Animal Welfare Act Enforcement

Abstract

This is an annotated transcript from a panel presentation at The Animal Welfare Act at Fifty conference at Harvard Law School. Delcianna Winders discusses the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and how the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) enforces it. She also provides a critique of the USDA’s enforcement of the AWA, with particular attention to its heavy reliance on warnings and discounted penalties, which in many cases fail to deter regulated entities from violating the AWA. Varu Chilakamarri discusses how animal welfare issues are incorporated into the work of the Department of Justice (DOJ). She provides an overview of the AWA, noting the specific sections that provide for federal court review. Chilakamarri also discusses some of the programmatic steps the DOJ has taken within the past few years to make animal welfare a larger priority.