Docket No. APHIS -2006-0159

APHIS, Station 3A-03.8

4700 River Road Unit 118

Riverdale, MD 20737-1238

RE: Handling of Animals; Contingency Plans

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Docket No. APHIS-2006-0159,
a proposed rule to amend the Animal Welfare Act regulations by adding
requirements for contingency planning and training of personnel by
research facilities and by dealers, exhibitors, intermediate handlers,
and carriers. The proposed plan would include:

(1) Identification of situations requiring a contingency plan

(2) An outline of specific tasks required to be carried out in response
    to the identified emergencies

(3) Identification of a chain of command and who will be responsible for
    fulfilling the tasks in this plan, and

(4) Addressing how the response and recovery will be handled in terms of
    materials, resources and training.

**Overview**

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is an international
trade body, created over 60 years ago by a group of airlines. Today,
IATA represents 230 airlines comprising 93 percent of scheduled
international air traffic. The organization also represents, leads and
serves the airline industry in general. Within IATA's structure are a
number of speciality boards that develop standards and guidance for a
number of airline related topics. With respect to this proposal, IATA's
Live Animals and Perishables Board develops standards for carriage of
live animals including those species regulated by the USDA within the
United States. Guidance on carriage of animals is published on a yearly
basis in IATA's *Live Animals Regulations* (LAR) which have been adopted
as authoritative standards for air transport of animals, not only by the
airline industry but also by national and international bodies such as
the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and a variety of
professional organizations. It is in this context that IATA is offering
comments on the proposed regulation.

IATA's review of this proposal, which appeared in the October 23, 2008
edition of the *Federal Register* (Volume 73, Number 206, pages
63085-63090), concluded that the intent of the USDA proposal is to
impose contingency planning on a number of regulated entities including
carriers and intermediate handlers operating services within the United
States and to mandating certain other conditions such as training and
training intervals for such plans. While IATA encourages its members to
consider the risk associated with air carriage of live animals and to
take the appropriate precautions to ensure their wellbeing during
carriage, the complexity of airline operations requires that emergency
responses be rapidly adaptable to very fluid transport situations. A
single written contingency plan would likely only be usable in a limited
number of situations and only at certain facilities and not at others.
Facilities for holding animals once the animals leave the aircraft are
meant to be limited and suitable for short-term stays. Under such
circumstances, animals are best protected within their shipping
containers, and airline personnel do their best to place the animals in
the best-controlled environment available. Larger airports have more
cargo facility related space than smaller ones thereby providing more
options for managing environmental conditions for animals in transport.
The usage of such facilities must take into consideration all perishable
goods (as well as animals) and be used in the most appropriate ways
possible to protect all such cargo.

IATA develops and makes available training materials, on the appropriate
care and handling of live animals as well as other perishable cargo,
that are used by airlines to administer to their cargo personnel. For
live animal transportation, this training is in accordance with the
materials found in the LAR, and it is the responsibility of individual
airlines to establish and maintain training programs. The proposed
mandatory training schedule is too prescriptive and would likely not be
able to be met by the many carriers that would serve US facilities.
Factors such as personnel turnover, available training time, large
numbers of geographically disperse locations, as well as other
considerations, make rigid timelines costly and difficult to manage.
Moreover, in today's very fluid air cargo environment that requires
constant adjustments to new physical and operational situations,
training given for one set of circumstances would likely not be
applicable to a whole host of others, either envisioned or not, at the
time of any risk analysis. As with emergency situations with passengers,
carriers rely upon the assessment of conditions at the time of the
emergency and the available assets to address the emergency.

The development of dedicated facilities or arrangements for animals in
transit at all locations to address all potential scenarios is simply
not practical nor economically feasible. In the current economic
climate, if such contingency planning requirements were imposed on
carriers or intermediate handlers, IATA members would have to make the
difficult choice of whether to spend a substantial amount of funds to
plan, train and provide for all possible emergencies and natural
disasters, as well as maintain the training schedule and record keeping
that would be required to comply with this proposed rule, or whether
simply to greatly reduce or even eliminate commercially available animal
transport by air for dealers, research institutions, exhibitors or
others that would cause the carriers to fail under the conditions of
this proposed rule.

