Home/Posts Tagged ‘animal’
Posts Tagged ‘animal’
Animals, May 11th, 2011,
We know that people in the UK love their animals. The RSPCA, Battersea Dogs Home, among others, are seminal animal welfare organizations with long histories. Sure, there are still Beefeaters at the Tower of London, but even the guards at Buckingham Palace are set to switch from bearskins to synthetic hats designed by Stella McCartney. Currently only about 20 wild animals perform in UK circuses, but the British public supports a ban, across political persuasions: A ban was backed by supporters of all three main political parties – Conservatives by 70 per cent, Labour by 76 per cent and…
Tags: animal, ban, circus, UK
Green living, Politics, Sep 13th, 2010,
Last week the European Parliament voted to enforce stricter limits on animal testing, including an outright ban of testing on great apes. The new rules, which will still allow some animal testing for medical research, were described as the strictest in the world by EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik. Animal welfare officials in EU countries will be required to insure that minimum pain is experienced by the test animals during those experiments still allowed under the new regulations. Testing on other primates will still be permitted in certain cases applying to Alzheimer’s, cancer and Parkinson’s. From an AFP report: Some…
Tags: animal, EU, Europe, laws, new, parliament, rules, testing
Health, Science & Technology, Sep 11th, 2010,
The role of animal feed in the production of safe food is recognized worldwide, and recent events have underlined its impacts on public health, feed and food trade, and food security. In modern farming practices, veterinary drugs are administered to food-producing animals in order to prevent and to treat several types of pathologies, to shorten feeding time and abate the risk of losses. Meat products and animal products such as milk and eggs, may have some residual amounts of veterinary drugs which remain in edible tissues after harvest. In these animal products, where the manufacturers’ and national legislative directions are…
Tags: animal, consumption, drugs, feed, food, human, veterinary
Green living, Sep 9th, 2010,
Stories of dogs and cats being abandoned due to tough economic times – or cruel indifference because they’ve simply become inconvenient – are unfortunate, but familiar scenarios. The abandonment of pets has even transformed the local ecology in parts of the world: an estimated 150,000 Burmese pythons live in the Florida Everglades and several London parks are chock full of exotic parakeets which originate in Africa and India. Ireland has its fair share of invasive species, but horses are not considered one of them. However, thousands of unwanted horses are some of the latest casualties in the global economic downturn…
Tags: abandoned, abandonment, animal, cruelty, downturn, Dublin, economic, horses, Ireland, Irish, neglected
Politics, Sep 2nd, 2010,
The parliament of Catalonia voted to ban bullfighting in July, a move that enraged Spain’s bullfighting community and drew accusations of Catalan nationalist motivations rather than concern for animal welfare. Well, plainly both nationalism and animal welfare played their parts in the ban – apparent by the fact that groups from both camps participated in the anti bullfighting campaign. But on the different, yet similar issue of fire bulls in Catalonia, the groups are more split. In the Catalan town of Amposta, bulls are taunted after flaming torches are attached to their horns. Another Catalan tradition involves tying ropes around…
Tags: Amposta, animal, ban, bullfighting, bulls, Catalan, Catalonia, fire, Spain, welfare
Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Aug 28th, 2010,
Sticking your fist or head into the mouth of a declawed, de-toothed lion or tiger isn’t very impressive. In Chinese zoos, animal parks and circuses the abuse of animals is widespread. Bears, monkeys, elephants, wolves and big cats are among the animals who are routinely beaten into submission and forced to do absurd tricks for the entertainment of ignorant crowds. There are no animal protection laws in China to prohibit such behavior. The Hong Kong-based animal welfare group Animals Asia visited 13 zoos and animal parks in China and compiled statistics and video footage into a report documenting the abuse….
