Talk:List of animal welfare organizations

Animal rights vs. animal welfare
There are important differences between animal rights and animal welfare (see discussion on AW page). I don't think the two types of groups should have been merged. Rosemary Amey 18:56, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

--wayland 11:40, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree. These two lists shouldn't have been merged. Also, merging them has caused the need for explanation at the head of the page to say what the difference is between them. A similar explanation is already on both the "animal welfare" and the "animal rights" pages so this is not only duplication but triplication.


 * I only just saw these comments, nearly two years after the fact! Don't let anyone say we're unresponsive. ;-D


 * I've split the lists into animal welfare, on the one hand, and animal rights on the other, as the two are indeed very different and often work in direct opposition to one another. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi 2A02:CE0:2801:D6B:6DB7:8000:6847:978D (talk) 15:29, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

mystery groups
I deleted one group that wasn't googleable, and one that is --


 * Wah Yan College Cats

There is a web page but it loads very slowly. I think it is probably a student organization from one of the Wah Yan Colleges, but I don't read Chinese so I'm not certain. While I don't want to discourage any nascent animal welfare, I think we also need to keep this page encyclopedic. So please, if you know something about the Wah Yan College Cats, create that page & document it.--Jaibe 19:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

A few more links to Animal welfare groups.
Hi, I added a few more links to this page, the list of animal welfare groups, including internal links as well as links to their websites.Beakymouse (talk) 00:27, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I removed the external links, leaving just links to resources on how to find groups. Rockpock  e  t  00:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Group Comparisons?
I'd like to find information on the relative effectiveness of each group and at least a general breakdown of how their contributions are spent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.165.20 (talk) 04:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

'Anti-vivisection' groups
'Vivisection' is a loaded term that animal rights activists use to attack animal research. If you look at some of the 'anti-vivisection' groups in the animal welfare list, they include ones like the National Anti-Vivisection Society, which includes answers like this one on their FAQ:

"It can be argued that no animal used in research is treated humanely, simply because they are forced to live in an artificial environment. These “laboratory” animals have been forever denied their ability to live their lives as nature intended, whether in the wild, as in the case of monkeys and chimpanzees, or in a home, as in the case of cats, dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs. . ."

http://www.navs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=answers663b

Putting the incoherence of the idea that 'nature intended' for some animals to be domesticated and put into houses aside, for the claim that animals should be returned to the wild to be an animal welfare claim requires that animals would be better off with its concomitant exposure to disease, starvation, parasitism, etc. I think it is much more likely that an animal rights group has inserted themselves into this list as an attempt at outreach, and that they should be moved or removed, as appropriate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.160.168.250 (talk) 02:56, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Definition of "animal welfare" seems misleading?
I think it could be argued that many of the animal welfare organisations in this list are specifically opposed to "the responsible use of animals to satisfy certain human needs" and I certainly don't hear any animal welfare organisations arguing for the responsible use of lions, tigers or bats, except in the context of a wider remit to try and support responsible ecotourism. I'm also concerned about the inclusion in this list of a wildfowling organisation such as Ducks Unlimited; this is a conservation group at best, not an organisation dedicated to animal welfare, and the shooting of wildfowl is primarily viewed as a sport by members of this organisation (motto: "Conservation Today, Wetlands For Tomorrow") and not as a means of keeping bird populations in check to the benefit of other wildlife. Only one organisation in this list would conceivably support the taking of animal lives (Compassion in World Farming) and yet the definition seems to suggest otherwise. N Withnall (talk) 20:14, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Introduction section
I completely agree with N. Withnall that the definition of animal welfare groups is misleading. I know of no animal welfare group that advocates the use of animals for medical research, sport, etc.

This is the current content of the introduction section: "Animal welfare groups endorse the responsible use of animals to satisfy certain human needs. These range from companionship and sport, to uses which involve the taking of life, such as for food, clothing and medical research. Animal welfare means ensuring that all animals used by humans have their basic needs fulfilled in terms of food, shelter and health, and that they experience no unnecessary suffering in providing for human needs. Unlike animal rights groups, animal welfare groups do not argue that animals should never be used, or kept as property, by human beings. Nor do any animal welfare groups advocate violence. These groups tend to seek legal, social and financial strategies.

"The following is a list of animal welfare groups. These must not include more advanced animal rights groups, such as PETA or The Humane Society of the United States. For animal rights, see the list of animal rights groups. Note that more comprehensive listings (over 17,000 groups) are available via the World Animal Net directory (see external links below)."

I note that there is no definition or introduction at all in the List of animal rights groups.

I think all that needs to be done is to mention that there is a distinction between the two lists. Here's my take on it:

An animal welfare group is concerned with the health, safety and psychological wellness of animals. It may be an animal rescue group which helps individual animals in distress.

The category is distinct from an animal rights group. Although some groups may belong to both categories, an animal rights group goes beyond the welfare of individual animals to advocate for the rights of animals to be treated in a certain way, such as not to be abused, or used for medical research, sport, food, or clothing.

