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Looking ahead to 2023
We have a robust agenda to advance protections for all animals in 2023, with major initiatives to end horse slaughter in North America, to rid the landscape of staged animal fighting, to convince Nike and Adidas to end their purchases of kangaroo skins to make soccer cleats, and to end the era of extreme confinement of laying hens and breeding sows on factory farms. Those are just a few of our many campaigns as we fight on many fronts for many species of wild and domesticated animals. Our work is now occurring at the local, state, national, and global levels, driving reforms in public and corporate policy.
With all of that ahead, this monthly update also provides a recent look back to our recent successes and activities. We proudly note a surge of remarkable successes, especially in the second half of December, with new and major national policies and enforcement actions. With every legislative success comes the task of enforcement, reminding us that gains we achieve are not the end of the process but an important incremental step in a longer process to pull up animal cruelty at the root.
We are grateful for your support that enables our lifesaving work. We do our best to scale up our success to meet the immense challenges of systemic threats to animals.
Animal testing is no longer a requirement
We are pleased to report that the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 is now law, signed by President Biden. The measure — which pulls together two bills, the original FDA Modernization Act and also the Reducing Animal Testing Act — eliminates a federal mandate for animal testing for new drugs and for biosimilars.
There were two major routes to victory, and in the end, we succeeded in getting the measure hitched to a massive, end-of-year spending bill. We’d been set up for success because Sens. Rand Paul and Cory Booker had passed it as a stand-alone measure in the Senate in late September and key House allies attached a version of the legislation as an amendment to a larger House legislative package. In short, we passed the measure twice in both chambers, underscoring that we framed the issue in the right way, built a base of remarkable bipartisan support, and drove it home by building a diverse coalition of stakeholders and generating grassroots energy to prompt Congress to move. Enactment of the measure punctuated the biggest policy win on the issue of animal testing in our nation’s history.
On a significant parallel track, we succeeded in advocating for an additional $5 million in new money to support an FDA-wide New Alternative Methods Program to reduce animal testing (the total for alternatives development to the FDA is $12.5 million). This additional money will build the toolkit on alternatives as we turn to pressing FDA and private and public drug developers to embrace alternative methods and work on dramatically reducing the numbers of dogs, primates, mice, rats, and other animals used in testing.
Enactment of the FDA Modernization Act will reboot a broken drug-development paradigm, and if follow-up work is diligent, it will deliver safer, more effective, and more reliable palliatives and cures to people in need. We are planning on globalizing the campaign and securing similar policies in other industrialized nations. Global drug companies will want to harmonize the rules of drug development.
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Big cats are safer now, too
President Joe Biden signed the Big Cat Public Safety Act, H.R. 263, into law. This was a long time in coming — 11 years since original introduction, a measure of how difficult it is to get even the most common-sense reforms enshrined in national law.
We worked very closely with Howard and Carole Baskin and Big Cat Rescue on the measure. They were steadfast and high-impact partners, along with our friends at the National Sheriffs Association and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. This bill closes out the cub-petting industry, which breeds tigers and lions to allow patrons to handle cubs for a fee. Just a decade ago, there were more than 60 of these operations.
WATCH
Our Facebook Live with Carole Baskin
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Sharks can keep their fins
Shark fins are off all menus in the United States, with Congress passing the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law in December.
As with the Big Cat bill, which was first introduced in 2011, it’s been a struggle to secure protective policies. The shark-fin sales prohibition bill had amassed overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and Senate, with the first formulation introduced more than seven years ago. But it’s never gotten over the finish line. Until now.
The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act is part of a long-term incremental lawmaking process. The anti-fin-sales legislation came in the wake of two other shark protection measures in the last two decades: 1) the Shark Finning Prohibition Act of 2000, which amended the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) to prohibit shark finning in U.S. waters, and 2) the Shark Conservation Act of 2010, which amended the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act and the MSA to require that sharks brought to American shores have fins intact.
Like the ban on the sale of dog and cat meat in the United States, U.S. leadership will be attention-getting throughout the world, including in nations where there is still an appetite for shark fin soup.
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Our late-breaking maneuver restores prohibition on race-day doping
Animal Wellness Action, along with The Jockey Club, worked with key lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate to amend the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020, correcting a provision in the original law that a federal appellate court declared unconstitutional in November and which put the national ban on race-day doping of Thoroughbreds in jeopardy. Performance-enhancing drugs put the animals at risk of breakdowns and other injuries and make the entire industry suspect.
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We secured record-level funding to protect horses from physical harm
First the bad news: the Senate did not take up the Prevent All Soring Tactics Act, after 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. But here is the good news: The year-end spending bill provided a record level of $4.1 million to enforce the Horse Protection Act (HPA) of 1970 for Fiscal Year 2023 — that’s $1 million more than the prior year’s record funding level of $3 million.
This is consequential because a segment of horse trainers torture horses to get them to exaggerate their gait and win ribbons at horse shows. With more inspections, we should be able to crack down on some level of lawlessness until we can upgrade the 52-year-old law next year. HPA enforcement funding had never been above $705,000 per year since 1970 until we launched the effort to increase funding in 2018. Just this month, we reported on USDA findings showing one-third of horses were non-compliant with the Horse Protection Act and subsequently disqualified at a Mississippi horse show.
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Positive news for horses at risk of slaughter and on the range
The Congress, in its end-of-year spending bill, continued a ban on funding of any horse slaughter inspections in the United States. This extends a de facto ban on horse slaughter in our nation. While that’s good and expected news, we must ban exports of live horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter for human consumption, and that will be a priority for us in 2023.
That same end-of-year funding bill also included funding and directives for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to pursue more forward-facing, more humane on-the-range management of wild horses and burros. Animal Wellness Action led efforts in prior years to secure $11 million in annual funding for fertility control, and that funding level has been continued for three straight years. This is just one step in a long march needed to keep wild horses and burros safe and free in their native habitats. The BLM must move from persecutor to protector of these equids.
Cockfighting convictions come from our investigations
Animal Wellness Action and allied groups congratulated federal prosecutors for securing federal prison time for major cockfighting operators from Verbena, Ala., for their deep involvement in staged animal fighting ventures. Brent Easterling, the most visible member of a larger family enmeshed in the business of cockfighting, was sentenced by 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 of home confinement. Several women in the Easterling family who were knowingly involved in the enterprise were sentenced to probation.
Animal Wellness Action provided compelling evidence to the federal government that aided the government’s investigation and prosecution. We obtained a video of Brent Easterling interviewing with a Philippines-based cockfighting channel BNTV talking about his fighting birds and marketing them to worldwide audiences. We also obtained videos in which 10 other cockfighters in Alabama extolled the prowess of their fighting birds.
“Every cockfighter in the United States should pay attention to what has happened to an Alabama family that was knee-deep in the enterprise of cockfighting,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “These cockfighters have lost their assets and their freedom. That’s the potential fate of anyone involved in the barbaric practice of staged animal fighting.”
Millions of animals' lives hang in the balance as we fight for federal animal protections and welfare. Please donate to our legislative fund and help us get key priorities signed into law in 2023!
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