Warning! Sad Story Ahead

This is such a sad story. A beagle rescued from a laboratory in Spain and brought to the Los Angeles has run off and his humans are trying to find him. :-(

Mad Cow Disease Appears in California

Potentially bad news for California Agriculture. Read the full story here at the LA Times.

The reemergence of mad cow disease, discovered in a California dairy cow, could have major implications for the state’s meat industry, even though officials have said that the human food supply is unaffected. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy hasn’t been found in U.S. since 2006 and was discovered in only three instances before then. But the disease has dealt a crippling blow to the industry in the past, especially when foreign countries refused to import American beef when mad cow was first uncovered in 2003. The U.S. Department of Agriculturetests about 40,000 cows a year in its effort to catch the disease. In California, private and public ranching takes up about 38 million acres, according to the California Cattlemen’s Assn. There are about 620,000 beef cows on 11,800 California ranches. The state also hosts 1.84 million dairy cows, according to information compiled by the California Beef Council. The sale of cattle and calves was a $1.82-billion industry in California 2008 and fifth among the state’s top 20 commodities. Beef cattle are raised in nearly every California county. Nationally, California ranks behind Texas, Kansas and Nebraska in total cattle numbers.

"Happy Cows" Campaign in California Under Fire

California dairy farmers have an ad campaign that cows are just darn happy on their factory farms. PETA is not convinced.

This article about the situation appears in the Merced Sun-Star which is from my home county of Merced!

Feds Approve Killing Sea Lions in the Columbia River

The Federal government has approved the killing of California Sea Lions in the Columbia River, blaming them for killing and eating endangered salmon. Never mind the main reasons for the problems with the salmon: hatcheries, human harvest, hydropower and the destruction of habitat.

Wolfgang Puck Sends Letter Supporting End to Foie Gras Sales

From Sfist.com....

Although his gastronomic reputation has, let's fact it, been marred due to his frozen food and canned soup lines, Spago founder and chef Wolfgang Puck still has some pull. So, he penned an open letter to California restaurants still serving foie gras. And the letter, sent by Puck in February, was intended to sooth the frayed nerves of chefs who don't like being told what they can and cannot serve at their spoons. (As you know, foie gras will be banned at the start of July this year.) Vegansaurus' wonderful Laura Beck (by way of SF Weekly) got her hot hands on the letter. Check it:

California Legislators Call for Wildlife Official's Resignation

The wildlife official in question is the President of the California Fish and Game Commission. He is a proponent of trophy hunting and was photographed with a dead mountain lion in Idaho. Full story here.

CA Wildlife Official Photographed with Dead Mountain Lion

What was this idiot thinking? The full story is below and it comes from kcra.com.

Outcry is growing against one of California’s top wildlife officials after a photo of him holding a dead mountain lion surfaced online last week.

Dan Richards, president of the California Fish and Game Commission, is shown in the photo, holding a mountain lion he reportedly hunted and killed in Idaho, according to Western Outdoor Press, which published the photo.

Hunting mountain lion is legal in Idaho, but illegal in California.

On Monday, some animal rights advocates said Richards appears to be sending a message about his feelings on California law: The photo, marked "courtesy" appears to have been provided by either him or one of his hunting companions to the Western Outdoor Press.

KCRA 3 could not reach Richards for comment.

The Humane Society of the United States, whose members are outraged over the photo, are exchanging thousands of Facebook and Twitter posts and plan to urge California State Assembly members and Senators to vote to have Richards removed from the commission.

US Judge Asked to Hear Case about Orcas

We'll see how it goes. Even when we lose these battles, the fact that they are heard at all is an important step. Barriers are broken and precedents are set for the future. I'm tired of being a pessimist all the time.

Excerpted from the Sydney Morning Herald....

A federal judge for the first time in US history has heard arguments in a case that could determine whether animals enjoy the same constitutional protection against slavery as human beings.

US District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing in San Diego after Sea World asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that names five orcas as plaintiffs in the case.

PETA claims the captured killer whales are treated like slaves, forced to live in tanks and perform daily at its parks in San Diego, California and Orlando, Florida.

