About

Wayne Pacelle has spent more than 30 years at the center of the animal protection movement. He’s led the way to secure unprecedented corporate and public policy reforms, put animals into the national debate and making it mainstream, pioneering the use of the ballot initiatives to drive major change in policy, working to enact national policies on subjects from animal testing to animal fighting to factory farming, creating and growing a string of high-powered animal-protection organizations to build capacity for the next set of fights, and putting animal welfare into the center of mainstream thought in America and extended its reach with personnel in more than 50 other countries across the world.

He’s testified before Congress and state legislatures, appeared in key court proceedings, lectured all over the world, and appeared on just about every major media platform through the years – from The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show and 60 Minutes to ABC’s Nightline. He is author of two critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling books: The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals and Our Call to Defend Them and The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals, both published by Harper Collins.

Wayne has spearheaded efforts to secure 1,500 state laws for animals, more than 100 federal laws and amendments, 30 ballot initiatives, and 500 corporate agreements. He has been active on animal welfare concerns since he formed the Student Animal Rights Coalition as a sophomore at Yale University in the 1980s. He’s helped take animal protection from the margins to the mainstream, working to help animals in crisis but also working to scale up animal protection addressing systemic or institutionalized uses of animals and bringing it to the attention of lawmakers, judges, corporate CEOs, and other influencers.

Pacelle and his colleagues have conceived of and passed more than 100 federal statutes for animals – from the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 in 2022 to the National Animal Fighting Ban (five upgrades in 2018, 2014, 2008, 2007, and 2002), to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act to establish a federal authority to promote horse safety at Thoroughbred racing venues to the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act to create a federal law to include pets and other animals in our disaster response plans. He worked to end horse slaughter for consumption in the United States and the trade in big cats as pets and is poised in the months ahead to work with like-minded individuals and groups to ban live exports of horses, to put an end to all greyhound racing, and end mink farming in America.

He almost single-handedly put the ballot measure process into use for animal protection in the modern era, leading ballot measures in nearly every election cycle since 1992. Highlights include winning three of three ballot measures to outlaw cockfighting (Ariz., Mo., and Okla.), five of five measures to halt extreme confinement of farm animals including Prop 2 and Prop 12 in California and Question 3 in Massachusetts), five of six measures to halt the use of cruel traps for fur taking, and won a head-to-head fight with the puppy mill industry in its redoubt of Missouri. He’s also led several initiatives and referenda that blocked or banned wolf hunting and trapping, bear baiting, hounding, and even the target shooting of mourning doves.

Wayne has also worked to defeat ballot measures cooked up by opponents of animal welfare to set the cause back, including an overreaching “right to farm” measure in Oklahoma and measures from Arizona to Alaska to make it more difficult to qualify and pass ballot measures to help animals. In all, no other cause or economic interest has a higher win rate on ballot measures than animal protectionists, due in large part to Wayne’s strategic use of the process.

He’s also worked with federal agencies on a wide range of rulemaking actions, including a ban on slaughter of downer cows for human consumption and the first-ever set of farm animal welfare standards under the ‘organic seal.” He worked with former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments.

He has negotiated agreements with major corporations, including McDonald’s, Costco, and dozens of other food retailers to phase out the use of gestation crates for breeding sows, and battery cages for laying hens in their supply chains. He won an agreement from Walmart to observe the “Five Freedoms of Farm Animal Welfare.” He negotiated an agreement with SeaWorld to halt more breeding of orcas, and Armani, Michael Kors, and other leading clothing brands ended their sales of fur after discussions with Wayne and his team.

In 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Pacelle has retooled a venerable organization seen as a mild-mannered protector of dogs and cats into an aggressive interest group flexing muscle in state legislatures and courtrooms.” In 2007, The New York Times reported, “The arrival of Wayne Pacelle as head of the Humane Society in 2004 both turbo-charged the farm animal welfare movement and gave it a sheen of respectability.” In 2008, Supermarket News included Pacelle on its annual Power 50 list of influential individuals in food marketing, writing that “there’s no denying his growing influence on how animal agriculture is practiced in the United States.” In 2016, Men’s Journal wrote, “In the 12 years since he ascended to the president’s seat, Wayne Pacelle has turned the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) from a polite nonprofit into “a Death Star opponent of industry abuses.” And a 2016 Chronicle of Philanthropy profile was headlined “Humane Society Notches String of Big Wins Under Aggressive Leader,” writing that “no one has done more for animals” over the last decade than Pacelle.

He was named one of NonProfit Times’ “Executives of the Year” in 2005 for his leadership in responding to the Hurricane Katrina crisis. In 2008, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, The “NonProfit Times” named Pacelle to its annual “Power and Influence Top 50” nonprofit executives.

He’s driven more progress with Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy than at perhaps any other time in his career. With his colleague Tamara Drake, he engineered the passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which was the first major bill introduced in Congress to address animal testing since the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in 1966. His measure to ban animal fighting in the U.S. Territories, passed as an amendment to the 2018 Farm bill, made animal fighting a crime on every inch of U.S. soil. And his formulation of the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, building on his work to stop “animal crush” video, established for the first time ever national anti-cruelty law.

In 2023, with the Center leading the global “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign, he worked to secure commitments from Nike, Puma, and New Balance to end their sourcing of kangaroo skins for athletic shoes.