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The Biden administration released its final phase II rule updating regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), our country’s basic charter for the protection of the environment.

Date created: June 24, 2024
Last updated: June 28, 2024
“To us, roads signify connection and escape; to other life-forms, they spell death and division.” Ben Goldfarb’s Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet is an engaging study of “road ecology,” or how the invention of cars—and the paved roads that followed—have impacted life on Earth, including that of humans. 
Date created: December 15, 2023
Last updated: April 17, 2024

A highly successful series of workshops in March in Ohio has led to lasting connections that could improve interventions and lead to prevention in cases of animal abuse and family violence. 

Date created: July 1, 2019
Last updated: July 1, 2019

Vermont-based Bushway Packing Inc. has been suspended from slaughtering days-old male dairy calves for veal.

Date created: February 25, 2010
Last updated: January 9, 2020

President Obama signed the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act on December 9.

Date created: February 7, 2011
Last updated: April 24, 2024
Crush videos are recordings which typically depict women in stilettos or bare feet literally crushing, stomping on, or impaling small, helpless animals to satisfy the bizarre sexual fetishes of sadistic viewers. The Animal Welfare Institute is vehemently opposed to "crush videos" and has supported federal legislation intended to stop the trade in these films in the US.
Date created: September 26, 2011
Last updated: April 1, 2021

Some good news: The Senate unanimously passed legislation, introduced by Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Richard Burr (R-NC), to restore the ban on crush videos (see Summer 2010 AWI Quarterly, p. 5).

Date created: November 8, 2010
Last updated: April 24, 2024

On September 8, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced that Ashley Nicole Richards pleaded guilty to five counts of producing and distributing crush videos that depicted the torturing and killing of dogs and cats.

Date created: December 31, 2015
Last updated: April 17, 2024
Following substantial public outcry, Colorado State University (CSU) announced yesterday that it was withdrawing from a joint plan with the Bureau of Land Management to conduct surgical sterilization experiments on wild horses.
Date created: August 9, 2018
Last updated: February 7, 2022
Hugh Warwick, a British ecologist, has spent decades studying his favorite species, the hedgehog. In his fourth book, Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation, Warwick shifts his focus to examine the complex and controversial practice of culling invasive species to save native species in the United Kingdom.
Date created: September 4, 2024
Last updated: September 13, 2024

In June, two companies—Upside Foods and Good Meat—were issued groundbreaking grants of inspection by the US Department of Agriculture that cleared the way for “cell-cultivated” (a.k.a.

Date created: August 30, 2023
Last updated: September 6, 2023

The long-awaited amendment to Mexico’s wildlife law to protect its wild bird populations from exploitation was approved by Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa on October 13. 

Date created: January 16, 2020
Last updated: May 27, 2021

Federal legislation known as the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act has been reintroduced in Congress.

Date created: August 19, 2021
Last updated: August 30, 2021

Moving animals in research around within an institution is a very common practice. Animals are moved from their housing rooms to laboratories or other locations, such as imaging or surgical facilities. Transportation is inherently stressful to these animals and can expose the public to allergens and diseases.

Date created: May 29, 2014
Last updated: January 9, 2020

In a landmark new study, scientists have shown that cuttlefish are capable of delaying gratification, and that those who choose to delay longer are also more intelligent (Schnell et al., 2021).

Date created: March 25, 2021
Last updated: April 17, 2024

Longtime AWI board member Cynthia Wilson died in August at the age of 83. Cynthia served on AWI’s board for over 50 years, chairing the board for the final 20 of those years following the passing of AWI’s founder, Christine Stevens, in 2002.

Date created: December 15, 2023
Last updated: April 17, 2024

According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 2021 the average number of US dairy cows involved in milk production at any given time was 9.45 million.

Date created: December 16, 2022
Last updated: December 20, 2022

On September 9, 2013, Dallas World Aquarium (DWA) representatives traveled to Panama to collect several pygmy three-toed sloths—the world’s smallest sloth—to bring back to Texas. 

Date created: December 10, 2013
Last updated: January 15, 2020

Although wolves may not have drastic economic repercussions on the livestock industry as a whole, they can substantially affect individual ranchers when depredations become chronic.

Date created: August 11, 2009
Last updated: January 16, 2020

On October 8, US Department of Agriculture administrative law judge Jill Clifton permanently revoked the dealer license of Daniel Moulton, who for decades had been a primary supplier of chinchillas for experimentation (

Date created: January 3, 2022
Last updated: January 3, 2022

Danube sturgeons - whose roe is prized as a source of caviar - have become so critically endangered that caviar exports from natural fish populations (as opposed to farmed fish) from all Lower Danube countries have been banned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Date created: October 3, 2011
Last updated: January 8, 2020

In a letter sent today to Nation’s Restaurant News, a coalition of 15 environmental, animal welfare and worker justice organizations with over 10 million supporters expressed dismay over the publication’s decision to honor Gene Lee, CEO of Darden Restaurants, as one of the recipients of its Golden Chain Award.

Date created: October 19, 2016
Last updated: February 2, 2022

Carole Morison was not born into farming. She married into it, joining her husband Frank on his third-generation farm in Pocomoke City, Maryland.

Date created: September 7, 2010
Last updated: January 8, 2020
David Kirby, an award-winning investigative journalist, died on April 16 at the age of 62, after a series of health setbacks that began in late January after a fall. David had been active in the AIDS community in the 1990s, working closely with actress Elizabeth Taylor as the press secretary for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which Taylor co-founded. In subsequent years, he authored four nonfiction books—Evidence of Harm, Animal Factory, When They Come for You, and Death at SeaWorld—as well as a comedic novel, Upper East Bride. In Death at SeaWorld (2012), David focused on the dark side of life in captivity for orcas at SeaWorld and prominently featured the work of AWI marine mammal scientist Dr. Naomi A. Rose.
Date created: June 20, 2023
Last updated: April 17, 2024

The council of the District of Columbia, on November 9, 2010, unanimously passed the Wildlife Protection Act (B18- 498), which imposes humane treatment standards upon nuisance animal control operators who work to remove wildlife from residential and commercial settings within city limits.

Date created: February 7, 2011
Last updated: April 24, 2024