There’s a reason why people say a pet is not for Christmas but for life. Animal Shelters often become crowded during the New Year, when people give up the pets they got during the holidays.  Since the Pandemic, animal shelters have seen an even higher uptick in the increase of animals that need adopting. Many people who adopted pets during the pandemic decide they don’t want pet companions when things get busy again.

What You Can Do for Shelter Animals in the New Year

• Shelters all around the US are reaching capacity. If you can’t adopt an animal you may be able to help shelters by fostering a cat or a dog. This will help them manage capacity until the animals in their care can find a new home. 
• Some animal shelters unfortunately euthanize animals in their care when they reach capacity. These shelters are known as “kill shelters.” If you can identify shelters where animals might lose their lives you can reach out to them to see if you can help to foster animals or negotiate to save the lives of animals.
• Educate friends who want a pet on the benefits of adopting a pet from a shelter rather than buying from breeders.
• Support animal shelters in your area by donating money or volunteering on the weekend. Working with animals can be its own reward but any volunteer programs also help the shelters to save money on staff costs and expand their capacity so that more animals can be housed.
• Get to know animals in the shelter and share social media posts to help find homes for them.

Shelter animals are often abandoned by people who can’t afford to house and feed them, or people who simply don’t want the responsibility of caring for an animal. Some of them have suffered abuse or been rescued from breeding programs. Some animals may have specific needs that the owner can’t facilitate. A good way to find out how to help is to follow the social media pages of the local animal shelters in your area so you can learn more about the needs of the animals and find out how to support the shelters.

Vietnam’s illegal wildlife trade is notorious for the sale of dog meat and the cruel treatment of animals caged and sold at so-called “wet-markets.” The country has committed to ending some of these cruel practices, but a probe has found that the cruel animal trade still persists.

The scenes of suffering that play out for animals are diverse and tragic.

Consider the following:

A water-bird is tethered to the top of a small cage with 6 others of its species. This agonizing prison is where these birds will spend their last moments, in noisy markets known as “wet markets.” At these markets animals are slaughtered in front of each other. Many of the animals brought to the markets are rare birds and endangered animals like turtles.

Or imagine what it’s like for a dog who is kidnapped from their owner or off the street, and bundled into a tight cage with other dogs who are frightened, confused, hungry and/or sick. As a captured dog, you witness other dogs being slaughtered in front of you until it’s your turn to be killed. These are the scenes that still play out in Vietnam’s dog meat trade. 88% of people want to end the dog meat trade, but there are no nationwide laws in Vietnam to prevent it.

Wet markets have become notorious since the COVID outbreak due to the health consequences of animal to human disease transmission. At wet markets, animals are kept in miserable conditions and routinely killed without even being stunned.

Vietnam’s prime minister has issued a directive that calls on regional authorities to crack down on wet markets and enforce existing laws to curb the trade of endangered animals. The government has made efforts to curb the dog meat trade in big cities but these efforts are still piecemeal. The investigation by We Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition showed that post-COVID, people have gone back to business as usual, abducting dogs and animals from the wild and enthusiastically slaughtering and selling them at bustling wet markets and restaurants that serve dog meat.

To help animals who are killed and treated cruelly in Asia the public must continue to send the message that these practices are heinous and unacceptable. Work must be done to assist any initiatives that support enforcement and the rescue of animals. To learn more about how to support these efforts, please visit Animals Asia and the Asia Animals Coalition.

The Sumatran tiger is the smallest sub-species of tiger – physically and in dwindling number. Fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers remain in their natural habitat of Sumatra. The tigers are under threat from poachers, palm oil farms and logging. A small number of tigers have recently been born through conservation programs in zoos, but the tiger is still declining every year in Sumatra.

Sumatra is the only place where some of the most endangered animals: rhinos, tigers, orangutans and elephants coexist. All are under threat from farming, logging and development. What’s more, if any of these species become extinct, it will affect the natural balance in the ecosystem.

