How to Win the Nation’s Highest Minimum Wage

Click here to read the article on the Left Chapter.

It took more than two years of hard work and relentless campaigning for LA’s tourism workers to win $30 an hour. Here’s how they did it.

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Tourism workers in Southern California just won a historic battle for the highest minimum wage in the nation—a perfect counterpoint to the Republican-led tax bill that rewards billionaires at the expense of low-income Medicaid recipients. The union-backed campaign is a powerful lesson in creative, proactive, and long-term mobilizing for economic justice.

Southern California’s tourism industry has been salivating at the prospect of an influx of visitors during the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, both of which Los Angeles will host. Why shouldn’t low-wage workers exploit the opportunity as well?

In April 2023, unions, faith groups, and advocacy organizations formed into a coalition called Tourism Workers Rising and cleverly labeled their demand for an “Olympic/Paralympic wage.” They proposed that the Los Angeles City Council pass an ordinance raising the minimum wage for all workers in the tourism industry to $30 an hour. This includes airport workers and workers at all hotels with more than 60 rooms.

Reverend Jennifer Gutierrez, an elder in the United Methodist Church and the executive director of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), who worked closely with campaign organizers, explained that “some of the more conservative council members requested a study to see how this [$30 an hour minimum wage] would affect the economy in the area, and of course a study came back saying it would be good for the economy.”

Gutierrez was referencing an economic impact study commissioned by the City Council, which found that a wage hike would be good for the local economy and benefit individual workers, small businesses, and local government. The study concluded that the “estimated 23,000 workers directly and indirectly impacted by the proposed increases are expected to spend a large portion of their new earnings stimulating the local economy by purchasing goods and other services.”

Two unions, Unite HERE Local 11, which represents hotel and hospitality workers, and SEIU USWW, whose members work at the Los Angeles International Airport as janitors, security guards, and other workers, joined forces to win the measure. “Any time unions can collaborate together, it makes a big impact,” said Gutierrez.

The coalition used social media to showcase how workers struggle to pay their bills on time in an economy where the cost of living continues to rise while wages stagnate. “I need to pay my electric bill on time,” said Maria Romero, an airport worker and member of SEIU-USWW, in an Instagram post shared by Tourism Workers Rising. Maria Gonzales, an airline catering worker, said she needs higher wages just to be able to pay rent on time. Laura Banuet, an airport worker, maintained that “we need a raise to have a dignified living wage.”

The fight took place at the intersection of economic and racial justice, with Los Angeles Council member Curren Price estimating that “nearly 9 out [of] 10 tourism workers are people of color.” The multiracial campaign, reflecting the city’s racially diverse populations, was relentless in pushing and cajoling members of the City Council to vote yes on the ordinance when it came up for a vote in May 2025. Coalition partners recorded social media messages urging council members to vote in favor of the measure, marched and protested in the streets on May Day, and mobilized outside City Hall while a council committee deliberated the ordinance.

In a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the president of FIFA, Unite HERE Local 11 leaders urged them to support the fight for a higher minimum wage, and called out the hypocrisy of global institutions that claim their massive sporting events are good for the economy. Signatories pointed out that “Both FIFA and the IOC have committed themselves to promoting sustainable economic development and humanitarian values… Yet to date, actors like the IOC, LA28, and FIFA have done far too little to ensure that our communities will actually benefit.”

More than two years after launching the campaign, on May 14, 2025, workers testified to the LA City Council about the need for an “Olympic wage” ahead of a full vote on the ordinance. Councilors passed the vote 12 to 3, and, according to the Los Angeles Times, this “translates to a 48 percent hike in the minimum wage for hotel employees over three years. Airport workers would see a 56 percent increase.”

There was no recourse for the City Council, no good reasoning to hinge a “no” vote on, and nowhere to hide from the hundreds of people who gathered regularly to hold them accountable. While local politicians faced tremendous pressure from the hotel and tourism industry, they had to contend with 25 months of grassroots campaigning, fueled by the wrath of workers and their allies. Ultimately, they gave in to the greater pressure—a reminder that political organizing is well-summarized by the adage, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

But moneyed interests will not back down. Hotel chains are enraged at the ordinance and have threatened to withdraw from agreements to offer blocks of rooms at discounts during the 2028 Olympics. Mark Beccaria of Hotel Angeleno told a local channel KTLA, “Common sense says you cannot raise wages over 30 percent in less than a year when revenue is flat.” What he didn’t add is that when revenues spike, shareholders generally pocket the profits—this is by design—rather than voluntarily giving workers increased wages.

If profitable years for hotels translated into higher wages for workers, there would be no worker struggles to pay rent or electric bills. Common sense is precisely what workers are driven by when their unions campaign for higher wages.

Local business leaders are also urging the council, ahead of a final vote, to hold off on the wage increase because of the federal government’s tariffs championed by President Donald Trump. And while it’s true that tariffs have impacted Los Angeles’s local economy, that’s not the fault of tourism workers. Why should workers pay the price of Trump’s tariff-related damage?

The Tourism Workers Rising campaign offers an “Organizing 101” course on how to effect change. The dynamics between politicians and their constituents is one of push and pull, of requests, gratitude, public pressure, and uncompromising demands. And, although $30 an hour is the nation’s highest minimum wage, “it is still not enough for a family to live on in Los Angeles,” said Gutierrez. “It is not a living wage. One job should be enough, and it’s still not enough.” For as long as there is predatory capitalism, there needs to be worker pushback.

Click here to read the article on the Left Chapter.

Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly subscriber-funded television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her books include Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World Is Possible (Seven Stories Press, 2025) and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and was a senior editor at Yes! Magazine covering race and economy. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.

Photo Credit: outinthetrenches, via Flickr

Archaeology Can Now Tell Us How People Have Muffled and Challenged Economic Inequality Across History

Click here to read the article on the Observatory.

By Gary M. Feinman

Without archaeology, there is no way to truly examine economic inequality, its causes, and its consequences over very long time spans on a global scale. Until recently, most grand narratives that purported to tell the story of human inequality over time tended to focus either on European history of the last five to six centuries or snapshots of recent societies, derived following colonial encounters with people around the world. These were then pyramided into proposed stepped sequences of change that were presumed to mimic unilinear temporal processes. Whereas the former was not global, the latter was not even historical.

