Animal cruelty involves gratuitously inflicting harm, injuring, or killing an animal. The cruelty can be intentional, such as kicking, burning, stabbing, beating, or shooting; or it can involve neglect, such as depriving an animal of water, shelter, food, and necessary medical treatment. Animal fighting, in which animals are trained or forced to attack each other in violent confrontations at the risk of grave injury or death, is another form of animal cruelty.
Friday Night Fighters is not for the faint of heart. Readers of mysteries know going in there will be a murder or two, but they may find the abuse of animals more disturbing. There is a good bit of both in Friday Night Fighters, but all in the service of shining a spotlight on the dog fighting underworld.
Every country has its own unique perspective on the relationship between humans and animals. It is all too easy to dismiss the practices of others as illogical or abhorrent. For the typical Westerner, eating dogs certainly qualifies as one of those practices we find strange and unsettling.
Live chickens and other birds have been sold at the Heart of the City Farmers' Market at the United Nations Plaza in San Francisco for the past two decades.
Fight or flight. They’re basic animal responses once considered purely instinctual—or perhaps strictly a natural learning process—but they may actually be a combination of the two.
In September 2021, a damning inspection report prepared by the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was released for Miami Seaquarium.
Raising pigs according to the industrial farming model is a study in homogeny. In industry parlance, “quality control” means having all the same pigs fed all the same food while housed in uniformly dark, cramped facilities with concrete-slatted floors. Maximum efficiency with minimal attention to animal welfare.
Ann Hastings, director of violence prevention at 360 Communities, a community service organization in Minnesota, knew that something was missing from her department—a therapy dog.
AWI offers a number of funding opportunities to assist efforts to improve animal welfare. Use the links below for more information or to apply, and thank you for your interest in making life better for animals.
After almost two years and tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, the Government Accountability Office (GAO ) has released its report, HORSE WELFARE: Action Needed to Address Unintended Consequences from Cessation of Domestic Slaughter with two contradictory recommendations: restore horse slaughter or ban horse slaughter outright.
The Food and Drug Administration recently cleared the way for genetically engineered (GE) salmon to come to market in the United States.
For the upcoming fiscal year, beginning October 1, AWI provided members of Congress with a list of priorities covering the welfare of companion animals, farmed animals, marine mammals, and other wildlife.
On June 22, 2016, Georgia Aquarium announced it would no longer seek to acquire dolphins or beluga whales from the wild for its exhibits. While an important step forward, the announcement came only after the aquarium had lost a two-year court battle to acquire a permit to import 18 wild-caught belugas from Russia.
Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) reintroduced legislation to end the use of brutal traps on furbearing animals within the National Wildlife Refuge System.
In September 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a new study on a dangerous phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.” Ghost fishing occurs when derelict fishing gear, including lost or abandoned nets and traps, continue to ensnare marine life.
For animals in the wild, days and nights are not delineated via a flick of the switch on the wall. Rather, dawn brings on a gradual waxing of the light, and night falls in an extended, dusky fade to black. Conversely, in laboratory settings (unless the animals are housed in rooms exposed to natural light), day often begins with a jolt of intense light accompanied by the unannounced appearance of humans, and ends with abrupt darkness and sudden solitude.
There are many ways to support AWI’s work to protect animals. We are grateful for cash and non-cash donations alike.
With the fate of thousands of America’s wild horses and burros at risk, there was palpable optimism when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that it would be issuing a report on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and