Tell your U.S. Senators to ban the inhumane, dangerous practice of fur farming of mink!
center-humane-economy
Target: United States Senate
We know that keeping mink in small cages and killing them for their fur is inhumane and unnecessary. Just about all of the major retailers in the U.S. and Europe stopped selling fur.
There is one more very good reason to shut down U.S.-based mink farms. Among non-human animals, mink are uniquely susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the only ones who contract the disease from people and spill it back to them. In Europe and the U.S., there have been 450 mink farms with outbreaks of this virus, spawning three variants.
USDA reported 1.4 million mink pelts sold in 2020, with a value of $47 million. It is entirely an export market, with nearly all pelts sold to high-end consumers in China. China’s elites get the coats and, in practical terms, they outsource the viral risk to our homeland. We continue to house them on factory farms to generate a luxury product that few people want or need and that generates negligible income for a few dozen farmers. This is why the House of Representatives has voted to ban the practice and why the Senate must follow suit.
Add your name to tell your U.S. Senators to join the U.S. House and adopt a ban on the inhumane, virally dangerous trade in mink kept on factory farms in more than half a dozen states!
Mink are wild, solitary, territorial, and aggressive carnivores. Housing them in groups in small cages produces terrible stress to the animals and even cannibalism. Putting animals through this to sell mink pelts to Chinese elites who do not need these coats is disgraceful!
Sign your name to call on the Senate to follow the House’s lead and ban mink farming throughout the United States!
Urge Congress to end abusive, ineffective animal testing!
center-humane-economy
Target: United States Congress
It is absurd and irresponsible that in the 21st century we still force pharmaceutical companies to conduct extensive testing on animals for drug development — even when there are non-animal testing methods and when we know the animal tests are simply not predictive of the human response to drugs!
Animals and human bodies are obviously very different, which means animal testing data are not reliable in gauging the safety of drugs. Drugs found to be safe in nonclinical animal tests fail during human clinical trials at a shocking rate — but the law and FDA still requires these tests for product submission.
It’s long past time for the FDA to update its decades-old regulations. We’ll help people and save animals in the process.
Add your name to urge Congress to immediately pass legislation to end abusive and ineffective animal testing!
The FDA Modernization Act of 2021 would update the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA) of 1938 to allow the FDA to authorize the use of 21st-century science to determine the safety and efficacy of new drugs.
If enacted, it will lower drug costs, speed delivery of drugs to patients, reduce the number of animals used in science, and increase the safety and effectiveness of drugs and vaccines.
The FDA must update its regulations regarding new drugs, shed animal testing wherever possible, and substitute state-of-the-art, human-relevant nonclinical test methods. It’s just good science and common sense!
Add your name to call on Congress to pass the FDA Modernization Act of 2021 and bring drug testing rules into the 21st century!
Take a stand for animal protection and oppose Oklahoma’s pro-cockfighting bill!
center-humane-economy
With the obvious cruelty associated with cockfighting, it’s hard to believe that Oklahoma Rep. Justin Humphrey would want to turn back the clock and essentially legalize cockfighting in the Sooner State.
But that’s exactly what he’s doing. His bill, House Bill 3283, reduces penalties to make cockfighting violations a cost of doing business. And he legalizes a range of activities associated with cockfighting, such as raising and training cockfighting roosters – which are now felony offenses under Oklahoma law.
Let’s be clear: illegal trafficking of fighting animals is like the drug trade. It is illegal and it is a big, underground business. Oklahoma is the cockfighting capital of the United States, according to the Center for a Humane Economy. Tens of thousands of fighting animals are exported from Oklahoma to fighting rings across the world while the gruesome practice fuels a thriving criminal underworld.
While Humphrey argues that it’s “just like raising beef or pork,” it’s obvious that this bill is nothing but a get-out-of-jail-free card for the organized criminals who run cockfighting rings in his district.
Add your name to oppose Justin Humphrey’s pro-cockfighting bill!
House bill 3283 must be defeated. Cockfighting is a barbaric practice, where organizers and handlers attach knives or curved ice picks to the birds’ legs, and then gamble on the knife fight that unfolds.
Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has condemned the bill, saying “this pro-cockfighting bill is an affront to every law-abiding Oklahoman and an embarrassment to our state. Cockfighting is a barbaric practice criminalized on every inch of soil by state and federal laws. The criminals who stage and promote knife fights between animals deserve handcuffs and jail time, not defensive maneuvers by lawmakers.”
Oklahoma voters outlawed cockfighting by a ballot measure in 2002. Now, two decades later, Rep. Humphrey wants to turn back the clock and allow spectacles of cruelty to thrive in Oklahoma. Let’s not let him succeed.
Sign your name to stand for decency and animal protection and oppose Oklahoma’s pro-cockfighting bill!