ANIMAL WELLNESS FOUNDATION

This year Animal Wellness Foundation has continued numerous successful campaigns to save lives and ease animal suffering. We continued to rescue dogs and cats off the streets of Los Angeles and assist low-income families with the care of their pets. This mission will be accelerated with the establishment of a facility that can be used to house sick and injured animals of Los Angeles County and serve as a daycare for animals in foster homes. This year, we have begun the process of forming a Dog Bless You Rescue Center to house dogs, cats and rabbits as they await their forever home.Animal Wellness Foundation has been taking in dogs and cats to help them avoid the overcrowded shelter system while also helping pets stay in loving homes for over a decade. We do this in two main ways, by offering low-cost veterinary care to families in need and by directly rescuing individuals without homes. When people find themselves unable to care for their pets, AWF offers free medical services for their companion animals. We also assistant a dozen local rescue groups with discounted veterinary care. Our team of veterinarians, and veterinary technicians, work endlessly to help animals that need assistance. In 2025, we will continue our rescue work, helping abandoned or lost dogs and cats found in Los Angeles County by rescuing, medically rehabilitating, and rehoming dogs and cats.Animal Wellness Foundation conducts rescue and direct care to help pets. But we also advocate for all animals. We do so by influencing public policy and corporations to elevate animal wellness in both important domains. By applying our scientific and veterinary expertise, we charged ahead after playing a leadership role in the passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. That federal policy, developed in early 2021, and enacted into federal law by the end of 2022, lifted an animal-testing mandate that had been in place for 84 years. Our collaborative Congressional campaign reminded people of the limits of animal testing as a representation of human biology, ushering in the prospect of a new, safer, and better paradigm for screening drugs for human well-being. The changes in agriculture we helped push forward in 2023 were similarly consequential, though grounded on very simple and common-sense norms about the proper treatment of animals. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Californias Prop 12 as a constitutionally sound animal-housing policy, it was a landmark win, reinforcing the nation that it is proper and constitutionally sound for states to halt selling pork and eggs from factory farms that immobilize the animals as a routine animal-housing strategy. And it was big news, too, when the USDA stipulated that the organic seal would guarantee a set of animal welfare standards for animals raised under that label. Both the high-court decision and the federal-agency action were two huge steps in our long march toward a cage-free future in agriculture. We were also a key player in the global Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign to spare the marsupials from horrific slaughter in their native habitats just to make soccer shoes. We clinched the case with Nike, Puma, and then New Balance, which pledged to us in 2023 that theyd stop sourcing kangaroos to make soccer cleats. Also in 2023, we built major momentum in our serious-minded efforts to close out industries that have been with us for longer than any of us have lived: horse slaughter for human consumption, greyhound racing for gambling, and dogfighting and cockfighting for the thrill of the bloodletting.Animal Wellness Foundation is a major supporter of a new political committee in Colorado, Cats Arent Trophies (CATs), to work to attempt to place a measure on the November 2024 ballot to ban trophy hunting of mountain lions and trapping or hounding of bobcats or lynx. This ballot measure will draw national attention given that trophy hunters and trappers kill 500 lions and 2,000 bobcats a year in Colorado. We are also working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the hunting industrys massive dispersal of lead into the environment. More than 500 peer-reviewed studies showed detrimental effects of lead on wildlife, including a continent-wide effect on bald and golden eagles. A study, released in January in Science, determined that about half of bald eagles have bone lead concentrations above thresholds for chronic poisoning and one-third of eagles had acute [lead] poisoning. In 2025, using our veterinary expertise, well continue with our campaign to halt the biggest driver of lead dispersal in the environment: sport hunting.In 2023, Animal Wellness Foundation made significant impacts on the welfare of animals both on a local level in Los Angeles, and a national level in the United States. We look forward to continuing our work in 2025 and will focus most of our efforts of the creation of the Dog Bless You Rescue Center.