U.S. Closure of Animal-Use Database Alarms Both Scientists and Protesters

Todd Bigelow for The Chronicle

After years under siege by activists who harassed him with violent threats and protests outside his home, the university scientist J. David Jentsch might be a chief beneficiary of the government’s decision to shut down a federal website listing animals used in research.

Yet Mr. Jentsch — who left the turmoil at UCLA a year ago for a calmer life at a New York state university — is among those questioning the move, seeing it as reducing public accountability while unfairly suggesting researchers have something to hide.

“The change can be perceived as malicious,” said Mr. Jentsch, a professor of psychology at Binghamton University. “It should have been avoided.”

The action this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture removed from open public access a database containing thousands of reports by USDA inspectors of facilities where animals are kept by various owners, including breeders, zoos, and research labs. Individual reports can still be obtained from the USDA through Freedom of Information Act requests, a process that can take weeks.

The change in procedures came amid a series of acts by the Trump administration to limit access to government information while new agency leaders get in place. But in recent days, USDA officials have made clear their department’s policy shift was unrelated to actions at other agencies, stemming instead from long-running concerns specific to the ways in which the department’s data are presented.

The USDA has not fully explained those reasons, though it has cited ongoing litigation as a factor. The cases the department is facing include a lawsuit by a Texas couple who feel the agency improperly sanctioned them for alleged poor care of their show horses merely by describing its inspection findings on its website.

The website listings, which typically describe problems found during animal inspections as “violations,” amount to meting out punishment without making an effort to validate inspectors’ allegations through appropriate legal processes, the couple, Mike and Lee McGartland, contend in their lawsuit.

The USDA has no “legitimate legal basis” for making public animal inspection reports containing preliminary findings, the McGartlands argue. The web listings help animal-rights advocates publicly portray some animal owners “as organized criminals,” they said.

Violence Against Scientists

The complaint has parallels with the battles for public opinion long waged against some university researchers, including Mr. Jentsch. In his previous job at the University of California at Los Angeles, he spent years living under armed guard, one among about a half-dozen UCLA scientists who faced a campaign of violence by animal-rights extremists.

Mr. Jentsch’s work included experiments injecting monkeys with cocaine, aimed at improving the scientific understanding of why drug abusers have such a hard time with their addictions. Acts of retribution by activists included the burning of his car and a mailed package of razor blades containing a note claiming they were tainted with AIDS.

Some of the more vocal groups opposed to the use of animals in research include People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Stop Animal Exploitation Now, or SAEN. Both have long relied on the USDA reports for their complaints against specific universities and researchers, and both have expressed alarm over the department’s action.

“We’re very concerned that this information may never come back,” said Michael Budkie, executive director and co-founder of SAEN. Mr. Budkie’s group has used USDA information to arouse public protests against research at various institutions, including work with cats at the University of Florida, lambs at West Virginia University, and monkeys at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Mr. Budkie dismissed the concern about the agency prematurely labeling its inspection findings as violations. “If anything, the USDA is overly cautious” about what its inspectors include in their reports, he said.

A federal official who helped maintain the USDA database for several years, Michal Leah Kanovsky, agreed. The USDA years ago stopped including names of individual employees or investigators such as Mr. Jentsch, opting instead just to identify their companies or institutions.

And complaints about the broad use of terms such as “violation” or “out of compliance” are unwarranted, Ms. Kanovsky said. Universities and other companies handling animals typically receive the USDA reports within a day of the inspections, and then have three weeks to contest them before they appear on the database, she said.

Ms. Kanovsky worked as a FOIA specialist at USDA from 2010 to 2014. Now on the staff of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, she writes a blog that portrays her former department as far too satisfied with leveling accusations through the database rather than pursuing actual legal cases against violators.

While that’s the basic argument made by the McGartlands in their lawsuit against the USDA, Ms. Kanovsky contends that the lack of prosecutions — her data shows more than 90 percent of USDA cases listed in the inspection reports lead to no further action — largely allows violators free rein. It’s especially difficult to hold universities accountable for any mistreatment of animals, she said, because federal law affords them almost a blanket exemption from any penalties by letting them declare virtually any treatment of animals to be a necessary element of a particular research protocol.

“Universities get a lot of leeway on that,” Ms. Kanovsky said. Because of that loophole, she said, the threat of public exposure through the now-shuttered USDA website stood as the most powerful check against the abuse of animals in university research labs.

The USDA action concerning academic work appears especially unwarranted, she said, because university research activities are listed in a database separate from the one covering horses that’s at issue in the McGartlands case. And most university research with animals isn’t included in any government database because the law precludes inspections involving small animals such as mice and rats — by far the most common lab animals.

A leading voice for universities involved in animal studies, the National Association for Biomedical Research, shares both the McGartlands’ concerns about unfair public accusations and Mr. Jentsch’s concerns about the shutdown of the website making scientists look like they had something to hide.

But the association’s president, Matthew R. Bailey, said he could offer no specific recommendation on how the USDA should eventually revise its policies for posting to the site.

However it decides, Mr. Jentsch said, the USDA or some other government entity should start balancing any negative reports about animal research with positive explanations of the benefits such work provides the overall society.

“They should tell the more complete story,” he said of the government. “Hopefully this unusual bizarre decision generates a discussion that goes deeper — what really is the public interest in knowing about what we’re doing.”

Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.