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 The emailed memo from Chavonda Jacobs-Young, head of the agency's
Agricultural Research Service, was sent to all Animal Research
Service employees on Friday afternoon in response to recent media
reports over controversial animal welfare conditions at its U.S.
Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska.
The new strategy will include updated training for government
employees and others who work with animals in the service's research
labs, according to the email. In addition, an independent panel will
be convened to review the group's animal handling protocols,
policies and research practices.
What specific training steps would be implemented, and who would be
on the independent review panel, is not known. Animal Research
Service officials could not be reached for comment on Friday
evening.
 Two days earlier, the agency said it was looking into livestock
conditions at its Nebraska-based center, in the wake of a New York
Times report stating that facility staff had failed to follow basic
animal welfare standards when conducting decades of research.
Researchers at the center, which is overseen by the Animal Research
Service, are tasked with finding ways to bolster the profitability
of the U.S. livestock industry, according to the paper's report,
including making lamb chops bigger and pork loins less fatty.
But in the process, according to the Times report, the center put
these animals into cruel and dangerous conditions and has operated
outside of the federal Animal Welfare Act, which does not cover most
farm animals used in research.
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Jacobs-Young also informally named Eileen Thacker, a veterinarian
and national program leader in both food safety and animal health at
ARS, as the unit's first animal welfare ombudsman.
"Please remember we all own the responsibility for animal welfare;
if you see something that disturbs you, please report it, first to
your supervisor or their supervisor," Jacobs-Young wrote.
If employees believed that further action needed to be taken, they
were advised to contact Thacker directly, according to the email.
(Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter, editing by Ken Wills)
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