2025 Animal Year in Review: Policy Shifts, Global Labels, and Rising Scrutiny of Exploitation

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.

America’s Wild Horses & Burros in Crisis

A recent UnchainedTV emergency town hall spotlighted the growing crisis facing America’s wild horses and burros. Through the Humane Party’s ethical and abolitionist lens, this article examines how federal management practices, land-use policy, and transparency failures intersect to shape the fate of these legally protected herds—and what their struggle reveals about governance, stewardship, and the treatment of vulnerable beings.