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Wayne Pacelle sees sunny days ahead for the historically stormy relationship between animal advocacy & the FBI
WASHINGTON D.C.––Night-and-day different visions of the FBI relationships with factory farming and animal advocacy emerged just a click apart on June 3, 2025 from Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle and Wired investigative journalist Del Cameron.
Pacelle envisioned what could be, might be, and probably will not be under the Donald Trump administration, politically indebted as it is to the animal industry-dominated “red states.”
Taking an optimistic view, Pacelle in a blog posting heralded the introduction in the House of Representatives of a pair of bills entitled the FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce Act and the Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act.
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Animal Agriculture Alliance
Cameron by contrast took an extensive look at the longstanding FBI relationship with the Animal Agriculture Alliance, which describes itself as “a nonprofit trade group representing the interests of U.S. farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, and others across America’s food supply chain.”
“Today, with Animal Wellness Action’s leadership,” Pacelle began, “U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer,” a New Jersey Democrat, “and Nicole Malliotakis,” a New York Republican, “have introduced the FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce Act — a groundbreaking measure to create a dedicated set of FBI agents to concentrate on investigating acts of cruelty and arresting perpetrators.
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Federal anti-cruelty laws need enforcement
“Our nation has a set of federal anti-cruelty laws,” Pacelle explained.
“There is the Preventing Animal Cruelty & Torture Act, the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act, the Pet & Women’s Safety Act, and others,” all gradually added as amendments to the federal Animal Welfare Act of 1970, which in turn built upon the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966.
“Dedicated FBI agents assembled into a task force at the Department of Justice,” Pacelle dreamed aloud, “would concentrate on dogfighting, cockfighting, the production and distribution of so-called ‘animal crush’ videos, and other heinous acts illegal under federal law,” as Congress presumably intended when reinforcing and expanding the Animal Welfare Act, bit by bit over more than half a century.
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Dream Team for animals
“The team envisioned by the FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce Act,” Pacelle dreamed on, “would work hand-in-hand with a team of prosecutors that would be formed with the passage of the Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act, H.R. 1477,” introduced by Representatives David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, and Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat.
“When we crack down on animal cruelty,” Pacelle argued, “we make our communities safer, because malicious acts of violence against animals are invariably tangled up with other criminal conduct, such as narcotics trafficking, domestic violence, human trafficking, and illegal firearms,” as ANIMALS 24-7 has detailed case by case for decades.
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Dogfighters & cockfighters
“The FBI has conducted a recent set of busts [of dogfighters and cockfighters],” Pacelle mentioned, “but even the folks at the FBI know that they are just scratching the surface of the problem.”
(See Former NFL player Leshon Johnson hit again for pit bull fighting and Red-faced feds ICE alleged cockfighters after ANIMALS 24-7 points finger.)
“In the indictment earlier this year of former NFL player LeShon Johnson,” Pacelle recalled, ‘FBI director Kash Patel signaled he understands the gravity of animal cruelty and its links to other crimes.
“The FBI will not tolerate criminals who harm innocent animals for their twisted form of entertainment,” Pacelle paraphrased Patel.
“He also emphasized that these cases are not isolated — that animal cruelty investigations are “a precursor to larger, organized crime efforts, similar to trafficking and homicides.”
Kash Patel. (TikTok photo)
Pacelle to Patel & Bondi: “Seize the moment!”
Finished Pacelle, “We’re urging Congress to pass both bills without delay. Or to have FBI director Patel and attorney general Pam Bondi seize the moment and create the sections on their own.”
Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollin, unfortunately, could be expected to object directly to Trump if either Patel or Bondi did any such thing.
Further, creating a division of the FBI and/or Department of Justice specifically to address cruelty to animals, urgently needed as it is, would of necessity require hiring a significant number of qualified and experienced personnel. This would be an expensive measure likely to run afoul of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, even if all of the personnel needed could be found among the federal staff who were fired earlier in 2025, but now must be rehired, according to various court decisions.
Hans Ruesch. (Beth Clifton collage)
Need to change the culture of the FBI
Apart from those political and economic obstacles to the proposed FBI Animal Cruelty Taskforce Act and Animal Cruelty Enforcement Act, there is also the necessity of transforming the culture of the FBI to view animal advocates as allies in law enforcement instead of enemies.
Since the formation of the National Society for Medical Research in 1945, founded in part to use the momentum of World War II urgency to squelch anti-vivisectionism, animal use industries have sought to persuade the FBI that animal advocates are a threat to national security.
