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All over the world, conditions for the overwhelming majority of farm animals are getting worse. Intensive and industrial pig, poultry, and beef/dairy cattle production factories are getting larger, and their tentacles are spreading into countries like Brazil, Thailand and China, which previously knew mainly traditional livestock systems.

In early December 2019, more than 2,700 marine mammal scientists, policymakers, students, and activists, as well as journalists and others interested in the latest marine mammal science developments, gathered from 95 countries in Barcelona, Spain,

The US delegation to the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment proposes a moratorium on commercial whaling, based on the adoption of the 1971 resolutions; it passes with no opposition.

In March, Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA) reintroduced the Marine Mammal Climate Change Protection Act (HR 1383), to protect marine mammals adversely affected by the climate crisis.

A one-time smuggler of marine animals has been collared by authorities in the Philippines, after more than three years on the lam. Olivia Lim Li was arrested in October in Zamboanga City in a coordinated effort by several Filipino law enforcement agencies.

Marineland, a marine park in Niagara Falls, Canada, has been ordered by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to stop burying animals on its grounds. Former Marineland employees told The Toronto Star that the park—without proper permits—had been shoveling animal remains into mass graves for decades, with “two of them containing ‘more than 1,000 animals.’”

In 2007, a study at the University of Zurich (Burkart et al., 2007) looked at cooperative behavior among common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).

Although an in-person hearing was canceled, AWI staff provided testimony to the Montgomery County Council in March in support of Bill 6-20.

More than 1,000 breeding dairy cattle of 3,400 cattle shipped from Galveston, Texas, to Russia in August died during the voyage or shortly after arrival.

When Massachusetts strengthened its animal cruelty statute in 2014, it also set up a task force to make additional recommendations.

In Massachusetts, AWI has joined veterinarians, farmers and other animal protection groups to get some of the most extreme confinement practices on factory farms banned through a new ballot initiative.

A 200-acre breeding “megafacility” is planned in Bainbridge, Georgia, to provide monkeys for biomedical research.

In a highly controversial decision, the animal care and use committee at the University of Wisconsin has approved an NIH-funded maternal deprivation study on newborn monkeys. This study echoes back to the notorious deprivation studies, done nearly 50 years ago by Harry Harlow, at the same institution.

On August 24, the Maui County Council voted unanimously in favor of a law curbing reckless reef fish extraction for the aquarium trade, representing the first such regulation in Hawaii.

McDonald’s announced that for its US and Canadian restaurants, over the next 10 years it will transition to eggs acquired solely from producers using cage-free operations.

A growing number of people, organizations, and corporations all over the world are designating a meat-free day each week in an effort to cut overall meat consumption.

As of November, over 50,000 workers at meat and poultry slaughter facilities had been infected with COVID-19.