Congressional reaction to the damning USDA puppy mill inspections report:
In response to a scathing report by the USDA Inspector General (IG), critical of the government’s handling of puppy mill investigations, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) today called for immediate changes at the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS) and promised to work with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on administrative and legislative reforms.
[…]
Durbin had been working for some time to address the sales of animals over the internet and today introduced legislation to close the internet loophole puppy mills are currently exploiting. Durbin’s bill, the Puppy Uniform Protection and Safety Act, would require all breeders that sell more than 50 dogs a year to be licensed and to undergo inspections to ensure dogs are receiving proper care. USDA played a role in developing the legislation and has endorsed the approach. Senator Vitter is the bill’s lead cosponsor.
Animal advocates lodge complaints against the shelter in Columbus Co, NC
A dairy farmer speaks out against the tendency of some to paint the entire dairy business as cruel in response to the actions of a few bad apples.
The owner of the “pet” chimpanzee who mauled a CT woman in February 2009 has died.
Good dogs may live longer than bad dogs, which is not good news for the Beaglies.
I’m not good at cat breeds – Is this a Bengal kitty?
Cool tiger photo from Six Flags
Looks to me like an F1 either Bengal or Savannah. I hope it’s not a Savannah, those things are quite large and are very capable of killing good sized animals.
I have forwarded the defense of dairy link to my farmer friends and bloggers.
In regards to the dairy issue, we don’t seem to have that view of dairy farmers here. The vast majority of our milk is locally produced. Here in Ontario dairy farms are still relatively small productions.
*eye roll* to the “defense of dairy” blog entry, but hey to each their own…I notice you didn’t include the reason for that blog entry.
As I keep wanting to know – how many undercover investigations, how many videos does it take for people to stop thinking these are “bad apples”? There are hundreds currently. Does it take thousands? Tens of thousands?
We don’t need the breast milk of another species to survive. We never have. Why take part in maternal deprivation, slaughter, veal, artificial selection for unhealthy animals when you don’t have to?
It doesn’t matter how many of those videos they make. I’m not going to believe even one of them. They look fake and they’re obviously staged by infiltrators. I will accept no evidence from animal protection groups against anyone anymore. Not after that one set of fake photographs that I saw, that’s for certain.
Here’s a link for you:
http://nokillleecounty.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/consequences/
My eye on the “Cause Matters” blog post is also jaundiced, but for different reasons.
No, I don’t believe that there are many dairy farmers who take joy in beating the shit out of cows and calves. Duh. Neither do I believe that the video was somehow “staged,” that the abusers were “tricked” into administering the beatings and then chortling about it.
I do read that post and smell bound-for-Hell PR Twinkie, (sorry, “Certified Speaking Professional”) and plenty of self-serving dissembling.
Dairy calves are not taken from their mothers for their health, or for their mothers’ health. What utter bullshit. They are taken because dam-raised calves are inconvenient to mechanized dairy operations. And being bucket-raised on “milk replacer” is the reason that dairy calves sicken and die of scours, a condition unknown among dam-raised beef calves. But it’s still more profitable and streamlined to deal with that morbidity and mortality than it is to cope with dam-raising calves in a dairy.
“Given their own home to thrive in.” OMFG. That’s how they spin “Separated at birth from their dams and raised in isolation in a calf hut.”
(Here at Romanian State Orphanage, we give baby privacy and personal space.)
Cows in most industrial dairies in the US ARE shot full of artificial hormones that are banned in most other developed countries. These hormones find their way into the food stream and our bodies. They are also correlated with higher somatic cell counts, because the overproduction they cause puts extreme stress on the cows’ udders.
Antibiotic use is high because of crowding, stress on the udders, and sanitary shortcomings. Sure, there are withdrawal times after an antibiotic is used. The resistant bacteria that get spawned by such use don’t care about withdrawal time.
And the “nutritionists” who formulate cow feed are not seeking the optimimum health diet for the healthiest Olympic cows. They are coming up with a ration that gets the highest production for the lowest cost. Again, duh. I have a guy at the feedmill who does this for my poultry, too, except I’m pretty strict about the ingredients being biologically appropriate (Randy calls me “nature girl” and has come up with a custom formula for me that other customers are now requesting because it has given me a really good feed conversion ratio at a reasonable cost.) The chickens do not “eat better than me.” If dairy cows are eating better than Ms. Payne-Knoper, then she really needs an intervention from Michael Pollan.
The abuser was very obviously playing to the camera. His spiel was prepared. It looked very fakey and played for the benefit of the camera. The abuser was a second infiltrator. They should have turned his worthless carcass over to the police, too, and told everyone his name.
They will only target the ones that they feel like. This is why investigations should only be conducted in an even-handed manner. As far as I am concerned a state or federal inspector’s clean bill of health should be the last word and these “undercover” operations should be felonies with hard time.
One other little bon mot: They do their best to keep credit away from those producers that do follow the humane laws. They won’t give credit for the good things that dairy producers do for their cows. This is the biggest reason to rid ourselves of their influence. If we rate ourselves by the way that they contrive to see us, the way that they pretend we are evil, we will harm ourselves. We already have harmed ourselves.
Uh, right.
The guy who is currently in the county lockup with a $100,000 bail that he can’t meet is just taking one for the PeTA team.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/05/27/gregg-court-appearance.html?sid=101
He’s a deep undercover animal-rights mole who is so devoted to the cause that he had no trouble cackling away as he beat the living shit out newborn calves, and will similarly close his eyes and think of Ingrid while he’s taking it up the ass with a plunger handle after his fellow inmates find out what he’s done.
He’ll never tell about his secret life as a vegan radical. All for The Cause.
Hello Ms. Houlahan. Just a question from this “PR Twinkie.” How many dairy farms have you worked on to come up with your opinions? Just wanted to ask since your reasoning reads like a book of misinformation, or perhaps that of Mr. Pollan (an English professor). Your entitle to your opinion. I choose to base mine on practicality, science and experience rather than the words of others. Good luck in your pursuits.
That’s right, I’m sitting here in my Manhattan high-rise reading Barbara Kingsolver and drinking a chai latte.
Not, in any way, having my apre-chore oatmeal with my own raw milk (shared with the dam-raised kids, thx) and my neighbor’s nice Ayrshire cream (shared with the dam-raised calf, thx) in my coffee (yes, fair-trade, thx).
We urban sophisticates in our ivory towers, always looking down our noses at the salt o’ the earth, ya know, never getting any shit on our Ferragamos.
You’ll have to find another ad hominem tactic, Ms. Certified Speaking Professional.
gah, can it possibly true that such behavior is NOT a crime (because the laws in most states for livestock don’t protect the animals??)