COVID-19 and rabies are both zoonotic diseases, with the viruses originating in non-human animals and then infecting people after a transmission event. In the last 17 months, COVID-19 has infected nearly 35 million Americans, with more than 600,000 dead. In the same period, there have been zero cases of rabies in humans in the United … Read more
Unproven, Untested Vaccination Program on Mink Farms Will Not Be Feasible or Effective Against an Evolving Virus (Washington, D.C.) — Today, the Center for a Humane Economy, Animal Wellness Action, and other partnering organizations unveiled a 96-page comprehensive scientific report detailing risks posed by mink farms to public health, native wildlife populations, and U.S. ecosystems … Read more
Center for a Humane Economy Releases Scientific Report Revealing How Intensive Mink Farms May Incubate New Virus and Also Threaten Animal Welfare and Wildlife Health (Washington, D.C.) – High-ranking U.S. House lawmakers, led by Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation to ban mink farming, working with Animal Wellness … Read more
COVID-19 is the most recent in a long line of epidemics caused by a disease that has jumped the species barrier from wildlife to humans Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley, D-Illinois, and Fred Upton, R-Michigan, re-introduced the Preventing Future Pandemics Act, which would direct the U.S. Department of State to work with … Read more
More so even than live wildlife markets — which incubated and then launched COVID-19 across the globe — mink farms around the world are turning out to be present-day gathering places for the highly contagious virus. From British Columbia to Denmark to Lithuania, COVID-19 is methodically infiltrating mink farms throughout North America and Eurasia, being … Read more
Washington, D.C. — Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy have called on Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to coordinate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to coordinate a government buy-out program for the state’s mink farms, after COVID-19 outbreaks have infected and killed tens of thousands of … Read more
The race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, with the runners sent down the wrong path by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) archaic animal-testing regulatory requirements, is putting wild animals through a sort of meat grinder in our laboratories. Researchers may kill upwards of 500,000 sharks for a single moon-shot vaccine, while hundreds of other … Read more
The globally unmanageable hopscotching of COVID-19 between living beings is today putting a spotlight on one of the most obscure, ruthless, and frivolous of animal use industries: the production of wild animals on fur farms, particularly mink raised for their pelts. Seemingly more susceptible to getting COVID-19 than dogs or cats or most other mammals, … Read more
With COVID-19 Surging Across the Country, No Time to Waste on Revamping Drug Development Regulations There are 536 counties in the U.S. with COVID-19 case densities that are equal to or exceeding New York City’s peak in April. Our national crisis has not only been severe, but enduring. What started as mainly a respiratory virus, … Read more
He says that’s just one reason to oppose federal anti-poaching bill One thing that’s always baffled me are the mental contortions exhibited by some animal-use industries to justify cruelty. Cockfighters, for example, say the birds love to fight, even though the hapless creatures are trapped in a cordoned-off pit and have deadly knives strapped to … Read more
The era of disregarding animal welfare laws cannot end soon enough Reports from China this week are delivering a dose of heartbreak and how-can-it-happen. Dog meat traders are butchering terrified and terrorized dogs at the infamous Yulin festival, selling their parts to buyers in defiance of a new Chinese regulation that reclassified dogs from “livestock” to … Read more
Sir Winston Churchill may have missed the mark by more than a few decades, but his vision for the future of food was characteristically bold and accurate. “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium,” he … Read more
Nature — by that, I mean the Earth’s crust and atmosphere, its five kingdoms of living organisms, water and fire and rock, the effects of the sun and moon, and all other interrelated parts and processes — is more than a mere backdrop for the human experience. It is, and has always been, central to … Read more
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
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
Deer Farms May Be a Next Threat to Wildlife and Human Health That We Aren’t Doing a Damn Thing About Private game farms keep deer behind big fences, slaughter them for meat or velvet, and invite fee-paying hunters to shoot some of the quarry in a guaranteed-kill arrangement. It’s about as sporting as shooting a … Read more
We are in disaster mode as a nation — sheltering in place, deploying FEMA and the National Guard, filling hospital beds with those showing the worst symptoms, and delivering food and other services to those in need. There are more than 60,000 Americans infected with the coronavirus, and 800 dead. Those numbers are sure to … Read more
“The Trump administration should consider a travel ban on China until China has verifiably shut down its exotic animal markets, at the very least,” wrote author and pundit Ben Shapiro this week. “The current crisis will cost millions of American jobs, millions more of Americans’ savings and thousands of American lives.” He’s right. And it’s … Read more
Press Release The animals were all placed for adoption by the Bureau of Land Management’s adoption programs, which put federally protected equines at risk of slaughter Washington, D.C. — The global health crisis caused by the Coronavirus should not be allowed to trigger a wave of pet companion relinquishment, according to the Animal Wellness Foundation … Read more
I wrote a week ago how the coronavirus may have started in Wuhan and unevenly radiated to now 77 nations throughout the world. The virus almost certainly infected its first human victim by jumping the species barrier in a “wet market” — open-air shops that are mixing bowls of people, animals, blood and other bodily … Read more
Press Release First Case of COVID-19 in a Pet Transmission Suspected from Infected Person to Dog, but the Animal is Asymptomatic Washington, D.C. — Policy makers should act with restraint and with a common-sense, science-based approach in dealing with cases where pets contract COVID-19, according to veterinarians and other experts from the Animal Wellness Foundation. … Read more
A deconstruction of the false accounting of animal exploitation industries Some historians have long repeated that the trigger for World War I — which, by the armistice, claimed 40 million military and civilian casualties and substantially reconfigured the world map — was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That single event set off a … Read more
Updates on the Corona Virus and The Bear Protection Act The human death toll for the coronavirus has eclipsed 1,600, more than double the number of people who died as a consequence of the SARS virus in 2003. The common thread between these public-health emergencies was China’s wet markets, which have proved to be a … Read more
Here we go again. China’s “wet markets” have triggered one more global health epidemic. Wet markets are open-air abattoirs, offering up dozens of species of live animals, including fish in tanks and wildlife in crates, for selection and slaughter by those with an appetite for biodiversity. These pop-up butcheries, with animals jammed in cages and … Read more