Articles by Jason D Scorse

They don’t ignore it

In order to further elucidate the role of animal welfare issues in environmentalism, let us examine mission statements from some of the top environmental organizations in the world.

Let's start with the first line of the mission statement from the World Wildlife Fund:

"Protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species."

Notice that WWF talks about protecting wild animals independently of whether they are endangered (only later do they go on to discuss the sustainability of resources).

Here's the first sentence from the mission statement for the Defenders of Wildlife:

The agricultural subsidy train never stops

Now that produce farmers are feeling the heat from overseas competition, they want some of the federal subsidy pie.

The problem of fish

Organic agriculture has always walked a tricky line between the aspirations of a positive ecological movement and the real difficulties of trying to define what makes for good agricultural practices. Noticeably absent have been workers rights and energy use -- and the organic rules surrounding animal agriculture are weak.

Now the limits of organic are being reached.

Humpback whales have ‘human-like’ brain cells

New discoveries point to the presence of more complex forms of brain cells in Humpback whales, which might explain their high levels of intelligence.