If someone illegally double parks in a one-way street and a cop walks by, the expectation is that they’d get fined. Similarly, you’d think that if a company that uses animals is caught mistreating them, they too would face some sort of legal repercussion. But for many businesses in the US, that’s not what’s happening.

This summer, an inspector with the US Department of Agriculture visited a dog breeder in Ohio where they found one of his dogs — a 4 1/2-year-old female Maltipoo — to be in bad shape. Several of her teeth were missing, she had gum recession, and when the inspector lightly pressed on some of the teeth she still did have, they moved. The breeder was issued a warning, which has no real consequences.

That was also the case when, three years prior, a USDA inspector who visited Alpha Genesis — a company that breeds and experiments on primates — learned that two of the company’s animals died after some of their digits (fingers and toes) became entrapped in a structure inside their cage. Another primate died after being placed in the wrong cage and attacked by another animal.

These incidents represent severe animal neglect and mismanagement — and alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act. According to a new, exclusive analysis by the nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), they’re part of a larger trend over the last five years of the USDA increasingly issuing warnings over actual enforcement actions, like fines.

“USDA is continuously looking for opportunities to improve regulatory compliance and believes that regulatory correspondence, such as an Official Warning, can be a useful tool to encourage compliance and deter future noncompliance,” a USDA spokesperson wrote in an email to Vox.

Passed in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act sets minimum standards, such as food, water, housing, and veterinary care for over a million animals used by around 17,500 businesses, which........

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