One of the biggest threats to the tigers is Palm Oil plantations. Forest-clearing for logging and development and poaching are also a threat to the tigers. Three tigers were recently found dead, caught in traps that farmers leave for bears. Poachers have been encouraged by a loss of income during the Pandemic to illegally kill tigers for their teeth and other parts of the animal used in Chinese medicine.

How can this beautiful and rare animal be protected?

Making everyday choices as a consumer can help to protect wildlife and endangered animals and ecosystems. If you want to avoid being part of the demise of the Sumatran tiger you should avoid products containing palm oil, and/or look for products that are verified sustainable by the Forestry Stewardship Council.

To take a more active part in protecting the Sumatran tiger you can donate to organizations that are working to protect their numbers such as the Wildlife Conservation Society India, and the International Tiger Project.

The Sumatran Tiger is in danger. Please consider donating to help this beautiful animal make it into the next century and by sharing any links to donation pages on your social media page.

https://internationaltigerproject.org/

https://indonesia.wcs.org/Wildlife/Sumatran-Tiger.aspx

Among the saddest and most cruel forms of torture animals humans have inflicted on animals is Bear Bile Farming. Bear Bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine. The process of extraction involves starving and dehydrating bears and extracting the bile through catheters and needles inserted into the gallbladder. Worse still, the bears are captured and confined to produce bear bile for the duration of their lives. This could mean up to 30 years of torture.

In the past, bears were killed and their gallbladders removed. Since the 1980s, the practice of bear bile farming took off. There are many synthetic and plant based alternatives that could replace this cruelly sourced extract, however bears are still kept in tiny cages for their whole lives to allow the extractions to take place. Bear bile farming is still legal in many countries. Korea, for example, still allows bear bile farming, though it has pledged to put a stop to it by 2025.

Vietnam is one of the countries that has banned bear bile farming but bear bile farms still exist there under the radar. It was on one of these farms that Paddington Bear, a moon bear, was kept for 17 years in a tiny cage where she was dehydrated and starved and her bile extracted. She was rescued by Animals Asia, but unfortunately she died less than a month after her rescue. Paddington Bear was dehydrated when she was rescued and suffered from multiple health problems typical of bears who are farmed for bile. These bears are often captured when they are bear cubs. They witness their mothers killed by poachers and are kept on bear bile farms for their whole lives where they are isolated and confined to the point that their bodies grow stunted to fit their tiny cages. Throughout their lives, they are tortured routinely with cruel bile extraction. The extraction of the bile leaves bears in poor health and causes many diseases and malignant tumors.

Paddington Bear was so close to living a better life, freed from the farm where she spent 17 years. Unfortunately, her health problems were overwhelming. She didn’t get to enjoy a healthy, peaceful retirement at her new home, but with renewed efforts to end the practice of bear bile farming, other bears may never have to go through what she did.

To learn how to end bear bile farming and help to rescue bears kept on bear bile farms, please visit Animals Asia’s website:

https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-bear-bile-farming.html

Giving animals, trees and rivers legal rights is no longer a fringe idea. The Law Society, the professional body for solicitors in England and Wales, has produced a report that says that granting legal rights and protections to non-human entities such as animals, trees and rivers is critical if nations are to confront climate collapse and the collapse of habitat and biodiversity.

The report is called Law in the Emerging Bio Age. The title indicates the big shift in thinking when it comes to humanity’s view of our place in our environment alongside other creatures. The idea that we live in the “bio age” is correct. Humans can no longer rely on the conceptual framework of the Western Christian tradition, in which we are outside nature and have dominion over nature. This attitude has brought us to the brink of the extinction of our species. It has destroyed whole species in the great age of extinction caused by pollution and human activity.

It’s time to move beyond the destructive power of exploitative traditions that inform our law and our societies. We can look to societies and nations that are informed by indigenous traditions for inspiration. Ecuador for example, has enshrined legal rights for the natural world, based on the tradition of respecting the earth mother goddess, Pachamama. Bolivia has also granted rights to nature. New Zealand has granted personhood to a former National Park, Te Urewara Park, the Whanganui river and Mt Taranaki.

