Animals & Politics

Lawmakers Speak Up for Animals in Spending Bills

Against a backdrop of election year politics and partisan fights in Congress, lawmakers are moving forward to fund the federal government and all its programs. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have been holding hearings and are preparing to mark up the individual bills designating funds for agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, National Institutes of Health, and others whose budgets have a direct impact on animals. 

Last year’s omnibus spending bill included a number of big wins for animals, and many of those same issues are still in play this year. We need to send the strongest possible signal to the leaders of the key subcommittees that animal protection matters. That’s why it’s so important that a bipartisan group of legislators has stepped up to request needed provisions and oppose harmful riders. Here are some highlights:

Jennifer Kunz/The HSUS

Animal Welfare Enforcement Funding: 169 Representatives and 38 Senators requested funds for USDA to enforce key animal welfare laws including the Animal Welfare Act, Horse Protection Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and federal animal fighting law, as well as programs to address the needs of animals in disasters and to encourage veterinarians to locate their practices in underserved rural areas and to take up USDA inspector positions. More Senators helped seek this animal welfare funding than last year, and it’s the highest number in the House ever since we began working on these annual letters in 2001. Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and David Vitter, R-La., marshalled the support of their colleagues on these letters. This multiyear effort has resulted in a cumulative increase of $185 million over the past 17 years for enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, and a doubling of USDA inspectors on the ground and specialists to support them in ensuring basic humane treatment at thousands of puppy mills, research laboratories, roadside zoos, circuses, and other facilities.

Horse Slaughter: 96 Representatives and 23 Senators jointly urged inclusion of the “defund” language that prohibits the USDA from spending federal dollars on inspections of horse slaughter plants and keeps such plants from reopening on U.S. soil. Led by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Frank Guinta, R-N.H., these letters are also a considerably stronger showing than last year’s House and Senate letters seeking the defund provision. The horse slaughter industry is a predatory, inhumane enterprise. They don’t “euthanize” old horses, but precisely the opposite: they buy up young and healthy horses, often by misrepresenting their intentions, and kill them to sell the meat to Europe and Japan.

Wildlife Trafficking and Ivory: 86 Representatives and 17 Senators requested enforcement funding for various agencies working to combat wildlife trafficking and voiced opposition to any rider that would block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from moving forward on its proposed rule to crack down on illegal trade in elephant ivory. These strong letters were championed by Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. The biggest ivory-selling markets in the world are in China and the U.S., and these sales are fueling the slaughter of elephants thousands of miles away. It’s simply shocking that some politicians are trying to block the Obama administration from cracking down on elephant poachers and ivory traffickers.

Michelle Riley/The HSUS

Endangered Species: 73 Representatives called for robust funding to support the work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on Endangered Species Act listing, planning and consultation, species conservation and restoration, and recovery efforts. Two freshmen legislators, Reps. Don Beyer, D-Va., and Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., led the charge here on behalf of ESA protections. Recent polling shows that the ESA is supported by 90 percent of American voters. This bedrock environmental law that calls for science-based decision making has prevented 99 percent of species under its care from going extinct. We will also be working hard to defeat poisonous riders to delist species and weaken the ESA.

As the appropriators gear up to make their initial decisions on how to allocate resources among many competing requests and whether to include provisions that could help or harm animals, we hope they will heed the remarkable bipartisan support demonstrated in these letters, which reflect the broad public mandate for animal protection policies.

Big Cats in Captivity a National Crisis

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., today introduced the Big Cat Public Safety Act, S. 2541, which would restrict the private ownership and breeding of big cats in the United States. Enactment of this legislation cannot come soon enough, to address the national crisis of big cats in captivity and stem the tide of problems created by reckless individuals owning and breeding tigers, lions, and other big cats and putting the rest of society at risk.

Katie Birk/The HSUS
Alexander, the tiger rescued from a filthy and flimsy backyard
enclosure in Atchison, KS now resides at Black Beauty Ranch.

Most captive big cats are kept in inhumane conditions, pose a threat to the communities in which they are held, create a burden for law enforcement agencies and sanctuaries, and compromise global conservation efforts. For example, last September, a 10-week-old declawed tiger cub was found abandoned and wandering through a Hemet, California, neighborhood. A Las Vegas man has a 6-acre backyard menagerie crammed with nearly four dozen caged African lions, necessitating that county officials deal with ongoing safety concerns. A tiger and two cougars were among 11 animals seized in Atchison, Kansas, in 2013 after they had largely been abandoned in flimsy, filthy cages on a rural property. Eighteen tigers, three cougars, and 17 African lions were among the 48 animals shot and killed in Zanesville, Ohio, in 2011, after their suicidal owner released them into the community. 

Hundreds of big cats are bred every year at roadside zoos to produce a steady supply of cubs for temporary use in public photo-ops and play sessions, with the older animals dying prematurely from neglect, warehoused in small cages, sold into the exotic pet trade, or even killed. Two tiger cubs named Maximus and Sarabi at Tiger Safari in Oklahoma—the subject of an HSUS undercover investigation into the sordid world of tiger cub photo-ops—are now dead just more than a year later. A roadside menagerie in Ohio, accredited by the deceptively named “Zoological Association of America,” uses lion cubs for photo-ops with the public and has had the older lions slaughtered for meat. And at another Oklahoma roadside menagerie, 23 tiger cubs died over a period of 13 months—taken from their mothers immediately after birth when they most need her.

Big cats in the U.S. have contributed to nearly 350 dangerous incidents in 44 states since 1990. Four children lost their lives and dozens of others lost limbs or suffered other often traumatic injuries. Eighteen adults have been killed, and scores have been mauled.

Enough is enough. The people peddling tiger and lion cubs are not credible in their claim to the status of small business owners. They are perpetrators of abuse who are passing their costs onto the rest of us—the taxpayers, government agencies, and nonprofit animal sanctuaries that spend millions of dollars dealing with the cast-off big cats, and the families of the victims whose lives were lost due to this unregulated madness in our neighborhoods and at roadside attractions.

The Obama administration can take important and overdue actions on this issue, with a pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule to substantially improve oversight of endangered tigers in captivity, and a petition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ban public contact with big cats and other dangerous wildlife. But Congress must also do its part, and Sen. Blumenthal’s bill would restrict the owning and breeding of big cats, with the exception of legitimate animal sanctuaries and professional zoos accredited by the widely respected Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA)—those with the resources and expertise to provide for their complex needs. The House version of the bill, H.R. 3546, introduced last year by Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C. and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., has 57 bipartisan cosponsors.

Please urge your U.S. senators and representative to support this important legislation. You can find their contact information here. It’s time to take this decisive step to protect public safety before the next person is killed by a lion or tiger, and to greatly reduce the suffering inflicted on these creatures kept as exotic pets and in miserable roadside zoos.

The Presidential Files: Who Trumps the Field on Animal Issues in Race for White House?

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last week vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have put a roadblock in place in New Jersey for the next Walter Palmer-wannabee who wanted to slay a lion and bring his head back to the states. New Jersey lawmakers had overwhelmingly passed legislation to block the shipment of big-game trophies of lions, tigers, leopards, Cape buffalo, elephants, rhinoceros, and other endangered animals through New Jersey ports. Christie, however, sided with the Safari Club International, which called for a veto of the bill.

Sean Pavone/Alamy Photo Stock

The furor over Cecil’s death and the political debates it has inspired provide a powerful reminder that many of the presidential hopefuls, both Republicans and Democrats, have records on animal protection issues, and have taken either positive or adverse actions that we can and should examine. With the first votes to be cast early next week in Iowa and then soon after in New Hampshire, animal advocates of all political persuasions want to know where the candidates stand on humane issues. HSLF has not made any recommendations in the presidential race, but here’s a summary of what we know about the contenders.

