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PETA Urges Pentagon to Stop 'Cruel' Pulsed Radiation Experiments on Animals
The animal rights group wants the military to stop "disturbing" tests meant to recreate symptoms of the mysterious "Havana syndrome" afflicting diplomats and other American and Canadian personnel.
Mar 13, 2023
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals on Monday implored the U.S. military to reinstate a ban on the intentional wounding of animals in experiments and to stop radiation testing in an attempt to determine the cause of the mystery ailment popularly known as "Havana syndrome" that has afflicted U.S. government officials posted at diplomatic facilities in Washington, D.C. and several foreign countries.
In a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, PETA science policy adviser Maggie Wiśniewska calls radio frequency wave testing in experiments trying to induce Havana syndrome on animals "not only cruel and wasteful but also, frankly, futile."
Wiśniewska urged the Pentagon "to renew the ban on weapons-wounding tests on dogs, cats, marine animals, and nonhuman primates and to no longer permit the wounding of any animals with weapons for medical research, development, testing, or evaluation."
This prohibition would apply to "an apparent military plan to expose monkeys to pulsed microwave radiation in a misguided attempt to determine human brain effects associated with an acquired neurosensory syndrome commonly referred to as 'Havana syndrome' and the ongoing experiment funded by the U.S. Army at Wayne State University that involves irradiating ferrets with a radio frequency directed weapon in an irrelevant attempt to study the cognitive, behavioral, vestibular, and cochlear health effects of Havana syndrome in humans."
In 1983, PETA exposed and fought to shut down a Pentagon "wound lab" where animals including dogs and goats were shot for medical training and experimentation. In 2005, U.S. Army Regulation 40-33 banned the use of dogs, cats, marine animals, and nonhuman primates in experiments "conducted for the development of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons."
However, in 2020 the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) issued Policy 84, which permits the purchase of live animals to inflict wounds upon using a weapon for the purpose of conducting medical research, development, testing, or evaluation."
In March 2022 PETA filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents and images related to USAMRDC-approved wound testing of animals. After initially stating it had at least 2,000 such files, USAMRDC backtracked and claimed that it had only one record relating to animal wound testing and that the responsive record to PETA's FOIA request is "classified... in the
interest of national defense or foreign policy."
PETA argues that the military's decision to use live animals in testing related to Havana syndrome is "counterproductive" due to biological differences between humans and species subjected to the experiments, as well as the widespread availability of non-wounding research methods and the likelihood that radio frequency waves did not cause the mysterious ailment.
The U.S. government has a long history of radiation experiments not only on animals but also on human beings. Scores of institutions, including some of North America's most prominent universities, laboratories, and hospitals hosted government and military experimentation on both volunteers and unwitting test subjects in the MK-ULTRA mind control experiments and other highly unethical and sometimes deadly programs.
People suffering from Havana syndrome—so named because it was first identified by U.S. and Canadian diplomats and embassy staff in the Cuban capital—experienced what The Lancet described as "an abrupt onset of unusual clinical symptoms."
"Affected individuals described hearing a sudden loud noise that was perceived to have directional features, and that was accompanied by pain in one or both ears or, in some cases, pressure or vibrations felt in their head," the British medical publication explained. "Some of the diplomats also reported tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties."
A global U.S. intelligence probe concluded earlier this month that it is "highly unlikely" that a foreign adversary is behind the illness, and that the symptoms reported by hundreds of U.S. personnel "were probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors."
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'Animal Fur Is Obsolete': Lawmakers Push Bills to Ban Sale of Animal Fur in California, Hawaii, and New York City
"This is a clear global movement away from the use of animal furs, especially among the world’s most respected brands and retailers."
May 29, 2019
In the 1980's and 90's, fur activists were mocked and viewed in the mainstream as a radical nuisance, embodied by a stereotype of dousing wearers of fur coats in red paint. Since then, undercover investigations and campaigns targeting leading fashion corporations have swayed public opinion against the use of fur in the fashion industry, and lawmakers have started to respond with proposals to ban its sale and manufacturin
West Hollywood, California was the first city in the United States to pass a fur ban in 2011. Berkeley followed in 2017, with San Francisco passing their own fur ban in March 2018 and Los Angeles, the largest city to ban fur, passing the sale and manufacturing of fur within city limits in September 2018. As cities in California have led the way to banning fur in the United States, a bill in the state assembly was recently proposed that would ban the sale and manufacturing of animal fur throughout the state of California.
"The City of Los Angeles has just gone through their process to ban the sale of fur, San Francisco had already done it and several other cities, so I felt it was time to have the conversation at the state level," said California assemblymember Laura Friedman, the author of the legislation, AB44, which passed a vote in the appropriations committee and will likely reach a floor vote within a few weeks. "We have a lot of evidence and heard from clothing manufacturers that its nearly impossible to find out whether the fur was sourced for clothing is raised in a humane way."
In the United States, the animal fur industry is widely unregulated and receives little to no oversight from the government.
In the United States, the animal fur industry is widely unregulated and receives little to no oversight from the government. The results of this lack of transparency have been uncovered in recent investigations of animal fur farms in the United States.
"The secrecy of the fur industry, and the secrecy they're allowed by law enables them to have so much cruelty within their industry," said Lewis Bernier, an activist with the animal rights organization, Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). In 2018, Bernier led an investigation of a chinchilla fur farm in Ohio. Dxe declined to disclose the exact name, location of the farm or dates of the investigation due to legal concerns. "The cages were very tightly packed, row to row, wall to wall, with open cage designs so the ones on the bottom were being defecated and urinated on by the chinchillas on top of them. There was cannibalization and no way they were being provided necessary medical care."
