Summer 2016

Volume
65
Number
2
Summer 2016 AWI Quarterly Cover - Photo by Mike Suarez
About the Cover

Most egg-laying hens in this country spend their lives stuffed inside cramped battery cages within massive, dimly lit sheds, wing to wing with other birds. There is light on the horizon, however: As described on page 6, major corporate customers are responding to activists' calls and demanding that suppliers go “cage-free”—allowing the birds to move about, albeit mostly still within the confines of a shed. “Pastured raised” chickens have it far better: at Grazin' Angus Acres in Ghent, New York (depicted on the cover), they can feel the sun, spread their wings, forage, dust-bathe, and generally live like real chickens.

Photo by Mike Suarez

Table of Contents

Animals in Laboratories

The US Department of Agriculture hearing against Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. (SCBT), scheduled for early April, has been pushed back to August 15—the fourth time over the past two years that the hearing on SCBT’s...

Companion Animals

In the last 20 years, law enforcement, policymakers, health care professionals, and the general public have become more aware of the significant link between animal abuse and child abuse. As with domestic violence, animal abuse...
Participants in the first animal cruelty prosecution training conference hosted by AWI and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys in 2009 came looking for guidance—and like-minded souls. They included individuals who had volunteered to take on...

Farmed Animals

Laying hens belong on pasture where they can spend their day exploring and scratching in the grasses for insects, dust-bathing in the earth, stretching their wings, socializing with other hens, and basking in the sun...
In 2011, after several reports of animals shipped from the United States dying during arduous journeys overseas, AWI petitioned the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to improve its live...
AWI’s report, The Welfare of Birds at Slaughter in the United States, describes the results of the first-ever survey of federal government oversight of the manner in which birds raised for meat and eggs are...
The food industry impacts almost every sector of society. When food is produced irresponsibly, it can negatively impact workers, animals, and the environment. Animals are intensively confined by the billions, natural resources are polluted and...
Poultry engineered to quickly grow freakishly large is a big welfare problem in animal agriculture. So it was good news when Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a third-party animal welfare rating system for food, recently announced...
Since the national organic regulations went into effect in 2001, AWI has called on the US Department of Agriculture and the National Organic Standards Board to establish animal welfare requirements for producers that are certified...

Marine Life

In early April, the US National Marine Fisheries Service proposed designating the Sakhalin Bay-Amur River population of beluga whales in Russia as “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA).
Norway has seen a continuous drop in demand for whale meat for several years, yet it continues to set quotas and kill whales in defiance of the commercial whaling moratorium established by the International Whaling...
AWI joined forces in April with Wild Earth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity in filing a petition with the National Marine Fisheries Service to list the Taiwanese humpback dolphin ( Sousa chinensis taiwanensis...
Despite its own large fishing industry, the United States is one of the world’s top seafood importing countries, and imports of Icelandic seafood products have been on the rise. By 2014, nearly 32 percent of...
On March 17, 2016, SeaWorld made a paradigm-shifting announcement. The company will end its captive breeding program for orcas. This policy will extend to all its parks, existing and planned, domestic and abroad. The orcas...

Terrestrial Wildlife

It all happened so suddenly. I had just opened a fresh bale of alfalfa hay and was inspecting it carefully before putting it out for the unicorns. Alfalfa hay has excellent nutrition; rich in protein...
When the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (NHFGD) proposed a bobcat hunting and trapping season to open in the spring, AWI and allies analyzed the proposal and pointed out its deficiencies. We also called...
The critically endangered California condor remains a highly publicized symbol of wildlife conservation. From a global population of just 27 captive adults in 1987, ex situ breeding produced a sufficient number of individuals to commence...
Rangers reported that a pride of lions came prowling after nightfall, stalking among the brightly burning pyres at the ivory incineration site. Very unusual. Lions normally avoid fire—and this was a spectacularly large fire: 105...
On March 11, 2016, just after midnight, a National Airlines 747 landed at Fort Worth’s Alliance Airport with 17 African elephants from Swaziland. These elephants are victims of a controversial international scheme involving three US...
In the summer 2015 edition of the AWI Quarterly, we told you about an alarming proposal from the US Fish and Wildlife Service that would create serious roadblocks for private citizens wishing to petition the...

Government Affairs

A powerful symbol of the horse slaughter industry—and of the hopes some have of resurrecting it—crumbled in April with the demolition of the former Dallas Crown plant in Kaufman, Texas.
Shutting the door on horse slaughter and Class B dealers: In its fiscal year 2017 spending bill for the US Department of Agriculture, the House Appropriations Committee included two AWI priorities. The bill bars the...

In Remembrance

It came as a terrible shock. A tremor ran through me and my insides felt empty and sad when I was told that Bob Anderson had died. Wildlife has lost one of its most competent...

Reviews

Friday Night Fighters is not for the faint of heart. Readers of mysteries know going in there will be a murder or two, but they may find the abuse of animals more disturbing. There is...
Heart of a Lion chronicles the true life, against-all-odds odyssey of a mountain lion over 2,000 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the tony town of Greenwich, Connecticut. Though we know the...
Red Wolf Revival made its debut in Washington, DC, on February 22 at the Carnegie Institution for Science, followed by a panel of speakers that included filmmaker Roshan Patel and representatives from AWI, Defenders of...