U.N. members agree to study livestock role in global warming

January 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

COPENHAGEN–A draft agreement creating an international
working group under United Nations auspices to reduce global warming
emissions from agriculture may become a turning point in the
international struggle to reduce and mitigate climate change.
Though called “greenhouse gases,” because they trap heat,
the emissions at issue are produced chiefly by livestock, by the use
of fossil fuels in raising fodder for livestock, and by clearing
woodlands for grazing and fodder cultivation.
“Current agricultural production is estimated to contribute
30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than double that of its
nearest rival, transport, at 13.5%,” explained Ed Hamer, reporting
for The Ecologist.

Viet pol asks South Korea to help stop bear bile trade

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

SEOUL–Vietnamese National Assembly member Nguyen Dinh Xuan
on October 28, 2009 confirmed to Moon Gwang-lip of the South Korean
newspaper Joong Ang Daily that he has asked the South Korean
government to cooperate with Viet efforts to halt bear bile farming.
“Nyuyen Dinh Xuan said that Korean visitors are involved in
illegal bear bile sales in Vietnam,” South Korean environment
ministry senior deputy director Kim Won-tae told Gwang-lip. “He
requested that we instruct Koreans to refrain from these illegal acts
when they travel to Vietnam.”

Feds to investigate horse slaughter & welfare

October 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Who wants or needs horse slaughter? The
Government Accountability Office is to spend the next few months finding out.
Signed by U.S. President Barack Obama on October 21, 2009,
the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Adminis-tration,
and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 included a clause
continuing the three-year-old prohibition of USDA inspection of
horsemeat, which brought the closure of the last three U.S. horse
slaughterhouses.

1990s HFA campaign still bringing vealer convictions

September 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:
MILWAUKEE–Brown Packing Company, a leading U.S. veal
producer, on August 10, 2009 agreed to plead guilty to felony
conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, and to pay a fine of
$2 million for illegally giving hormones and steroids to veal calves
between 1997 and 2004, while marketing the meat as “all natural.”
The case was the latest of a 15-year series of successful
prosections of major players in the veal industry for misuse of
hormones and steroids. An informant tipped the Food & Drug
Administration to the violations in 1989, but serious
investigation did not start until February 1994, after an outbreak
of poisoning caused by the synthetic steroid clenbuterol hit at least
140 people who ate contaminated veal in an unrelated case in Spain.
Pressured by the Humane Farming Association, the U.S. Department of
Justice eventually won convictions of at least eight executives of
leading veal firms. Among them were the Dutch entrepreneurs who
brought the crated veal industry to the U.S. in the first place,
circa 1962.

Mercy For Animals

September 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

DES MOINES–The Iowa egg production giant
Hy-Line North America admitted on September 8,
2009 that an independent audit found “animal
welfare policy violations” at a hatchery in
Spencer, Iowa, where a Mercy for Animals
undercover operative videotaped unwanted male
chicks being killed for two weeks in May and June
2009.
“But West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North
America said that it won’t release further
details,” Associated Press reported.
Summarized Associated Press writers
Frederic J. Frommer and Melanie S. Welte, “The
video shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a
conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some
of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips
cards. These chicks, which a narrator says are
males, are then shown being dropped alive into a
grinding machine.

BOOKS: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs:
An inside look at the modern poultry industry by Karen Davis, Ph.D.
Order c/o United Poultry Concerns (P.O. Box 150, Machipongo, VA
23405; 757-678-7875; www.upc-online.org), 2009.
224 pages, paperback. $14.95.

“The mechanized environment, mutilations, starvation
procedures and methodologies of mass murdering birds,
euphemistically referred to as ‘food’ production raise many profound
questions about our society and our species,” says Karen Davis in
this second edition of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, an
eye-opening book into a major worldwide industry originally published
in 1996.
Davis takes us from family-owned farms with free roaming
chickens who clucked families awake at dawn to the sprawling factory
farms that now dominate the poultry industry.

BOOKS: The Inner World of Farm Animals

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

The Inner World of Farm Animals: Their amazing social, emotional
and intellectual capacities
by Amy Hatkoff
Stewart, Tabori and Chang (New York), 2009.
(c/o Abrams Books, 115 W. 18th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY
10011), 2009. 176 pages, $19.95.

“Chickens are very social and form strong friendships. They
prefer the company of familiar chickens and avoid chickens they don’t
know,” says Inner World of Farm Animals author Amy Hatkoff. This
sounds like my cousin who loves company but shies away from
strangers. Is it possible that farm animals, such as chickens,
cows, and sheep experience social memory, show preferences, and
interact with one another? According to the author, the answer is a
resounding yes.

Egypt uses H1N1 flu as pretext to massacre pigs

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2009:

CAIRO, PARIS–After condemning the pointless massacre of
pigs in Egypt in response to a “swine flu” that swine rarely get and
have yet to verifiably pass to any other species, the 2009 meeting
of the Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on May 24 elected Nihat
Pakdil of Turkey to become OIE European region secretary general.
Pakdil, as Turkish deputy undersecretary for agriculture,
in 2005 ordered a pointless massacre of dogs in response to the avian
flu H5N1, even though dogs have never been infected by H5N1.
Despite Pakdil’s ascent, Africa Network for Animal Welfare
founder Josphat Ngonyo was hopeful, he told ANIMAL PEOPLE, that the
OIE conference discussion would prevent anything like the Egyptian
pig killing “from ever occurring again, through the concerted effort
of OIE, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, and the
international animal welfare community.”

Rapid progress against Dutch vealers

May 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:
AMSTERDAM–The Dutch animal advocacy organization Wakker
Dier–“Awake Animal”–appears to be quietly making unprecedented
gains against the crated veal industry in the nation where it
originated.
“Within six months of Wakker Dier launching a peaceful
company-targetted campaign against ‘pale veal’–produced by keeping
male calves penned up, fed on low-iron milk diets–nearly all Dutch
supermarkets have stopped selling it,” reported Adriana Stuijt for
Digital Journal on March 15, 2009.
Recently retired after covering public health for the
Johannesburg Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa,
now living in Dokkum, The Netherlands, Stuijt found that 14 leading
Dutch supermarkets chains “have all undertaken to stop selling the
pale veal within the next few months, because the Wakker Dier
publicity campaign created a high level of consumer awareness, and
people stopped buying it.”

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