Animal Welfare

President Reagan’s proposed budget eliminates all funding for enforcement of the federal Animal Welfare Act! This outrageous proposal would with one blow destroy all progress made, with great effort by animal welfare organizations and humanitarians, over a quarter of a century for animals suffering and dying in experimental laboratories in the name of scientific research on behalf of human beings, and would take away the minimal protection the act now provides.

Passed in 1966 after years of effort, the Animal Welfare Act was amended in 1970 and 1976 to broaden and strengthen it, but it still actually only provides for humane conditions for the animals (housing, food, water, exercise) before and after experimentation; during painful experiments anesthetics need not be used if the researcher attests it “will defeat the purpose of the experiment.”

Fourteen European countries have legislation on experimental animals that is more humane, more specific and complete than our existing Animal Welfare Act! But if no funds whatsoever are appropriated to enforce the act--the only federal law that provides any protection at all for these pitiful creatures--our avowedly humane nation will move backward to the same status as countries like China and Russia, which provide no protection at all.

MARJORIE McINTYRE