SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
humane society
The Deadliest US Wildfire in a Century Could Also Take a High Toll on Maui Wildlife
Scientists warn that debris from the Maui fires pose a signficant threat to vulnerable coral reefs.
Aug 18, 2023
The wildfires that engulfed the town of Lahaina, Maui, last week killed at least 111 people. But it's not only human lives that could be lost.
Scientists say that forecast rains could wash the ash and toxic debris from the fires into the ocean, where they could have a devastating impact on marine ecosystems that are already stressed by pollution and the climate crisis.
"You have a reef that is already damaged by many other things and then you have a sedimentation event on top of that," California Academy of Sciences ichthyology curator Luiz Rocha told The Guardian Friday. "A lot more coral are going to die."
"Keeping those reefs safe is one of our higher priorities."
The fire debris pose several threats to the reefs. For one, the corals may accidentally gobble up pollutants in the fire debris, mistaking them for plankton.
"We don't know what was in those houses, and a lot of times when things burn and when they mix together, they can form other things that can be dangerous," U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Strike Team Lieutenant Trent Brown told The Garden Island Wednesday of the contents of potential runoff.
If those toxins end up in the water, it could be devastating for the reefs.
"The corals are attached to the bottom of the ocean, they cannot move," Jennifer Smith, director of the Marine Biology Research Division at University of California, San Diego, told NBC Bay Area Tuesday. "So if you were to rain a bunch of sediment, ash, debris on top of them, they could essentially become smothered. Add to that a lot of this ash and debris could have chemical toxins."
Beyond smothering the reefs, the sediment could also provide food for algal blooms that would block the sunlight.
"It is going to heavily damage the coral reefs," Rocha told The Guardian further. "They depend on clear water to survive."
One dangerous pollutant has already entered the water because of the fires: oil. The oil has spilled from boats in the Lahaina Marina that sank during the disaster, and the U.S. Coast Guard is working to contain it, as well as prevent any runoff from reaching the reefs, by setting up booms around storm drains and the marina itself.
"Keeping those reefs safe is one of our higher priorities," Brown told The Garden Island. "I know that's a very valuable natural resource here in the Hawaiian Islands, and that's what all that boom is there for—to try to minimize any impacts for those reefs, either from physical debris or sorts of toxic chemicals."
West Maui's reefs are vital economically for attracting tourism, culturally for their importance to Indigenous Hawaiians, and ecologically for their role in the islands' broader ocean community, The Guardian explained. They spawn coral that help build reefs in the rest of Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Kahoolawe, and one threatened reef—the Olowalu—hosts the largest population of manta rays in the U.S.
"These reefs have high concentrations of endemic marine species that don't live anywhere else in the world," Rob Ferguson, an expert in coral reef watershed management who works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef conservation program, told The Guardian.
Above the waves, the fires also took a devastating toll on domesticated animals.
Maui Humane Society head Lisa Labrecque told reporters Monday that residents lost around 3,000 pets during the blaze, as Vox reported.
"Our veterinary, humane enforcement, and search and rescue teams are reporting back every day that there are many stray animals. Cats, dogs, rabbits, tortoises, birds, livestock etc.," the group wrote in a Facebook post Thursday.
In a statement Wednesday, the national Humane Society said that while it was hard to gauge the exact number of animal casualties, "it's likely the toll is significant."
"Thankfully," the group added, "local organizations such as the Maui Humane Society and Hawaii Veterinary Medical Association are working with others to find animal survivors and give them a fighting chance."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Green Groups Call on Biden Admin to End Support for 'Scientifically Bankrupt' Wildlife Killing
"The FWS is tasked with preventing extinctions, using sound science when making decisions to prevent those extinctions, and with being accountable to the entire public—not funding controversial predator-control actions for the purported benefit of a few."
Aug 15, 2023
A rulemaking petition demanding an end to federal support for the removal of wolves and bears from states such as Alaska has been languishing at the U.S. Interior Department for almost two years, nearly three dozen conservation groups and scientists said in a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Tuesday as they raised alarm about a recent killing operation.
Led by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the Humane Society of the United States, and the Global Indigenous Council, 35 organizations wrote to the secretary to raise alarm about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) continued funding of "irresponsible and controversial predator-control projects."
