OkcPets Magazine March 2023

March / April 2023 • OKC Pets 15 erinary services at the Oklahoma City Zoo, also received the award. The honor is a part of the Kirkpatrick Foundation’s mission to make Oklahoma a safe and humane state for all animals through its Safe & Humane initiative. Becoming an Advocate for Animals Born in Washington, D.C., Edmondson lived most of his young life in Musk- ogee, where the family split its time while Edmondson’s father served in the United States Congress for 20 years. After gradu- ating from Northeastern State University, Edmondson enlisted in the Navy and volunteered for a tour of duty in Vietnam. In addition to receiving Vietnam campaign medals, he earned the Navy Achievement Medal and the Joint Service Commenda- tion Medal. “I followed my father into the Navy and into the law. When he was in Congress, the committees he served on included public works and the interior, which gave me an appreciation for the importance of water quality,” Edmondson says. After the Navy, Edmondson taught speech and debate at Muskogee High School before winning a seat in the Okla- homa Legislature in 1974. Then came law school and a time practicing law with his father before being elected district attorney for Muskogee County in 1982. Edmondson won reelection without opposition in 1986 and 1990. In 1994, Edmondson was elected Okla- homa attorney general, and he was reelected in 1998, 2002, and 2006, distinguishing his career as an advocate for the protection of Oklahoma’s waters. A protracted fight against the pollution of the Illinois River and Lake Tenkiller by industrial chicken farms led him into the sphere of animal wel- fare. In 2005, the state, led by Edmondson, sued 14 companies, including Tyson Foods, Cargill, and Simmons Foods, asserting that they had polluted the waterways of north- eastern Oklahoma with waste from chicken farms in northwestern Arkansas. “The interests of attorneys general are reflected in how they build their staffs. One of the things I did was create a stand-alone environmental protection unit within our office,” Edmondson says. “The major problem affecting pollution of the Illinois River was factory-farming poul- try, which was a relatively new phenomenon at the time. Now, an individual poultry farm can have thousands of birds at a time, with new flocks three or four times a year. A single farmer would be dealing with a mil- lion chickens in a given year. With millions of chickens comes the problem of waste. High in nitrogen and potassium, most of the chicken waste is spread over land and crops, which then enters local waterways and watersheds,” Edmondson says. Arguments in the lawsuit ended in 2010. Since then, nothing has occurred. The judge still has not ruled in the case. Finding the Right Thing To Do “The thing to know about Drew is he’s the most courageous politician in the state and has been for decades,” says Miles Tolbert, who led Edmondson’s environmental unit when he was attorney general. “Who else was going to go up against a corporate interest that’s layered over with the kind of homespun feel of agriculture? The answer basically is nobody. Where another politi- cian would have wilted or found some fuzzy little kind of compromise, he always wants to do the right thing.” From that continuing lawsuit about chicken farming, Edmondson became involved in other animal-welfare groups, including the Humane Society of the Unit- ed States. As attorney general, he helped to promote animal-cruelty and animal-fight- ing reward programs by educating law enforcement about the importance of the enforcement of laws to protect animals and the connection between animal cruelty and human violence. Edmondson even weighed in on the breed-specific legislation controversy in Oklahoma, issuing an attorney general’s opinion clarifying that existing state law prohibits breed-specific bans. In 2011, he received a Humane Law Enforcement award from the Humane Society of the United States, recognizing his outstanding achieve- ments in animal protection. In 2015, as an attorney in private practice, Edmondson represented the Humane So- ciety of the United States in court, filing a lawsuit against Oklahoma’s attorney general at that time, Scott Pruitt, for his campaign of harassment against the Humane Society of the United States. Cynthia Armstrong, Oklahoma senior state director for the Humane Society of the United States, says, “I’ve known Drew for 20 years and have observed him to be an extremely effective advocate for Oklaho- mans, our land and natural resources, and the humane treatment of animals. I have long admired the strong ethical principles that guide his actions and very much appre- ciate his willingness to take on a tough fight because it’s the right thing to do.” Continuing the Fight To Protect Animals That lawsuit was one of the many ways Ed- mondson has championed the cause of ani- mal and environmental issues in Oklahoma. State voters approved State Question 687 in 2002 to outlaw cockfighting, making Oklahoma one of the last states in the country to do so. “It was my job when the ban was chal- lenged to defend the new statute. There were a number of injunctions against en- forcement of the law filed for and granted in rural counties, mostly in southern Oklaho- ma, and we moved to consolidate them all into a single pleading at the state supreme court,” Edmondson says. “We got them out from the judges who might be worried about the political consequences of sustain- ing the statute. There was a unanimous de- cision affirming the ballot initiative and the new statute, so now we have an enforceable statute banning cockfighting.” Although the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the ban on cockfighting in 2004, the practice still exists, Edmondson says, and cockfights are now held in illegal arenas. In 2020, he and several animal organizations called for county and federal investigations into those illegal operations and interna- tional rooster shipments to Guam and other countries for cockfighting. In 2016, Edmondson was among those to fight against a proposed amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution. State Question 777, known as the “Right To Farm,” would Former Oklahoma legislator, attorney general, and gubernatorial candidate Drew Edmondson serves as the keynote speaker at the ANIMAL Conference in Oklahoma City in 2021.