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In February, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) proposed two rules to allow most poultry and pig slaughter plants to increase line speeds (the rate at which animals are slaughtered, eviscerated, and processed). One rule would allow chicken processing plants to boost line speeds from 140 to 175 birds per
Another devastating year for barn fires is in the books: More than 573,000 animals are known to have died in fires during 2025. What isn’t in the books: state-established fire safety standards that might have spared many of these animals from such a horrible fate. As in previous years, the overwhelming majority (99%) of the
In late February, The Harris Poll, on behalf of AWI, conducted a national online survey of consumer attitudes regarding the treatment of dairy cows. The survey asked over 2,000 Americans to rate the acceptability of specific dairy production practices and indicate the extent to which a producer’s engagement in such practices might affect their own
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has released an updated edition of its Guidelines for the Depopulation of Animals, which the federal and some state governments use to set policy related to the mass killing of flocks or herds of farmed animals for disease control or other reasons. When a draft of the Guidelines was released for comment,
In March, the House Committee on Agriculture finalized its version of the long-overdue farm bill—HR 7567, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026—and it is a mixed bag for animal welfare. On the plus side, it reauthorizes until 2031 the Protecting Animals with Shelter grant program, which helps service providers expand their capacity
In September, Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) reintroduced the Humane Transport of Farmed Animals Act (HR 5286)—bipartisan legislation to improve transport conditions for farmed animals in the United States. The bill would establish fitness for travel standards—mirroring those already in place for livestock exported abroad—to prevent animals who are sick, injured, disabled, or are otherwise in
AWI recently released new and improved versions of A Consumer’s Guide to Food Labels and Animal Welfare to help compassionate consumers purchase more humane food options. This guide includes definitions, and the animal welfare implications, of some of the most common labels applied to dairy, egg, meat, and poultry products. For those who wish to have something
This fall, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Technical Committee on Animal Housing held a “First Draft Meeting” to launch the next revision cycle for NFPA 150, Fire and Life Safety in Animal Housing Facilities Code—a model code that provides fire protection standards for a wide range of animal housing facilities, including commercial animal agriculture buildings.
In October, AWI assisted with a fly-in that brought over 200 farmers to Capitol Hill to meet with congressional offices in support of California’s Proposition 12, which sets minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, breeding pigs, and veal calves while also prohibiting the in-state sale of eggs, pork, and veal that do not meet those
In a major victory for farmed animal welfare, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held in early October that Massachusetts’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (aka “Question 3”) is constitutional and not preempted by federal law. The state law—enacted by ballot initiative in 2016 with the support of nearly 78 percent
As reported in the fall 2024 AWI Quarterly, AWI submitted comments to the Animal Welfare Committee of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) regarding its policy on pregnant sow housing. Dr. Gwendy Reyes-Illg, veterinary medicine consultant for AWI’s Farmed Animal Program, provided an extremely detailed, comprehensively researched rationale for why pregnant sows should be socially housed in appropriately designed
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of California in July, alleging that a combination of its “voter initiatives, legislative enactments, and regulations” have contributed to higher egg prices. In particular, the legal challenge singles out California’s Proposition 12 (passed by nearly 63 percent of the state’s voters in 2018), which prohibits
In May, Hickman’s Family Farms—a major US egg company—announced the loss of a staggering 95 percent of its chicken flock after highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu) swept through several of its farms in Arizona. To prevent further disease spread, approximately 6 million birds were reportedly killed, the majority of whom were being raised within
Every year, hundreds of millions of farmed animals are shipped across the United States to breeding, feeding, and slaughter facilities—transport that represents one of the most stressful experiences in a farmed animal’s life. AWI research, chronicled in the newly published second edition of our report Farmed Animals in Transport: The Twenty-Eight Hour Law, indicates that a
A pair of bipartisan bills currently before Congress would protect octopuses, finfish, and marine ecosystems from the animal welfare and environmental ills of marine factory farms in the United States. In April, Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) reintroduced the Keep Finfish Free Act to prohibit federal agencies from issuing permits for commercial
AWI has commissioned several surveys over the past 15 years regarding consumer attitudes about animal-raising claims on meat and poultry packaging. In most, including the most recent survey conducted earlier this year, the overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that food producers should not be allowed to use the claim “humanely raised” on meat or poultry product labels
In encouraging news, both Senate and House fiscal year 2026 Agriculture Appropriations bills winding their way through Congress contain provisions that continue to bar horse slaughter operations in the United States. The House and Senate Interior Appropriations bills also maintain long-standing protections against the slaughter and lethal control of wild horses—provisions absent from the administration’s
In Gail Eisnitz’s memoir, Out of Sight: An Undercover Investigator’s Fight for Animal Rights and Her Own Survival, she recounts a 40-year career working to understand and expose the gruesome truth about the unconscionable ways millions of cattle, pigs, chickens, and other farmed species are raised and killed in factory farms and slaughter plants across the
Scientists and philosophers call it the “meat paradox”—a type of cognitive dissonance that can occur among people who want to eat meat but not kill animals. The unfortunate reality, however, is that every meat and poultry product on grocery store shelves comes from a sentient individual who was slaughtered for food—nearly 10 billion of them
States have repeatedly passed laws that seek to criminalize undercover investigations of abuse and other animal welfare issues on factory farms. Although these “ag-gag” laws have been repeatedly struck down in court on First Amendment grounds, states continue to enact them—tweaking the content each time in hopes of circumventing constitutional clashes. This year, South Dakota