Poultry engineered to quickly grow freakishly large is a big welfare problem in animal agriculture. So it was good news when Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a third-party animal welfare rating system for food, recently announced that it will require slower growth-rate genetics for all chickens raised under its program.
On July 23, the National Milk Producers Federation Board of Directors approved a resolution opposing tail docking of dairy cows in their industry guidelines, recommending the practice be phased out by 2022.
Small whales, dolphins and porpoises are hunted for commercial and subsistence purposes across the globe. They are killed for human consumption, fisheries bait, and to reduce the perceived competition for fish or damage to fishing nets. Some are also captured alive to supply the aquarium industry, with frequent overlap between those involved in the killing and the live capture. Small cetaceans also face indirect threats which may impact them cumulatively or synergistically. Such threats include bycatch (accidental capture in fishing gear), chemical and noise pollution, ship strikes, habitat destruction, over-fishing of prey species, and climate change—which can impact prey, breeding and feeding habitats and migration routes.
Shuanghui International, a Chinese meat processing company, has agreed to purchase U.S.-based Smithfield Foods, a development that raises numerous concerns. Sale of the world’s largest pork producer to a company that is heavily subsidized by the Chinese government is expected to result in less competition and further consolidation in the pork industry worldwide.
Imprisoning more than one million breeding sows in the U.S., gestation crates used by Smithfield Foods are severe forms of punishment designed with one goal in mind: increased profit.
A wolf in Minnesota was shot and killed this February after a truly horrible encounter with a strangling snare. Wolves are not legal targets for such devices, but snares are sanctioned year-round to kill coyotes in the state.
There is widespread concern that aged rhesus monkeys who have been housed singly for a long time would do better living alone than sharing a cage with a companion. Ten female and five male rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), 22 to 33 years old and deprived of physical contact with any other conspecific for more than 10 years, were socialised with weaned infants (11 pairs) or with each other (2 female -female pairs) using two standard methods of pairing. Pairing was associated with a total of 7 non-injurious aggressions during the first hour. Pairs were compatible (no visible signs of injury, adequate food sharing, no signs of depression) in every case throughout a one year follow-up period.
Isosexual pair-housing of ten female and six male previously single-caged adult stump-tailed macaques (Macaca arctoides) was attempted. Partners were introduced to each other following the establishment of rank relationships during a three-day non-contact familiarization period. Pair formations did not entail serious antagonism; instead companions engaged in conciliatory interactions.
The practicability of social enrichment for singly caged adult rhesus monkeys was examined. Twenty-nine weaned rhesus monkey infants were removed from breeding troops to avoid overcrowding and were placed with unfamiliar singly caged adults.
A review of the scientific literature gives evidence that transferring previously single-caged adult macaques to permanent compatible pair-housing arrangements (isosexual pairs, adult/infant pairs) is associated with less risk of injury and morbidity than transferring them to permanent group-housing arrangements. Juvenile animals can readily be transferred to permanent group-housing situations without undue risks.
This study, which was funded by a Refinement Grant from AWI, examined the impact of nonhuman primate social housing status on compassion fatigue in laboratory animal care professionals, who are at an elevated risk of experiencing this condition. Compassion fatigue is a consequence of stress that results from caring for suffering individuals, leading to a gradual erosion of empathy and compassion.
The reader can’t get past the cover of Maria Goodavage’s book Soldier Dogs—featuring a black Lab in goggles with her head on a camouflaged lap—without uttering an audible “awwww!” From that point on you are hooked on this highly readable account of Military Working Dogs (MWDs).
For over 50 years, Lolita (a.k.a. Tokitae, Toki, and Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut), an orca originally captured from the Southern Resident killer whale population, has been languishing as the only orca in a tiny tank at the Miami Seaquarium.
International trade in wild-caught Solomon Islands Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins continues with little sign of ending so long as the demand for dolphinariums persists.
AWI has followed the saga of the Russian “whale jail” for over a year now. It began in summer 2018, when 90 beluga whales and 11 orcas were captured in the Russian Far East and held in small holding pens all winter. Three of the belugas and one of the orcas died by the following spring.
In other corporate responsibility news, restaurants and producers are beginning to make commitments to improve the lives of chickens raised for meat (known to the industry as “broiler” chickens).
New research by scientists in South Florida indicates that a high percentage of stranded dolphins were almost deaf at the time of stranding. The cause of the near-deafness is unknown.
Texas real estate scion and former chairman of Perot Systems, H. Ross Perot Jr. has met his match over a white rhino trophy head in a battle with South African wildlife officials.
At a time when thousands of whales were being slaughtered each year, the release of the album Songs of the Humpback Whale in 1970 sparked a movement that eventually led to one of the great conservation achievements to date, the moratorium on commercial whaling.
The U.S. Navy has requested authorization from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to allow it to take (harass, harm or kill) many tens of millions of marine mammals incidental to thousands of training and testing activities in the Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing Study Area (AFTT).
This past December, mute swans in New York finally gained protection under legislation introduced by Senator Tony Avella and Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation released a draft management plan in 2013 calling for eradication of all 2,200 birds by 2025 (see AWI Quarterly, spring 2014).
Wolf–human conflicts are an ongoing concern that can lead to both legal and illegal killing of wild wolves, poor support for wild carnivore welfare among local human populations, and legislative changes that negatively affect wolf conservation.