This cruelty and secrecy within the animal fur industry has driven consumer demand for cruelty free products within the fashion industry, as leading fashion brands have stopped using animal fur. Gucci banned animal fur in 2017, as its CEO called it "outdated." Michael Kors phased out using fur in December 2018. Versace announced its ban in March 2018. Chanel banned animal furs and exotic skins in December 2018. Gucci and Coach also went fur-free in 2018, joining other fashion brands such as Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and others that stopped using fur in previous years. For the first time, London's fashion week in 2018 was completely fur free as a requirement for brands to participate. On May 22, 2019, Prada announced it will begin phasing out the use of animal fur for its products.
"This is a clear global movement away from the use of animal furs, especially among the world's most respected brands and retailers," said Joshua Katcher, a New York City fashion designer and author of Fashion Animals. "The demand for brands to stand proudly of how things are made, not just what they look like. The demand for the beauty of an object and how it was made, more and more consumers want that and want to support these new systems they want to see flourish."
Katcher noted these demands are felt by young designers who are seeking cutting edge, sustainable, and ethical materials over materials like animal furs. "Animal fur is obsolete at this point," he added.
In New York City, city council members are currently in the process of deciding on a bill to ban the sale of new animal fur products within the city after public hearings were held on May 15. A recent poll conducted by Mason-Dixon found 75 percent of New York City voters support the ban. No date has yet been set on when the city council will decide on the legislation.
Dan Matthews, Senior Vice President of Campaigns at PETA, was one of the bill supporters present at the hearing to demonstrate to council members the type of animal traps used by fur traders to catch animals.
"Trap lines are completely self regulated, nobody can check on them because only the trapper knows where they've placed the traps and the coyote trap I've been showing to council members is a coyote trap meant for coyotes, but they don't discriminate. They often trap family dogs, cats, owls, other wildlife," Matthews said. He noted the traps are used as close to New York City as Westchester County and Connecticut.
PETA has been one of the leading organizations against the animal fur industry, conducting several undercover investigations and targeted campaigns against clothing brands.
"We found minks in Maryland being injected with weed killer. We found a fur farmer in Indiana who electrocuted chinchillas with cords attached to a car battery, and he often didn't use enough voltage so animals would come alive on the skinning table, which he thought was funny," added Matthews. "So these fur farmers and trappers, they have no veterinary training and no interest in training, yet they are involved in killing animals for their business."
In Hawaii, a bill to ban the sale of animal fur was introduced for the first time this year.
"I thought of all places our state doesn't really need fur clothing given our warm, tropical climate," said State Senator Mike Gabbard (D), who proposed the bill in January 2019. The bill, which received five co-sponsors in the Hawaii State Senate, was referred to the consumer protection and health committee, but did not receive a hearing this legislative session. "Sometimes it takes a couple years to get good legislation like this moving, so I plan to reintroduce the bill next session, in January 2020, and I hope Hawaii can be one of the first states to pass a fur ban."
Kimberly Moore, spokesperson for the Fur Free Society, a non-profit that helped write the bill with Senator Gabbard, added, "The fact it was taken up as a legislative matter is extremely heartening because more and more countries are banning fur around the world."
She cited examples of countries that have either banned fur farming or the sale of animal fur outright, including Serbia, Luxembourg, Norway, Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, UK, Belgium, Japan, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and partial bans and regulations in several other countries around the world.
"The private market itself is moving away from fur and exotic skins. In the last couple of years, the movement against using fur has really accelerated," Moore noted. "There was a little activity in the 1990s with PETA, but in the last couple of years there has been major movements by governments to ban the sale of fur. That trend is being picked up by more municipalities in the United States."
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Victory for Free Speech and Animal Welfare as Federal Judge Strikes Down Iowa 'Ag-Gag' Law
"A huge win for free speech and a free press, and a major—and richly deserved—defeat for the pervasively corrupt agricultural industry, that has tried to use their control over governments to criminalize the exposure of their heinous practices."
Jan 09, 2019
In "an important victory for free speech" and animal welfare, a federal judge on Wednesday struck down Iowa's so-called "ag-gag" law, determining that it violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
"It has effectively silenced advocates and ensured that animal cruelty, unsafe food safety practices, environmental hazards, and inhumane working conditions go unreported for years."
--Rita Bettis Austen, ACLU of Iowa
The legal groups that brought the case challenging Iowa's ag-gag law and other animal rights advocates celebrated the win in court, which follows similar victories in Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming.
"Ag-gag laws are a pernicious attempt by animal exploitation industries to hide some of the worst forms of animal abuse in the United States," Animal Legal Defense Fund executive director Stephen Wells said in a statement on Wednesday. "Today's victory makes it clear that the government cannot protect these industries at the expense of our constitutional rights."
Ag-gag legislation, which has been enacted and often struck down in several states with sizable agricultural industries, aims to prevent journalists and activists from going undercover at factory farms and other facilities where animals are held for commercial purposes, such as slaughterhouses and puppy mills, to shed light on abuse.
As ACLU of Iowa legal director Rita Bettis Austen explained, in her state--home to an estimated 10,000 factory farms--"it has effectively silenced advocates and ensured that animal cruelty, unsafe food safety practices, environmental hazards, and inhumane working conditions go unreported for years."
Senior Judge James Gritzner of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa granted summary judgment (pdf) on Wednesday, declaring that the state's lawyers had failed to show that the law's prohibitions on speech "are actually necessary to protect perceived harms to property and biosecurity," as they had argued.
