Tag Archives: animal

Rescuers Turn to Boat as Storm Rocks Florida

by Myrna Posted on April 30, 2014

A storm driven by heavy rainfall and high winds has also hit hard in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee. See more here: Rescuers Turn to Boat as Storm Rocks Florida Related ArticlesWhere Tornadoes Are a Known Danger, the One That Hits Home Still StunsA Grim Toll as Storms Sweep South and MidwestSevere Flooding in South as Storm System Tapers Off

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Rescuers Turn to Boat as Storm Rocks Florida

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged alabama, animal, dwarf, Emperor, georgia, german, lai, store, storm-driven, weather | Comments Off

Study: Fad Diets Work (But Not Why You Think)

by Polly Browder Posted on April 2, 2014

Mother Jones

What’s the best diet to follow to get healthy—should you go Paleo, low glycemic, low-carb, Mediterranean, or low-fat? For a paper released last month in the Annual Review of Public Health, Yale medical researchers David Katz and Samuel Meller surveyed the scientific evidence and decided … all of the above. Specifically, they found that all of these fad diets can be consistent with these basic principles:

The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches. Emphasis added.

But what about the Paleo diet, which encourages meat eating? The authors conclude the “aggregation of evidence” supports meat eating, as long as the “animal foods are themselves the products, directly or ultimately, of pure plant foods—the composition of animal flesh and milk is as much influenced by diet as we are.” That’s entirely consistent with the Paleo push for meat from pasture-raised animals, and brought to mind a study I wrote about late last year finding that cows fed on grass deliver milk with healthier fat profile than their industrially raised peers.

The Yale paper essentially cuts through the hype of various fad diets and affirms the koan-like advice put forward by author Michael Pollan in his 2008 book In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In fact, the authors reference Pollan directly in the chart that summarizes their findings:

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Study: Fad Diets Work (But Not Why You Think)

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Billions of pounds of sea life die every year to feed our seafood appetite

by BereniceMidgett Posted on March 20, 2014

Billions of pounds of sea life die every year to feed our seafood appetite

By John Upton

NOAA

A ring seal entangled in fishing equipment — aka bycatch.

For every pound of sashimi, barbecued shrimp, or grilled sea bass that you stuff into your mouth, you’re basically spitting four ounces of marine life onto the floor.

The nonprofit Oceana published a detailed report on Thursday cataloguing the egregious problem of bycatch in U.S. fisheries. Bycatch is a word that refers to the sharks, turtles, whales, non-edible fish, and other critters that are inadvertently hauled into fishing boats or caught up in the gear of fishing fleets that are pursuing more palatable and lucrative species.

Such gratuitous killing wreaks havoc with marine food chains that are needed to support sustainable fisheries. From Oceana’s new report:

Bycatch is one of the biggest threats to the oceans and has contributed to overfishing and the dramatic decline of fish populations around the world. Commercial fisheries bring in approximately 160 billion pounds of marine catch around the world each year, which means almost 400 million pounds are caught every day. Recent estimates indicate as much as 40 percent of global catch is discarded overboard.

Based in part on U.S. government studies, Oceana estimates that 17 to 22 percent of animal life captured by the American fishing industry is discarded back into the sea — “likely already dead or dying.” If that’s accurate, some 2 billion pounds of marine wildlife is inadvertently being maimed or killed by the U.S. fishing sector every year.

The problem is not well measured globally or in the U.S.:

OceanaClick to embiggen.

Of those American fisheries where bycatch is measured, nine fisheries cause a lionfish’s share of the problem — they’re responsible for half of the country’s reported bycatch but they bring in just 7 percent of its landings.

OceanaClick to embiggen.

Oceana is calling for new regulations, the closing of loopholes in existing regulations, vigorous enforcement of rules already on the books, and better monitoring of bycatch. “Bycatch is not inevitable,” the report states. “There are ways to minimize unintended injury and waste by using cleaner gear, avoiding areas where vulnerable species are known to be present and enforcing bycatch limits each season.”

Source
Wasted Catch: Unsolved Problems in U.S. Fisheries, Oceana

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Billions of pounds of sea life die every year to feed our seafood appetite

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Animal Planet Star Was Warned He Was Breaking the Law

by Oleksajp9 Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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This morning, I appeared on CNN’s New Day to discuss my investigation into Animal Planet’s hit reality TV show, Call of the Wildman. (Watch the interview above). My story detailed a cavalier culture of animal treatment on the set of the show, produced by New York’s Sharp Entertainment, including the improper drugging of a zebra and the placement of bats—a protected species in Texas—inside a Houston hair salon to be “rescued” by the show’s star, Ernie Brown Jr., a.k.a. Turtleman. Dan Adler, a senior vice president with the production company, represented the program for the first time in public since the story broke on Tuesday.

