Dear friend,

When it comes to guarding our homeland against deadly zoonotic diseases — including diseases originating in animals and then possibly jumping the species barrier to humans — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is failing. Badly so.

It’s not done a thing to address key forms of animal exploitation with the potential to spread deadly diseases in our homeland — namely mink factory farms and the trade in cockfighting birds.

Meanwhile, the agency has instituted a wildly overreaching policy when it comes to dog imports to protect against rabies. That new policy, where the CDC got it wrong in many places, needs a major reboot.

Mink Farms Threaten to Spread Bird Flu and COVID Variants

We’ve worked with lawmakers in Congress to introduce the MINKS Are Superspreaders Act because we abhor the cruelty inherent in these operations, where solitary, semi-aquatic mammals are crammed in cages so tightly that they fight each other in the tight confinement. The mink farmers kill the animals to supply elites in China with the pelts.

But there’s even more to the story. As documented in one of our technical reports by Jim Keen, D.V.M., Ph.D., mink pose a special risk of contracting and spreading zoonotic diseases.

During the height of the COVID crisis, mink farms in Europe and the United States incubated at least five new variants of SARS-CoV-2. But even though a third of U.S. farms had infections, CDC has set up no protocols for even inspecting the farms in our homeland. For years now, we’ve been flying blind because of CDC’s inattention to the issue.

CDC has held firm in its ‘do nothing approach to mink farming” even after we learned that factory-farmed mink are highly susceptible to H5N1, or “bird flu,” which has even greater potential to disrupt human society than COVID-19.

Please take action and write your lawmakers in support of the MINKS Are Superspreaders Act today.

Then There’s Cockfighting and Avian Diseases

The smuggling of cockfighting birds from Mexico was the cause of 10 of 15 outbreaks of virulent Newcastle Disease — also a form of bird flu — to hit the U.S. in recent decades. And in Asia, we know cockfighting played a role in spreading H5N1 ("bird flu"), which has a 53 percent mortality rate — 100 times more deadly than COVID-19.

Today, cockfighters ship millions of roosters across the nation and to other nations — back and forth across our borders illegally.

That threat of avian disease spread by cockfighting birds is an ongoing, high priority concern as the nation suffers from the costliest zoonotic disease outbreak in the U.S. after COVID, in the form of the current bird flu outbreak.

Urge your legislators to cosponsor the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act!

While CDC Ignores Animal Exploitation Industries, It’s Overreached on Dog Imports

Given our nation’s bitter experience with COVID-19, Americans have a keener understanding of the economic and public health threats associated with zoonotic disease.

Down on the list of zoonotic risks for us is rabies, partly because our nation has long had protocols to limit its spread. And unlike airborne disease spread, rabies is spread by animal bites, and that makes rapid spread of the disease highly unlikely.

But just weeks ago, CDC imposed import standards, under the banner of rabies prevention, for dogs coming into the country that threaten to separate people from their pets. CDC’s new rules impose extreme financial, time, and medical burdens on families. Military and Foreign Service personnel now have major complications in returning home with their pets, and even some international dog rescue organizations are shutting down. In fact, several major airlines have said they are halting shipments of dogs because of their onerous new rules.

CDC justified this policy because it says dogs can import rabies into the United States. But even under the prior set of policies, not a single rabid dog got into the country.

And remember, rabies is already present in bats and other wild animals in our country, so our nation is already not “rabies free.” Local and state government policies requiring dog vaccinations are ubiquitous already.

Anna Umansky, co-founder of Sochi Dogs, a U.S.-based international nonprofit organization that rescues homeless and abandoned dogs around the globe, says the CDC import rules have disabled the charity from its humanitarian and animal welfare work in war-torn Ukraine.

“As a nonprofit rescue we were prepared to do whatever it took to comply with the new CDC rules, but they are so stringent that not only did the temporary rules make it too costly to fly dogs, now the airlines are banning dogs on flights to the U.S. because the CDC rules are too difficult for them to comply with,” she said.

One of the nation’s foremost experts on such matters is Dr. Thomas Pool, M.P.H., D.V.M., who is the Center for a Humane Economy’s senior veterinarian. He agrees with Umansky.

“CDC has no justification for charging ahead with such an irresponsible policy that is already hurting dogs with their families abroad,” he told me. “I firmly believe the CDC’s import rules are unjustified, unscientific, expensive, and unforgivably cruel.”

CDC’s policy rightly forbids imports of puppy mill dogs from Russia, Mexico, and other nations that want access to our market. But other than that, the agency has it wrong.

We’ll be fighting the rule. And we need your help.

And we ask you for your support so we can push back against this policy and other overreaching and reckless government policies.

This Administration has pushed mass killing of barred owls in the Pacific Northwest, failed to protect wolves from slaughter in the Northern Rockies, and is rounding up wild horses and burros at a breakneck pace in the West. And it’s failed to implement foresighted animal testing policies passed by the Congress.

We are watchdogs of our government for animals no matter which party is in charge. And we are demanding that Congress take action for animals no matter who is in power.

We know you agree that animal welfare is a universal value, and government, whether it’s led by Democrats or Republicans, or if power is split, must act with care and active concern and work to help animals. Because when we help animals, we help ourselves.

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Center for a Humane Economy