In the West, in certain countries and states, the law has started to consider that animals should be defined as people rather than property in divorce cases.

These changes represent promising new seeds, but more has to be done to protect the vast swathes of the earth and its creatures that are vulnerable to human exploitation. It is time to accept that we live in the “bio age,” and time to build a new legal and political framework to legislate for our connectedness to natural and animal life.

Read More:

https://vjel.vermontlaw.edu/rights-nature-movement-closer-look-new-zealand#:~:text=Rather%20than%20incorporate%20a%20rights,Taranaki.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/10/give-legal-rights-to-animals-trees-and-rivers-say-experts

Plainville Farms was allegedly designated by a third-party labeling program as “animal welfare certified.” PETA was skeptical and sent a private investigator to check. They found horrifying evidence of turkey catchers committing some of the most extreme acts of animal cruelty a PETA Vice President said the organization had ever seen.

PETA’s undercover investigator abstained from the cruelty and was berated for taking too long. “There’s not time for that,” he was told. “You need to find a different job.” His co-workers’ acts of cruelty were documented on video. Co-workers stomped and kicked turkeys, clubbed them with rods, and picked them up by the heads and shook them violently. The workers mock-raped the Turkeys and threw them like footballs.

The horrifically cruel treatment of the turkeys appeared to be the norm. Despite the blatant disregard for life at the catching facilities, Plainville CEO Matt Goodson released a statement that painted the company in a responsible and ethical light. He stated that Plainville had zero tolerance for such abuse and that the workers had been fired.

PETA has asked the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit Plainville from “using false or misleading claims in advertising its turkey products.” Despite the publicity surrounding the abuse, and being suspended from the Global Animal Partnership, the company continues to claim that its turkeys are “humanely raised” in a “stress-free environment.” As animal rights activists know however, respect for life is not compatible with the business of industrial farming. It’s probable that there are many other industrial farming facilities out there where animals are suffering horribly.

PETA has long been critical of the Global Animal Partnership’s humane certification, calling it misleading and insufficient. The organization has certified more than 4,000 farms in 11 countries. Plainville’s “earthwise” seal is not even an independent certification, it was invented by the company itself.

“Greenwashing” is used as a cover for cruelty, and people who buy cheap meat don’t ask questions. Meat-eating consumers who toss meat products into their supermarket baskets are satisfied with labels claiming humane certification and don’t inquire further. Those who choose not to eat meat on ethical grounds understand that the industrial farming model is cruel by nature. No matter how vehemently these companies promise to make animals’ “experience” of being raised and killed for meat stress-free and safe, it will not reflect reality.

A state police animal cruelty officer has confirmed that the investigation was “lengthy, detailed,” and that it involved “reviewing a lot of evidence at multiple locations.” Police said that the abuse took place at multiple farms in Chester, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton, Perry and Union counties. 139 charges were filed, including 6 felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals and 76 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. According to PETA, this cruelty-to-livestock case has the most criminal counts they are aware of in their time reviewing such cases.

It is almost certain that this horrific cruelty is not limited to those who got caught. People should not be distracted by the “bad apples” theory that views the cruelty of these workers as individually motivated. This cruelty is part of the reality of meat production. Workers who kill animals for a living are more likely to become desensitized, traumatized and cruel (there has been plenty of research to show that this is the case).

PETA has organized protests outside Wegmans asking them to reconsider their ties with Plainville Farms. To learn more about PETA’s response to the protests and about how to volunteer, visit their website or contact local animal rights organizations in your area.

Read More: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/11-turkey-farm-workers-charged-cruelty-caught-video-91103726

Last year when the world was struggling to find a solution to the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers who were testing on animals moved quickly to human trials and conducted some of the fastest ever research using human trials. The vaccines were ready for rollout 6 months later.

This is not a normal timeline. Usually, animals are tested on and suffer for years in clinical trials before drugs and treatments are deemed safe to test on humans. Yet in 2020, somehow it was possible to speed up development and cut out years of animal suffering.

