͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌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, the Center for a Humane Economy, and the Animal Wellness Foundation
January 2026
Summary
* We secured enactment of the FISCAL Act with the President’s signature on the legislation, officially ending the “cow’s milk mandate” in the National School Lunch Program and allowing schools to offer plant-based milk options for all students.
* There is continuing momentum on animal testing, with the House poised to act on the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 after the Senate passed it unanimously.
* Ohio restricted gestation crates, making it the 11th state to limit extreme confinement of breeding sows. Meanwhile, we released a science-based report countering efforts in Congress to nullify the states’ most important farm animal welfare laws (Prop 12 and Question 3).
* As the year turned to 2026, Adidas, ASICS, and New Balance officially stopped the use of kangaroo skins for soccer shoes, joining Nike, Puma, and other global athletic company brands — culminating in a landmark shift driven by our Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign.
* We quashed a crazy scheme by cockfighters to secure a cockfighting enclave in Louisiana. Meanwhile, we’ve built a coalition of 1,050 agencies backing the FIGHT Act, even as we roll across America to dismantle animal fighting rings from coast to coast.
DUNKING THE MILK MANDATE
President signs key provisions of the FISCAL Act, included in S. 222, into law
President Trump signed into law a compromise [[link removed]] on S. 222 that includes our language to dismantle the dairy industry’s monopoly [[link removed]] that put cow’s milk on every tray in the National School Lunch Program. We built a coalition that included more than 200 medical, nutrition, child-advocacy, and animal welfare organizations to give kids these plant-based milk options.
With our partners at Switch4Good, we launched this campaign three years ago — with the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches (FISCAL) Act introduced last year — to give kids a plant-based milk option. A third of all kids participating in the meal-assistance program are lactose intolerant and tossing millions of gallons of milk into the trash — disregarding the immense sacrifices made by cows to produce that milk.
Schools may now offer plant-based milk options among cafeteria choices and must provide nutritionally appropriate non-dairy beverages to lactose-intolerant students with a parental or medical note. Ending the cow’s milk mandate for all kids restores choice for families, reduces taxpayer-funded food waste, and eases pressure on dairy cows, who have been selectively bred to produce enormous volumes of milk (26,000 pounds of milk per cow each year).
MODERNIZE TESTING
We back the FDA Commissioner’s plan to wind down animal tests
The House seems poised to pass our FDA Modernization Act 3.0, following Senate passage of the measure. Congress also passed a spending bill for fiscal 2026 that includes a range of directives to federal agencies to increase use of non-animal testing methods and increase transparency on animal use and funding for New Approach Methodologies. Congress also took steps to end the U.S. military’s use of live goats and pigs in combat trauma training, directing the Pentagon to rely on advanced human simulators instead.
To a great degree, these actions are a derivative of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, enacted in 2022, which lifted a federal animal testing mandate in the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has pledged to make animal tests the exception rather than the norm within three to five years, issuing guidance encouraging organoids, microphysiological systems, and computational modeling.
A new peer-reviewed paper [[link removed]] by Dr. Zaher Nahle, senior scientific advisor to the Center for a Humane Economy, was published in Frontiers in Medical Technology, offering a novel and comprehensive analysis of how animal testing became deeply embedded in drug development and biomedical research — and how new national policies promoting alternative methods and innovations in science have the potential to produce a paradigm shift in R&D work.
In a blog [[link removed]] , Wayne Pacelle mused whether there is a “Berlin Wall” moment coming on animal testing, after decades of stasis on the issue and with the animal research industry exerting undue influence over agency actions and congressional spending priorities. Still, though, while there is rapid change, the Congress is continuing funding primate testing somewhat at odds with public declarations made by the Health and Human Services secretary.
Cage-Free Future
The nation is moving toward a cage-free future even as some try to turn back the clock
Ohio became the 11th state to restrict the use of gestation crates [[link removed]] for breeding sows, completing a 15-year phase-out negotiated as part of a landmark eight-point animal welfare agreement Wayne Pacelle reached with the state’s leading agricultural organizations.
The policy fulfills the final provision of an accord that reshaped animal welfare law in Ohio [[link removed]] , including reforms to make cockfighting a state felony, to improve living conditions for dogs in commercial dog breeding operations, and to ban the private ownership of dangerous wild animals. The set of reforms catapulted Ohio to a much better place on animal welfare.
Ohio’s action coincides with the release of our new national report examining and rebutting efforts by the National Pork Producers Council and China-owned Smithfield Foods to overturn California’s Proposition 12 and Massachusetts’ Question 3 through the Save Our Bacon Act. The report documents past legislative and court defeats for the pork industry, including a decisive loss before the U.S. Supreme Court. With more than 1,300 Prop 12-compliant suppliers certified and growing participation from major producers and retailers, the direction of American agriculture is clear: immobilizing sows in crates has no future.
ANIMAL FIGHTING IS THE PITS
We worked to empower law enforcement to eradicate animal fighting in America and beyond
We worked to expose and quash an attempt by cockfighters [[link removed]] to win approval from the St. Landry Parish council in Louisiana to create a national cockfighting refuge there. [[link removed]] The effort by the council illustrated the presence [[link removed]] of an active “underground” cockfighting network in Louisiana and through much of the rest of the nation, with perhaps 20 million fighting birds in the nation. [[link removed]] U.S.-based fighters conduct illegal derbies in the states and territories and also smuggle fighting animals to Mexico, the Philippines, and two dozen other countries, fueling violence and spreading disease all over the world.
Meanwhile, we continue to see and drive busts across the nation, [[link removed]] driven by our investigations and partnership with Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK). The bipartisan FIGHT Act also directly addresses this illegal network of cockfighters and dogfighters. With more than 1,050 endorsing agencies and organizations, [[link removed]] including 450 law enforcement agencies, H.R. 3946 and S. 1454 would shut down online gambling on animal fights, authorize seizure of properties used for staged combat, stop the mailing of fighting birds through the U.S. Postal Service, and empower citizens to protect themselves from animal fighting operations. We are working with Rose Acre Farms and other major agribusiness companies [[link removed]] to pass the FIGHT Act.
KANGAROOS ARE NOT SHOES
In the new year, Adidas, New Balance, and ASICS officially stopped sourcing kangaroo skins
Adidas, New Balance, and ASICS officially ceased using kangaroo skins [[link removed]] in their products in this new year. They join Nike, Puma, Sokito, and Diadora, with Umbro and Mizuno still working on their phaseouts, meaning nine major brands have ended or pledged to end their role in the kangaroo parts trade. This achievement caps years of the Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, a global advocacy effort exposing the inhumane commercial killing of kangaroos for footwear.
The killing of kangaroos for skins and meat has been the largest slaughter of terrestrial wildlife in the world, driven by exports of skins and, to a lesser degree, meat. As we work to advance the Kangaroo Protection Act, we are also readying a campaign to stop the use of kangaroo meat for pet food and other purposes — yet one more revenue stream for shooters slaying the native wild animals to drive global sales of the parts of these iconic marsupials.
ADDENDUM
Please see our three new reports:
1. Our new science-based report on lead ammunition [[link removed]] in hunting, detailing that 10 million hunters disperse toxic lead fragments and lead dust [[link removed]] from 10 billion rounds across more than a billion acres of land — half of the surface area of the United States.
2. Our agricultural scientists’ report [[link removed]] on the attempts by the National Pork Producers Council and China’s Smithfield Foods to overturn voter-approved ballot measures [[link removed]] Prop 12 and Question 3.
3. Our legislative team’s detailed report on our work in 2025 in the 119th Congress. [[link removed]]

Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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