I'm confident enough in the change to go ahead and do it. Always open to feedback and discussion.

Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 06:52, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

"See also" section
Right now the "see also" section has a link to the animal portal and the list portal. I went to both links and don't see them as helpful to readers interested in animal welfare groups. I'm going to add instead links to the articles of animal rights group and animal rescue group, which are more pertinent.

In case anyone is very attached to the portals I'm deleting, the code for it is this (oh well, you can't see it but I can retrieve it here if need be).

Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 07:26, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Categories for location and type of animal served
I think the list would have more utility if people can see a group that serves their specific location. I would like to see categories by country, with worldwide reach starting it out. Within each country if there are smaller locations like states or provinces they could be subheadings.

Eventually it would be nice to see further subheadings by the type of animal served. At the same time, I'd like to keep it simple. I'm not sure of the value of having groups in alphabetical order, as they are now listed, and that might be scrapped. I'll try to dig into the rearranging of the existing groups and then add others.

Re the groups themselves, if there is a Wikipedia page for the group, that reference should be sufficient. People can link to the website for the group from the page. I changed a couple of groups in this manner to simply provide the link to the Wikipedia page.

On the flip side, if the organization doesn't have a page, the website can be linked when the name of the group is mentioned, rather than including the website as a reference (footnote). For example, Buddha Society for Animal Welfare.

I've been going through the listings, and found Animal Chaplains doesn't refer to a specific organization. I found information about animal chaplains and added that to the page called Chaplains. They serve people moreso than animals, although animal welfare is an interest. But this is a list of organizations. All I could find were a couple of people with websites who are animal chaplains. I deleted it from this list at this point. I may add it back in later on when the revised listing comes out. **** revisited later, added the two organizations back in the newly organized list under USA.

Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 07:33, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Have been making good progress. It's time-consuming, as I'm researching the area served by each organization and putting it in a list of places, beginning with Worldwide and moving to continents, countries, and states/provinces. Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 07:38, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I've completed going through the list as it now sits, and organizing them all by location. Done! Saved the new list, and for now keeping the old A-Z listing at the bottom. Wherever there was a website rather than just a wikipedia page, I linked the website directly rather than using a footnote. The A-Z listing doesn't have that feature throughout.

There were a few changes I made to the existing list.
 * Citizens Lobbying for animals in zoos is an old organization, not really in use now so I left it out.
 * Party for the animals USA - this is a personal blog written in Japanese, perhaps was about animals at one time but it isn't anymore.
 * Society for Animal Protective Legislation - now called Animal Welfare Institute.

I also added a number of other organizations that I learned about ... with or without wikipedia pages ... there are still many pages out there that I would like to see added for more completeness, but it seemed a good idea to publish the organized list now rather than wait till it was more comprehensive. You may note there are US states that aren't mentioned because there were not organizations attached to them yet, so I left the state out until there is an organization mentioned. Enjoy! Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 05:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Removal of groups/external link policy
I noticed that some groups were recently removed from the list, and have some concerns about these removals. An issue was also raised about external links.

(1) deleted three groups for the reason that they were "clear animal rights groups": Animal Defenders International, Born Free Foundation (wildlife), and Humane Society International.

Animal Defenders International's website describes that it "campaigns across the globe on animals in entertainment, providing technical advice to governments, securing progressive animal protection legislation, drafting regulations and rescuing animals in distress... ADI rescues animals all over the world and educates the public on animals and environmental issues." While there is a focus on animal rights, in my view, their work in animal rescue and promoting animal welfare through changes in legislation shows animal welfare is integral to their work.

Born Free Foundation's page states "The Born Free Foundation undertakes animal welfare, conservation and public awareness campaigns to prevent animal abuse and to keep wildlife in its natural habitat."

Humane Society International is the international division of the HSUS, an animal welfare organization.

I don't believe the distinction ultimately has too much significance in any event. Even a group that is mainly an animal rights organization is doing their work because they are concerned about animal welfare. I also note that none of the above groups are yet listed in the page, List of animal rights groups. I would rather be inclusive than exclusive. Thoughts of others?

(2)  deleted some organizations from the list for the U.K., stating it was done "per WP:EL and convert possibly notable ones to redlinks - if they're notable, write the article".

This user kindly found a page for Retired Greyhound Trust, and replaced the organization's website link with the page.

Two organizations without pages, that were linked by their website previously, were changed to list the name only with a "redlink" to a page yet to be written, but now had no information even by way of reference, to the website of the organization. These were European Society of Dog and Animal Welfare and Scottish Animal Welfare.

Two organizations were removed altogether: Save Me (foxes, badgers) and Team Badger. I found a Wikipedia page for Save Me (animal welfare) talking about both the Team Badger effort and the Save Me organization. I will add that page to the list. I also found a lot of independent references to Team Badger, but it looks like it is well covered with the Save Me page.