While conceding that protecting both is important, Gritzner further concluded that the "prohibitions are not narrowly tailored to serve either interest." Additionally, his judgement noted that there were other motivations for implementing the law:
[As] admitted by defendants, some lawmakers also wanted to stop "subversive acts" by "groups that go out and gin up campaigns...to give the agricultural industry a bad name." ...Other statements in the record illustrate that [the law] serves the interest of protecting Iowa's agricultural industry from perceived harms flowing from undercover investigations of its facilities.
Journalist, animal rights advocate, and constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald declared in a tweet that the decision was "a huge win for free speech and a free press, and a major--and richly deserved--defeat for the pervasively corrupt agricultural industry, that has tried to use their control over governments to criminalize the exposure of their heinous practices."
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Emptying the Cages
A new book envisions the end of animal factory farming and all the suffering it causes.
Dec 02, 2018
U.S. factory farms, where an estimated 99 percent of farmed animals are kept, are almost as inaccessible to the public as they are inescapable for the animals locked inside. When I started getting more involved in discussions about animal farming, I knew I had to see the inside of one of these facilities for myself. I finally got my opportunity with a rescue team from a California farmed animal sanctuary.
The sanctuary was able to convince a handful of farmers to allow them to rescue some of the chickens in their spent flocks. The industry term "spent" is used to describe hens whose reproductive systems are too worn out to be profitable, at which time the animals are killed. These hens were bred to lay eggs, not produce meat, so they can't be sent to the slaughterhouse. Farmers would have to spend money killing the hens and disposing of their bodies; relinquishing them to the rescuers spares the farmers that cost.
The rescue took place at a battery-cage farm in the Central Valley of California in early 2016. Battery cages are thin wire enclosures that are typically so small the hens can't even spread their wings. They're named for the way identical units are stacked end to end, like electrical batteries.
In 2008, California residents passed Proposition 2, a ballot measure in California that added this section to the California Health and Safety Code: "In addition to other applicable provisions of law, a person shall not tether or confine any covered animal, on a farm, for all or the majority of any day, in a manner that prevents such animal from: (a) lying down, standing up, and fully extending his or her limbs; and (b) turning around freely."
More than eight million California residents turned out in favor of Proposition 2, the highest positive turnout for a citizen initiative in the state's history. Many thought this would end the cruel confinement of egg-laying hens in the state. But despite the overwhelming public support for the bill, reform can be slow, and these dreadful cages are still common.
In order to comply with the new law, the farm I visited had simply taken out the walls separating the batteries. This means that each hen has more total space in her "cell," but she has more cellmates. Recent investigations have shown that some California farms haven't even made these changes, and there has been only one recorded enforcement of the law in the entire state, which was home to an estimated twelve million egg-laying hens in 2017.
We entered the farm before sunrise so the sleepy birds would be less anxious and easier to handle. We drove through a large metal gate with signs warning keep out and biohazard, and passed a dozen sheds with metal roofs and walls of plastic netting. The stench of ammonia was burning our mouths and throats, even outside the barns. We unloaded our transport crates, donned our disposable coveralls, sanitized our boots, and entered the designated shed.
From the entrance, we looked down a dozen rows of cages, each approximately 150 feet long. Cages were stacked on each other in two levels, one just above and one just below eye level. On the floor below them was a six-inch-tall, foot-wide mound of feces, which at first looked hard enough to stand on, but the new volunteers got ample warning from veterans that the dry exterior hid a moist, rotting interior. The birds were already agitated from hunger when we came in--the farm didn't waste any money on feeding them before we arrived--but the lights and our presence stressed them out further.
In the absence of rescue, the spent hens face a cruel fate. In normal circumstances, a farmhand pulls a large wheeled box down each row, grabbing the chickens by whatever body part is accessible and ripping them out through the tiny doors of their cages, breaking limbs and tearing skin in the process. The hens are then thrown into the dark, cramped chamber until it's full, and the little air that is left in the box is replaced with carbon dioxide.
Injured, confused, and terrified, the chickens die slowly from asphyxiation in a cage of flesh. Hens used for eggs are typically killed at between a year and a half and two years old, a small fraction of their potential lifespan. Of the thousands of birds slated to be killed and discarded on this one farm that day, we could save only a few.
We worked in teams to transfer the hens from the cages to our transport crates. Some of us reached into the cages to pull out the birds--bruising our arms on the edges of the narrow doors as we carefully pulled out one bird at a time, holding her wings against her body so she didn't flap them and break one on the way out--while other rescuers opened and closed the transport crates.
The hens tried desperately to escape our reach, crowding into the corners of the cages and dodging our hands. Some bit us, others cried out in fear when rescuers picked them up, and many were breathing heavily and with open mouths, an indicator of stress. Many birds had wounds from fighting and climbing over each other in the cramped cages, and injuries from incessant contact with the metal cage. Some were missing eyes and had infected cuts from broken wire.
In each cage, you could tell who the dominant birds were and who had been picked on. All the birds were thin, but those who had been bullied were severely emaciated. They were missing many feathers, which other birds had pecked off in agitation. Anxiety had driven some birds to peck off their own feathers. There were many dead birds, some whose legs and heads hung limp and were beginning to decompose after they had become hopelessly trapped between the wires of their cage walls.
Each rescuer managed the experience differently. Some people's hands shook while they consoled the hens, promising them that they would soon be free of this hellhole. Some quietly let tears roll down their faces while they worked on the task at hand with solemn tenderness. Others were angry and snapped at fellow rescuers for any misstep.
