Article originally appeared in Inside APHIS, Summer 1998
The scene is tense. A crowd of 250 animal rights advocates, industry representatives, and interested members of the public pack into the conference center at the APHIS Headquarters building in Riverdale, MD.
Cordial but cautious, they all come to the May 12 Animal Care (AC) public meeting for one reason: to learn what APHIS has been doing to improve enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Outside, the rain pounds against the windows. Inside, the questions spring from the floor.
“What has USDA been doing to improve the oversight of commercial dog dealers?” asks one individual. “What are USDA’s plans regarding the testing of circus elephants for tuberculosis?” asks another.
Ron DeHaven, AC’s Acting Deputy Administrator, has anticipated these questions for weeks. In fact, as head of the program that enforces the AWA, he’s been hoping they would be asked. The questions provide him the opportunity to showcase the program’s efforts. Assistant Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Michael V. Dunn, who sits by DeHaven’s side with Acting APHIS Administrator Craig Reed, strongly supports these efforts.
“I’m glad you asked,” begins DeHaven. “Let me take a few minutes to recap some of the many changes our program has undergone in the past 2 years.”
In April 1996, APHIS issued its strategic direction for the Animal Care program. The document painted the picture of a program with vast potential but in need of an overhaul. It also detailed the steps AC needed to take to improve. These included making better use of resources for enhanced program delivery and empowering, supporting, and developing employees.
From the start, the strategic direction had the backing of Dunn and other high-level Department officials. As Dunn notes, “We knew what needed to be accomplished, and we gave our full support to AC employees to get the job done.
Capitalizing on this support, AC wasted no time in putting the plan into action. The program established eight employee-based teams, each focusing on one or more of the plan’s objectives. It also created an initiatives coordinator position to oversee the teams and ensure that the strategic direction moved forward.
“The strategic direction document was basically a mandate to reinvent the AC program,” says Dick Watkins, AC’s initiatives coordinator. “The strategic direction said, ‘Don’t be modest. Take risks and make major changes.’”
For the next several months, AC employees from California to the Carolinas descended on APHIS headquarters with the charge of revamping the way AC did business. The employees looked at everything from the way the program conducted inspections to ways to better educate stakeholders—such as licensees and animal rights activists—about the laws and regulations. The employees had numerous suggestions for improvements.
“At one point, I think we had more proposed changes than we had employees to carry them out,” says DeHaven. “However, it was easy to identify the high-priority items.”
“One of the first items we looked at changing was our inspection system for AWA licensees and registrants,” says DeHaven. “We realized that with decreasing resources and increasing costs we would need to change our policy of inspecting all regulated facilities at the same frequency.”
This concept first surfaced at AC’s public meetings on the regulation of dog dealers in early 1996. But serious concerns remained. Any decrease in the frequency of inspections would be viewed by animal welfare organizations as making APHIS’ AWA inspection system less stringent. And any new system had to be fair and equitable for all licensees ad registrants.
To handle these thorny issues, AC knew it needed to establish an inspection system that was both objective and impartial. The system must rate everybody using the same criteria. The result? AC’s new risk-based inspection system (RBIS). This system uses several criteria, such as licensees' or registrants' past compliance history and types of animals being used (e.g., tigers versus gerbils), to determine risk and inspection frequencies for given facilities.
Still, implementing the plan wasn’t easy. “It took us 2 years of hard work and headaches to make RBIS a reality,” says Bob Gibbens, AC’s Western Region Director and a member of the team that developed the system. “Some of our inspectors even had reservations at first, not to mention how it was viewed by those outside the agency.”
However, in time, these concerns turned into confidence for the risk-based system. And, by the time it was officially launched in February of this year, the system was broadly supported both by AC employees and the program’s stakeholders.
“Right now, we are seeing tremendous support for RBIS,” says Watkins. “People are realizing that it is a fair and equitable way to do more with less. And, after all, isn’t that what reinventing government is all about?”
To complement RBIS, AC also changed the focus of its inspections. “After 30 years of conducting as many inspections as possible, we began performing more indepth inspections, particularly of those licensees and registrants who historically had compliance problems,” says DeHaven.
“The result is a slight decrease in the overall number of inspections but a significant increase in the amount of time spent inspecting individual facilities. And that means more time to search for any problem areas.”
AC also modified its enforcement strategy. No longer does the program treat all alleged AWA violators the same. Under a new two-pronged strategy, AC and Investigative and Enforcement Services (IES) pursue innovative penalties for licensees and registrants who show an interest in improving the conditions for their animals. These penalties allow the individuals to invest all or part of their monetary sanctions in facility improvements.