Nearly 30 groups
signed the petition in September 2021 that demanded a rulemaking process to stop federal subsidies from supporting so-called "conservation projects" in which state officials oversee the killing of certain predator species—regardless of their federal protected status—in order to boost populations of other species.
"Since its submission the petitioners have not received a response," wrote the groups on Tuesday. "We request a meeting with the secretary to discuss the rulemaking petition."
The letter was sent two months after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) concluded a large-scale operation in which it gunned down 94 brown bears, including cubs, five black bears, and five wolves in order to increase "caribou calf recruitment" in southwestern Alaska. Caribou are often targeted by game hunters in the state.
Claiming to run a program aimed at boosting sustainability in Alaska, ADFG agents "shoot brown bears and black bears from helicopters, snare bears, and even shoot mother brown bears accompanied by cubs," wrote the groups. "Wolves face similar fates, and are targeted in the controversial 'Judas wolf' program in which radio-collared wolves who return to their pack enable ADFG agents to discover and eliminate the entire pack. The agency also aerial-guns wolves and poisons their pups in their dens."
The recent operation that took place in Alaska this spring appeared to be the largest of its kind in the state's history, with agents "inexplicably" killing at least four times as many brown bears as it had originally planned to.
The agency and other state game departments use federal aid that exceeds $1 billion annually to conduct such operations, according to PEER.
Haaland's rejection of the funding could help end the large-scale killings, the groups suggested Tuesday as they asked the interior secretary to meet with them.
Wendy Keefover, senior strategist for native carnivore protection for the Humane Society, said killing operations like the one that took place in Alaska "directly contradict federal wildlife policy," as the FWS is tasked with protecting species including brown bears and gray wolves and managing biodiversity.
"The Biden administration should suspend all further payments of federal funds to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game until its wildlife management complies with federal ecological standards," said Keefover.
Rick Steiner, board chair of PEER, also noted that killing operations are "economically counterproductive" in addition to being "scientifically bankrupt," as "millions of tourists travel to Alaska spending billions of dollars annually—just to catch a glimpse of Alaska's iconic bears and wolves in the wild."
The groups pointed to a letter signed by 55 wildlife scientists in 2018, which objected to the repeal of protections for carnivores in the interest of growing populations of caribou and other species—"privileging the human use" of wildlife "over all other considerations, including maintaining sustainable wildlife populations for future generations." The practice is ineffective, said the scientists, in addition to being disruptive of natural biodiversity.
"The scientific consensus for the last several decades has generally concluded that carnivores modulate ungulate prey populations and make them more vigorous, because predators remove the sick and weak animals which would die of other natural causes anyway, or because they reduce their competitors, including smaller wild carnivores such as coyotes, which prey on young ungulates," wrote the scientists. "Predator-control schemes, unpopular with both the Alaskan and American public are an unreliable and ineffective way to increase the abundance of ungulate."
In their letter to Haaland Monday, the groups warned that "the extinction crisis is not an abstraction; it is a clear and present danger and an impending catastrophe."
"The FWS is tasked with preventing extinctions, using sound science when making decisions to prevent those extinctions, and with being accountable to the entire public—not funding controversial predator-control actions for the purported benefit of a few," they wrote. "For these reasons, we urge your office to again consider our petition and meet with us to discuss the issues."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Conservation Groups Slam Trump's 'Reprehensible' Reversal on Elephant Trophies Ban
The Interior Department said Wednesday it will allow hunters to import their elephant trophies from Africa
Nov 16, 2017
Animal-protection advocates were outraged on Thursday over the Trump administration's decision to reverse a ban on imported elephant trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Elephant Project called the move "reprehensible" and declared, "One hundred elephants a day are already killed. This will lead to more poaching."
Although elephants are endangered species, hunters can pay government agencies in the two countries for permits to kill the animals if their expeditions are deemed to "benefit the conservation of certain species," according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, which announced the change on Wednesday.
According to the agency and groups like Safari Club International, a hunters' lobbying group which filed a lawsuit in 2014 to block an Obama-era ban on elephant trophies, hunting regulated by permits provides incentives to local communities to conserve the species and puts revenue back into conservation efforts.
Wayne Pacelle, president of the Human Society, called the permit system "a venal and nefarious pay-to-slay arrangement that Zimbabwe has set up with the trophy hunting industry" in a blog post, and noted conservationists' concerns over "lack of information about how money derived from trophy hunting by U.S. hunters is distributed within Zimbabwe." He argued that there is little evidence that so-called hunting regulations have a positive impact on conservation efforts.
