Animals 24-7

News on dogs, cats, horses, wildlife, zoonoses, & nature

“Cage-free” fire that killed 400,000 hens is subject of $25 million lawsuit

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Building barn that burned was praised as “victory” by then-Humane Society of U.S. brass BLOOMFIELD,  Nebraska––A February 27,  2020 barn fire that killed 400,000 hens is now the subject of a $25 million lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island-based Factory Mutual Insurance Company against the barn builder,  Henning Companies LLC of Johnston,  Iowa. ANIMALS 24-7 […]

UPDATE: Iowa belongs to Boss Hogg now. The stench? That’s money.

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Roasting pigs alive & smothering the state in pig manure is fine for corporate farmers,  says Iowa law,  but errant individuals will be prosecuted.  One was just convicted & sentenced.             DES MOINES,  Iowa––Whatever happened to Jefferson Davis “J.D.” Hogg,  better known as Boss Hogg,  the insatiably greedy and unscrupulous villain of the 1979-1985 television […]

Bird flu means “cage free” & “free range” hens can run around indoors in the dark

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“Cage free” & “free range” producers protect their “girls” by keeping them in jail Think that “cage-free” or “free-range” label on a box of eggs or meat package amounts to more than bull-feathers? Even if it is certified by any of the major farmed product certification organizations? Amid the current global H5N1 high pathogenic avian […]

“Birds Aren’t Real” ––if only those in poultry barns were not

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The good news is,  vegan food technology means the birds on the menu need not be real MEMPHIS,  Tennessee––The avian advocacy world is still aflutter,  a week after CBS News 60 Minutes reporter Sharyn Alfonsi extensively exposed the “Birds Aren’t Real” hoax conspiracy theory orchestrated from Memphis by 24-year-old University of Arkansas dropout and former […]

Birds, bees, broiling heat, & adding insect parts to food on purpose

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The bees-at-the-airport disaster story went global––but mass media missed the biggest issues             KENAI,  Alaska––More than 300 Alaskan beekeepers,  most of them fruit and vegetable farmers,  without native honey bees to pollinate introduced food crops,  on April 23,  2022 expected to receive two million bees from Sacramento to help start their short growing season. Soldotna […]

Will bird flu cut the U.S. appetite for chicken, eggs, ducks, & turkey?

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Public notices eagle deaths & higher prices             CHICAGO,  Illinois––Soaring egg prices,  bald eagles dropping from the skies in at least 14 states,  and 200 dead birds found at Baker Lake in the Forest Preserves of Cook County,  forty miles northwest of Chicago,  in mid-April 2022 began to bring the mainstream mass media spotlight to […]

Farmed animal product certifications “lack integrity,” investigators find

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Food In-Depth & Farm Forward find antibiotics in “antibiotics-free” meat. Farm Forward cites much else wrong with the American Humane Certified,  One Health Certified,  & Global Animal Partnership labels             SAN MATEO,  California;  PORTLAND,  Oregon––The food testing company Food In-Depth and Farm Forward,  a self-described nonprofit “team of strategists,  campaigners, […]

USDA proposes to cover birds under the Animal Welfare Act––sort of

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Disease outbreaks afflicting poultry producers lend regulatory urgency to protecting birds––some birds,  anyhow––that 50 years of activism did not WASHINGTON D.C.––The worst outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza on record,  ravaging European flocks both wild and domestic since 2020,  now killing birds by the million in poultry barns,  especially in the upper Midwest,  may soon help […]

The dilemma of backyard chicken-keeping

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by Karen Davis, Ph.D.,  president, United Poultry Concerns “Would you be pleased if chickens came to be viewed more and more as animals to be kept as pets? Is the routine objection of neighbors to roosters insuperable?” This inquiry was prompted by a January 28,  2022 Boston Globe article about a family’s lawsuit to keep […]

Moral injury in animal advocates and nonhuman animals

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and the commonality of being reduced to “lesser beings” by Karen Davis, PhD,  president, United Poultry Concerns “Some people seemed unfazed when witnessing cruelty, but I could feel the pain of every living organism through my bones, as if it were my own.” ––Elin Gundersen, “Understanding the Power of Compassion,”.  VEGAN VOICES: Essays by Inspiring […]