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First, the Democratic candidates:

Hillary Clinton: During her eight years in the U.S. Senate, Clinton was a strong and consistent supporter of animal protection policies, earning a 100 percent score on the Humane Scorecard in the 108th Congress, a perfect 100+ score in the 109th, and an 83 in the 110th. She cosponsored legislation dealing with horse slaughter and animal fighting, as well as bills to stop the processing of “downer” livestock and to crack down on abusive puppy mills where dogs are treated like production machines. She led efforts in the 108th and 109th Congresses to stop the overuse of antibiotics in farm animals, which allow them to be crammed into overcrowded, stressful, and unsanitary factory farms. As a Senator, Clinton also signed letters requesting more funds for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to step up enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and the federal animal fighting law. During the 2008 campaign, she voiced concern over the slaughter of sick and injured cows whose meat was channeled into the national school lunch program. As Secretary of State, Clinton led international efforts to crack down on wildlife trafficking, and later through the Clinton Foundation, she helped to launch a major campaign to fight the illegal ivory trade and poaching of elephants, continuing her leadership on this issue. Earlier, as first lady, she often took Socks the cat along with her to visit children or senior citizens in local hospitals and to other events, and she wrote a children’s book on presidential pets featuring kids’ letters to Socks and the family’s dog, Buddy.

Martin O’Malley:  During eight years as governor of Maryland, O’Malley never distinguished himself on animal issues. He generally signed the animal protection bills sent to him by the legislature—on matters such as upgrading the cruelty law, protecting terrapins, setting up a spay and neuter fund, and ending breed discrimination against pit bull type dogs—but he never exhibited leadership or attentiveness on them. He is largely remembered by animal advocates for allowing a trophy hunting season on the small population of bears in western Maryland and never restraining the worst instincts of the state Department of Natural Resources when it came to trophy hunting and commercial trapping.

Bernie Sanders: Like Clinton, Sanders has been a steady and consistent supporter of animal protection during his time in Congress. As a House member, he earned a 58 percent on the Humane Scorecard for the 103rd Congress, 75 percent in the 104th, 60 percent in the 108th, and a perfect 100 percent score in both the 106th and 109th Congresses. As a senator, he scored 100 percent in the 110th, 112th, and 113th Congresses, an 89 in the 111th, and an 86 percent in the most recent session. It’s clear that Sanders became more active on animal protection during his congressional career, and his generally high scores attest to that.  In the current session of Congress, Sanders is cosponsoring legislation to protect pets in domestic violence, ban horse slaughter for human consumption, create a felony penalty for malicious animal cruelty, and crack down on horse soring abuses. He supported strong enforcement of federal animal welfare laws, and opposed the weakening of the Endangered Species Act. In previous sessions, Sanders cosponsored bills to crack down on abusive puppy mills and animal fighting, to restrict the private trade in big cats and primates as exotic pets, and to ban barren battery cages for egg-laying hens. He helped to lead the effort in the 111th and 112th Congresses to end the wasteful use of chimpanzees in invasive research and retire them to sanctuaries. Sanders was the first presidential candidate to publish an animal welfare statement, and it’s a strong and compelling one that demonstrates his concern for the issues as well as his leadership.

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The Republican field is much larger, and one of the candidates who has withdrawn, Sen. Lindsey Graham, had perhaps the strongest record on animal issues among Republicans. He is currently leading efforts in Congress to ban horse slaughter for human consumption and crack down on wildlife trafficking. 

Here’s some background on the remaining Republicans in the race:

Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina : Since they have not held public office before, there is not much to point to in terms of their philosophies or policy actions on animal issues. When Trump owned the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, he reportedly was involved in canceling an inhumane horse-diving act. On the down side, he has defended his sons’ trophy hunting of African wildlife, including giraffes, buffaloes, and even lions, and it’s remarkable, especially after the Walter Palmer incident, that the press have not pushed harder on Trump about his sons and their globe-trotting killing sprees for wildlife. Trump also recently lamented Ringling Bros.’ decision to phase out its performing elephants. Fiorina has the backing of millionaire businessman Forrest Lucas, who runs an anti-animal Super PAC and has spent lavishly to defend puppy mills, factory farming, and other cruelties; Fiorina did, however, post a video about her love of dogs so that voters could learn something of her personal feelings about animals. Carson has said little about animal welfare issues throughout his career, but he says  in interviews that he is mostly vegetarian, and in a 1990 interview with Vegetarian Times he shared his belief that “eventually there will no longer be a reason for most people to eat meat. And animals will breathe a sigh of relief.”  

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio: These sitting U.S. senators have had records consistently at odds with animal protection sensibilities. Rubio and Paul were among a handful of senators who opposed a floor amendment to ban attending and bringing children to animal fights, and Paul wouldn’t talk about the issue even after it became high-profile in the Republican primary in his home state between Mitch McConnell (who supported the amendment to crack down on animal fighting) and Matt Bevin, who attended a pro-cockfighting rally. Rubio and Paul each scored 28 percent on the Humane Scorecard for the 112th Congress; Cruz, Paul, and Rubio each received a score of 12 percent for the 113th Congress; all three have zeros for the first session of the 114th Congress. On the positive side, Rubio did cosponsor legislation to strengthen enforcement of the federal law against horse soring in the previous Congress (but has yet to do so in the current session), and when he previously served in the Florida state legislature, he sponsored a successful bill to strengthen the animal fighting statute. On the negative side, Paul is backing an alternative sham reform bill that would maintain the status quo for the horse soring crowd, and it’s basically just him, Sen. McConnell, and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Smith pushing that pro-soring bill. None of these Republican presidential candidates are cosponsoring any current animal protection legislation even though the major bills all have Republican authors.

Jeb Bush: As governor of Florida, Bush signed a number of animal protection bills sent to him by the legislature, but like O’Malley, never distinguished himself as a leader or an advocate in that office. During his tenure, Florida upgraded its laws on animal fighting, horse tripping, dog and cat fur, downer livestock, and pets in disaster planning. On the campaign trail, Bush has floated the idea of relocating the Interior Department to the West, and his Iowa Farm Team includes two past presidents of the National Pork Producers Council who have opposed animal welfare reforms in Congress and in the corporate sector.

Chris Christie: As noted above, Christie recently vetoed legislation to block imports of big-game trophies, although he had previously signed bills to crack down on wildlife trafficking by banning the trade in elephant ivory, rhino horns, and shark fins. As governor of New Jersey, Christie signed bills upgrading a number of animal protection laws on horse slaughter, animal fighting, pets in disasters, and other issues. He is most remembered, however, for twice vetoing legislation to ban the extreme confinement of breeding pigs in metal gestation crates, which had passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan votes. The issue made national headlines and was largely viewed as a sop to Iowa’s pork industry in light of Christie’s presidential ambitions. Christie has also been a booster of the state’s trophy hunting season for the state’s modest population of bears. In short, Christie’s record is mixed, where he’s taken some very good actions for animals but lined up with special interests like the Farm Bureau and NRA when it’s served his political ambitions. In New Jersey, one of the most pro-animal states in the nation, state lawmakers are pushing a number of reforms toward his office—some politically impossible not to sign because they are so popular, and others that stir the passions of trophy hunters, pork producers, and other animal-use interests he’s been courting in Iowa and elsewhere on the rest of the presidential trail.

