Guest Tamara Drake of the Center for Responsible Science Unpacks the Problem The world is racing to formulate a vaccine for COVID-19, but what hurdles stand in the way? In the best of circumstances, vaccine development is not an easy process. The SARS coronavirus (SARS-COV-1), which originated in a live-wildlife market in China in 2002, … Read more
BIRMINGHAM, AL — Animal Wellness Action, a national organization promoting legal standards against cruelty, applauded an announcement made by the Jefferson County Racing Association (Birmingham Race Course) that live greyhound racing will end at the last track left in Alabama — one of the last states to stage this archaic form of animal competition. “We … Read more
38 More Cosponsors will Trigger New House Rule to Move Legislationb WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Reps. Collin Peterson (D-MN-07), Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, and Scott Perry (R-PA-10) — who represents the district where Penn National Race Course is located in Grantsville, Pennsylvania — are the latest to join in cosponsoring the Horseracing Integrity Act, … Read more
While cruelty is universal, so is the fight against it (This essay is the latest in our continuing series about the relationship between animal-use industries, pathogens and their effect on animal and human health.) Since early March, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic, there’s been alarm and uproar about the mistreatment of … Read more
Washington, D.C. — Nearly eighty Members of the U.S. House, led by Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Katie Porter, D-Calif., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. and Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., urging leadership to include $4 million funding in the next COVID-19 package to help domestic violence victims … Read more
Washington, D.C. — Animal Wellness Action today applauded U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, for introducing a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on all nations to permanently close “live wildlife markets.” In addition, Reps. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., Ted Yoho, R-Fla., Scott Perry, R-Pa., Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., Michael Guest, R-Miss., and Steve Watkins, R-Kans. Also joined … Read more
Impossible to Achieve ‘Social Distancing’ at Animal Factories and Slaughterhouses In its own dispassionate way, the Johns Hopkins’ coronavirus dashboard plots the global hopscotching of COVID-19. More than 550,000 afflicted and 23,000 dead in the United States, with global infections eclipsing 2 million. Politicians and epidemiologists direct our attention to graphs to remind us of … Read more
COVID-19 has infected 1.5 million people, with that number to swell before the virus’s person-to-person global hopscotching pauses. In response, scientists in laboratories are racing to develop a vaccine and therapies to arrest its progress and to palliate its worst effects. But the race between the scientists and the virus is rigged. The virus had … Read more
Washington, D.C. — The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratories has confirmed SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans) in a captive tiger at a zoo in New York. This is the first instance of a confirmed infection of COVID-19 in a tiger. Samples from this tiger were taken and … Read more
In what constitutes perhaps the riskiest imaginable practice when it comes to animal-to-human disease transmission, some cockfighters are known to put the head of a rooster in their mouth to suck airway secretions from the injured and exhausted animal. For the cockfighter, sucking up the blood and other secretions from the lungs and other air … Read more