Carolyn Schnurr is a Federal Legislative Manager for the Government Relations team of The American Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Carolyn’s work involves developing strong relationships for the ASPCA in Congress and with agency officials to advance animal welfare legislation at the federal level. Carolyn has always been an animal lover, but it was through her animal-focused law school projects and time spent volunteering at a wild horse sanctuary that she was able to define her true calling. 1. What was your first experience with animals that had an impact on you? I’ve been infatuated with animals for as long as I can remember – a trait I’m confident I got from my mother. Our household had all kinds of pets growing up. We could never resist welcoming another furry member to our family. From my earliest memories I had dreams of working with animals: first I wanted to be a zookeeper, then a veterinarian, and now here I am, a federal lobbyist for animal welfare issues. 2. When, how, and why did you first get involved with the animal welfare/rights movement? There are two distinct memories that stick out in my mind as my earliest inklings that I was meant to be a part of the animal welfare movement. As part of my health class my freshman year of high school, we watched a video on food production, a segment of which showed footage of gestation crates and a mother sow desperately trying to reach her piglets through bars that separated them. I can remember the images like it was yesterday and the realization as to what those animals suffered shook me to my core. I gave up eating pork that very day. The second event was when I decided to write a high school research paper on animal testing – specifically for commercial/cosmetic purposes. I knew nothing about the issue going in and was horrified by what I learned. I specifically remember learning about the Draize eye testing done on rabbits, a procedure where product is applied to the eyes of restrained rabbits who are unable to flush the solution from their eyes, and they are then observed for days or weeks to note any damage that occurs to their eyes. The pain these testing animals experience can be immense and can go unrelieved for agonizingly long periods of time. Again, my world perspective was shaken, and I gained a whole new awareness as to vast suffering of helpless animals that I never before knew existed. 3. What are your favorite types of animal advocacy activities? Why? (i.e. lobbying, letter-writing, petitions, volunteering, protests, etc.) Being a law school graduate, and thus a bit of an academic nerd for statutory work, I love lobbying on bills and performing research for the sake of building support for animal welfare legislation. I also love working hands-on at the ground level with at-risk animals. Though I learned of the animal welfare movement early on, it was my time spent at Dreamcatcher Wild Horse and Burro Sanctuary caring for wild mustangs and horses saved from abuse/neglect cases that brought me back to the movement. I think being engaged with the animals we strive to protect helps remind people in the movement who they’re doing this for and why. 4. What animal issues are you most passionate about? That’s a difficult question. Being a lobbyist means I have to be well-versed in a variety of issues and must be able to advocate passionately and articulately on each one. I think my answer would be that I am most passionate about whichever animal issue I have the greatest ability to assist with at the time action is needed. 5. What current animal-related issue or campaign has caught your attention, and why? Through law school and my subsequent career path, I’ve gained an expertise in horse-welfare initiatives, thus I spend a lot of time working on issues such as horse slaughter and humane horse transportation. My time spent at the wild horse sanctuary has alerted me to the plight of our country’s wild mustangs in the West and the serious need for reformations in the way they are managed. There has been a lot of movement in recent years on other issues of huge importance as well, such as animal fighting, puppy mills, and farm animal welfare, and I’m also excited to help advance initiatives involving those issues. 6. How do you address animal issues within your career? I am a federal legislative manager for the ASPCA, which involves preparing information to educate the public and congressional offices about important animal welfare bills we support or want to introduce and then communicating that information to our members and meeting with congressional offices on these issues. The type of work I do is in pursuit of large-scale change that will improve animal protections nationwide. I’m thrilled to be doing this kind of animal welfare advocacy every day. 7. What advice do you have for someone looking to become a more active animal advocate? The most important thing I can say is just start somewhere! You don’t have to have it all figured out at the start. If there’s an issue that you want to learn more about, research it or see if you can do a school project on it. If you are interested in how shelters work – volunteer at one! Getting started by following your curiosity will open doors to other opportunities down the road. 8. What book, quote, photo, video, story, etc. have you found most inspiring/has inspired you? At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have to say that the book that has stuck with me the most over the years is “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss. The message transmitted through its pages is clear, powerful, and memorable. The choices we make as humans have far-reaching impacts on our planet and the animals that inhabit it. The welfare of wild animals, farm animals, and companion animals alike is inevitably affected by our human actions. I often recall, particularly on exhausting days, one of the book’s most powerful lines: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” It’s a message that I first encountered as a very young child, and it’s a motto that I truly believe helped shape the choices I made growing up and led me to the position I’m in today. And I couldn’t be happier about that.
