Wisdom, a Laysan albatross and the oldest wild bird known to science, has just become a mom again. In February, Wisdom and her mate, Gooo (so named because he was banded with the identification number 6,000), hatched what could be Wisdom’s 40th chick at their nest within the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.
Date created: April 1, 2016
Last updated: January 15, 2020
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the Animal Defense League of Arizona (ADLA) this week launched a digital campaign aimed at discouraging the public from buying tickets to attractions that exploit captive dolphins. Through the campaign, the organizations are specifically targeting potential customers of Dolphinaris, an entertainment facility that opened last year near Scottsdale, Arizona,and offers swim-with-dolphin activities.
Date created: August 21, 2017
Last updated: May 2, 2022
Seventy-seven percent of Americans are opposed to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) proposed surgical sterilization experiments on wild horses, according to a newly released survey.
Date created: October 15, 2019
Last updated: January 18, 2024
Since the Biden administration took the reins in January, animal welfare and organic farming advocates have resumed their push to reinstate the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP) rule under the US Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. In April, 40 former members of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)—the federal advisory board established to provide recommendations to the USDA regarding organic production—sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack expressing concern about the integrity of the National Organic Standards and urging the department to move forward with a number of NOSB recommendations that have been proposed but not implemented, including the OLPP rule.
Date created: June 9, 2021
Last updated: June 23, 2021
The Taiwanese government must act quickly to ban gill and trammel nets and stop development from further degrading the habitat of the critically endangered Taiwanese white dolphin, according to a new recovery plan drafted by an international team of marine mammal and policy experts.
Date created: November 15, 2019
Last updated: January 18, 2024
Whether they are thoroughbreds running full tilt around an outdoor track or walking horses stepping gracefully across an arena, horses bred for competition undergo extensive training and conditioning.
Date created: August 30, 2023
Last updated: April 17, 2024
Today, in the wake of the latest Faroe Islands drive hunt on Friday that killed 42 more pilot whales, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and six other leading animal welfare and marine conservation organizations released a new report presenting evidence to challenge claims that the annual drive hunts are humane, sustainable, and integral to local culture.
Date created: September 25, 2023
Last updated: September 6, 2024
Norway is now the world’s leading whaling nation, killing more whales in the past two years than Japan and Iceland combined. A new report released today calls on the international community to respond to Norway’s systematic efforts to weaken management rules and improve market conditions for its whalers.
Date created: June 13, 2016
Last updated: February 2, 2022
A February 2021 report commissioned by the UK government provides a sobering economic analysis to explain why we must change the way we interact with nature if we wish to avert disaster.
Date created: March 24, 2021
Last updated: March 24, 2021
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) released today a new report, “Humane Slaughter Update: Federal and State Oversight of the Welfare of Farm Animals at Slaughter.” Key findings of the report—which examines Humane Methods of Slaughter Act enforcement by federal and state departments of agriculture—include the following:
Date created: April 6, 2017
Last updated: February 7, 2022
Slayed in Iceland: The commercial hunting and international trade in endangered fin whales is the result of a joint investigation into Iceland’s fin whaling industry by AWI, the Environmental Investigation Agency, and WDC-Whale and Dolphin Conservation. The report provides an in-depth look at the hunt for the majestic fin whale, the second largest animal on earth.
Date created: December 11, 2014
Last updated: January 8, 2020
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) today released a new report describing the poultry industry’s level of compliance with humane handling regulations and guidelines. The report covers activities related to the treatment of chickens and turkeys at the approximately 300 federally inspected poultry slaughter establishments in the United States for the period 2015-2016.
Date created: November 15, 2017
Last updated: February 7, 2022
Our children are less likely to see monarch butterflies, bumble bees, and a host of other once-common wildlife species due to farm pesticides, declining ocean health, climate change, and dirty energy production, according to a new report by the Endangered Species Coalition. The report, Vanishing: Ten American Species Our Children May Never See, highlights ten disappearing species and the causes of their dramatic population declines.
Date created: September 23, 2014
Last updated: February 2, 2022
A new report, released to the public today, reveals the enormous ecological benefits that whales and other cetaceans provide to the environment. The report is the product of a workshop, conducted during the July 2017 International Congress for Conservation Biology, in Cartagena, Colombia, entitled “The Role of Cetaceans in Ecosystem Functioning: Defining Conservation Policies in the 21st Century.”
Date created: December 19, 2017
Last updated: February 7, 2022
In recognition of October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has released new research that identifies a lack of sheltering services around the country—including in some of the most populated counties—for pets of domestic violence survivors.
Date created: October 3, 2022
Last updated: October 3, 2022
The US Department of Agriculture continues to allow birds to be mutilated by machinery, slammed against walls, and buried alive in slaughterhouses without holding the industry accountable, according to a new report released today by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).
Date created: December 6, 2023
Last updated: September 6, 2024
Steel-jaw leghold traps, widely criticized for being indiscriminate and inhumane, are presently prohibited or significantly restricted in the majority of countries around the world. According to research released today by the Library of Congress, more than 100 countries prohibit or impose stringent limits on the use of these and other body-gripping traps.
Date created: September 1, 2016
Last updated: May 2, 2022
The US Department of Agriculture’s inadequate, haphazard oversight of the treatment of chickens and turkeys at slaughter has led to the widespread mistreatment and suffering of birds at some of the nation’s largest plants, with no real consequences for the producers, according to new research released today by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).
Date created: November 20, 2020
Last updated: February 2, 2022
The US Department of Agriculture consistently fails to review and respond to animal welfare violations at custom-exempt slaughter facilities, resulting in animals being beaten, held in deplorable conditions, and deprived of food and water for extended periods, according to a petition delivered to the USDA today on behalf of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI).
Date created: January 19, 2023
Last updated: January 19, 2023
One out of every five intentional animal cruelty incidents reported to police involves another criminal offense, according to a new study by researchers from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and American University’s School of Public Affairs.
Date created: June 22, 2022
Last updated: August 25, 2022
In response to disease outbreaks and supply chain disruptions, US producers are killing an increasing number of farm animals by inducing heat stroke—“an urgent ethical problem for the US veterinary community,” according to a newly published paper in the journal Animals.
Date created: January 5, 2023
Last updated: January 5, 2023
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) released a new report today that documents how state-level farmed animal welfare laws continue to be minimally enforced, even though such laws could substantially improve the lives of many of the 9 billion farmed animals raised and killed in this country each year.
Date created: July 2, 2024
Last updated: July 2, 2024
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) announced today its new publication entitled “Representing Domestic Violence Survivors with Pets in the District of Columbia, Maryland & Virginia: A Manual for Domestic Violence Attorneys & Advocates Helping Survivors Obtain Protection Orders.” Compiled by Washington-based law firm Hogan Lovells, the manual is designed to enable attorneys and advocates in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area to better assist pet-owning domestic violence survivors.
Date created: November 19, 2014
Last updated: February 2, 2022
Following the recent deaths of 21 pregnant cows on a barge traveling from Oahu to Kauai, the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) formally committed last week to adopting regulations to better protect farm animals on sea vessels traveling to, from, and between the Hawaiian Islands.
Date created: February 18, 2020
Last updated: January 18, 2024
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) is expressing vehement opposition to draft legislation, released yesterday by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), entitled the Endangered Species Act Amendments of 2018. According to AWI, this bill would impose damaging and unnecessary revisions to the remarkably successful and popular Endangered Species Act (ESA), and thus undermine the government’s ability to protect imperiled species.
Date created: July 3, 2018
Last updated: February 7, 2022