ANIMAL WELFARE DISASTER! DO NOT APPOINT TOM VILSACK TO SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE!

  • by: Barbara Lovett
  • recipient: President Joe Biden; United States Senate

Tom Vilsack is not the reformer needed for the USDA. While Secretary of the USDA from 2009 to 2017, Vilsack did nothing to correct serious failures of the USDA to effectively administer the purpose and intent of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) or enforce minimum standards to protect animal welfare, identified in multiple USDA Office of Inspector General Reports (1992, 1995, 2010), including incomplete and insufficient inspections, failure to require AWA minimum standard compliance prior to license renewals, failure to take enforcement action against chronic violators, and failure to even ensure license holders were not convicted animal abusers or employing convicted animal abusers. He consistently prioritized businesses who exploited animals over fair and just action to stop flagrant mistreatment of them.

Circus and zoo animals have suffered terribly for years because of this non-action, leading to poor care and mistreatment by lackadaisical owners. Vilsack filled his department with pro-hunters and pro-captive individuals who followed the powerful hunting and circus/zoo lobbies, allowed fewer inspections of facilities and self-governance of many, which led to poorer conditions for the animals.

While serving under Obama, USDA head Vilsack allowed Ringling Brothers to force arthritic elephants to perform, allowed "Joe Exotic" (of "Tiger King") to run his filthy and abusive baby tiger shows and sales, and ignored laboratories keeping highly social monkeys in solitary confinement. He allowed Nosey the elephant and other circus elephants to languish in poor physical and psychological condition as his inspectors continually found nothing wrong with their circumstances, in spite of clear evidence sent to the contrary and a massive outcry from the public. Nosey had to be confiscated by a local animal control officer in order to be sent to sanctuary after 30 years of abuse and neglect, something USDA inspectors were well aware of as testified in their inadequate and infrequent "inspections".

We require a leader who will show transparency and a willingness to make change, not a known enabler of the dairy industry and of Big Ag.

Under his previous tenure, Vilsack also:
• Prioritized the needs of the deadly meat and dairy industries; he currently sits on the US Dairy Export Council.
• Defended the use of "pink slime," which is leftover flesh from slaughtered cows, as a potential food source.
• Failed to enforce laws which required the humane slaughter of animals, and allowed known animal abusers within slaughterhouses to escape prosecution;
• Moved forward with removing food safety inspectors from bird-killing slaughterhouses and implemented higher speed of production, causing even more stress and pain for imprisoned chickens, as well as putting slaughterhouse employees at increased risk of injury;
• Admitted that some days in his position he had "nothing to do," in a time when food scarcity and environmental collapse had already become very real threats to the country.
Many have also criticized Vilsack for his actions against Black farmers, his devastating civil rights record and his inaction on climate justice.

Nosey the elephant, chickens and cows in slaughterhouses, tigers in a roadside zoo, and puppies in a puppy mill should not have to suffer because of poor leadership at the USDA.

President Biden and Senators, we are calling on you to appoint a Secretary of the USDA who will fight for us as consumers and fight for the lives of innocent animals every day. We need an agent of change who will not turn a blind eye and go home when so many are suffering. PLEASE DO NOT APPOINT TOM VILSACK TO USDA SECRETARY.

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