Advertisement: Story continues below "This case is on the next frontier of civil rights," said PETA lawyer Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas.

Sea World's lawyer, Theodore Shaw, called the lawsuit a waste of the court's time and resources. He said it defies common sense and goes against 125 years of case law applied to the American constitution's 13th amendment, which prohibits slavery between humans.

"With all due respect, the court does not have the authority to even consider this question," Shaw said, adding later: "Neither orcas nor any other animal were included in the 'We the people' ... when the constitution was adopted

Terrible News. US Supreme Court Strikes Down California "Downer Cow" Law

Clearly a win for the damn livestock industry. It was a question of federal vs. state authority. Sucks. And it was a unanimous decision.

Read the full story at CNN....

A state law mandating "humane treatment" of downed livestock headed for the slaughterhouse was unanimously overturned Monday by the Supreme Court.

At issue was whether federal regulations dealing with inspection of domesticated animals about to be killed, processed, and sold for human consumption preempted -- or nullified -- California Penal Code 599f.

Several justices had earlier noted the good intentions behind the state action, but all now agreed that it went too far into the traditional federal arena.

U.S. Supreme Court rules on health care challenge| GPS tracking

"The Federal Meat Inspection Act regulates slaughterhouses' handling and treatment of non-ambulatory pigs from the moment of their delivery through the end of the meat production process," wrote Justice Elena Kagan. "California's (law) endeavors to regulate the same thing, at the same time, in the same place -- except by imposing different requirements. The FMIA expressly preempts such a state law."

Beef Farm's Trucks Burned by Activists

I don't support the destruction of property or any physical threats against people who harm animals whether through medical testing or through conventional agriculture. It does nothing but make the targets more wedded to their positions and it garners sympathy from the general public. And, this happened in Fresno County which is in the San Joaquin Valley of California. I grew up there. Believe me, they are NOT helping their cause at all.

Full story here at the Fresno Bee.....

Animal rights activists are behind the burning of cattle trucks at Harris Farms in western Fresno County early Sunday, according to a statement released by a clearinghouse for activists.

The statement purports to describe how the fire, which heavily damaged 14 tractors and several cattle-hauling trailers, was set and says the attack was aimed at "the horrors of factory farming."

Harris Farms CEO and Chairman John Harris said in an email Tuesday that he and others with the ranch are "appalled by this senseless, but very alarming attack." He called it a terrorist action.

"I had suspected Animal Liberation Front may have been involved and now they are in fact claiming responsibility for it with multiple details," Harris wrote.

The clearinghouse that distributed the statement claiming credit for the arson is the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which says it has no direct dealings with underground groups or illegal activity.

New Laws to Start in California

From Hometown Station AM 1220.....

New legislation in California increases the misdemeanor penalty for animal neglect and makes it a crime to sell a live animal on any street, highway, public right-of-way, parking lot, or carnival. California SB 917

Two new laws in Oregon and California prohibit the possession, sale, trade or distribution of shark fins. The California law specifies that a person must hold a license in order to possess shark fins for scientific purposes. In addition, restaurants may possess and sell shark fins purchased before Jan. 1, 2012, until Jan. 1, 2013. California AB 376.

California Exotic Animal Laws Criticized by Some

Here's an interesting article. Ohio's governor just signed an executive order modeled on California's exotic animal laws, actually spurring criticism of the effectiveness of those laws.

Animal Welfare in the State of California

California really is at the forefront of animal welfare and this is an excellent article detailing what's going on in the State and the challenges animal welfare faces. It also does a great job at profiling Jennifer Fearing who led the victory of Proposition 2. She sounds amazing.

West Hollywood, CA, Approves Fur Ban

It's the first fur ban in the United States.

Yay! Here's hoping there are many more to come!

Followup: Witherspoon Will Stop Carrying Python Purse

I don't know what she's going to do with it, but at least she'll stop carrying it. She's supposedly a vegetarian and is friends with Walk the Line co-star Joaquin Phoenix who is a huge animal rights activist and vegan.

