ALERTT: USDA MANIPULATING INSPECTION REPORTS

ALERT! ALL USDA LICENSEES

Current licenses may want to check on your inspection reports periodically online. We have just confirmed that the USDA will change information on the report months, even years, after it was written, given to the licensee, and posted online for public access.

IF YOU ARE WAITING FOR A HEARING . . . this advice is of particular importance as the agency will alter "evidence" to make you look worse than you already do. It usually happens the most before hearings.

The most common alterations the Animal Care staff are making in inspection reports is the addition of the status, "CRITICAL", to certain citations in the report. Below is an example which was a recent occurrence.,

According to the USDA Animal Welfare Inspection Guide, inspection reports cannot be modified or changed to add a "Direct", "Indirect", "Critical", or "Repeat" designation or an additional citation to an inspection report after it has been given to the licensee or registrant." A licensee may also see how additional details are added to "beef up" accusations on the reports which the state may cite the licensee on as well. This is an effort, after the fact, of the USDA and DEC staff to work together to coordinate false accusations against the licensee. For some reason, they may think the Court would deem accusations more likely to have occurred if there are "matching reactions" of the same charges to which a licensee pled.

Therefore, our facility is in civil disobedience. All this obsession with only certain people following the "laws", which sometimes are even made up and changed on a dime to entrap the same people is sickening when those people who willingly and flagrantly violate any law, rule or regulation is the staff itself. It's a hindrance or handicap to following laws anymore since the administrative agencies play so dirty.

There are many other ways the USDA sets up exotic animal owners to fail. These tactics are as follows:

- mandatory 8' perimeter fence when the regulations clearly specify a 6' fence to be adequate, and thus be required, for small to medium size animals.

- If you must repair a section of your perimeter fence, for instance, to repair if after a tree fell on it and damaged the fabric of the fence, you may be cited for maintaining the fence. If the inspector arrives unannounced to conduct an inspection of a licensee's facility, and you have already taken the section of the perimeter fence down to replace it due to the damage from the tree, you would be considered "violating the Animal Welfare Act" for taking the fabric off the posts to replace it. How else would one repair a fence with this kind of damage? Licensees cannot win!

- Inspectors frequently misrepresent facility standards and/or methods the caregivers use to provide for animals. An example is mocking the keeping of young juvenile opossums in a structure which provides for its ability to partake in activities of daily living typical of the opossum, although those structures were initially built or used for domestic rabbits. We had an inspector misrepresent the keeping of juvenile opossums in rehabilitation in those structures by making sure she told others the licensee "uses 'rabbit hutches' for opossums" without clarifying they were large hutches for small opossums. By not providing all the details, the inspector allowed other individuals to assume adult opossums were stuffed in a little rabbit hutch.

The same inspector also told others the same licensee was using a "rabbit hutch" for coyotes, which also conjure up a person stuffing adult coyotes in a "rabbit hutch" in which would undoubtedly fail to provide enough room for the animals to move at all, much less partake in instinctive behaviors, like digging, running, etc. However, the real situation was it was a litter of young juvenile coyotes weighing in between 1-2 pounds each. In fact, they were smaller than any domestic rabbits the facility had which used the "hutch". In addition, it wasn't a "hutch"; it was a large "run", which gave the pups a good deal amount of room to move and play, both laterally and vertically. They were also taken out nightly, since they were nocturnal, and taken to exercise in various parts of the premises for enrichment and exercise.

Besides wildlife in rehabilitation programs are not within the purview of the USDA, even though they want everyone to believe that even if they see an animal which is not being exhibited and is kept away from the regulated animals or is in a different enclosure other than regulated animals, then staff on-site can impose the same standards as they do with regulated animals. This includes pets.

The only animals which would fit this bill would be federally protected wildlife in rehabilitation programs. We have yet to read a statute, rule or regulation encompassing any animal which is not regulated being treated as if it were and citing the caregivers.

Normally, inspectors do this when they don't have enough on someone and they want to build up citations so they can give the licensee a tough time and eventually, sooner rather than later, shut the business down. Arrogance and narcissism are also qualities of many inspectors since, as staff of an administrative agency, they may treat licensees any way they want, no matter how abusive it is and unprovoked it is, without ever being held accountable at all.

Stay tuned for more explanations of abusive standards administrative agencies use to check off one more agenda item for animal rights advocates and favored licensees who want animals from your menagerie.

It's time to create and impose regulations for the regulators! Stay tuned . . .

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