Flying Under the Radar

What with a global pandemic and a presidential election and a whole lot of other stuff going on, there is a lot of newsworthy news which didn't really make the... well, the news.  One item this year popped up on my radar in a big way.  After years of batting around the idea and then letting it lay, the USDA looks like they are finally starting to move towards expanding their definition of "animal" under the Animal Welfare Act - as in, the creatures that they have jurisdiction over and which they do inspections of - to include birds.

The vast majority of zoos and aquariums in the US are already inspected by USDA - the only way they wouldn't be is if they don't have mammals.  Most aquariums usually have some mammals, if not marine mammals such as seals or cetaceans than otters, or small education ambassadors, or maybe sloths or monkeys in one of those ubiquitous rainforest exhibits they all have.  Even the National Aviary in Pittsburgh has a few token mammals on exhibit.  This is still going to be an enormous change, though.  Probably one of the biggest challenges is going to be establishing exactly what the standards of care for birds are going to be according to USDA.  We're talking 10,000+ species, as diverse as kiwis, burrowing owls, condors, puffins, and lorikeets.

Zoos and aviaries aren't really the focus of these new regulations - they are really aimed at breeders and dealers.  Still, they will cover us all the same.  Earlier this year, USDA had listening sessions with interested parties to get their take.  The resultant responses were... well, varied, to be sure.  They ranged from angry private aviculturalists who furiously denounced government overreach into their private businesses to equally furious animal rights activists who would accept nothing less than the abolition of keeping any birds, in captivity, for any reason.  You can read some of the comments in the transcripts below - and on some of them, you can smell the crazy.

APHIS Bird Listening Sessions

I don't know soon to expect these changes to be coming.  For one thing, USDA is so short-staffed that they can barely cover their current load - I've gone years without seeing our inspector.  A major change like this will also probably take years to implement, not least of all with the necessity to establish and tweak standards (who is going to be writing those, anyway?).  For now, it's business as usual in birdland... but with a definite wind of change somewhere on the horizon.