There is a number that should stop anyone who encounters it: more than six million. That is the number of mother pigs in the United States currently confined in gestation crates — metal enclosures approximately two feet wide, so small that the animals inside them cannot turn around, cannot take more than a step forward
The world of big cat rescue rarely offers moments of uncomplicated joy. Most of the stories that animal welfare organizations follow across years of field work, legal battles, and diplomatic negotiations are defined by what was taken from these animals before they arrived at safety — by the decades of confinement, the trauma of isolation,
Okha Has Been Waiting 56 Years for Someone to Free Her. She Is Still Waiting. Read More »
Animals & Wildlife Welfare, SAN NewsThere are moments when a single animal’s story becomes the clearest possible window into a system of cruelty that the public has been conditioned, over generations, not to see. Okha is one of those animals, and her story is one of those windows. She is 56 years old. She was born in India in 1970.
In March 2026, after seven years of legal battles that should not have been necessary, the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division issued a ruling that animal welfare advocates in New York City had been waiting for since 2019: the city can enforce its ban on the sale of foie gras. The court found
A Horse Died. Then a Teenager Died. New York City Has Run Out of Excuses. Read More »
Animals & Wildlife Welfare, SAN NewsThere is a word for what happens when the same danger produces the same kind of tragedy, again and again, and the people with the power to end it choose not to act. The word is negligence. And in the case of New York City’s horse-drawn carriage industry, it is the only honest word left.
There is an argument that gets made quietly, in shelters and sanctuaries and research institutions, that almost never makes it into mainstream conversation with the clarity it deserves: that the mass breeding of animals — domestic pets, captive wildlife, and livestock — is one of the most consequential and underexamined drivers of animal suffering on
Juju, Drako, and Eve Died on a Chain. Countless Others Are Still Living That Way. Read More »
Animals & Wildlife Welfare, SAN NewsTheir names were Juju, Drako, and Eve. PETA fieldworkers found their remains on a property in conditions that told the whole story without a single word needing to be spoken. Three dogs. Three lives spent confined, isolated, and ultimately lost to the cruelty of a chain. Their owner, Tanakia Peele, was convicted and sentenced to
The American criminal justice system loves a clean narrative, and one of the tidiest stories it has told for decades is this: some states have parole, and some states do not. The implication is clear — states that “abolished” parole are tougher, more serious about accountability, more committed to making people serve the sentences courts
The Climate Crisis Is Accelerating: Everything You Need to Know Right Now Read More »
Climate, SAN NewsThe summer of 2026 is not a theoretical warning about what climate change might eventually look like. It is the warning made real, playing out in real time across three continents, in meteorological data, in hospital emergency rooms overwhelmed by heat casualties, in wildfire smoke columns visible from space, and in the quiet arithmetic of
On June 4, 2026, the Washington State Board of Health met in Spokane and made a decision that animal welfare advocates and public health campaigners are calling a serious failure of institutional accountability. By a unanimous vote, the board rejected a rulemaking petition that would have required primate research laboratories in Washington to report transmissible