Animal Rights

kunsjoi sent in a tale of a rottweiler who has “adopted” two baby lambs who were born with complications on a UK farm. The dog has been sleeping with the lambs and is protecting them from the other animals. It’s a heartwarming story, but one the world will soon forget – the lambs will soon be well enough to move out to the field, where odds are pretty good that they’ll one day be killed for food. Nobody says “awwww…” at that part of the story. Link.

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frank language notes that we may have been mislead in our earlier post about a scientist trying to “cure” gay sheep. Apparently the researchers are claiming that many of the Sunday Times’ initial accusations about their work, including the one about implanting devices into the sheep’s brains, aren’t true. Curse you, secondary sources! So, in an effort to find out what Charles Roselli and co. were actually up to, I took a look at a few of his papers. According to the sheep paper, they spent a year or two figuring out which sheep exhibited homosexual behaviour, and then they removed the heads of all the sheep to figure out how they worked, so no implants, and probably nothing more invasive than blood tests during the study, but the last day, well, it’s a killer. Of course, there’s always his study with rats, where I learned a new clinical term – apparently it’s easier to write “gdx” instead of “gonadectomized,” and the rats did get some kind of implant, because hey, we must understand the gay! Link to article about errors, link to sheep paper, link to rat paper.

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kunsjoi sends word of a hunting accident that may already be in the forums, but it raises an interesting point: if hunters keep going on about how responsible they are and how every shot they take leads to a clean, near instantaneous death with little or no suffering for the animal, how is it that we keep seeing cases like this one, where the hunter in question couldn’t even distinguish between a deer and his own brother? Granted, his brother may have indeed died quickly and cleanly, but given the size and shape differences between a deer and a human, I suspect that there’s a lot more “ready, fire, aim” going on in the woods than so-called “responsible” hunters like to admit. Link.

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As frank language noted both in a submission and in the forums, the University of Connecticut has shut down a research project involving monkeys after the USDA uncovered a whack of violations including incorrect drug dosages, performing unauthorized procedures, and employing unauthorized staff. Missing among the list of violations was the fact that the experiment itself involved drilling holes in the monkeys’ skulls and implanting steel coils in their brains. Apparently this has some relevance to stroke treatments, but one has to wonder how useful the information gleaned from the project would be if the scienticians couldn’t follow their own protocols. The timing on the shutdown is interesting as well – apparently it stopped in August, but the USDA had been citing the school for violations 4 times in the year before that. By the way, if you’re working on the Trivial Pursuit Cruelty Edition (wait ’till you see what the game pieces look like!), the USDA has taken action against the university two other times in the past 10 years. Link, comments.

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The EU is taking, as porkypunk says, “tiny, tiny steps” towards better treatment of food animals through a new series of regulations focusing mostly on transport. Lorries (that’s the metric equivalent of “trucks,” I’m told) must now be licensed to ensure compliance with travel and rest times, and the, uh, vehicles must be equipped with drinking stations and temperature monitors. Of course, animals can still be (and are) taken on trips of up to 60 hours. Transport practices are something that most people think about even less than slaughter techniques, and I suspect that most people don’t have a clue where their food came from (“US beef” doesn’t help much in a country that’s more than 3.7 million square miles in size), and likely don’t realize how much of the distance their meal had to travel while still alive. Link to story, link to US transport practices summary.

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kunsjoi notes that a pair of universities in Oregon have been spending research money on the following: cutting open live sheeps’ skulls, attaching electonic sensors to their brains and monitoring them while injecting hormones into their brains. The goal of this tiny little procedure? Curing homosexuality. The official line is that the research could improve the “productivity” of a herd, since apparently 1 in 10 rams prefer mounting other rams, but farms don’t need too many males to get the job done, assuming they don’t artificially inseminate anyway. Opponents of the research fear that the oppression of animals now will lead to the oppression of humans at a later date, while the scientists claim that they’re just lifting the taboo off of stuff that’s been underlooked for political reasons up until now. While they’re at it, here’s another one: how about finding a way to stop people from wanting to tear into live sheep brains? Link.

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VegBow sends news of the Japanese dog breeding industry, and while we look forward to the day where we can say something favourable about dog breeding (we’ve no idea what it would be), today is not that day. Japan seems to have a tendency to turn consumer goods up to 11, and the use of dogs as fashion statements is no exception. The trouble is that to create a really unique dog, breeders are inbreeding their animals to the extent that the rate of genetic defects is going through the roof. In many cases, entire litters are born deformed and have to be killed, but as this only costs the breeder some space and kibble, it’s not a problem that’s likely to be solved anytime soon if consumer demand continues at its current rate. Link.

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kunsjoi sends in an incredible array of submissions, ranging from “argh! my eyes!” horror stories to “awww…” cutesy wootsy stuff. As I’m not in the mood for horror right now: an Australian cat has been credited with saving a family of four from a house fire. After a mattress caught fire from a stray cigarette, the cat clawed at the sleeping smoker’s face until he woke up and got the family to safety. As the cat isn’t named in the article, I assume he or she wishes to remain anonymous, but it should be noted that living with a cat is no substitute for, say, not smoking in bed. Link.

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From kunsjoi: ignoring the kill from a few seconds earlier, altogether now, awww… Link.

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