Deer with Arrow Wound Euthanized in Colorado
Thursday January 15, 2009
A deer with an arrow through her face was watched for several days, but authorities from the Colorado Division of Wildlife were unable to catch her before the infection, they say, became too much. They eventually euthanized her, despite protests from people who thought she could have been saved. Lori and Jack Cavanaugh put out food for the deer and opened up their home so that DOW employees could wait for "Miss Doe" with a tranquilizer gun. I don't know if this deer could have been saved or not, but I commend the Cavanaugh family for trying to save her.
Officials don't know who shot the deer, and the story has touched off a debate over bowhunter education and ethics. Proper hunting ethics require hunters to track wounded animals and kill them. How about not hunting them in the first place?
Interview with Karen Davis
Tuesday January 13, 2009
Photo by Doris Lin.Every animal activist has a story about how they became involved in the animal rights movement. In a detailed interview, Karen Davis, Founder of United Poultry Concerns, talks about how she became an activist in the early days of the modern animal rights movement. Davis recounts growing up with hunters, working with animal rights pioneer Henry Spira, and dealing with negativity within the movement when she decided to focus on chickens. And find out why she used to follow Frank Perdue to the bathroom.
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Vote for Vegan School Lunch Options
Saturday January 10, 2009
Photo by David Buffington / Getty Images.Who can forget the mystery meat from their school cafeteria? Or the debate over whether ketchup is a vegetable?
Now, you can vote for vegan school lunch options as an idea for change at Change.org. The top ten ideas, as determined by the online poll, will be presented to the Obama administration at the National Press Club on January 16, which means voting ends on January 15. As of this writing, Vegan School Lunch Options is ranked #17. You need to register to vote, but registration is easy and free. Change.org will also launch advocacy campaigns supporting the top ten ideas for change.
Plant-based meal choices are important not only for vegans and vegetarians. They're important for anyone who wants to make healthier food choices. Both parents and doctors lament the lack of healthy school lunch options. Eating less meat is also important for the environment, a cause which many children have taken up.
The exact wording of the idea is "Require USDA to facilitate healthful plant-based school lunch options as a means of promoting public health, environmental quality, and animal rights." Vote now, for a kinder, gentler school lunch program.
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Hens Rescued from "Free-Range" Egg Farm
Friday January 9, 2009
Free-range chickens who don't look so free.
Photo by Jeff Mitchell / Getty Images.Farm Sanctuary has rescued 148 hens from a "free-range" egg farm that went out of business. What they found at the farm reveals the cruelty behind "free-range":
The hens’ bodies are underweight and “spent,” as the industry calls them, as a result of intensive and unnatural egg production. And, they show the painful scars of “debeaking" . . . These chickens were found crowded together on the second level of a barn, not freely roaming green pastures.
"Free-range" does not mean the animals are free. Just because the hens are not in battery cages does not mean they are running around an idyllic barnyard. Many still live in crowded conditions. They are still debeaked, and are still killed when their egg production drops and they are no longer profitable. Even by animal welfare standards, these conditions are unacceptable and far from humane. From an animal rights perspective, no matter how much room the animals have, we do not have the right to keep them and use them for meat, eggs or milk.
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