Animal Welfare And Public Policy Trends And Implications

This presentation is made from the perspective of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, providing an overview of the farmed animal industry and the strategies, role, and progress of animal advocates in advocating legislative reform for farmed animal welfare.

There are currently ballot initiatives across the country that address farmed animal welfare (a map of ballot initiative states is included in the report). At the state and local level, the tactics of activists include:

• Pressure state legislatures with influence of ballot initiative wins.
• Letter/email/phone campaigns – influence based on HSUS’ number of members (1 in 20-30 in US).
• Pressure agricultural groups to support legislative compromise to avoid future ballot initiative campaign
• Ballot initiative campaigns in more states

The goals of activists at the state and local level are to:

• Ban modern production practices
• Ban sales and consumption of food products
• Ban new farms or expansion of existing farms
• Expand efforts to change animal “owners” to animal “guardians”
• Ban use of antibiotics in farm animals for disease prevention
• Increase penalties for animal cruelty violations
• Add farm animals under state animal cruelty statutes

At the national level, activist tactics include:

• Meetings with Congressional members and administration
• Congressional letter/email/phone campaigns
• Congressional Animal Protection Caucus
• Contribute to candidates’ campaigns

With the following national goals:

• Amending Federal Animal Welfare Act to include farm animals
• Ban antibiotics in farm animals
• HR 503 – Criminalizing the transportation and selling of horses intended for slaughter
• Farm Animal Anti-Cruelty Act
• Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act
• Transportation Regulations for Farm Animals
• Repeal of Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)