Livestock-Industry

By Russ McSpadden / Earth First! Journal The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has ordered the killing of an alpha female Mexican gray wolf for crimes against the cattle industry. She is accused of being the ringleader of a six member pack that has killed four cows in southwestern New Mexico over the last several months. Extirpated from the wild by the 1950s, reintroduced through captive breeding programs in 1998, Mexican gray wolves are far from recovered. The outlaw matriarch of the Fox Mountain Pack—last seen roaming the mountainous woodlands of the northwest portion of the Gila National Forest—is one of only 58 of her kind left in the U.S. Southwest. And though Mexican gray wolves are endangered and federally protected she is now on the federal government’s hit list. There’s no telling how long she and her pups can hold out under the cover of pinion and ponderosa pine or the conifers of the colder peaks of the range with a warrant out for her life. ...

By The Wilderness Society Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed a package of anti-wilderness bills (H.R. 2578), including H.R. 1505, the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act.” H.R. 1505 would hand over “operational control” of federal public lands within 100 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders to the U.S. border patrol, and could open national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness and other public lands to development, such as construction and road building. Rep. Raul Grijalva’s (D, AZ-7) amendment to strike H.R. 1505 from the package was unfortunately defeated. This package of bills now awaits movement in the Senate. ...

By Tom Knudson / The Sacramento Bee The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes. Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn’t intended to kill. There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle. ...

By Oregon State University A survey on the loss in the Northern Hemisphere of large predators, particularly wolves, concludes that current populations of moose, deer, and other large herbivores far exceed their historic levels and are contributing to disrupted ecosystems. The research, published today by scientists from Oregon State University, examined 42 studies done over the past 50 years. It found that the loss of major predators in forest ecosystems has allowed game animal populations to greatly increase, crippling the growth of young trees and reducing biodiversity. This also contributes to deforestation and results in less carbon sequestration, a potential concern with climate change. ...

By Jeremy Hance, Mongabay Less than a year after being pulled off the Endangered Species Act (ESA), gray wolves ( Canis lupus) in the western U.S. are facing an onslaught of hunting. The hunting season for wolves has just closed in Montana with 160 individuals killed, around 75 percent of 220-wolf kill quota for the state. In neighboring Idaho, where 318 wolves have been killed so far by hunters and trappers, the season extends until June. In other states—Oregon, Washington, California, and Utah—wolf hunting is not currently allowed, and the species is still under federal protection in Wyoming. ...

By Tom Philpott / Mother Jones The meat industry defends its reliance on routine antibiotic use by flatly denying the practice poses any public-health problem. The view is summed up by this 2010 National Pork Producers Council newsletter: “[T]here are no definitive studies linking the use of antibiotics in animal feed to changes in resistance in humans.” The claim, I guess, is that the drug-resistant bacteria that evolve on antibiotic-laden feedlots stay on those feedlots and don’t migrate out. ...

By David Ferguson / The Raw Story Speculation has long abounded that overuse of antibiotics by factory farmers has been a major contributing factor in the development of so-called “superbugs” like MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Now, according to a report from Mother Jones, there is scientific proof. According to a paper in the American Society of Microbiology’s newsletter mBio, researchers have sequenced the genomes of 88 closely-related strains of Staphylococcus aureus. They have concluded that one “particularly nasty” strain, CC398, began as a fairly harmless human bacterium known as MSSA, but evolved after colonizing the systems of pigs, chickens and other livestock. ...

By AFP When dead sea mammals started washing ashore on Canada’s west coast in greater numbers, marine biologist Andrew Trites was distressed to find that domestic animal diseases were killing them. Around the world, seals, otters and other species are increasingly infected by parasites and other diseases long common in goats, cows, cats and dogs, marine mammal experts told a major science conference. The diseases also increasingly threaten people who use the oceans for recreation, work or a source of seafood, scientists told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held this year in this western Canadian city. ...

By Ian Sample, The Guardian Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in the Netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food. The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat, and a milestone on the path to the world’s first burger made from stem cells. Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger – produced at a cost of more than £200,000 – this October. ...

By Will Potter / Green is the New Red Utah is the latest state to consider new laws targeting undercover investigators who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms. A new bill would make photographing animal abuse on par with assaulting a police officer. Rep. John Mathis calls undercover investigators “animal rights terrorists,” and says video recordings that have brought national attention to systemic animal welfare abuses are “propaganda” and fundraising efforts. ...