Mike Huckabee: As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee sat on the sidelines and was silent during the legislative effort and ballot measure campaign to establish felony-level penalties for malicious animal cruelty. The policy was enacted after he left office, under the tenure of Gov. Mike Beebe. News reports also questioned Huckabee’s personal involvement in the handling of animal cruelty allegations against his son in 1998.

John Kasich: As governor of Ohio, Kasich acted swiftly in response to the tragic release of dozens of bears, lions, tigers, wolves and other exotic animals in Zanesville, setting a moratorium on the sale of exotic animals and advocating for the state’s first restrictions on the private ownership of dangerous wildlife as pets. Kasich has signed other bills sent to him by the Ohio legislature, upgrading the state laws on animal cruelty and puppy mills, and allowing pets to be included in domestic violence protective orders. He came into the governor’s office on the heels of a landmark agreement between The HSUS, the Ohio Farm Bureau, and Gov. Ted Strickland, and he’s generally done a creditable job of handling the provisions—including the phase-out of veal crates for calves, gestation crates for breeding pigs, and tail-docking of dairy cattle, and protections for “downer” cows—although there is concern that the state has not yet established felony penalties for cockfighting and may allow the expansion of a new battery cage egg-laying facility run by the notorious Hillandale Farms (thereby falling short, so far, on two elements of the eight-point agreement between The HSUS and the Farm Bureau).

Rick Santorum: Of all the Republican candidates still in the race, Santorum was arguably the most active on animal protection issues. He earned a 60 percent on the Humane Scorecard for the 108th Congress, and an 80 percent for the 109th. But more importantly, he was the lead sponsor of the Pet Animal Welfare Statute (PAWS) to crack down on large-scale commercial puppy mills, and held a hearing on the bill when he was the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Research, Nutrition and General Legislation. He was also a leader in the Senate urging adequate funding for the enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the federal animal fighting law, and other animal welfare programs. Santorum cosponsored legislation to establish federal felony penalties for dogfighting and cockfighting, cosponsored legislation to require the addition of a bittering agent to antifreeze and engine coolant to prevent the poisoning of pets, and voted to stop the slaughter of American horses for food exports.

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You can help put humane issues in front of all the presidential candidates and make animal protection part of the political discourse. Please join us at ChangePolitics.org, a new, nonpartisan, elections platform that allows you to ask questions about animal protection issues that are important to you, and “upvote” other users’ questions to give them a higher ranking.

Did Your Members of Congress Make the Grade?

We’ve started a new year and a new session of the 114th Congress (which runs from January 2015 to December 2016), and despite plenty of gridlock last year, there were several important victories for animal protection. We want you, as an animal advocate, to have a simple and efficient way to determine how your federal lawmakers sided on crucial animal protection legislation. To that end, today we’re publishing the final version of the 2015 Humane Scorecard, which covers the first session of the 114th Congress and shows you how your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative performed on animal protection issues. 

hslf.org/scorecard

Think of the Humane Scorecard as a handy tool to see where your federal legislators stand on our movement’s key policy issues. It demonstrates the level of support animal protection ideas hold in various regions of the country and with the two major political parties. It also helps us evaluate where we’ve been effective, and where we need to focus our energies in the months and years ahead.

In this report, we score lawmakers on key votes to weaken the Endangered Species Act and erode protections for imperiled wildlife, to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s modest rule to crack down on the commercial ivory trade that is wreaking havoc on elephant populations, and to enact the omnibus funding package containing many crucial advances for animals. We also evaluate their support for adequate funding to enforce federal animal welfare laws, and their co-sponsorship of priority bills to protect animals including pets, horses, and animals in laboratories. We provide extra credit for legislators who took the lead on one or more animal protection issues.

We recognize the limitations of trying to judge legislators based on a few votes, co-sponsorships, and joint letters, and no instrument of this type is ever going to be perfect. We can’t count co-sponsorship of every worthy bill, so we try to give a balanced snapshot looking at a few priority bills across a spectrum of concerns, each with a critical mass of support and a reasonable chance of enactment.

Legislators sometimes must miss votes for unavoidable reasons such as illness or a death in the family. Advocates should also consider such unrecorded matters as performance on committees, positions of congressional leadership, and constituent service. But our movement must strive for some objective yardstick to evaluate performance on our issues.

We hope the Humane Scorecard will be useful to you all year. If you’re a member of HSLF (I hope you are!), please enjoy the complimentary printed copy you’ll receive in the mail as one of your membership benefits. And please help to spread the word about the important work we are doing.

Here are some of the highlights from the first session of the 114th Congress:

• A bipartisan group of 39 Senators and 142 Representatives covering 37 states, Guam, and the District of Columbia led as prime sponsors of pro-animal legislative or regulatory efforts and/or scored a perfect 100—more than one-third of the Senate and more than one-quarter of the House.
• The average Senate score was a 47, with Senate Democrats averaging 79, Senate Republicans averaging 20, and Senate Independents averaging 65.
• The average House score was a 48, with House Democrats averaging 83, and House Republicans averaging 21.
• Twenty-one Senators scored 100 or 100+.
• Eighteen Senators scored zero.
• One hundred and eight Representatives scored 100 or 100+.
• Fifty-three Representatives scored zero.
• The New England region led the pack with an average House score of 94 and an average Senate score of 90, followed by the Mid-Atlantic region with a House score of 70 and a Senate score of 77, and the West with a House score of 63 and a Senate score of 61.
• The Rocky Mountains and the Southeast were at the bottom, with average House scores of 34 and 31 respectively, and each had an average Senate score of 23.
• Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey had an average Senate score of 100.
• In Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, both Senators scored 0.
• Rhode Island had a House average of 100, and Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New York had House averages above 80.
• Wyoming had an average House score of zero, and Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, and West Virginia had average House scores in single digits.

For all the details, please check out (and hold onto) the Humane Scorecard and use it to talk to your lawmakers about their grades for last year. If they scored high, thank them for their support of animal protection. If they didn’t, let them know you’re watching and you hope they’ll do better in 2016.

It’s important to let your legislators know that you and other constituents care about treating animals humanely, that you want to see common-sense policies enacted to protect animals, and that you’ll be keeping them informed throughout the year so they can do well on the next Humane Scorecard right out of the gate. 

We need your help, and theirs, to advance a mainstream agenda for animal protection in this final session of the 114th Congress, taking on horse soring and slaughter, poaching and wildlife trafficking, animal testing for cosmetics and chemicals, domestic violence against family pets, and other cruelties.

P.S.—Special thanks goes to the following Senators and Representatives who took the pro-animal position on every scored item and earned extra credit for leading on one or more animal issues:

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Sen. Benjamin Cardin (Md.), Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Sen. Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Rep. Don Beyer (Va.), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Rep. Vern Buchanan (Fla.), Rep. Tony Cárdenas (Calif.), Rep. David Cicilline (R.I.), Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Rep. Susan Davis (Calif.), Rep. Peter DeFazio (Ore.), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), Rep. Mike Doyle (Pa.), Rep. Eliot Engel (N.Y.), Rep. Sam Farr (Calif.), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.), Rep. Jared Huffman (Calif.), Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), Rep. Sander Levin (Mich.), Rep. Nita Lowey (N.Y.), Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (N.M.), Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), Rep. Grace Meng (N.Y.), Rep. David Price (N.C.), Rep. Mike Quigley (Ill.), Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (Calif.), Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Rep. Dina Titus (Nev.), Rep. Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Rep. Niki Tsongas (Mass.)

