Animal Welfare Institute

About Me

Since its founding in 1951 the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has sought to reduce the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by people. In the organization’s early years our particular emphasis was on the desperate needs of animals used for experimentation. In the decades that followed we expanded the scope of our work to address many other areas of animal suffering. Today one of our greatest areas of emphasis is cruel animal factories, which raise and slaughter pigs, cows, chickens and other animals. The biggest are in our country, and they are expanding worldwide. Another major AWI effort is our quest to end the torture inflicted on furbearing animals by steel jaw leghold traps and wire snares. AWI continues its work to protect animals in laboratories including promotion of development of non-animal testing methods and prevention of painful experiments on animals by high school students. AWI began and is leading the national campaign to end horse slaughter in the US through passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. AWI also led efforts in Illinois for the first ever legislative ban on horse slaughter by a state in the US.

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