Category: Farm Animals

RSPCA of Australia wins big case but loses face with activists

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

“Two months after opposing Australia’s live animal export
trade for slaughter, the Royal SPCA has endorseed a large shipment
of dairy cattle from the Port of New-castle bound for Japan,” the
Australia Broadcasting Corporation revealed on April 25, 2006.
Explained Bernie Murphy, RSPCA chief executive officer for
New South Wales, “I need to emphasize the difference between live
export for breeding, and the RSPCA’s stated and continued opposition
to live export for slaughter. We consider that totally unnecessary,”
Murphy said. “We think the animals should be processed in humane
conditions in Australia.”
“I’m perplexed and utterly stunned that they have made this
exception and are supporting Livecorp,” the exporter, “when
Livecorp are also responsible for the transport of thousands of
animals to be slaughtered,” said Lynda Stoner of Animal Liberation
Australia.

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Anti-pork site still up

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Three months after the Premiere Bacon Company threatened to
sue New Zealand activist Mark Eden and the Wellington Animal Rights
Network for posting anti-pork material at <www.premierbacon.co.nz>,
an address just one letter different from the company’s own, the
site is still up. Eden told Louisa Cleave of the New Zealand Herald
in December 2005 that the site had been redesigned to eliminate
copyrighted logos.

Australia suspends livestock exports to Egypt after exposé of cruelty

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

CANBERRA–Australian agriculture minister
Peter McGuarin on February 26, 2006 suspended
livestock exports to Egypt, after the Australian
edition of 60 Minutes aired video taken in
January 2006 by Lyn White of Animals Australia
that showed workers at the Bassetin
slaughterhouse near Cairo poking out the eyes of
cattle and cutting their leg tendons before
subjecting them to a version of hallal slaughter
that clearly flunked the goal of the animals not
suffering.
“Required is that the animal must be
unconscious at the time of slaughter, there
should be no cruelty to it, and that any stress
to the animal should be minimised,” said
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils hallal
certification representative Munir Hussain.
“Over 1 million Australian cattle have
been exported into Egypt over the past 10 years.
The vast majority have been slaughtered at
Bassatin abattoir,” said Animals Australia
executive director Glenys Oogjes.

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United Nations Environment Program warns about ecological consequences of H5N1

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

GENEVA–The United Nations Environment Program warned on
March 22, 2006 that, “Culling poultry [to control avian flu H5N1],
especially in developing nations where chicken is a key source of
protein, may put new and unacceptable pressure on a wide range of
creatures,” who may be hunted as alternate protein, “from wild pigs
to endangered great apes.”
UNEP also warned against culling wild birds and draining
wetlands to discourage congregations of waterfowl, who appear to be
victims of H5N1 more than carriers.
Now afflicting 45 nations, H5N1 has been found in 87 bird
species, including many of the most common and broadly ranging–and
carrion-eaters such as kites, crows, and buzzards, known to have
strong resistance to most pathogens.

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Chinese “Year of the Dog” begins with good omens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

The Year of the Dog, observed throughout the regions of Asia
sharing cultural affinity to China, has rarely been auspicious for
dogs.
1910, for example, brought famine and a rise in dog-eating
to Korea, following a Japanese invasion. In 1922 the Chinese
Communist Party declared that dogs are social parasites. The
notoriously dog-hating Mao Tse Tung became head of the Chinese
Communist Party in 1934, began his rise to national rule in 1946,
and in 1958 purged both dogs and songbirds, after the Great Leap
Forward brought famine on a globally unprecedented scale.
The 1994 Year of the Dog predictably began in Beijing with a
dog massacre. The Beijing Youth News estimated that as many as
100,000 dogs inhabited the city when the killing started. The
Beijing Evening News pretended that dogs found by the police were
taken to “an animal shelter run by the Public Security Ministry,” but
China bureau correspondent Jan Wong of the Toronto Globe & Mail
learned otherwise.
Chief dog-killer Li Wearui boasted to Wong that his team beat
to death 351 dogs in 10 days. His assistant Fei Xiaoyang preferred
strangling dogs with steel wire. The Beijing Legal Daily published a
photo of police dragging a dog to death behind a jeep.

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Falcons, chickens, & avian flu

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Falconing, along with factory farming, cockfighting,
bird-shooting, wild bird trafficking, and keeping caged songbirds,
has emerged as a factor in the increasingly rapid global spread of
the deadly H5N1 avian influenza.
As the March 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 92
humans in seven nations had died from H5N1. More than 30 nations had
experienced H5N1 outbreaks since 2003, 14 of them since February 1,
2006. Hit, in chronological order, were Iraq, Nigeria,
Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Iran, Austria,
Germany, Egypt, India, France, and Hungary.
More than 200 million domestic fowl have been killed in
mostly futile efforts to contain H5N1, according to the United
Nations Food & Agriculture Organization–almost entirely because of
the persistence of practices long opposed by the humane community.
Falconing became implicated when five trained hunting birds
died from H5N1 at a veterinary clinic in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi agriculture ministry officials confiscated and killed 37
falcons who were kept at the clinic.

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H5N1 may halt European movement to free-range poultry-raising

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

LONDON–The Tower of London ravens will be indoor cage birds
until the H5N1 crisis subsides, says raven keeper Derrick Coyle.
Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the
British monarchy will fall–and keeping the ravens indoors sets an
example for poultry farmers.
Just as animal welfare concerns made “free range” a household
phrase and free range poultry growing began to take market share from
intensive confinement, H5N1 might kill the whole concept.
“In the protection zone,” to be established around all H5N1
outbreaks within the European Union, the European Commission decreed
on February 12, 2006, “poultry must be kept indoors.”
Agreed United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization senior
officer of animal production and health Juan Lubroth, “People need
to ensure that poultry are roofed-in to avoid contact with wild
birds, and should not mix chickens with other species, such as
ducks,” since H5N1 is most likely to mutate into forms that can
easily spread when it has the opportunity to move from one species to
another.

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U.S. Supreme Court may step into factory-farmed chicken poop

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

The U.S. Supreme Court, recently reconstituted with two new
members including a new chief justice, may hear arguments on the
right of states to regulate agricultural pollution.
Arkansas attorney general Mike Beebe in November 2005 asked
the Supreme Court to throw out a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in
June 2005 by Oklahoma attorney general Drew Edmondson against eight
poultry firms with Arkansas operations that allegedly pollute the
Illinois River, upstream from Oklahoma. The eight, among them many
poultry industry leaders, include Cargill, Cobb-Vantress, Simmons
Foods, Peterson Farms, Tyson Foods, Willow Brook Foods, George’s,
and Cal-Maine Foods.

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Industry rejects poultry killing by gas

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Industry arguments against extending Humane Methods of
Slaughter Act coverage to poultry tend to center on a claimed lack of
acceptable alternatives to the present system of shackling birds
upside down, then dragging them headlong through an electrified
“stunning bath.”
An alternative, controlled atmosphere stunning, is already
widely used in Europe. Slaughterhouses using controlled atmosphere
stunning gas newly arrived birds in their transportation cages,
using either carbon dioxide or a mixture of nitrogen and argon.
McDonald’s Corporation in November 2004 agreed to study the
feasibility of requiring suppliers to shift to controlled atmosphere
stunning, in exchange for PETA withdrawing a shareholder resolution
that sought to require McDonald’s to do the study.
In June 2005 McDonalds concluded that “current standards for
animal welfare are appropriate for the company’s global supply chain
at this time.”
PETA pursued a similar resolution at the May 2005 Applebee’s
International Inc. shareholders meeting, but it drew less than 6%
support.

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