͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌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]]

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Monthly Accomplishments and Update
Animal Wellness Action
October-November 2024
Summary
* Animal Wellness Action conducted independent expenditure campaigns in nine competitive congressional races, and our work pushed seven of them to victory (78% win rate). We helped oust three of the most anti-animal-welfare incumbents, replacing them with three pro-animal lawmakers. In the other four races, incumbents we helped and who prevailed are among Congress’s leading animal welfare advocates.
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* The Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its unprecedented plan to massacre more than 450,000 barred owls across the Pacific Northwest, including inside 14 units of the National Park Service.
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* Animal Wellness Action and the Center released a long-term investigation of illegal cockfighting and animal trafficking in Arkansas, showing a connection between these illegal operators and organized criminals in Mexico and the Philippines.
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* Our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, which we launched in 2020 to address the widely overlooked mass slaughter of kangaroos for their skins, has gone viral, with multinational condemnation of the commercial kill, global protests against Adidas, and legislative action in the United States and abroad to outlaw the trade in kangaroo parts.
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* We are appealing to the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to examine the use of intelligent and sociable animals, such as dogs and primates, in animal tests for drug screening. These archaic tests, especially compared to 21st-century strategies, are not only inhumane but also squander immense public and private resources.
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* Pennsylvania lawmakers gave final approval to a groundbreaking measure that explicitly allows companion animals to be included in Protection from Abuse orders.
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* We are disappointed but undeterred that Colorado voters, after a deceptive and well-financed opposition campaign, failed to pass Prop 127 to ban trophy hunting and commercial trapping of wild cats in Colorado. We are already working on a new plan to secure key reforms.
Major Election News : Our Campaigns Oust Three Anti-Animal Lawmakers
Our TV campaigns also help return four leading pro-animal lawmakers to Congress
Animal Wellness Action conducted television advertising campaigns that resulted in the ouster of three incumbent lawmakers who balked at supporting any animal welfare reforms. Our campaigns also helped return four animal welfare leaders to the U.S. House.
* In California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley, our endorsed candidate, Adam Gray, won by 187 votes, ousting incumbent John Duarte, R-13, who refused to cosponsor a single animal welfare bill this term and who was working to overturn Prop 12 by advocating for the EATS Act, H.R. 4417. Duarte’s loss will reverberate throughout the House as we ready ourselves to again fight off an attempt by factory farmers and their legislative allies to unwind the states’ most important farm animal welfare laws. Adam Gray took the opposite position as Duarte, calling EATS “a misguided attempt funded by the pork industry and a Chinese multi-national corporation to take away the rights of California voters to set standards for the food they eat.” See our anti-Duarte ad [[link removed]] .

In a neighboring Central Valley district, an avowed Republican opponent of EATS, U.S. Rep. David Valado, CA-22, was re-elected in a district with a Democratic voter registration advantage. A farmer, Valadao co-led a letter by a group of 16 Republicans opposing the EATS Act. This summer he also added language to the Ag-FDA appropriations bill directing the Food and Drug Administration to implement the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. See the Valadao ad here [[link removed]] .
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* Reps. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., and Michelle Steel, R-Calif., went down in defeat to two pro-animal lawmakers after Animal Wellness Action ads showed their apathetic response to the urgently needed FIGHT Act. See our anti-Williams ad here [[link removed]] and our anti-Steel ad here [[link removed]] .
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* In addition to helping Rep. Valadao, we campaigned to keep other top allies in Congress. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick — author of the Kangaroo Protection Act and the Puppy Protection Act — was re-elected in his swing seat in the Philadelphia suburbs. See our ad here [[link removed]] . Rep. Nancy Mace — author of the MINKS Are Superspreaders Act and the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, and the lead Republican cosponsor of the ADD SOY Act — was re-elected to a third term. See the ad here [[link removed]] . And freshman Don Davis, in one of the toughest races in the nation, was re-elected to a second term, with Animal Wellness Action highlighting his leadership on a range of animal welfare reforms. See the ad here. [[link removed]]
PROTECTING ALL FOREST OWLS
We sue Fish and Wildlife Service, noting kill plan opens national parks to owl hunting
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy filed a legal action in U.S. District Court in Washington state challenging a plan crafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to greenlight the killing of almost half a million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest over the next 30 years. The unprecedented scheme to kill barred owls — a species native to North America and protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act — was dreamed up to reduce competition between that species and its lookalike cousins, the northern spotted owl and the California spotted owl.
This unworkable kill plan calls for opening 14 units of the National Park Service — including in Olympic, Crater Lake, Redwoods, and Yosemite national parks — to owl hunting. Our coalition opposing the kill has swelled to 230 organizations, including 20 Audubon societies. See our opposition detailed here [[link removed]] , concerns here [[link removed]] from the nation’s premier forest owl biologist, and the details of the gruesome plan here [[link removed]] .
ANIMAL FIGHTING IS THE PITS
We release undercover investigation of illegal cockfighting in Arkansas
Animal Wellness Action and the Center released a damning investigation that reveals that illegal cockfighting is rampant in Arkansas, documenting that a network of animal fighting complexes are operating in explicit violation of state and federal laws against animal cruelty and related crimes and consorting with organized crime interests in Mexico and the Philippines.
