The Ultimate Ag-Gag

America’s most prominent animal hater, Rep. Steve King, has a nasty little plan to nullify farm animal protection statutes in America.

http://www.ourhenhouse.org/2013/05/scrambled-priorities-will-the-king-amendment-end-farmed-animal-reform/

 

Shelter Pets: Official Pets of Colorado

Thanks, Colorado! And if you’re still wondering whether the commercial breeding industry is a bunch of scumbags, this move was of course opposed by breeders of purebred dogs and pet stores. Of course.

Read more:  http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/shelter-dogs-and-cats-are-now-colorados-official-state-pets/#ixzz2TetYtiDe

 

It’s About Time

It’s about time the ACLU got involved in the obvious free speech violation known as “ag-gag laws.” It would have been nice had they been able to prevent six of these things from already passing in US states.

And if you still aren’t scared of ag-gag, ponder this:

And in Pennsylvania, an ag-gag bill was introduced yesterday that outlaws the dissemination of factory farm photos or video footage over the internet. This bill would make it a crime to upload and share videos …

So there you go. If you live in PA and decide to share Meet Your Meat on your Facebook page, you could be charged with a crime.

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The Name Game

Let’s do “cruelty”! Cruelty cruelty  bo bruelty banana fanna fo fruelty…

But rather than encourage producers to embrace animal welfare reforms, such as using higher-welfare practices already utilized by many family farmers, Olson’s recommendation is simply to stop calling the cages “gestation crates” — which they’ve been called for decades — and start referring to them as “individual maternity pens.” Here again, we see agribusiness fail to understand the root of its crisis.

Mystery meat

Apparently, China’s fur industry is outpacing their meat industry.

Among those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin and passed it off as lamb.

What’s in Fido’s Food?

A Slate blogger examines a common horror story–what’s really in pet food–and comes to an enlightening and encouraging conclusion.

This mass of otherwise unwanted death is a measure of the animal suffering caused by human activity. Fifty percent of all chickens hatched out for the egg business are unneeded roosters that are discarded. Roughly 75 percent of all cats in shelters are euthanized. Because they were unprofitable, because they were inconvenient, because we made too many of them, they were killed.  

…

It is easy to get up in arms over something that might affect the health of our pets. Indeed, the same system that doesn’t know whether its main ingredient is chicken beaks or dachshund really cannot guarantee adequate nutrition to the dogs that eat it. But perhaps we ought to be more angry about the parade of unwanted carcasses that fuel our need for a rendering industry in the first place.

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Mining Historical Gold

Giddy with excitement over the largely unknown history that the newest expansion of this collection includes, I eagerly visited the archival collections page and typed in “animal,” where I was knocked off my feet by the plethora of resources. Even just the content notes are full of golden nuggets from the history of the animal rights movement (for example, check out the summary of the “Guide to Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Pamphlets from 1874-1952“). Perhaps even more exciting is that the announcement of the exhibit’s expansion (which is chock-full of a basic historical run-down of animal rights and in and of itself is worth a read) concludes with this teaser: “If you are interested in finding out more information about specific items, stay tuned over the next few weeks as we highlight a number of items in the collection.” What will they highlight?! Are my true nerd colors shining through here, because I am thrilled.

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