28 



Mr. Saxton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for having 

 been out of the room much of the time that you all were giving 

 your testimony, but in my opening statement I raised some ques- 

 tions and I would just like to ask this question of whoever might 

 want to respond. I suspect that Dr. Foster or Ms. Beattie would 

 like to respond to these questions. The question has to do with the 

 regulations that were proposed last October that had to do with the 

 subject of a $10,000 surety bond or whatever other arrangements 

 one might make with regard to each animal in the care of a facil- 

 ity. It has to do with seemingly extensive review and intricate per- 

 mit applications that many people see as unnecessary and over- 

 reaching, and it has to do with the industry requirement to pay for 

 the government's writing of environmental assessments and envi- 

 ronmental impact statements. So I guess I have basically three 

 questions. Why are these regulations necessary? In other words, 

 justify them. Why are they not overreaching? And how are we 

 going to pay for them? 



Dr. Foster. I think I win the lottery this time. Those are the Na- 

 tional Marine Fisheries Service's proposed rules. Let us start with 

 the idea of the surety bond. First of all I should say that we are 

 not bound and determined and wedded to a $10,000 surety bond. 

 What we are trying to get at is a problem that we have faced in 

 two serious situations, at least, in the past few years and we see 

 this as having the potential to happen more often in the future. 

 And that is when a facility for one reason or another closes or goes 

 bankrupt, what happens to the animals in that facility? Because 

 we grant the permit to hold these animals, the public holds us ac- 

 countable for what happens to these animals. And in point of fact, 

 this is a classic example of one of the differences between the Ani- 

 mal Welfare Act and the MMPA. 



When a facility loses a license, then APHIS responsibility goes 

 away. And so without the MMPA there would be no care for these 

 animals. What we see as a real problem is that we can't think of 

 any good reason why the public taxpayer should have to pay for the 

 care and transport of these animals while we are working with the 

 public display community to find a place for them. 



Our proposal is a way of ensuring that really marginal facilities 

 find it more difficult to get the animals but even more important 

 than that, that there is some funding to take care of them when 

 some facilities fail. We have imposed on friends in the public dis- 

 play community; we have imposed on the Marine Mammal Center 

 in California at their own expense to take these animals. The New 

 England Aquarium incurred a tremendous expense taking animals 

 from a facility that went down. 



And that is the rationale behind the idea of the surety bond. 



Mr. Saxton. May I beg your indulgence to interrupt you just so 

 that I understand the scope of the problem that you are trying to 

 deal with here. Because I really don't. How often is it that one of 

 these bankruptcies or going out of business occurs, is it something 

 that happens every year, every week, every month, once in a while, 

 really often, and thereby what kind of a problem is it really? 



Dr. Foster. I think over the past 4 years we have seen it happen 

 twice. But if you happen to be the New England Aquarium, it only 

 needs to happen once. We have invoices from that Aquarium that 



