Animals 24-7

News & perspective for the humane community

Meat-heavy diet must go the way of Neanderthals, German economists warn

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Bigger people will do better in a smaller world on grains & veggies GOETTINGEN, Germany––Better-fed people get bigger. This trend has been evident in paleontology since our omnivorous but mostly plant-eating Cro-Magnon ancestors circa 40,000 years ago gradually reduced our much older,  shorter,  and mostly carnivorous Neanderthal cousins to a handful of recessive genetic traits […]

Pit bulls kill four in eight days approaching Christmas 2019

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2019 pit bull fatalities & total dog attack deaths surpass 2018 with 10 days left in the year Hopes that the decline in U.S. pit bull-inflicted human fatalities from a record 40 in 2017 to 32 in 2018 might mark the beginning of a downward trend were dashed by four deaths in eight days,  from […]

Fire & ice puts Australian koalas and Icelandic horses at urgent risk

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Songwriter Joni Mitchell in 1982 recommended “50/50 fire and ice” as the best response to a crisis.  That isn’t working for either Icelandic horses or koalas.              REYKJAVIK, Iceland;  SYDNEY, Australia––Eco-disasters afflicting Icelandic horses and Australian koalas starkly illustrate extreme and contrasting effects of global warming as 2019 comes to an end. Hundreds of Icelandic […]

Convicted of G.I. Bill fraud: trainer who prepped pit bulls for police work

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Must forfeit $1.3 million for scamming feds & veterans             SAN ANTONIO,  Texas––Bradley Lane Croft,  48,  whom the pit bull advocacy organization Animal Farm Foundation funded from 2013 to 2017 to prepare pit bulls for police work,  was on December 18, 2019 ordered to forfeit more than $1 million in assets to the federal government,  following […]

Race track deaths upstage notice of horses “retired” due to injury

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45 horses dead on three Southern California tracks during 2019 seasons––and 39 at Belmont alone LOS ALAMITOS,  California––Two horse deaths in the first race of the next-to-last-day of the Los Alamitos Race Course on December 14,  2019 renewed attention to high injury toll in horse racing,  but upstaged the disintegration of the California Equine Retirement […]

Former HSUS vp David Wills’ co-defendant gets 15 years for sex trafficking minor

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Wills,  facing multiple life terms,  is yet to be sentenced             CORPUS CHRISTI,  Texas––The likelihood that former Michigan Humane Society president and Humane Society of the U.S. vice president David Keith Wills,  67,  will spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary appeared to increase on December 18,  2019,  when U.S. District Judge […]

California Equine Retirement Foundation runs into deep muck

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Current leadership allegedly squandered assets & 27-year positive track record under ousted founder SAN JACINTO,  California––Among the 80-odd animal shelters,  sanctuaries,  and nonprofit rescue organizations foundering in 2019,  the California Equine Retirement Foundation (CERF) has probably run through the most money over the past five years. Along the way,  CERF blew the the best reputation […]

Bullhead City shelter break-in: owner & pit bulls on the lam

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Pet theft in the 21st century more often involves pit bulls under euthanasia order than laboratory supply BULLHEAD CITY,  Arizona––Rhonda Kathrine Johnson,  51,  on the lam with her pit bulls Melony and Ginger,  sprung on Thanksgiving 2019 from the animal shelter in Bullhead City,  Arizona,  is unlikely to make the FBI “Ten Most Wanted List.” […]

Is Down Under biological warfare killing bunnies across the Pacific?

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Spreading disease by air is much easier than containing it by any method             LANGLEY, Washington––About sixty feral Belgian hares, long beloved village pets in Langley,  Washington,  may be the latest casualties of deliberate releases of the rabbit hemorrhagic disease RHD-1 in Australia and New Zealand,  8,000 and 7,500 miles across the Pacific Ocean,  respectively. […]

Brother Wolf: “Warehousing is not working,” says director of no-kill experiment

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“Keeping aggressive animals isn’t the solution for lifesaving” ASHEVILLE,  North Carolina––“We are warehousing aggressive animals at Brother Wolf when we know this isn’t the solution for lifesaving,”  executive director Leah Craig Fieser acknowledged in “Warehousing is not working,”  a December 5,  2019 social media statement inspiring heated debate nationwide. “We inherited this way of operating,”  Fieser said,  […]