Animal welfare in the United States

Based on Wikipedia: Animal welfare in the United States

In 1923, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a woman named Celia Steele made a mistake that would transform how America eats. She accidentally received 500 chicks instead of the 50 she'd ordered for her small egg-laying operation. Rather than send them back, she decided to raise them for meat.

That accidental flock launched an industry.

Within two decades, what Steele started on the Delmarva Peninsula had evolved into something the world had never seen: industrial animal farming. By the 1940s, farmers were using intensive confinement and selective breeding to produce chickens that grew faster, weighed more, and converted feed to flesh with ruthless efficiency. The birds that emerged from this process bore little resemblance to their ancestors. They also suffered in ways their ancestors never had—skeletal problems became endemic as bodies grew faster than bones could support them.

Today, roughly nine billion land animals are slaughtered for food in the United States each year. More than 95 percent of them are chickens. And here's the strange legal fact that shapes their existence: chickens are explicitly exempt from the only federal law governing how farm animals can be killed.

The Long Road to Any Protections at All

Americans weren't always indifferent to animal suffering. The first animal welfare law in North America appeared in 1641, tucked into the Massachusetts Body of Liberties—a remarkable document that also limited government power and prohibited cruel punishment. The relevant passage forbade "Tirranny or Crueltie" toward domestic animals. The Puritans, it turns out, had thought about this.

Then came a long silence.

It wasn't until the late 1820s that states began passing anti-cruelty statutes. These laws looked promising on paper but proved almost useless in practice. They typically exempted animals used in experiments, and courts invoked them on behalf of animals exactly twice. The laws existed more as statements of aspiration than as tools of enforcement.

The first organizations dedicated to animal welfare emerged in the late 1860s. The Humane Societies and Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—what we now call SPCAs—began operating shelters and pushing for enforcement of those dormant anti-cruelty laws. They focused primarily on working animals: horses, dogs, cattle. The animals visible on city streets.

Around the same time, a different kind of animal use was just beginning. The first animal laboratories opened in the 1860s and 1870s, sparking the American anti-vivisection movement. In 1883, the American Anti-Vivisection Society formed in Philadelphia to oppose surgical experimentation on living animals. The movement had moral fervor but lacked political power. It failed to achieve federal regulation and gradually declined as medical science advanced and delivered increasingly obvious benefits—benefits that relied, in part, on animal research.

The Rise of Industrial Farming

While activists debated vivisection, a quieter revolution was transforming the countryside. Following Celia Steele's accidental experiment with chickens, industrial methods spread to other animals. Pigs and cattle entered factory farming operations in the 1960s.

The numbers tell the story of this transformation. American meat consumption rose dramatically beginning in the 1940s, driven largely by the efficiencies that industrial farming made possible. Chicken, once a luxury, became the cheapest protein available. Today, Americans consume about 200 pounds of meat per person annually—second only to Australia among developed nations.

The shape of that consumption has shifted remarkably. Beef consumption has been declining since the 1970s. Chicken consumption has doubled. The birds that Celia Steele raised by accident have become the dominant form of animal protein in the American diet.

Meanwhile, animal experimentation grew throughout the twentieth century, driven by pharmaceutical development. New drugs required testing, and animals provided the test subjects. The scale expanded far beyond what those first laboratory pioneers of the 1860s could have imagined.

The Movement Reawakens

After the anti-vivisection movement faded in the early twentieth century, animal welfare largely disappeared from public debate. It took half a century for it to return.

In 1955, the Society for Animal Protective Legislation formed with a specific goal: passing legislation to regulate slaughter. The effort succeeded. In 1958, Congress passed the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, or HMSA—the first major federal law addressing animal welfare in American history.

The law seems straightforward enough. It requires that animals be "rendered insensible to pain" before being "shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut." It specifies which slaughter methods are appropriate for which species. On paper, it promises a less brutal death.

In practice, enforcement has been troubled from the start. The original enforcement mechanism—prohibiting federal purchases from slaughterhouses that violated the law—was repealed in 1978, leaving a statute with no teeth. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report criticizing the United States Department of Agriculture's enforcement. The problems the GAO identified weren't subtle.

And then there's the exemption that swallows the rule: chickens aren't covered. Neither are other poultry. The animals that constitute more than 95 percent of farm animal slaughter in the United States have no federal protection governing how they die.

Dogs, Cats, and the Law That Followed

Eight years after the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, Congress passed the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. It came in response to something that had nothing to do with farming or laboratories—at least not directly.

The media had reported abuses of dogs. The public was outraged. Dogs, after all, are companions. They have names. People cared in ways they didn't care about chickens or laboratory mice.

The original law focused on regulating the sale and transport of animals. It has been amended eight times since—in 1970, 1976, 1985, 1990, 2002, 2007, 2008, and 2013. Each amendment expanded its scope, though not always in ways that seem logical.