Well into the 20th century, European history and its colonial global impact empirically underpinned our conceptual lenses on inequality. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that to the present, our grand narratives on the topic tend to see increasing wealth disparities as inevitable. Inequality is seen as a byproduct of population and economic growth, only potentially reversible through the spread of a supposedly nascent rationality birthed at the outset of the modern era, with the rise of the West and the program of governance and education it offered. Alas, over the last decades, as inequality spirals, nowhere more than at the heart of the West in the United States and the United Kingdom, the long-entrenched grand narratives now seem naive and out-of-date.

Fortunately, over the last half-century, archaeologists have gone to work looking beyond ancient temples and tombs and, instead, have been mapping sites and excavating houses. By broadening their vantage beyond kings and courts, archaeologists in many regions of the world have and continue to gather data on diverse segments of past societies; farmers as well as rulers. The systematic cumulation of these data, with a focus on houses, lies at the core of the GINI project, a broad collaborative effort led by Timothy A. Kohler (Washington State University), Amy Bogaard (Oxford University), and Scott Ortman (University of Colorado), which has measured and coded more than 50,000 houses from more than 1,000 archaeological sites.

During the past and present, disparities in housing have been one of the best measures of wealth differences. And with this unprecedented sample, it is now feasible to trace economic inequality across much of the globe over time. Now, for the first time, we can see that neither farming nor population growth nor urban aggregation are simple determinants of inequality. Nor can we point to a uniform, unilinear sequence that accounts for patterns of change across every continent. Nevertheless, when we look across humanity’s past, there are broader tendencies, patterns, and even lessons to absorb and learn.

One clear trend is that through time, across the broad sweep of human history, the potential for inequality has grown due to advances in technology (domesticated crops and animals, enhanced communication, and advances in transport) and the increasing size of human aggregations and nations. These factors are important as they contribute to the growing extent of economic inequality. Yet alone, they are not determinative.

The deeply held story that sedentary settlement, along with farming, prompted the advent of private property, which generated intra-community inequality that was then a basis for the emergence of top-down, autocratic governance simply does not fit most, if any, global regions. It often took millennia after reliance on farming for degrees of economic inequality to tick significantly upward, and only in specific places.

For the regions we examined as part of this research project, the potential for inequality was not uniformly realized or consistently reached. In fact, in general, within global areas, the variances or ranges in the degree of inequality expanded through time. Over and over, and in different ways, people have devised institutions, modes of governance, and leveling mechanisms to muffle that expansive potential for rises in inequality.

Regarding the realized degrees of inequality, population size and the hierarchical complexity of governing institutions do matter in line with long-held narratives. But how those governing institutions were organized, how democratic or autocratic they were, is also a relevant factor—and one not considered in the past when Athens and the Roman Republic were wrongly presumed to be the only political democracies before the modern era. Across human history, people at certain times and places have made choices that quell ever present agentic selfishness and leverage the unmatched human abilities to cooperate and collaborate with large numbers of non-kin.

And yet, past and present, democratic or collective institutions are hard to maintain and sustain. Human cooperation tends to be situational and contingent. Institutions that are organized democratically require constant nurturing and participation. When that is disrupted, participatory, inclusive institutions break down, which is why we see temporal cycles and spatial variation in the degree of inequality across time and geographic space.

Our global sample, along with other recent studies, also holds clues as to why the institutions of governance shift along the axis of concentrated (or personalized) power and more democratic formations with checks and balances. What we see is that when our governing institutions are financed by monopolized resources that are not drawn from the labor and fields of the local population, but rather through external resources, power in governance will likely become concentrated in the hands of a few.

Herd animals, access to metals, and the control of long-distance exchange routes all seem to have a relationship to greater potential for inequality. Whether today or in the deep past, when political power is wielded autocratically, the checks and leveling mechanisms that dampen inequality will tend to break down, and, over time, disparities in wealth will move closer toward their maximal potentials. In this way, the past is a mirror for what we now see.

Gary M. Feinman is an archaeologist and the MacArthur curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Click here to read the article on the Observatory.

Photo Credit: Norbert Nagel via Wikimedia Commons

Watch Emmy Winner and Legendary Narrator Peter Coyote’s “Smothered by Riches: The Legacy of the Powell Memo” Documentary

Two-time Emmy winner and PBS legend Peter Coyote and the Observatory have just released a new documentary, “Smothered by Riches.” The documentary will go on tour and play at gatherings and documentary festivals, and can be found at popular online video platforms.

It’s the story of a memo by Lewis Powell (who would later go on to the Supreme Court) that captured the attitudes of an establishment frightened of democracy, and was treated as a key blueprint by the ideologues and philanthropists determined to keep corporate power and elite interests on top.

Accompanying the documentary is Coyote’s extended history of the Powell Memo, and its motivating effects on corporate power to interfere with democracy and the role of government.

Don’t just stand there; go watch it!

The Observatory: Finally, an Information Resource for Our Times

A message from Peter Coyote:

If you’re like me, you probably have some trust issues with the media, whether it’s news from the internet or what’s on TV. It’s a problem because we all need to learn about the issues of our times from trustworthy and respected experts.

And we all have day-to-day information needs in our personal life. Where do you go for that?

The Observatory is a promising solution. It’s a free public education resource and reference guide to understand today’s issues and navigate life in the modern world.

Already, hundreds of trusted experts and researchers are proud to share their expertise with the public through the Observatory and make it accessible and understandable for everyone. It’s already an incredible resource, but it will take years to reach its full potential.

And that’s where you come in. The Observatory should never have to worry about keeping the lights on. It’s already a valuable asset to the public and has great long-term potential to be a trusted resource the public needs.

Please explore the Observatory and support this important project. I’m sure you’ll agree that we need this.

Thanks,

Peter Coyote

Note from the Observatory founders: 

The Observatory is a free digital education resource. It offers the public useful information to help them better understand today’s issues and navigate life in the modern world.

Visitors engage with the Observatory:

  • Via Search: For expertise by keyword, topic area, or a favorite author.
  • Via Guides: To get the big picture.

The Observatory uses MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia, to publish content by a team of expert contributors.

Our doors are open: The Observatory is designed to incorporate reader feedback and is open to input and collaboration with volunteer researchers and editors.

Our goal is to be an audience-supported education resource that can make a difference.

Please visit the Observatory and donate now or schedule a call or video meeting with the Observatory founders to learn more and share your interest.

Background:

The Observatory is a free online encyclopedia written by experts and journalists. It was produced through collaborative peer review and editorial oversight. The encyclopedia explores key social and political issues to help readers navigate modern life.

In an era of declining trust in news, the Observatory fosters deeper reader engagement through well-researched and accessible content. It is a growing hub for informed public education, featuring contributions from leading intellectuals, academics, and journalists. New articles are added weekly, expanding its reach on critical topics.