The investigation and our 30-page report [[link removed]] also lay bare a plan we uncovered to decriminalize cockfighting in Arkansas. According to a leaked audiotape we obtained through an informant, cockfighters are planning to knowingly misrepresent their enterprises as benign chicken-breeding operations focused on exports of birds for legitimate purposes. The best answer to their conduct is for Congress to pass the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking Act (FIGHT) Act, S. 1529 and H.R. 2742, to increase the array of tools that federal law enforcement can deploy to stop illicit conduct. The FIGHT Act has more than 750 endorsing agencies and organizations, including the National Sheriffs’ Association, the National District Attorneys Association, the United Egg Producers, and a large set of rural county sheriffs in Arkansas.
KANGAROOS ARE NOT SHOES
Our campaign to end kangaroo-parts trade goes viral, worldwide
When the Center for a Humane Economy announced its Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign in 2020 — highlighting the world’s largest mammalian slaughter of wildlife — it may have seemed like a lonely effort and an uphill battle in taking on the government of Australia and its commercial kangaroo-shooting and processing industry.
That campaign has gone viral [[link removed]] , with Australian groups mobilizing to stop the commercial slaughter and groups throughout the United States, Europe, and now even Japan joining us in the fight. In November, there were global protests against Adidas in Sydney, Melbourne, Berlin, New York, Toronto, Tokyo, Taipei, and other cities throughout the world. In the Netherlands, Dutch politician Ines Kostic reportedly won majority support of her parliament to ban the import of kangaroo products, a decision reported by Australian media [[link removed]] .
Also in November, the Center’s Kevin Chambers traveled to Japan to open dialogue with two athletic shoe brands based there — ASICS and Mizuno — to halt their sourcing of skins of the marsupials. Adidas remains the biggest outlier, in the wake of Nike, Puma, New Balance, Diadora, and Sokito divorcing their companies from the trade. There are serious legislative efforts afoot in the U.S. and Europe to close markets to this inhumane trade.
CRUELTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Pennsylvania adopts stiff protections for companion animals
Pennsylvania lawmakers gave final approval, on the last day of the 2024 legislative session, to a measure that explicitly allows companion animals to be included in Protection from Abuse orders. This advance follows a grassroots campaign led by Animal Wellness Action, Humane Action Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania state director Natalie Ahwesh, and a coalition of animal welfare groups, children’s advocates, domestic violence organizations, and law enforcement agencies. The bill’s success not only highlights the importance of safeguarding animals but also brings attention to the vital link between animal abuse and domestic violence.
MODERNIZE TESTING
We call on Congress and the new DOGE to address wasteful animal testing
In addition to calling on Congress to hold the FDA accountable for slow-walking the transition to a new testing paradigm grounded on human-based biology and animal-free science, Animal Wellness Action is calling on the newly announced Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut wasteful spending and wean America from its reliance on animal testing. “The consequences could be historic,” Dr. Zaher Nahle of the Center writes in a blog [[link removed]] , “vis-à-vis trimming waste and bolstering efficiency in the biomedical discovery space. This shall benefit all Americans.”
“A jarring 90-95% of experimental drugs fail in clinical trials after acceptable outcomes data in animals are used to justify their advancement for testing on humans,” Dr. Nahle writes. “Moreover, scores of potentially life-saving drugs are prematurely abandoned once they confer no benefits to animals, exacerbating an already inefficient animal-centric drug discovery paradigm. Failed oncology trials [[link removed].] alone are estimated to cost $50-$60 billion annually. Most new-generation therapies (e.g., cell therapy, immunotherapy) are by design human-specific, and testing on animals is a fool’s errand.”
Introduced in the House and Senate, the bipartisan FDA Modernization Act 3.0, H.R. 7248 [[link removed]] and S. 5046 [[link removed]] , will require the FDA to align its regulations with the new statute under the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. A Washington Post piece [[link removed]] on the escape of nearly 50 primates from a primate breeding and collection facility in South Carolina highlighted FDA’s intransigence in implementing the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 and the need for a follow up act from Congress.
PROTECTING NATIVE CATS
Colorado voters turn back reform to stop trophy hunting and commercial trapping
Voters rejected Prop 127 on November 5 in a surprise defeat, after voters there favored two prior attempts to restrict inhumane methods of killing bears and other fur-bearing mammals. A multi-million-dollar campaign succeeded in muddying the issue by claiming that Colorado Parks and Wildlife should decide the issue rather than the citizens. We will take them up on the offer and are already asking the Colorado Wildlife Commission and CPW to ban all trophy hunting and trapping of bobcats and to end hounding of lions. If the agency doesn’t address these abusive outlier practices, we will consider appealing to the voters again, showing them that we have repeatedly tried in good faith to get the agency to address inhumane and unsporting methods of killing native cats that are not permitted for other big game species.
The Center for a Humane Economy’s Jim Keen, DVM, Ph.D., wrote a major report, A Scientific Review of Mountain Lion Hunting and Its Effects [[link removed]] , that dismantled the groundless claim that trophy hunting does anything but provide a recreational killing opportunity for the participants. Dr. Keen, a former USDA and University of Nebraska veterinarian and an infectious disease specialist, also authored a second report, on the beneficial role that lions play in limiting the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease, which is the greatest threat to the long-term health and viability of deer and elk in Colorado and dozens of other states and provinces.
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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