The 1970 amendment extended coverage to all warm-blooded animals used in testing, experimentation, and exhibition, or kept as pets. It required humane handling, shelter from weather, proper ventilation, adequate housing, decent sanitation, and veterinary care. Inspectors gained real authority: those who interfered with investigations faced increased fines, and assaulting or killing federal inspectors brought additional criminal penalties.

In 1976, transportation rules tightened. Animals had to travel in adequately sized accommodations. They couldn't be thrown together in ways that allowed fighting. The law clarified that dogs used for hunting, security, and breeding were protected—closing a loophole that some had exploited.

The 1985 amendment, tucked into the Food Security Act, addressed experimental animals directly. No single animal could be used in more than one major surgery without adequate recovery time. Research facilities had to describe painful procedures and implement practices to minimize suffering. Each facility had to establish an Institutional Animal Care Committee to review proposals and oversee experiments.

In 1990, a provision addressed the problem of lost pets ending up in laboratories. Dealers had to hold dogs and cats for at least five days before selling them, giving original owners time to reclaim their animals. Written documentation of each animal's background became mandatory. Repeat violations could cost dealers $5,000 per animal and eventually their licenses.

Then came 2002, and the law took a strange turn. An amendment changed the definition of "animal" to explicitly exclude birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus when used in research. This wasn't a minor technical adjustment. Rats and mice constitute the vast majority of laboratory animals. The amendment effectively exempted most experimental subjects from federal protection.

The same 2002 amendment did strengthen protections elsewhere, making it a misdemeanor to ship, exhibit, or sponsor birds for fighting. But the exclusion of lab rats and mice from the definition of "animal" remains one of the more Orwellian provisions in American law.

Animal Fighting and the Evolution of Penalties

Dog fighting and cockfighting have their own legal trajectory within the Animal Welfare Act. The 2007 Animal Fighting Prohibition Reinforcement Act elevated animal fighting from a misdemeanor to a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison. It also criminalized possessing fighting implements—the knives and gaffs used to make roosters more lethal.

The 2008 amendments went further, prohibiting the training, possessing, and advertising of animals or sharp objects for fighting purposes. Penalties increased to three to five years' imprisonment. The same amendment addressed a different problem: imports of dogs for resale. Dogs now had to be at least six months old, fully vaccinated, and healthy before entering the country for commercial purposes.

General fines under the Animal Welfare Act quadrupled in 2008, from $2,500 to $10,000 per violation, per animal, per day. For a large operation with systematic problems, the numbers could add up quickly.

The 2013 amendment was narrow, adjusting the definition of "exhibitor" to exclude pet owners who occasionally show their animals but don't derive substantial income from it. A grandmother showing her cat at a local fair needn't register as a commercial exhibitor.

What the Law Doesn't Cover

Here's what may be the most important fact about American animal welfare law: no federal regulations govern the living conditions of farm animals.

The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act addresses death, with chickens exempted. The Animal Welfare Act addresses laboratories, pet dealers, exhibitors, and transporters, with farm animals largely outside its scope. The space between birth and slaughter—where animals spend their entire lives—exists in a federal legal vacuum.

States have begun filling this gap, but inconsistently. Some states have banned gestation crates, the metal enclosures roughly the size of a pig's body where breeding sows spend most of their lives unable to turn around. Some have banned veal crates, similar enclosures for calves. Some have banned battery cages, the wire enclosures where egg-laying hens often can't spread their wings. Many states have banned none of these practices.

World Animal Protection, an international organization that assesses national animal welfare policies, gave the United States a grade of D on its Animal Protection Index in both 2014 and 2020. The possible grades range from A to G. America sits closer to the bottom than the top.

The Politics of Animal Welfare

When animal welfare legislation comes to a vote, one factor predicts the outcome better than any other: the political party of the legislator. Democrats generally support bills that strengthen animal protections. Republicans generally don't.

This partisan divide is relatively recent. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act passed in 1958 with bipartisan support. The original Animal Welfare Act in 1966 wasn't particularly controversial. The politicization of animal welfare tracks with the broader sorting of American politics into opposing camps that disagree about nearly everything.

The split has consequences. Whether your state bans gestation crates or battery cages depends heavily on which party controls your state legislature. Animal welfare has become another front in the culture war.

The Numbers Behind the Debates

Abstract debates about animal welfare become concrete when you look at the numbers.

Since 2000, the total number of land animals slaughtered for food in the United States has ranged between 8.9 and 9.5 billion annually. In 2015, approximately 9.2 billion animals were slaughtered, with chickens accounting for 8.8 billion. These figures don't include animals that die before reaching slaughter—at least tens of millions each year.

Aquatic animals push the numbers far higher. Scientist Noam Mohr estimated that 56 billion sea animals were killed to feed Americans in 2011. That's billion with a B, just for one country in one year.

Eggs add another dimension. American egg consumption exceeds the average for developed countries. Per-capita consumption hit 263 eggs in 2014, the highest level in recent memory. Each egg represents a hen living in conditions that federal law doesn't regulate.