Also in 2020, animal testing dragged on even though the vaccines were showing promising results in humans. There was a “monkey shortage,” as labs rushed to perform unnecessary tests on rhesus macaques who were imported over great distances to suffer in labs and then be euthanized.

Over 100 million animals die during animal tests every year according to PETA. One reason so many animals are killed in the US is that animal testing is simply a bureaucratic requirement to receive drug approval, according to this blog.

And of course, animal testing is also big business. The demand for animals in research is subject to predictions and betting about how much money it’s worth, just like any other market. The so-called “monkey shortage” is yet another way humans reveal the value they place on animal life. Animals are a commodity to serve humans, not living beings.

PETA has an informative list of reasons why animal tests are unnecessary and cruel. One of the reasons is the abject failure of many treatments and drugs tested on animals when they are tested on humans. It is an inexact science to compare human and animal biological systems, and some of these tests even harm humans. The thinking seems to be to just throw any research at the problem and see if it sticks. The excuse for being able to do things this way is the underlying belief that animals are disposable.

Please check out this PETA list of reasons why animal testing isn’t necessary and why other testing methods are becoming the norm: https://headlines.peta.org/end-experiments-on-animals-for-covid-19/

Read More:

https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/268699398/animal-model-market-driven-by-developments-in-pharmaceutical-and-crispr-genetic-research-opines-factmr

https://insidesources.com/there-is-no-monkey-shortage-for-covid-19-research-because-no-monkeys-are-needed/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/09/10/covid-vaccine-treatment-trials-create-monkey-shortage-science/5714115002/

Fish farming has been getting away with a low profile when it comes to animal rights for too long. The debate about whether it’s OK to eat animals that “can’t feel pain,” is one reason fish don’t get a lot of attention. The right of fish to live free in their natural habitats has thus far been hijacked by the excuse that has been used about other sentient beings, that fish are automatons humans should be allowed to kill and torture. There is also the false belief that fish farming is somehow better for the environment than wild fishing. Both of these arguments for fish farming have been widely refuted.

The scale of industrial fish farming has ramped up in recent decades to the point where fish farms resemble the industrial killing fields of large scale chicken farming and other industrial meat farming. The conditions fish suffer in fish farms are miserable and painful. Fish farms are often overcrowded and fish suffer from diseases. Poor water quality compromises fishes’ immune systems, chemicals used to treat fish infestations sicken fish, and over-crowded fish are vulnerable to aggression from other fish. Just as with industrially farmed chickens, fish are bred to grow faster and bigger leading to health problems like abnormal heart shape and cataracts.

Also, increasingly, fish are fed on the bodies of other wild caught fish. A recent report found that one fifth of all wild caught fish are fed to farmed fish. Human fish production is a “fish eat fish” world, and there is no mercy for the fish whether they are caught in the wild or on farms. Fish in the wild suffer hours of suffocation on the decks of fishing trawlers before they die, while fish in farms suffer lives of pain and discomfort and the inability to perform the natural behaviors they would in the wild.

Also, it’s been definitively proved that fish do have feelings and feel pain. Fish have nociceptors which detect and respond to threatening and damaging stimuli. They have also been shown to have brain activity in response to events that are potentially painful – what we would call fear. When fish are in pain they are distracted, and less able to function. They even rub themselves against surfaces to alleviate the pain, as humans would do.

The more different the animal, the less easy it is for humans to relate to them. This has been used to cover up the reality that animals with different systems are still autonomous beings who experience their world as dynamically as we do and can suffer or thrive. Cruelty to fish should no longer be allowed to hide behind the fact that they are different from us. Fish are less well understood beings that humans have decided to enslave and exploit. Fish farms are showing us the scale of our exploitation and cruelty, and why fish need to be liberated from human exploitation and enslavement.

