We are thrilled to announce the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) has awarded White Coat Waste Project the 2020 Pollie Award for Public Affairs Campaign of the Year!

The Pollie Award is widely recognized as the campaign industry’s highest honor. Esquire magazine has dubbed the Pollies “…the Oscars of political advertising.” Out of over 300 AAPC awards given out this year, we’re one of only nine Campaign Excellence Award winners.

Five WCW accomplishments in particular took AAPC’s notice:

• • Ending the EPA’s animal testing program: We exposed how the Environmental Protection Agency spends millions annually to kill 20,000+ mammals: bunnies forced to inhale diesel exhaust fumes, pregnant moms blasted with loud noises, babies forced to eat lard and receive electric shocks. This led to the first time in history that a federal agency set a plan to cut all taxpayer-funded experiments.
  • Putting a stop to the USDA’s “kitten slaughterhouse”: WCW first exposed how the U.S. Department of Agriculture secretly bred, killed, and incinerated thousands of kittens in 50-year-old experiments at a cost of $22 million. After 11 months of campaigning and work with Congress, we ended the program, retired the survivors, and the USDA announced it wouldn’t implement any future cat labs.
  • Cutting federal dog testing to its lowest levels: For decades, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs drilled holes in puppies’ skulls, forced them to run on treadmills, induced heart attacks, and killed them. Following WCW’s investigation, lobbying, and grassroots campaign, the VA ended 75% of its labs—and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration phased out 100% of their painful dog labs.
  • Curbing government monkey business: For the first time in history a federal agency received a hard deadline to cut primate testing when President Trump signed the 2020 federal spending bill, subsequent to WCW’s campaign. This bill included our language demanding a timeline for the VA and FDA to phase out primate tests, and the National Institutes of Health to reduce primate labs.
  • Retiring lab survivors: Federal agencies didn’t allow taxpayers and sanctuaries to adopt dogs, cats, primates and other animals who survive government experiments. Taxpayers “bought them”—and we launched a campaign to reform adoption policy and make Uncle Sam “give them back.” WCW successfully enacted agency-wide policies at the FDA, NIH, and VA to retire survivors. We also worked with influential lawmakers in the House and Senate to introduce first-ever federal retirement legislation—called the Animal Freedom from Testing, Experiments, and Research Act, or the AFTER Act.
    
    

It’s been said that cutting spending is the most difficult thing to do in Washington.  That’s precisely what WCW works to accomplish, working across the aisle with members of Congress from both parties.

At $20 billion annually, the federal government, not the private sector, is the world’s largest funder of animal testing. Instead of advocating for new regulations to improve animal welfare in labs, WCW attacks wasteful spending that subsidizes the abuse in the first place.

We are honored to be recognized by AAPC for our work.

Join our fight to end wasteful government spending on animal experiments by urging the U.S. government to defund ALL primate experiments.