At the same time, AC and IES have pursued stringent penalties for licensees and registrants who do not improve the conditions for their animals. Such actions typically include significant monetary sanctions, such as a $200,000 fine that was levied against a circus for the death of an elephant in the southwestern United States in August 1997.
“The idea is to get off the backs of those that are in compliance, work with those who want to improve, and get tough on the bad actors,” DeHaven proclaims.
AC’s numbers speak for themselves. During the past 2 years, more than $1.8 million in fines have been assessed and nearly 50 licenses suspended, revoked, or disqualified. All the while, AC and IES have virtually eliminated the once insurmountable backlog of AWA cases in the legal pipeline.
But AC’s efforts don’t stop with the new plans for focus and enforcement. The program has also undertaken several initiatives to better equip its field personnel with the tools they need. For example, AC has provided its entire AC field force with laptop computers, allowing them to eventually produce electronic inspection reports that can be instantly transmitted to the AC regional offices.
AC also has consolidated several volumes of often conflicting and confusing policies into approximately 20 sensible and understandable ones. These policies are interpretations of the regulations and are used by field personnel when conducting inspections. By having one easily portable manual that is used by all field personnel, AC can ensure that the AWA is being interpreted the same way throughout the country. (As a side benefit, AC has made these policies available to stakeholders for the first time.)
In addition, AC has held two national training conferences for AC field personnel, the most recent of which took place in March of this year. As with the rewritten policies, the focus of these conferences was establishing uniform inspection procedures throughout the country.
“We want to make sure our inspectors are saying the same thing in Honolulu as they are in Houston and Hartford,” says Jeanne Lorang, AC field inspector in the western region and a member of the team that helped to plan the national training conference. “Our policies and national training conferences are making this goal a reality.”
As a final training piece to the puzzle of inspection consistency, AC will hold three training sessions later this year that pertain specifically to elephant care and handling. With all the public attention focused on these popular giants in recent years, AC recognizes the need to provide its inspectors with the best available knowledge on the animals’ care. Through these three sessions, AC will train its field personnel who inspect elephants on what to look for and how to look for it.
Still, all these changes would be unknown to the program’s stakeholders if they weren’t communicated. “If a government program changes in Washington, and the people in Iowa don’t know, what good is accomplished?” asks DeHaven. “We must tell our stakeholders where we are going and ask for their input.”
AC has used a variety of means to achieve this end. In early 1997, the program undertook a massive survey of 3,700 licensees and registrants to measure customer satisfaction. The survey, part of AC’s efforts to comply with the Government Performance and Results Act, helped the program establish baseline levels of service from which to improve. AC has used this valuable data to set goals for the future.
Around the same time the survey was given, AC also launched a multi-year public awareness campaign. This campaign is designed to raise awareness about AC and its numerous efforts to improve enforcement of the AWA, as well as the Horse Protection Act. Products from the campaign already include a full-color brochure on traveling safely with pets, a corporate-style annual report, and several other valuable informational products.
“One of the most important products,” says Watkins, “has been the quarterly report we send to our stakeholders to keep them briefed on program developments. With all of our changes, we believe it is imperative to keep our customers in the loop with where we’re going.”
Another, more subtle communication enhancement was the creation of a new user-friendly inspection report. The new narrative format provides a list of any items that are not in compliance and a description of the citation. It also references the section of the AWA regulations under which the noncompliant item has been cited. All of this makes the reports much easier for people outside the agency to understand.
Through all these changes, what has emerged is a new Animal Care program. One dedicated to continuous improvement rather than the status quo, one based on performance-management not placating interests, and one committed to the spirit of reinventing government and the intent of the Government Performance and Results Act.
Nowhere has this been more evident than at the May 12 public meeting (yet another AC effort to communicate better with stakeholders). As DeHaven fields question after question from the probing audience, he reveals the numerous changes that the program has undergone during the past 2 years and comes one step closer to the real reason why AC has spent so many hours and dollars reinventing its operations.
“In essence, we had to put the ‘care’ back in ‘Animal Care.’” says DeHaven. “We had to make it clear that, when we get involved, animals’ lives improve. Our work is too critical to have people not understand that essential part of our job.”
This article appeared in the Animal Welfare Information Center Bulletin, Volume 9, Number 1/2, Fall 1998
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