Access to care and direct care
Amanda Arrington, The HSUS:
A shortage of veterinary professionals in the U.S. is creating barriers for many families, especially in rural and underserved communities, making it difficult for them to access medical care for their companion animals. This year, our Rural Area Veterinary Services team granted 60 scholarships for veterinary students and vet tech students to attend RAVS field clinics to learn community medicine and help expand access to care.
We hit the $100 million mark in pet food and supplies provided by the HSUS to our partners around the country through various corporate partnerships, the largest being Chewy.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
We want to make access to care policy mainstream! Access to care is the opportunity and ability for all people caring for companion animals to identify animal care needs, obtain necessary resources to preserve and improve animal health and welfare, and keep people and pets together. This includes policy on pet-inclusive housing, veterinary telemedicine, expanding the use of veterinary technicians and more.
Adam Parascandola, HSI:
We responded to wildfires in Chile in February, assisting local shelter and vet clincic volunteers and distributing much-needed pet supplies to the communities. We helped thousands of animals and the families who love them.
In 2024, we witnessed the largest fine ever issued for Animal Welfare Act violations. It resulted from a 2022 federal investigation into a breeding facility where we helped remove more than 4,000 beagles (for more information, see p. 19).
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
Weather-related disasters have increased in recent years. We’ll continue to build out our disaster response teams around the globe so that we’re ready and able to assist animals and their communities as quickly as possible wherever disasters—weather-related and otherwise—strike.
Wildlife
Jennifer Hillman, The HSUS:
We brought in more than 100 Wild Neighbors pledges—commitments to use the most effective and humane methods for responding to wildlife conflicts—from animal control and law enforcement agencies around the country.
Massachusetts and Maryland banned certain wild animals—after years of work from our team—in traveling acts and circuses! In the U.S., there are now 11 states that have banned cruel traveling wild animal shows.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
Marc Jacobs and Max Mara announced fur-free policies in 2024, adding to the hundreds of brands and retailers that have already made the commitment. Our campaign has been so successful that few major companies still sell apparel made with animal fur. As the number of companies selling fur continues to dwindle, we’ll concentrate on the few holdouts and ensure they won’t have any markets to sell their products to by enacting fur sales bans across the U.S.
It’s still legal in 40 states to gun down foxes, coyotes and other species for cash and prizes in wildlife killing contests. We’ll aim to ban these grisly competitions in Illinois, New Jersey and Nevada.
Alexandra Kennaugh, HSI:
Our efforts helped Belgium ban the import of hunting trophies and the U.S. restrict the import of live African elephants and trophies.
In India—which accounts for nearly 50% of snakebite deaths across the globe—there are high numbers of snakes killed, but we made some major headway in combatting that this year. HSI/India helped government officials in Karnataka create a protocol for caring for snakebite victims. We also launched a WhatsApp chatbox in the region that provides information about local species, snakebite prevention tips and more.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
We’ll be relaunching our campaign encouraging ethical wildlife tourism. We’ll focus on corporate partnerships, country-specific initiatives and public engagement encouraging travelers to avoid harmful animal attractions and souvenirs made with wild animal parts.
We’re excited to engage with an emerging issue on the international stage: animal culture. Thise is important for behavior, survival, reproduction and biodiversity—for example, whales use unique vocal dialects to communicate with each other, and birds fly across socially learned migratory routes—but has largely been ignored in global conservation frameworks.
Farm animal welfare and protection
Karla Dumas, The HSUS:
After years of working with McDonald’s, the company announced—two years ahead of schedule—that it’s reached 100% cage-free eggs in the U.S.
We collaborated with lawmakers on bills that would ban the production and sale of eggs from caged hens in Maryland and Illinois. Although neither bill became law, these efforts propel momentum for the bills to be reintroduced in 2025.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
In 2024, we released our third scorecard rating the top 50 largest food service management companies on their plant-based and meat reduction practices. In 2025, we'll publish the first annual college and university sustainability scorecard, focusing on the 40 largest in the country. By evaluating transparency, goals and a plan of action, the scorecard increases accountability and encourages companies to be more transparent about their menu sustainability efforts. This year, in addition to self-reporting, we asked companies to share extensive menu and purchasing data to verify self-reporting.
We’ll aim to make 50% of all food service meals served nationwide plant-based by 2027. At the end of 2024, 33% of food service meals are plant-based, which saved the lives of 390 million farm animals!
Julie Janovsky, HSI:
Our global team has persuaded multiple institutions, municipalities, companies and other meal-providing venues to replace at least 20% of all meals served with plant-based meals.
