͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

​# [#]
Updates and Issues on Animals and Our Work on Their Behalf

Summary

*
New
Jersey
becomes
11th
state
to
ban
gestation
crates,
but
farm-state
Republican
lawmakers
initiate
the
EATS
Act
just
weeks
after
a
conservative
U.S.
Supreme
Court
upheld
Prop
12
as
proper
and
constitutional
exercise
of
state
authority.
*
New
York
State
approves
the
nation’s
strongest
ban
on
horse
slaughter
for
human
and
animal
consumption,
giving
momentum
to
our
federal
legislative
effort
to
include
a
ban
on
live
exports
of
horses
for
slaughter
to
Canada
and
Mexico.
*
As
our
investigations
uncover
the
scale
of
illegal
animal
fighting,
including
extraordinary
smuggling
of
fighting
animals
back
and
forth
between
the
United
States
and
Mexico,
momentum
builds
for
the
FIGHT
Act
and
the
creation
of
a
private
right
of
action
against
cockfighters
and
dogfighters.
*
Since
the
launch
of
our
Kangaroos
Are
Not
Shoes
campaign
in
2019,
the
commercial
slaughter
of
kangaroos
has
declined
by
more
than
700,000
animals,
based
on
the
government’s
crude
estimates.
A
bipartisan
group
of
six
U.S.
Representatives
has
introduced
Kangaroo
Protection
Act
to
halt
any
trade
of
kangaroo
parts
in
the
United
States.
A
Senate
bill
will
soon
follow.
*
The
Center
and
GREY2K
USA
maneuver
to
close
out
a
century-long
era
of
greyhound
racing
in
the
United
States.
*
FDA
Modernization
Act
2.0
tremors
felt
across
the
globe.

New Jersey Bans Gestation Crates, but Pork Producers and Smithfield Foods Continue Attack on Prop 12
In July, we applauded [[link removed]] New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy [[link removed]] and Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature for enacting an Animal Wellness Action-backed measure [[link removed]] to ban gestation crates to house breeding sows. The Senate voted 35 to 1 and the Assembly 73-1 in favor of the ban. That makes 11 states with gestation-crate bans, including comprehensive measures in California and Massachusetts that incorporate sales restrictions on factory-farmed pork that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in May as constitutionally sound.

Rather than opting to pass national anti-gestation crate legislation that complements state laws and corporate policies, a strong subgroup of lawmakers in Congress want to go in the other direction. Farm-state Republicans are seeking to federally preempt state laws like Prop 12 and wipe them out. The Exposing Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act is the legislative initiative of the National Pork Producers Council and Smithfield Foods, which in 2013 was purchased by the Shuanghui Group in China, better known as the WH Group, for $4.72 billion. That acquisition put the WH Group in control of one of every six pigs born for slaughter in the United States. The U.S. major pork industry trade association, heavily influenced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is seeking to overturn statewide elections, such as Prop 12 in California and Amendment 3 (Mass.). The American and Chinese interests hold sway with farm-state Republicans, who have a major presence on Congress’s agriculture committees and who take a lead role in writing the Farm bill. You can read Wayne Pacelle’s exposé of the China-NPPC connection [[link removed]] and Dr. Jim Keen’s essay against the EATS Act in the Des Moines Register. [[link removed]]

Help us oppose the EATS Act here [[link removed]] .

Finally Ending the Slaughter of American Horses for Foreign Consumers
New York State is poised to join California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas in banning horse slaughter for human consumption [[link removed]] , underscoring that big border states want to end the live export of horses for slaughter to Canada and Mexico.

The state laws are, however, no substitute for a federal ban, given that our goal is to halt all exports of horses bound for slaughter. Fortunately, U.S. Senators Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced anti-horse slaughter legislation, just months after we partnered with Animals’ Angels on a North American investigation [[link removed]] documenting that the extraterritorial slaughter of American horses is rapidly waning but still a merciless journey for around 20,000 American horses. A House companion bill, also rewritten to go to the Agriculture Committee, has strong bipartisan support, and we are seeking to attach the SAFE Act to the 2023 Farm bill. We’ve won enormous bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress for a comprehensive ban on horse slaughter, and this is our moment now to complete the job.

You can make a difference on horse slaughter here [[link removed]] .

