by Heide Brandes | Photos courtesy of the Kirkpatrick Foundation
When Drew Edmondson — former Oklahoma legislator, attorney
general, and gubernatorial candidate — speaks, he does so with a quiet, humble voice. Beneath that calm timbre, however, is a bulldog tenacity to protect Oklahoma’s environment and health, a mission that has extended to the humane treatment of animals in the state and beyond.
Edmondson is best known for filing in 1996 — and being on the national legal team that settled in 1998 — the state attorney-general lawsuits against the tobacco industry. When entered, the settlement had an estimated value to Oklahoma of $2 billion during the first 25 years, but payments would continue as long as cigarettes were sold. Perhaps more important, Edmondson led the effort to create a constitutional trust to receive the bulk of the payments. That trust, dedicated to protecting the health of Oklahomans and known as the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust (TSET), is now valued at more than $1.8 billion.
Edmondson then took on commercial and industrial chicken farms for polluting Oklahoma rivers and waterways and helped in the fight to end the cruel practice of cockfighting. He is now a voice for the humane treatment of all animals, including those raised for slaughter.
For his advocacy, Edmondson is one of two recent recipients of the Kirkpatrick Honor for Animal Wellbeing, for achievement and leadership in animal welfare. Dr. Jennifer D’Agostino, senior director of veterinary 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 Muskogee, where the family split its time while Edmondson’s father served in the United States Congress for 20 years. After graduating 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 Commendation 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 Oklahoma 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 Oklahoma 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 welfare. 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 northeastern 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 poultry, 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 million 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 politician 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 United States. As attorney general, he helped to promote animal-cruelty and animal-fighting 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 achievements in animal protection.
In 2015, as an attorney in private practice, Edmondson represented the Humane Society 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 Oklahomans, 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 appreciate 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 Edmondson has championed the cause of animal 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 challenged to defend the new statute. There were a number of injunctions against enforcement of the law filed for and granted in rural counties, mostly in southern Oklahoma, 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 sustaining the statute. There was a unanimous decision 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 international 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 have prohibited the legislature or state agencies from passing laws or regulations that would take away the right to employ agricultural technology and livestock production “without a compelling state interest.”
Armstrong says, “He was extremely effective in his role as Oklahoma attorney general, taking on several major poultry producers for polluting our Oklahoma rivers and waterways. I was fortunate to work with Drew again in 2016 as a member of the campaign team and political action committee, the Oklahoma Stewardship Council, in defeating State Question 777, the so-called Right To Farm state question. Had that harmful measure passed, it would have had devastating consequences for the well-being of Oklahomans, the environment, and animal welfare. General Edmondson’s leadership in that effort was invaluable and a key component of that success.”
For Edmondson, the bill was more insidious than its supporters portrayed it.
“It would have placed agriculture in the Oklahoma Constitution as a protected industry with zero oversight,” Edmondson says. “No other industry in Oklahoma — not oil and gas, not banking, not legal — nobody has that kind of protection.”
The widespread concern was that all agricultural practices would have little to no restrictions or legal recourse on land use, environmental practices, and treatment of animals — for all time. Although early polling indicated that the measure would pass by a wide margin, it ultimately failed in a landslide on election day, thanks in part to Edmondson’s vocal opposition.
“Drew is consistent with the message that the best part of being an Oklahoman is to be concerned about animals,” says Tolbert. “He called bull on the idea that caring about animals is somehow alien to what it means to be an Oklahoman.”
Promoting Humane Treatment of Farm Animals
These days, Edmondson remains active in the welfare of animals, not just in Oklahoma but also nationally. He is founder of the National Law Enforcement Council for Animal Wellness Foundation, a nationwide coalition of attorneys general and district attorneys. He also advocates for the humane treatment of farm animals, including chickens and pigs.
“We still have in our head that agriculture looks like Uncle Henry and Auntie Em and chickens running around in the barnyard and cows in the corral. And it’s not realistic. That’s not what agriculture looks like anymore,” Edmondson says, referring to giant industrial confined-animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs. “Our efforts have not been to ban industrial or foreign-owned hog farms but to make pig farming more humane in our state. With millions raised in Oklahoma — more than two million pigs annually on 33 corporate farms — let’s at least treat them well before they are slaughtered and let’s ensure they are slaughtered in a humane way. Everyone can agree with that.”
Edmondson says he will continue to fight for limitations on large hog operations in Oklahoma, especially the use of extreme-confinement gestation crates that don’t allow sows to turn around or even stand up.
“These pregnant pigs are caged their entire adolescent and adult lives through multiple pregnancies, and I think that’s cruel because pigs are sentient animals. Ironically, they are as intelligent, if not more so, than dogs,” says Edmondson. “It’s cruel. We aren’t interested in banning industrial pork production; we just want to make it more humane.”