I appreciated the link to Wikipedia's External Link guidelines. As I mentioned above, when reorganizing & cleaning up the page, I've been taking the approach that external links are more efficient than references. It appears that Wikipedia guidelines discourage long lists of external links, which may result. It would be great if we all had time to write the pages for the notable organizations that are listed here (presumably they were added here because they are notable). Until that happens, is it not ok to continue listing external links to their official websites, or is it preferable to create footnotes for each official website for organizations that don't yet have their own pages? It can be done but is tedious, and references seem to fit better for things like articles that discuss the organization. I don't care to delete active organizations just because they don't have a page yet. A lot of people in the past linked information about certain organizations that didn't have pages; I checked to make sure they were currently in operation and removed those that were no longer. To me it is more consistent with the advancement of knowledge that we provide information than that we omit it.

For the time being, I'm going to put my efforts more on adding pages than links to groups without pages. I'll add references to the "redlinked" organizations in the UK and add the Save Me page.

Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 00:46, 7 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation. I think that the general notability guidelines (WP:NOTE and WP:V) come in to play here.  Basically, a list page like this should really only cover articles that are either in Wikipedia already, or which are notable enough to be in Wikipedia if someone wrote an article about them - which includes the requirement that there is plenty of unbiased third party reporting of them (not just their own website or PR).  Per WP:REDLINK, it's fine to include a red link to a page that doesn't exist yet if it is likely to be notable enough, but don't be surprised if some of those get culled, especially on a subject like this where there are literally thousands of groups even in a single country.  I'm a bit concerned that this article is already a bit too long to be useful, and some thought may need to be given to subdividing some country sections, and thinking about what constitutes notability for some of these organisations.  Many local ones will not be notable enough for Wikipedia. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 08:18, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I respectively disagree about including all organizations that have a Wikipedia article. As more and more organizations have articles written about them, we will end up with zillions of names here. I live outside Chicago, in a western suburb.  There are two humane societies in my town plus nine more in the county south of us.  And what about local and county pounds?  Many of these provide the same or similar services that humane societies do.  The county next to ours has a no-kill policy.  They provide extensive animal welfare programs including humane education, adoptions. lost/found services and provide low-cost spay/neuter surgery -- which is almost exactly what the no-kill humane society where my husband and I volunteer does. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors  (talk) 21:07, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, this is helpful. I am going through some locations now and really checking if the organizations are notable enough to be included, some are being pared down. I will link the website in a footnote if there isn't a page already. I am also adding columns so the page reads more clearly - a column section for Worldwide, one for the US, for Canada, for the UK ... basically larger sections where keeping a list in columns will make some sense.

I'm going to take out this group, which was listed in the Worldwide category; I had an extensive footnote addressing that it may not be operational: Greyhound Protection League

I think it is also time to remove the A-Z listings which are now not being kept up to date, and needlessly lengthen the article. I won't do that in the same edit in case someone is really attached to the A-Z list.

Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 01:30, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I had plans to edit more extensively with footnotes for websites, but those edits were lost when there was an editing conflict. I did pare down some of the organizations that I had added after reviewing more closely for notability. Canadianknowledgelover (talk) 02:11, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * References

Links
I have removed nearly all of the links to outside organizations and many of the organizations that have Wikipedia articles, some of which are specific to breed or type of animal. Every state has at least one state-wide organization (eg, the state branch of the ASPCA of HSUS) that should be included, but adding local humane societies or private organizations, many of which deal with only one type of animal, is way too big a job for this article. And, as someone else noted, contact information about these organizations can be obtained through other sources.

I have been in the humane society biz since 1990, both as an employee and a volunteer. I am willing to collect information on each state's key humane organizations and put that here.

This may take a week or so -- please be patient. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 21:34, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Worldwide or Serving Multiple Countries
The "Worldwide or Serving Multiple Countries" section needs weeding, too. The first name on that list is the "Albino Squirrel Preservation Society," hardly what one thinks of as a major worldwide animal welfare organization. I have already removed Alley Cat Allies from this list as it operates only in the US. Rissa, Guild of Copy Editors (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge from Humane society and SCPA
The articles Humane society and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are content forks and should be merged into List of animal welfare organizations. The page should then have a redirect hatnote about the British Royal Humane Society (which is not an animal charity), but no other mention of that society is needed on the page. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:54, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The article Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is essentially a list of organizations that have the phrase in their names and includes a brief introduction about the genericness of the phrase. It should be retained and turned into a disam page for readers to find the specific organization they are looking for when they search for that generic phrase. The groups in the list should also be included in List of animal welfare organizations -- some of them are already in that list and the rest should be included too. The article Humane society is not a list, it's a full prose article about the history and attributes of humane societies and therefore is not redundant to -- and would not merge well into -- a list article like List of animal welfare organizations.  Sparkie82 ( t • c ) 23:57, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with Sparkie that neither page should merge and agree with the argument. However, I suggest that Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should not be a disambiguation page, but rather a set index article, because it is a list article about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name. Klbrain (talk) 00:20, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I have switched the article to an SIA. Klbrain (talk) 21:48, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Another NGO ?

 * Social Compassion in Legislation ? --Lamiot (talk) 09:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC) (french)
 * Society of Animal Welfare Administrators