where science and ethics intersect with politics
Every January, millions of people worldwide take part in Veganuary, a month-long invitation to explore vegan living. What begins as a simple dietary shift often sparks deeper reflection on animal ethics, environmental responsibility, and the power of collective action to drive lasting change.
As the year draws to a close, The Humane Herald reflects on a year marked by ethical clarity, resistance to euphemism, and the refusal to look away from interconnected crises facing humans, nonhuman animals, and the planet. Standing at the threshold of a new year, this piece calls readers forward—not with false optimism, but with disciplined hope, moral courage, and a commitment to compassion rooted in truth.
Legal scholar and policy strategist James Schultz reflects on veganism, justice, and animal liberation—examining how law, moral consistency, and collective responsibility shape a more just future.
Christmas Day is often framed as a season of peace, goodwill, and generosity—but those ideals are not automatic. This reflection explores what it means to practice compassion beyond tradition, and why peace remains a choice we must make, deliberately and daily.
As the winter solstice approaches, Yule’s ancient themes of renewal and protection take on renewed relevance in a time of ecological instability. Across cultures, this season has long emphasized safeguarding the vulnerable through the harshest months. Today, that ethos aligns with urgent ethical concerns—from wildlife protections to climate-driven disruptions. This feature explores how Yule’s historical roots in stewardship intersect with modern animal rights, environmental responsibility, and the Humane Party’s commitment to ethical realism.
When a New York Assembly seat opened unexpectedly, the outcome was settled long before voters had a say. The loss of the state’s only vegan legislator reveals how special election rules and party-controlled processes can quietly erase ethical representation — even in districts that once elected it.
Mid-December marks the peak of America’s most waste-intensive season — a surge in trash, factory-farming output, and environmental harm often hidden behind holiday cheer. Ethical gifting offers a way to resist the cycle and align the season with compassion, sustainability, and planetary reality.
When a fierce desert storm threatened every creature underground, it was the gentle, misunderstood tarantula who held the earth together with silk and courage.
From global food labels to wild-horse roundups, 2025 pushed animal issues into the center of climate, policy, and public-health debates. New transparency laws, plant-based investment, companion-animal protections, and growing scrutiny of industrial livestock marked a year in which governments could no longer ignore the ethical and environmental costs of animal exploitation.
On December 7, America remembers Pearl Harbor—but remembrance means more than ritual. The Humane Herald examines the war’s true cost: human suffering, environmental devastation, emergency powers, and the birth of a militarized state. To honor history, we must confront the systems that make war inevitable—and choose a humane alternative.
Democrats’ recent attempt to brand their proposal as the “Abolition Amendment” obscures the term’s established meaning and appropriates language created by the Humane Party years earlier. While removing the 13th Amendment’s punishment clause is necessary, it is not abolition — not when the slavery of non-human beings remains fully intact. By co-opting a name that already denotes the complete end of slavery for all creatures, the proposal risks misleading the public and diluting a central pillar of the animal rights movement.
Lancaster Farm Sanctuary is reshaping what sanctuary work means inside one of Pennsylvania’s most agriculturally entrenched counties. In this in-depth conversation, the LFS team reflects on their origins, the daily rituals that center animal agency, the emotional weight of rescue work, and the communities that make their mission possible. From piglets teaching elders how to play to ponies who insist on freedom during their evening return, every story underscores the same truth: when animals are given safety, autonomy, and respect, they reveal who they have always been. This interview offers a rare, honest look at the joys and struggles of sanctuary life—and what compassion can build when a community chooses to care.
Animal rescuer Zoe Rosenberg faces a 90-day jail sentence — and potentially life-threatening medical neglect — for saving four suffering chickens from a Perdue slaughterhouse. Her case exposes a deeper crisis in California: the criminalization of compassion and the protection of corporate cruelty at any cost.
On World Wildlife Conservation Day and International Cheetah Day, The Humane Herald examines the crisis facing cheetahs and the global systems driving wildlife decline. Beyond charismatic species, true conservation demands dismantling the industries and worldviews that treat animals as resources rather than beings with rights.
A leader who kills a puppy and then proudly markets the story is not an anomaly — she is a symptom of a political culture that confuses cruelty with strength. The Kristi Noem scandal is not about a single dog; it is a mirror held up to America’s comfort with harm, hierarchy, and disposability.
A growing movement is calling for a full consumer blackout over Black Friday weekend—urging people to skip the sales and resist the hyper-capitalist pressure to buy. The blackout shines a light on exploitative labor, environmental damage, psychological manipulation, and the animal suffering embedded in the holiday retail spike. Through the Humane Party lens, it’s an act of ethical realism: choosing not to feed a system built on harm.
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