A Look Back at the First Session of the 114th Congress

Editor's note: This post was originally published on December 29, 2015 at 12:17 p.m. and has been updated to include the list of legislators who led the way on these important measures and the updated cosponsor numbers on our priority bills for 2016.

Federal lawmakers have concluded their work for 2015, and will pick up where they left off in mid-January. Washington saw plenty of gridlock this year, but there were also several important victories for animal protection, including bills that made it over the finish line or have the momentum to do so next year. Here’s my rundown of the advances for animals during the 2015 session:

Omnibus (Consolidated Appropriations Act) Highlights:

A number of the victories for animals came with the $1.1 trillion omnibus funding package (P.L. 114-113), signed into law just before Christmas. With a number of critical animal issues in play, the bill was essentially a clean sweep on all of them, with gains in the following areas:

Language in the omnibus prevents the resumption in the United States of horse slaughter for human consumption.Photo by Jennifer Kunz/The HSUS

Horse slaughter – The omnibus retains “defund” language that’s been enacted over the past several years to prohibit the U.S. Department of Agriculture from spending funds for inspection of horse slaughter plants.This effectively prevents the resumption in the United States of horse slaughter for human consumption – a practice that is inherently cruel, particularly given the difficulty of properly stunning horses before slaughter, and dangerous because horses are routinely given drugs over their lifetimes that can be toxic to humans.
Leads: Sens. Tom Udall, D-N.M., Mark Kirk, R-Ill., Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., Chris Coons, D-Del., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Reps. Sam Farr, D-Calif., Frank Guinta, R-N.H., Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., and Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M.

Federal protections for wolves and other endangered species – The omnibus rejects all the new riders in the House and Senate Interior Appropriations bills that would have undermined the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law that has prevented 99 percent of species under its care from going extinct and that calls for science-based decision making to protect wildlife and plants in danger of extinction. Recent polling shows that the ESA is supported by 90 percent of American voters. With the extinction of species on earth now at its highest rate since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, this law is needed more urgently than ever. 
Leads: Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Reps. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, Betty McCollum, D-Minn., and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.

ARS research on farm animals – The omnibus contains strong language to address abuses uncovered by a New York Times exposé of the Agricultural Research Service’s Meat Animal Research Center. Language directs ARS to ensure that all of its research facilities comply with federal Animal Welfare Act standards, provides $400,000 for inspections, and withholds five percent of the ARS budget until specified animal welfare reforms are fulfilled. 
Leads: Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Udall, Feinstein, Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Booker, D-N.J., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Farr, Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Buchanan.

Alternatives to animal testing and stopping pointless experiments – The omnibus provides a $52.7 million increase for the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which works on developing alternatives to animal testing that are more humane, faster to perform, less costly to industry, and can provide more reliable results than animal experiments not predictive of the human experience. 
Leads: Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Reps. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., David Price, D-N.C., and Tom Cole, R-Okla.

Maternal deprivation – The omnibus incorporates by reference House committee report language calling on the NIH to review (in consultation with outside experts) its ethical policies and processes for nonhuman primate research, language that already helped spur NIH to develop a plan to close down one of its primate facilities in Maryland where decades-long research had occurred involving maternal deprivation for infant monkeys.
Leads: Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., and Farr.

The omnibus rejects the House Interior Appropriations bill rider that would have blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from moving forward on efforts to reduce trafficking in ivory products. Photo by iStockphoto

Ivory rule – The omnibus rejects the House Interior Appropriations bill rider that would have blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from moving forward on efforts to reduce trafficking in ivory products. Illegal poaching of elephants has reached epidemic proportions, and extinction in the wild looms unless strong action is taken to curb demand. The United States is the second largest market for ivory products after China, and the U.S. and Chinese presidents committed publicly in September to take action in both countries to crack down on the ivory trade.
Leads: Sen. Feinstein, and Reps. Grijalva, Peter King, R-N.Y., McCollum, and Steve Israel, D-N.Y.

Wildlife trafficking enforcement – The omnibus provides not less than $80 million (a $25 million increase) under the U.S. Agency for International Development to combat the transnational threat of wildlife poaching and trafficking, and bars any expenditures to train or assist military units or personnel that the secretary of state determines are credibly alleged to have participated in wildlife poaching or trafficking, unless the secretary reports that such expenditure is in the national security interests of the United States. Wildlife trafficking has become one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises internationally, helping finance organized criminal syndicates and terrorist groups such as the Janjaweed and Lord’s Resistance Army. 
Leads: Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Coons.

Class B dealers – The omnibus denies funds for the USDA’s licensing or relicensing of Class B animal dealers who sell “random source” dogs and cats, often obtained fraudulently and kept in horrible conditions before being sold for laboratory experiments. These dealers have a long history of trafficking in stolen pets, misrepresenting themselves at animal shelters and in responding to “free to good home” ads.  The vast majority of research facilities long ago stopped relying on such dealers, and in recent years, NIH has prohibited funds for research involving cats and dogs acquired that way. The number of Class B dealers has gone from hundreds two decades ago to only two remaining currently.
Lead: Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.

Animal welfare enforcement – The omnibus maintains funding for the USDA to enforce and implement key animal protection laws, including the Animal Welfare Act that provides oversight for millions of animals at more than 10,000 sites, including puppy mills and other commercial breeding facilities, laboratories, zoos, and circuses; the Horse Protection Act dealing with cruel soring of Tennessee walking horses and related breeds (deliberately inflicting pain on horses’ legs and hooves to achieve an artificial high-stepping gait and win prizes); the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act; the federal animal fighting law; and a program that encourages veterinarians, through student loan repayment assistance, to locate in underserved rural areas and USDA inspection positions.
Leads: Sens. Boxer David Vitter, R-La., and Merkley, and Reps. Chris Smith, Blumenauer, and Farr.

Wild horses – The omnibus restates the long-standing ban on the killing of healthy wild horses and burros and sale for slaughter, and directs the Bureau of Land Management to continue implementing reforms recommended by the National Academy of Sciences for more humane wild horse and burro population management, including reducing the number of animals rounded up and transferred to long-term holding pens and increasing the use of available humane fertility control methods.
Leads: Reps. Calvert and McCollum.

The omnibus incorporates language directing the USDA to issue its long-delayed proposed rule to establish more humane standards of care for captive marine mammals. Photo by iStockphoto

Marine mammals – The omnibus incorporates by reference Senate committee report language directing the USDA to issue its long-delayed proposed rule to establish more humane standards of care for captive marine mammals, including orcas, dolphins, and beluga whales.
Leads: Sens. Feinstein and Merkley.

Land and Water Conservation Fund – The omnibus contains a 47 percent increase in funding for this program that protects and improves habitat for wildlife and recreational access for nature lovers.

Pet food – The omnibus provides full funding to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, which includes needed reforms for safe pet food.
Leads: Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Reps. DeLauro, Farr, and Pingree.

Authorizing Bill Highlights:

Alternatives to animal testing – The Senate passed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act by voice vote in December, reauthorizing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for the first time since it was signed into law almost 40 years ago. The Senate bill contains landmark provisions to reduce – if not eliminate – the use of live animals for chemical testing.  Each year, tens of thousands of animals are killed to test industrial chemicals, including those found in common household products. These animals suffer terribly, as harsh chemicals are rubbed into their skin, forced down their throats, and dropped in their eyes, sometimes over a prolonged period, causing horrific deaths.  If these provisions are enacted, it will benefit animals, consumers, industry, and the environment by spurring the use of modern, science-based alternatives that are much more efficient and yield better safety decisions than antiquated animal toxicity testing. The House had already passed its version of TSCA, so we hope House-Senate conferees will hammer out their differences quickly in 2016 and, no matter what, retain the vital Senate language on animal testing.
Leads: Sens. Booker, Udall, and Vitter.

