President Trump has declared that America is “woke no longer.” Let’s hope he’s correct because it’s long past time that activists of all political backgrounds get back to tangible issues with real impact. For those of us on the political right who happen to love animals, it’s time to step up.
Whatever you think about Trump’s accomplishments during these first tumultuous weeks, we’ve seen a marked uptick in government recognition of right-leaning voices concerned about the billions of animals routinely subjected to torture and abuse at our hands.
Consider White Coat Waste (WCW), a watchdog organization dedicated to ending taxpayer-funded animal experimentation. WCW was the first group to bring to attention the now-notorious $8 million in taxpayer funding spent on costly and cruel transgender mice experiments (a largely correct characterization, in a Trumpian vernacular sort of way).
They also highlighted a grant – now cut by DOGE – funding a Chinese animal lab using rabbits and mice in malaria experiments. On his recent Joe Rogan appearance, Elon Musk described some of the animal tests exposed by WCW as “mutilating animals in demented studies that are like the worst thing you can imagine from a horror show.”
With those words, Musk demonstrated that progressives don’t own the cause of animal welfare. If a Trump-Musk coalition could lead us in a movement to end the horrors committed against billions of animals every year around the world, Republicans and Democrats might finally find common cause in rescuing our shared humanity.
What all of us in the animal protection movement want is a robust and unfettered dialogue that welcomes a diversity of unique perspectives substantively addressing one of the most morally urgent issues of our time. As George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully wrote in the National Review, “There are no subtle or imagined ‘micro-aggressions’ on the list of our offenses against animals; just blunt, relentless, at-times-horrific abuse.”
And so we celebrate the progress being made by groups like WCW, just as we applaud former Daily Beast editor-in-chief Noah Schactman, who in a recent New York Times article drew back the curtain on the relentless government-sponsored grifting of the horse racing industry, a cruel and inhumane sport that only exists because “state legislatures keep funneling money to it.”
At the same time, pro-animal conservatives must seize this opportunity to forcefully and compellingly make the kinds of arguments that will resonate in this very specific era.
“Egg-flation,” for example, is a direct result of the continuous bailout of big agriculture at the expense of taxpayers, animal welfare, and any incentive for businesses to do better. Our failure to contain bird flu resulted in the cruel suffocation of millions of egg-laying chickens, but it was our unwillingness to rein in billions in farm bailouts that disincentivized better biosecurity protocols in the first place.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) pays for preventative efforts to contain infection, such as killing birds and destroying eggs. In other words, companies are encouraged to destroy their chickens rather than prevent the spread of disease on the front end. This has resulted in a skewed system that discourages farmers from doing enough to guard against outbreaks in the first place. They get paid anyway.
By ending or significantly rethinking APHIS indemnity payments, the Trump administration can not only take a stand against cruel farming practices and wasteful spending but also incentivize better protocols in the long term, ensuring that we don’t experience similar commodity-based price spirals in the future.
Animal lovers often ask government folks what they can do to improve conditions for animals at the national level. In fact, it’s what the government can stop doing that would make the biggest difference.
It can stop the Bureau of Land Management’s cruel and arbitrary wild horse management practices, which cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. It can end the sick, tortuous animal experimentation conducted by the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center. It can reform the USDA’s Wildlife Services program – whose only function is killing wild animals – by prioritizing humane mitigation practices.
And it can put an end to wasteful and gruesome experiments conducted by the National Institutes of Health, which has brutally tortured and killed over 2,100 beagles over the past 40 years.
With Republicans in the driver’s seat, animal advocates have reason to be hopeful that such arguments will resonate. And while we welcome activists and supporters from all political backgrounds, we must be laser-focused on decisive action resulting in tangible gains – not ideological posturing. Our cause is too important.
A friend at The Humane Society of the United States was fond of saying that our metric must be “progress, not perfection.” To those on the left who would balk at working with the current administration, I encourage you to think about that. In the interim, pro-animal conservatives must take up the mantle because we might not get a chance like this again.
Trump and Musk have managed to kill two birds with one stone, if you’ll pardon the expression, by identifying animal experimentation as wasteful spending. But there’s much more that can be done. After all, being pro-business is no justification for cruelty, especially when being humane is good for the bottom line.