My focus was on diligence and observation. I hoped to absorb as much as I could from the experience, in particular the perspectives of the hens themselves. I needed to remember these stories, not just of the hens who made it out alive to live happily at the sanctuary, but also those who remained on that farm--dead or alive. This harrowing experience helped me put a face--actually more than seven thousand faces in the shed we visited--on the horrors of animal farming.
In the fall of 2016, dozens of animal advocates descended on Massachusetts from across the country, joining hundreds of in-state activists, to participate in the "Yes on 3" campaign for the November ballot. I was able to join for the last few days leading up to the vote on the referendum. We went door-to-door discussing the measure, which sought to prohibit the most extreme farmed animal confinement, similar to Prop 2 in California.
Most of the conversations were short; the residents just told us they had already voted or were definitely going to vote in favor. In fact, the measure ultimately received an overwhelming 77.7 percent of the vote. Interestingly, almost everyone I spoke to about the initiative brought up how upset and concerned they were by footage they had seen from undercover investigations of animal farms.
This is a common experience for advocates of both plant-based eating and farmed animal welfare. Almost everyone who cares about the issue does so because of videotaped investigations of animal farms, and the most dedicated, passionate people in the movement are even more likely to be driven by their knowledge of the suffering farmed animals endure--which they learned about through investigations--than other information such as environmental and health concerns. If I had to choose one strategy that has built the most momentum for the movement, it would be the undercover investigations that have exposed and publicized the implications of the modern "machine in a factory" approach to farming animals.
Undercover investigations of animal farms essentially began in the early 1990s, following investigations of animal testing laboratories in the 1980s. Of course, there were earlier exposes, such as Upton Sinclair's work leading to the publication of his novel The Jungle in the early 1900s. It seems the first investigation of the modern era was conducted by the pioneering animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1983 at a Texas horse exporter, shortly after PETA's famous lab animal investigation in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1981. More food-industry investigations followed in 1991, when PETA investigated a cow slaughterhouse, a pig slaughterhouse, and a chicken hatchery.
The first modern animal farm investigation, in 1992, exposed the cruelty at Commonwealth Enterprises, a New York farm producing foie gras, the fattened liver of a duck or goose. The major finding was that, contrary to prior claims by the company, the ducks were force-fed. Three times a day, each worker would shove a long, metal pipe down the throats of around five hundred birds. The pipes caused the birds serious pain and resulted in subsequent health issues such as damaged esophagi and pneumonia.
This research led to the first U.S. police raid of an animal farm, though reports by activists suggest the foie gras industry successfully pressured the district attorney into dropping the charges. Federal law at that time, and today, excludes farmed animals from standard animal-cruelty protections.
These investigations started receiving major media attention in the late 1990s. A 1998 PETA investigation of a pig-breeding farm led to the first felony indictments ever for cruelty to farmed animals. It "revealed shocking, systematic cruelty, from daily beatings of pregnant sows with a wrench and an iron pole to skinning pigs alive and sawing off a conscious animal's legs."
PETA's McCruelty campaign against McDonald's in 1999 and 2000 led to one of the first major corporate commitments to reducing farmed animal suffering, though PETA has since restarted its campaign after McDonald's failed to take continued steps to increase welfare.
Since undercover investigations began, one of the biggest contributors to their success came, inadvertently, from animal agriculture lobbyists. The meat, dairy, and egg industries tried to stop investigations by passing laws in state legislatures to limit the ability to document animal farm operations. The first such law, passed in Iowa in 2011, prohibits undercover audio or visual recording of an animal facility, and possessing or distributing any such record.
In essence, animal ag has sought to punish those who expose abuse, rather than those who commit it. The public backlash to these "ag-gag" laws, as they are now widely known, began as soon as they were discussed in the mainstream media. Food columnist Mark Bittman popularized the term in a New York Times article shortly after the Iowa law was passed. He referenced a Texas investigation from earlier that year that showed calves being hammered to death by workers, animals confined in tiny crates with barely enough room to turn around, pervasive health issues, and the standard industry practice of dehorning calves by burning the budding horns out of their skulls with hot metal cutters.
These laws have been passed in numerous U.S. states, though many have failed, and the Idaho and Utah ag-gag laws were struck down in the courts as unconstitutional. Numerous journalists and public figures have denounced the laws, and that coverage has led many to speak out against eating meat and against the animal agriculture industry as a whole. A psychological experiment even corroborated this effect, suggesting that simply learning about the laws led to decreased trust in farmers and increased support for animal welfare regulation.
Since 2013, the industry has quietly continued to push ag-gag laws through state legislatures, despite public opinion. In August 2013, a policy representative from the National Pork Producers Council said, "We did a study of coverage of 'ag-gag' laws that found that 99 percent of the stories about it were negative."
When investigators and other advocates share videos and otherwise engage with the public, they need to include an "ask," or request--some action an inspired viewer can take if they want to help end the animal cruelty, environmental damage, or other harm they've seen. This activism can be very compelling.
A recent advance has been the use of virtual reality headsets to immerse the audience in the life of a farmed animal. This tactic has been pioneered by Animal Equality; one video takes the audience through a chicken slaughterhouse via a camera hanging between two chickens, as a worker sharpens his knives in front of them, ready to slice the throat of each passerby. For the past three decades, the movement's ask for viewers eager to take action has almost exclusively been for individual diet change, either for the viewer to reduce their meat consumption or leave animals off their plate entirely.
