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 New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature for enacting an Animal Wellness Action-backed measure 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 and Dr. Jim Keen’s essay against the EATS Act in the Des Moines Register.

Help us oppose the EATS Act here.

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, 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 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.

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 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. 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 to Kentucky, Oklahoma to Texas to Virginia. Our veterinary experts are making their case in major agricultural states, such as Idaho, Nebraska, and South Dakota bears no resemblance to accepted agricultural practices. Animal fighting is bound up with a wide range of other organized criminal operations, including Mexican cartels.

Support the FIGHT Act with just a couple of clicks here.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 of the FDA Modernization Act, which authorizes researchers to use non-animal and human-relevant methods instead of animals. A similar effort is underway in the Republic of Korea. A recent marketing research report 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 and Forbes. 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 President Animal Wellness Action