Amtrak and pets – Congress enacted a transportation package with an amendment directing Amtrak to develop a program that allows passengers to carry their cats and dogs on board certain trains. This will create more opportunities for pets to remain with their families when they have no one to care for them during travel or need to permanently relocate.
Leads: Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Kirk, and Feinstein, and Reps. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., and Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.  

House and Senate bills named after Cecil the lion were introduced to stop imports of trophies from endangered or threatened animal species. Photo by 500px Prime

Military working dogs – Congress also enacted a defense authorization bill with an amendment to facilitate the adoption of retired military working dogs by their former handlers and their families, law enforcement agencies, or other individuals who will humanely care for these animals. This provision honors the special bond between service members and their trusted dogs.
Leads: Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J.

Wildlife trafficking – The House passed the Global Anti-Poaching Act by voice vote in November to make wildlife trafficking violations predicate offenses under the Travel Act, Money Laundering, and RICO statutes; designate major wildlife trafficking countries; authorize the U.S. Department of Defense to provide training and equipment to fight poaching on the front lines; and promote other needed reforms. Related bills introduced in the Senate have bipartisan support – the Wildlife Trafficking Enforcement Act and the Eliminate, Neutralize, and Disrupt (END) Wildlife Trafficking Act. In the House, the Targeted Use of Sanctions for Killing Elephants and Rhinoceros (TUSKER) Act would provide for trade sanctions against countries involved in illegal trade of elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn. House and Senate bills named after Cecil, the lion killed by a U.S. trophy hunter, were also introduced to stop imports of trophies from endangered or threatened animal species. We are hopeful that both chambers will reach agreement to pull together key elements of these various bills and enact needed reforms early in 2016.
Leads: Sens. Feinstein, Graham, Coons, Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Menendez, and Reps. Ed Royce, R-Calif., Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., DeFazio, Grijalva, and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

New and reintroduced priority bills – We are halfway through the 114^th Congress, and there is already overwhelming bipartisan support for other priority animal protection legislation. With the momentum building for these bills, we are hopeful they will get over the finish line in 2016, including:

• Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act – to strengthen the federal animal crush video law enacted in 2010 (which banned the creation, sale, and distribution of obscene videos that show the intentional crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, or impaling of live animals) to prohibit those same extreme acts of malicious animal cruelty when they occur in interstate or foreign commerce, or on federal property (213 House cosponsors and 31 Senate cosponsors).
  Leads: Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Blumenthal, and Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Tom Marino, R-Pa., and Blumenauer.

• Pet and Women Safety (PAWS) Act – to make it harder for abusers to prey on their battered partners and their pets by: 1) allowing pets to be protected across state lines when restraining orders are issued in domestic violence and stalking cases; and 2) authorizing grant money so that domestic violence shelters can accommodate pets (currently only three percent of these shelters allow pets) or help arrange for pet shelter (185 House cosponsors and 27 Senate cosponsors). 
  Leads: Sens. Ayotte and Peters, and Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. 

• Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act – to amend existing federal law to better crack down on the cruel practice of “soring,” in which unscrupulous trainers deliberately inflict pain on the hooves and legs of Tennessee walking horses and certain other breeds to force them to perform an unnaturally high-stepping gait and gain unfair competitive advantage at horse shows (246 House cosponsors and 50 Senate cosponsors).
  Leads: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Mark Warner, D-Va., and Reps. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., Fitzpatrick, Cohen, David Jolly, R-Fla., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

• Humane Cosmetics Act – to phase out the testing of cosmetics on live animals and the sale of animal-tested cosmetics in the United States, as is the case for more than 1.7 billion consumers who live in countries that have already undertaken such action, including the European Union and India (145 House cosponsors).
  Leads: Reps. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Don Beyer, D-Va., Joe Heck, R-Nev., and Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif.

• Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act – to protect horses and consumers by prohibiting the transport and export of U.S. horses to slaughter for human consumption (184 House cosponsors and 29 Senate cosponsors).
  Leads: Sens. Menendez, Graham, Mikulski, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Reps. Guinta, Schakowsky, Buchanan, and Lujan Grisham.

• Animal Welfare in Agricultural Research (AWARE) Act – to permanently close a loophole in the Animal Welfare Act that exempts farm animals used for agricultural research at federal government facilities, and ensure that these animals receive the basic care required under the law (83 House cosponsors and 10 Senate cosponsors).
  Leads: Sens. Booker and Blumenthal, and Reps. Blumenauer, Fitzpatrick, Slaughter, and Buchanan.

• Big Cats and Primates as Pets – to protect public safety and animal welfare, the Captive Primate Safety Act (66 House cosponsors) would bar the interstate trade in chimpanzees and monkeys as pets, and the Big Cat Public Safety Act (50 House cosponsors) would prohibit private ownership of dangerous big cats such as tigers and lions as pets. 
  Leads: Reps. Fitzpatrick, Blumenauer, and Walter Jones, R-N.C.

There were dozens of other bills introduced demonstrating the broad interest in animal protection among lawmakers and the public. This year’s results demonstrated that it is still possible to get good things done for animals and that our issues continue to transcend the partisan divide. We look forward to a robust second session of the 114^th Congress beginning in January and to the renewed engagement of advocates across the country.  It is this engagement that makes all the difference to our success.

Ask your lawmakers to act on these priority bills»

With Omnibus Bill, a Big Year of Progress for Animals, Especially in Research

The U.S. House this morning passed the $1.1 trillion spending package for 2016, which includes a number of important provisions to prevent the opening of U.S.-based horse slaughter plants, retain Endangered Species Act provisions for gray wolves, and allow restrictions on the domestic ivory trade to protect elephants from poaching. But the provisions in the omnibus spending bill also cap an incredible year of exciting progress at the federal level for animals used in research.

iStock Photo

In the wake of The New York Times exposé of the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center conducting ghoulish experiments on farm animals—with animals dying in steam chambers, of deformities, or left to starve or freeze to death—Congress took action to improve the welfare of animals at USDA Agricultural Research Service facilities including U.S. MARC. The omnibus bill withholds 5 percent of the ARS budget until the agency certifies it has updated its animal care policies and has a fully functioning Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The language also assigns additional funds to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to provide much needed oversight at ARS facilities using animals in agricultural research.

The bill cracks down on the unscrupulous Class B dealers rounding up cats and dogs from random sources—including flea markets, free to a good home ads, and even stolen pets—and funneling them into research labs. A provision strips the funds made available for licensing the two remaining Class B dealers, which cannot conduct business without renewal of an annual license. The National Institutes of Health has already stopped funding research involving dogs and cats from Class B dealers, and this additional action could close out the issue which has long been a concern of animal advocates.

In a tough budgetary climate with competition for federal dollars, the omnibus bill also provides an additional $53 million dollars to the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the NIH. The NCATS program invests in the development of non-animal approaches, such as the human-on-a-chip program, which are more human-relevant and ultimately more effective than relying on animals. It’s this kind of enhanced funding that will help lead us away from animal testing in the future. 

In addition, the report accompanying the bill also calls for NIH to review the ethical policies and procedures regarding the use of primates in controversial maternal deprivation studies. It has spurred the agency to develop a plan to close down one of its own facilities in Maryland where the decades-long experiments on infant monkeys have been carried out. This is a positive step by NIH, and another marker of our progress on research issues.

