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Contact:
David Sacks (301) 734-5271
Lyndsay Cole (970) 494-7410
USDA’s Animal Care Program Enhances Searchable Database to Provide the Public with Greater Access to Animal Welfare Information
WASHINGTON, June 1, 2011--The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has developed an expanded and improved search engine that provides greater access to information about USDA licensees and registrants regulated under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).
“This search engine is very powerful, and it allows the public unprecedented access to information that used to be available only through Freedom of Information Act requests,” says Chester Gipson, APHIS’ deputy administrator for animal care. “This is another way that the federal government is becoming more transparent than ever before.”
The AWA, enforced by APHIS’ animal care program, establishes federal standards of humane care and treatment that must be provided for certain animals that are bred for commercial sale, used in research, transported commercially or exhibited to the public. Animal care ensures the welfare of the animals it regulates by conducting unannounced inspections of USDA licensees and registrants. For the past several years, it has posted its inspection reports as public information on a searchable, online database accessible from APHIS’ website.
Now the program has upgraded the search tool for their database, known as the Animal Care Information System (ACIS), so the public can search for licensing data, inspection data and information contained in the annual reports submitted by USDA-registered research facilities.
Not only is there more information available than ever before, but users can also export data for their own specific purposes into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. For example, in previous years, animal care posted the research facilities’ annual reports as portable document format files, but this format did not allow users to electronically search or sort the information. The revamped ACIS search tool offers the data from the annual reports in a format that can be electronically arranged for comparison and analysis.
With the new ACIS search tool, the public can also make much more in-depth and individualized queries. Now, if users want to find out how many rabbit breeders there are in Minnesota, they can do that. With the old system, users could, for example, query the number of breeders in a particular state, but the data was not species-specific.
Queries can be made using more than one search criteria. Users can search for data pertaining to multiple states, multiple non-compliance items and multiple licensee types. For example, it is now possible to make a data search for USDA-licensed dog breeders and dealers in five different states who have been cited on inspection reports for three different types of non-compliance items.
ACIS search tool is responsive to questions for technical assistance as well. Users can submit their questions via e-mail, and they will receive answers via email.
ACIS is accessible via the following link: http://acissearch.aphis.usda.gov/LPASearch/faces/AC_Forms.jspx?r_type=1
Note to reporters: USDA news releases, program announcements and media advisories are available on the Internet and through really simple syndication (RSS) feeds. Go to the APHIS news release page at www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom and click on the RSS feed link.
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(800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).
