Monthly Accomplishments and Update:
Center for a Humane Economy, Animal Wellness Action, and the Animal Wellness Foundation
August-September 2025

Summary

• Sen. John Kennedy, lead author of S.J. Res. 69, is closing in on 30 signatures from colleagues to bring the resolution to the full Senate to nullify a billion-dollar scheme to shoot 450,000-plus North American barred owls. Meanwhile, wildlife scientists and ethicists weigh in that a “forever war” against owls won’t work and is morally wrong.
• Cody Roberts, the rancher and trophy hunter who ran over Theia (a young wolf) and then took her captive and tormented her, has been indicted in a rural Sublette County in Wyoming. Though his savage act came to light 18 months ago, justice may yet be served.
• U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a damning 105-page opinion finding that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refusal to relist gray wolves in the Northern Rockies held no factual or legal merit. Judge Molloy told the agency to re-examine the issue. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming not only allow people to run over wolves with snowmobiles, but also to injure them by other unconscionable methods, including attack dogs and neck snares, often supported by bounties.
• In the wake of the release of our 40-page report deconstructing the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act and a similar Senate bill, 14 Republicans in the U.S. House announced their opposition to the plan to wipe out Prop 12 and similar state laws. Meanwhile, we gained “intervenor” status in a lawsuit from the Department of Justice that seeks to overturn protections for laying hens built into not only Prop 12 but also preceding laws (Prop 2 and AB 1437).
• The two national leaders of the pro-cockfighting movement — Anthony Devore and Blake Pearce — were arrested in September in Oklahoma some months after our hidden camera caught them at a cockfighting derby. Also in September, the Oklahoma Ethics Commission ordered their group, the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission PAC, to disband for at least two years and fined it $10,000 for egregious campaign finance violations.
• Democrats and Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee introduced the Greyhound Protection Act to end the century-long era of greyhound racing in America.

Saving Owls
Momentum builds for Senate and House resolutions to nullify kill plan
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is closing in on his task to bring S.J. Res. 69 to the Senate floor and stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to shoot half a million North American barred owls. Collecting 30 signatures from senators will allow him to “discharge” his resolution from the Environment and Public Works Committee and trigger an up-or-down vote. In the House, we continue to build bipartisan support for the parallel resolution, H.J. Res. 111.

Meanwhile, scientists and ethicists are declaring the federal government’s kill plan costly, unworkable, and morally wrong. Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist Kent Livezey — with 14 peer-reviewed papers to his name on barred owls and spotted owls — notes that barred owls typically leave their natal range at about 4 months of age, and they routinely disperse about 30 miles. “Virtually all occupied spotted owl territories include and are surrounded by many pairs of barred owls,” he wrote in a letter to federal lawmakers. “If barred owls were shot in one area, other barred owls would move in and replace them.”

Add your voice here.

Cage-Free Future
14 Republican U.S. Representatives oppose plan to overturn Prop 12 to benefit China
In defense of states’ rights, American agricultural sovereignty, and animal welfare, 14 Republicans in the U.S. House sent a letter to House Agriculture Committee leaders, urging them to exclude the Save Our Bacon (SOB) Act, H.R. 4673, from any Farm Bill that may be considered in the 119th Congress. The SOB Act is a reprise of the former EATS Act and similar measures turned back by lawmakers in every Congress dating back nearly 15 years.

Prop 12 and Question 3 “play a critical role in ensuring fair competition, food safety, and public trust,” wrote the Republicans in their missive. “However, the EATS Act seeks to strip states of this authority, overriding the choices of citizens and nullifying investments made by farmers in compliance with these laws.”

The letter also notes the extraordinary control exerted by China over America’s pork industry. “Enacting the EATS Act could further consolidate the influence of such foreign entities, granting them greater control over the U.S. agricultural sector and limiting the capacity of individual states to regulate their own food supplies,” wrote the conservative lawmakers. Smithfield Foods, which was purchased by a Chinese company in 2013 and now operates without a single American board member, currently controls one quarter of all U.S. domestic pig production.

