Welcome to the USDA Animal Care online search tool.

Here you will find information regarding individuals or facilities whose animals and activities are regulated by the Animal Welfare Act.

The Animal Welfare Act and its associated regulations require that federally established standards of care and treatment be provided for certain warm-blooded animals bred for commercial sale, used in biomedical research, transported commercially or exhibited to the public. Entities that operate facilities using animals in these ways must provide their animals with among other things, adequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, water and veterinary care, and they must protect the animals from extreme weather and temperatures.

The following questions are designed to help determine the type of information you are seeking:

Are you seeking basic licensee/registrant information, such as whether a particular entity is licensed by USDA?
Clicking on the above link will allow you to conduct a basic search of entities regulated under the Animal Welfare Act.

Are you seeking an inspection report for a particular entity?
USDA inspectors conduct routine, unannounced inspections of all entities licensed/registered by the Animal Welfare Act. We make inspection reports available via this search tool 28 days after the inspection is finalized. If a facility appeals the report, we will make it available once the appeal has been settled. We keep inspection reports online for three years.

Are you seeking an annual report for a particular research facility?
Each research facility must submit an annual report to USDA Animal Care each year. These reports contain the numbers and types of animals used for research purposes during a particular year.

Are you seeking to create an ad hoc search in which you extract a combination of information from our database?
For example, you can create a search which gathers "all of the exhibitors in the state of Maryland" or "all of the commercial dog breeders in the state of California."