Rep. Sam Farr Honored for Animal Advocacy Work
In honor of his work for animals on Capitol Hill, PETA presented California Rep. Sam Farr with our Humanitarian Award at a ceremony yesterday in Monterey, California. Fellow animal advocate and Californian Kevin Nealon helped present the award.
Throughout his career of more than 20 years in Congress, Rep. Farr has been a voice against cruelty to animals and for government accountability as it relates to the treatment of animals. He has stated that a legislator’s job is to be “the voice of all living things.”
In the 90s, Rep. Farr was the first member of Congress to initiate efforts to ban the use of elephants in the circus and for elephant rides, and he continues to advocate on this issue today. When he introduced his 1999 bill, he told his colleagues in Congress, “The problem is that we have to break the will of wild beasts, big beasts that are 10 feet tall, weigh several tons, in order for them to perform stunts at circuses. They use high-powered electric prods. They tie them up.”
At the award ceremony, Nealon, a longtime animal advocate, told Rep. Farr, “Ringling’s recent announcement that it will end its use of elephants by 2018 is due in large part to your work on Capitol Hill to ban the use of elephants for rides and traveling shows.”
Rep. Farr has introduced and vocally supported bills to stop “canned” hunts, retire chimpanzees from laboratories, ban the use of cruel steel-jawed traps, stop animal fighting rings, prohibit “crush” pornography, ban horse slaughter, curtail the big-cat trade, and stop the shooting of animals in military training drills. He also recently supported efforts to end the National Institutes of Health’s maternal deprivation experiments on infant monkeys and helped introduce legislation to protect mice and rats in laboratories.
PETA is proud to recognize Rep. Farr’s important achievements for animals.
Note: PETA supports animal rights and opposes all forms of animal exploitation and educates the public on those issues. PETA does not directly or indirectly participate or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office or any political party.