Experts contribute original research and curated insights, drawn to the Observatory’s high-quality editorial process and Creative Commons accessibility. Built on Wikimedia Foundation software, it offers advanced search tools, expert-guided learning pathways, and multimedia content—ensuring a scalable and cost-effective platform.

Online News Trust

The news media industry has undergone significant changes in recent years. First, how people consume news has shifted dramatically compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Online news consumption has surpassed television, becoming the primary source of information for many. Second, the industry’s business model has evolved, with many news organizations relying more on digital ad revenue to sustain their operations.

Third, political identity plays a significant role in media trust as political parties tend to trust different news sources. Finally, misinformation has become a serious challenge. Many people struggle to navigate online news in an era of widespread false information, and many believe that fabricated news causes confusion and poses a significant societal problem.

Reader trust in digital news is below 20 percent (Gallup). The online news landscape fosters low attention spans and high skepticism. It is cluttered with ads, paywalls, and popups, hindering deep learning and open-minded discussion. Comparing authoritative perspectives or filtering misinformation is equally challenging.

Wikipedia’s Trust Advantage Over Online News

A 2019 YouGov poll found 78 to 98 percent of respondents across five countries trusted Wikipedia. This highlights the potential for alternative information models focused on public education.

Pew Research (2020) found that users spend 1.82 minutes per newspaper site visit, while Similarweb data shows that Wikipedia visits average nearly 4 minutes. The Observatory aims to extend engagement further through documentaries and podcasts.

Challenges for Experts in Digital Media

Experts struggle to educate audiences in a fragmented online environment for numerous reasons: 

  • Their work is scattered, buried by algorithms, or locked behind paywalls.
  • Definitive research quickly becomes outdated.
  • Academic content is inaccessible to many readers.
  • To compete with infotainment, experts tend to oversimplify or sensationalize. 

By offering a dedicated, ad-free platform, the Observatory helps experts engage the public without compromising on the depth or accuracy of their work.

Please visit the Observatory and donate now or schedule a call or video meeting with the Observatory founders to learn more and share your interest.

What Makes the Observatory Special?

Built for Learning

The Observatory contextualizes and clarifies pressing social and political issues, fostering deeper engagement through high-quality writing and editing. Wiki software enables guided exploration, linking articles, data journalism, and multimedia content. All content is available at high school and college reading levels, following media literacy guidelines.

Clear Authorship and Accountability

Unlike Wikipedia, which uses anonymous crowd-editing, the Observatory relies on invited experts and a dedicated editorial team, ensuring transparency and credibility. While Wikipedia battles unseen influences—self-interested figures, regimes, and spammers—the Observatory upholds editorial integrity and trustworthiness.

Beyond News and Academia

News outlets prioritize quick cycles, while academic journals remain static. The Observatory offers a living repository, is continually updated with the latest research, and is free from ad-driven pressures. Unlike Wikipedia, it combines agility with editorial coherence to keep content relevant and insightful.

A Unique Publishing Model

While online news is oversaturated, reference sites face little competition. Wikipedia’s model relies on a small group of editors controlling 80 percent of the content, often behind opaque moderation. The Observatory revives the expert-driven tradition of encyclopedias, offering authoritative and well-curated information.

Designed around a world-class wiki search tool, the Observatory is a trusted entry point for inquiry and learning.

You can donate now or schedule a call or video meeting to learn more and share your interest with Jan Ritch-Frel and the founders.

Are Community Schools the Positive Disruptor Public Education Needs?

The following is an excerpt of an article that was originally published on the Progressive.

Click to read the full article online.

Trust in public schools has eroded, but community schools in La Crosse, Wisconsin, may show how it can be restored.

It’s important for people to know they can trust schools,” Jenna Fernholz told The Progressive during a call over Zoom in early March. “That’s a hard thing in this time and in this administration. But there are people on the ground who are really working hard for our families and our kids.”

When Fernholz, a school principal in La Crosse, Wisconsin, talks about “people on the ground,” she undoubtedly includes herself and her colleagues at Hamilton Elementary School. The administration she referred to is, of course, the presidential administration of Donald Trump, which has accused K-12 public schools of “radical indoctrination” and has proposed redirecting government money for public schools to privately operated alternatives.

Although surveys have found that a vast majority of parents throughout the country trust public school teachers, evidence suggests that the public’s trust in the nation’s public education system is being eroded by years of culture-war attacks on schools and an oft-repeated narrative that public schools are failed institutions filled with educators who are lying to parents to cover up that failure.

But for Fernholz, trust isn’t just a sentiment—it’s essential for the success of the difficult work of school improvement. Her school is implementing an approach to improvement commonly referred to as community schools.

The community schools approach looks different depending on location, but the basic idea is that schools should serve as local hubs not only for education services, but also meet the broader needs of students and families such as physical and mental health, housing, transportation, after-school care, and neighborhood improvement. To provide these services, schools partner with local organizations, including nonprofits and businesses. And students, parents, community members, and school staff help to determine school policies and activities, such as curriculum offerings and sports programs.

Fernholz knew Hamilton was a community school when she became principal in 2022, but she wasn’t certain about what that designation entailed. “I kind of felt like all schools were community schools, because they’re in a neighborhood,” she recalled. “But I didn’t fully realize how the model works and how impactful the approach is.”

“In my previous school, we did things like food drives and handed out free clothing, like we do at Hamilton. But the community schools approach requires us to dive in deeper, to look for what is at the root of the academic and social-emotional problems our kids are having, and what we need to do to help address those problems,” Fernholz said.

Fernholz knew, for instance, that Hamilton serves generally low-income families—nearly 85 percent are considered economically disadvantaged—and has an unusually high percentage of students, nearly one in three, with disabilities. But she was surprised to learn how many of her students and their family members struggle with mental health, and how challenging it can be for some Hamilton students just to get to school.

“We want students to learn to read and do math,” Fernholz said. “But there is a whole other side we have to tackle first in order for them to be ready to learn.”

Fernholz and her colleagues wouldn’t have learned any of this about their school’s community if Hamilton students and families didn’t trust them enough to speak up.

[…]

Read the rest of this article on the Progressive.

Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky @jeffbinnc.

Photo Credit: Mariquitas CK via Wikimedia Commons

How Trophic Cascades Devastate Ecosystems and Endanger Human Health

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Bats and vultures may not be widely loved, but their decline has profound negative implications for humans.