Please visit FishFeel.org to learn more about advocating for fish: https://fishfeel.org/

Read More about fish farming: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based

Higher intelligence in animals, the ability to know your own thoughts and have self-consciousness is traditionally thought to be rare and mostly confined to humans. Humans have made this assumption for one simple reason which turns out to be, actually, not that smart. The reason many animals, such as birds, have been assumed not to have the higher intelligence of humans is that the six layered structure of the neocortex or forebrain is believed to be what gives humans, above all animals, intelligence and a sense of self. However, new research shows that pigeons and barn owls have neurons connected at right angles creating columns of connected neurons. The conclusion is that it doesn’t matter what structure is formed, super connectivity in a highly active part of the brain is likely the thing that gives rise to higher intelligence, not a particular “type” of brain.

Crows have a particularly large fore-brain and have long been known to be intelligent. New research demonstrates that crows are thinking of their own experience when they are asked to indicate whether they saw a flashing light in an experiment. Crows have been known to recognize faces, hold grudges, solve puzzles and use tools.

Birds resemble humans much less than great apes and other mammals. Perhaps this is why we are so surprised that they could possibly have consciousness, a sense of themselves and their fellow beings (crows are also known to hold funerals). But, as research now shows, this says a lot more about human bias than about the intelligence of birds.

Read More:

https://www.livescience.com/23090-crows-grudges-brains.html

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/24/crows-possess-higher-intelligence-long-thought-primarily-human/?fbclid=IwAR0ScB6EyC9G7AS3YQsmdFh0YGDsPD2549Etj32aHCBrHGmc1FAXngNv-yE
https://www.livescience.com/53283-why-crows-hold-funerals.html

“Please forgive me. If I don’t kill you, I can’t feed my family” was the desperate apology a slaughterhouse worker used to whisper to the dogs in their cages in the Cambodian slaughterhouse where he used to work. The worker burst into tears as he described killing up to 6 dogs a day in a Cambodian slaughterhouse. Unlike workers in slick Western meat processing plants who are removed from the killing, Cambodian workers who participate in horrific violence on a daily basis fully experience the reality of what they are doing.

The dogs themselves are rounded up and put into cages and then suffer a drawn-out, tortuous end to their lives. They are transported to the slaughterhouses in crowded cages huddled with other dogs, and kept in rusty cages before being killed. The dogs are killed in brutal, horrific ways with no agreed upon system of killing. Some are hung from trees, others are drowned in fetid water. Some are strangled. Some are stabbed and some are beat over the head. Workers learn to prefer beating dogs over the head because it’s quicker, or drowning them in closed cages so they don’t have to hear their cries.

Yet amid all the horror, somehow there is a ray of light for Cambodian dogs. The organization Four Paws, which has worked tirelessly on behalf of dogs in Cambodia, has succeeded in shutting down the worker’s former employer, one the country’s biggest slaughterhouses. If the closure of this business disrupts the supply chain, it will send a strong message about the acceptability of the dog meat trade in Cambodia. The province of Siem Reap has also decided to ban the trade. But in Cambodia over 3 million dogs a year are slaughtered for the dog meat trade. There is still so much more work to be done to turn the tide against this horrific slaughter.

Four Paws did not just shut down the slaughterhouse, it supported workers to find alternative income and helped some of them to open a grocery store. The organization follows through on an understanding of the relationship between human misery and animal misery. One begets the other as poor workers are forced to kill for a living and dogs die to make profits for rich humans who are conveniently removed from the killing. The kind of clothes that those in business wear are different from the blood-stained rags of hired animal killers, yet it is the clean suits that are the real hallmarks of mass killers.

In a poignant moment, the worker who had murdered the dogs was able to release fifteen of them from their cages when the factory shut down. This time the worker was able to whisper to the animals: “you are free now” In this moment, the workers’ freedom and the animals’ freedom were not different, they were intricately intertwined and impossible without each other.

Please visit Four Paws website and make a donation to support the important work they are doing: four-paws.us/campaigns-topics/campaigns?utm_source=google&utm_medium=grant&utm_campaign=Evergreen&utm_content=UNR1907ADGRNTevergreenBrand&gclid=EAIaIQobChMInt2_1rKq6wIVFIzICh25fAV7EAAYASAAEgLww_D_BwE

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3037201/inside-cambodias-brutal-dog-meat-trade-which-claims