Critical insights at the intersection of animals and politics
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Animal Wellness Action and the Animal Wellness Foundation sent a letter to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio requesting that he revisit and advance a new policy banning carriage horses in the nation’s largest metropolis. The call follows a horrific incident involving a twelve-year-old mare named Aisha on Saturday in … Read more
Wildlife in American Under Siege from Commercial Trappers and Their Allies in State Government Among all horrors inflicted upon our non-human friends by ordinary citizens, the use of steel-jawed leghold traps and other trapping arguably is one of the worst. In today’s episode of the Animal Wellness podcast, host Joseph Grove moderates a discussion with AWA … Read more
A deconstruction of the false accounting of animal exploitation industries Some historians have long repeated that the trigger for World War I — which, by the armistice, claimed 40 million military and civilian casualties and substantially reconfigured the world map — was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That single event set off a … Read more
Organ harvesting of bears and breeding of tigers for cub petting are matters federal lawmakers should handle without a second thought For charitable purposes only, I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a lawmaker or anyone else about some peculiar form of animal exploitation and they replied, “I had no idea … Read more
Updates on the Corona Virus and The Bear Protection Act The human death toll for the coronavirus has eclipsed 1,600, more than double the number of people who died as a consequence of the SARS virus in 2003. The common thread between these public-health emergencies was China’s wet markets, which have proved to be a … Read more
Federal Law Is Brazenly Defied, Even by Politicians Rightly Pleading for Federal Disaster Relief (Washington, D.C.) — Dozens of citizens of Puerto Rico are writing to Animal Wellness Action (AWA) to alert the organization to illegal cockfighting activities on the island, signaling their own opposition to the bloody spectacles and reminding the nation that cockfighters … Read more
Here we go again. China’s “wet markets” have triggered one more global health epidemic. Wet markets are open-air abattoirs, offering up dozens of species of live animals, including fish in tanks and wildlife in crates, for selection and slaughter by those with an appetite for biodiversity. These pop-up butcheries, with animals jammed in cages and … Read more
Press Release Washington D.C. — Today U.S. Representatives Charlie Crist (D-FL) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) introduced legislation in the U.S. House recognized as the “Petfax Act” to mandate honesty and transparency in the commercial sales of dogs and cats and crackdown on cruel “puppy mills” — large commercial dog breeding operations that breed high volumes of … Read more
Updates on the Corona Virus and The Bear Protection Act American horses and horseracing itself are in peril, and horses are dying on tracks every week as a result of the overuse of medication and doping that runs rampant in the sport. But that’s not all — many racehorses that can’t fit the bill or … Read more
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Animal Wellness Foundation (AWF) and Animal Wellness Action (AWA) today provided a preview of its 30-second television advertisement to air during Sunday’s Super Bowl on Guam. The ad features two Guamanians of Chamorro descent who describe cockfighting as “about gambling, not about our culture” and ending “the medieval practice of having animals … Read more