Big Cat bill on its way to president’s desk
Animal Wellness Action led a highly strategic lobbying campaign to pass the Big Cat Public Safety Act, with the
U.S. Senate taking favorable action on S. 263, sending it on to President Joe Biden to sign into law. We had reported that the U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Big Cat Public Safety Act, H.R. 263, at the end of July.
This new law will build on the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, which was passed unanimously in 2003 to ban the trade in big cats as pets. That 2003 measure, it turns out, had a drafting flaw that the Big Cat Public Safety Act remedies, while adding in the restriction on the breeding of big cats for the pet trade and for commercial cub petting operations.
The coalition favoring S. 263 included dozens of law enforcement agencies because their sworn officers are not trained to handle dangerous big cats on the loose or in private residences. The most infamous example occurred in Zanesville, Ohio, in 2011 when an emotionally disturbed exotic animal owner turned 60 large carnivores and other animals into the community. Sheriff Matt Lutz, who handled the Zanesville case, joined AWA in Washington, D.C. advocating for the bill’s passage. Sheriff Lutz’s voice, along with that of the National Sheriff’s Association, was a major factor for many lawmakers.
When big cats are confiscated or abandoned by owners who finally realize they are too much to handle, these animals become an unfunded liability for the already struggling animal welfare community. Sanctuaries, reputable zoos, and animal welfare groups step up to take in these big cats to help them, but it comes at an enormous and unanticipated expense — as much as $1 million to house, feed, and care for a single tiger over its 20-year lifespan.
National legislation on animal welfare is often about going to the source of the problem, and that’s exactly what this legislation does. And that’s exactly why Animal Wellness Action made its passage a top priority.
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FDA Modernization Act 2.0 poised for final action
We are tantalizingly close to passing the FDA Modernization Act — the most consequential reform related to animal testing ever to gain traction in Congress. The U.S. Senate
passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 on Sept. 29, in a deft maneuver executed by Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., and
other key lawmakers. The House had previously passed the FDA Modernization Act as a rider (Section 701) to a larger legislative package,
H.R. 7667, the Food and Drug Amendments. Procedurally, both chambers must pass a bill with identical language, and that’s exactly what we are working to achieve before the year ends.
What started out as our effort to spare animals unnecessary torments in laboratories has won support from patient advocacy groups, biotech, pharmaceutical companies, and even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which initially was hostile to the initiative. Weida Tong, M.D., a lead researcher at the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research and Director of its Bioinformatics and Biostatistics division, had this to say about the FDA Modernization Act:
| “All these efforts [passing the FDA Modernization Act] just make sense. Conventional animal studies are expensive, time-consuming, labor-intensive, and there are also ethical concerns. Above all, these tests are not fail-safe for human safety. But with the FDA Modernization Act, the train has now left the station, and over the next few years, we will see tremendous progress.” (Source: Elsevier) |
And here’s what Isaac Bentwich M.D., the CEO of the biotech company Quris, had to say about why the up-front capital costs in drug development impede public health goals:
| “Right now, the tools available to pharma, and the approach they use, make it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to develop rare disease drugs. The economics of drug development tell a good part of the story. It costs $2.5 billion and 12 to 18 years, on average, to develop a new drug. In the rare disease space, where there is a smaller number of patients, those numbers are simply unsustainable.” (Source: Clinical Leader) |
Enactment of the FDA Modernization Act will reboot a broken drug development paradigm, and when it happens, it will deliver safer, more effective, more reliable palliatives and cures to people in need. Congress must now modernize testing and the FDA by dispatching the Depression-era rule that requires mass use of animals for testing in pre-clinical trials. You can see now your lawmakers have performed on the FDA Modernization Act by checking our
Animal Wellness Action Congressional Scorecard.
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Horse-soring legislation passes U.S. House but stalls in Senate
The U.S. House passed the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act in November for the second time since the bill’s formulation a decade ago. Unfortunately the vote fell short of the previous
high-water mark of 333 to 96, passing by a vote of
304 to 111, with all Democrats favoring it but a majority of Republicans opposing it.
With powerful Senators from the South opposed, that chamber won’t take up the bill. While this opposition is deeply disappointing, the slide in support in the House may punctuate a point that Animal Wellness Action has publicly announced: the PAST Act is unlikely to be enacted in its current form.
A compromise, negotiated by AWA and some key Tennessee Walking horse business leaders, however, stands a chance. Our
compromise legislation would secure the core reforms of the PAST Act and add others, including a ban on treacherous devices known as tail braces. With Republicans taking the House, there may now be a recognition that the original PAST Act, as worthy as it is, must be modified to set us up for success in 2023.
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Courts again affirms national law ban on cockfighting
On Nov. 18, a U.S. District Court dismissed a legal maneuver by a former Northern Marianas Islands politician — a self-described lifelong cockfighter — to invalidate the federal ban on cockfighting in the Pacific-island territory. Two prior legal challenges initiated by cockfighters in Guam and Puerto Rico had been swatted away after the AWA-backed 2018 federal law went into effect.
While the court rulings are vitally important to our campaign to end animal fighting, we must also strengthen the law to make enforcement actions more seamless and high impact. With a bipartisan group, led by Reps.
