FOIA and the Unpublished USDA Record

A large share of USDA Animal Care inspection reports can be read without filing anything. APHIS says so, and it built a public search tool for that purpose.⁵⁶ The same pages also say that inspection reports not currently posted, regulatory correspondence, and enforcement-related matters may require a Freedom of Information Act request.⁵ Research that ignores the second sentence will treat the portal as a complete archive. It is not.

What the statute actually provides

The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, provides that any person has a right of access to agency records except to the extent those records are protected from disclosure by one of the statute’s exemptions or by a law-enforcement exclusion.¹ USDA’s FOIA division repeats that formulation and notes that its Office of Information Affairs processes requests for USDA staff offices except the Office of Inspector General.²

The right is real. The exceptions are also real. Privacy, deliberative process, confidential commercial information, and open law-enforcement files are among the reasons a page comes back blacked out or a request is denied in part. A released file with redactions is still a source. It is a source that must be quoted as released, not reconstructed into what the researcher wishes had been printed.

Where USDA tells the public to file

USDA directs requesters to its Freedom of Information Act Public Access Portal to create, submit, and track requests and to download released records.³ The Department also notes that requests can be submitted through the Department of Justice national FOIA portal.²⁸

OIG is a separate FOIA component. USDA states that FOIA inquiries for the Office of Inspector General should be directed to the OIG FOIA officer, and OIG maintains its own public-access portal for frequently requested records and new requests.²⁴ Mixing an APHIS correspondence request with an OIG investigative-file request in one filing is a common way to slow both.

What APHIS has already said about Animal Care files

Two APHIS statements belong in almost every Animal Care FOIA plan. First, records not in the Public Search Tool may still exist and may be requestable.⁵⁶ Second, veterinary medical records ordinarily stay at the facility; they enter USDA’s possession—and therefore become FOIA-eligible as USDA records—when an inspector copies them to support a citation.⁷

That second point prevents a wasted request. Asking USDA for a facility’s entire medical chart when those pages were never copied is asking for records the Department has said it does not keep. Asking for the supporting documentation attached to a specific cited item on a dated inspection is a request that tracks APHIS’s own description.

How FOIA results should enter a packet

1. 01Record the request number, component (APHIS, OIG, or another USDA office), and the date filed.
2. 02Preserve the determination letter with the released PDF.
3. 03Quote redacted passages as redacted. Do not fill gaps from memory or from news accounts.
4. 04If the request is pending or denied, the pending or denied status is itself part of the evidence trail.
5. 05Do not treat a FOIA release as more official than a posted inspection report; treat it as a different retrieval with its own date.

FOIA is slow. That delay is not a reason to invent the missing file, and it is not a reason to ignore posted reports while a request sits in a queue. The warehouse can hold what is already public. The unpublished remainder, if it is needed, arrives later—with exemptions attached.