Puppy mills, by definition, come up short on animal welfare, taking moral and practical shortcuts in order to churn out dogs for the pet trade - by confining animals indefinitely, breeding them every heat cycle, and denying them proper veterinary care. But the conditions our rescue...

Can horse meat find its way into the U.S. food supply? I would not be the least bit surprised if it does turn up, now that people are starting to look. The U.S. Department of Agriculture largely relies upon a self-reporting system that leaves us at the...

"What are the alternatives to using animals in medical research?" This is a legitimate question I am often asked, and now, due to scientific innovation and increasing evidence of the shortcomings of animal research, it is becoming easier to answer. A newly published scientific paper shows...

It is amazing to me how often the U.S. Congress works not only against common sense, but also contrary to the national interest. Take two trade-related issues currently being debated and deliberated upon in that body: importation of sport-hunted polar bear trophies, and the trade in nine species of large constricting...

There's never a respite for our Animal Rescue Team. Last week, the Humane Society of the United States' Animal Rescue Team helped animal control officers and local groups in Person County, N.C., save more than 130 animals from miserable conditions in a hoarding situation.

Kimberley Alboum,...

It's especially painful to see people and places that purport to help animals do precisely the opposite. That's what we discovered last week when The Humane Society of the United States' Animal Rescue Team helped the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable and Montgomery County Animal Control

Recently, I blogged about exciting news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would propose a rule requiring large-scale puppy mills and kitten mills selling pets online, by phone, or by mail to be licensed and inspected for basic standards of care. This is a reform we've been working...

Yesterday, I broke the news on MSNBC's Morning Joe that The HSUS and Burger King are jointly announcing that the world's second-largest fast food burger chain will eliminate both battery cages and gestation crates from its U.S. supply chain. According to its...

Last week, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times broke news of The Humane Society of the United States' latest undercover investigation focused on industrial agriculture -- a large-scale, battery cage facility for hens in Manheim, Pa., that produces 1.6 million eggs a day. Kristof's piece is online,...

The spring season brings familiar signs of life's renewal―birds building their nests, frogs waking from their winter hibernation, and other wild animals rearing their newborns. As you might imagine, our Cape Wildlife Center in Massachusetts―one of our three wildlife rehabilitation centers―is busy in springtime caring for young raccoons,...

It's the biggest and perhaps best-known restaurant chain in the world. And today, in a joint statement with The Humane Society of the United States, it announced its intention to get out of the business of gestation crates for breeding sows in the United States. McDonald's declared that...

The Humane Society of the United States went undercover again to record what's happening at factory farms, and yesterday we released our latest findings. We announced them at a press conference in Oklahoma City, not far from the pig production facilities we examined.

For four months while pregnant,...

The Humane Society of the United States' Animal Rescue Team has saved cats, dogs, horses, rabbits and even rats from all sorts of crises and cruelty situations. But this week's main event was a particularly exotic mission: rescuing three tigers, two leopards, three cougars, two wolf-hybrids and a...

Report Card for 2011

Executive Summary: The Obama administration had B-level scores for the first two years of the term, but earned only a C-minus from The Humane Society of the United States for its performance on animal welfare issues in 2011. The Obama administration had a...

Online shopping is a great way to buy holiday gifts, but not when it comes to getting a companion animal. In our latest undercover investigation, released today, Humane Society of the United States investigators and attorneys dug into the world of Internet puppy sellers and found not only the underlying...

While euthanasia rates for dogs and cats in our nation's animal care and control facilities have been in steady decline for more than three decades, there are still millions of healthy dogs and cats euthanized every year. We as a nation shouldn't stand for that.

There are thousands of organizations...

If I told you that pigs confined in gestation crates -- cages barely larger than the animals' bodies, in which they don't have enough space even to turn around for nearly their whole lives -- were living in "ideal" conditions where their "every need is met," you'd probably...

In the past few years in particular, The Humane Society of the United States has attacked the puppy mill problem from every angle, including working with law enforcement to shut down rogue commercial breeding operations in the United States, rescuing the dogs in distress, and drawing attention to...

In early June, The Humane Society of the United States' Animal Rescue Team deployed to Florida to help Alachua County Animal Services remove nearly 700 cats from appalling conditions, in one of the largest cat rescues in American history. We called on our partners to support...

The goal of the Humane Society of the United States is not endless campaigning or conflict with political adversaries, but to find a place where we can forge solutions that produce tangible and meaningful outcomes for animals and show a new way forward in society. And that means sitting down...