Category: Farm Animals

Ohio keeps deal on veal, but backs off on exotic pets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
COLUMBUS–The Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board on April 5,
2011 voted 11-0 in favor of a standard requiring that veal calves be
kept in pens in which they have room to turn around. The vote
reversed a 6-5 vote on March 2, 2011 which would have allowed veal
crating to continue–and would have broken a June 2010 agreement
brokered by former Ohio governor Ted Strickland that kept off the
November 2010 ballot a proposal advanced by the Humane Society of the
U.S. to ban veal crates, sow gestation crates, and battery cages
for laying hens.

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Dutch to get 500 “animal cops” — may ban kosher & halal slaughter

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
DEN HAAG, The Netherlands– The politics of assembling the
present Dutch coalition government are expected to put 100 new
“animal cops” on the beat in the Netherlands by the end of 2011, and
to eventually increase the Dutch animal police force to 500 officers.
Dutch coalition politics could also lead to the passage of a
proposed ban on slaughter without pre-stunning, which within the
European Union is done by electroshock for cattle and by carbon
dioxide gassing for pigs and poultry. The proposed Dutch law would
prohibit kosher and halal slaughter, practiced by Jews and Muslims.
Pre-stunning has traditionally been interpreted by most Judaic and
Islamic religious authorities– though some differ–as a violation
of the requirements of Mosaic and Islamic religious law that animals
be conscious when their throats are swiftly cut with a sharp blade.

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Animal Welfare Board of India bans forced molts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
CHENNAI–The Animal Welfare Board of India on March 9, 2011
ordered all egg producers in India to cease starving hens to induce
forced molts. The AWBI advised egg producers that forced molts
violate the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Forced molts simulate winter by depriving hens of food for as
long as two weeks, while keeping them in darkened barns. Water may
be withheld for up to two days. When food, water, and light are
restored to normal, the hens who survive the ordeal–in which they
typically lose a third of their weight–respond by starting a new
egg-laying cycle.

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Ohio reneges on veal calf deal

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
COLUMBUS–Can the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board keep a promise?
Only 11 members of the 13-member board on
March 2, 2011 voted on a proposed regulatory
standard for raising veal calves, but six of the
11 approved of a standard which violates a June
2010 agreement brokered by former Ohio governor
Ted Strickland that kept off the November 2010
ballat a proposal to ban veal crates, sow
gestation crates, and battery cages for laying
hens.

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Camel Rescue Centre in India is world’s first

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

JAIPUR, India–Help In Suffer-ing on March 13, 2011 opened
a new Camel Rescue Centre at Bassi, on the outskirts of Jaipur. The
announcement was of global humane significance because, as best
ANIMAL PEOPLE can determine, the Help In Suffering Camel Rescue
Centre is the first facility built specifically to help camels in
humane movement history, and only the second dedicated camel
hospital in the world.
The first was the Dubai Camel Hospital, opened in 1990 by
Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum to treat the 3,000 racing and
dairy camels “belonging to the Maktoum family and their friends and
relatives,” wrote BBC News science reporter Anna-Marie Lever in
January 2009.

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Bison get grazing space in Montana but settlement puts wolves in the crosshairs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

MISSOULA, Montana–Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on
March 17, 2011 authorized bison wandering out of Yellowstone
National Park to graze within the Gardiner Basin, flanking the
Yellowstone River on either side for about 13 miles north of
Yellowstone. Bison who wander farther, into the Paradise Valley
south of Livingston, will be shot, said Montana gubernatorial
natural resources advisor Mike Volesky.
The March 17 order was Schweitzer’s second attempt in 2010 to
resolve the annual winter conflict between the instinct of bison to
migrate out of Yellowstone to lower elevations in search of forage,
and the hostility of ranchers to the presence of bison from fear that
they may transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle–which has in fact
never happened.

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BOOKS: The Beekeeper’s Bible

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

The Beekeeper’s Bible
by Richard A. Jones & Sharon Sweeney-Lynch
Stewart Tabori & Chang
(c/o Abrams, 115 West 18th St., New York, NY 10011), 2011.
412 pages, hardcover. $35.00.

Reputedly living on a diet of milk, honey, and locusts,
commonly interpreted to mean locust beans rather than the insects,
John the Baptist was for centuries regarded as a proto-vegetarian,
beginning long before the word “vegetarian” existed. The definiton
of “vegetarian” is “one who eats no animals,” not “one who eats no
food of animal origin.”

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Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster, & H5N1 avian flu, too

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
CHIBA, Japan–Chiba prefecture Governor Kensaku Morita told a
March 13, 2011 press conference that the earthquake and
tsunami-ravaged region is also fighting an outbreak of H5N1 avian
flu–potentially lethal to humans.
Chiba, second among Japanese prefectures in egg production,
lies between Tokyo and the prefectures to the northeast that had the
most displaced people and animals. Living in severely crowded
conditions, with disrupted sanitation, inadequate food, and often
little protection from the elements, many victims–both human and
animal–were already in weakened health due to effects of the tsunami
and, in some cases, perhaps exposure to radiation from the
malfunctioning Fukushima nuclear complex.

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Agribiz trying to learn to use Twitter

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
Having formed the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance in
November 2010 to try to counter bad publicity, agribusiness fronts
including the National Corn Growers Association and National Pork
Producers Council are still trying to figure out what to do and how
to do it, reported Michael J. Crumb of Associated Press on January
31, 2011.
“The groups have been alarmed by such things as the release
of videos that show male chicks being put into grinders, egg-laying
hens in battery cages, and the mistreatment of hogs in large
confinement operations,” Crumb wrote. “The alliance has yet to
develop an action plan, but leaders said it will likely use social
media such as Twitter and a public relations campaign.”
Responded Humane Society of the U.S. factory farming campaign
manager Paul Shapiro, “It doesn’t matter what media they use.
Defending practices most Americans consider indefensible is not a
smart strategy.”

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