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Animal Wellness Action Endorses Rep. Nancy Mace for Congress
Today, Animal Wellness Action, a Washington, D.C. non-profit focused on promoting legal standards to halt cruelty and to enforce those laws, formally endorsed U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., for re-election to the First Congressional District against Annie Andrews.
“We are proud to endorse Nancy Mace for Congress and applaud her tireless work for animals, and the great people of the First District,” said Marty Irby, executive director at Animal Wellness Action. “If you recognize our moral responsibility to animals and you want to root out animal cruelty, you’ve got no better lawmaker in the nation than Rep. Nancy Mace.”
Nancy Mace is leading on at least five federal animal protection and sustainable agriculture measures in the U.S. House:
- Mace is working to stop needless, costly, and inhumane animal testing. She joined Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Virg., Buddy Carter, R-Ga., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., along with Senators Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., in leading the charge to pass the FDA Modernization Act, H.R. 2565, that would end animal testing mandates at the FDA by amending the 1938 statute – a Depression-era requirement for animal testing for all new drug development protocols and allow for alternative methods when validated. The FDA Modernization Act passed the House as an amendment to a larger FDA reform bill, H.R. 7667. At the end of September, the U.S. Senate passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0.
- Mace is coauthor of a measure to ban mink farming, which is an export industry with nearly all of the pelts sold to China and the number one zoonotic disease threat when it comes to spawning COVID-19 variants. It makes little sense to keep afloat a dying, subsidized mink industry that threatens human and wildlife health for a luxury fashion item. It is entirely an export market, with nearly all pelts sold to high-end consumers in China. China’s elites get the coats and they outsource the viral risk to our homeland. Mace shepherded an amendment that mirrors the stand-alone bill to passage in the U.S. House in February.
- Mace led a letter to the U.S. Postal Service Inspector calling on the Inspector to crackdown against illegal animal fighting shipments to Guam and other countries throughout the world. Dogfighting and cockfighting, are often bound up with illegal gambling, narcotics trafficking, and human-on-humane violence.
- Mace is the coauthor of the Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, H.R. 4291/S. 2861, with Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., and Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would help bring transparency and accountability to the USDA’s Commodity Checkoff Programs. Mace is also the coauthor of the Pigs In Gestation Stalls (PIGS) Act, H.R. 7004, with Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Tex., that would stop extreme confinement of breeding sows and at least allow these animals to lie down, stand up, and turn around in their enclosures.
Nancy Mace has cosponsored a broad range of other important reforms:
- Mace cosponsored the Big Cat Public Safety Act, that would bar private citizens from keeping dangerous carnivores like lions and tigers in our communities;
- Mace cosponsored the Bear Protection Act to combat poaching of bears for their gall bladders;
- Mace cosponsored the Greyhound Protection Act that would wipe out the last remaining tracks operating in the U.S;
- Mace cosponsored the PREPARED Act that would help both animals and pet owners in times of crisis like Hurricane Florence that brough widespread flooding to the Palmetto State in 2018;
- Mace cosponsored the Animal Cruelty Enforcement (ACE) Act that would create an Animal Cruelty Crimes Unit at the U.S. Dept. of Justice;
- Mace cosponsored the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act that would ban the trade in shark fins in the U.S.;
- Mace cosponsored two bills that would better protect our iconic American equines: the SAFE Act that would permanently outlaw horse slaughter on U.S. soil and the PAST Act that would help end the soring of Tennessee Walking, Racking, and Spotted Saddle Horses.
In addition Mace invited Animal Wellness Action to join her in South Carolina on an expedition geared at exposing animal-testing-related cruelty on Monkey Island near Beaufort, and Mace has appeared in numerous videos on animal issues with AWA leaders here, here, here, here