Ethics, genetics, & relationship of pigs to humans BALTIMORE, Maryland––The world’s first pig-to-human heart transplant, performed on January 7, 2022 at the University of Maryland Medical Center, may or may not extend the life of transplant recipient David Bennett, 57. Certainly it shortened the life of the pig, trucked five hours from a company […]
Robert Dole: why did Pacelle, Amundson, & Bershadker inflate his record?
Robert Dole, at best, had a good record on animal issues for a Trumpist––but he was no Hubert Humphrey, nor even a Richard Nixon Robert Joseph Dole, 98, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, U.S. Senator from Kansas 1969-1996, and a Kansas member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1960-1968, died on December 5, 2021. Lauded […]
Joe Keller gave Jim Mason the pictures that started the war on factory farming
Editors’ note: “You give me the pictures and I’ll give you the war!” newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst reputedly instructed a staff artist who failed to find fighting in Cuba at the outset of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Joe Adreon Keller (November 21, 1947––October 13, 2021) gave Animal Factories co-author and Animals’ Agenda magazine […]
Factory-farmed pigs get a break from vaccine breakthrough
For factory-farmed pigs, avoiding African swine fever may be about as good as the grim news gets GREENPORT, New York––With all eyes on the progress of vaccination against the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has to date killed nearly 3.5 million people, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Service in early May quietly announced a breakthrough […]
Barn fires begin to be noticed by animal advocates but not yet agribiz
Animal Welfare Institute & Humane Society International make recommendations WASEKA, Minnesota––Twelve thousand pigs, including 9,000 piglets and 3,000 sows, died in a May 16, 2021 fire that razed two barns at the Woodville Pork Farm in Waseca, Minnesota. Nine different rural fire departments sent water tankers, but as the first barn was already fully […]
U.K. “animal sentience” law: “victory” claimed before the fight begins
Recognizing animal sentience is part of an “Action Plan for Animal Welfare” yet to be written into draft bills, let alone passed by Parliament LONDON, U.K.––A week-plus after the Conservative government of the United Kingdom introduced an “Action Plan for Animal Welfare,” much of the animal welfare sector worldwide has already declared “victory,” with the […]
The Origins & Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia & Europe
Reviewed by Jim Mason Edited by Sue Colledge, James Conolly, Keith Dobney, Katie Manning, and Stephen Shennan Routledge, 2013, https://www.routledge.com/. 354 pages hardcover, also available in paperback and Kindle formats. This book is an academic work, a collection of recent writings by zooarchologists (or archeozoologists) on the origins of animal domestication in the prehistoric Middle […]
Law prof: more jail time for cruelty does not advance animal rights
Institutional offenders remain untouched by felony cruelty penalties DENVER––“More prosecution will never lead to greater animal rights. Longer sentences have not incrementally advanced the standing of animals in society,” argues Sturm College of Law professor Justin Marceau in the March 20, 2021 edition of the Harvard Law Review Forum. Marceau is also the Brooks Institute Faculty […]
Pig transport truck kills animal advocate Regan Russell outside slaughterhouse
Accident reprises 1995 death of British protester Jill Phipps BURLINGTON, Ontario––Regan Russell, 65, of Hamilton, Ontario, was on June 19, 2020 crushed to death by an 18-wheel livestock transport truck delivering pigs to slaughter at Fearman’s Pork Inc., the largest and oldest slaughterhouse in Ontario. A local landmark since 1852, and the scene of […]
Mink & pig massacres due to COVID-19 may help to kill fur & pork industries too
Netherlands may end fur farming four years before ban takes effect LIMBURG, Netherlands; SIOUX CITY, Iowa––The good news, if it could be called that, about the scheduled massacre of as many as 30,000 ranched mink on June 6, 2020 is that it may put 10 mink farms owned by eight companies permanently out of business, […]