How successful has this been? The data here is limited. The numbers of self-identified vegetarians is growing but still under 10 percent. Survey results indicate around 54 percent of Americans are "currently trying to consume fewer animal-based foods (meat, dairy, and/or eggs) and more plant-based foods (fruits, grains, beans, and/or vegetables)."
Yet a 2014 U.S. survey found that 93 percent of respondents felt it was "very important" to buy their food from humane sources. Eighty-seven percent believe "farmed animals have roughly the same ability to feel pain and discomfort as humans." And an astounding 47 percent of U.S. adults say in a survey that they support the seemingly radical policy change of "a ban on slaughterhouses."
Excerpted with permission from The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System, by Jacy Reese, Beacon Press, 2018.
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In 'Loud and Clear' Rebuke of Factory Farming, California Passes World's 'Strongest Animal Welfare Law'
While some animal rights advocates argue Proposition 12 won't prevent routine cruelty, its passage "clearly shows pro-animal-rights voter sentiment."
Nov 07, 2018
In a clear rebuke of factory farming, California voters on Election Day passed the "ground-breaking" Proposition 12, which is being celebrated by some advocates as the world's "strongest animal welfare law for farmed animals in history."
Backed by 61 percent of voters, Proposition 12 establishes "minimum space requirements based on square feet for calves raised for veal, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens"--which includes chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and guinea fowl--and and bans the sale of veal, pork, and eggs from livestock from other states that are confined in spaces deemed too small under California's standards.
The ballot measure--which builds on Proposition 2, passed by voters in 2008--has two rounds of new rules. By 2020, calves must have at least 43 square feet of usable floor space and hens at least 1 square foot. By 2022, breeding pigs and offspring must have at least 24 square feet of space and hens must be kept in indoor or outdoor cage-free housing systems based on the United Egg Producers' 2017 cage-free guidelines.
"California voters have sent a loud and clear message that they reject cruel cage confinement in the meat and egg industries," declared Kitty Block, acting president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. "Thanks to the dedication of thousands of volunteers and coalition partners who made this victory happen, millions of veal calves, mother pigs, and egg-laying hens will never know the misery of being locked in a tiny cage for the duration of their lives."
"California voters have sent a loud and clear message that they reject cruel cage confinement in the meat and egg industries."
--Kitty Block, Humane Society
"From voting at the ballot box to shopping at the supermarket," said ASPCA president and CEO Matt Bershadker, "consumers have played a significant role in demanding more humane food choices by rejecting cruel and unsafe methods still commonplace at industrial-style factory farms."
"Democrats; Republicans; vegans; omnivores; and people of all ages, genders, and races banded together to pass the historic measure, sending a clear message: California voters believe animal cruelty is wrong," wrote Elizabeth Enoch in a blog post for Mercy for Animals. "As a movement, we clearly have incredible power to make progress for animals when we galvanize support from people of all walks of life."
While supported by the majority of voters and a coalition of animal rights groups, not all activist organizations backed the ballot measure--particularly because of its provisions about egg-laying hens.
Friends of Animals, which advocates for veganism, had called it a "scam" that "won't do anything to spare the lives of animals." PETA, which claims that "the only way to reduce chickens' suffering is to stop supporting the egg industry by simply not eating eggs," also came out against the measure, arguing it "still allows tens of thousands of hens to be crammed into giant warehouses and does nothing to prevent routine cruelty."
As journalist Glenn Greenwald, a vocal advocate of animal rights, concluded, although the anticipated impact of the measure left activists divided, ultimately, its passage "clearly shows pro-animal-rights voter sentiment."
California wasn't the only state to adopt new animal rights rules on Election Day. Florida's Amendment 13--which aims to phase out greyhound racing by 2020--also passed after receiving support from 69 percent of voters across the state. The Committee to Protect Dogs, which backed the ban, called it "a knock-out blow to a cruel industry that has been hurting and killing dogs for nearly a century."
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3.4 Million Chickens, 5,500 Hogs Killed in Florence's Flooding
"This was an unprecedented storm with flooding expected to exceed that from any other storms in recent memory." And millions of animals have already paid the price.
Sep 20, 2018
The North Carolina Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the historic flooding from Florence has killed about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs.
"This was an unprecedented storm with flooding expected to exceed that from any other storms in recent memory. We know agricultural losses will be significant because the flooding has affected the top six agricultural counties in our state," said agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler in a press release.
The footprint of flooding from this storm covers much of the same area hit by flooding from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which only worsens the burden on these farmers.
When Matthew hit the state, it flooded more than 140 hog and poultry barns, more than a dozen open hog waste pits and thousands of acres of manure-saturated fields, the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance reported.
Poultry is the number one agricultural industry in North Carolina, with a statewide economic impact of $36.6 billion a year, according to the North Carolina Poultry Federation.
Sanderson Farms, the third largest poultry producer in the country, issued a statement on Monday that 1.7 million of its broiler chickens "were destroyed as a result of flooding." Sixty of its 880 broiler houses in North Carolina flooded and another six broiler houses experienced damage. Four breeder houses out of a total of 92 in the state flooded.
Additionally, Sanderson said about 30 Lumberton-area farms, housing approximately 211,000 chickens in each, have been isolated by flood waters. More chickens could die if the company is unable to reach those farms with feed trucks.
"Losses of live inventory could escalate if the company does not regain access to those farms," the statement read.
The state is also the nation's second leading producer of hogs, with more than 2,100 farms that raise about 9 million hogs each year, according to the North Carolina Pork Council.
The 5,500 hog deaths from Hurricane Florence have already exceeded the 2,800 killed during Hurricane Matthew, the industry trade group wrote in a statement Tuesday.
