Forthcoming World Health Organization report is expected to confirm Chinese investigators’ suspicions BEIJING, BOSTON, WUHAN––Will a World Health Organization report expected to be released within days indict the Chinese mink industry for infecting the world with COVID-19? Beijing University researchers have already suspected for more than a year that mink farming was likely […]
“That touch of mink” & COVID-19: Dutch outbreak hints mink may be host
Fur farming to end in The Netherlands by 2024 WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands––The discovery that ranched mink can become infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus may lend momentum to the Dutch national plan to phase out mink farming entirely by 2024. Concern that mink themselves might become a COVID-19 reservoir may also dampen Chinese enthusiasm for rebuilding […]
People who buy meat from glass cases have little room to throw stones
(Beth Clifton collage) “Wet markets” in China & U.S. slaughterhouses both kill people as well as animals SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota––Underscoring that people who buy meat from glass cases have little room to throw stones at the “wet markets” of China and the developing world, which sell live animals, the Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods pig slaughterhouse […]
COVID-19 & “The Next Big One”: Spillover revisited
Science writer David Quammen saw COVID-19 coming COVID-19, though renamed twice just in the first few months of 2020, “is not as novel as you might think,” explained veteran science writer David Quammen in the January 28, 2020 edition of The New York Times. Quammen, 72, was uniquely positioned to comment, not only because he […]
Wild animals off market in China: crackdown on coronavirus
“Huge hidden dangers to public health & safety” BEIJING, China––Responding to the COVID-19 coronavirus, which has now killed nearly 2,600 people worldwide, the 170-member National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the top legislative body in China, on February 24, 2020 provisionally banned all consumption of wildlife and trade in wild-caught species, other than fish. Announced […]
Wet markets or Walmart? Animal consumption & the coronavirus
by Karen Davis, Ph.D., president, United Poultry Concerns Apart from a small but perhaps widening circle of optimism, it is hard to figure whether progress for farmed animals is actually happening in modern society. While it is great to see more plant-based products in local supermarkets, the amount of meat displayed in the aisles has […]
Will feral pigs eat Hong Kong before Hong Kong eats the pigs?
Feral pigs may be poached as African swine fever & trade war cut off pig imports HONG KONG––A three-way collision among African swine fever, feral pigs, and the global pork industry, U.S. interests included, may be only days away in Hong Kong. Whatever the outcome, pigs––both factory-farmed and living free––are already the big net […]
Live animal markets in New York City: a cut-throat business at best
Customs change with waves of immigration NEW YORK CITY, N.Y.––Escaping the Iranian Revolution with her parents at age 6, artist Sara Rahbar as an adult has produced an internationally recognized portfolio on themes often involving human and animal suffering. Yet Rahbar found herself wholly unprepared for the misery she met close to hand on […]
South Korean court rules that killing dogs for meat is illegal
Verdict for the first time upholds 1991 law BUCHEON, South Korea––Upholding parts of the Korean Animal Protection Act which have been on the books since 1991, but were never before successfully prosecuted, a Bucheon city court judge has fined a dog meat farmer the equivalent of $2,050 in U.S. dollars for “killing animals without […]
Are politicians sentient? British animal advocates wonder
Nothing yet on animal sentience in U.K. law LONDON, U.K.–– “Sentient,” a word seldom used by mass media and little recognized by the public before a much decried vote of the British Parliament on November 15, 2017, is overnight at the center of debate raging throughout the United Kingdom. Who is sentient? What is sentience? […]