AWI Quarterly » 2004 Summer

The Pan-Pacific region of the globe holds more than half of the world's domestic swine population. At the request of the trade association Australian Pork Limited, AWI's Farm Animal Advisor, Diane Halverson, delivered the keynote speech at the Pan-Pacific Pork Expo in Brisbane, Australia in March, entitled "Responding to the Public Demand for the Humane Treatment of Pigs: On the Farm, in the Marketplace and in the Law."

Packaged food from agricultural animals is increasingly identified by appealing claims such as "natural" and "happy" as if to suggest that the animals from which the products come were treated humanely. With no regulation on such terms, producers can easily deceive customers.

Japan and more than 50 other nations continue to ban American beef due to the unwillingness of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to test each animal slaughtered for mad cow disease. As one might expect, a growing number of proactive, independent, niche market cattle ranchers desperately want to maintain their Japanese customers and seek to test all of their animals.

The greatest challenge for a reader of Richard Manning's Against the Grain may be to endure the introduction. But, from the point in the first chapter when his prose coagulates and he begins to make his case, Manning coveys his reader on an extraordinary intellectual excursion.

Ngamba Island is a sanctuary for orphaned chimpanzees on Lake Victoria in Uganda. Many of its residents had been forcibly taken as infants from their forest home and their families to be sold into the exotic pet and bushmeat trades. The rescued chimpanzees thankfully now are protected in the sanctuary, enjoying a 100-acre rainforest, living together in large, closely-bonded social groups. They are free to roam around the large island.

A complaint alleging hundreds of violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act by licensed Class B dealer C.C. Baird and his wife, operators of Martin Creek Kennels, provides a horrifying look inside a random source dealer's operation. Following are a summary of and quotations (emphasis theirs) from the 108-page document filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on March 11, 2004.

Acting on a tip, authorities discovered and seized sixty Maine Coon cats kept under appalling conditions in a house in Harrison, New York.