Campaigns
Hard-hitting campaigns targeting systemic cruelty have delivered extraordinary gains in the realms of agriculture, fashion, sport, wildlife management and the trade in live and dead wild animals
Animal Protection Campaigns Deliver Unmistakable, Enduring Progress for Animals
I’ve always believed that, in addition to sheltering, adopting, and rescuing animals, the cause of animal protection must devote considerable resources to tackle large-scale, institutionalized forms of cruelty to animals. And that’s done, in large part, by conducting focused campaigns.
Since starting an animal protection group as a college student, and then later throwing myself in full time – leading a series of major national organizations — I’ve worked to put campaigns in place to address abuse and exploitation. In each campaign, we employed a wide range of tactics to drive change — legislative maneuvers, investigations, media exposure, scientific studies and economic analysis, litigation, careful messaging, letter-writing and other forms of grassroots advocacy and more. And there is no substitute for intuition, hard work, and resolve, and persevering during times when our political adversaries seem either too connected or too well-resourced.
But over 30 years, I am glad to report to you there’s been immense change for the good. There’s no question, we have a long way to go. But there’s also no question that directed, focused, and strategic campaigns are transforming the lives of animals and delivering remarkable gains for our cause.
Here are just some of the gains I’ve been pleased to have a hand in:
Ending Greyhound Racing
Putting Horses in the Stable, Not on the Table
It is exasperating and saddening that horse slaughter for consumption continues, but we’ve reduced the number of horses at risk by 95 percent — from 400,000 American horses slaughtered in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to 20,000 today. We intend to complete the job, by banning live exports of equines, with the passage of the Saving America’s Forgotten Equines.
Taking Chimps Out of the Lab
We sent them into space and we tormented them by the tens of thousand in laboratories. In 2015, we finally ended the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments after more than a 20-year campaign. The end of that ugly era of human domination of our closest living relatives came about with complementary federal actions: 1) the National Institutes of Health, under director Francis Collins, determined that chimps were no longer needed for scientific discovery, and 2) Dan Ashe of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after receiving a petition from animal welfare groups, declared that the “endangered” status for chimps applies to captive great apes, barring invasive procedures on the animals in laboratories.
I was so pleased to work with Dr. Jane Goodall on this campaign and we had a remarkable ally and advocate in the late Bill Richardson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico, U.N. Ambassador, Congressman, and U.S. Secretary of Energy.
No Wild Animals in Circuses
I was involved in a long-term bitter fight with Ringling Brothers circus, as were PETA and several other groups, with the groups collectively seeking to halt their use of wild animals in traveling circus acts. Finally, after legal actions, boycotts, consumer awareness – and exposing the infiltration efforts by the company to discredit animal advocates — Ringling buckled in 2016 and ended its operations using animals. Animals were at the center of the enterprise for 140 years, even as Cirque de Soleil and other circuses showed that human acrobats and performers could also thrill crowds.
No Big Cats as Pets
In 2022, working with Carole and Howard Baskin, we finally passed the Big Cat Public Safety Act in Congress, strengthening the ban on the trade in big cats as pets and halting any commercial cub petting as an enterprise at roadside zoos. I had worked to pass the Captive Wildlife Safety Act in 2003, but it had proved inadequate in stemming the trade. It took 20 more years to delivering a finishing blow, but the enterprise of cub petting, along with breeding the animals to supply the trade, is now essentially a thing of the past in the United States. Most of the commercial cub petters went to jail or landed in other legal jeopardy. Most states, too, have restrictions on the private ownership of dangerous exotics, and I had worked on those state policies for years with a number of immensely talented colleagues.
Ending Cockfighting
I worked with grassroots advocates to qualify and pass ballot measures in 1998 to ban cockfighting in Arizona and Missouri, after pro-cockfighting lawmakers thwarted state legislation to achieve that policy for decades. I then allied with like-minded Oklahomans on ballot measure there. We won it in 2002, with Oklahoma becoming the 48th state to outlaw staged fights, shuttering 42 cockfighting arenas in the state. With the remaining states looking like terrible outliers, we cracked the code in the state legislatures in 2007 in Louisiana and New Mexico, establishing in anti-cockfighting laws in all 50 states.
In 1999, I launched efforts to parallel efforts build a federal anti-animal-fighting law. In 2002, broke through in Congress, after a three-year campaign, to banning any interstate or foreign transport of fighting animals. When Michael Vick was arrested in 2007, we had a second bill on the desk of President George W. Bush to make dogfighting and cockfighting felony offenses (and added a new prohibition to ban trade in cockfighting implements). In 2008, we got a third measure over the finish line to define animal fighting as an enterprise bound up with interstate commerce — therefore banning the fighting itself under federal law.
In 2014, we made it a crime to be a spectator at an animal fighting venture. And in Animal Wellness Action led the effort to secure passage of the Parity in Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act in 2018 to outlawing cockfighting and dogfighting everywhere in the United States, including the U.S. territories. In one fell swoop, we outlawed cockfighting in the strongholds of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Marianas Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. The cockfighters and their political allies sued to overturn the laws in federal courts in Puerto Rico, Guam, and even in the Northern Marianas Islands. We turned back their challenges in every case.
This still-ongoing 25-year campaign, with a series of five increasingly potent federal laws and three statewide ballot initiatives at its core, resulted in a ban on animal fighting on every inch of U.S. soil. We now have a sixth upgrade of the federal law in the works with the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act. The FIGHT Act (HR 2742 & S. 1529), which amends the Animal Welfare Act to ban simulcasts of gambling, halt the shipment of fighting birds through the U.S. mail, and allow the forfeiture of property assets used in animal fighting crimes.