"Zimbabwe's elephant population has declined six percent since 2001 and evidence shows that poaching has increased in areas where trophy hunting is permitted," Pacelle wrote, adding that if anyone should be able to hunt game in Africa, it should be the people who live there rather than wealthy Americans hunting for sport.
"What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it's just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?" wrote Pacelle.
The U.K.-based elephant-protection group Tusk Trust also drew attention to corruption in the system that allows permits for hunters. "Tusk continues to have major misgivings in the way trophy hunting is not properly regulated, and has been open to corrupt abuse of quota systems and unethical practices," said Charlie Mayhew, the group's chief executive, in a statement. "This is a setback in the fight to ban all illegal wildlife trade."
President Donald Trump's grown sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have both been roundly criticized for their enjoyment of trophy hunting over the years.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Big (Ag) Cover-Up: Will Factory Farming Finally Stop Its Culture of Abuse?
It is well beyond the time that our farms adapt to 21st Century expectations of transparency by ending the concealment of their mistreatment of animals
Jan 27, 2017
Last year, the investigator working undercover at New England's largest egg farm found rows and rows of chickens packed tightly into cages so small they were unable to even extend their wings. He found dead ones--mummified and flattened like pancakes--sharing cage space with live hens who continued to lay eggs for human consumption. Some of those eggs were covered in blood.
When he found birds with uterine prolapses or facial abnormalities, he did the right thing and alerted his supervisor. "As long as it's standing up and laying eggs, that's all that matters," his supervisor coldly replied.
Public relations experts and common sense both suggest that when we're caught red-handed, we earnestly apologize and take steps to ensure it never happens again. But that's not the path most factory farm operators take. In the case of this Maine facility, they deflected by asserting the pride they take in their eggs, and blamed the laundry list of problems on their aging barns and outdated equipment.
This animal cruelty uncovered, documented by an investigator with The Humane Society of the United States, isn't rare. Over the past two decades, animal protection organizations have conducted more than 100 undercover investigations into our nation's factory farms and slaughterhouses. These investigations have repeatedly revealed sadistic abuse: workers kicking piglets, cows rammed with the blades of a forklift, and calves repeatedly shocked with metal prods. They've also exposed standardized, industry-wide practices, like confining egg-laying hens, breeding sows and veal calves in cages and crates that virtually immobilize them for their entire lives.
Rather than confront these abuses, Big Ag--which produces most of our meat, eggs and dairy--has sought to conceal them by pushing a spate of Orwellian "ag-gag" bills in state legislatures across the country. Ag-gag, a term coined by food journalism veteran Mark Bittman, is a type of anti-whistleblower legislation designed to criminalize the documentation of cruelty to animals, rather than the cruelty itself. Many ag-gag bills impose criminal penalties for photographing or videotaping inside factory farms and slaughterhouses.
The view that the American consumer should be kept in the dark is nothing new in the meat industry. For example, in his 1999 textbook Contemporary Issues in Animal Agriculture, Peter Cheeke, PhD, professor of Animal Agriculture at Oregon State University wrote, "For modern animal agriculture, the less the consumer knows about what's happening before the meat hits the plate, the better."
While the industry has won some short-term battles by passing ag-gag bills in a handful of states, they're losing the war. More than 30 ag-gag bills have been defeated in the past five years, thanks to a broad coalition of animal protection, environmental, faith, food safety and journalism organizations. A handful of ag-gag laws have passed, however, Idaho's was struck down and deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge. Lawsuits challenging Utah and North Carolina's ag-gag laws are pending in federal court.
What's been driving Big Ag's motivation to continue to push ag-gag laws, in spite of its failures, is the rise of social media. At the 2016 World Meat Congress, Ted Bilyea, an agriculture and food consultant, opined that "social media is seen as the industry's worst nightmare." He's correct. The proliferation of grisly video footage of animals confined in cages now spreads like wildfire that no amount of spin can put out.
In the 1990s, when animal protection advocates investigated factory farms, they had to copy the footage onto VHS tapes one at a time and hand them out at events and on the street, hoping the public would actually watch them. If they were lucky, footage might air on local nightly news. Now the work of investigators can be viewed by millions in a matter of days.