By Leslie Alan Horvitz

All organisms in an ecosystem are interconnected, and any imbalance in this complex relationship can have irreversible consequences for both humans and nonhumans. Numerous examples illustrate how the destruction of one species can lead to unforeseen and devastating impacts on others.

“Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning do matter to human beings. … And it’s not always the charismatic and fuzzy species,” said Eyal Frank, an environmental scientist and economist at the University of Chicago, in a New York Times interview in July 2024. Frank is one of the authors of the study “The Social Costs of Keystone Species Collapse: Evidence from the Decline of Vultures in India,” published in the American Economic Review in October 2024.

Various studies have shown how this lack of natural harmony has affected biodiversity and human health. For instance, the loss of trees in the United States due to the invasive emerald ash borer increased human deaths related to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, according to a 2013 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study, conducted in 15 U.S. states from 1990 to 2007, examined the effects of this imbalance on biodiversity and human health.

Another example is the extinction of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the 1920s, which led to an explosion in the elk population. The elks, in turn, devoured the vegetation, triggering a trophic cascade or ecosystem collapse. The loss of prey often forces predators to find new food sources, which can have unpredictable environmental consequences. By definition, trophic collapse must affect a minimum of three feeding levels. Trophic cascades frequently occur during periods of climate stress.

“Our results… suggest that increasing environmental stress… as a result of climate change may decouple species interactions,” noted Brian S. Cheng and Edwin D. Grosholz, environmental scientists at the University of California, Davis, in a 2016 article in Ecosphere.

The public pays attention when a species considered “adorable”—like polar bears, dolphins, or pandas—is threatened with extinction. However, the same risks faced by underappreciated species—such as bats and vultures—are often overlooked, underscoring the threat posed by trophic cascades to the world’s ecosystems.

The devastation affecting bat populations in the U.S. and vultures in India has largely escaped notice, as neither species inspires much affection. Instead, they often evoke fear and disgust. However, their decline has dire implications for humanity.

Healthy Bat Populations Support Human Health

“Bats are a fantastic example of a species that we like to keep a distance from, but that are truly impactful in terms of the role they play in ecosystems,” Frank told the Washington Post in September 2024. He was referring to a study he authored and published in Science that same month. The study documented how biodiversity degradation negatively affects human health.

He found that the declining bat population was linked to an 8 percent increase in infant mortality rate in certain U.S. counties. This link is due to the positive impacts of bat’s diets. Every night, a single bat consumes up to 40 percent of its body weight in insects. In agricultural areas, this means that when bats disappear, farmers might use more insecticides on their fields,” explained Rudy Molinek, a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in a September 2024 article in Smithsonian Magazine.

According to the study, the decline in the bat population resulted in 1,334 infant deaths between 2006 and 2017. Essentially, the loss of bats, which led to a rise in insect populations, directly impacted human health. In areas with a marked decline in the bat population, U.S. farmers increased their use of insecticides by 31 percent.

White-Nose Syndrome

The principal culprit behind the bat die-off is white-nose syndrome (WNS), a disease caused by a fungus that attacks bats during hibernation. WNS disrupts the hibernation cycle in winter, leading to energy depletion and death. Researchers first identified the disease in 2006 when they observed dying bats in the Northeast U.S. with white fuzz on their noses, ears, and wings.

It is believed that the fungus responsible for the syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, originated in Europe and was transported to the U.S., possibly through cavers traveling between continents.

As of November 2024, white-nose syndrome has​​ been confirmed in 40 states and nine Canadian provinces. The disease has wiped out more than 90 percent of three North American bat species. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, 6.7 million bats have died from WNS since 2006.

According to State of the Bats: North America, a 2023 report by experts from Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., 52 percent of North American bat species are at “risk of severe population decline” through at least 2038 due to various factors, including WNS, habitat loss, climate change, and collisions with wind turbines.

“They need our help to survive,” Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International, one of the groups that participated in the State of the Bats report, told the Associated Press. “We face a biodiversity crisis globally, and bats play a vital role in healthy ecosystems needed to protect our planet.”

The syndrome’s mortality rate averages around 70 to 90 percent. “In some cases, the mortality rate has been 100 percent, wiping out entire colonies,” stated the Center for Biological Diversity. Researchers are still searching for an effective treatment for it. Polyethylene glycol 8000 has shown promise when applied as a spray to coat fungal spores and prevent their spread. Additionally, a vaccine experimentally used in Wisconsin has reduced infections in affected bat populations.

“Fungal disease killed bats, bats stopped eating enough insects, farmers applied more pesticides to maximize profit and keep food plentiful and cheap, the extra pesticide use led to more babies dying,” Eli Fenichel of Yale University told the New York Times in September. “It is a sobering result.”

Frank told the Guardian that during his research, he ruled out all other causes of infant mortality, including “the opioid epidemic, parental unemployment, genetically modified crops, and even the weather,” Molinek of AAAS reported in Smithsonian Magazine. Frank further stated that the results provide “compelling evidence… that farmers did respond to the decline in insect-eating bats, and that response had an adverse health impact on human infants.”

Vanishing Vultures Cause Human Deaths to Rise in India

Bats aren’t the only species that benefit humans—a phenomenon some scientists call “ecosystem services.” In another study co-authored by Frank, he found that “[a]fter vultures nearly went extinct in India, an extra 500,000 people died” on the subcontinent between 2000 and 2005.

“Vultures are considered nature’s sanitation service because of their important role in removing dead animals that contain bacteria and pathogens from our environment—without them, the disease can spread,” Frank told the BBC.

“Understanding the role vultures play in human health underscores the importance of protecting wildlife, not just the cute and cuddly,” he added. “They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that impacts our lives.”

The first reports of the vulture die-off came from villagers in northern India. Hindus consider cows sacred and do not eat their meat; instead, they leave the carcasses for vultures to strip and consume. The people then harvest the bones to make bone meal and fertilizer.

The villagers’ warnings foreshadowed the catastrophe to come. The white-backed vultures, once abundant, are now on the brink of extinction. As they sicken, their long bald necks droop into the shape of nooses; death soon follows. “By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero because of diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal painkiller for cattle that is fatal to vultures. Birds that fed on carcasses of livestock treated with the drug suffered from kidney failure and died,” stated a BBC article. According to a New York Times article published in July 2024, vulture populations in India have declined to less than 1 percent of their previous numbers.

The disappearance of vultures has not only resulted in the loss of their critical environmental role but has also had severe consequences for human health and mortality. The “half a million excess human deaths” occurred because rotting livestock carcasses polluted water supplies and contributed to a rise in feral dog populations, which spread waterborne diseases and rabies, according to the New York Times article. “It was ‘a really huge negative sanitation shock,’” said Anant Sudarshan, an economics professor at the University of Warwick in England, who co-authored the study with Frank.

