With the changing of the guard at the White House comes the prospect of new possibilities for moving animal protection goals forward, and to mark this latest transfer of power, The HSUS and the Humane Society Legislative Fund (HSLF) are advancing a "100-Point Change Agenda for Animals."

Never before has the animal protection movement so carefully articulated a vast array of critical animal protection reforms in the domains of so many federal agencies--Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, State, and others. It is a road map for reform, and it reflects the remarkable experience and knowledge of HSUS and HSLF staff experts and government affairs specialists who developed the roster of items after years of study and work, and experience in the corridors of power where fateful decisions concerning the fate of animals are made--or not made.

The items are numbered from 1 to 100, but they reflect no order of priority. They are all important, from #1, the inclusion of chickens, turkeys, and other poultry under the standards of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, to #100, improving the work of a federal committee that validates alternatives to animal testing. Other reforms include ending the slaughter of American horses for consumption in foreign countries (#4), cracking down on abusive puppy mills (#5), transforming the USDA's Wildlife Services program into one that mitigates human-wildlife conflicts through non-lethal means (#10), halting the import of sport-hunted polar bear trophies into the United States (#23), having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate factory farms and the pollution they produce, including emissions that contribute significantly to climate change (#39), ensuring that Housing and Urban Development officials don't require tenants in public housing to subject their cats to declawing (#54), and phasing out the use of chimpanzees in invasive research and retiring these great apes to permanent sanctuaries (#74).

You'll be hearing more from The HSUS on all of these reforms, but they'd also like to hear from you. Please write to Wayne Pacelle, either by offering a comment or sending an email to blog@humanesociety.org, and tell him what you think should be the top five priorities from this list. Just send in the numbers, in no particular order, and they'll post the top vote-getters in a couple of weeks.

Source: The Humane Society of the United States

Photo Credit: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals