On the eve of President Trump’s victory, Vivek Ramaswamy posted on X that “Animal cruelty will eventually become a genuine concern for conservatives. It’s already happening. Count me in.”
At our pro-liberty, pro-free market, and anti-animal cruelty think tank, the Wilberforce Institute, we believe it is evident the federal government is behind the worst and largest scale animal cruelty in our nation and perhaps the world (we’re even funding some of Communist China’s animal cruelty). This means that cutting our government’s waste and ending animal cruelty are often the exact same thing. As such, we’ve identified the top three programs Ramaswamy can eliminate entirely through his role heading up the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Elon Musk.
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wild Horse & Burro Program
As often is the case, the program began with broad legislation to protect and manage the population of wild horses and burros, calling them “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West,” that allowed the agency (in this case the BLM to define the particulars and regulate accordingly.
Now, the BLM’s strident interpretation has resulted in an arbitrary definition of “overpopulation” (based on the number of wild horses at the time of the legislation’s passing — which itself defined the population of wild horses as “fast disappearing”) and inhumane practices to control the population. The horses are chased by helicopter for long durations over long distances and are often injured or killed in the process. The horses that survive are rounded up and warehoused in government holding facilities for indefinite periods, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
Just as there may be no better metaphor for killing the pioneer spirit of the West these horses embody, there may be no better metaphor for government than the fact that the biggest threat to their population comes from the bureaucracy charged with protecting them.
USDA’s Agriculture Research Service (ARS)
In 2015, the New York Times released an exposé that revealed large-scale and mortifying animal experimentation being conducted by the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, a 55-square-mile complex of government laboratories that fall under the ARS. These experiments included exposing newborn lambs to brutal conditions and experimenting with pigs and cows to birth more young than ever before, resulting in sick and deformed piglets and calves being born into increasingly crowded conditions. Countless young animals died in horrifying ways, from being ravaged by coyotes to being crushed by their own mothers in tight conditions.
This is not nearly the only case of taxpayer funded cruel animal experiments — as watchdog group White Coat Waste (WCW) Project has exposed, the federal government spends $20 billion on cruel animal experimentation every year.
WCW has its own list of recommendations of ways for DOGE to cut this wasteful and horrific spending, which the Wilberforce Institute backs fully. But the ARS is particularly nefarious in that it is a government agency that exists entirely to conduct these types of experiments, effectively acting as a research wing for the largest and least humane industrial meat producers.
This is one of the many ways our government picks winners and losers, in this case prioritizing and supporting factory farms over traditional and family farms and over the well-being of animals.
It is estimated that 99 percent of farmed animals in the United States are being raised on factory farms, making factory farming the biggest cause of animal suffering in our country. The existence of the ARS is anti-free market, anti-traditional farmer, anti-animal, and wastes our tax-dollars.
USDA’s Wildlife Services
The USDA’s Wildlife Services program has the sole function of killing wild animals, especially grizzly bears, gray wolves, and coyotes. While the ostensible purpose is to protect other human and animal life, it seems that these animals' mere status as predators is enough to meet the Wildlife Services’ definition of a threat.
In one harrowing example, federal employees killed 61 coyotes in under four hours on one trip in Montana. Wildlife Services also killed a whopping 6 percent of Montana’s wolf population in a three year period.
There are better ways to eliminate conflicts between livestock and wildlife than to deputize the federal government to kill wild animals without restraint and for the benefit of special interests. The Property and Environment Research Center is one organization researching ways to humanely mitigate conflicts between grizzly bears and cattle on Western grazing lands.
Ranchers who are losing animals to predators should work with their local and state governments and private conservation groups to practice humane mitigation. They do not need the federal government to ruthlessly kill large numbers of wild animals. The USDA should not have its own self-regulated, taxpayer-funded agency that exists only to declare open season on wildlife.