Sudarshan and Frank compared human death rates in Indian districts that once had thriving vulture populations to those with historically low vulture numbers, both before and after the vulture collapse. They examined rabies vaccine sales, feral dog populations, and pathogen levels in the water supplies. The researchers revealed that human death rates increased by more than 4 percent in districts where vultures had previously thrived. The effect was most significant in urban areas with large livestock populations, where carcass dumps were common.

For years, the cause of the vulture deaths remained a mystery. However, in 2004, researchers identified the culprit: diclofenac, a widely used anti-inflammatory drug.

A decade earlier, the steroid’s patent had expired, leading to the production of cheaper generic versions that farmers began using extensively. This unintentionally triggered a mass extinction of vultures.

In their study published by the American Economic Association, Frank and Sudarshan found a direct correlation between the rise in diclofenac sales and the subsequent collapse of vulture populations. The researchers used range maps to determine where vultures had lived and where they had not, allowing them to draw their conclusions. They discovered that “[i]n districts where vultures had lived, human death rates started ticking up in 1994, the year after the price dropped on diclofenac,” noted the New York Times. Human deaths continued rising over the following years in those districts, in stark contrast to areas where vultures were never present.

Alarmed conservationists pushed for a ban on the drug’s veterinary use. Although they succeeded in 2006, the 2023 State of India’s Birds report revealed that at least three vulture species in India have suffered long-term losses of 91 to 98 percent. In ecological terms, they are now functionally extinct.

The decline of both bats and vultures is already disrupting ecosystems and negatively impacting human health. To prevent further devastation, we must take urgent steps to preserve biodiversity and recognize the far-reaching consequences of our actions on other species.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life.

Leslie Alan Horvitz is an author and journalist specializing in science and a contributor to the Observatory. His nonfiction books include Eureka: Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed the World, Understanding Depression (co-authored with Dr. Raymond DePaulo of Johns Hopkins University), and The Essential Book of Weather Lore. His articles have been published in Travel and Leisure, Scholastic, Washington Times, and Insight on the News, among others. He has served on the board of Art Omi and is a member of PEN America. Horvitz is based in New York City. You can find him online at lesliehorvitz.com.

Photo Credit: BirdingInSpain / Wikimedia Commons

How a Worker Cooperative Is Mitigating the Stray Animal Crisis in Texas

Click here to read the article on the Observatory.

Houston’s Pet Care Co-op empowers humans and helps animals survive.

By Damon Orion

The popularity of support animals attests to the mental health benefits of bonding with a pet, such as decreased stress, anxiety, and loneliness. According to the Mayo Clinic, having pets may also positively impact cardiovascular health and blood pressure control.

Unfortunately, many animals that could be treasured companions never get that opportunity. This is especially true in the state of Texas. According to the animal welfare group Best Friends Animal Society, approximately 568,325 cats and dogs entered Texas shelters in 2023, and an estimated 82,681 of these animals were killed. In 2024, TotalVet reported that “Texas tops the list for the number of shelter animals killed in a given year at over 61,000. This number is nearly 10 times the national average and represents nearly 20 percent of the total kills for the entire nation.”

“Here in Texas, we have a terrible situation with strays and rescues,” says Melody Shannon, founder of the Pet Care Co-op in Houston. “[The area is] overrun with animals, so we need a lot of out-of-state help. A lot of these issues come from the fact that our fosters have been completely abandoned. The animal rescues don’t know what to do. They’re inundated with endless bills,” which results in a lack of resources for advocacy.

The Pet Care Co-op’s members tackle that problem by providing free care for foster pets. This often involves working with aggressive and emotionally unstable animals to make them fit for cohabitation. Besides helping get animals adopted and freeing up foster homes, this gives workers experience with animal care while they earn college credits for their efforts.

When Shannon and her husband launched a pet-sitting company in 2015, they discovered that pet care workers without proper training were being harmed, as were the animals they assisted. “We realized there was a real problem in our industry: [Workers] didn’t have access to education,” she recalls.

The couple addressed that issue by converting their pet-sitting business to a worker cooperative that offers its employees education and the opportunity to turn animal care into a career.

“What we do as a pet care provider is train people to be their own business owners,” Shannon explains. “We have tried and true policies they can operate on [that enable them to] immediately start training and working in the fields they want to be in. As they get education and training, we have them work in-field with foster animals, which allows us to assist the community in a different way.”

Shannon says the initial vision for this co-op was to create a business that would be accessible to all classes and income levels. She adds that one of the cooperative’s long-term goals is to provide jobs for unhoused individuals, victims of domestic abuse, and other people in need.

The Pet Care Co-op’s business model is designed to empower pet handlers. “Most trainers want someone to keep coming back to them,” Shannon says. “We want you not to have to come back to us.”

However, clients are always welcome to use the co-op as a resource. “If you have a new pet, a new obstacle, or a life change, we can help you with that,” Shannon says. “Life changes like bringing in a baby, college kids going off to school, or people being at home during the pandemic versus not being at home anymore [after returning to work at the office] can cause behavioral situations with your pet. We can help you with that without you having to take them back to the trainer.”

Rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach for behavior adjustment, the co-op takes an inventory of each pet’s temperament and character. “We want to see not only if the animal is extroverted or introverted but also whether it is capable of handling routine situations or is attracted to novelty-seeking situations,” Shannon says.

She adds, “First we take the animals with aggressive tendencies and give the knowledge to the people who can actually handle them. We do not touch the animals until the parents or the handlers can get the behavior under control, and then we introduce new handlers.”

As a worker cooperative, the Pet Care Co-op makes decisions by voting. Its members also have the option to give a percentage of their paychecks back to help pay for education and insurance. “That percentage is used like a loan, so we get insurance paid back,” Shannon says.

Explaining the advantages of this system, she adds, “Most independent pet care providers end up being completely overwhelmed. They’re working from morning to late night seven days a week, and they don’t have anyone to help cover them. We’re providing them a sense of relief as far as coverage for sick days and holidays without the loss of a paycheck.”

The Pet Care Co-op is part of a holding company called MadHouse Collabs, which Shannon describes as “a grassroots movement focused on helping our community rebuild, empower, and thrive with cooperative businesses.” She adds that the collaborative is launching a pet waste removal service and plans to create a pet recreational facility.

Shannon, who specializes in handling aggressive animals, says one of the biggest rewards of this work is “seeing rescue animals come 360 [degrees] and [helping reverse] desperate situations where people feel like they’re going to have to put the animals down.”

