Monthly Accomplishments and Update:

Animal Wellness Action
May 2025

Summary

• In rapid succession, athletic shoe giants Adidas, ASICS, and Mizuno announced in May that they’ll stop sourcing kangaroo skins for athletic shoes — and that means all top global brands are now on board with our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign to halt the largest mammalian slaughter of native wildlife in the world.
• The Interior Department has defunded two barred owl killing projects just days after we organized a letter from 20 federal lawmakers urging Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to sideline a $1 billion federal plan to kill upwards of 450,000 raptors across three states. The May letter from Republicans and Democrats doubles the number of lawmakers on record on the subject, with a prior letter sent in March from 19 lawmakers asking Interior to nix the costly, unworkable, and inhumane scheme.
• Following April’s game-changing announcements from the leaders of the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to wind down animal testing, we gave NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya a roadmap for that transition: to defund the National Regional Primate Centers and also to initiate a grant-making policy that favors projects with human-relevant science in place of primates, dogs, and other animals.
• Oregon State Police shut down a notorious roadside zoo — a facility we first investigated two years ago — and authorities seized more than 300 animals.
• We applauded the FBI's major dogfighting raid in South Florida, while our investigations, intelligence gathering, and advocacy to combat cockfighting produced more busts and arrests around the nation.

KANGAROOS ARE NOT SHOES
Three giant athletic brands abandon kangaroo skins
Adidas has halted sourcing of kangaroo skins for its soccer shoe models, after Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle addressed him and the leadership of the company at its Annual General Meeting in Fürth. While celebrating this extraordinary news, we turned our attention to other global brands selling kangaroo-based soccer cleats — ASICS and Mizuno, both headquartered in Japan. In succession, the companies announced in correspondence with us that they’d also stop their participation in this trade. ASICS committed to ending use of kangaroo parts in 2025, though Mizuno has not yet set a timetable.

With these announcements, our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign has run the table with the seven biggest soccer shoe sellers in the world since inception in 2020. These companies sell to tens of hundreds of millions of soccer players in 200 nations in the world, and it’s that trade that has driven the annual slaughter of 2 million kangaroos in their native habitats in Australia. With the collapse of these foreign buyers, we are eliminating the commercial incentive for shooters to conduct on night-time shooting sprees.

Protecting Owls
We helped secure congressional opposition to massive owl kill scheme
The Trump Administration, in a signal it disfavors the Biden Administration’s plan to kill half a million barred owls over the next 30 years, has terminated funding for two California projects to shoot barred owls. The Interior Department acted just days after Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Adam Gray, D-Calif., led a May letter signed by them and 18 other lawmakers urging the Interior Secretary to scuttle the entire plan to kill North American barred owls.

The plan, calling for shooters to fan out across 24 million acres of forest habitats in California, Oregon, and Washington, seeks to dramatically reduce barred owl numbers to reduce their competition with look-alike spotted owls. The proposal, known to locals as a “hoot and shoot,” would allow killing of owls in 17 national forests and 14 units of the National Park Service. In March, the original set of 20 lawmakers, led by Reps. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, and Sydney Kamlager Dove, D-Calif., called on Burgum to scuttle the plan.

Reps. Val Hoyle, D-Ore., ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, and David Valadao, R-Calif., are notable signers of the May letter, which asks Secretary Burgum to defund the plan and “suspend the issuance of take permits” for barred owls. We’ve now organized more than 300 animal welfare and birding groups who do not want the plan to proceed. And our federal lawsuit, filed earlier in the year, has forestalled any large-scale killing of owls. In short, we are attacking the plan from all angles.

MODERNIZE TESTING
We call on NIH to defund primate and beagle testing
After the FDA and NIH announced in April that they would reduce reliance on animal testing, we sent two formal letters to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, urging him to 1) wind down funding for primate breeding and testing at all National Primate Research Centers alongside related facilities (14 sites in U.S.), and 2) exclude animal models starting with beagles and primates from all new funding opportunities at NIH. In our letters, we also urged the director to invest money in advanced, human-relevant non-animal technologies.

From our letter on defunding primate centers: “With April announcements from FDA and NIH to wind down animal testing, the Trump Administration is promising to shed the inhumane, inefficient, and archaic model of animal testing and to substitute a new era characterized by human-relevant science and personalized medicine. A logical next step would be for the NIH to wind down funding of the government-funded regional primate centers. The federal government spends a fortune on invasive testing on these animals even though, as Dr. Makary and Dr. Bhattacharya noted, their scientific value is dubious and their moral worth undeniable.”

Oregon’s Democrat Governor Tina Kotek has publicly advocated for the closure of the Oregon National Primate Research Center operated by Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). In late March 2025, her office confirmed that she urged OHSU leadership to complete their current research obligations and move toward shutting down the center in a humane and responsible manner, like Harvard University’s closure of its primate research facility in 2015.

In our letters to Dr. Bhattacharya, we also applauded his early action in shutting down an in-house beagle lab at the NIH campus — a symbolic and practical move consistent with our vision of a humane research future.

These strategic actions are a derivative of our successful work to pass the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 more than two years ago to eliminate the federal statutory requirement to conduct extensive, multi-species animal tests for any new drug development program. You can draw a straight line from the enactment of that law to the announcements from Drs. Makary and Bhattacharya. Our letters to Dr. Bhattacharya on primates and dogs are available here and here.

SHUTTERING ROADSIDE ZOOS
Oregon roadside zoo we investigated is shut down; hundreds of animals rescued
We applauded Oregon State Police and other key agencies for their surprise raid and shutdown of the West Coast Game Park Safari, a notorious roadside zoo on the south coast of Oregon we investigated in prior years for persistent mistreatment of animals. Law enforcement rescued more than 300 animals, including lions, tigers, bears, monkeys, and camels. Zoo owner Brian Tenney was arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.

We worked with Carole and Howard Baskin of Big Cat Rescue to pass the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2022, and one of our first acts after the law came into force was to investigate West Coast Game Park Safari after receiving reports of illegal jaguar cub petting there. In recent years, the cub petting industry, and the breeding of big cats for that purpose, has been decimated by law enforcement and lawmaking actions.

ANIMAL FIGHTING IS THE PITS
FBI arrests dogfighter, and busts of cockfights surge across the nation
With relentless focus on enforcement of federal and state laws against animal fighting, we’re continuing to see surge in busts of these spectacles of animal cruelty. The FBI raided a major dogfighting ring in South Florida, arresting a known perpetrator and rescuing dozens of dogs from the site, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Cincinnati Port of Entry intercepted a shipment containing illegal cockfighting paraphernalia. ICE also conducted a major cockfighting raid in southern Mississippi.

There were local busts of cockfights in May in Indiana, Florida, Oklahoma, and other states. Our teams, working in concert with Showing Animals Kindness and Respect, continue to infiltrate animal fighting rings, gather real-time info on fights with drones, and alert law enforcement.

Our work to expose the vast network of animal fighting operations is documenting the need for a new Animal Cruelty Crimes section at the Department of Justice, the creation of a forthcoming FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce (FBI ACT) Act, and the reintroduction of the FIGHT Act to provide more tools for law enforcement and citizens to take action against animal fighting.

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action