The national election concludes in just a few days, with tens of millions of votes already cast but millions more to come by Tuesday. 

It's not just in the run-up to an election that we must pay attention to how lawmakers handle animal protection. We want all lawmakers, regardless of political party, to understand that opposing animal cruelty is a moral priority for the nation every day of the year.

When it comes to driving awareness of the national priorities for animal protection, we don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say that Animal Wellness Action is perhaps the most pivotal player in making sure that federal lawmakers pay attention to animal protection.

Here are just a few of the laws we’ve helped push over the finish line in the two prior Congresses.

• The Parity in Animal Cruelty Enforcement (PACE) Act — to ban cockfighting and dogfighting everywhere in the United States, including in the five major U.S. territories.
• The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act — to create, for the first time ever, a federal anti-cruelty statute.
• The Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act — a measure to ban any sale of dog and cat meat in the United States.
• The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) — to ban race-day doping of Thoroughbred horses.

In recent months, we’ve worked to introduce, or prepared for introduction, 10 new bills in Congress, remaking the national agenda for animal welfare with these offerings. Here are just a few of our federal legislative initiatives:

• The FDA Modernization Act — to eliminate the requirement for animal testing for all new drug development protocols.
• The MINKS Are Superspreaders Act — to phase out mink farming in the United States, after these factory farms spawned SARS-CoV-2 mutations.
• The Bear Poaching Elimination Act — to curb the mass poaching of bears by banning the trade in bear gall bladders and bile for Traditional Chinese Medicine.
• The Pigs in Gestation States (PIGS) Act — to ban the use of confinement cages known as gestation crates that don’t even allow animals to turn around on factory farms.
• The Kangaroo Protection Act — to halt any trade in the United States in kangaroo parts, as a way of getting Nike, Adidas, and other athletic shoe companies to stop using these skins in soccer cleats that drive the killing of 2 million kangaroos a year.
• The Animal Cruelty Enforcement (ACE) Act — to create a new Animal Cruelty Crimes section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the same time, we are working to get two other bills, with an older vintage, over the finish line:

• The Big Cat Public Safety Act would shut the door on the trade in big cats as pets or as props in commercial cub petting operations.
• The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act would halt the trade in fins for soup.

This is an incredible legislative agenda, and there’s much more to it than what we’ve identified above.

Last week, we released our Animal Wellness Scorecard for the 117th Congress. I hope you will take a look and see how your lawmakers are performing on animal issues. You can access it on our website at: https://animalwellnessaction.org/scorecard.

Please vote in this election and make an informed choice, factoring in the performance of lawmakers on animal issues.

But don’t treat politics as a once-a-year exercise. Write and call your lawmakers, see them at town halls, write letters to the editor.

And most of all, put Animal Wellness Action to work every day driving the agenda for animals and working with us to make these priorities concerns in our society.

Lawmakers will only make animal issues a priority if they work with strategic groups like Animal Wellness Action and if they know their constituents back home care.  

More than ever, we need your support to manage this remarkable legislative agenda. Please give today to support our wide-ranging work that improves the lives of countless millions of animals.

And please know that we’ll only be able to drive a major agenda to stop cruelty if we join together in this fight.

P.S. Don’t delay and review the Animal Wellness Legislative Scorecard and see how your lawmakers are handling animal welfare issues in Congress.