Summer 2022

Volume
71
Number
2
Summer 2022 Quarterly Cover
About the Cover

Farm animals raised on pasture have room to roam and opportunities to engage in natural behaviors—foraging, rooting, grazing, dust bathing, lounging in sun or shade. Most animals raised for food in the United States, however, feel neither sun above nor grass below. They are crammed into factory farms with little or no room to maneuver. In recent years, a number of states have enacted laws banning some of the more extreme forms of confinement, but there is still a long way to go. AWI reviews the reform efforts and summarizes the current state of factory farming.

Table of Contents

Animals in Laboratories

A federal court in Virginia has taken the extraordinary step of granting the Department of Justice a temporary restraining order against a facility in Cumberland, Virginia, that breeds and sells beagles for experimentation. The court...
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently announced the provisional composition of an ad hoc committee that will examine the need, both current and future, for the use of nonhuman primates (NHPs)...
Barren colony cages are often used for housing of breeding and research quail, especially within laboratory animal housing systems. These systems provide for ease of care and the maintenance of strict laboratory hygiene requirements, but...
A court in Germany is investigating whether killing animals bred for labs but never used in research constitutes a crime, since German law forbids hurting animals without reasonable cause. According to a 2017 report by...
Fish can perform simple addition and subtraction, a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports revealed (Schluessel et al., 2022). In a series of runs, cichlids and stingrays were first shown an image containing...

Companion Animals

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a nearly unfathomable level of suffering for both humans and animals within the war-torn country. Thousands of people, many of them civilians, have been killed or wounded, and more...
AWI’s Safe Havens for Pets Mapping Project aims to provide an accurate listing of the nation’s available safe havens for pets—i.e., sheltering services that assist individuals experiencing domestic violence in placing their companion animals out...

Farmed Animals

AWI is partnering with Consciously, a public benefit company, and the ASPCA’s Shop With Your Heart program on a new internet browser extension (add-on) that will help consumers select higher-welfare and plant-based alternatives while they...
Donkeys are valued and trusted companions. As working animals, they are essential to many livelihoods. Around the globe, however, donkeys are being killed in unprecedented numbers. “Ejiao” (pronounced “eh-gee-yow”) is a gelatin made from boiling...
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging California’s Proposition 12, a voter initiative requiring pork, veal, and eggs sold in the state to come from animals raised in environments where they can move...
On November 5, 2002, voters in Florida approved the first US law prohibiting the use of small “gestation crates” to house pregnant sows. Such crates are but one example of the extreme animal confinement that...

Marine Life

In October 1972, during the Nixon administration, the United States passed an environmental law well ahead of its time. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, inspired by horrific images of dolphins dying in tuna nets, factory...
Almost 3 million whales were killed for their oil and meat in the 20 th century, bringing many species and populations to the brink of extinction. Forty years ago, in July 1982, the International Whaling...
In June 2021, a dubious US government–funded attempt to study minke whales’ response to ocean noise began in the northern Norway region of Lofoten. ( See AWI Quarterly , summer 2021. ) It involves stretching...
Fewer than 10 vaquita porpoises remain in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. Yet, calves were observed during a 2021 survey, and new evidence, published in Science , indicates that the vaquita’s historical rarity reduces inbreeding...

Terrestrial Wildlife

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now confirmed four cases of humans infected with a variant of the coronavirus originating in farmed mink during an outbreak in Eaton County, Michigan, in late 2020...
Since April, over 140 wild horses have died from influenza exacerbated by a bacterial infection at a Colorado holding facility in Cañon City in what is thought to be the largest disease outbreak in the...
by Chris Farmer, PhD, Hawai‘i Program Director, American Bird Conservancy, and Lisa “Cali” Crampton, PhD, Project Leader, Kaua‘i Forest Bird Recovery Project The Hawaiian Islands are full of astounding beauty and an incredible diversity of...
As spring brought budding trees and new shoots to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina, it also brought renewed hope for the survival of the red wolf, the most critically endangered canid in...
COVID-19—the most recent example of a zoonotic pathogen causing a global pandemic—continues to claim human lives, even as vaccines and other strategies return us to some semblance of normalcy. However, as many as 10,000 other...
The preservation of large carnivores such as jaguars will not be achieved only by conserving isolated protected areas. They need large landscapes. Subpopulations need to mix genes to remain genetically robust; therefore, animals must move...

Government Affairs

During a key stage of the fiscal year 2023 appropriations cycle, members of Congress consider spending requests from individuals and groups. In the House of Representatives, where that part of the process has concluded, several...
Earlier this year, footage of a Bureau of Land Management roundup in Nevada captured a horrifying and tragic incident where a young colt’s leg snapped in half as he was being relentlessly chased by a...
In April, the Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act (HR 7398) was introduced in the House by Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) to bar organizing, sponsoring, conducting, or participating in most types of wildlife killing contests on...
The Big Cat Public Safety Act (HR 263/S 1210) received a hearing in the House Natural Resources Committee on May 12. This bill would prohibit private ownership of big cats and outlaw direct public contact...
In the last eight years, the number of puppy mills in Ohio has increased fourfold—a consequence of the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) relaxing its regulation of these entities. To make matters worse, a shocking...

Reviews

In rich detail, A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds unveils the captivating world of migratory birds, the threats they face, and the scientists and conservationists who strive to protect them...
During his time in office, Barack Obama protected more natural habitat than any president in history. His conservation ethos is on full display in Our Great National Parks, a Netflix docuseries he hosts. Through compelling...
As Rob Percival, author of The Meat Paradox: Eating, Empathy, and the Future of Meat, recounts, an Inuit shaman stated a century ago that “the greatest peril in life lies in the fact that human...