Vote for Congressman Seth Moulton in U.S. Senate Primary on September 1

Animal Wellness Action endorses Seth Moulton in the Massachusetts Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. The final day of voting is Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Rep. Moulton has amassed a nearly perfect record on animal protection issues in six terms representing the North Shore of Massachusetts. The Marine Corps combat veteran identified animal welfare on his campaign website as a priority issue. I urge you to examine his detailed summary here.

As a New Englander and a former resident of Massachusetts, I have a special connection to the Commonwealth. I led the winning statewide ballot measure Question 3 in 2016 to ban extreme confinement of farm animals and to restrict in-state sales of pork, eggs, and veal that come from factory farms using battery cages and gestation crates.

Two decades before that, I led Question 1, a ballot measure to ban steel-jawed leghold traps and other body-gripping traps, to ban hounding and baiting of bears, and to eliminate a requirement that you had to be a long-standing trapper or hunter to serve on the state’s Fisheries and Wildlife board.

And I also helped my friends from the Massachusetts-based GREY2K USA to pass a ballot measure in 2008 to ban greyhound racing in the Commonwealth.

While we’ve made incredible progress in the Bay State, the policy areas addressed by the above-mentioned ballot measures are not settled issues nationally. China’s Smithfield Foods and the National Pork Producers Council are committed to overturning Question 3 (and the similarly constructed Prop 12 in California). The NRA and other trophy hunting and trapping extremists are working with their allies in Congress and the Administration to open commercial trapping on our national wildlife refuges. And on the positive side, I am working with GREY2K USA Worldwide in Congress to extend the Commonwealth’s ban on greyhound racing to make it apply nationwide.

We need fighters on animal protection issues — lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who care deeply about animal welfare and who are skillful legislators. Seth Moulton will be a leader on animal welfare for years to come if you help elect him to the U.S. Senate.

To be sure, incumbent Sen. Ed Markey, a dedicated and committed public servant, has also been a consistent friend to animals for almost 50 years in Congress. To his great credit, he co-led a letter to leaders in the Senate urging Agriculture Committee leaders to oppose efforts to overturn Question 3. He’s also introduced an important bill to help beleaguered sea turtles that passed the Senate in March.

But he disappointed Animal Wellness Action last year by voting to allow a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to proceed that would spend $1.35 billion of your tax dollars to kill 450,000 North American barred owls. This plan is a thinly veiled scheme to allow the timber industry, in cooperation with our federal land management agencies, to cut down old-growth forests and also kill threatened Northern spotted owls. We needed Sen. Markey in this tough fight — the only roll call vote on animal protection in the Senate so far in the 2025-2026 congressional term. He backed President Trump’s Interior Department that was pushing for this unprecedented plan to kill American owls and take aim at our old-growth forests and the threatened spotted owls that inhabit them.

Rep. Seth Moulton has personally pledged to me that he’ll fight the barred owl kill plan.

Moulton is on record as supporting a broad set of other reforms:

Anti-cruelty measures. Cosponsoring the Fighting Inhumane Gambling and High-Risk Trafficking (FIGHT) Act, H.R. 3946, to strengthen federal enforcement against animal fighting and related criminal activity; the No Flight, No Fight Act, H.R. 7371, to stop the smuggling of fighting birds on commercial airlines; and the Animal Cruelty Enforcement (ACE) Act, H.R. 1477, to establish a dedicated unit at the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute animal cruelty crimes.

Protecting horses. Cosponsoring the SAFE Act, H.R. 1661, to end the slaughter of American horses for human consumption and their export to foreign slaughter plants; and the PAST Act to crack down on the soring of Tennessee Walking Horses.

Protecting dogs. Cosponsoring the Puppy Protection Act and Goldie’s Act to strengthen protections for dogs in commercial breeding operations; the Better CARE for Animals Act to improve federal enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act; and Violet’s Law to give animals used in federally funded research an opportunity for adoption or sanctuary placement. He also voted to block efforts to weaken the Greyhound Protection Act.

Saving wildlife. Cosponsoring the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons (SAW) Act to prohibit the intentional use of motor vehicles to run down wolves and other mammals on federal lands; backing the MINKS Are Superspreaders Act to halt mink farming; and fighting an attempt to remove critical federal protections for gray wolves.

Like Sen. Markey, Moulton has opposed efforts to overturn Question 3 and Prop 12. In the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, when the Build America 250 Act came up in 2026, Moulton favored the Van Drew-Titus amendment to combat the transport of horses for slaughter for human consumption.

You can read more of Animal Wellness Action’s detailed analyses of the two lawmakers’ work on animal protection: Moulton’s can be found here, and Markey’s can be found here. Massachusetts voters are lucky to have two pro-animal lawmakers vying for the U.S. Senate seat. But based on their extensive records and the level of engagement the two lawmakers exert on animal issues, Moulton is our enthusiastic choice for the Senate.

Note: Residents who are unenrolled can choose to participate in the Democratic primary.