On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced the reactivation of its “refined public search tool” that had previously provided public access to Animal Welfare Act compliance and reporting records. This database and its crucial information have been offline since February 3, 2017.

Financial support and letters demanding transparency from the USDA from NAVS advocates were vital to this new release of information.

While NAVS is pleased to see that many features of the Animal Care Public Search Tool have been restored, there appear to be elements of the interactive database that are still missing. For instance, the previous version of the search tool allowed for more customizable searches, enabling the public to quickly generate reports for their specific and detailed queries of interest, such as which universities in particular states used cats or dogs in research. This information can be found in the new database, but hidden in the individual state annual reports of each university, rather than generating one report that pulls all this information together in one place.

There is important work to be done on behalf of animals sitting in cages across the country, but until we have fully functional databases allowing the public to access data on animal use as needed, we can only guess what the USDA could be hiding.  

Animals’ lives are at stake. NAVS plans to continue this fight—but we can’t do it without thousands of animal advocates like you on our side.

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Our action spoke volumes, and now we’re asking you to help us take the next step. 

Can we count on you to make a donation to NAVS to continue our legislative efforts on behalf of animals? Your generosity will help us continue to unite animal advocates across the country as we work both to restore transparency and move forward life-saving, humane legislation.