McDonalds Makes Positive Move to Help Sows

I'm no fan of McDonalds, but any little bit of help is progress.

Here's an excerpt. For the full story, check out this link to the New York Times article.

The McDonald’s Corporation said on Monday that it would begin working with its pork suppliers to phase out the use of so-called gestational crates, the tiny stalls in which sows are housed while pregnant.

Animal rights advocates have singled out the crates, known as sow stalls, as inhumane, and several states have moved to ban or restrict their use not only in pork production, but also in the production of eggs and veal.

“McDonald’s believes gestation stalls are not a sustainable production system for the future,” Dan Gorsky, senior vice president for supply chain management for McDonald’s North America, said in a statement. “There are alternatives we think are better for the welfare of sows.”

Mercy for Animals Exposes Cruelty at Iowa Select Farms

Safeway and Kroger have announced they're halting all purchases of the farm's pork. Mercy for Animals is trying to convince Costco to do the same.

News story is from the end of June. D'oh! Almost let that one slip by!

Mini-Pigs Identified by EU as Potential Lab Subjects

I guess their cuteness wore off too quick!

From myfoxny.com...

The mini-pig, darling of celebrities’ handbags, may have had its bacon Sunday after the EU earmarked it as the laboratory test animal of the future.

A research project into the feasibility of using miniature pigs in laboratories concluded they are better suited for testing toxins, drugs and chemicals than dogs and monkeys.

Belgian Bill Calls for Pig Castration WITH Anesthesia

OK, I'm stupid as hell. They castrate piglets WITHOUT anesthesia. OMFG!

I hope this bill passes. But I post about so many legislative proposals, with so few actual passages. We'll have to wait and see.

Are Micro Pigs the Next Stupid Pet Trend?

Great. This lady is breeding tiny pet pigs that can live up to 11 years. People are buying them like crazy, which means...eventually people will start dumping them like crazy. And who will suffer? The animal shelters who have to find them homes at the expense of other animals.

Thanks lady! And, yes, she plans on making money from these animals by franchising.

All for the love of animals right?

Pigs Used in Explosives Tests in Britain

I wish we could stop killing animals for reasons related to killing humans.

From the BBC News...

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has defended its use of more than 100 pigs in explosive tests in Wiltshire.

Some 119 pigs were used in the research at the Government's military research laboratory Porton Down, near Salisbury, between 2006 and 2009.

The tests "saved many lives" in Iraq and Afghanistan due to improvements in post-traumatic techniques, junior defence minister Quentin Davies said.

He said 25 pigs were used in 2006, 19 in 2007, 40 in 2008, and 35 in 2009.

Europe's Pig Industry Mad about Undercover Investigation

Compassion in World Farming led an undercover investigation that showed illegal tail docking and poor attempts at pig enrichment on factory farms, in violation of EU law. Now the pig industry is mad and claiming bias (scroll down in article.)

Too bad! If you complied with the law, you wouldn't look like such jerks!

Tests Involving the Burial of LIVE PIGS Are Halted

Well, there's always some unexpected nonsense to discover.

From USA Today....

An experiment in which anesthetized pigs were buried alive in snow to learn how humans live or die in avalanches was halted today in Austria after animal-rights groups denounced the research as cruel and useless.

The two-week experiment involving 29 pigs began Tuesday in the Western Austrian Alps. Some animals were being buried completely and suffocated, while others were covered up to their necks to freeze to death.

"It is absolutely unacceptable to kill these highly sensitive, helpless animals for such a useless experiment," said Johanna Stadler, director of Vier Pfoten (Four Paws).

Pork Industry Tries to Deal with Public Image

Every time I get depressed about animal issues (every other day it seems like), I see an article like this. Now, it may see like it would add to more depression, but it actually makes me feel a little better.

It's an article about the pork industry having to address the increasingly positive media image of pigs as intelligent creatures that could be someone's pet. The fact that this discussion warrants an article in the Des Moines Register means that there is some movement on this front and and it causes the pork industry concern.

On Wednesday, I almost lost my temper with some people in our customer service unit who wondered why anyone would want a turkey to have a good life before death...."it's just a turkey." And, of course, this view of farm animals is the norm. But small cracks like those hinted at in this article give me tiny room for an almost imperceptible pause.

PETA Protests Military's Testing on Pigs

I'm late on this one. The protest happened on Wednesday. But it's worth noting that someone out there took some action on this gruesome story.

And that's what I like about PETA and why I recently became a member for the first time. They are fast, organized, committed and they get attention.

Marines Still Using Pigs for Medical Training

They claim the animals are asleep during the procedures and feel no pain. The Marines also claim that using live pigs and inflicting wounds on them is the only way to approximate real-life situations in combat. It's the best way to train medical personnel.

Read and decide for yourself.

Animal Health Care is Part of the Bottom Line

We've argued in previous posts that factory farming is simply not conducive to animal welfare. Better conditions for animals hurt the bottom line. Animal welfare is a cost of doing business, not a moral obligation.

Here's an example. I'm not arguing about the methods as I'm not a veterinarian, but it's a good example of the clinical discussion of costs when it comes to managing farm animal health.

The pig industry, says Dr MacDougald, is marked by generally poor production and financial analysis. This means poor assessment of ROI {Return on Investment} for interventions and little focus on opportunity cost. However, research based on finishing pig group opportunity costs calculated on mortality, culls and feed conversion to target reveals startling results, with the best to worst sites varying by $11 per pig, with the widest variance per site at $34 per pig.

These pigs are simply raw materials.

Watch Video About Pig Farming in the UK

It's a 5-minute film about conditions for pigs in the UK. Produced by Compassion in World Farming.

