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
Many of my fondest childhood memories are of time spent with my grandfather, a mink farmer in a tiny Idaho town, just a few miles north of the Utah border. A soft-spoken, kind and generous man, my grandfather doted on his children, including my mother, and on me and his other grandkids. Even with his … 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
San Francisco, CA — In a unanimous vote, the City and County of San Francisco has introduced standards and goals for food purchasing by the Department of Public Health and Sheriff’s Department in hospitals and jails that promote more sustainable, healthful, and animal-friendly standards. Specifically, the ordinance means that hospitals will be altering their purchasing practices … Read more
At a time when the nation’s network of factory farming and mechanized slaughter plants is breaking down — disassembling overweight and crippled animals at an indescribably fast pace, killing and throwing away millions more on the farm because of a mass production system on auto-pilot, and the slaughterhouse workers heading for the respirators — can … 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
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
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