animal welfare
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From New Jersey, bad news for factory farms
Thomas Hobbes famously described life in a “state of nature” as “nasty, brutish, and short.” The U.S. meat industry appears to have taken Hobbes’ statement as a prescription for proper animal husbandry. Every year, millions of farm animals are slaughtered without ever knowing anything besides life in a grim, crowded cage. Many are subjected to […]
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California’s Prop 2 could end the worst farm-animal abuses and set a national precedent
When Californians go to the polls in November they can set a precedent for the rest of the country by ending the worst animal and environmental abuses and simultaneously increasing the safety of our national food supply.
It's an election year and we all know what that means -- big money, big events, and big promises. As the rest of the country listens endlessly to the political propaganda of the last few desperate months before November, California voters are being fed an entirely different mouthful of issues -- the living conditions of the billions of farm animals slaughtered in this country every year. This weekend the Humane Society of the United States will hold a series of cross-country parties to mark the celebration of their historical ballot initiative in California: the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act or Proposition 2.
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Animal rights group called out for repeatedly exploiting women
Yesterday, The Sydney Morning Herald had a piece about PETA titled, “Why does a pro-vegetarian organisation treat women like meat?” Good question. The women-as-meat connection’s nothing new — 1990’s Sexual Politics of Meat, anyone? But it’s especially ironic coming from a group that asserts, “Animals are not ours to use for entertainment.” Seattle’s stellar Erica […]
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Makah tribe members sentenced for illegal whale hunt
The five members of the Makah tribe who participated in an unsanctioned hunt of a gray whale last year were sentenced earlier this week. The Makah tribe, whose reservation is located in northwestern Washington state, is the only tribe in the country with treaty rights to hunt whales. However, the long, arduous process of obtaining […]
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New website shows which shampoos, foods kill lovable primates
While doing the research for a Los Angeles Times op-ed about the dangers and prevalence of palm oil, I came across a great new website from the Rainforest Action Network. It lists hundreds of products that contain this orangutan-killer. (In case you haven't been following palm oil coverage on Grist and elsewhere, rainforests -- the homes of the orangutans and many other rare creatures -- are being destroyed at the fastest rate in history in Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for palm oil plantations, accounting for between four and eight percent of annual global greenhouse-gas emissions.)The site, The Problem with Palm Oil, is valuable for two reasons: First, it allows folks to green their home by getting rid of climate-killers like Oreo cookies, many Entenmann's baked goods, Body Shop soap, and Kit Kats -- and replace them with the many equally affordable (and healthier) alternatives like Lever 2000 soap (ironically made by Unilever, the biggest palm oil consumer in the world). After my article was published, I received an email from Andrew Butler of Lush Cosmetics, in which he reports has "eliminated the vast majority of palm oil we use" and is "working with Friends of the Earth to gather signatures in our stores asking [Members of the European Parliament] to vote against targets to increase the use of biofuels in road transport." Every food and cosmetics product I looked at had mainstream, equally affordable (and often tastier/better) alternatives that didn't contain palm oil.
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Presidential candidates may forgo shooting small animals to impress voters this year
This presidential election, for the first time in decades, will not feature candidates for the highest office in the land donning hunting gear and going out with guns to shoot small animals fleeing in terror. The contrast to the 2004 election, in which both candidates made a publicity stunt out of killing for votes, is stark.
In September of that year, The Arizona Republic published in September a strong op-ed by former White House speechwriter Matthew Scully, who excoriated both presidential candidates for killing innocent creatures while trolling for votes. Scully, a true-red Republican who loathes cruelty to animals, wrote:
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There’s a metaphor in here somewhere
Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear.
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Tar sands are hardly ‘environmentally responsible’
Alberta's tar sands got yet another huge black eye this week when as many as 500 ducks died after simply landing on a giant pond full of highly toxic oil sands tailings. Only five were said to have survived their toxic plunge. A member of a Canadian environmental watchdog group described the water found in the ponds as follows:
Drinking a glass of water from a tailings pond would be like drinking a diluted glass of oil or gasoline.
Whether the bitumen is cooked in situ while still underground or scraped off, carted away, and processed elsewhere -- either process requiring both huge amounts of energy and water -- millions of tons of global warming pollution are produced and nearly unfathomable amounts of toxic wastewater and tailings are left behind. Indeed, it is estimated that producing one barrel of oil from tar sands requires between 2 and 4.5 barrels of water. Last year alone, the Alberta tar sands industry was permitted water withdrawals totaling a staggering 119.5 billion gallons.
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