Jenny Desmond/For The HSUS

All of this exciting news in the omnibus bill comes in addition to other major federal actions on animal research issues in 2015. In a banner year for chimpanzees, we have seen NIH grant retirement to the remaining 50 government owned chimps and get out of the business of funding invasive chimp studies. NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins acknowledged there is virtually no research that requires the use of these animals and under his leadership the agency has made major advances on the issue. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed captive chimps as endangered, in response to an HSUS legal petition, making it extremely difficult for anyone to use chimps as exotic pets or for invasive biomedical research. The Hill called our campaign to get chimps out of labs one of the top 10 lobbying campaigns of the year.

And just last night, the U.S. Senate passed S. 697, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21^st Century Act, by voice vote. The bill would improve the science behind chemical testing, encourage better safety decisions to protect the environment and human health and would reduce—if not eliminate—the use of animals. Each year, tens of thousands of animals are killed to test industrial chemicals, including those found in common household products. These animals suffer terribly, as harsh chemicals are rubbed into their skin, forced down their throats and dropped in their eyes. This breakthrough bill would help make chemical testing smarter, faster and more reliable for regulatory decision-making and protect animals’ lives.

We are urging members of the House-Senate conference committee to accept the Senate animal testing language when they finalize the chemical safety bill. And we are urging the Senate to pass the omnibus bill and the President to sign it into law, with so much at stake on such a wide range of animal protection issues. Together these actions will mark a big period of progress for animals, but especially so for animals in research.

Here is a run-down of all the animal protection items included in the omnibus package: 

Gary Alvis/iStock

Horse slaughter – omnibus retains “defund” language that’s been enacted over the past several years to prohibit USDA from spending funds for inspection of horse slaughter plants. This effectively prevents the resumption in the U.S. of horse slaughter for human consumption—a practice that is inherently cruel, particularly given the difficulty of properly stunning horses before slaughter, and dangerous because horses are routinely given drugs over their lifetimes that can be toxic to humans.

Federal protections for wolves and other endangered species – omnibus rejects all the new riders in the House and Senate Interior Appropriations bills that would have undermined the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law that has prevented 99% of species under its care from going extinct and that calls for science-based decision making to protect wildlife and plants in danger of extinction. Recent polling shows that the ESA is supported by 90% of American voters. With the extinction of species on earth now at its highest rate since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, this law is more urgently needed than ever. 

ARS research on farm animals – omnibus contains strong language to address abuses uncovered by a New York Times exposé of the Agricultural Research Service’s Meat Animal Research Center. Language directs ARS to ensure that all of its research facilities comply with federal Animal Welfare Act standards, provides $400,000 for inspections, and withholds 5% of the ARS budget until specified animal welfare reforms are fulfilled. 

Alternatives to animal testing and stopping pointless experiments – omnibus provides a $52.7 million increase for NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which works on developing alternatives to animal testing that are more humane, faster to perform, less costly to industry, and can provide more reliable results than animal experiments not predictive of the human experience. 

Maternal deprivation – omnibus incorporates by reference House committee report language calling on the NIH to review (in consultation with outside experts) its ethical policies and processes for nonhuman primate research, language that already helped spur NIH to develop a plan to close down one of its primate facilities in Maryland where decades-long research had occurred involving maternal deprivation for infant monkeys.  

Ivory rule – omnibus rejects the House Interior Appropriations bill rider that would have blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from moving forward on efforts to reduce trafficking in ivory products. Illegal poaching of elephants has reached epidemic proportions, and extinction in the wild looms unless strong action is taken to curb demand. The U.S. is the second largest market for ivory products after China, and the U.S. and Chinese presidents reached an agreement in September to take action in both countries to crack down on the ivory trade.

Wildlife trafficking enforcement – omnibus provides not less than $80 million (a $25 million increase) under the U.S. Agency for International Development to combat the transnational threat of wildlife poaching and trafficking, and bars any expenditures to train or assist military units or personnel that the Secretary of State determines are credibly alleged to have participated in wildlife poaching or trafficking, unless the Secretary reports that such expenditure is in the national security interests of the U.S. Wildlife trafficking has become one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises internationally, helping finance organized criminal syndicates and terrorist groups such as the Janjaweed, Lord’s Resistance Army, and al-Shabaab. 

Class B dealers – omnibus denies funds for USDA’s licensing or relicensing of Class B animal dealers who sell “random source” dogs and cats, often obtained fraudulently and kept in horrible conditions before being sold for laboratory experiments. These dealers have a long history of trafficking in stolen pets, misrepresenting themselves at animal shelters and in responding to “free to good home” ads. The vast majority of research facilities long ago stopped relying on such dealers, and in recent years, NIH has prohibited funds for research involving cats and dogs acquired that way. The number of Class B dealers has gone from hundreds two decades ago to only two.

Animal welfare enforcement – omnibus maintains funding for USDA to enforce and implement key animal protection laws, including the Animal Welfare Act that provides oversight for millions of animals at more than 10,000 sites including puppy mills and other commercial breeding facilities, laboratories, zoos, and circuses; the Horse Protection Act dealing with cruel soring of Tennessee Walking Horses and related breeds (deliberately inflicting pain on horses’ legs and hooves to achieve an artificial high-stepping gait and win prizes); the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act; the federal animal fighting law; and a program that encourages veterinarians, through student loan repayment assistance, to locate in underserved rural areas and USDA inspection positions.

Wild horses – omnibus restates the long-standing ban on killing of healthy wild horses and burros and sale for slaughter, and directs the Bureau of Land Management to continue implementing reforms recommended by the National Academy of Sciences for more humane wild horse and burro population management, including reducing the number of animals rounded up and transferred to long-term holding pens and increasing the use of available humane fertility control methods.

Marine mammals – omnibus incorporates by reference Senate committee report language directing USDA to issue its long-delayed proposed rule to establish more humane standards of care for captive marine mammals, including orcas, dolphins, and beluga whales.

Land and Water Conservation Fund – omnibus contains a 47% increase in funding for this program that protects and improves habitat for wildlife and recreational access for nature lovers.

Pet food – omnibus provides full funding to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act, which includes needed reforms for safe pet food.

Government Pork: May the Farce Be With You

Here are some pretty painful examples of your government at work. Monkeys on a treadmill, sheep in microgravity, and a fight club for shrimp? All of that and more amounts to a smackdown of American taxpayers.

Photo courtesy of Wastebook: The Farce Awakens

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is asking these serious questions in a humorous and eye-catching way. Today he released Wastebook: The Farce Awakens, highlighting 100 examples of questionable federal spending amounting to more than $100 billion. A number of the projects targeted by Flake deal with animal issues, such as bizarre laboratory experiments that may have some appeal with federal agencies but have limited scientific value and leave a trail of animal victims behind.

For example, $8 million of taxpayer funding was awarded to the Southwest Primate Research Center, located in Texas, which used part of the grant to study 12 marmoset monkeys forced to run inside an exercise ball on a treadmill. One of the monkeys vomited and three defecated in the exercise ball, and another monkey died during week 11 of the treadmill study. Surely no scientific breakthroughs came from it all.

