Dear friend,

We secured big gains for animals in 2024, including in our candidate election work where we ousted three incumbent lawmakers who worked against animal welfare policies. But more than anything, we are looking ahead working to drive direct and consequential gains for animals in 2025 and beyond. That progress for animals will only happen, however, with your focused support and engagement for this life-saving work.

We take on the toughest fights for animals and the biggest forms of systemic cruelty. Year to year, we make incremental gains and work to transform key sectors of our economy. Our goal is nothing short of reshaping our human relationship with animals, shedding long-standing forms of cruelty and exploitation in favor of benign and better ways of doing business and conducting our lifestyles.

Will you consider giving $50, $25, or even $10 so we can budget for 2025? A $25,000 match will double your donation, but the opportunity ends Dec. 31 at midnight!

We want to build a newer, better, more humane economy, setting business and government on a better path forward when it comes to food and agriculture, science and testing, wildlife management, clothing and fashion, and entertainment.

As the year closes, I want to share some of our tangible gains as an organization and also identify pivotal actions we must undertake to clinch even more lasting and conclusive victories.

1) We blocked the EATS Act in Congress again in 2024, allowing key state laws (e.g., Prop 12 in California and Question 3 in Massachusetts) to take hold and to provide better living conditions for pigs, hens, and other farm animals. This fight, though, resumes when the new Congress convenes in days.

2) Also on the farm animal confinement front, we prevailed again in federal court to protect implementation of a key farm animal protection law, with the court holding that Question 3, passed by Massachusetts voters in 2016, is not preempted by federal law.

3) We also won again in federal court against the cockfighting mafia, establishing that staged animal fighting is banned on every inch of U.S. soil, including in the U.S. Territories of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

4) We attracted massive law enforcement support for the FIGHT Act so that we can pass the measure in Congress and dismantle animal fighting operations based in the United States but with tentacles that reach to Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other nations across the world.

5) The U.S. Senate passed the FDA Modernization Act 3.0, with the House poised to follow, in our quest to turn the page on the era of animal testing in drug development.

6) Nike and Puma stopped using kangaroo skins in their soccer shoes, and New Balance’s policy takes effect in days. But Adidas remains an outlier, and we must secure a pledge from this German company to stop driving commercial killing of free-ranging kangaroos in their native habitats.

7) We took aim at a ghoulish plan by our federal government to massacre half a million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest, but we must win in the courts or in Congress, or convince the Trump Administration, to scrap the plan to slaughter these North American native owls.

8) We worked with allies to stop a roundup and removal of the iconic wild horses at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in 2025. But we must tackle the larger problem of tens of thousands of wild horses and burros being rounded up across the West at an enormous cost to the animals and to American taxpayers.

9) We are poised to close out a century of greyhound racing and slaughter of horses for human consumption. We planned to pass a legislative amendment to the Farm bill on these reforms in 2024 in Congress, but Congress deferred action on the Farm bill. We’ll be ready to secure these policies and to close out inhumane businesses that are now out of alignment with American values and on the back end of a long decline.

10) We sued the federal government again to restore federal protections for wolves in key parts of their range, and we’ve also launched a critical campaign to pass a federal law — the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons (SAW) Act — to ban chasing down and running over animals in motorized vehicles.

And there’s much more ahead. We are taking on trophy hunters and commercial trappers and their obsession to kill mountain lions, bobcats, and other apex predators.

We are battling to stop the killing of bears for their gallbladders and bile for traditional Chinese medicine.

We are seeking to halt the mistreatment of dairy cows, engineered at the expense of their well-being, for hyper production only to see their milk thrown away. This happens in the National School Lunch Program, which requires dairy milk exclusively to be provided to 15 million kids who are lactose intolerant and become ill if they drink it.

None of this progress or possibility would be achievable without you — your advocacy for animals, your financial support, and your passion for making the world safer for animals.

We are a risk-taking but strategic organization. And we know you value big and bold moves and maneuvers for animals.

Please give generously today so that we can get this work done.

For the animals,

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action