Congress moves to restore ban on horse slaughter

Grist

Hear that whinnying? It’s not the sound of horses being led to slaughter. It’s the sound of would-be horse killers reacting to budget cuts.

In 2006, Congress cut funding for inspectors of horse slaughterhouses, which shut down the industry one year later. Funding was restored in 2011, and New Mexico company Valley Meat Co. planned to start slaughtering horses again, intending to export the meat to countries where people might actually want to eat it. But legal challenges and sabotage have stymied Valley Meat. It didn’t help when one of the company’s workers videotaped himself shooting a colt in the head and saying “fuck you” to animal activists — and then asininely posted the footage online. Last month, New Mexico sued in an effort to block the slaughterhouse, which Attorney General Gary King (D) described as “completely at odds with our traditions and our values as New Mexicans.”

And now Congress is once…

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Let’s Nuke Japan Again but this Time To Target Taji!

Friday Cat-erpillar Blogging: Gypsy Moth

Living With Insects Blog

Gypsy Moth caterpillars were found on the Purdue Campus in Spring 2013. This year (2014) the State of Indiana will aggressively target the population for eradication. The DNR is advertising its plan to the media and holding informational meetings to answer the public’s questions. The plan consists of spraying the area with a Bacillus thuringiensis strain that is effective against gypsy moth caterpillars. That will be followed by an area wide pheromone treatment to disrupt adult mating. A similar program successfully eradicated an isolated population in Indianapolis earlier this decade.

One reason for the media blitz is to answer the concerns of citizens. However, some citizens oppose any spraying on public property and spraying by government agencies. I think eradication is the right move and will lead to less pesticide use and abuse in the long run. The BT is specific for Lepidoptera and it will be sprayed on a…

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South Korea slaughters poultry amid H5N1 bird flu scare, 24 farms under quarantine

The Extinction Protocol

January 17, 2014– SOUTH KOREA– South Korea started culling thousands of poultry after a preliminary test indicated the first possible outbreak of bird flu since 2011, officials said. A suspected case of avian influenza was reported yesterday at a poultry farm in Gochang in North Jeolla Province, some 300 kilometers southwest of Seoul, the agricultural ministry said. Local authorities had already begun culling all of the more than 20,000 ducks on the farm, it said. Quarantine measures were also enforced at 24 other farms in four different provinces that were known to have purchased ducks from the Gochang farm. Further testing from Gochang was under way, but the ministry said it was “highly likely”’ it would be confirmed as H5N1 avian flu. The last outbreak in South Korea occurred in 2011, when more than six million poultry were culled at more than 280 farms across the country. –

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Shark Cull: Australian Politicians Pledge to Round up Usual Suspects

strange behaviors

On a Saturday morning six weeks ago, Chris Boyd, a 35-year-old father of two, was surfing the break off Gracetown in Western Australia. A shark, presumed to be a great white, bounced off the board of a nearby surfer first, before tearing into Boyd. “The shark bit him and held him for about a minute,” said another surfer, who witnessed the attack from the beach. “He was dead before the shark let go.”

It was the third fatal shark attack on a surfer at Gracetown in the past decade, and the seventh fatality from a shark attack in just three years in Western Australia. Predictably, local politicians reacted by pushing for immediate action on a shark mitigation scheme first proposed in September 2012.

Their plan, due to go into effect this month, calls for placing drumlines—buoys rigged with large baited hooks—a little more than a half mile off popular…

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Live Baby Chicks Used as Packing Peanuts

Our Compass

BACKGROUND | SOURCE PETA

Ideal Poultry Breeding Farms, a company that sells and ships live birds, uses live baby chicks as packing material! According to complainants and Ideal Poultry’s own website, male chicks are included as filler in live shipments so that the birds who were ordered can be kept warm during transit. Sadly, many of these filler chicks reportedly arrive dead or die within hours of arrival. One caller who adopted several ailing filler chicks from a neighbor contacted PETA with a heartbreaking story: She tended, fed, and watered her chicks with a dropper throughout their first night, but she could only watch as each one slowly died.

We reached out to Janet Crouch, the owner of Ideal Poultry, but our concerns were brushed off with the response that male chicks are used for warmth and to take up extra space in the box. … Adding males for warmth…

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100 Most Weirdest and Rarest Animals in the World / Pictures (10:51)

These beautiful shawls are made from endangered antelope fur

Grist

The Tibetan antelope lives on a cold, cold plateau and grows a fine fuzzy under-fur — one-fifth the width of human hair — to keep it warm. Not coincidentally, it’s also endangered. It’s lost more than half of its population in the past 20 years, and part of the reason is that humans use that fuzzy fur to make really soft, really warm shawls. The Guardian reports:

Shahtoosh shawls are made by highly skilled Kashmiri artisans from the fine under-fur of the chiru (the Tibetan antelope) and they are prized in Pakistan. Processing or wearing shahtoosh is a punishable offence in India, and in Pakistan — where they are smuggled into from Indian Kashmir — anyone selling them face prison sentences of up to two years and fine of up to Rs1m (£5,805).