A video of a dog named Willow demonstrates that dynamic. “We spent 10 hours with the parents and Willow for nine weeks,” Shannon notes. “Her parents’ commitment is the reason we were so successful.”

This article was produced by Local Peace Economy.

Damon Orion is a writer, journalist, musician, artist, and teacher in Santa Cruz, California. His work has appeared in Revolver, Guitar World, Spirituality + Health, Classic Rock, and other publications. Read more of his work at DamonOrion.com.

Photo Credit: Jocelyn Augustino / Wikimedia Commons

Human Bridges Project: A New Wave of Information for Our Times

A message from Peter Coyote:

Every big wave that improves our lives comes riding in on a new body of information, whether it’s research from modern medicine or how audio recording allowed the spread of music worldwide.

A new wave of information is reaching our shores that gives us fuller context for how we got here and why we behave the way we do.

The huge body of research coming out of archaeology and human biology gives us a reference for humanity that we’ve never had before. Increasingly, we’re able to fill in the various steps of the human story, from 7 million years ago to the recent time, when we started living together in societies.

This knowledge provides a universal and authentic framework for humanity to connect. Combining our history with an understanding of our biology and behavior is a game changer for the wide range of challenges and opportunities we face.

I invite you to look at the media, research, and education initiatives related to the Human Bridges project. I’m sure you’ll agree that this can actually make a difference.

Read on for a message from Human Bridges founder Jan Ritch-Frel and start exploring the project here.

Thanks,

Peter Coyote

Message from Jan Ritch-Frel, director of Human Bridges

I am excited to share a quick overview of the Human Bridges project and the important initiatives we have to advance education using a synthesis of new research from disciplines that include anthropology, archaeology, neuroscience, and behavioral biology. As Peter Coyote explained, education and incorporation of this new knowledge across age ranges and activities can be a game changer.

Our Human Bridges initiatives are focused on accelerating this process, advancing education at all life stages, and encouraging the adoption of this information in critical areas of society.

Media, Research, and Education Initiatives

  1. Improve the ‘Canon’ of Global Higher Education—New Paradigm, New Curriculum: A synthesized body of knowledge that all leaders should receive. Traditional leadership education often reinforces outdated mindsets. To overcome this, Human Bridges cultivates the critical thinking necessary to approach complex challenges with innovation. This foundational education should be integrated across all ages.
  2. Crowdfunding and Research Platform for Archaeology and Human Evolutionary Science: We are in the advanced stages of developing a ‘Curiosity Engine,’ a Wiki-based crowdfunding platform tool for the public to support the projects of leading research institutions. Academics and experts have promising research projects underway, and they collaboratively research with qualified volunteers and expand the scope of their research initiatives.
  3. The New Grand Tour: A comprehensive, map-based resource for lifelong learning and education-inspired travel. The New Grand Tour connects archaeological sites, museums, research centers, national parks, educational institutions, cultural heritage tours, and volunteer opportunities in archaeology and ecology, fostering engagement with the world’s history and environment.
  4. Human Bridges Global News and Wiki Archive: A curated international network of experts advancing Human Bridges’ unique approach—synthesizing knowledge for practical application. The Global News and Wiki Archive collects, curates, and shares a growing collection of published works from diverse experts, creating a valuable resource for research and education.

You may have already noticed a growing visibility of ancient history, anthropology, DNA, and neuroscience in the media and a more profound desire to understand our relationship with the natural world. Authors including David Graeber, Robert Sapolsky, and Jane Goodall are prominent in the bestseller lists. The most popular documentaries on Netflix and Amazon Prime include series on Neanderthals, archaeology, genetics, and the ‘Chimp Empire.’ Countless YouTube and Spotify podcasts offer a wealth of episodes on the finer points of Ancient Rome and Bronze Age Societies, satisfying an audience that appears to have grown into the tens of millions.

But we are at the beginning of the education process—the recent science and research have not percolated into popular consciousness or found application in centers of social influence.

Starting points for learning more about Human Bridges:

For an introduction to this project, read Human Bridges editor Jan Ritch-Frel’s conversations with Gary M. Feinman on the promise of archaeology to provide historical context for humanity and how we live today, Michael Hudson on how the central social institutions we live by are borne out of the archaic past, and Robert Sapolsky on the social advantages of studying the biology of human behavior. If you want a learning path that combines travel and education, read The New Grand Tour.

You can donate now or schedule a call or video meeting to learn more from the Human Bridges team and share your interests.

States Are Doing a Terrible Job Enforcing Laws Meant to Protect Farmed Animals

Click here to read the article on the Observatory.

Lack of law enforcement leads to needless suffering for sentient beings.

By Reynard Loki

Farmed animals in the United States have minimal legal protections, and much of the abuse they endure is legal. Unfortunately, the federal Animal Welfare Act—which establishes protections for pets and nonhuman animals used for exhibition (like in zoos) and research—does not apply to farmed animals. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a poorly conceived regulatory framework regarding animal rights and the enforcement of the few protections that exist for animals raised and slaughtered for human consumption.

“The failure of regulatory oversight in the U.S. slaughter industry is actually multifold, negatively affecting workers, animals, and the environment (including the communities that live near slaughterhouses),” wrote Delcianna J. Winders, an associate professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute Vermont Law and Graduate School, and Elan Abrell, the vice president of community planning and partnerships at the Phoenix Zones Initiative, in 2021 for the Health and Human Rights Journal.

Most state anti-cruelty laws also exempt farmed animals or allow standard practices that are patently cruel. No federal law in the United States explicitly regulates the treatment of animals on farms, except for the small percentage raised organically.

“Cattle are subject to many unique forms of legal bodily exploitation,” wrote Katalina Hadfield, former editor-in-chief of Ecology Law Quarterly, in 2022. “Perhaps the most well-known form of exploitation is, of course, the slaughter of cattle to produce beef. Another common endeavor is to forcibly impregnate cows and collect their milk for processing and distribution. Cattle are also routinely branded, sometimes on the face, for humans to lay legal claims to their bodies. Cattle are subject to agitation, mutilation, and general discomfort in rodeos across the United States. Nearly all these practices are completely legal—and sometimes encouraged—in U.S. law.”

Even more concerning are the claims—some made by former USDA employees—that animal welfare officials purposely ignore breaches in animal welfare regulations in favor of business interests. In 2021, National Geographic reported that former USDA employees said, “inspectors were discouraged from documenting poor welfare,” revealing “a pattern of federal officials’ failure to act on potential welfare violations.”