This is the same primate research center housed at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, which was the subject of an HSUS undercover investigation into mistreatment of primates who suffered unnecessary injuries and even death. The Wastebook report notes, “Over the past decade, the facility has collected nearly $70 million in grants and contracts from various federal agencies. During this same period, the center has also been slapped with fines totaling more than $30,000 by the federal government for a number of violations, including performing a necropsy on a baboon that was still alive. USDA identified 14 violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the center over a two year period.”

iStock photo

In another example, NASA spent $1.2 million to study the effects of microgravity in sheep. Flake writes, “The sheep aren’t floating around inside an anti-gravity chamber or on the International Space Station. Instead, the back leg of each sheep was put in a brace that kept it from bearing weight, simulating the effects of microgravity.” After weeks of this confinement, surgeons removed part of each animal’s leg and then put them back in the brace to see how they recovered in simulated microgravity. The researchers found that “the sheep’s bone density decreased” and the “weakened bone could break more easily.” This type of research, which involves actively harming animals on the government dime, seems to have limited—if any—practical value and there are likely much more useful learnings to be had from astronauts spending actual time in space. Flake notes that extensive research on the same subjects has already been done by NASA involving humans. 

Flake also targets a $60 million boondoggle in which the National Pork Board funnels check-off dollars—a tax paid by every pig farmer supposedly for marketing efforts—to a D.C. lobbying group. Flake writes, “In a very unusual deal, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) is bringing home the bacon from a government sponsored board for the sale of the slogan ‘The Other White Meat,’ which was put out to pasture years ago.” Flakes notes that the “deal guarantees payments to a lobbying organization over two decades” for a slogan that is no longer even being used.

Shaun Lowe/iStock

The Wastebook report notes, “While the arrangement surely makes NPPC lobbyists as happy as pigs in mud, it has raised the eyebrows of the farmers who are being treated as piggybanks to pay the fees….A coalition of small hog farmers and the Humane Society of the United States have joined forces to file a lawsuit to undo the deal and recoup the millions of dollars already paid for the defunct ‘other white meat’ slogan.” It’s an example of how cozy Washington is with special interests in Big Ag, who are unlawfully spending federal dollars to lobby against animal welfare, the environment, and family farmers.

As Congress approaches its self-imposed deadline this Friday to reach agreement on a spending package to keep federal agencies operating or face another government shutdown, it’s a good time to consider reductions in spending that harms animals and wastes taxpayer money. Despite rhetoric about favoring smaller government, Congress has allowed many needless programs to continue. We are grateful to Sen. Flake for calling out these wasteful and misguided projects, and we urge other lawmakers to seize the opportunity to save animals and save tax dollars.

Scores of Scientists Stand Up for Wolves

With our ballot referendum, educational, and litigation successes, we’ve blocked some massive killing of wolves in the Great Lakes states and in Wyoming, sparing hundreds of wolves from trapping, hounding, and trophy killing. But a faction in Congress is trying to nullify these efforts by seeking to remove federal protections for wolves. Hostile lawmakers are now attempting to include an anti-wolf policy rider into a massive end-of-year spending bill. We’ve got to stop it.

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It was no surprise when a handful of old-school biologists and former government types sent a letter recently advocating for the delisting of wolves and the resumption of trophy hunting and trapping. But it was notable that in response, a much larger group of 70 independent scientists and scholars this week called upon the Obama administration and Congress to retain critical federal protections under the ESA for gray wolves. A few weeks ago, 25 U.S. Senators and 92 U.S. Representatives also wrote to the Obama administration and urged it to shelve any plans for delisting specific species, such as the gray wolf, or gutting the ESA in a the final spending package.

The scientists who favor continued federal protection for wolves—including a number of internationally renowned wildlife biologists—invoked a compelling scientific case for their position. Their letter also addresses public attitudes, citing recent polling showing that an overwhelming 90 percent of American voters support the ESA. The public also maintains a positive attitude toward wolves, and support for them has been increasing over the past few decades. Our winning ballot measures in Michigan last year demonstrated that even in a wolf range state, there is enormous support for protecting wolves.

Once wolves lose federal protections, they are subject to reckless and overreaching state management plans, including wolf hunts utilizing unsporting and barbaric methods, such as steel-jawed leghold traps, cable snares, baiting, and hound hunting. State management hasn’t worked and has been disastrous for wolves, and that’s why federal oversight is still needed. The authors of the second letter draw attention to several scientifically questionable components of state management, including the sustainability and science behind legal wolf hunting plans and accuracy and bias in wolf population counts.

Finally, the scientists explain why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been unsuccessful in each of its attempts to delist wolves, noting that the biological status and management of wolves do not meet standards required by the ESA for delisting. The best available science shows that wolf populations have not recovered, as explained in numerous peer-review articles and supported by published evidence, repeated judicial opinion, and congressional intent.

When a species is delisted, there is an administrative process for the public and wildlife biologists to weigh in, and when the science doesn’t justify delisting—as it hasn’t in the case of wolves—then judicial review can overturn the decision. It’s not an appropriate role for Congress to intervene while those administrative rulemaking and judicial review processes are playing out.

Most Americans value and appreciate wolves, and wolf-watching tourism drives tens of millions of dollars annually into local economies. We must do everything we can to protect these creatures and the ecosystems that rely on them, and not allow politicians to force delisting by legislative fiat on behalf of special interest groups.

Right now, members of Congress are having closed-door negotiations about which policy riders to include in the final omnibus spending package. Please let your legislators know that you oppose riders delisting wolves (or any other species) in the spending bill (you can find their contact information here). Please also let President Obama know that you would also like him to reject these harmful riders by clicking here to send him a tweet.

Are Your Lawmakers Making the Grade?

One of the core objectives we have at the HSLF is to make it simple and efficient for voters to determine how federal lawmakers have sided on crucial animal protection legislation across a range of issues. With the end of the first term of the 114th Congress approaching, HSLF has posted a preview version of the 2015 Humane Scorecard, so you can see how your U.S. senators and U.S. representatives have performed so far in this Congress on animal protection issues. If they’ve done well, please thank them; if they have room for improvement, please let them know you’re paying attention, and that there is still time for them to do better before the final scorecard is wrapped up at the end of the year.

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In this preliminary report, we hold lawmakers accountable on key votes to weaken the Endangered Species Act and erode protections for imperiled species, putting our nation’s wildlife at risk, and to block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s modest rule to crack down on the commercial ivory trade that is wreaking havoc on elephant populations. We also evaluate their support for adequate funding to enforce federal animal welfare laws, and their co-sponsorship of priority bills to protect animals including pets, horses, and animals in laboratories. We provide extra credit for legislators who took the lead on one or more animal protection issues.

Already in the last few weeks since we notified offices about which bills would count on the scorecard, we’ve seen a dramatic jump in the co-sponsor counts for each of these key bills, and we need to keep the momentum going with your help. A bill to protect victims of domestic violence and their pets has 160 co-sponsors in the House and 17 in the Senate; a bill to prevent animal cruelty and torture on federal property and in interstate commerce has 174 co-sponsors in the House and 25 in the Senate; the bill to crack down on the cruel practice of horse soring has 217 co-sponsors in the House and 49 in the Senate; the horse slaughter bill has 173 co-sponsors in the House and 28 in the Senate; and the bill to phase out cosmetic testing on live animals has 125 co-sponsors in the House.

Building the number of co-sponsors on a bill is an important way to show that there is a critical mass of bipartisan support for the policy, warranting floor consideration, and to help push the legislation over the finish line. This is especially important as we enter the second half of a two-year session.

Please check the scorecard charts and call your two U.S. senators and your U.S. representative today. Thank each of them for their support of the bills that they’re already co-sponsoring and urge them to join on any of the animal protection bills being counted on the 2015 Humane Scorecard that they’re not yet co-sponsoring. This preview will be updated online periodically throughout the fall, and legislators will have until the end of the first term of the 114th Congress to receive credit on the final version of our Humane Scorecard that will be printed in January.