My dear friend and long-time board member Marion Look Jameson, who was born on Guam, has been central to all of the progress we’ve made on this issue since 2018. I am in her debt for her commitment to tackling this problem in the United States. So many lawmakers had enormous roles, but none bigger than U.S. Representatives Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, and U.S. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J.
Reducing Animal Testing
AWA and our partners, within the timeframe of a single two-year Congress, worked to secure passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 — the most consequential anti-animal testing bill Congress passed in the history of our republic. The new law eliminated an 84-year legislative mandate for animal testing for all investigational drugs as codified by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.
My colleague Tamara Drake was instrumental in getting this work done, and I was so pleased to work closely with an amazing coalition that included Gary Michelson, M.D., founder of the Michelson Center for Public Policy. Laurie McGrath, the matriarch of the McGrath Family Foundation, invested in this campaign and made it possible, along with my late friend Skip Trimble, who believed in the project and allowed us to have lift off.
The FDA Modernization Act 2.0 builds on work I did with Senator Cory Booker and his staff to set a new standard for screening chemicals for human health risks, with amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016 to stipulate that alternative methods must be used before resorting to animal tests.
No Doping in Racing
Racing horses are suffering catastrophic breakdowns at alarming rates, and there are a range of other problems in horse racing that threaten the safety of the horses. U.S. horse racing has operated under an outdated, state-based, balkanized patchwork of medication rules that creates confusion and risk for owners and trainers and contains gaps in rules and enforcement.
I worked with key actors in the Thoroughbred industry and animal advocates in working to pass the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act in 2020, allowing a new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority to establish track standards to promote horse safety, including by setting up strict anti-doping standards on race day. There were legal challenges to the law from horse racing trainers, and in December 2022, we were able to secure amendments to the law in Congress to insulate it from attacks by actors in the horse racing industry that want no federal safety standards whatever.
Cage-Free Future
It wasn’t until 2002 though when I partnered with Gene Bauer of Farm Sanctuary and we won the first statewide ballot initiative to halt extreme confinement — amending the Florida Constitution to halt the use of gestation crates in the Sunshine State. In 2006, I launched a ballot measure in Arizona to ban gestation crates and veal crates and we won in a landslide vote. We then took those two provisions and added in a ban on battery cages with Prop 2 in California in 2008, and again went on to a crushing victory.
The measures would get stronger and stronger, with Massachusetts voters passing Question 3 in 2016 to ban extreme confinement but also to restrict the sale of eggs, pork, and veal if it came from factory farms. I worked with my then colleagues Josh Balk and Paul Shapiro on a similar measure in California on Prop 12. Same result: a double-digit win. We were five for five on major farm animal protection ballot measures, with every measure favored by voters by double-digit margins.
Each of those wins allowed us to open up dialogue with the major food retailers in America, and when I worked with colleagues to persuade McDonald’s to phase out sourcing of pork from farms that rely on gestation crates, it was a watershed moment. In the wake of that announcement, we secured commitments from 60 of the biggest names in food retail — from Costco to Walmart to Cracker Barrel — to institute humane procurement policies for pork and eggs.
When the National Pork Producers Council sued to invalidate the laws as a violation of interstate commerce rules, we rose to the challenge. In May 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that California – and by proxy Massachusetts and other states with humane treatment and commerce laws — had the right to enact these humane and food safety standards that drafted in a non-protectionist manner. It was the most important Supreme Court ruling ever on animal protection.
In November 2023, after years of delay from senior USDA officials, the federal agency finally promulgated a final Organic Livestock and Poultry Protection rule. That legal standard established key protections for 60 million animals raised under the “organic seal.” These are the first ever federal farm animal welfare standards. The new standards, enshrined in the final Organic Livestock and Poultry Protection rule, prohibit the use of gestation crates for pigs and cage housing for laying hens; they prohibit tail-docking of pigs and cattle and debeaking of birds; and they require meaningful outdoor access for all animals raised under the organic label. The new rule also rejects the efforts by some cage-free producers to allow indoor “porches” to qualify as outdoor access for laying hens. The rule also contains additional standards for pigs relating to their ability to root and live in group housing.
Kangaroos Are Not Shoes
Responding to pressure from CHE’s “Kangaroos Are Not Shoes” campaign, Puma, Nike, Diadora, and New Balance — four of the five top brands in the athletic shoe sector — have announced policies halting any sourcing of kangaroo skins. Prior to our campaign, commercial hunters, with the approval of the state and federal governments in Australia, annually killed 1.5 million wild kangaroos without interruption in their native habitats to sell their skins to the athletic shoe companies.
Dismantling the Fur Trade
I’ve campaigned against the fur trade during my entire career, starting with protests but then graduating to anti-trapping ballot measures and broader anti-fur corporate campaigns. After years of seeming stasis, we broke through in the second decade of the 21st century. Armani, Coach, Macy’s, Michael Kors, Nordstrom’s, and dozens of other companies stopped selling fur. Major designers also put the fur aside as a fabric for their fashion offerings.
Prior to win in the marketplace, I had launched winning ballot measures in California, Massachusetts, and Washington to ban steel-jawed leghold traps and other body-gripping traps. I had helped pass two other measures in Arizona and Colorado, proving the thesis to “wildlife managers” around the nation that the public abhorred these inhumane and indiscriminate traps. Whether the fur were stripped from the animals in the field with cruel traps or from animals in confinement on factory farms, there was no excuse for wearing fur any longer.