While federal protection for farmed animals is largely nonexistent, the few instances of protection that do exist are on the state level. Since the turn of the 21st century, several states have enacted measures to improve the welfare of farmed animals. These laws are often the result of public concern, and in many cases, they are reflected in citizen-initiated ballot measures.

Factory Farms: Cruelty to Animals on a Massive Scale

Cows, pigs, and chickens—the most common animals in factory farms—are intelligent, emotional, and curious. They experience the same basic emotions as we do: joy, happiness, sadness, loneliness, and fear. But despite being sentient beings, they are treated like mere property on farms where they are raised and killed for human consumption.

Factory farms do not provide environments where animals can express natural behaviors, leading to frustration and psychological distress. They are forced to endure various forms of abuse and poor living conditions, including being kept in confined, unsanitary, manure-filled spaces with little or no room to move. This leads to stress, injuries, and infection, and animals are often given antibiotics to stave off the spread of diseases caused by these poor conditions.

To prevent animals from harming one another in crowded and stressful conditions, practices like debeaking, tail docking, and dehorning are performed without anesthesia. On top of this, workers often use rough and violent methods to move animals, causing further pain and injury.

According to a 2011 study published in the Journal of Dairy Science, 52 percent of farmers agreed that disbudding led to prolonged pain, “but pain management was rare” during the procedure.

Along with being selectively bred for productivity, animals are often given hormones and other drugs to promote rapid growth, which can cause health issues like chronic pain and lameness. Recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), a synthetic bovine growth hormone, may cause “an increased risk of adverse reproductive effects, clinical mastitis, foot and leg problems, injection-site reactions, and udder edema,” writes John B. Gaughan, an associate professor in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at the University of Queensland, in “Metabolic challenge: How does it affect welfare?” a chapter in the 2018 book Advances in Cattle Welfare.

However, many of these animals do not receive adequate medical attention when sick or injured, leading to prolonged suffering. After a life of continual distress, they must also endure stressful and sometimes long-distance transportation, followed by a traumatic death.

Widespread abusive practices in factory farms raise significant ethical concerns and have led to calls for more humane treatment and better welfare standards for farmed animals.

The Challenge of Passing Animal Welfare Laws

Passing legislation to protect the welfare of animals trapped in our food system is not easy. In the United States, it is incredibly challenging due to several key factors.

Economic Interests

The agricultural industry plays a significant role in the U.S. economy. In 2023, agriculture, food, and related industries added about $1.53 trillion to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), making up 5.6 percent of the total GDP. Of this amount, the output from U.S. farms contributed $203.5 billion, representing around 0.7 percent of the GDP. Large agribusinesses have substantial financial interests in maintaining current practices, as implementing stricter animal welfare laws can increase costs and reduce profitability.

However, as a 2022 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences policy brief states, “Improving animal welfare can lead to improved profitability for farmers through, for example, higher prices for more in-demand products or higher production from healthier animals. … can imply healthier animals and that veterinary costs and the work of treating sick animals are thereby reduced… [and] can make production smoother, which in itself also has a positive impact on the farm’s financial outcome.”

Lobbying Power

Agribusinesses and industry groups wield considerable influence in politics through lobbying. They spend substantial amounts of money on lobbying efforts to sway lawmakers and resist regulations that could negatively impact their operations.

Between 2019 and 2023, “agribusiness interests spent a huge sum of money—$523 million—lobbying Congress,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, deputy director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of a May 2024 report about corporate lobbying on the Food and Farm Bill. “In just the last five years, the agribusiness sector’s annual lobbying expenditures have risen 22 percent, from $145 million in 2019 to $177 million in 2023. And each year, agribusiness spends more on federal lobbying than the oil and gas industry and the defense sector,” stated the report.

Lack of Public Awareness and Pressure on Lawmakers

A 2024 study by the NSF, a nonprofit testing agency that establishes and enforces food sanitation and safety standards, found that many consumers are worried about the treatment of animals in the food industry and where animal products come from. According to the study, 67 percent of U.S. respondents said animal welfare is “very or extremely important in purchasing decisions.” Additionally, 68 percent of consumers value companies that follow animal welfare standards throughout their global supply chains and are transparent about it. These concerns are important since meat consumption in the U.S., by some estimates, is expected to rise through at least 2032.

However, while there is a fair amount of public awareness about the horrific conditions in which factory-farmed animals are raised, it does not necessarily result in public pressure on lawmakers to enact animal welfare laws. 

Legal and Regulatory Framework

The USDA oversees most aspects of animal agriculture and is mandated to promote and regulate agricultural production. However, it prioritizes productivity over animal welfare.

“Undercover investigations by animal protection organizations in the early 2000s exposed mistreatment of chickens and turkeys in some of the nation’s largest poultry slaughter establishments,” according to an extensive AWI report released in December 2023, “The Welfare of Birds at Slaughter in the United States.”

The group reported, “The USDA responded by issuing a Notice in September 2005, reminding the poultry industry that birds ‘must be handled in a manner that is consistent with good commercial practices [GCP], which means they should be treated humanely.’ Shortly thereafter, the USDA began issuing records to plants observed violating GCP. However, no additional regulations were written. As a result, compliance with GCP remains effectively voluntary; in most cases, USDA inspection personnel do not take enforcement action for violations, even when intentional abuse is involved.”

Unsurprisingly, the department’s strategic plan for fiscal years 2022-2026 contains no mention of animal welfare.

Political Climate

Animal welfare issues can be polarizing, and achieving consensus on new protections in a politically divided climate can be difficult. Some lawmakers may fear backlash from constituents or industry groups if they support stricter animal welfare laws.

These factors create a complex environment in which economic, cultural, and political considerations make the passage of comprehensive laws to protect farmed animals difficult at the federal and state levels, especially since many do not view them as sentient individuals but merely as property or a means of making a profit.

Sadly, passing new farmed animal protection laws—which have only been done at the state level in the last 45 years—doesn’t necessarily improve the lives of nonhuman animals. Proper enforcement of these laws is necessary to ensure they are afforded the necessary protections. Moreover, how these laws are drafted—including the specific powers given to a state agency and the instructions for that agency to carry out investigations and prosecutions—has an enormous impact on their efficacy.

We must ensure that these hard-won protections are maintained during implementation.

State-Level Farm Animal Protection Laws and Lack of Enforcement

State laws protecting farmed animals can be grouped into three main categories. Firstly, some laws set minimum standards for the care of animals on farms (such as providing food, water, shelter, and veterinary care). These laws usually grant the state authority to investigate complaints made by citizens or other agencies and differ from state cruelty laws, which often offer limited protection for farmed animals.