Cindy Axne, D-Iowa,
Don Bacon, R-Neb., and
Buddy Carter, R-Ga., we introduced H.R. 9309, the Animal Fighting Amendments of 2022.
The proposed amendments to Section 26 of the Animal Welfare Act would fortify an already strong federal law by: 1) banning simulcasting and gambling on animal fights in the United States, no matter where the fights and broadcasts originate; 2) halting the shipment of mature roosters shipped through the U.S. mail; and 3) creating a citizen suit provision to allow private right of action against illegal animal fighters and ease the resource burden on federal agencies.
This bill complements our efforts to advance the
Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act that would create an Animal Cruelty Crimes section at the Department of Justice. Our national investigations in multiple states and territories have blown the lid on a startlingly large national network of organized criminals engaging in malicious acts of cruelty to roosters and dogs.
Animal Wellness Action (AWA) and allied groups congratulated federal prosecutors for
securing federal prison time for major cockfighting operators from Verbena, Alabama for their deep involvement in staged animal fighting ventures. Animal Wellness Action provided a detailed dossier on the leader of that illegal cockfighting crime ring to the federal government more than two years ago and that intelligence contributed to this very important and consequential prosecution. Brent Easterling, the most visible member of a larger family enmeshed in the business of cockfighting, was sentenced by Honorable Judge Myron H. Thompson to 24 months in federal prison. Judge Thompson also sentenced Billy Easterling to 22 months and Tyler Easterling to 20 months. Jim Easterling was sentenced to three years home confinement. Several women in the Easterling family who were knowingly involved in the enterprise were sentenced to probation.
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Breaking dairy-industry monopoly, combatting factory-farming of cows
Working with
Switch4Good, the Center for a Humane Economy worked with
31 members of Congress who wrote to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and demanded that he and the USDA address the unfair and unhealthy dairy industry monopoly in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
USDA’s mass buy-ups of cow’s milk for schools
force a food staple onto the breakfast and lunch trays of millions of kids who are lactose intolerant, and the Department provides no practical choices for a nutritionally equivalent plant-based milk option. Nearly 30 percent of the kids throw the milk away in the carton. That aversion is driven by the data that show that three-quarters of African Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans are lactose intolerant. Reps.
Troy Carter, D-La., Ted Lieu, D-Calif, and Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., are leading the effort to give needy kids healthy food choices, reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions, and also address the inhumane treatment of cows on modern factory dairies.
Dairy cows have been re-engineered to produce milk at volumes that cause them a range of chronic health problems and dramatically shorten their lifespans. Not long ago, a normal dairy cow would produce about 3,600 pounds of milk (2,700 gallons). But by breeding them for hyper productivity, they now produce 22,500 pounds — output that taxes their systems and leads to an array of health problems. With a natural life span of 15-20 years, cows are sometimes physically spent at even three or four years of age and sent to slaughter. Like the spent females, male calves are recycled into the meat industry to make low-grade beef products. Calves are forever separated from their mothers immediately or up to 48 hours after being born.
Adult consumers now have options to cow’s milk in the marketplace. Thirty million kids in our National School Lunch Program should have options, too.
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News on the track and in the courts on horse racing
Controversy continues to swirl around horse racing, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit striking down
the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act that AWA worked to enact in 2020. The measure banned race-day doping in Thoroughbred racing and created a uniform national standard for drug testing, track safety, and enforcement under the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. That measure has not gone into effect, and just this week we’ve seen another rash of horse deaths in California, as
CBS Sports reports with 17 dead at Los Alamitos Race Course,
13 dead at Golden Gate Fields, and
12 dead at Santa Anita Park, marking nearly 60 horse deaths in the state in 2022. We’ll be working angles to address the court ruling.
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Animal Wellness Action plays major role in defeating Dr. Oz
Animal issues never played more prominently in a U.S. Senate race than the 2022 battle in Pennsylvania, where
Animal Wellness Action, the
Senate Majority PAC, and the
Lincoln Project spent more than $3 million on TV and digital ads to elevate the issue of animal testing.
The groups spent money to defeat Dr. Mehmet Oz because of a startling record of inhumane animal testing and a failure to provide assurances that he would support policy efforts to reduce animal testing.
The Washington Examiner reported that Dr. Oz’s experiment on dogs may have doomed his campaign, with Oz and his research team
conducting tests on more than 1,000 animals, including 330 beagles, between 1989 and 2010 at the University of Columbia. The mistreatment was severe enough to prompt the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a rare citation for Animal Welfare Act violations and to fine Columbia University for the abuses. Even
Saturday Night Live traded on the controversy.
AWA is entirely non-partisan and makes endorsements based on the candidates’ contrasting position on animal issues and their chances of success. It’s important to note that AWA also endorsed key Republican Senate candidates, including
Rand Paul,
Mike Lee,
John Kennedy, and
Ted Budd because of their active leadership on animal issues. We also endorsed key Democrats such as Sens.
Tammy Duckworth,
Richard Blumenthal, and others. In short, if we are going to pass strong laws to help animals, we must have a critical mass of political support in both parties, especially with legislative chambers almost evenly divided by party.
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