Dear John,
If you cast your ballot in the national election, my first message is “thank you.”
My second message is that our work is just beginning.
Voting in a national election is a renewing of the political process, not its endpoint. And when it comes to the cause of protecting animals from cruelty, we must fight every day in the political realm to advance our policy goals.
When our society demonstrates a compassionate concern for animals, we increase the quotient of mercy and kindness, and we make our society a more civil one. And we also know that mistreating animals often brings with it other adverse effects in our society, from social violence to zoonotic disease to business failures and losses.
Animal Wellness Action believes that
helping animals helps us all.
That’s why when Animal Wellness Action made political endorsements — and the vast majority of our favored candidates prevailed — we looked at the question of where lawmakers stand on animal issues. With government control so evenly divided by political party — and last night’s results indicating that the House and Senate will again be divided by ratios approaching 50/50 — it is absolutely essential to engage with lawmakers across the ideological spectrum. Neither party has a policy stance supporting cruelty. And that’s as it should be.
Animals cannot be left out in the cold when Congressional control changes hands. No matter who wins, we want to be in a position to advance our robust agenda to promote a cage-free future in agriculture, to end cockfighting, to stop horse slaughter, to end the needless and unreliable torment of animals in drug testing, and so much more.
To be sure, animals were part of this election. We made sure of that.
Without a hint of partisanship, we did a major independent expenditure campaign to alert Pennsylvanians that Dr. Mehmet Oz and his research team killed more than 1,000 animals at his Columbia University lab, including more than 300 beagles. Before taking a public stand in that U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, we asked Dr. Oz to make a pronouncement that he’d turned the corner on the issue of animal welfare, and that he’d be an ally in Washington, D.C. He didn’t make that pledge. As a consequence,
millions of Pennsylvania voters saw our television ad and heard about Oz’s animal-testing activities. Those abuses led to federal enforcement actions and fines of the university.
As I said, our work in Pennsylvania had nothing to do with partisanship. In other states, we backed Republicans who have been active in working to stop needless animal testing. In Kentucky, we favored Sen. Rand Paul, who is also an M.D., in his re-election campaign. Sen. Paul has been spearheading a bipartisan fight to eliminate an archaic animal-testing requirement in federal law since the Depression era. With AWA backing him, Dr. Paul cruised to his re-election victory, as did Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy, who joined Sen. Paul in helping to pass the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. in the Senate.
Lawmakers and candidates must learn the lesson that it’s the right moral position and the right political posture to favor animal protection. When that political truth is understood and embraced — and that’s a major goal of Animal Wellness Action — then we’ll see the policy gains that we all desperately desire.
Thank you for supporting our fight to establish and then enforce legal protections for animals. And thank you for supporting us.
As we try to wrap up vital legislative campaigns in the next few weeks and turn to the work of the new Congress in 2023, we need your support now more than ever.
I hope you’ll make a financial investment in this life-saving work.
Invest in Animal Wellness Action and you’ll enable us to carry out strategic policy work to spare countless millions of animals from a wide range of torments and abuse in so many sectors of our society and economy.
It is time for lawmakers, regardless of party, to understand that cruelty is a vice and being good to animals a virtue. It’s up to you and to Animal Wellness Action to clinch that case.
For the animals,
Wayne Pacelle
President, Animal Wellness Action
