Iowa State’s Veterinary Medicine program has been included in a report by the United States Department of Agriculture as one of 27 schools across the country issued citations for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act.

The act is a federal law that governs the treatment of animals in some situations, including animals in laboratories.

The California-based Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights submitted a petition to the USDA last year asking for a more proactive approach in enforcing the law after discovering “blatant violations” in schools across the country.

According to the USDA inspection report of Iowa State, alternative procedures in using animals as lab subjects had been considered at Iowa State, but in five instances, a written narrative was not submitted to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee for their consideration regarding the alternatives.

Also cited in the report was Iowa State’s failure to justify the number of animals used in surgical training activities.

Joan Hopper, director of Iowa State’s Laboratory Animal Resources department, said USDA investigators felt at the deadline the school was in full compliance.

“What happened was they looked at what the university required from us, and they felt it should be more,” she said.

No further action will be taken by the USDA, Hopper said. She also said the citations would not provoke any significant changes in the department’s policies.

The citations represented a lack of documentation rather than a lack of attempts to find alternatives to using animals in training, Hopper said.

“The instructors who teach our courses have been using alternatives for some time,” she said.

Included in the list of alternative actions currently used by the university are the use of demonstrations in place of single student work and a program that allows students to spay and neuter cats instead of participating in surgeries, Hopper said.

Some courses no longer use animals, she said.

Teri Barnato, national director for the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights, said she is hopeful the USDA’s actions would spur a change in policy for the reprimanded schools.

“It’s a very good signal that they’ve decided to enforce the laws in this regard,” Barnato said. “Hopefully, this will influence veterinary schools to be more humane.”

She said a number of schools are now adopting more animal-friendly policies.

“It’s a growing trend. Many students now are unwilling to harm or kill animals as part of their training,” she said.

She said the movement toward providing alternatives to euthanizing previously healthy animals in teaching surgery has been growing, and a few schools, such as Washington State University and Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, have discontinued terminal surgeries in core courses.

“Iowa State is still behind the times,” Bernato said.

Hopper disagreed, saying Iowa State and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights have similar goals.

“What they would like to do is reduce the number of animals used in classroom surgery,” she said. “We’re already on that path.”