IATA and its constituent members are supportive of taking whatever steps
are available to provide for the safety and wellbeing of animals in
their care. IATA supports the legitimate use and movement of animals in
commerce by legal entities such as those enumerated in the proposed
rule. IATA appreciates the USDA's desire to protect animals moving in
commerce from the possibility of injury or death resulting from
emergency situations or natural disasters. However, IATA and its members
submit that fixed facilities such as breeders, exhibitors, and research
laboratories would present a relatively greater risk under these
circumstances than would occur during the transport of animals. The
failure rate for air transport for any reason including misdirection of
cargo, container damage, and other non-animal health and welfare
incidences represents a minute fraction of all containers shipped under
all conditions of carriage and is not limited to just natural disasters
or other emergency conditions. While figures are not available that
further categorize the number of animals injured or lost during
emergency or natural disaster conditions while in carriage or on
airlines, it is clearly much smaller than the overall percentage for all
carriage on a yearly basis. For this reason, IATA believes that the
inclusion of intermediate handlers and carriers in this proposed rule is
unwarranted and not based upon a true economic assessment or numbers
justifying their inclusion.

A review of the (US DOT published) number of animals classified as pets
that died or were injured during air transport over the period from
January 2005 through August 2008 throughout the entire United States
totaled 194 animals from a base that is likely much larger per year.
From this data it should be obvious that the risk of death or injury
from a single emergency or natural disaster involving animals in
carriage that are regulated by the USDA would likely be extremely small.

As carriers we are heavily regulated already by a number of agencies
including in the United States the Federal Aviation Administration and
the Department of Transportation. While some planning can be made for
emergencies such as equipment failure, the ability to implement such
plans in a timely fashion depends heavily on the location of the
equipment and type of failure. Due to health requirements that must be
maintained during transit, off loading animals for an extended period of
time at facilities that may or may not be equipped to maintain the
animal health status, ultimately imposes risk to that status which in
turn impacts the value and usefulness of the animals that IATA members
are transporting. This risk may be unacceptable to the consignee and may
ultimately require euthanasia of the animals as a consequence of what
might seem to be a reasonable alternative action during an emergency or
natural disaster. It is also important to realize that as carriers we do
not own the animals and as such are responsible to the consignor
(shipper) who engages us to transport the animals between locations.
While international agreements place some restrictions on our liability,
they do not absolve us from liability.

Under the proposal as it stands, IATA members would be gauged on their
success in addressing animal welfare and safety during an emergency by
the USDA on an as-yet-to-be specified basis and liable for noncompliance
enforcement actions resulting in fines or other consequences if it is
judged by the USDA that their actions resulted in the injury or death of
one or more animals. These consequences could apply even if the actions
were taken using the best available resources at the time but did not
follow a preapproved contingency plan that could not be implemented due
to the very circumstances caused or contributed to by the emergency.
Conversely, if IATA members followed a contingency plan which resulted
in no or minimal harm to the animals they could be held separately
liable by the consignor for 1) acting outside of the scope of their
contract and 2) making the animals unacceptable by changing the health
status which could result in the animals' euthanasia. One could also
envision situations where even though a pre-approved contingency plan
was followed it was not the best choice for the animals at the time of
taking the actions and therefore unacceptable to both the USDA and the
consignor.

In summary, IATA feels that while the requirement for contingency
planning is well intentioned and may be applicable in certain segments
of the regulated community, the available data on the frequency and
magnitude of risks does not support the extension of this requirement to
intermediate handlers and carriers. IATA also feels that the level of
resources required both by the carriers and by the USDA to regulate this
requirement or to comply with it is disproportionate to the risk and
would likely be viewed by IATA constituent carriers as an unacceptable
economic burden. IATA urges that the USDA consider the withdrawal of
this proposal and the development of a more focused proposal applicable
to individual segments of the regulated community on a needs and risk
basis.

If you would like further clarification of materials within this
correspondence, please contact IATA.

Respectfully submitted,

**Eric RAEMDONCK**

Manager

Special Cargo Standards

** **

### International Air Transport Association

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Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4Z 1M1

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