Pork Industry Complaints Are Pure Hogwash
Now is the time for not just the states but for all consumers to act on behalf of tens of millions of pigs and egg-laying hens cruelly confined in factory farms across America — sentient beings who cannot wait or tolerate excuses designed for delays.

This is precisely because in deciding the most consequential case for animal welfare to come before the U.S. Supreme Court, an ideologically diverse majority of U.S. Supreme Court Justices upheld California’s Proposition 12 as constitutional, putting that measure and a similar Massachusetts statute on track for full enforcement within weeks. More broadly, the decision, at least for the moment, safeguards the rights of states to restrict agricultural commerce for animal welfare, food safety, and other compelling purposes.

Prop 12 built on a prior voter-approved, anti-confinement measure (Prop 2) enacted a decade earlier that restricted extreme confinement of laying hens, veal calves, and breeding pigs, stipulating that any eggs or pork sold in the state come from animals afforded sufficient space to move around, regardless of where the animals are raised. Question 3 in Massachusetts was similar in construction. (The current leadership at the Center and Animal Wellness Action had played a central role in initiating those two ballot measures and the three prior winning farm animal protection measures approved by voters between 2002 — 2021.)

In siding with the state of California in its defense of Prop 12, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Clarence Thomas, Sonja Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett, and Elena Kagan, determined that the National Pork Producers “invite us to fashion two new and more aggressive constitutional restrictions on the ability of States to regulate goods sold within their borders. We decline that invitation. While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list.”

The ruling was widely covered, from the Des Moines Register to the San Francisco Chronicle. Our team has had op-eds published in more than 15 newspapers, from the Orange County Register to the Worcester Telegram Gazette, and has called on state officials in Massachusetts and California to proceed with alacrity in implementing measures adopted by voters in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The laws’ provisions barring the sale of veal and eggs from animals kept in extreme confinement are already in effect.

The debate now moves to Congress, where lawmakers aligned with the pork industry have readied national legislation, the so-called Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act, to nullify Prop 12 and other state laws restricting agricultural commerce. Meanwhile, Animal Wellness and the Center will be actively promoting H.R. 2939 to ban gestation crates nationwide. Here is the SCOTUS ruling, a blog about the win and its effects, and our legal brief and veterinarians’ brief to the court.

Crippling Animal Fighting Around the Nation
Driven by concerns for the barbarism of animal fights, mass shootings, and other comingled crimes, as well as disease threats to poultry and other birds posed by illegal transports of fighting roosters, bipartisan, bicameral legislation crafted by Animal Wellness Action was introduced by federal lawmakers, entitled the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act.

The FIGHT Act is designed to enhance enforcement capacity and to cut off the mass commerce in fighting animals (outlawing online gambling on animal fighting and banning the shipment of roosters through the U.S. mail) and to empower private citizens to bring civil actions against illegal animal fighters.

We are also enormously active against animal-fighting in the states. The Oklahoma legislature officially adjourned May 26, and three pro-animal fighting bills died, with our team leading the effort to block them. In Delaware, with Animal Wellness Action supporting the field investigations of Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, a single Animal-services officer broke up a cockfighting derby in progress after a tip from SHARK. We are partnering with SHARK on a wide variety of investigations in Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and other states. There have been investigations and arrests in a growing number of states, including Arizona, California, Delaware, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

In the latter half of April, a mass shooting at a Hawaii cockfight left two dead and three wounded, generating global attention along with recriminations in Hawaii about a lack of enforcement there. The shooting is a painful reminder that cockfights produce a spillover of violence in our communities. Hawaii press have asked if the Congressional delegation from the state will back the federal bill to curtail rampant fighting activities on the islands.

A New ‘Zero Tolerance’ Standard for Horse Deaths at Racetracks
Declaring that the “show must not go on with so many athletes dying on the field of play,” Animal Wellness and the Center for a Humane Economy called on Churchill Downs to take an indefinite pause with its live-racing schedule until it can return to competition without more young, fit horses dying on the track.

Twelve horses have died at what is arguably the nation’s premier racing venue in the last month, including seven in the week preceding the Kentucky Derby. The deaths of young, healthy, fit horses prompted us to call on the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) to embrace the goal of “no young, healthy horses dying on tracks in training or competition,” with the new Authority urged to suspend trainers whose horses enter into competition and do not get off the track alive. We also called on the Authority to ban the use of the whip.

The spate of deaths drew national attention, and Animal Wellness was at the center of the national discussion, with a national column by the Associated Press and stories in the Wall Street Journal and other major outlets. Criticism spiked just days later after a horse trained by Bob Baffert died at Pimlico in Baltimore, yet the famed horseman was allowed to run a horse later that day. Baffert celebrated the win after the nation mourned the loss of yet one more horse under his control.

The Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action hosted a webinar on Wednesday, June 8, entitled, “Getting to Zero Racetrack Deaths in American Racing.”

You can view the recording here.

Ending the Trade in Kangaroo Skins for Shoes
The Center for a Humane Economy announced results of its latest statewide investigation revealing that retailers in California continue to sell soccer cleats from adidas despite repeated warnings about the violations of the law that forbid this commerce. The Center, having already filed three lawsuits against soccer shops for violating the state’s Unfair Competition Law, sent notices of intent to sue to two more retailers unless they respond with written assurances that the shops would immediately cease sales of the illicit products.

These investigations come in the wake of our March announcements that Nike and Puma will end their sourcing of kangaroo skins for all shoe models, bending to the will of the Center and our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign. Meanwhile, our campaign to secure similar commitments from adidas and New Balance continues.

Protecting Other Wildlife: Delivering an Elephant Truck to Help Captive Giants in Thailand, and Halting Trade in Bear Bile to China
We are pleased to announce the roll-out of a Center for a Humane Economy-funded truck, operated by the Save Elephant Foundation in Thailand, to deliver food to elephants, to help with elephant transports to sanctuaries, and to secure medical attention for them. You can see that truck here. To be sure, we are no fans of captive elephant rides in Thailand, but when the pandemic hit, the Center began supporting Lek Chaillet, founder of the Save Elephant Foundation, to address the acute problem of elephant care, specifically the inability of the private tour operators even to feed the elephants conscripted into deeply problematic work. We’ve stuck with it, including funding the build-out of a rescue truck for elephants.

Also in Asia, where demand for bear gallbladders and bile drives the mistreatment of captive bears and also the poaching of wild bears worldwide for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine, we worked with allies in the House to introduce the Bear Poaching Elimination Act.

Bear farms are being phased out in South Korea and Vietnam, and while that decline is a very good outcome, it will result in greater demand of bile from wild bears, with North America having the biggest populations of bears in the world and therefore representing the biggest target for poachers.