For his parting shot to a career marked with controversial deeds and politically incorrect advocacy, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) inserted language into the Farm Bill that permanently excludes the millions of birds, rats, and mice used in painful experiments from receiving even minimal protection under the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Sadly, the bill was passed by Congress on May 8, 2002.

Birds, rats, and mice make up 95 percent of the animals used in research, yet they were somehow left out of the AWA when it was signed into law in 1966. Technically, this should never have been so, as the act covers any “live or dead dog, cat, nonhuman primate, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or any other warm-blooded animal, which is being used, or is intended for use for research, teaching, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes.” The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), recognizing its limited budget and interest in such matters, long interpreted the act to exclude any protections for birds, rats, and mice. For more than 30 years, animal welfare and rights advocates have been working to end this arbitrary exclusion. Their efforts looked set to pay off, despite innumerable twists and turns, until Sen. Helms made his move.

• On January 8, 1992, Federal Judge Charles R. Richey granted a summary judgment in favor of several animal protection organizations that filed suit against the USDA for its refusal to provide birds, rats, and mice coverage under the AWA. Judge Richey described the sentient animals’ exclusion as “arbitrary and capricious.”
  
  
• In October 2000, after being sued again, the USDA finally agreed to modify its definition of the word “animal” to include birds, rats, and mice under the Act.

While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned Judge Richey’s 1992 decision (ruling that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated sufficient legal standing or injury), the research lobby failed in its attempts to scuttle the October 2000 agreement when its motion to intervene on the lawsuit was denied. Seeing the writing on the wall, the research lobby turned to Thad Cochran, an ally in Congress who readily agreed to attach a rider to the 2001 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that would prohibit any action on the inclusion of birds, rats, and mice for one year (i.e., until October 2001).

When the rider expired in October 2001, the research lobby found its hero in Sen. Jesse Helms. Helms, whose top contributors included Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson Tobacco, argued that inclusion of these animals would hinder lifesaving research and that "a rodent could do a lot worse than live out its life span in research facilities." Sen. Helms represented North Carolina's Research Triangle, home to a host of research institutions, including the prestigious University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.

In February 2002, while Sen. Helms was making speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate about how good rodents used in research have it, a PETA investigator was in Helms' home state, working as an animal care technician at UNC-Chapel Hill and proving him wrong.