"Our farmers took extraordinary measures in advance of this storm, including moving thousands of animals out of harm's way as the hurricane approached," the statement read. "We do not expect the losses to increase significantly, though floodwaters continue to rise in some locations and circumstances may change."
Animal rights group PETA called the animal deaths a "tragedy."
"These millions of deaths were preventable, but as long as a market exists for animal flesh, some people will turn a profit at the expense of animals," a spokesperson told EcoWatch in an email. "PETA urges everyone to take personal responsibility, not shrug this tragedy off, and actually help stop future suffering by going vegan so that animals are no longer forced to endure the many types of cruelty inherent in the meat industry."
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was similarly "heartbroken" over the deaths.
"HSUS is heartbroken by the reports of the catastrophic numbers of farmed animal deaths resulting from the flooding related to Hurricane Florence," the organization told EcoWatch via email, adding that the animals "needlessly lost their lives."
"Having an emergency plan, regardless of the numbers of animals at your home, facility, or farm, is the responsibility of the humane steward caring for their welfare," HSUS added. "If the sheer number of animals makes evacuation extremely difficult or impossible, then a hard look needs to be taken at the number of animals being cared for and the opportunity for them to be considered in an emergency plan. The cost of not doing so, as we can see here, has a devastating impact on the community, the environment and the animals, and are further examples of why we need to reduce the reliance on these massive factory farms."
Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, at least 77 pig waste lagoons have either breached or are at risk of breaching, the New York Times reported, citing data from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
North Carolina's hog and other concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, produce almost 10 billion gallons of fecal waste a year, according to the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance. Flooded CAFOs could release a potent mix of pollutants that can potentially harm human health and the environment.
Waterkeeper Alliance has conducted overflights at some of the industrial sites and agricultural operations impacted by Florence and is investigating the possible hazards left in the storm's wake.
"We've been working to address environmental hazards caused by industrial waste mismanagement in North Carolina for over two decades," said Will Hendrick, Waterkeeper Alliance staff attorney and manager of the Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign in a statement received by EcoWatch. "As defenders of the state's rivers, lakes and streams, we're committed to documenting conditions and alerting the public to threats to public health and environmental quality stemming from Hurricane Florence."
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How Could You Represent Someone Like Milo Yiannopoulos?
How free speech protections fuel civil rights movements
Aug 10, 2017
Milo Yiannopoulos trades on outrage. He is a professional provocateur who has turned insulting different groups of people into a specialty.
He has claimed that the very existence of transgender people is the product of delusional thinking. He has compared Black Lives Matter activists to the KKK. And he has fostered both anti-Muslim bias and disdain for women in one breath, characterizing abortion as "so clearly bad for women's health that it falls second only to Islam."
Here at the ACLU, we vehemently disagree with Mr. Yiannopoulos' views. We work hard, every day, with the very communities he targets, to fight for equal rights and dignity for all. We recognize that his words cause grievous pain to many individuals, their families, and their loved ones. Speech like his hurts.
Yet even though we know how wrong-headed Mr. Yiannopoulos' speech is, the ACLU on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to defend his free speech rights.
Say what?
We did not take this decision lightly. We understand the pain caused by Mr. Yiannopoulos' views. We also understand the importance of the principles we seek to defend.
The constitutional principle here, of course, is that government can't censor our speech just because it doesn't like what we say. But we're not representing Mr. Yiannopoulos just out of an abstract principle. We're also representing him because free speech is crucial to progress in civil rights movements.
Without free speech protections, all civil rights advocacy could be shut down by the people in power, precisely because government doesn't agree with the ideas activists advance. That was true of the civil rights fights of the past, it's true of the movements facing pitched battles today, and it will be true of the movements of the future that are still striving to be heard.
The case we filed Wednesday is a good illustration of what we mean. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, a government agency, prohibits any advertisements on its trains or buses that attempt to "influence members of the public regarding an issue on which there are varying opinions." Enforcing that rule, the WMATA told the ACLU that we couldn't put up ads that show the text of the First Amendment (yes, really) in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It also refused ads from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) urging people not to eat meat and another one from Carafem, a non-profit that provides abortion care and family planning services. In Mr. Yiannopoulos' case, it pulled ads for his book from its trains after passengers complained.
That's quite a range of views that government decided to silence -- from an organization promoting free speech, another advocating for reproductive health care, another urging protection of animals, and another peddling what the ACLU believes to be anti-trans, anti-Black, anti-woman, and anti-Muslim views. That speaks to a core premise of the First Amendment: If government can shut down one of those views, it can shut down all of them. And that would make it harder for any of us to engage in debate with the public and to try to change people's minds about the issues that are dearest to our hearts.
Protecting the First Amendment rights of all of these speakers is crucial to the ability of civil rights movements to make the change we need to make. When we're talking about oppressed groups espousing what are often minority viewpoints, the danger of being censored is not just theoretical, it happens all the time. Fighting against that censorship is part of how we ensure that the voices of the marginalized do not disappear from public view.
Consider the movement for LGBT rights. In 2010, a Mississippi high school student, Constance McMillen, wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom and wear a tuxedo. Both acts were inherently expressive, communicating that she's a lesbian and challenging gender norms. The school said no, asserting they needed to protect other students from these "disruptive" statements. But a lawsuit we brought under the First Amendment ensured Constance could attend prom -- as her true self.
In Delaware, Kai Short knew he was male from an early age, despite being assigned female at birth and given a traditionally female name. While incarcerated, the state barred him from legally changing his name, but he argued that the First Amendment protected his right to do so. Delaware ultimately changed the law, allowing Kai to be recognized as his authentic self.