Most notable was Adler’s insistence that nothing whatsoever occurred on COTWM sets that could be described as improper: “The idea that there is a culture of neglect or abuse on the show is completely false,” he said. “So many shows out there kill animals for sport or for money. This show is about saving them.” Adler also said that Sharp’s own internal investigation, prompted by a former staffer last May, failed to find anything questionable with production practices.

But at the same time, new evidence is emerging of another case involving legally dubious production activities. In a letter sent in August 2013, Kentucky wildlife officials warned Brown that he was breaking the law.

The letter, made available to Mother Jones, was sent by legal counsel for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, after officials saw footage of Turtleman catching a deer in a consignment store on YouTube—despite the fact that that’s against Kentucky law, according to department spokesman Mark Marraccini.

Addressed to Ernie Brown Jr., the letter states that, “Our regulation…prohibits a NWCO Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator from taking white-tailed deer unless specifically authorized by the Commissioner.” The letter also says Turtleman’s actions breached another state law governing animal welfare, which entails the risk of “criminal citation.”

Also, state law…makes it illegal for any person to take, pursue, or attempt to take or pursue, or otherwise molest an elk, deer, wild turkey, or bear in a manner contrary to the Department’s regulations. Such action may result in the revocation of your NWCO permit…for a minimum of three years and/or a criminal citation.

Mother Jones has filed an open records request with the department to see responses from Turtleman, Sharp Entertainment, or Animal Planet to the department’s letter. We have also approached producers for comment on the incident, with no response. Sharp has previously told Mother Jones that all animals were handled legally by licensed wildlife personnel while on set.

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The deer episode questioned by Kentucky officials involves a buck laying waste to a store, where it has somehow become stranded. Turtleman and his team attempt to corner and chase the deer, and then tackle it to the ground by its antlers, but not before havoc breaks out and crockery crashes to the floor:

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Animal Planet Star Was Warned He Was Breaking the Law

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Will Tyson Finally Ditch Cruel Crates for Pregnant Pigs?

by ElouiseR69 Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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In November, the animal-welfare group Mercy For Animals released a video, captured by an undercover investigator, documenting alarming conditions on a hog farm contracted to meat giant Tyson Foods. Some of the actions caught on tape were truly awful: men kicking sows and pounding them with sheets of wood. But it was just as devastating to watch how those pregnant sows lived day-to-day: crammed individually into spaces so tight, they can’t turn around.

On Thursday, Tyson announced it had begun “urging” its hog contractors to “improve housing for pregnant sows…urging all future sow barn construction or remodeling to allow for pregnant sows of all sizes to stand, lie down, stretch their legs and turn around.” Granted, it’s a statement without teeth: It requests, not requires, action, and gives no timeline. But even Mercy For Animals acknowledged in an emailed statement that it “signals an important new era and direction for the company,” which had before resisted considerable pressure to take a stand on the practice.

Gestation crates really, really need to be phased out. As Ted Genoways showed so forcefully in his 2013 Mother Jones feature “Gagged by Big Ag,” the techniques not only essentially tortures the sows, but it also puts the workers who handle them in danger—and leads them in turn to heap yet more abuse on the sows. Get this, from Genoways’ account of an interview with a Hormel worker who had been caught on tape in the act:

As we sat recently in the tiny, tumbledown house he grew up in and now shares with his wife and two kids, Lyons acknowledged—as he did to the sheriff’s deputy back then—that he had prodded sows with clothespins, hit them with broad, wooden herding boards, and pulled them by their ears, but only in an effort, he said, to get pregnant sows that had spent the last 114 days immobilized in gestation crates up and moving to the farrowing crates where they would give birth. Lyons said he never intended to hurt the hogs, that he was just “scared to death” of the angry sows “who had spent their lives in a little pen”—and this was how he had been trained to deal with them. Lyons had watery blue eyes that seemed always on the verge of tears and spoke in a skittish mutter that would sometimes disappear all the way into silence as he rubbed his thin beard. “You do feel sorry for them, because they don’t have much room to move around,” he said, but if they get spooked coming out of their crates, “you’re in for a fight.”

Did the revelations in the latest video inspire Tyson’s baby steps toward change? In its statement, Tyson attributed the announcement to its “ongoing animal well-being program,” “input we’ve received from our Animal Well-Being Advisory Panel, customers, farmers and industry experts,” and “our continuing efforts to balance the expectations of consumers with the realities of today’s hog farming business.”

