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U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has reintroduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (“PAMTA,” or H.R. 1150) into the House of Representatives. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) intends to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

From 1995–1996, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) conducted a negotiated rulemaking, bringing together stakeholders of varying viewpoints in an attempt to hammer out consensus language to update the regulations governing the care and maintenance of captive marine mammals.

In December 2014, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued an audit that was highly critical of the department’s enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (as described in the Winter 2015 AWI Quarterly). Just a month later, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced its Strategic Plan 2015–2019, which read as if the audit had never occurred.

In 2011, after several reports of animals shipped from the United States dying during arduous journeys overseas, AWI petitioned the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to improve its live animal export regulations.

AWI launched its scholarship program in December 2019. To date, we have provided 50 scholarships totaling $114,000.

AWI congratulates the most recent Refinement Grant recipients:

Through October 11, 2024, AWI is accepting applications for the long-standing Refinement Research Award and the newer Implementing Refinement Grant.

For the first time in six years, Congress has opened the doors to restarting horse slaughter in the U.S. The bill to fund the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the rest of FY 2012 was stripped of language prohibiting USDA inspections of plants that slaughter horses for human consumption.

In September, the House passed HR 3354, an omnibus appropriations bill that would harm animals in a variety of ways.

In September, the House passed HR 3354, an omnibus (bundled) spending bill that included four amendments to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

Responding to the National Academy of Sciences report on Class B dealers (see AWI Quarterly Summer 2009), both the House and Senate reports accompanying the bills funding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for fiscal year 2010 express a desire to end the use of Class B dealers as a source of animals for research funded by the NIH.

AWI and a number of allies and partners have been working to minimize the harm to five beluga whales scheduled for import to Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut from Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for research purposes.

In October 2019, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) indicated it had received a permit application from Mystic Aquarium to import five captive-born beluga whales from MarineLand in Canada, for the purposes of scientific research.

A decades-long Agricultural Research Service (ARS) project has intentionally killed untold hundreds of kittens.

The following out-of-print publications are presented here for historical purposes. These items are not sold through our online store but may be available on request while supplies last.

With the recent passage of its felony animal cruelty law, Arkansas has shed its dubious distinction as one of only five states - including Idaho, Mississippi, and the Dakotas - still treating heinous acts of animal abuse as mere misdemeanors.