The Animal Wellness Podcast

The past year was busy on the animal-wellness front. Not only did Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy see some major wins outside of Congress, we worked to set up major legislative victories for when the 118th Congress returns for its second and final year.

In this podcast, Wayne Pacelle, president of the groups, and Jennifer Skiff, director of international, review those wins and ...

About 1.5 million kangaroos a year are shot, bludgeoned or left to starve to death or die of their injuries. This occurs because companies like Adidas and New Balance still pay hunters to head into the Australian wilderness to hunt the animals. The hunters make the kills, the kangaroos are skinned, and the skins are made into soccer shoes for affluent customers across the United States and other parts of the world.

Last May, Marielle Williamson was an anonymous teenager doing anonymous teenager things. Like her classmates at Eagle Rock High School in Los Angeles, California, she was busy preparing to graduate and to leap across the threshold into adulthood. The last thing on her mind was becoming the subject of countless news stories and being thrust into a debate about nutrition, animal welfare and the First Amend...

Don’t be a Dick’s.

That’s the message of a new campaign initiative by Animal Wellness Action and its sister organization, the Center for a Humane Economy. It’s targeted at Dick’s Sporting Goods, the largest sporting-goods retailer in the United States, and intends to call attention to the chain’s role in the largest commercial slaughter of land-based wildlife in the world.

Dick’s Sporting G...

Animal Wellness Action is one of many organizations pushing for Congress to pass the ADD SOY Act, a bill that would require the USDA to make soy milk available as a beverage alternative to the 30 million children who are part of the National School Lunch Program.

Every year, about $300 million in cow milk is tossed into the garbage—much of it still in unopened containers—by children who d...

For decades, a wide range of man-made and environmental threats have endangered Southern Resident Orca—thinning the population in the Pacific Northwest to only 73. Today, they’re looking directly at extinction.

The urgency of the orcas’ plight cannot be overstated. While many agencies and organizations are working to save our orca through scientific research, mitigation programs, public p...

After numerous battles in lower courts, the National Pork Producers Council and others finally convinced the Supreme Court to hear their challenge to California’s Proposition 12. That state initiative, passed by a powerful majority of California voters, mandates that no producer may sell products sourced from pigs or chickens into the state unless the producers ensure certain humane standards are maintained for the an...

Our special guest is filmmaker Ashley Avis, whose new WILD BEAUTY: MUSTANG SPIRIT OF THE WEST is available for pre-order on iTunes after earning multiple awards from film festivals across the country. The release date is May 12, 2023. You can watch the trailer here.

The Winterstone Pictures production has been called "a sweeping, immersive journey into the world of wild horses...

Jewel Johnson joins our podcast to talk about the emotional lives of fighting roosters, whom she rescues from seizures at busted cockfights and other surrenders. She does this through her 30-acre sanctuary in Colorado called Danzig's Roost.

Contrary to expectations, the animals are incredibly docile with people and even exhibit bonding behaviors with humans more typically associated with dogs and cats. Johnson talks about the merci...

In this episode, author Julie Marshall and host Joseph Grove talk with Ursula Goodenough about her new release, the second edition of "The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved." The book provides a brief but powerful commingling of science and spirituality to help readers more deeply connect with animals, plants and the earth herself.

The book is available here: https://bit.ly/3L7gSS2. More information about th...

How far is too far when it comes to animal advocacy? In this episode of the Animal Wellness Podcast, two veteran activists with somewhat different approaches discuss the best tactics to effect change for animals.

Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, often works quietly and behind the scenes, nudging the levers of government an...

In this episode of the Animal Wellness Podcast, the team says farewell to Marty Irby, executive director of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. Marty has been a guest on virtually every show and served the organizations and the podcast since their inceptions.

One of Marty’s greatest passions is improving the lives of horses—Tennessee Walkers, Thoroughbr...

Australia has its kangaroos. China, its beloved pandas. In the United States, we have horses. We love them. We revere them. Children delight in seeing them. We cheer them on when they race around tracks from sea to shining sea.

But there’s a rancid underbelly to our treatment of horses, and a new investigative report, “U.S. Live Exports Fade as Foreign Demand Abates | An Investigative Report on Horses and Other Equines Sent to Slau...

• Passing the Big Cat Public Safety Act
• Passing...

Thanksgiving turkeys. Christmas hams. The holiday season is inextricably linked to these staples of holiday indulgence. While we amble through the darkening days of the year, however, the animals whose lives will be sacrificed to feed us are far worse than they need to be. And that is so because of unnecessarily inhumane conditions on the factory farms where the majority of them are bred, live short, gru...