I still don't understand what she was doing. She knew it was an animal skin....and she spent $4,000 on it? CRAZY!

PETA is very happy.

Witherspoon in Trouble for Python Purse

For some bizarre reason (hopefully just ignorance), Reese Witherspoon has pissed off animal rights activists by purchasing and carrying around a purse made out of python skin. Python skinning is horrible, brutal and repulsive. And it's illegal for her to have it at least in the State of California.

And she paid $4,000 for it. Sorry, but that's stupid enough on its own. $4,000 for a frigging purse?!

Foie Gras to Be Banned in California

Apparently, this will happen in 8 months. I had no idea!

Excerpted from The New York Times.....

In eight months, the sale of foie gras will be banned in California. But for seven hours on Friday night, at a restaurant appropriately known as Animal, three chefs presented an eight-course meal that was nothing short of a glorification of this soon-to-be-outlawed delicacy. There was smoked foie gras, roasted foie gras, steamed foie gras and liquefied foie gras, injected into agnolotti. It was served with veal tongue, yogurt, prosciutto, mustard ice cream and truffles. There was even a foie gras dessert: a brownie sundae with foie gras Chantilly.

With all its gluttonous excess, and with the backdrop of the animal rights protesters, the sold-out dinner became the fattiest of food as political protest, offering a clash of competing passions in a battle that has reverberated across the nation but finally settled here, the first state in the nation to criminalize the sale of foie gras, the fattened liver of a goose or a duck.

It was also a perhaps belated realization by these chefs and their fans that a law signed eight years ago is truly taking effect and is about to change the way they do business drastically, putting California on the front lines of the battle about force-feeding ducks and geese to produce the silky liver delicacy.

Scandal at Los Angeles Animal Shelter

LA Animal Services is the subject of an internal investigation surrounding missing animals. At first, it sounds like employees may have been taking them, but volunteers had access too....

Excerpt from CityWatch...

Brenda Barnette, General Manager of the Animal Services Department, said 64 animals have disappeared from six shelters in roughly a year,” Zanhiser reports. “Of that total, 39 were housed at the city's North Central shelter on Lacy Street — a missing rate considered unusually high.”

“They were the young ones, the cute ones,” Barnette said. "They were ones that would have been likely to have been sold or be a nice gift for someone." The majority of the unaccounted-for animals were dogs, Barnette said.”

At a recent Encino Neighborhood Council meeting Ms. Barnette announced that her LA Animal Services staff has a “few bad apples”—not exactly the public description you expect from a City manager. This week she disclosed that she went to Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD, plus Human Resources to ask them to help sniff out what happened to 64 animals—mostly dogs—missing from over 68,000 impounded this year at six city shelters.

Ms. Barnette apparently failed to mention that early this year she personally ordered that volunteers are to have keys to the kennels to remove animals at any time. The type of key she made available is reportedly the universal key that provides access to all city facilities and is not marked “Do Not Duplicate.” She also reportedly did not set up a standard procedure for monitoring the issuance and use of the keys.

Sea Shepherd Busts Whale Meat Importer

From examiner.com....

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is just about ready to chalk up a win against a California seafood dealer who imported endangered whale meat from Tokyo and sold it to Califorian restaurants. Today, according to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Ginichi Y Ohira was charged in Los Angeles federal court with selling whale meat in violation of the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had run a sting operation to collect evidence related to the serving of whale meat.

Sea Shepherd activists Zoli Teglas and Crystal Galbraith and Charles Hambleton (producer of The Cove) visited The Hump resaurant in Santa Monica and pocketed pieces of suspect meat for formal testing.

Best & Worst States for Animal Protection

According to this Technorati article, the Humane Society rated the states on their animal protection laws.

BEST STATES
California (best-yay!)
New Jersey
Illinois
Massachusetts
Colorado
Maine

WORST STATES
Ohio
Hawaii
Alabama
North Dakota
Mississippi
Idaho
South Dakota (worst)


According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the states fell this way...

BEST
Illinois (best)
Maine
Michigan
Oregon
California

WORST
Mississippi
Idaho
Hawaii
North Dakota
Kentucky