This increased exposure has weakened trust in animal agriculture and harmed their bottom-line. A 2010 study out of Kansas State University found that media stories about investigations decreases consumer demand for meat. A 2016 study published in the journal Food Policy concluded, "Awareness of ag-gag laws erodes trust in farmers and increases support for animal welfare regulations."
It appears the stronger Big Ag fights for secrecy, the more consumers fight for change. Massachusetts residents just passed a ballot measure that bans the production and sale of eggs, veal and pork from animals confined in cruel cages with an overwhelming 78 percent of the vote. Similar farm animal protection measures have passed on the ballot in California, Florida and Arizona.
And the food industry is responding to consumer demand. In the last five years, just about every major grocery and restaurant chain has pledged to transition to purchasing solely cage-free eggs and crate-free pork, including McDonald's and Walmart.
As state legislatures reconvene in the New Year and begin the arduous task of governing a divided citizenry, they should emphatically reject proposed legislation that seeks to silence food industry whistleblowers and suppress information from consumers.
The fresh start of the New Year grants us all the opportunity--including animal agribusiness leaders and their political allies in the state legislature--to self-reflect and take strides in a more positive direction. Will they double-down and suppress whistleblowers? Or will they come clean, and commit to authentic transparency and higher animal welfare standards? The choice is up to them.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In 'Game Changing' Move, SeaWorld Finally Ends its Orca Breeding Program
After years of pressure and protest from animal rights advocates, SeaWorld will make its current population of whales the 'last generation' in captivity
Mar 17, 2016
In a decision that animal rights advocates hailed as a "game changer," SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby declared on Thursday that the amusement park will "end all orca breeding programs" in response to intense criticism from protesters.
SeaWorld will also invest $50 million over the next five years in the rescue and rehabilitation of marine animals and Humane Society advocacy campaigns. The Humane Society reported that SeaWorld agreed to all these changes as a result of negotiations with the animal rights advocacy organization.
"The sunsetting of orcas in captivity is a game changer for our movement, one that's been a long time coming, and one that is only possible because of your advocacy and participation," the president and CEO of the Humane Society, Wayne Purcell, thanked his organization's members on Thursday.
SeaWorld has been criticized for years by animal rights groups for its orca whale breeding and theatrical programs, which critics have condemned as cruel and inhumane.
In 2013 the documentary Blackfish highlighted abuses by the amusement park in the case of Tilikum, an orca whale responsible for three people's deaths, which the film highlighted as a tragic result of the cruelty of his treatment and the amusement park's unethical confinement of its killer whales.
Critique of SeaWorld's practices reached a fever pitch in response to the devastating film, culminating in calls for a boycott. The amusement park's revenue and stock price has tanked in the last two years, yet it still refused to concede to activist pressure. It even received further backlash when it came to light in February that rather than respond to animal rights activists' pleas on behalf of its whales, SeaWorld had dispatched employees to secretly spy on the protesters' activities.
The changes Manby described on Thursday were a major concession to advocates' demands for better treatment of its captive animals, and it followed the amusement park's November announcement that it also plans to phase out its theatrical orca shows.
But while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) celebrated Thursday's announcement, they also argued that "more must come." The animal rights group urged, "For decades orcas, dolphins, beluga whales, seals and many other animals have suffered in SeaWorld confinement, and to do right by them now, SeaWorld must open the tanks to ocean sanctuaries so that these long-suffering animals may have some semblance of a life outside their prison tanks."
Manby claimed that releasing the remaining orcas into the wild is "not a wise option," saying that orcas raised in captivity will not survive in the wild and noting that habitats for orcas are diminishing as a result of climate change.
PETA rebuts, "Animals who are members of endangered species are no happier in cages and tanks than are animals who aren't endangered. The ultimate hope for those animals lies in protecting their habitats, not in life sentences in a tank."
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Egg Industry, Scrambling
Dec 30, 2015
Americans eat about 265 eggs per person per year, according to the American Egg Board, and roughly nine in 10 are laid by hens confined in cages with little room to move.
That's changing. McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, General Mills and Nestle all said this fall they are gradually switching to cage-free eggs in the US. Consumers are buying more cage-free and organic eggs. Laws in five states, including California, ban caged hens.
