Latest Stories

Toward an Intersectional Animal Studies
For more than a decade and with many others, I have been trying to think through the multiple entanglements between human and non-human joys and suffering. Our thinking about human issues necessarily involves thinking about animal issues. Similarly, considering animals expands our understanding of the world around us including some of the most pressing issues at hand, such as climate change, food justice, racial violence, and colonial legacies of dispossession and environmental degradation.

For the Love of Dog Biscuits Breaks Ground With Healthy, Vegan Dog Treat Recipes
Would you believe dog treat sales in the U.S. were $2.6 billion a year in 2013? Unfortunately, today most American dogs are overweight, likely due to too little exercise and copious amounts of high calorie food. It doesn’t have to be that way. My two dogs compel us to take more walks and move around. Of course they get fired up over food and frequent dog treats. But by making a variety of healthy, delectable biscuits you can spare dogs the troubling ingredients found in most commercial treats, and the icing on the biscuit…you can also save money.

Fur Free China
ACTAsia raises awareness about the exploitation of people, animals and the environment in consumer product industries. With China being the largest producer of fur in the world, it is now more than ever of paramount importance to cultivate compassionate consumers who will choose an alternative and cruelty free lifestyle.

POETRY: Requiem
…
Swim deep, little seal
Man is here
Here with his nets and his clubs
Your ballet of grace means nothing to him
Dive to the sunless sea and do not return…

Confronting Vets Who Harm Animals
Instead of contributing to the development of sustainable, healthy farming systems, veterinarians have become servants of the industrial farming machine. Vets no longer see animals as their clients, they see the person who signs their salary check. We need vets to rediscover their original mission – animal welfare. Vets have the power to change the system for good. It’s hard to understand why medical professionals who specialize in treating animals actively contribute to their pain and terror.

Single-Issue Campaigns & Abolition/Vegan Advocacy: What Would a Chicken Say?
For some Abolitionists, all campaigns focusing on particular animals – in this case chickens used for Kaporos – frustrate the ultimate, worldwide goal of Abolition, Animal Rights, and Veganism. My organization, United Poultry Concerns, promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. This makes us a “single issue” or “single class of animals” organization. Does our focus on chickens and turkeys hamper efforts to liberate all animals from all forms of oppression everywhere on the planet?

Proposal for an Accord Between Animal Advocates and the Biomedical Research Community
The biomedical research community has already agreed in principle that scientific use of animals should be subject to rigorous scientific review… If the practices and regulations… were changed or amended so that scientific use of animals were to be conducted in an improved and strict manner regarding the welfare of animals, we believe that animal advocates would agree not to interfere with such research or specifically object to it through targeted campaigns.

POETRY: Man the Destroyer of Worlds
When I walk in the woods,
I am at peace.
I am at home.
And, yet,
Sadness is always there
Because I know
In every thorn patch,
Every hillock,
Every thicket,
Hide living beings,
Shy and fearful
Of me and my fellow man….

The Changing State of Indian Dairy
Must you drink milk? If you must, at least try and find out what cows are being used for your dairy. Scientists have implicated A1 beta-casein, found in the milk of European cattle breeds, in a range of serious health problems.

POETRY: Looking for a Place to Die
He arrived one day
And claimed a corner of the yard.
The whirling dervish tomcat bully
Tried his usual tricks
But he just wearily hissed
And stayed
Curled up tight
On his bed of leaves
For over a day…

Ethical Travel Tips to Change the World
The ethical traveler now needs to take decisions that change the world. To decide where to go for their holidays. And if they decide not to go to a particular state and country, to actually let the travel agency and country know why they are not going.

Should Buddhist Temples Serve Meat?
The Buddha may or may not have taught vegetarianism, but there is no excuse in any Buddhist tradition for temples to serve meat to followers.

Trap-Neuter-Return Projects May Bring Conflicts Over Euthanasia
What does it take to implement a successful TNR program, and when if ever is it more humane to euthanize animals than return them to their habitats?

Ending the sacrifice at Gadhimai, part two
Large numbers of volunteers from Indian animal welfare groups arrived to assist the Border Patrol in spotting people trying to take animals to Nepal.

Ending the sacrifice at Gadhimai, part one
…the temple authorities of Gadhimai Temple made the announcement that the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of animals, held every five years, would be permanently canceled. The world’s largest animal sacrifice had finally come to an end.

THE MARKET TO SELL DOGS and its sad wrecks
An item in our Ernest Bell Library. French postcard – anti-vivisection It is quite unusual…

Romania Animal Rescue and Animal Spay Neuter International
“Everyone says they will help the Romanian dogs. They go home, they forget. You will go home, you’ll forget”. Our reply, “We will not forget”.”

Ecotourism
In any discussion of ecotourism the dangers of “greenwashing” must be explored. Greenwashing is the use of misleading advertisements to suggest that an activity is good for the environment when objectively it is not. Wildlife theme parks, underwater hotels and motorized tours into fragile ecosystems strive to portray themselves as environmentally positive (or neutral) but they are not. True ecotourism builds environmental awareness while emphasizing human rights and local control over resources and development. It is not solely about animals but also about the humans who live there, and have lived there in the past, often for thousands of years.

Animal friendly gardens
So many backyards in our neighborhood are covered with grass and non-native plants which are unfriendly to wildlife. Animals can only utilize certain plants as food and some are unusable or even poisonous. Grass is an environmental disaster. It requires a prodigious amount of water which in drought regions is irreplaceable. Pesticides are generally used it which poison the ecosystem and drain off into our rivers and oceans. People then mow it and put the clippings in plastic bags which are hauled away (using fossil fuels) to the landfill. What a tragedy!

The “Animal Rights Agenda” 25 years later
Animal People takes a retrospective look at one of the founding documents of the animal rights movement