Little Downside for Multiple Federal Law Violations

On April 15, 2020, the USDA fined the University of Wisconsin $74,000 for series of twenty-two violations of the Animal Welfare Act that occurred from March 4, 2015 to April 25, 2019.

The USDA reports that the university has not been inspected since December 10, 2019. [To see the data, you need to enter 35-R-0001 into the "Certificate Number" field.

Since December 10, 2019, the university has self-reported thirty-seven violations (most involving monkeys) to the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW). [See UW-Madison's Self-Reported Animal Welfare Violations] OLAW rarely, if ever, issues citations or levies fines.

You might imagine that an institution fined for multiple violations would warrant extra attention, but in the world of tax-payer-funded vivisection, that does not appear to be the case. There is no downside for repeat violations of the so-called Animal Welfare Act.