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UK Bill Holds Promise
On Oct. 13, England and Wales introduced a bill to
modernize animal welfare standards. The unprecedented measure requires
owners of all vertebrate animals to provide a suitable environment and
diet, the ability to express normal behavior, and freedom from pain and
suffering. The Animal Welfare Bill would replace the Protection of Animals
Act of 1911 and bring together over 20 additional pieces of legislation.
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Monsanto Invents Pig
Monsanto Corporation, notorious for pioneering the
use of genetically engineered crops, has a new invention up its sleeve.
Last February, it filed a patent application at the World Intellectual
Property Organization —not only
on pig breeding methods, but also on the actual herds of pigs it has
created. Monsanto is infamous for not caring about the environment and
this action proves it certainly does not care about the livelihood of most
farmers. If a patent on Monsanto’s pig breed is granted, the corporation
can legally prevent farmers from breeding pigs who fit the description in
the patent claims if they do not pay royalties. This type of corporate
control could be devastating to independent family farms.
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Loss of a Staunch Crusader
Animal rights movement pioneer Ethel Thurston died
in early January at the age of 94. For the last three decades of her life,
she ran the American Fund for Alternatives to Animal Research and the
company Beauty Without Cruelty —inspiring
a new generation of activists and working to make the world a better place
for animals.
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Southern California’s diminishing otter population includes a group
of several clever animals who have managed to trick government
scientists by returning to the habitat from which they were
displaced.
Bryant Austin/mmcta.org |
Otters Win Relocation Battle—For Now
Many otters from Southern California are swimming
in "forbidden waters," despite relocation efforts made several years ago
by a group of government biologists. The scientists moved the animals
north from Anacapa Island to Monterey, Calif. under a federal plan to
preserve the species and protect shellfish divers from natural
competition. Yet within less than half a year, dozens of the otters had
returned to their original habitat. Now the government may abandon its
program to acknowledge the fact that the intelligent creatures will not
stay within the boundaries imposed for them by man. Environmentalists are
also pressing authorities to allow the otters to go where they want,
hoping that it will help the species recover. Subjected to hunting over
the years, the Southern California otter population has dwindled to about
2,700 animals.
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Legacy of Cruelty Continues at UCSF
To settle a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) legal complaint
alleging 75 Animal Welfare Act (AWA) violations, the University of
California-San Francisco (UCSF) agreed to pay a $92,500 fine in September,
avoiding the presentation of evidence for federal violations in open court
hearings. USDA claims the violations took place in UCSF animal research
labs between 2001 and 2003 and included horrific acts such as performing a
craniotomy on a monkey without post-surgical pain relief and performing
surgery on a ewe and her fetus without post-surgical pain relief. A
stipulated penalty of $2,000 was also paid in 2000 for other AWA
violations, and the poor conditions in the university’s labs have been
documented since the 1980s. Several of the university’s top investigators
were cited as violators in this new case, yet UCSF has never formally
admitted to the cruelty going on behind its laboratory doors— the
first step in fixing this decades-old problem.
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