowa puppy mill has been hailed as a victory for animal welfare, it is just further proof of the agency’s chronic failure to protect the animals it’ has been charged with overseeing.
The federal government should prevent these horrific outcomes, not allow animals to continue in these conditions for months if not years.
The Department of Agriculture licensed Iowa breeder Wuanita Swedlund three years ago. In the time since, the agency documented dogs at her facility suffering from untreated illnesses, painful injuries, and a lack of basic care, leading to multiple deaths. But the department chose to do nothing. It did not fine her, remove any dogs, or take her license away.
Finally, after she spent more than a year evading required inspections, officials entered her property and found even more appalling conditions. Dogs were emaciated, covered in fleas, and kept in filthy cages without clean food or water. But it was local law enforcement who removed more than 30 animals and placed them with a local shelter, and it was the county that charged Swedlund with 34 counts of animal neglect — not the Department of Agriculture.
The federal government has a responsibility to take action before a situation gets this far. Instead, it allowed repeated violations and inspection-dodging, leaving dogs to suffer and die for years in a facility for which it has direct oversight. And this wasn’t the first time.
More than 1,500 dogs were recently purchased by animal welfare organizations from federal licensee Ridglan Farms, which faced allegations such as performing eye operations on dogs without anesthesia or pain relief. While Wisconsin inspectors cited the facility for 494 state violations in a year, the feds only logged four Animal Welfare Act violations over the course of a decade.
Similarly, in 2022, federal licensee Envigo had thousands of dogs removed after the Department of Agriculture had documented years of severe abuse. This included euthanizing dogs via heart injection without the required anesthesia, resulting in an unnecessarily painful process.
And in 2021, hundreds of dogs were rescued from another licensed dog breeding facility in Iowa, operated by Daniel Gingerich. Gingerich kept his license for two years, even though the department had documented more than 100 American Welfare Act violations and a dog died in an inspector’s hands.
In all of these cases, dogs suffered for years, while federal regulators failed to protect them, leaving it to local law enforcement, shelters, or rescues to utilize their limited resources to remove, care, rehabilitate, and rehome the animals.
This is a systemic problem. The Agriculture Department is endowed with the responsibility to protect animals and the authority to revoke licenses, to remove suffering animals and to fine violators. Instead, it has long prioritized an excessively lenient policy focused on “educating” dog dealers in lieu of enforcing the law, leading to tremendous suffering and completely avoidable deaths.
A report by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that, last year alone, the Agriculture Department had documented 680 instances where licensed dog dealers failed to meet the minimum standards of care, yet not a single violator lost its license.
Although the department has announced what seemed like a promising interagency effort to prioritize animal welfare, the department continues not to exercise the appropriate enforcement it is currently afforded under the law.
Congress must step in. The bipartisan Goldie’s Act would ensure that the department conducts meaningful inspections of these licensed facilities, addresses every violation, and intervenes to protect suffering animals.
Sixty years on, the Animal Welfare Act’s promise to protect vulnerable animals continues to elude us. By passing Goldie’s Act, Congress has the opportunity to fulfill the law’s intention and ensure these animals have the protections they are owed.
Nancy Perry is senior vice president of government relations for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
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