Working with the largest global baked goods manufacturer to implement its cage-free egg commitment in Mexico has led the second-largest egg producer in the world to begin cage-free production. Because of this, some of the largest companies around the world can implement their cage-free commitments, which will free millions of hens.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
More than 2,000 companies are set to meet their cage- and crate-free commitments, and this will hugely impact animal welfare. Our team is gearing up to support producers, procurement officers and financial institutions to ensure these promises are kept. By working together, we can make sure animals are spared from the suffering of caged systems, helping to create a future where millions of animals live better lives.
We aim to shift nearly 10 million meals to plant-based meals, which will spare the lives of an estimated 400,000 animals.
Companion animals
Heidi Prescott, The HSUS:
We helped pass a bill banning the sale of puppies in pet stores in Vermont. This makes the eighth such bill we’ve passed in as many years! Bans like this are crucial to ending the puppy mill-to-pet store pipeline.
South Carolina enacted a cost of animal care law. This shifts the responsibility—of covering shelter, food and medical expenses for animals rescued from neglect and cruelty—from local agencies and taxpayers to defendants.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
Cockfighting is illegal in the U.S., but the practice continues and California is one of the biggest offenders. We’ll work hard to help enact a California law to combat the cockfighting industry by prohibiting gamefowl yards. These are properties where roosters are bred and sold for the purpose of illegal fighting in the U.S. and around the world.
We want to add at least one state to the list of three (New York, Maryland and Virginia) that have banned declawing cats. Rhode Island came close to a ban last year, so we’ll focus our efforts there as well as in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
Katherine Polak, HSI:
South Korea banned the dog meat industry after years of campaigning by HSI/Korea and local groups. This law (to take effect in 2027) makes the breeding, slaughter and sale of dogs for human consumption illegal.
We’ve made incredible strides in increasing access to veterinary care across Latin America. We trained almost
50 veterinary professionals at our Latin America Veterinary Training Center in high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter, and have provided affordable spay/neuter services for 9,000 dogs and cats in Bolivia.
Additionally, in Chile, we successfully assembled HSI's first ever mobile veterinary team in Latin America. In Costa Rica and Mexico, we launched a mobile vet clinic to increase access to veterinary care in underserved communities; vet trainings in high-volume, high-quality spay/neuter and education about preventing dog bites.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
We will continue reducing the dog and cat meat trade and dog and cat meat consumption in Viet Nam's provinces of Thái Nguyên and Dong Nai.
We’ll work toward building a campaign to end the dog meat trade in India. We’ll also focus on improving the welfare of pet dogs in the country, in addition to street dogs.
We’ll focus on reducing inhumane dog killings by aiding government agencies around the world and implementing programs to humanely manage street dog populations.
Animals in research
Kathleen Conlee, The HSUS:
One of our standout moments was the Department of Justice’s announcement that Inotiv must pay a historic $35 million settlement because of violations that occurred at the Virginia facility where we removed more than 4,000 dogs being bred for laboratories in 2022.
We filed a legal petition with the Food and Drug Administration asking the agency to make it clear animal
testing isn’t a legal requirement for drug approval and to update guidance prioritizing replacement of animals. This could spare countless mice, rabbits and primates from unnecessary pain and suffering.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
Our lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health came to an end in 2024: A judge ruled that the agency was breaking the law by not retiring the federally owned chimps formerly used in research. Despite this, 23 chimps still languish at a New Mexico laboratory. In 2025, our team will fight for these chimps to be moved to a sanctuary.
There have been attempts to invest more federal funding into primate research recently; there has also been a proposal to open a new U.S. monkey breeding facility. We will fight hard against any attempts to expand the use of primates in research.
Troy Seidle, HSI:
We’re thrilled that an initiative we began—to expose bias by scientific journal reviewers and editors favoring animal versus non-animal approaches in research—was awarded a 2024 Lush Prize for major scientific collaboration.
Our signature Biomedical Research for the 21st Century workshop series continues to drive dialogue about non-animal methods among scientists, lawmakers, patient groups and medical research funding organizations around the world.
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2025
We’ll continue our lifesaving scientific advocacy work across the globe: Working with governments, companies and developers, we’ll focus on modernizing regulations for chemicals, medicines and other products to replace animal experiments with human-relevant approaches.
We’re leveraging our collaborations with leading research scientists and educators from across the globe: We’re developing a first-of-its-kind master class in animal-free research to help design experiments using exclusively human-focused approaches.
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