American Humane Association approves decompressing chickens

September 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010:
(published October 5, 2010)
DENVER–Former Pew Charitable Trusts
deputy director of philanthropic services Robin
Ganzert took office on August 31, 2010 as new
chief executive officer of the American Humane
Association with a statement distancing the AHA
from “extreme ideas purported by those who argue
thatŠpeople have no right to raise animals for
food.”
Ganzert in her next sentence mentioned
“the inhumane farming practices that contributed
to the massive egg recall” due to salmonella
contamination of eggs produced primarily by farms
owned by Austin “Jack” DeCoster, whose abusive
methods on some of those same farms were exposed
only weeks earlier by the vegan advocacy group
Mercy for Animals.

Editorial feature: “Zero grazing” vs. the Five Freedoms

September 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010:
(published October 5, 2010)
Few animal advocates doubt these days
that the use and misuse of more than 47 billion
farmed animals worldwide is the most urgent and
critical issue before us. Whether one favors
ushering humanity toward vegetarianism or
veganism, or only more nuanced efforts to reduce
and mitigate animal suffering in husbandry and
slaughter, animal agriculture involves many
times more animals and more misery than all other
human activities combined.
Indeed, from a third to half of all the
birds in the world are factory-farmed chickens.
Farmed mammals far outnumber all companion
animals and probably all wildlife larger than a
dog. Even the highest estimates of the numbers
of animals used in laboratories per year appear
to be lower than the volume of animals
slaughtered for human consumption on most days of
the week.

EPA agrees to regulate factory farm emissions & effluents

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

WASHINGTON, D.C.–Thirty-eight years after Congress told
agribusiness to clean up their act, an estimated 20,000 factory
farms may at last have to account for what they do with 500 million
tons per year of cattle, pig, and poultry effluent.
Settling a lawsuit brought in 2009 by the Natural Resources
Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on June 1, 2010 agreed to
identify and investigate manure discharges by factory farms.
If the EPA honors the settlement, the outcome could be the
biggest economic blow to the meat industry yet, following three
years of losses attributed to rising feed and fuel costs.

Ingesting bear bile can kill, warns top Vietnamese traditional doctor

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

HANOI– People’s Doctor Nguyen Xuan Huong, chair of the
Traditional Medicine Association of Vietnam, on July 21, 2010
warned that consuming bear bile products can cause potentially fatal
liver and kidney damage.
Huong, who served two terms in the Vietnamese National
Assembly, “joined Animals Asia’s campaign to end bear bile farming
after seeing the shocking effects of bile consumption on some of his
patients, including two government officials who died after taking
bear bile tonics,” said Animals Asia Foundation senior writer Angela
Leary. “Huong has treated 10 patients for bear bile poisoning since
1985, including two he couldn’t save,” Leary said.

Salmonella egg recalls began with DeCoster

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
More than half a billion eggs laid between April and August
2010 were recalled in mid-August from stores in 14 states due to
salmonella enteritidis outbreaks that afflicted more than 2,000
people. Wright County Eggs, of Galt, Iowa, recalled 380 million
eggs. Another Iowa producer, Hillandale Farms, recalled more than
170 million eggs several days later.
Salmonella typically infects laying hens via rodent droppings
contaminating feed. Not immediately clear was whether the Wright
County and Hillandale outbreaks began from a common source.
Wright County Eggs owner Austin “Jack” DeCoster “earlier this
year pleaded guilty to 10 counts of animal cruelty over his company’s
treatment of chickens,” recalled Emily Friedman of ABC News. “In
June, DeCoster was ordered to pay more than $100,000 in fines and
restitution,” as result of an undercover investigation by Mercy For
Animals.

American Humane Association deal with egg producer may undercut California standards

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

SACRAMENTO–Humane Society of the U.S. factory farming
campaign senior director Paul Shapiro rejoiced on July 7, 2010 when
California Governor Arnold Schwarz-enegger signed AB 1437, to
require that all eggs sold in California be produced under conditions
meeting the welfare standards for laying hens kept in California that
were established by the passage of Proposition Two in November 2008.
Shapiro called AB 1437 “a bill that will require all whole
eggs sold in California by 2015 to come from hens who can stand up,
lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs. In other
words: cage-free.”
Shapiro was scarcely alone in his understanding.
Editorialized The New York Times, “Since California does not produce
all the eggs it eats, this new law will have a wider effect on the
industry; every producer who hopes to sell eggs in the state must
meet its regulations. There is no justification, economic or
otherwise,” The New York Times added. “Industrial confinement is
cruel and senseless,” the editorialists wrote, “and will turn out
to be, we hope, a relatively short-lived anomaly in modern farming.”

Defenders of Wildlife stops paying ranchers for livestock lost to wolves

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Defenders of Wildlife on August 20, 2010
announced that it will end paying compensation for verified livestock
losses to wolves in most states on September 10.
The 23-year-old Wolf Compensation Trust managed by Defenders
is widely credited with opening the way to wolf reintroduction in the
Rocky Mountains. Defenders has paid $1.4 million since 1987 to
ranchers in six states, for the deaths of 1,301 cattle, 2,431
sheep, and 108 other animals. “Our goal is to shift economic
responsibility for wolf recovery away from the individual rancher,”
said the Wolf Compensation Trust mission statement, “and toward the
millions of people who want to see wolf populations restored. When
ranchers alone are forced to bear the cost of wolf recovery, it
creates animosity and ill will toward the wolf,” which can “result
in illegal killing.”

Editorial: How expanding animal agriculture swamped Pakistan

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Is the world close to reaching finite ecological limits on
the production capacity of animal agriculture?
Flooding inundating more than a fifth of Pakistan in recent
weeks may demonstrate that the limits have already been exceeded,
doing catastrophic harm to more than 20 million displaced people and
30 million livestock, plus untold millions of dogs, cats, and
wildlife.
Critics of industrial agriculture and diets centered on
animal products have been predicting such an impending crisis for
more than 40 years. Among the most influential were Paul Ehrlich in
The Population Bomb (1968), Frances Moore Lappe in Diet for A Small
Planet (1971), and E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful (1973).
Their insights and dire prophecies helped to build the environmental
movement–but, focused on the collision course of human population
growth and food security, Ehrlich, Moore Lappe, and Schumacher each
hugely underestimated the human capacities for invention,
adaptation, and denial.

Showdown expected in Ohio over farm standards evolves into a deal

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
COLUMBUS–Instead of shaking hands and
coming out fighting on the November 2010 Ohio
state ballot, representatives of the Ohioans for
Humane Farms coalition and the Ohio Farm Bureau
Federation on June 30, 2010 shook hands with
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland over a truce that
leaves the proposed ballot issues to be arbited
by the newly formed Ohio Livestock Care Standards
Board.
That the industry-controlled Ohio
Livestock Care Standards Board rather than voters
should control farm animal conditions was a goal
sought by agribusiness for more than two years.

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