Secondly, laws prohibit specific conventional industry practices (such as keeping pregnant sows in small crates or housing egg-laying hens in battery cages). Thirdly,  laws prohibit the sale of products based on these practices.

A report published in July 2024 by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), a nonprofit animal advocacy organization, documents how state-level farmed animal welfare laws are minimally enforced, even though such laws are meant to improve the lives of the 10 billion farmed animals raised and killed in the U.S. each year.

As of February 2023, 44 farm animal protection laws were in place in 18 states. AWI surveyed each state to determine whether and to what degree the provisions of those laws and regulations were being enforced.

To conduct this research, AWI submitted public records requests for documents related to all enforcement activities between September 2019 and February 2023. In response, AWI received records indicating some level of enforcement for only 12 of the laws in 10 states.

Similar to what AWI documented in its 2020 report—the first-ever comprehensive analysis of the enforcement of farmed animal protections by states—the 2024 report also showed that minimum animal care standards overall had the most evidence of consistent enforcement. Ohio, New Jersey, and Indiana supplied the most extensive evidence of enforcement.

In Ohio, for instance, the state’s agriculture department investigates complaints and enforces the rules, including levying fines or seeking injunctions through the court. State records show that during the survey period, the department conducted more than 100 investigations—the most of any state—and fined multiple producers, including one penalty totaling $15,000.

Lack of Enforcement of Laws

Several states have established animal protection laws but have yet to enforce them actively. For example, at the legislature’s direction, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture adopted farmed animal care standards in 2014 (which included a prohibition on veal calf crates after 2018). Yet, the department provided AWI with no enforcement records.

In Nevada, the legislature passed a law in 2021 to “phase out battery cages and the in-state sale of eggs from caged hens.” At the time of the survey, eggs produced or sold in the state must have come from hens afforded at least one square foot of space each (with the full cage-free requirement effective January 2024), a minor yet remarkable and welcome achievement. Animal activists are right to scoff at such a paltry improvement in the lives of imprisoned hens. But seen against the long arc of nonhuman rights, it demonstrates a willingness by lawmakers—and presumably the voters they represent—to move toward more space, and thus, more personal freedom, for hens.

Yet a records officer from the Nevada Department of Agriculture informed AWI that—contrary to a legislative directive—the department leaves it up to retailers to ensure compliance. This approach to enforcement is certainly not the way to ensure that the law is being followed.

In Massachusetts, there is a ban on the sale of certain animal products where they are confined in a way that “prevent [them] from lying down, standing up, fully extending [their] limbs, or turning around freely.” The department responsible for compliance with these requirements doesn’t need to conduct routine assessments but is only required to ensure “complaint-based enforcement,” according to the AWI report.

In Oregon, there is a requirement to ensure cage-free housing for hens regardless of whether the eggs are procured from within the state or outside, but there is minimal enforcement of the compliance of these housing standards. Equally problematic is Washington’s enforcement mechanism for its battery-cage egg sales ban, which only requires distributors to attest that they understand compliance is required without needing proof.

Out of the 30 state laws or regulations banning a specific industry practice, AWI received enforcement records for only two: Ohio’s tail docking ban and Colorado’s hen housing standards. One possible reason for this lack of enforcement is that most laws do not have any “mechanism” to check compliance proactively.

“[S]ince AWI’s [2020] survey, new farmed animal protection laws and regulations have taken effect in six states, but there has not been a dramatic increase in the overall enforcement of such laws,” said Adrienne Craig, senior policy associate and staff attorney for AWI’s farmed animal program, in the July 2024 report prepared by her.

The most significant changes included sales bans in states like California and Massachusetts on animal products derived from animals confined in spaces that did not meet minimum size requirements. However, these laws have faced lengthy legal challenges, delaying implementation and enforcement. It should also be noted that while they may avoid the torture of extreme confinement, these animals will nevertheless continue to endure physical and emotional pain and suffering.

“Legislation establishing any standards for the care of animals or related to the sale of specific products must include a clear enforcement mechanism that requires the appropriate state agency to proactively ensure compliance, as well as the obligation to investigate complaints and follow up on violations,” said Craig.

Important Factors to Ensure More Ethical Food Practices

Lawmakers must consider many elements when drafting the most effective farmed animal protection laws.

Legislation establishing minimum standards for livestock care must include language clearly providing a mechanism for complaints and an obligation for the appropriate state agency to investigate and follow up. Severe violations—such as failure to seek veterinary care for injuries or causing an animal to become emaciated—need to be prosecuted and not merely left to the agency’s discretion.

The agency responsible should be required to periodically review minimum care standards to ensure they reflect the latest animal welfare science.

For sale bans, legislative bodies should direct a single responsible agency to require producers and distributors to prove compliance through on-farm inspections, which a competent third-party certifier can perform.

Fines need to be established to penalize noncompliance, and the penalties must be high enough to discourage violations rather than allow producers and retailers to treat them merely as the cost of doing business.

“We can and must reduce the vast amount of avoidable suffering that animals raised for consumption endure,” said Craig. “Lawmakers, as representatives of the people who elect them, should do what they can to ensure their communities’ ethical and moral standards are reflected in the laws and in their robust enforcement.”

It takes all of us—as consumers and voters—to play an active role. An excellent first step is knowing how the food on your dinner plate arrives there. A significant next step is to find out who your elected officials are so you can determine precisely where they stand on animal protection laws and start a conversation about how they can improve them. Across the globe, cities are launching healthy eating campaigns based on plant-based diets, and for many good reasons, vegan diets are on the rise worldwide. Plant-based alternatives not only prevent animal cruelty but are better for the environment.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life.

Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor of Earth | Food | Life.

Photo Credit: Scattare61 / Wikimedia Commons

Announcing Observatory Classics

The Observatory is pleased to announce the release of Classics.

This virtual library houses public domain books that are of cultural/historical significance to all readers, including academics/researchers, experts, and students.

Our editors have thoughtfully updated these transcribed texts to improve upon what was previously available by adding contextual and editorial notes, as well as user-friendly formatting—and they are all available for free to readers.

Observatory Classics works cover history, philosophy, cookbooks, and much more.

Please visit observatory.wiki/Classics to view the growing Observatory Classics library so far.

Sincerely,

The Observatory Editors

Read Observatory Classics:

Photo Credit: Bibliothek Wissenschaftspark Albert Einstein via Wikimedia Commons