But what do terms like "cage-free" and "organic" really mean? Not what you might imagine. According to a new report from the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit that promotes organic food policy and farming, eggs labeled "organic" or "cage-free" can be produced in industrial-sized barns by hens that rarely see the light of day. No wonder consumers are confused.
The challenge for large-scale egg producers is clear. Their corporate customers and regulators are demanding that they convert to more expensive, cage-free methods. Less than 9% of US hens (there are 277 million of them in all) are now raised without cages, according to United Egg Producers, a trade group. Rose Acre Farms and Rembrandt Foods, the US's second-and third-largest egg producers, are among those expanding their cage-free operations. "The change is humongous," Marcus Rust, CEO of Rose Acre, told the AP.
Smaller companies that supply cage-free and organic eggs face challenges, too. As the industry shifts to cage-free, companies like Pete & Gerry's, Egg Innovations, The Happy Egg Co and Wilcox Farms will need to find new ways to set themselves apart. Some will promote their eggs as "free range" or "pastured", terms that, unlike "cage-free", mean that chickens get access to the outdoors.
Consumers, in the meantime, may need to look beyond labels. The Cornucopia Institute report includes a scorecard ranking 136 name-brand and private-label egg producers. Shoppers concerned about animal welfare may want to look for certifications from independent nonprofits like Animal Welfare Approved and Certified Humane.
No more jailbirds
Many of these changes have been driven by animal welfare groups like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). They won an epic battle in 2008 when California voters passed Proposition 2, a ballot measure that, among other things, required that all egg-laying hens raised in the state by 2015 be able to turn around and extend their wings. That meant abolishing conventional cages, which give each hen just 80 square inches of space in which to move, roughly the footprint of a laptop computer. Later, California lawmakers required that all shell eggs sold in the state be produced in compliance with Proposition 2.
"It was at that point that the egg industry realized that the status quo was not sustainable," says Josh Balk, HSUS's director of food policy. Since then, four states - Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Washington - have enacted laws banning or restricting the use of wire cages. A sweeping animal welfare law is headed for the ballot next year in Massachusetts.
HSUS also has helped persuade more than 100 companies, including the US's three biggest food service firms, Aramark, Sodexo and Compass Group, to phase out caged eggs. The McDonald's promise in September to switch to cage-free eggs in North America over the next decade has been deemed a turning point by many, mostly because the company and its franchisees buy more than 2.1bn eggs a year.
The egg industry has fought the legislative mandates, arguing that banning cages will cost producers and consumers more, without improving animal welfare. But Chad Gregory, president of United Egg Producers, acknowledges that conventional cages are on the way out, for better or worse.
"Choices are being taken away from consumers by animal rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States," Gregory says. "You are increasing the cost of a high-quality protein significantly, sometimes doubling or tripling it."
He's not far off. On a recent visit to a Giant supermarket in suburban Washington DC, Pete & Gerry's organic free-range eggs were selling for $5.79 a dozen, Nature's Promise Naturals, a store brand, large cage-free eggs were selling for $3.49 a dozen, and a dozen conventional Giant eggs were priced at $2.99.
Some consumers willingly pay higher prices. Pete & Gerry's, for example, has grown by 20% or more a year since converting to organic and cage-free about 15 years ago. "We rose out of the ashes of the conventional egg business," says Jesse LaFlamme, the company's co-owner and CEO, who is Gerry's son. The company has expanded from a single New Hampshire farm into a network of about 100 family farms in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states to meet growing demand.
Not all eggs are created equal
Terms like "organic" and "cage-free", however, don't mean that hens spend their days bathed in sunshine and pecking at grass in a farmyard. "Cage-free" means only that hens are not kept in cages; they can still spend all their lives indoors. The organic label requires that farmers need to use organic feed and create access to the outdoors, but big farms can comply by building small porches around hen houses with as many as 150,000 to 200,000 birds.
The Cornucopia Institute is especially critical of large farms that use the organic label, but give birds extremely limited access to the outdoors, citing such brands as Chino Valley Ranchers, Eggland's Best, Horizon Organic and Land 'O Lakes. The researchers took aerial photographs of large organic egg farms and found few, if any, hens outside.