But it’s becoming clear that videos like the Mercy For Animals one are increasingly shaping those consumer expectations. Tyson’s rival Smithfield found religion on hog crates after being burned by a particularly grotesque video in 2010. Unlike Tyson, which buys the great bulk of the pigs it slaughters from contract farmers, Smithfield is a massive hog producer in its own right, raising about 60 percent of its own sows. In 2010, it vowed to phase out the gestation crates in its company hog-production facilities by 2017. And just this week, Smithfield announced it would pressure its contract farmers, suppliers of the other 40 percent, to phase out crates by 2022.

The lesson from this trend is clear: When people see what goes on in factory farms, they don’t like it, and they force change (granted, at a slow and halting pace). And that is why, as Genoways’ Mother Jones piece demonstrates, the meat industry is fighting so hard to criminalize the act of secretly documenting conditions within these massive facilities.

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Will Tyson Finally Ditch Cruel Crates for Pregnant Pigs?

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Activist cited for animal cruelty because she filmed animal cruelty

by MaritaMontefior Posted on November 25, 2013

Activist cited for animal cruelty because she filmed animal cruelty

By John Upton

Shutterstock

The nonprofit Compassion Over Killing recently released videos of newborn calves being horribly abused by workers at the Quanah Cattle Co. in Kersey, Colo. Within a couple of days, three workers were cited for animal cruelty — a misdemeanor. The men, who explained to investigators that they hadn’t been properly trained to not be cruel to calves, were dismissed from their jobs.

Props are in order for the activist who took a job at the cattle company and covertly filmed the abuses. But that’s not how the local sheriff sees things. In an extraordinary attack against animal activism, the activist has been cited for the same crime as the cattle handlers. From a press release [PDF] issued Friday by Weld County Sheriff John Cooke:

During her employment at Quanah, [Taylor] Radig compiled many hours of animal abuse footage that was collected on an “as needed basis” The video footage was eventually provided to law enforcement by representatives of Compassion Over Killing approximately 2 months after Radig’s employment ended with Quanah Cattle Company. …

Radig’s failure to report the alleged abuse of the animals in a timely manner adheres to the definition of acting with negligence and substantiates the charge Animal Cruelty.

Compassion Over Killing describes the citation as politically motivated. Will Potter had the scoop over the weekend:

The prosecution of a whistleblower who exposed animal cruelty in this way is unprecedented.

However, the agriculture industry has been campaigning heavily for “ag-gag” laws that would make it illegal to photograph or videotape animal abuse on factory farms. In Utah, the first ag-gag prosecution was against a woman who filmed a slaughterhouse from the public street.

The latest versions of these bills require investigators to turn over video footage to law enforcement immediately, and some of them would prohibit investigators from speaking with the press.

These so-called “mandatory reporting” requirements — which are strikingly similar to what is at issue in this case — are intended to stop national animal welfare groups from documenting patterns of abuse.

What makes this prosecution particularly remarkable is that there are no such ag-gag laws on the books in Colorado. This is simply a case of using creative interpretations of existing laws to help shelter the agricultural sector from prying eyes.

Source
Undercover Investigator Charged With Animal Cruelty for Videotaping Farm Abuse, Green is the New Red

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Activist cited for animal cruelty because she filmed animal cruelty

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged agriculture, animal, animal-cruelty, company, compassion, county, cruelty, food, g & f, politics, radig, upton | Comments Off

Raids to Free Minks Up Ante on Animal Rights

by Myrna Posted on October 16, 2013

After something of a hiatus, a guerrilla war against the fur industry has been revived with a vengeance. From: Raids to Free Minks Up Ante on Animal Rights ; ;Related ArticlesLimits Approved for Genetically Modified Crops in Kauai, HawaiiSupreme Court to Hear Challenge to E.P.A. Rules on Gas EmissionsAn American Shutdown Reaches the Earth’s End ;

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Raids to Free Minks Up Ante on Animal Rights

Posted in alo, Casio, Citadel, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged animal, cesar, eco-friendly, fur, games-workshop, has-been, horticulture, pur, short, solar power | Comments Off

Bring on the ‘Frankenburger’

by Myrna Posted on August 5, 2013

Is a taste test of a burger made from lab-grown beef a one-time stunt or the dawn of an era of ethical meat? See the original article here: Bring on the ‘Frankenburger’ ; ;Related ArticlesA Closer Look at ‘Nonhuman Personhood’ and Animal WelfareDot Earth Blog: A Closer Look at ‘Nonhuman Personhood’ and Animal WelfareDot Earth Makes Time Magazine’s List of 25 Top Blogging Efforts ;

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Bring on the ‘Frankenburger’