Whether politically conservative, like the “scientific” wing of anti-vivisection advocacy led by evolution-denying fundamentalist Christians and the late author Hans Reusch (1913-2007), or “left,” like the civil rights activists turned animal rights leaders Henry Spira (1927-1998) and Tom Regan (1938-2017), or as firmly in the middle as Animal Welfare Institute founder Christine Stevens (1918-2002), whose husband Roger L. Stevens founded the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, practically anyone of animal advocacy prominence has been investigated by the FBI.
Ryan Shapiro. (Beth Clifton collage based on photo)
Ryan Shapiro files FOIAs
Ryan Shapiro, elder brother of Paul Shapiro, who directed farmed animal campaigns under Wayne Pacelle at the Humane Society of the U.S. from 2005 to 2017, has for more than 20 years filed Freedom of Information Act requests––reportedly more than 1,000 in all––seeking documentation of just who and what the FBI has been looking at within animal advocacy, and why.
In some instances, for example investigations of the multiple incarnations of the “Animal Liberation Front,” and of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty [SHAC], the motivation has been obvious: the organizations themselves have claimed credit for covert illegal actions, including arsons, break-ins, property damage, and violent threats to people working in animal industries.
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Animal Enterprise Protection Act & AETA
The Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006 [AETA] both specifically encouraged and empowered the FBI to investigate such actions, and likewise encouraged and empowered the Department of Justice to prosecute the perpetrators.
About 20 people, about 40 in all, are known to have been convicted of offenses under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and AETA.
But the vast majority of animal advocates investigated by the FBI are not known to have had anything to do with anything addressed by either the Animal Enterprise Protection Act or AETA, and if they had anything to do with anyone who did, it was as casual and fleeting as responding to an email or talking to someone met in a hallway after a speaking appearance at an animal advocacy conference.
Dell Cameron.
(DellCameron.com photo)
Dell Cameron
Dell Cameron of Wired made extensive use of the responses to Ryan Shapiro’s Freedom of Information Act requests in compiling his June 3, 2025 report “How the Farm Industry Spied on Animal Rights Activists and Pushed the FBI to Treat Them as Bioterrorists.”
“Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by Wired,” Cameron began, “reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as informants for the FBI.
“The documents,” Cameron explained, “mostly obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit Property of the People,” Ryan Shapiro’s organization, “detail a secretive and long-running collaboration between the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate and the Animal Agriculture Alliance.
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“Bioterrorism threat”
“Since at least 2018,” wrote Cameron, “documents show the Animal Agriculture Alliance has been supplying federal agents with intelligence on the activities of animal rights groups such as Direct Action Everywhere, with records of emails and meetings reflecting the industry’s broader mission to convince authorities that activists are the pre-eminent ‘bioterrorism’ threat to the United States.
“The records further show,” Cameron alleged, “that state authorities have cited protests as a reason to conceal information about disease outbreaks at factory farms from the public,” apparently even when some of those disease outbreaks might have jeopardized public health.
“Confidential documents obtained separately by Wired,” Cameron wrote, “reveal undercover operators for the Animal Agriculture Alliance embedded within [Direct Action Everywhere] fed the trade organization daily reports about protests and meetings, as well as photographs, audio recordings, and other documentation.”
From “Spy versus spy,” drawn for MAD magazine by Antonio Prohías.
(Wikipedia image)
Animal Agriculture Alliance allegedly did what FBI could not
The FBI itself could not legally undertake such surveillance without probable cause of a federal crime being underway, if only in planning, but the Animal Agriculture Alliance, or any non-governmental entity, could.
“At a regulatory conference in early 2018,” Cameron recounted, “the Animal Agriculture Alliance delivered a talk on ‘Bioterrorism and activist groups.’ Internal Animal Agriculture Alliance documents show that, within a few months, the FBI contacted the Animal Agriculture Alliance with a request.”
Quoted Cameron from an Animal Agriculture Alliance memo, “They reached out to us a few weeks ago and asked for records of activist incidents on farms. At the same meeting, members discussed their difficulty getting prosecutors to charge activists with crimes, with one industry representative saying the issue was their lack of legal standing.
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“Deploy terrorism charges instead”
“The rep suggested calling on law enforcement to deploy ‘terrorism’ charges instead—as one national pork producer had reportedly considered. The Animal Agriculture Alliance had already “been in contact with the FBI about this situation,” the notes claim.
“In an email to Wired, “ Cameron wrote, “Animal Agriculture Alliance spokesperson Emily Ellis denied the organization has a formal relationship with the FBI.”
Ellis acknowledged, however, that “In the course of our work to support a secure food system, we have occasionally communicated with authorities to flag concerns where there is a potential risk to people, animals, or critical infrastructure.”