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Kenny serves as Mercy For Animals' Chicago Campaign Coordinator, organizing events, overseeing campaigns, and coordinating volunteers and interns throughout the Windy City. Mercy For Animals is a national non-profit animal protection organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting compassionate food choices and policies. 1. What was your first experience with animals that had an impact on you? I learned at an early age that my companion animals had their own needs, interests, preferences, and personalities. In high school, when I first learned about the routine cruelties inflicted upon pigs, chickens, cows and fish, I had to withdraw my support. I wouldn’t pay others to mutilate, confine, and slaughter cats and dogs, so I couldn’t justify paying others to abuse and kill farmed animals, who are every bit as capable of experiencing pain, suffering, joy and other emotions as my companion animals. 2. When, how, and why did you first get involved with the animal welfare/rights movement? Shortly after going vegan in 2007, I saw the documentary Earthlings. The next day I began thinking about how I could raise awareness and inspire others to choose compassion over cruelty. Since then, I've been fortunate to intern, volunteer, and work for fantastic organizations effectively working to prevent cruelty to farmed animals. 3. What are your favorite types of animal advocacy activities? Why? (i.e. lobbying, letter-writing, petitions, volunteering, protests, etc.) The power of leafleting and its benefits for animals cannot be overestimated. Leafleting is effective on a number of fronts, making it one of MFA's core strategies for promoting cruelty-free food choices. Leafleting is great because you don’t need a large group of people or extensive advance planning. If you spend only two or three hours a month on leafleting, you can easily hand out as many as 500 or more leaflets. If you conservatively estimate that one in every 100 people you leaflet is eventually compelled to go vegetarian, you've inspired five new vegetarians or vegans in that month alone. Paid-Per-View is a new campaign whereby we invite people to watch a 4-minute segment of the 12-minute, eye-opening MFA documentary Farm to Fridge, and afterwards they receive a dollar. After watching only a few minutes of how animals are treated on modern farms, hatcheries and in slaughterhouses, many people walk away swearing never to eat animals again. Click here for info on how you can organize a Paid-Per-View event in your area. 4. What animal issues are you most passionate about? I’m most passionate about farmed animal advocacy. Since over 95% of the cruelty to animals in the United States occurs at the hands of the meat, dairy, and egg industries, which confine, mutilate, and slaughter over 9 billion land animals each year, the standard American diet is the leading root cause of animal abuse. We can choose kindness over cruelty every time we eat, and inspire others to do so as well. 5. What current animal-related issue or campaign has caught your attention, and why? Currently five states – Minnesota, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa and New York – are pursuing whistleblower suppression bills, which would make it a crime to take pictures or record video at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Video footage is the most powerful tool the animal protection movement has to expose the plight of farmed animals. People have a right to know where their food comes from and farmed animals have a right to have their stories told. 6. How do you address animal issues within your career? Mercy For Animals works to be a voice for farmed animals through effective and results-driven campaigns. Our groundbreaking undercover investigations into factory farms and slaughterhouses have resulted in corporate animal welfare policy reforms, criminal prosecutions, and mainstream news coverage, and have influenced countless consumers to choose compassion over cruelty every time they eat. Mercy For Animals distributes hundreds of thousands of pro-veg booklets and gives presentations to thousands of students – effectively raising awareness about factory farming and veganism on a grassroots level. And every year, MFA exposes millions to the plights of farmed animals with powerful bus, billboard, magazine, web, and TV ads. 7. What advice do you have for someone looking to become a more active animal advocate? There are limitless ways to get active for animals, and here are a few ideas to get you started:
8. What book, quote, photo, video, story, etc. have you found most inspiring/has inspired you? I’ve witnessed firsthand the powerful impact MFA’s short documentary Farm to Fridge can have on inspiring people to switch to a vegetarian diet. I’ve seen dozens of people cry, writhe in shock, and promise to begin making choices toward a vegan diet after seeing the video. At one festival, many Farm to Fridge viewers afterward would ask us what they could eat, and we ended up sending dozens of festival-goers over to the all-vegan food booth for lunch! As a movement, this film is one of our most powerful tools to effect change for animals. Fred Barton is the Director of the Learning Resources Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures at Michigan State University. His interest in animal rights goes back to his parents who were always bringing animals home from the pound, and really took off after he adopted his first rescued racing greyhound. Michigan Retired Greyhounds As Pets Resources REGAP Website: http://rescuedgreyhounds.com/ REGAP on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MI.REGAP 1. What was your first experience with animals that had an impact on you? We always had animals when I was growing up, usually more than one. I still remember the first dog I was old enough to take for walks. It was a Border Collie named Tippy and I weighed only about ten pounds more than him at the time. Animals, particularly dogs, have just always been a part of my life and having them around just seems normal to me. 2. When, how, and why did you first get involved with the animal welfare/rights movement? I started volunteering with greyhound rescue groups shortly after adopting my first greyhound, Perry in 1995. 3. What are your favorite types of animal advocacy activities? Why? (i.e. lobbying, letter-writing, petitions, volunteering, protests, etc.) As chair of the Advocacy Committee for Michigan REGAP most of my duties these days involve researching issues related to greyhound racing for use in advocacy materials, reports and media information packets. I do still enjoy “getting out of the office” occasionally though, and recently participated in a protest of the Skechers Superbowl ad at a local mall. I also enjoy engaging industry representatives in the comments section of newspaper articles and in comments on blogs. 4. What animal issues are you most passionate about? Ending greyhound racing, of course, but I’m also concerned with animal experimentation, CAFO’s and spay neuter issues. 5. What current animal-related issue or campaign has caught your attention, and why? Currently the Skechers Superbowl ad is front and center both here in Michigan and nationally. This Saturday (January 28) Grey2k has called for a national day of protest. Over 110,000 people have signed a petition asking Skechers to kill the ad, and protests are taking place in front of Skechers stores all over the country. 6. How do you address animal issues within your career? I teach a Service Learning class at MSU. We have done service projects with Humane Societies, local animal control offices, and various breed rescue groups over the years. 7. What advice do you have for someone looking to become a more active animal advocate? The opportunities for advocacy are much more open and varied today. The internet can bring stories related to animal rights issues right into your home from anywhere in the world, and online commenting can allow for letters to the editor, or comments on news stories in just about any publication around the planet. It is much easier to stay informed and to participate in the ongoing conversation today than it ever was. 8. What book, quote, photo, video, story, etc. have you found most inspiring/has inspired you? Two books have shaped my thinking. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer and Domination: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Skully. I consider them to be must reads by anyone serious about helping animals. |
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To feature prominent as well as lesser-known animal advocates in order to a provide a resource for those interested in learning about current advocacy activities and how one can get more involved in the animal protection movement. |