Earlier this week, law enforcement officers from the Umatilla County Sheriff’s office in Oregon were called to a home because a pet chimpanzee attacked a woman who subsequently locked herself in a bedroom. The woman’s mother instructed deputies to shoot and kill the chimpanzee so that emergency...

This year for Thanksgiving, I’m in Texas at our expansive animal sanctuary, Black Beauty Ranch. Founded in 1979, Black Beauty Ranch is home to nearly 650 rescued animals. Some came from slaughterhouses or research laboratories or cases of extreme neglect. Others came from  roadside zoos or were...

In Arizona, a woman’s marmoset monkey attacked her newborn grandchild, scratching and biting the baby’s face and splitting open one nostril. In New York, a neighbor’s pet capuchin monkey bit off a 22-month-old girl’s finger when the child stuck her fingers through a backyard fence. In Tennessee, an...

A backyard breeder of primates who has been on our radar for years was in the news this week for an incident that defies all common sense. Michael Poggi, who runs his operation from his home in Florida, charged a man $150 in August for a “full contact experience” with an adult leopard in his...

Maryland has a groundbreaking new tool to help the state transition away from animal experiments. This week, Gov. Wes Moore signed HB 626/SB 560 into law, making Maryland the first state to require that animal laboratories contribute to a research fund that will be used to provide grants for...

A decade ago, our undercover investigation delved into the bizarre world of Joseph Maldonado-Passage (aka Joe Exotic) and his roadside zoo, GW Exotics. For years, Joe and his band of untrained workers kept hundreds of big cats and other wild animals in captivity in barren conditions, bred them to...

In recent years, our nation has witnessed an epidemic of people acquiring exotic wildlife as pets. Wild animals, including lions, tigers, bears, chimpanzees, monkeys, venomous snakes, alligators and other dangerous species are readily available from breeders and even over the Internet. In private...

With Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature earlier this month, New York became the 10 th state in the U.S. to prevent the sale of cosmetics that have been newly tested on animals. This represents just the latest gain in a worldwide movement to end cosmetics animal testing on animals. Worldwide, we’re up to...

We’re pushing back hard against plans to fund expanded reliance on monkeys in experiments in the U.S., plans that would see even more of these intelligent, curious animals used in outdated and unreliable tests, often at taxpayer expense.   

Fewer animals will suffer in experiments in California laboratories thanks to a bill sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on Sunday. AB 357 was authored by Assemblymember Brian Maienschein, D-San Diego, and received wide bipartisan support...

A company called “Safer Human Medicine” is proposing to build a monkey breeding warehouse in the small town of Bainbridge, Georgia. At full capacity, the proposed facility, at a significant cost to taxpayers, would be the largest in the U.S., holding up to 30,000 long-tailed macaques bred for...

One of the most remarkable things about saving animals is what happens after the drama of their rescues is over: They begin to experience the daily pleasures they deserve, like having fields of fresh grass to lie on, rather than cement or metal bars. There was nothing quite like the unbridled joy...

This week, we presented the Russell & Burch Award to Dr. Donald Ingber, a professor at Harvard University and the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. Dr. Ingber is one of the pioneers behind the development of organ-on-a-chip technology, which is...

This past year has been a mixed one for animals under President Donald Trump. On the one hand we’ve seen federal agencies take steps to improve the fortunes of animals used in testing and the wild horses and burros on our public ranges, and also to end breed discrimination of companion animals. On...

The United States is one of the world’s largest destinations for illegal wildlife products. Each year, traffickers smuggle in millions of dollars’ worth of items from poached animals, including shark fins, pangolin scales, ivory trinkets, animal trophies, and live animals like monkeys, parrots and...

The Department of Transportation has just finalized a rule that prohibits airlines from banning pit-bull-type dogs and certain other breeds from serving as service animals on flights. The Humane Society family of organizations has long opposed breed bans because they are unscientific and...

Vietnam’s prime minister has issued a directive that will ban most wildlife imports into the country and crack down on the illegal wildlife trade there. The directive from Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, which will go into effect immediately, comes in response to concerns about the reported close...

In an era defined by scientific and technological innovation, testing drugs on dogs, rats, monkeys and other animals is not only becoming increasingly outdated but causes immense animal suffering. Despite publicly indicating a commitment to non-animal test methods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulations and guidance documents for pharmaceutical companies are unclear and continue to emphasize the use of animals for drug testing. There is evidence that some companies believe testing on animals is legally required as part of the drug approval process.

Our Animal Research Issues Department is headed by Kathleen Conlee who has devoted the past two decades of her life to this work. But before she became an avid animal protection advocate she worked at a breeding facility that supplied primates for research. Recently we released a video of Katie...