Finishing Off the Animal Fighting Industry
It’s hard to fathom that there may be as many as 20 million fighting birds in the United States. That’s precisely why we are working to fortify the legal and enforcement framework to shut it all down, including by providing for a private right of action in new federal legislation called the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act. We are building major momentum [[link removed]] for national legislation, introduced by U.S. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and John Kennedy, R-La., and U.S. Reps. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Andrea Salinas, D-Ore [[link removed]] . Already, it has attracted more than 250 organizations and agencies in the animal welfare, law enforcement, gaming, agriculture, and conservation communities. Meanwhile, we’re working with Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) to expose fighting operations throughout the United States and driving more busts of illegal animal fighting operations, with interdictions from California [[link removed]] to Kentucky [[link removed]] , Oklahoma [[link removed]] to Texas [[link removed]] to Virginia [[link removed]] . Our veterinary experts [[link removed]] are making their case in major agricultural states, such as Idaho [[link removed]] , Nebraska [[link removed]] , and South Dakota [[link removed]] bears no resemblance to accepted agricultural practices. Animal fighting is bound up with a wide range of other organized criminal operations [[link removed]] , including Mexican cartels.

Support the FIGHT Act with just a couple of clicks here [[link removed]] .

Commercial Killing of Kangaroos in Australia Declining as Presence of Kangaroo-Skin Shoes Dwindle in Global Marketplace
Leading a bipartisan group of three Republicans and three Democrats as sponsors, U.S. Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act, H.R. 4995 [[link removed]] to ban the sale of kangaroo body parts in the United States. The bill comes just months after Puma and Nike announced they’d halt further sourcing of kangaroo skins for their soccer cleats, and as the Center for a Humane Economy and other animal-welfare groups press Adidas, Mizuno, and New Balance to stop any use of kangaroo skins in their shoe offerings. The Australian Broadcasting Company has comprehensively covered our campaign [[link removed]] as we’ve rallied the Australian animal-welfare movement to fight the biggest commercial slaughter of wildlife in the world.

Just three years ago, commercial shooters massacred approximately 1.7 million kangaroos in a single year, with 500,000 joeys orphaned in the process. That commercial-kill number has dropped to one million, according to government counts. In 2019, the Center for Humane Economy issued a first-of-its-kind list of 72 models of kangaroo skin soccer shoes from Adidas, Lotto, Mizuno, New Balance, Nike, Pantofolo d’Oro, Puma, and Umbro, but three years later, most of those shoe models are no longer available. We are demanding that Adidas exit the kangaroo trade, and our discussions with New Balance give us hope that no major U.S. athletic shoe manufacturer will source these skins for much longer. And with our new federal legislation, with a companion bill from U.S. Senators, we aren’t leaving anything to chance.

Take action for kangaroos today by visiting this page [[link removed]] .

Greyhound Racing Facing an Existential Moment as Animal Wellness Action, GREY2K USA Campaign for National Ban
A generation ago, there were 60 greyhound racing tracks. Today, tracks hang on in just two small cities in West Virginia. The industry, battered by an unyielding movement to ban racing, has shed tracks one at a time and also in larger bunches as now 42 states have banned greyhound racing. That decline has been accelerated by a nationwide expansion of casino-style gambling and other games of chance that have proven far more alluring to wagerers than greyhounds making 30-second dashes in pursuit of a mechanical rabbit.

In June, a bipartisan group of lawmakers — led by Congressmen Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., and Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, with Don Davis, N.C., Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C. — introduced legislation [[link removed]] to wind down greyhound racing in its entirety. Perhaps more important, the Greyhound Protection Act, H.R. 3894, also seeks to prevent the U.S. market from feeding foreign-owned tracks, whether through simulcasting of the foreign races here at home or by selling U.S.-bred greyhounds to tracks from Mexico to China.

Join our action against greyhound racing here [[link removed]] .

FDA Modernization Act Tremors Felt Domestically and Internationally
With the December 2022 passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, reverberations continue to be felt domestically and globally in our campaign to phase out animal testing for drug development marches ahead. Last month, the government of India passed its own version [[link removed]] of the FDA Modernization Act, which authorizes researchers to use non-animal and human-relevant methods instead of animals. A similar [[link removed]] effort is underway in the Republic of Korea. A recent marketing research report [[link removed]] shows that 55 percent of industry respondents said that the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 is driving exploration into human cell models, and additional research shows that alternatives to animal test are being used in ~70 percent of companies. There is a clear drive to transition from animal methods. Nearly 250 articles have been published about the impact of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, including in the American Heart Association Journal [[link removed]] and Forbes [[link removed]] . We are pressing the FDA to update its regulations given the enactment of the new law and ensure that the agency moves swiftly towards qualification and regulatory acceptance of non-animal methods. We’ll announce follow-up legislative efforts in the coming months.
For the animals,

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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