Category: Farm Animals

Mercy for Animals exposes cruelty at a Texas factory catfish farm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:

 

DALLAS–Probably more fish consumers were
puzzled–at first– than shocked on January 19,
2011 when Mercy for Animals released undercover
video of alleged criminal animal abuse at Catfish
Corner, in eastern Dallas County. “I don’t get
too many calls about inhumaneness to fish,”
Dallas fish market owner Rex Bellomy told Ken
Kalthoff of NBCDFW.com.
Founded in 1968, Catfish Corner is among
the oldest active fish farms in the U.S.–“a
place where families bring their kids, often to
fish for the first time. Others stop by and pick
a catfish out of a tank for dinner. They can
have their fish cleaned and take them home to
eat,” described Dallas Morning News staff writer
Melissa Repko.

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LGBT Compassion files new challenge to San Francisco live markets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
SAN FRANCISCO–Flaring again, the 142-year-old conflict
between the San Francisco humane community and the mostly ethnic
Asian owners and customers of live markets has morphed into a clash
between the city’s two most prominent minority cultures. About 45%
of the San Francisco population are of Asian descent, according to
recent polling; 14.5% declare themselves to be lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgender.

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Is South Africa phasing out sow stalls?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
CAPE TOWN– South African Pork Producers Organisation
officers indicated to news media twice in the first two months of
2011 that sow gestation stalls are to be phased out–but Compassion
in World Farming national representative Tozie Zokufa has yet to get
SAPPO to confirm the planned phase-out directly to him.
Zokufa became hopeful when SAPPO chief executive Simon
Streicher e-mailed to the Beeld newspaper in January that South
African pig producers are beginning “the gradual phasing out of sow
crates,” and that “SAPPO supports the phasing out of crates in a
reasonable and realistic time frame.”

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U.S. “bear product” linked to bile is synthetic

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
HONG KONG–Trying to shake bad publicity and attract
investment, a leading Chinese bear bile producer apparently planted
news items with two Wall Street Journal subsidiaries in 2009 that
paralleled bear bile farming with the work of a U.S. company founded
to develop a synthetic analog of a hormone produced by North American
black bears.

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How to move the earth to help farmed animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:

“Give me a lever and a place to stand,”
the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes
reputedly said, “and I shall move the earth.”
His premise affords a metaphor for how
animal advocates sometimes manage to motivate
animal use industries to change-and an
explanation of why some seemingly promising
efforts fail.
As large and influential as some of the
biggest animal advocacy organizations appear to
be from within the cause, the budgets and assets
of the entire cause, worldwide, are still
substantially less than those of supermarkets in
any major U.S. metropolitan area. Graphing the
economic magnitude of animal advocacy compared to
that of agribusiness is much like trying to graph
the size of the earth in proportion to the rest
of the solar system.

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South Korea kills 1.6 million pigs, cattle, & dogs in fight against foot and mouth disease

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:


SEOUL–Water taps spat blood on New Year’s Day 2011 in Paju, Gyeonggi Province,  South Korea,  “just one day after some of nearly 1,000 pigs within a 500-meter radius of a foot-and-mouth-hit livestock farm were buried alive to prevent further spread of the disease,”  reported Park Si-soo of Korea Times.

The quarantine officers who ordered the live burial claimed the water would soon run clean,  but “many experts insist that blood from the buried animals will eventually contaminate underground reservoirs,”  Park Si-soo wrote. Read more

Penn State faculty start industry-backed poultry transport certification program

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

STATE COLLEGE,  Pa.–Pennsylvania State University faculty in the first week of 2011 introduced what they termed “a certification program believed to be the first to offer third-party quality assurance training on poultry handling and transportation for ‘catch crews.'”

The program was developed as a collaboration among 12 organizations and government agencies which operate in support of agribusiness,  among them the National Chicken Council,  United Egg Producers,  National Turkey Federation,  USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service,  and American Veterinary Medical Association. Read more

What does the Food Safety Modernization Act mean for farmed animal welfare?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.–-U.S. President Barack Obama on January 4,  2011 signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act,  the most extensive update of U.S. food safety legislation since 1938.  The enforcement regulations are due to be completed by 2014.

Though not specifically an animal welfare bill,  the Food Safety Modernization Act has huge implications for animal welfare,  especially in regard to livestock and poultry disease control. The Food Safety Modernization Act specifically does not amend or supercede the Federal Meat Inspection Act,  the Poultry Products Inspection Act,  the Egg Products Inspection Act,  and the Packers & Stockyards Act.  However,  the act includes 28 specific mentions of animals.  Most of the mentions stipulate that the provisions of the Food Safety & Modernization Act extend to protecting animal health as well as human health. Read more

Coffee fad revives civet farming (long version)

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010

DENPASAR, HANOI–Just seven years after
China banned civet farming because of the
association of civet consumption with more than
800 human deaths from Sudden Acute Respiratory
Syndrome, a vogue for pricy civet coffee has
brought the industry back perhaps bigger than
ever–and certainly in many more places.
Sold to coffee snobs as kopi luwak, the
Indonesian word for it, civet coffee is brewed
from the beans that civets excrete after eating
coffee berries, one of their favorite foods.
Civet coffee is by reputation stronger and
usually more aromatic than most coffees.
Collecting and salvaging the excreted
beans from wild civets is so laborious that civet
coffee, known for centuries, has historically
been so costly to produce as to be consumed only
in small amounts by the very rich and jaded. But
civet farming in coffee-growing country has
brought civet coffee within occasionally reach of
the merely affluent–at prices of from $50 to
$100 a cup.

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