If government can shut down one of those views, it can shut down all of them.
The First Amendment has also repeatedly ensured that advocates could organize and get their messages of protest out in support of the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court relied on the First Amendment when it ensured that the NAACP could disseminate its message through an economic boycott of racist businesses in Mississippi. And when Alabama tried to intimidate NAACP members -- and effectively destroy the NAACP itself -- by subpoenaing its membership records and exposing its members to retaliation by the state, the First Amendment shut it down.
The fight for women's rights has also relied on free speech protections. When Virginia made it a crime to publish an ad stating, "Unwanted Pregnancy - Let Us Help You. Abortions are now legal in New York," it was the First Amendment that protected the right of the public to receive such information. And in litigation now ongoing, it is the First Amendment that enables us to challenge an Indiana law prohibiting abortion providers from telling teens seeking abortions without parental consent about their options in other states.
I could go on, but you get the point. In each of these cases, the Constitution's guarantee that we can speak our minds, regardless of what the government thinks about our views, has been crucial to our ability to be out about who we are and what we believe, to share our stories, and to build public support for our equality, dignity, and survival. Allowing government the leeway to "protect" others from our views silences us. And silence means an end to the progress we have been making across a wide range of issues, all over the country.
Some people may say that Mr. Yiannopoulos' offensive speech sets him apart and doesn't deserve to be defended. But the sad reality is that many people think that speech about sexuality, gender identity, or abortion is over the line as well. They'll say that abortion is murder, civil rights advocates are criminals, or LGBT advocates are trying to recruit children into deviant and perverse lifestyles. If First Amendment protections are eroded at any level, it's not hard to imagine the government successfully pushing one or more of those arguments in court.
That means that we, as a country and a community, have to put up with a hefty dose of pain from people like Milo Yiannopoulos. But ask Constance McMillen, the NAACP, and women across the country if the First Amendment has advanced their equality. We think so, which is why we need to keep protecting it.
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Animal Rights Groups Sue Over Unprecedented USDA Website Blackout
'The government should not be in the business of hiding animal abusers and lawbreakers from public scrutiny'
Feb 13, 2017
Leading animal rights groups sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Monday over the removal of animal welfare records from its website early this month.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by PETA, Beagle Freedom Project, Born Free USA, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, along with public health advocacy group the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and Harvard animal law and policy fellow Delcianna Winders, demands the reinstatement of the records, which included thousands of inspection reports, research facility reports, and violations at zoos, research laboratories, and commercial breeders.
"The government should not be in the business of hiding animal abusers and lawbreakers from public scrutiny," Winders said in a statement.
The USDA took down the records on February 3, citing privacy concerns. The agency said those seeking the information would henceforth be required to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Humane Society of the United States said at the time: "This action benefits no one, except facilities who have harmed animals and don't want anyone to know."
As The Dodo noted:
The recently disappeared reports include information about SeaWorld, dog breeders, and puppy mills, zoos, circuses (including Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus) and taxpayer-funded animal testing labs, among others.
[...] "We've been the USDA's watchdog for 20 years," Deborah Howard, president of the Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS), told The Dodo recently, explaining that CAPS investigators use the USDA reports to show which pet shops are sourcing their dogs from puppy mills. "We compare our findings to the inspectors. If we didn't have those reports, we wouldn't be able to do our inspections."
The removal came amidst reports of other federal agencies scrubbing critical data and research from their websites under the Trump administration.
Indeed, Deborah Dubow Press of the ASPCA told Teen Vogue, "It happened just two weeks after President Trump took office. It's a very detrimental and disappointing action out of the gate from our new president. It does not leave us very hopeful."
Press told the outlet: "We are not aware of any previous agency data purge of this scope."
As such, the decision received significant public scrutiny and was the subject of a social media campaign under the hashtags #AnimalWelfare and #NoUSDABlackout.
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Ringling Bros. Circus 'Finally Bows to Public Opinion,' to End Run in May
Announcement seen as 'a sign that any industry—including farms, labs, and circuses—that commits violence against animals is destined to fail'
Jan 15, 2017
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced Saturday night that it would hold its final performance in May, a victory for animal rights activists who have battled the show for decades.
A message from Kenneth Feld, president of the Ringling parent company Feld Entertainment, said that "Ringling Bros. ticket sales have been declining, but following the transition of the elephants off the road, we saw an even more dramatic drop. This, coupled with high operating costs, made the circus an unsustainable business for the company."
The company said in March 2015 that it would retire its elephants by 2018. Other performing animals, such as tigers, lions, horses, dogs, and camels, remained in the show.
Animal rights groups cheered Saturday's announcement, attributing it to shifting public opinion after a long awareness campaign showing traveling circuses cannot meet the needs of wild animals.
"After decades of exposing the suffering of animals in circuses behind the scenes, we are pleased to hear that Ringling has finally bowed to public opinion--it was a mistake for them not to see the trend away from animal shows to human-only performances over a decade ago," said Jan Creamer, president of Animal Defenders International.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) similarly chastised the company for not seeing the writing on the wall sooner. "Ringling Bros. has changed a great deal over a century and a half, but not fast enough," said Wayne Pacelle, HSUS president and CEO. "It's just not acceptable any longer to cart wild animals from city to city and have them perform silly yet coercive stunts. I know this is bittersweet for the Feld family, but I applaud their decision to move away from an institution grounded on inherently inhumane wild animal acts."
PETA said it "heralds the end [of the circus] and asks all other animal circuses to follow suit, as this is a sign of changing times."