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The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate
“The Alliance cannot speak to how law enforcement officials choose to communicate or act on information,” Ellis told Cameron. “We do not direct the actions of any government agency, and we categorically reject the suggestion that the Alliance instructs or influences the FBI or any such organization.”
Countered Cameron, “Records show that in the spring of 2019, the Animal Agriculture Alliance moved to establish a firmer connection with the FBI.
“In an email to the bureau that May, the group’s then-president and CEO, Kay Johnson Smith, noted having met with Stephen Goldsmith, a veterinarian at the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
(Brother Wolf vegan doughnuts)
What every cop fears most
“Smith then called on the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate to help the Animal Agriculture Alliance share information about Direct Action Everywhere ‘with law enforcement officials nationwide,’ claiming the group is planning an ‘extremist campaign.’”
As an alleged example of the Direct Action Everywhere “extremist” campaign, Cameron mentioned, “Smith passed along an alert about an upcoming Direct Action Everywhere protest, a march from a local police station to a nearby grocery store.”
A march from a cop house to a grocery store would not normally alarm law enforcement unless the cops perceived some risk that the marchers might eat all the doughnuts.
Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins is in charge of chickens in the Donald Trump White House. (Beth Clifton collage)
Newcastle disease
Cameron noted, however, that “The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate issued an intelligence memo roughly three months later titled ‘Animal Rights Extremists Likely Increase the Spread of Virulent Newcastle Disease [vND] in California,’ citing with ‘high confidence’ claims that violent extremists were ‘likely’ to ‘spread virulent Newcastle disease.’”
Newcastle disease is longtime menace to the poultry industry, especially in California, spread chiefly for more than 50 years by cockfighters.
“Analysts at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a multi-agency hub that supports law enforcement, soon threw cold water on the FBI’s claims,” Cameron continued.
“The agency further noted,” Cameron said, “that despite law enforcement’s claims that Direct Action Everywhere ‘almost certainly’ violated biosecurity protocols, police reports showed activists had taken ‘biosecurity precautions to prevent contamination or spread of disease.’”
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PETA accused of spreading bird flu
Also in late 2019, Cameron added, “Goldsmith’s chemical-biological countermeasure unit within the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate quietly circulated a presentation to state law enforcement officials pointing to ‘unsubstantiated reports’ that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals had played some sort of role in the 2015 avian flu outbreak—allegedly collecting ‘contaminated carcasses’ in an effort to spread the virus.
“Goldsmith had already previously dismissed a similar claim while working for the same unit four years prior,” Cameron learned.
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Chinese “swine stir-fry syndicate”
“Michael Payne, an outreach coordinator at the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security,” at the University of California Davis campus, Cameron reported, months later “issued a memo under the rural taskforce’s letterhead encouraging his ‘FBI colleagues’ to read an article translated and amplified by a Beijing-based podcast host. The article concerns a Chinese ‘swine stir-fry syndicate’ purportedly using drones to spread African swine flu in an alleged scheme to manipulate the price of pork.
“Payne suggested weaponizing the allegations,” Cameron summarized, “to achieve specific policy goals such as allowing farmers to declare livestock facilities ‘no fly zones,’” to avoid drone photography of their operations.
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Forwarded info to “slew of local sheriffs”
“Payne’s email notes that he forwarded the article to a slew of local sheriffs’ departments, as well as the state’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate office, ‘which in turn passed it on to FBI headquarters,’” Cameron said.
“Goldsmith circulated the Animal Agriculture Alliance’s tips to several FBI agents, as well as a supervising special inspector in the animal health branch of the California Department of Food & Agriculture,” Cameron detailed.
“Several federal agencies and at least 27 state and local police departments received the email. At least 10 agricultural trade groups and lobbyists were copied,” Cameron recounted.
Cameron went on to describe several other examples of Animal Agriculture Alliance efforts to persuade the FBI that animal advocates in general and Direct Action Everywhere are threats to national security.
Steve Hindi with drone.
FBI may have figured out who the real bioterrorists are––or not
Of note is that most, indeed practically all of these efforts occurred during the same many years that Steve Hindi of Showing Animals Respect & Kindness and Wayne Pacelle’s organizations, Animal Wellness Action and the allied Center for a Humane Economy, tried desperately to alert the FBI to the actual, demonstrated threat of cockfighters spreading both virulent Newcastle disease and the H5N1 avian influenza nationwide.
Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Gene Chontos photo)
The FBI, recently moving against several cockfighting operations documented by Showing Animals Respect & Kindness and Animal Wellness Action, may finally have figured out who the real bioterrorists are––and they are not drone-flying animal advocates.
But whether this is sufficient to change a culture of suspicion of animal advocacy inculcated within the FBI since midway through the tenure of founding director J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) remains to be seen.
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