That violates the spirit of the organic standard, says Mark Kastel, Cornucopia's co-founder. Factory farmers who use the organic label are "misrepresenting themselves to consumers and injuring ethical farmers", Kastel says. "They are inconsistent with what consumers expect in terms of the humane treatment of animals, environmental standards and support for family farmers." The Cornucopia scorecard points consumers to smaller, family-owned farms that allow hens to spend all of their time on pasture; about 35 smaller firms earn the top "Five Egg" ranking.
Ranked in the middle are mid-sized producers like Pete & Gerry's, Wilcox Farms and Egg Innovations. They face a difficult challenge - explaining to consumers that their practices are superior to those of big organic farms and better than cage-free.
Pete & Gerry's relies in part on third-party verification. Its eggs are Certified Humane by an independent nonprofit and it was the first farm business in the US to become a certified B Corporation, according to LaFlamme.
"We have our work cut out for us in a category that's very confusing," LaFlamme said. "We are, to a degree, hanging our hat on the differentiation between cage-free and free range. But what we're really counting on is our brand."
Keep ReadingShow Less
After Ringling's Announcement, What's the Next Elephant in the Room?
Ringling Bros.' recent announcement that it will eliminate elephants from its acts was a potent illustration of just how far our society has moved toward recognizing and valuing the interests of animals. After more than 130 years of Ringling carting elephants from city to city and making them perform unnatural acts through abusive training techniques, it seems the pachyderms will finally come off the road.
Mar 11, 2015
Ringling Bros.' recent announcement that it will eliminate elephants from its acts was a potent illustration of just how far our society has moved toward recognizing and valuing the interests of animals. After more than 130 years of Ringling carting elephants from city to city and making them perform unnatural acts through abusive training techniques, it seems the pachyderms will finally come off the road.
For too long, we've ignored the consequences of our actions against the animals with whom we share our planet, and the results have been profoundly regrettable for both them and us. Abusing creatures of course is a disservice to them, yet it also debases us and devalues our own humanity.
But we'd be wise to look beyond the big top. Take food production, for example. Almost all of the nine billion animals we raise for food live on factory farms are subjected to deprivation so severe, we wouldn't wish it on the most heinous criminal, let alone an animal who's committed no crime.
Just as we might recoil at the sight of electric prods and bullhooks used on elephants, who among us wouldn't feel the stirrings of our conscience if we were to walk into a typical egg factory where birds are reduced to mere assembly line production units, locked in cages so small they can't even spread their wings for their entire lives? Where day-old male chicks--of no use to the egg industry--are casually killed on the first day of their lives, thrown alive into industrial grinders? Or if we were to witness pigs in the pork industry locked in cages barely larger than their own bodies, unable to even turn around for years on end, driven insane by the depraved conditions?
Such callous treatment of farm animals--animals who've done nothing to deserve such punishment--is the norm, not the exception in the meat and egg industries. And it's time that we stop allowing such abuse.
We stand alone as the most powerful species on the planet. Yet our rampant mistreatment of animals--whether in circuses or for food--is among our greatest failings when it comes to such an awesome responsibility.
As a society, we're beginning to take our responsibility to our fellow creatures more seriously. We're starting to recognize that simply because we can subjugate animals in the most extreme ways doesn't mean that we should.
Gandhi said that a nation's moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals--the most powerless group in society. The historic and precedent-setting announcement about elephants this past week indeed serves as a true marker of our social progress, and it should encourage us to continue moving toward a more humane society. When examined in the light of how we treat the animals we raise for food, we've still got a very long way to go.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Law Latest to Criminalize Defenders of Animals
Despite losses in other states, Idaho lawmakers pushing hard to paint activists as "terrorists"
Feb 13, 2014
Though similar efforts in other states have failed, a bill moving swiftly through the Idaho legislature this week is trying to criminalize the activities of animal rights advocates who expose the mistreatment of farm animals and livestock by documenting abuse by their human handlers.
Known broadly as 'Ag-Gag' legislation, the specific bill in Idaho is titled SB 1337 and is pitched by its backers--which include large agribusiness interests in the dairy and meat industry--as an "agricultural security measure" defending farmers, dairies, and processing plant owners against "ag terrorists," their unkind moniker for those who might secretly videotape abuse of animals without express permission.
