As the year winds down to a close, I’m pleased to report that 159 new animal protection laws have been enacted this year at the state and local levels. That continues the surge in animal protection policymaking by state legislatures, and in total, it makes about 1,200 new policies in the states since 2005, across a broad range of subjects bearing upon the lives of pets, wildlife, animals in research and testing, and farm animals.
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.
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle are weighing in on the recent damning investigative report by the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General, about the Bureau of Land Management’s mismanagement of our nation’s iconic wild horses.
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.
It’s not just Europe where ground beef and meatballs could be tainted with horsemeat.
The U.S. Forest Service has sparked a national outrage with its new plan to remove all of the horses from one of the nation’s most iconic herds—the Salt River horses—from Tonto National Forest in Arizona.
Good news for horses: a bipartisan group of more than 100 members of Congress, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, joined together as original cosponsors of the Prevent All Soring Tactics (PAST) Act introduced last night in the U.S. House. Led by Reps. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., and Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., who are both veterinarians and co-chairs of the House Veterinary Medicine Caucus, along with the leadership team of Reps.
Yesterday was a mixed day of results for animals on Capitol Hill, with some setbacks and some progress on a number of different fronts for companion animals, wildlife, and farm animals.
What good news there was came in the Agriculture Appropriations Bill that passed the House Appropriations Committee.
Many animal protection issues and challenges are not resolved quickly—they involve long-term fights that take years. The slaughter of horses for human consumption is one such example.
We and our allies have been working to block horse slaughter plants from opening in the U.S.; to stop the long-distance transport of these companion animals in cramped cattle trucks, bound for a brutal slaughter in Canada and Mexico; and to close down export markets for horse meat in the E.U.
There’s a new Congress in town, but it includes many veteran members who are back at work on the Hill, too. We want you to know how those members performed on important animal protection issues in the last session, so you can either encourage them to keep up the good work, or let them know you want them to do better for animals this time around.