Tags: abuse, animal, Asia, bear, China, Chinese, circuses, cruelty, lion, parks, show, zoos
Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Jul 31st, 2010,
Dolphins are a common sight in the calm, warm waters of the Greek Mediterranean and Aegean Sea. There they can be observed living free in their natural habitat. And so it may seem strange that a dolphinarium – an aquatic animal park featuring dolphins – exists in Greece. Animal welfare activists believe so and are protesting a dolphin park at the Attica Zoo in Athens, which they believe to be cruel. The dolphinarium’s operators disagree, claiming the park has educational as well entertainment benefits. Click on the below link to watch the BBC News report on the story: Greek dolphin…
Tags: animal, cruel, dolphinarium, dolphins, entertainment, Greece, Greek, welfare
Climate Change, Conservation, Jul 23rd, 2010,
Much of the feed for British livestock comes from soybeans imported from South America – mainly Brazil and Argentina. According to an article in the Telegraph, 350,000 hectares of rainforest is being cut down to grow soy for UK animal feed. Environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE) has published a report entitled ‘Pastures New’ detailing how the British meat and dairy industry indirectly causes rainforest destruction in South America. The report incorporates new research by the Royal Agricultural College stating that only 8% of the UK’s agricultural land is used to grow animal feed. FOE urged the government to…
Tags: amazon, animal, beans, Brazil, British, dairy, deforestation, Earth, farmers, feed, FoE, Friends, meat, rainforest, South America, soy, UK
Conservation, Wildlife & Flora, Jul 19th, 2010,
The last female rhino at Krugersdorp Nature Reserve in South Africa was killed by poachers on Wednesday. The poachers are suspected to have entered the game reserve – near South Africa’s largest city, Johannesburg – by helicopter, where they then shot the white rhino cow with tranquilizers before cutting off her horn with a chainsaw. This latest killing marks the 136th rhino in South Africa that has been murdered for its horn this year – already more than last year’s total of 129, suggesting that the number of killings this year will double. The sophistication of the operation leaves conservationists…
Tags: Africa, animal, Asia, calf, CITES, Krugersdorp, park, poachers, poaching, Reserve, rhino, South, white
Nature, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, May 11th, 2010,
A Sumatran tiger can fetch as much as $5,000 US in Indonesia. This is more than enough incentive for poachers to hunt and capture tigers; sometimes selling them on as pets or killing them in order to harvest their body parts. The body parts of Sumatran tigers are used as charms, to make religious artifacts and status symbols; and as ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine. Other threatened species in Indonesia being illegally trafficked include the pangolin – a scaly anteater considered both a delicacy and a source of medicine in China – the slow loris; gibbons, and several birds of…
Tags: Al Jazeera, animal, illegal, Indonesia, medicine, report, Sumatran, tiger, trade, video, wildlife
Climate Change, Nature, Wildlife & Flora, May 10th, 2010,
Economic growth and the quest for raw materials in developing nations are threatening to devastate global biodiversity, according to a forthcoming UN Global Biodiversity Outlook report. Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the Convention on Biological Diversity is reported as claiming the current rate of extinction to be 1,000 times its ‘natural historical background rate’. From an article in the Telegraph: Population growth, pollution and the spread of Western-style consumption are also blamed for hitting plant and animal populations. The dangerous behavior already practiced by industrialized developed nations will increase dramatically as it is adopted by the developing world. China, India, Brazil…
Tags: animal, biodiversity, developing, extinction, global, nations, plant, report, species, UN
Climate Change, Green living, Health, Politics, Apr 11th, 2010,
Is American-style industrialized livestock farming coming to Europe? There are plans to open a massive ‘feedlot’ dairy farm in Lincolnshire, England where some 8,100 cows would be housed and fed a mix of alfalfa and maize instead of grazing on grass in open pastures as is customary in the UK. The industrial factory farm would be the first of its kind in Western Europe. It may seem like a surprising development at a time when food and environmental awareness is so strong. Intensive farming is generally seen as bad for both human and animal health as well as for the…
Tags: animal, dairy, England, environmental, Europe, factory, farm, farmers, farming, farms, intensive, Nocton, UK, welfare
Nature, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, Apr 6th, 2010,
Minks and grey squirrels from North America, muntjac deer from China, red-necked wallabies from Australia – all have established themselves to varying degrees in different parts of the UK. These and many more are detailed in a new report by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species entitled ‘The State of Britain’s Mammals’. Some of the UK’s invasive species have effectively ‘gone native’ and become part of local ecosystems. Others, like the American mink, are considered harmful to indigenous British wildlife. From an article in the London Times: Britain is facing a surge of invaders with scientists recording 3,800 alien species,…
Tags: American, animal, Britain, British, China, deer, grey, indigenous, invasive, london, mammals, mink, muntjac, native, parakeets, species, squirrels, UK, wallabies
Science & Technology, Weird Stuff, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 31st, 2010,
Dogs, rodents, fish and snakes have been observed reacting to earthquakes, sometimes several days before they occur. Now we can add toads to the list of animals that can ‘predict’ seismic activity. A British study on toads in Italy shows strong evidence that the amphibians can detect earthquakes days before they happen. According to a report from BBC News, toads that were being studied in L’Aquila, Italy last year produced no spawn during an earthquake period, which begins at the main shock and continues to the last aftershock. What’s even more remarkable is that the toads fled the earthquake area…
Tags: animal, earthquake, earthquakes, Grant, Italy, Journal of Zoology, L'Aquila, quake, report, seismic, toads
Animals, Nature, Weird Stuff, Mar 23rd, 2010,
In The Cove, the Oscar winning documentary on Japanese dolphin slaughter, activist and former dolphin trainer Richard O’Barry claims that he witnessed one of his dolphins commit suicide by self-suffocation. This event was a major turning point in O’Barry’s life and spurred his transformation from someone who kept dolphins into someone who rescues them. The idea of animals voluntarily killing themselves is a long-debated subject, as an article in Time magazine explores: The Romans saw animal suicide as both natural and noble; an animal they commonly reported as suicidal was one they respected, the horse. Then for centuries, discussion of…
Tags: animal, discovery, dolphin, human, O'Barry, suicide, The Cove, Time
