Animals 24-7

News & perspective for the humane community

“No injuries” says Michael Foods of fire that killed 400,000 hens

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Cage-free complex has been much praised by animal advocates             BLOOMFIELD, Nebraska––If anyone imagined that going cage-free would substantively change the egg industry,  the headlines alone reporting a February 27,  2020 barn fire at a Michael Foods cage-free complex in Knox County,  Nebraska should explode that illusion. The Michael Foods fire killed as many as […]

Ravaging Asia & Africa: a much deadlier plague than COVID-19

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World fiddles while grasshoppers munch             NINGBO,  China;  NAIROBI,  Kenya––A much deadlier plague than the COVID-19 coronavirus is sweeping westward from China through Pakistan,  across Central Asia,  and throughout the Horn of Africa,  flying 100 miles a day,  devouring crops enough to feed as many as 34 million people,  according to the United Nations Food […]

Science races law to end culling seven billion male chicks a year

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No more fingers up chicks’ anal vents          PARIS,  France;  BERLIN,  Germany––Racing to appear to be ahead of egg industry science,  French agriculture minister Didier Guillaume on January 28,  2020 announced that his administration would ban mass culling of male chicks and castration of piglets without anesthetic. “From the end of 2021,  nothing will be […]

Plane crashes & slaughterhouses: who suffers more?

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Helpless in a cage by Karen Davis,  Ph.D.,  president,  United Poultry Concerns On January 8,  2020,  passenger flight 752, headed from the Iranian capital of Tehran to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev,  was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, killing all 176 occupants,  including 167 passengers. The jet continued flying for […]

Heart failure fells Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) founder Helmut Dungler, 56

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Dungler died at the Lionsrock sanctuary he founded             BETHLEHEM,  South Africa––Helmut Dungler,  56,  founder of the international animal charity Vier Pfoten (Four Paws),  died on January 5,  2020 from a sudden massive heart attack suffered on one of his frequent visits to the Lionsrock sanctuary,  among the biggest and most ambitious of the many […]

Protecting purity from pollution, or protecting pollution from purity?

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The Golden Age, Garden of Eden, and Thanksgiving Myth of Origin by Karen Davis Ph.D.,  president, United Poultry Concerns (See also Turkeys: Sympathy, Sensibility, and Sentience and The “Thanksgiving” turkey:  object of sentimentality, sarcasm, & sacrifice.) “The question before us is, which images of the universe, of power, of animals, of ourselves, will we represent […]

The “Thanksgiving” turkey:  object of sentimentality, sarcasm, & sacrifice

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Each year a litany of sarcasm accompanies the sentimentality of Thanksgiving by Karen Davis, Ph.D.,  president, United Poultry Concerns   “Nothing so unites us as gathering with one mind to murder someone we hate, unless it is coming together to share in a meal.” – Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner, p. 33.   The […]

Turkeys: Sympathy, Sensibility, and Sentience

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Plus Social Dancing and Driving Off Predators by Karen Davis, PhD,  president, United Poultry Concerns Turkeys express social sympathy An emotional behavior in turkeys that has been said to “defy logic” is “the great wake” they will hold over a fallen companion.  In one episode,  cited by A.W. Schorger in The Wild Turkey: Its History […]

Are NYC foie gras ban & other new “pro-animal” bills all they’re quacked up to be?

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“Horsefeathers,”  says Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages founder NEW YORK CITY,  N.Y.––Voters For Animal Rights was quick to declare victory on October 30,  2019 when the New York City Council passed a bill banning the sale of foie gras from force-fed ducks and geese and a bill creating a Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare within […]

More cockfighters than stars in Doris Day/Clint Eastwood country?

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Cock-breeding explodes around Carmel-by-the-Sea             MONTEREY,  California––By the look of it,  more might have been done in Monterey County to enforce legislation against breeding gamecocks if California had remained a U.S. territory in 1850 instead of becoming a state,  four years after overthrowing Spanish rule.             Exulted Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block […]