Dairy tells a different story. Per capita availability dropped from 339 pounds in 1970 to 276 pounds in 2012. Americans are drinking less milk and eating less cheese than they once did.

What about vegetarians and vegans? The numbers are smaller than you might expect given the cultural attention these diets receive. In a 1999 Gallup poll, 6 percent of respondents identified as vegetarian. By 2012, that figure had dropped to 5 percent, with 2 percent identifying as vegan. A larger 2014 survey by the Humane Research Council found even lower numbers: 1.5 percent vegetarian, 0.5 percent vegan.

These statistics don't show a surge in vegetarianism. But they may not capture what's actually changing. Many people are reducing their meat consumption without eliminating it entirely. They're eating more plant-based meals without calling themselves vegetarian. The category labels may be staying flat while the underlying behavior shifts.

Fur, Leather, and the Animals You Don't Eat

Not all animal products are food. The United States is a major producer of leather—in 2012, it was the world's largest producer of bovine hide. In 2013 and 2014, leather exports reached historic highs.

Fur farming continues at industrial scale. In 2014, 3.76 million mink were killed on American fur farms. Federal and state regulations on fur farming are minimal, covering mainly labeling requirements and bans on dog and cat fur.

Wild animals fare no better. Americans trap and kill more wild animals for fur than any other country—up to seven million annually. The number has increased substantially in recent years as international demand has grown, particularly from China.

The methods matter. The steel-jaw trap, a device that clamps onto an animal's limb and holds it until the trapper returns, is widely considered inhumane. More than 80 countries have banned it. In the United States, it remains legal in 42 of 50 states and is the most common trapping method. Animals caught in these traps may wait for hours or days before dying of exposure, thirst, or the trapper's club.

Laboratory Animals and the Review Process

Laboratory research operates under a different framework than farming. Every institution that uses vertebrate animals for federally funded research must have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, known as an IACUC. These committees review research protocols, conduct inspections, and evaluate animal care practices.

The system aims to balance scientific progress against animal suffering. Researchers must try to minimize distress whenever possible. According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, procedures that cause more than momentary pain should generally use sedation, analgesia, or anesthesia.

But the system has explicit exceptions. Some studies require animals to experience pain that cannot be relieved because the pain-relief agents would interfere with the research. In these cases, regulations require only that pain be limited to what's unavoidable for valid scientific purposes. Animals that would otherwise suffer severe or chronic pain that cannot be relieved should be killed humanely—at the end of the procedure or, if appropriate, during it.

This framework acknowledges something uncomfortable: we allow animals to suffer for scientific knowledge. The IACUC process tries to ensure that the suffering serves legitimate purposes and that researchers have considered alternatives. Whether this balance is morally adequate depends on how you weigh animal pain against human benefit—a question the regulations acknowledge but don't answer.

The Movements That Shaped the Debate

The modern animal welfare and rights movements emerged in the 1970s. Philosopher Peter Singer published "Animal Liberation" in 1975, arguing that species membership alone doesn't justify ignoring suffering. The book provided an intellectual framework for what had previously been sentiment.

Activist Henry Spira translated philosophy into action. His campaigns against animal testing were highly publicized and remarkably effective. He showed that public pressure could change corporate behavior.

The founding of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, in 1980 brought a more confrontational style to the movement. PETA's early years included an undercover investigation that changed the legal landscape. Alex Pacheco, one of PETA's founders, documented conditions at a Maryland laboratory where seventeen macaques lived in welfare-compromised conditions. The resulting legal battle over the "Silver Spring monkeys" lasted years and brought unprecedented attention to laboratory animal welfare.

These movements didn't achieve everything they sought. Farm animals remain largely unprotected under federal law. Laboratory research continues. Most Americans still eat meat. But the movements changed the conversation. Animal welfare is now a political issue in ways it wasn't before 1970.

Where We Stand

The history of animal welfare in America is a history of selective concern. Dogs and cats receive more protection than chickens and pigs. Laboratory primates receive more scrutiny than laboratory mice. Wild animals caught in steel-jaw traps receive almost no protection at all.

These distinctions reflect something about human psychology more than animal biology. We protect the animals we see as individuals, the ones with names, the ones whose suffering we can imagine. The chicken in a battery cage is as capable of suffering as the dog at the shelter, but the law treats them as entirely different kinds of beings.

The gap between American rhetoric about animal welfare and American practice is vast. We tell ourselves we care about animal suffering. We passed the first animal protection law in the Western Hemisphere back in 1641. Yet we've built an industrial food system that keeps billions of animals in conditions we'd never tolerate for our pets, and we've exempted those animals from the laws that supposedly protect animals from cruelty.

Whether this will change depends on whether the selective concern that has always characterized animal welfare can expand to include the animals we don't want to think about—the chickens, the pigs, the fish, the animals whose suffering makes our cheap protein possible. The law follows culture. And culture, so far, has been reluctant to look at what happens between birth and slaughter on an industrial farm.