You can look up your federal legislators here, and then call the congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to be connected to each of your legislators. Here are the animal protection bills that will count on the scorecard and we hope will gather additional co-sponsors before year’s end:

The HSUS

Pets and Domestic Violence —S. 1559 and H.R. 1258, the Pet and Women Safety (PAWS) Act. Introduced by Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Reps. Katherine Clarke, D-Mass., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., this bill will make it harder for abusers to prey on their battered partners and their pets by allowing pets to be protected across state lines when restraining orders are issued in domestic violence and stalking cases; and authorizing grant money so that domestic violence shelters can accommodate pets (currently, only 3 percent of these shelters allow pets) or help arrange for pet shelter. This legislation will help an estimated one-third of domestic violence victims escape from an abusive partner—these are victims who delay their decision to leave a violent situation out of fear for their pets’ safety. Violence toward humans is closely related to animal cruelty; up to 84 percent of women entering domestic violence shelters reported that their partners abused or killed their family pet.

Animal Cruelty —S. 1831 and H.R. 2293, the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act. Introduced by Sens. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, Ted Deutch, D-Fla., Tom Marino, R-Pa., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., this bill will strengthen the federal animal crush video law enacted in 2010 (which banned the creation, sale, and distribution of obscene videos that show the intentional crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, or impaling of live animals) to prohibit those same extreme acts of animal cruelty when they occur in interstate or foreign commerce, regardless of whether a video is produced. All 50 states have felony penalties for malicious cruelty to animals. This legislation would complement the states’ anti-cruelty laws in the same way that the federal animal fighting statute complements state animal fighting laws, providing an additional tool to be employed when extreme animal cruelty occurs on federal property or otherwise in interstate commerce.

Jennifer Kunz/The HSUS

Horse Soring —S. 1121 and H.R. 3268, the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act. Introduced by Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Mark Warner, D-Va., and Reps. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., David Jolly, R-Fla., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., this bill will amend existing federal law to better crack down on the cruel practice of “soring,” in which unscrupulous trainers deliberately inflict pain on the hooves and legs of Tennessee walking horses with caustic chemicals, heavy chains, sharp objects, and other gruesome techniques to force them to perform an unnaturally high-stepping gait and gain unfair competitive advantage at horse shows. This legislation would amend the Horse Protection Act to end the failed system of industry self-policing, ban the use of devices associated with soring, strengthen penalties, and make illegal the actual soring of a horse.

Horse Slaughter —S. 1214 and H.R. 1942, the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act. Introduced by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Reps. Frank Guinta, R-N.H., Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., and Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., this bill would protect horses and consumers by prohibiting the transport and export of U.S. horses to slaughter for human consumption. American horses are not raised for food and are routinely given numerous drugs over their lifetimes that can be toxic to humans if ingested. Kill buyers round up horses from random sources, and these companion animals or working animals are shipped for long distances and are often seriously injured or killed in transit. At the slaughter plant, the methods used to kill horses rarely result in quick, painless deaths.

Alamy

Animal Testing for Cosmetics—H.R. 2858, the Humane Cosmetics Act. Introduced by Reps. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., Don Beyer, D-Va., Joe Heck, R-Nev., and Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif., this bill would phase out the testing of cosmetics on live animals and the sale of newly animal-tested cosmetics in the U.S. While most manufacturers no longer test finished products on animals, some animal tests are still conducted on rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, and mice for assessing ingredients. Animals have substances forced down their throats, dripped in their eyes, or smeared onto their skin, usually without pain relief. These tests are not predictive of the human experience so their results are unreliable for consumer safety. There are many alternative methods to ensure that products are safe for human use. More than 1.7 billion consumers live in countries that have banned cosmetics testing on animals and the sale of cosmetics tested on animals. H.R. 2858 will help the U.S. remain competitive in the global market and create a key incentive for cosmetics to be tested here with cutting-edge technologies that are more humane, faster to perform, and less costly to industry than animal testing.

Wildlife Refuges -- Not Always A Refuge for Wildlife

Every year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service celebrates our country’s wildlife refuges with National Wildlife Refuge Week. Since Teddy Roosevelt’s simple “I so declare it” established Florida’s Pelican Island as the first refuge in 1903, 150 million acres of land and water have been set aside to serve as protected habitat for thousands of species. Visitors to these areas reconnect with nature through a variety of activities, including wildlife watching, hiking, kayaking, and photography.

Cynthia Barstad/South Florida Wildlife Center
A raccoon being treated at the South Florida Wildlife Center
after getting her leg caught in a leghold trap.

Few of the 46.5 million annual visitors to the “nation’s premier habitat conservation network,” however, realize that another activity occurring on these public lands—one never intended or anticipated even by the sportsman Teddy Roosevelt—puts the wildlife they’re striving to protect, as well as themselves, their children, and their pets, at serious risk.

The use of cruel, body-gripping traps is allowed on the majority of national wildlife refuges across America. Since much of the killing is done so the trappers can sell the fur pelts, it’s a private commercialization of wildlife and type of market hunting that flies in the face of 21st century wildlife management. And it violates the spirit of the vision that Roosevelt laid out for our national wildlands, too.

The killing devices include steel-jawed leghold traps that clamp down on an animal’s limb, body-crushing Conibear traps often set under water to drown the animals, and wire snares that are designed to strangle the trapped animal’s neck. Many of the animals caught in these traps experience excruciating pain and may resort to chewing or twisting off their limbs in a desperate attempt to escape. Because trappers often don’t have to return for at least 24 hours, the victims are left suffering for hours before being put out of their misery. More than 80 countries and several states have banned leghold traps, but they remain the most commonly used traps in the U.S.

Trappers intentionally kill as many as six million animals every year for recreation and commerce in fur pelts. But this astonishing number doesn’t even include the countless non-target species that are caught. Body-gripping traps are notoriously indiscriminate, and each year there are new horrifying tales of accidental victims, including beloved family pets and endangered species that are injured, maimed, and killed in these devices.

The lucky ones who survive their initial injuries may just need to have a limb amputated, but there are far too many cases where a pet owner simply didn’t get there in time or wasn’t able to free their pet before it was too late. And we cannot forget the story of Cub, the heroic dog who was rescued after he was found hobbling down the road on the exposed bones of his back legs. Veterinarians believe Cub’s hind legs had been caught in a trap, and he had to chew his way out. Although Cub has recovered and been adopted into a loving home, countless other animals aren’t as lucky.

Body-gripping traps pose a serious threat to public safety, especially on public lands visited by millions of American families. Just a few months ago, a 12-year old boy’s hand was smashed inside a Conibear trap. After he was rushed to the emergency room, it took six people to get the trap off his hand. This case should be an outrage to us all. The use of such traps is an unacceptable risk to human safety and has no place on federal lands.

With traditional hunting, sportsmen often talk about eating the meat of the animal, being selective with their targets, and making the kill as quick and humane as possible. None of these things are achieved with traps, which are like landmines, killing and injuring any animal who triggers them, causing them to suffer for long periods of time, and all for the commercial fur trade, not for food.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., and U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey D-N.Y., are working to make our wildlife refuges safe from these body-gripping traps. They’ve introduced the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act, S. 1081 and H.R. 2016, which would prohibit the use of body-gripping traps on national wildlife refuges, sparing countless animals from the cruel torture of these archaic killing devices.

The very concept of a refuge invokes the idea of shelter and protection, but if body-gripping traps are still allowed on these public lands, people and animals will remain at serious risk. Please contact your members of Congress and urge them to support S.1081 and H.R. 2016 (you can find your members of Congress here).