"Consumers want better treatment of animals used for food not for the agriculture industry to cover up illegal acts and penalize those who try to expose cruelty." --Matthew Strugar, PETA
But opponents of animal cruelty say laws like the one in Idaho not only endanger animal welfare, but are an assault on the public's right to know about the treatment these animals receive in certain facilities when operators think no one is watching.
"Consumers want better treatment of animals used for food not for the agriculture industry to cover up illegal acts and penalize those who try to expose cruelty," said Matthew Strugar, senior litigation counsel for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), in an email sent to Common Dreams.
SB 1337, sponsored by State Senator Sen. Jim Patrick (R-Twins Falls), would ban unauthorized video recordings on agricultural facilities and treat those found engaging in such activities as criminals, with punishments of up to one year in prison and fines up to $5,000.
On Tuesday of this week, the bill was voted out of committee and is now headed to the full Senate for a vote.
As local journalist Kimberlee Kruesi reported for the Twin Falls Times-News:
The bill is being endorsed by Idaho's $2.5 billion dairy industry just two years after an animal rights group released undercover footage of abuse at Dry Creek Dairy southwest of Murtaugh, owned by large-scale dairy owner Luis Bettencourt.
The video was obtained after an investigator - who was employed by Los Angeles-based Mercy for Animals - began working on the Bettencourt dairy in July, 2012. Within three weeks of working on the facility, he recorded employees using a tractor to drag a cow on slippery concrete by a chain wrapped around its neck, employees punching and stomping on milk cows and one employee beating a cow with a pink cane.
Though animals rights groups have helped defeat similar laws in other states, the tensions in Idaho are strong. Backers of the bill have repeatedly vilified those with animal rights concerns while couching the law as one that defends the rights of private property owners.
"The cruelty [documented at the Bettencourt Dairies] drew nationwide attention and condemnation, but instead of taking meaningful steps to improve animal welfare, the state's dairy industry is simply trying to silence its critics." --Matthew Dominguez, Humane Society
According to the Associated Press, during Tuesday's committee hearing, Sen. Patrick described those who film animal abuse in dairies or slaughterhouses as "comparable to marauding invaders centuries ago who swarmed into foreign territory and destroyed crops to starve foes into submission."
"This is clear back in the sixth century B.C.," Patrick said. "This is the way you combat your enemies."
And another supporter of the law, state Sen. Jim Rice (R-Caldwell), said farmers shouldn't have to worry that someone is monitoring the treatment of animals on their property. "Do you have a right to control your own activities on your property or not?" he asked at the hearing. "Throughout our history, the answer has been yes."
But animal rights activists say these arguments are both absurd and a distraction from the real issue: preventing cruelty to animals and improving the public perception of all farmers by creating a culture of transparency, not secrecy, when it comes to farming and food processing operations.
"If the Idaho state legislature passes this bill and it becomes law, people all over the country will think Idaho's agriculture sector has a lot to hide," said PETA's Strugar.
PETA has long used undercover investigators to expose animal cruelty like that found in Bettencourt case.
"It's vital that the public retain the right to document abuse wherever it occurs," Strugar explained to Common Dreams, "because there are no inspections of farms for cruelty violations and workers who report abuse are often ignored, evidence from undercover investigations is crucial in prosecuting criminal acts."
The Humane Society of the United States, which has been active in opposing the Idaho law, released this television ad to help make its case to the public:
Idaho Ag-Gag Commercialwww.youtube.com
Matthew Dominguez, who works on farm policy for the Humane Society and has been actively lobbying against the bill, says the argument about private property rights is a red herring pushed by agribusiness to confuse the issue.
"The real motivation behind these dangerous ag-gag bills," Dominguez told Common Dreams, is "to prevent the public from learning about the horrors occurring on factory farms."
He continued: "The cruelty [documented at the Bettencourt Dairies] drew nationwide attention and condemnation, but instead of taking meaningful steps to improve animal welfare, the state's dairy industry is simply trying to silence its critics."
Both Strugar and Dominguez agree that though the AG-Gag bill now before Idaho's full senate is designed to insulate the dairy and agriculture industries from outside critics, what its really doing is making consumers in the state and across the country less trusting of the people who are responsible for caring for the many millions of animals used for food production each year.
"This dangerous effort by Idaho's dairy industry is going to hurt the public's trust in all of Idaho agriculture," said Dominguez. "Other farmers should resent that the dairy industry for giving the impression that all of the state's food producers have something to hide.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy