Congress: Stop the Reckless Big Cat Trade

Shockingly, there are more captive tigers in the U.S. than there are in the wild.  Due to lack of laws, unqualified people may easily purchase and breed tigers and other big cats across the country.

A recent HSUS investigation of one facility holding hundreds of big cats uncovered numerous dangerous public interactions with tigers, tiger deaths, frivolous breeding, and tiger cubs punched, dragged and kicked by workers.

The Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act (H.R. 4122), introduced by Reps. Buck McKeon and Loretta Sanchez, would prohibit the private ownership and breeding of tigers and other dangerous big cats.

TAKE ACTION Please make a brief, polite phone call to your U.S. Representative urging co-sponsorship of H.R. 4122. Look up your Representative’s phone number. You can simply say: “Please co-sponsor the Big Cats and Public Safety Protection Act (H.R. 4122).” After making your phone call (please do not skip that crucial step!), submit the form below to send a follow-up message. Be sure to edit your message so it stands out.

 

SAMPLE EMAIL:

Your Message

*Subject:

Dear U.S. Representative,

There are currently more tigers in captivity in the U.S. than there are in the wild, and captive uses of big cats can undermine conservation efforts to save these species. Many are kept by unqualified people in flimsy cages.
This bill doesn’t affect legitimate zoos and sanctuaries possessing big cats. The majority of big cats are kept, purchased, and sold by poorly run roadside zoos and reckless private owners with little or no experience in the keeping, handling, or proper care of these animals.

*Please personalize your message

A recent investigation into one facility holding hundreds of big cats found big cats were bred without regard to genetic integrity and for the commercial purpose of allowing interaction with the paying public, even children.

Big cats are continuously bred to ensure a steady supply of young cubs are available for handling and sale, and older animals are transported to substandard facilities across the country.

Consequently, law enforcement must spend resources to deal with incidents where these deadly predators escape and threaten public safety.

Please co-sponsor H.R. 4122.

Article – HumaneSociety.org

Video – HumaneSociety.org

Misfit – One kitten’s story of survival

Janet Dubois

My story began in late September. I was born outside. My  mother fed me and cleaned me and everything was fine for a while.  Then one day I woke up and my mother was gone.

I did pretty well on my own. There were a few other cats to  hang around with, and we found things to eat. I had a little  trouble keeping up with them, because they had four legs and I  was born with three. But I was doing okay. I was two months  old.

One really cold day I started sneezing and my eyes were  watery. I didn’t feel well enough to look for food. Soon my eyes  got worse. They stuck shut when I was asleep, and it was hard to  get them open again. One day I couldn’t open them at all. Then  they began to hurt.

I’m not sure why, but I started to crawl off. I heard loud  noises that scared me, but I kept going. I didn’t know the noises  were cars. My eyes hurt so much. Then all of a sudden, whoosh, I  was up in the air. A human had picked me up. I was shaking all  over, and I could hear a kitten crying and crying.

The man held me tight. He wrapped a towel around me, and I  started to warm up. I listened as the man called animal control  and said he’d found a kitten whose eyeball was popping out.

Carriage Horse Protection in New York City

ASPCA

When you think about horses, where do you imagine them? Nature has shown us that they need space, room to move, pasture in which to graze. Horses are social animals and spend much of their time grazing together. New York City carriage horses live and work under conditions far removed from what nature intended and humanity dictates. Big-boned, well-muscled and often docile in nature, the carriage horse is an anachronism whose life of hard work is hidden beneath the facade of romance.

Our Position The ASPCA believes that carriage horses were never meant to live and work in todays urban setting. In addition to the dangers inherent in working in congested areas, these horses spend their days directly behind cars, trucks and buses, inhaling their fumes. To ensure that carriage horses enjoy a better quality of life, the ASPCAs Government Affairs department works on legislation that seeks to improve the health, safety and well-being of all New York City carriage horses. In the meantime, the ASPCA will continue to enforce the existing carriage horse regulations to the full extent of the law.

Grilled Vegetable Pizza

By John Schlimm| April 30, 2012

Homemade veggie burgers and grilled sandwiches are often found at barbecues, but it’s time for another classic comfort food to step up and earn its grill stripes.

Classic mix-and-match veggies from the local farmers’ market or your own backyard garden, a few iconic herbs, and even a meatless hot “wing” option help turn up the heat on family pizza night and tailgating chow-downs.

Makes 1 pizza

Tell Congress to End Military Trauma Training on Animals!

Thousands of live animals are shot, stabbed, dismembered, and burned every year in cruel and crude U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) trauma training exercises, even though the military already relies on the use of lifelike simulators and other effective non-animal training methods and DoD regulations require that alternatives to animals be used when available.

The U.S. Army’s own Rascon School of Combat Medicine at Fort Campbell does not use animals in its training program and has even publicly stated that “[t]raining on [simulators] is more realistic to providing care for a person than training on animals.” The Air Force’s Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills and the Navy Trauma Training Center also do not use animals to train soldiers.

Unlike mutilating and killing animals, training on simulators allows medics and soldiers to practice on accurate anatomical models and repeat vital procedures until all trainees are confident and proficient. Studies show that medical care providers who learn trauma treatment using simulators are better prepared to treat injured patients than those who are trained using animals.

Prince Williams Takes a Stand Against Poaching

Fresh off of celebrating his one year wedding anniversary to Kate Middleton Sunday, Prince William is said to be slated to help highlight the problem of animal poaching in Africa by taking part in an anti-poaching project and documentary. Prince William is “furious” about the “senseless slaughter” of Max, a hand-reared rhinoceros who was killed last year by poachers at a wildlife preserve in Kenya.

The 29-year old royal’s friend, adventurer and British TV presenter Ben Fogle, told The (London) Sunday Telegraph, “I am hoping to work with William on an anti-poaching project and documentary. I was lucky enough to go out to Botswana with him a few years ago, so it would be nice to do more with him. We’re both vehemently passionate about stopping poaching.”

Prince William has long been interested in conservation. In 2001, he began assisting with the Lewa Wildlife Preserve conservation project, located in central Kenya. The 29 year old royal became so moved by his work there that he became a patron of the Tusk Trust charity.

After last week’s London screening of “African Cats,” a film about Kenya’s wildlife, the prince spoke out about endangered animals, saying “Films like African Cats remind us of the dramatic beauty, and the harshness, of the natural world – and there is nowhere more awe-inspiring or beautiful than the vast plains of Kenya’s Maasai Mara. Africa’s natural heritage is the world’s natural heritage. We have to preserve places like this – not just for us, but for future generations. We must act now, coherently and together, if the situation is to be reversed and our legacy – our global, natural legacy – preserved. Tomorrow will be too late.”

Article – Ecorazzi.com/Brook Bolen

Picture – Telegraph.co.uk

Breaking Investigation: Horses’ 36-Hour Journey to Slaughter Exposed

Every year, tens of thousands of American horses are killed for their flesh. Worse still, they are forced to endure journeys of hundreds of miles in cramped trucks—often in extreme weather without food or a drop of water—before reaching slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. It is a cruel industry that has been hidden from sight—until now.

This spring, PETA investigators rode with and followed a transporter from a meat buyer’s property in Iowa to the Les Viandes de la Petite Nation Inc. slaughterhouse in Québec. U.S. law permits horses to be hauled for 28 hours and sometimes longer without being off-loaded. PETA’s investigator witnessed how the 33 horses aboard the transporter endured a 1,100-mile, 36-hour journey in subfreezing conditions and were never given food, water, or a chance to unload.

This long, grueling ride is only a small part of the torment that many tired, injured horses endure. Panicked horses—including thoroughbreds, standardbreds, quarter horses, and draft horses—are crowded inside “kill pens” at livestock auctions across the country. At an auction in Iowa, horses waited for hours before they were corralled toward the auction ring, weighed, and finally sold. The heavy hydraulic gates used to separate the horses as they entered the auction area frequently slammed shut on their heads and necks—just one more ordeal in the long and traumatic journey to their deaths.

PETA investigators found ex-racehorse Royale With Speed, the grandson of Triple Crown winner Secretariat, packed inside a “kill pen” in Kalona, Iowa.

Speak Up Against Misleading Missouri Bill That Would Paralyze Undercover Investigations!

 

 

Urge your senator to oppose this bill today!

House Bill (H.B.) 1860—which could stop vital undercover work that exposes routine, often violent, and criminal abuse of animals in the factory-farming industry—has just been passed by the Missouri House of Representatives and will now be considered by the Senate. If it becomes law, the bill would make it a crime to record video of or photograph a farm without the farm owner’s consent. This legislation is a desperate attempt by agriculture industry giants to prevent consumers from learning the truth about the miserable lives and gruesome deaths of animals on factory farms.

Past undercover investigations of factory farms, such as those conducted by PETA, have revealed that pigs were beaten with metal gate rods and spraypainted in the face, that sadistic employees stomped on and hurled turkeys, that animals were sexually abused, that dairy farmers repeatedly kicked and electro-shocked cows who were in too much pain to stand up, and much, much more. Footage from investigations is crucial in helping prosecutors across the country enforce anti-cruelty statutes. This bill is designed to shroud factory farming in secrecy and shield criminals from accountability under the law.

To contact your Representatives, go to www.Peta.org

Article – Peta.org

Picture – Peta.org

Can Animals Be Nice?

“Humans have a code of ethics,” says Marc Bekoff, an animal behavior expert at the University of Colorado. “If I don’t play a certain way, you won’t play with me. Some animals have the same code.”
Scientists recently discovered that animals who live in groups, such as elephants, foxes, and wolves, are especially likely to follow rules. If they don’t, and each does its own thing, the group might break apart. Group members would be forced to live alone. Then they’d have a harder time hunting and raising their young.
That’s probably why a traveling wolf pack stopped and waited to let its limping leader catch up. Similar social ties may have prompted a captive elephant to save her friend from drowning. Selfish reasons certainly motivated the male fox, who wanted to keep playing.
Sometimes, though, animals go out of their way to do what’s right, even when there’s nothing in it for them. Nobody knows why. “It might simply feel good to be kind, just as it does for humans,” says Bekoff.
Read on for four surprising stories about nice behavior in the animal kingdom.

Three U.S. agencies aim to end animal testing

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY:

An ambitious program announced Thursday by a coalition of government agencies could lead to the end of animal testing to evaluate the safety for humans of new chemicals and drugs.

Three agencies — the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program and the National Institutes of Health — have signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” to develop and implement the new methods. The collaboration is described in today’s edition of the journal Science.

The agreement is a “milestone” says Martin Stephens of the Humane Society of the United States. “We believe this is the beginning of the end for animal testing. We think the (conversion) process will take about 10 years.”

The agencies acknowledge that full implementation of the shift in toxicity testing could take years because it will require scientific validation of the new approaches.

The Humane Society and other activist groups have long protested the use of animals to test the safety of chemicals, particularly those used in cosmetics and other personal products. The agencies noted that the public’s “unease” with animal testing, in addition to a growing number of new chemicals and high testing costs, fueled the new collaboration.

 

By Mike Groll, AP

Professor Jonathan Dordick holds a biochip designed to mimic human reactions to potentially toxic compounds. The chip holds hundreds of tiny white dots loaded with human cell cultures and enzymes. Scientists hope the chips can do away with the need to use animals to test new blockbuster drugs or wrinkle creams.