But people want them anyway — they’re often given as wedding gifts.

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Nevada lawsuit exposes underbelly of the Public Lands grazing disaster

Tuesday's Horse

THE CLOUD FOUNDATION PRESS RELEASE

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. (Jan. 17, 2014) — A lawsuit brought by the Nevada Association of Counties (NACO) and the Nevada Farm Bureau (NFB) against the federal government claims wild horse overpopulation creates serious environmental concerns for horses, wildlife, and the ecology of rangelands, yet makes no mention of the glaring inconsistencies between policies of wild horse management and the free ride granted to federal livestock grazing.

The lawsuit accuses the federal government of failing to comply with the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act by not keeping wild horse populations within Appropriate Management Levels (AML) set by the BLM. The lawsuit claims that the wild horses have damaged public land and demands not only removal of “excess” wild horses, but the disposal of removed wild horses that are incarcerated in holding facilities.

“Even though millions of privately-owned livestock occupy public lands, the few remaining…

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GLEE, the miracle cat who survived terrible abuse

IN MEMORY OF VUČKO

On the 1st of December 2013, animal rescue charity Andjeo Sarajevo found two animals in a desperate situation, a cat with blood pouring out of her eyes and a puppy with a serious and infected leg wound. The puppy, Cara, had to have her leg amputated, but this is the story of the cat, who everyone thought had to be put to sleep. She was named Glee. Glee has made such a remarkable recovery her story deserves to be read by the world. I will tell her story through the words of Andjeo Sarajevo as they posted up her progress on Facebook:

December 1, 2013 Bloody day. I have no words to describe the pain I’m feeling. The pictures say more than I can now say, a cat left on the street to die in agony and poor puppy only a month and a half old also left to die, to…

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NY Assembly Response

Update in Taji is A Great One Today (I am so happy right now): All killing boats returning to Taiji harbor empty handed. January 16, 2014….Woo Fucking Hoo!

What the Hell Happened to Our Food Chain?

The Wisdom Tube

OMG…this just in…are you aware?

From the Organic Consumers Association today:

Fish no longer eat other fish. Cattle eat corn, even though it makes them sick. Chickens eat corn and fish. And fish eat byproducts from cows and poultry.

Even chicken feathers have become food.

California grows oranges, but sends them away because they’re too difficult to peel. The oranges Californians eat come from Australia.

The food chain doesn’t look like it used to.

Demand for more food, and cheaper food, has created a food chain that’s motivated by making the greatest amount of food, at the cheapest cost. It’s efficient, if you measure efficiency by corporate profits. But in terms of health and the environment? Grandma wouldn’t approve.

Watch this film and PASS IT ON:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_29082.cfm

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Protect Black Rhinos from Trophy Hunters

Vegan Lynx

Click to sign here.

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Protect Black Rhinos from Trophy Hunters

Vegan Lynx

Click to sign here.

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A Russian Mother’s Photographs

This Guy Just Dumped A Few Tons of Horse Manure in Front of the French Assembly…

Higher Learning

The protester, who has yet to be identified, drove a truck full of horse manure in front of the the French National Assembly building, where the French parliament meets.

He was halfway through dumping the load (pun intended) when he was arrested by police.

President Francois Hollande, France’s current president, is (according to polling numbers) the least popular leader in France’s modern-day history. He also recently became entangled in a sex scandal with a popular French actress.

The side of the feces-filled truck read, “Out with Hollande and the entire political class. Long live the Sixth Republic”. The 5th Republic refers to the 5th and current version of the French constitution, so it seems the man was calling for a whole new constitution and political system in the country.

But he might have just been saying, “This whole situation is horse****.”

Read the full story from TIME here.

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Kentucky 7000G Reward For Tips Who Shot The Whooping Cranes

Ann Novek( Luure)--With the Sky as the Ceiling and the Heart Outdoors

Kentucky is offering a $7,200 reward to anyone who can lead authorities to the person or people responsible for shooting two endangered whooping cranes that arrived in the state this winter.

The two 5-foot (1.5-meter) tall, pure white birds, who were mates, were killed around Thanksgiving in central Kentucky, according to U.S. officials. The shooters could face up to a $100,000 fine and a year in jail.

Fewer than 500 whooping cranes live in the wild in the United States, making them the world’s most endangered crane species, said Tom MacKenzie a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday. Only seven spend their winters in Kentucky.

Joe Duff, the co-founder of Operation Migration, an organization that helps young whooping cranes on their first migration from Wisconsin to Florida, called the shooters “vandals that want to kill something, putting their own moods, feelings and aggressions on a creature…

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In Defense Of Animals Releases 2013 List Of “Ten Worst Zoos For Elephants”