APHIS Announces New Animal Care Deputy Administrator and Program Review

Dear Stakeholders:

July 18, 2023 – USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is pleased to announce that, effective immediately, Dr. Roxanne Mullaney is APHIS Animal Care’s new Deputy Administrator. She’s been acting in this position since May 2023, when the previous Deputy Administrator, Dr. Betty Goldentyer, retired. Prior to that, Dr. Mullaney served as Animal Care’s Associate Deputy Administrator.

Dr. Mullaney brings a wealth of veterinary knowledge and skills, as well as both hands-on and managerial experience, to the Deputy Administrator role. She joined APHIS in the early 1990s through the Public Veterinary Practice Career program as a field veterinarian within APHIS Veterinary Services. Earlier in her career, she gained animal disease emergency response and preparedness experience at the local and national levels, as well as managed trade and domestic operations. Dr. Mullaney has since served in a number of key leadership positions, including as the Associate Deputy Administrator of APHIS’ Emergency and Regulatory Compliance Services and the Deputy Pandemic Coordinator for the USDA Marketing and Regulatory Program’s COVID-19 response. Today, she continues as a leader for APHIS’ American Rescue Plan Act implementation.

With this new leadership in place and given the continually evolving changes in the animal welfare landscape in the United States, we felt the timing was right to take a fresh, objective look at our Animal Care program to ensure our regulations, policies, and procedures for protecting animal welfare have kept pace and are still effective. To that end, we plan to issue a Request for Quotes seeking a third-party contractor to help us conduct a program review. We want this contractor to assist us in taking a holistic look at the Animal Care program to see where we hit the mark, where we can improve, and what we might do differently. We want the review to look at both our external and internal environment, along with the legal landscape of animal welfare across the country.

We are excited about this review and know that many of you have thoughts and ideas about enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act. We look forward to exploring possible opportunities to have you, our stakeholders and partners, as a part of this process. Until then, please join me in welcoming Dr. Mullaney to this new role.

Dr. Mike Watson
Acting APHIS Administrator