As an aside, people who love to eat meat should also watch educational videos like these. They need to take responsibility and learn about the food they eat. If one wants to eat meat, fine, but understand how you are spending your money. Don't live in a cloud....wake up!

Conditions for farm animals will not change until meat-eaters start demanding changes themselves. Unfortunately, there are way more of them than there are vegetarians and vegans.

Military Used Pigs in Brain Injury Research

Lovely.

Military researchers have dressed live pigs in body armor and strapped them into Humvee simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury.

For an 11-month period that ended in December, researchers subjected pigs and rats to about 200 blasts, according to Pentagon documents and interviews. The explosions have ranged in intensity, wounding some of the pigs and killing others. Roadside bombs are the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Did you know this?

U.S. car companies used live animals, including pigs, for crash tests until the early 1990s. They stopped after protests from animal rights groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Pork Industry Moving into Defensive Mode

It's in response to the HBO film "Death on a Factory Farm."

The Pork Board has planned delegate meetings at the {annual Pork Industry} forum to discuss quality assurance rules including animal handling, and how much money to allocate to promote animal welfare.

"Our Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance Programs are designed to demonstrate the care we are giving to our animals everyday on our farms," Cunningham said.

"It's not as much about what the animal rights activists are saying about how we are raising pigs as opposed to us demonstrating that we do care and we are giving the best possible care" she said.

Uh huh. I have a hard time with the logic of that statement. The pork industry does not make money from happy pigs, but from dead carcasses. There is no economic motivation to treat them well or to care about their wellbeing. The only real concern comes from the spread of illness to humans from eating diseased meat, but they only need to provide minimal care to avoid that.

Pig Castration in Europe - An Animal Welfare Concern

Ugh. They castrate piglets in Europe for sanitary purposes (to avoid taint in the meat), but the methods are not terribly humane.

This year, the European Commission will issue a research contract, worth up to €1 million for a study into alternatives to the castration of pigs and dehorning of cattle.

Investigation Reveals Cruel Treatment of Pigs in Europe

It really sucks to be a factory farm pig in Europe.

Investigators from Compassion in World Farming found 80 per cent of farms across five European countries engaging in illegal practices such as barren pens and routine tail-docking.

In one of the biggest undercover inquiries into pig-farming, CIWF visited 60 farms across five big pork-producing states, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Britain.

In 48 farms, farmers had cut the tails off pigs to stop them biting each other, despite EU rules restricting tail-docking. Some 47 failed to provide anything for the pigs to root around in, despite an EU requirement to provide "environmental enrichment" such as straw. Most farms made widespread but legal use of metal cages for confining pregnant pigs. Overall, Spain had the worst conditions, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Britain.

Conditions are so bad, some pigs are resorting to cannibalism.

Jaime Oliver is doing a show about the issue in Britain.

Horrible Animal Abuse at Iowa Pig Farm

Horrific.

Johns Hopkins Med School Uses Live Pigs

Johns Hopkins Medical School still requires its students to perform live surgery on pigs.

Humane treatment? Necessary practice? You decide.

"[The animals] are treated remarkably well," explained Diana Scorpio, assistant professor and clinical veterinarian at Hopkins.

"They are under very deep anesthesia ... and then they are humanely euthanized."

Scorpio emphasized that very few of Hopkins's animals are used for medical instruction, and that the medical school has taken steps to reduce the number of animals used for teaching.

"Less than one percent is used in teaching and training ... 99 percent is used for research," she said.

In defense of using live animals to instruct medical students, Scorpio stressed that students who have experience with live animals "are much more proficient at understanding anatomy, and how to manipulate tissue in surgery."

...In a December 2007 letter addressed to Dean Edward Miller of Hopkins's School of Medicine, Executive Director of the National Center for Animal Law Laura Ireland Moore expressed the organization's dismay at the University's use of live animals in medical training. Moore accused the medical school of bending if not breaking the law.

"The use of animals in classrooms violates the spirit and letter of the Federal Animal Welfare Act," Moore wrote. "In light of the availability of superior, non-animal alternative technologies in medical school education, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine arguably violates the principles set forth in the Animal Welfare Act by using pigs in its classrooms."

Photo by bigbird3.

Canadian Pig Clones for Medical Research

There are so many reasons why I am not happy with this story about pigs being cloned at McGill University.

We started the procedure a year ago and the pigs are now developing normally," said Dr Vilceu Bordignon, director of the Large Animal Research Unit at McGill's Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue.

Three litters were born Oct. 22, Nov. 6 and Nov. 12, after Bordignon and his team first collected cells from a male pig, cultured the cells in vitro and then injected them into matured female germ cells. Embryos developed in the lab were then inserted into three female pigs.

I resist the whole cloning process. I hate it. Some may say that I'm not progressive. Not true. I just have a problem with humans playing God by duplicating living things and messing with genetic codes. I believe that the pace of technology development and profit-making opportunity has far outstripped the necessary medical and bioethical debate that should be occuring. Everyone wants to make money in all sorts of ways because they can do so without considering whether they SHOULD (I know, shades of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park in there).

Also, if you can create living beings on demand, are humans next? Will people be able to order a pretty blue-eyed girl with golden ringlets? As a peasant-brown brunette, that worries me.

Finally, look what happened to the pigles from the first batch.

The project produced 17 piglets, seven of which were euthanized and autopsied to determine any abnormalities as a result of the cloning. The remaining 10, now several weeks old, will eventually be used in biomedical research to help develop treatments for human diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

"After monkeys, pigs are the best animal models to use in research because of their physiology, which is quite similar to our own," explained Bordignon.

So, almost half were killed for research and the rest will be kept alive...for research. I suspect the dead ones got off lucky.

Research on living things is research on living things. I'm opposed to it no matter if they are clones or not.

Photo by dirty bodega.