Indeed, the grassroots network Direct Action Everywhere, which has protested circuses and other exploitative industries in the past, called the decision "a sign that any industry--including farms, labs, and circuses--that commits violence against animals is destined to fail. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe animals should be protected from all suffering and increasingly believe that animals should be granted equal rights under the law to be free from harm. We celebrate tonight's victory and look forward to seeing animal agriculture and other industries that torture and kill animals go the way of the circus."
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Welcome to Swamp Trump. Please Don't Feed the Gators.
It's already a Washington truism that Donald Trump, who promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and others who exploit government for personal gain, has turned to it instead for his key appointments.
It's true. The reptiles are taking over. Let's take a tour of the place while we still can.
"Trump's only doing what his fellow developers did in the Florida Land Rush of the 1920s: He's selling people paradise, but giving them swampland instead."
Nov 16, 2016
It's already a Washington truism that Donald Trump, who promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and others who exploit government for personal gain, has turned to it instead for his key appointments.
It's true. The reptiles are taking over. Let's take a tour of the place while we still can.
"Trump's only doing what his fellow developers did in the Florida Land Rush of the 1920s: He's selling people paradise, but giving them swampland instead."
Welcome to Trump Swamp. Join us on the glass-bottom boat as we gaze on the denizens below. Keep your hands inside the railings - and please don't feed the gators.
It's hard to get past the white nationalist in any discussion of Trump's team. Sure, they call Steve Bannon's worldview "alt-right," but that's deceptive. That makes it sound like something new, when hatred is as old as the hills.
White supremacist Jared Taylor cheered Bannon's hire, saying he suspected Bannon will serve as an "anti-waffler" to maintain Trump's ideological and racial purity. (Taylor's most recent tweet, as of this writing is, "Excellent Boston Globe article about the Hispanic invasion. This is how we throw away our country.")
"I think that's excellent," said former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke of Bannon's hire.
"Perhaps The Donald IS for 'REAL'," the chairman of the American Nazi Party exulted, adding: "Time will tell."
Admittedly, when one of the President-elect's appointments gets positive responses from the KKK and the Nazis, it's hard to focus on his other hires. But it's important. If "personnel is policy," as Sen. Elizabeth Warren says, then Trump's policy is plunder.
Billionaire Steve Mnuchin is a leading contender for Secretary of the Treasury. As we first noted last August, Mnuchin ran a mortgage-lending outfit called One West, which was investigated for its abusive treatment of borrowers. The California Reinvestment Coalition asked authorities to investigate One West's pattern of racial discrimination in foreclosures, and specifically cited its "foreclosures of widows."
Looks like the proprietor of Trump University has found a soul mate. There are others.
Trump also sought out JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for Treasury Secretary. Dimon has presided over a truly epic orgy of fraud during his tenure. Dimon is a generous campaign donor to politicians from both parties, which may explain why he has escaped serious investigation.
(Dimon wisely took his name out of consideration for the job.Elizabeth Warren would have humiliated him.)
Then there's billionaire Wilbur Ross, a leading contender for Commerce Secretary. Ross, who is already reassuring investors that Trump won't do anything rash on trade, invests in "distressed assets." What the aliens in "Independence Day" do to planets like Earth, Ross does to troubled companies. He plunders them for anything of value and then leaves them in ruins.
And speaking of plundering a planet and leaving it in ruins, here are the leading contenders for Trump's top energy and environmental slots:
Oil tycoon Forrest Lucas is a frontrunner for Secretary of the Interior. He makes his money by digging up the land he would be tasked to protect. But Lucas is not a one-dimensional candidate. He also hates animals.
Lucas is, as Politico reports, "one of the biggest donors to groups that attack the Humane Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and (who) defend animal agriculture, hunting, meat consumption, rodeos and circuses."
Like dogs? Lucas reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending puppy mills from a ballot initiative.
And you'll get two for the price of one: his wife and Lucas Oil co-founder Charlotte Lucas has attacked atheists and Muslims on Facebook, writing, "I'm sick and tired of minorities running this country!"
Feel like you're in a swamp yet?
Trump's considering a real mother-fracker for Energy Secretary: Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm has extensive holdings in corporations that use fracking and other techniques to extract oil from Mother Earth. (What did you think I meant?) Hamm's spent years trying to get federal lands turned over to companies like his for exploitation.
Bloomberg News reported that Hamm tried to get some earthquake researchers fired from the University of Oklahoma, where he's a major donor, because they were investigating the connection between oil and gas extraction and Oklahoma's "nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes."
Expect more man-made earthquakes under a Trump/Hamm regime.
Trump is also reportedly planning to turn leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency to far-right environmental nemesis Myron Ebell. Ebell has parlayed his extreme anti-government views and his refusal to accept climate science's findings - a refusal grounded in absolutely no scientific qualifications whatsoever - into a lucrative gig as the head of a fossil-fuel industry front group he calls the "Competitive Enterprise Institute."
Today the institute, tomorrow the world - destroying it, that is.
(Note to media: "Climate contrarian" is a weasel phrase. It's like calling Flat-Earthers "geography contrarians." The right term for Ebell is "industry-funded crank.")
There are more cold-blooded creatures like these in Trump's world, but it's time for our tour to end.
What we're seeing here is nothing new. Trump's only doing what his fellow developers did in the Florida Land Rush of the 1920s: He's selling people paradise, but giving them swampland instead.
Trump's "contract with the American voter" promised that he would "clean up corruption and special interest collusion" in Washington in his first hundred days as president.
Oh, well. It won't be the first contract Trump's ever broken.
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