Meanwhile, we are readying a defense against the Trump administration’s surprise lawsuit seeking to nullify California’s series of laws to protect laying hens from extreme-confinement housing. We’ve been granted “intervenor” status in the case, along with the Association of California Egg Farmers, which now supports California’s laws to provide more humane housing for hens. We will also be intervening in a related lawsuit brought by Missouri-based pork factory farming company Triumph Foods against Prop 12. We are already fighting Triumph Foods in a federal appeals court in Massachusetts over Question 3.

Let Congress know you’re against the SOB Act. Go here.

Protecting Wolves
Cody Roberts indicted. We win lawsuit highlighting failure of agency to protect wolves
Citizens in a rural county of western Wyoming indicted Cody Roberts on charges of animal cruelty for his barbaric and gleeful abuse of a young wolf in 2024. The indictment is the first key step toward the delivery of justice in this matter, now more than a year after Roberts sparked national outrage by running down an adolescent wolf with a snowmobile and crushing her with it. He then taped her muzzle shut, even though she was grievously wounded, and paraded around a bar, as the tormented animal languished in a corner. The organizations named her “Theia” for the goddess of light, hoping that her torments and death would bring understanding about the state’s delinquent policies toward wolves.

And indeed, light did come from a federal court in Montana. U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy issued a damning 105-page opinion finding that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s rationale for refusing to restore federal protection for wolves held no factual or legal merit and violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in numerous ways. Judge Molloy remanded the decision for further action, ordering the agency to revisit and correct its flawed determination. So far, though, the agency hasn’t done anything to remedy the problem, and killing seasons are upon us in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Meanwhile, as we wait for the FWS to address problems for wolves in the Northern Rockies, we’re fighting legislation in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to remove federal protections for wolves in more than a dozen other states, including those in the Upper Great Lakes.

Want to preserve protections for wolves? Tell Congress here.

Animal Fighting Is the Pits
Our undercover work nets two leaders of far-reaching cockfighting crime network
The nation’s two most politically active cockfighters — Anthony Devore and Blake Pearce — were arrested by Oklahoma authorities after our undercover investigations team caught them at a major cockfighting derby in McIntosh County. Devore and Pearce raised more than $100,000, with some proceeds obtained by illicit means (e.g., auctioning off fighting birds for sale in violation of federal law) and donated money to Oklahoma politicians to support their pro-animal fighting legislation.

The two men, from multi-generational cockfighting families, also formed the U.S. Gamefowl Commission and half a dozen “gamefowl commissions” in other states to spread their cockfighting legalization efforts. Despite obvious evidence to the contrary, both men long denied any involvement in cockfighting. Our investigation laid bare their charade.

At about the same time, the Oklahoma Ethics Commission announced that Devore’s cockfighting front group — the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission – had grossly violated campaign finance laws and ordered it to pay $10,000 in penalties, dissolve within 30 days, and refrain from creating a new Political Action Committee for two years. The state Ethics Commission documented multiple violations, including taking illegal corporate contributions, failing to track donor information, spending outside its stated mission, and keeping shoddy, misleading records. Our legal team, along with our Oklahoma state director, documented the laundry list of violations and triggered the investigation by the Ethics Commission.

Animal cruelty like this needs to end. Tell Congress you agree here.

Protecting Greyhounds
Partnering with GREY2K USA, we are working to finish off greyhound racing
With GREY2K USA, we worked with Reps. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., Randy Fine, R-Fla., Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, and Don Davis, D-N.C., to introduce bipartisan legislation to phase out greyhound racing throughout the United States, including simulcasting of races from foreign jurisdictions.

Once the sixth-largest spectator sport in the United States, greyhound racing now happens just at two tracks, in West Virginia, both owned by Delaware North, a New York-based gambling and food service company, which has taken actions to signal it wants to wean itself away entirely from the enterprise. Greyhound racing is illegal in 44 states, and remote gambling on dog races has recently been prohibited in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Oregon.

A generation ago, there were 60 tracks in the United States. Greyhound racing has been in a death spiral for a generation, and this legislation to end the spectator sport codifies what the American public wants. Foreign dog tracks are also working to capitalize on the end of greyhound racing in the United States by appealing to American gamblers and simulcasting their races here. We can prevent harm to thousands of greyhounds by barring gambling on these spectacles within the United States.

Go here to tell Congress to end greyhound racing and wagering in the United States.

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