Critter News

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

So here is a nice story and video about a HSUS rescue of a California feral colony. It makes me want to get back into animal rescue, which is where my animal rights activism started. Tags: HSUS california animal rescue feral cats. I've been way overworked and stressed lately.

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Critter News

AUGUST 15, 2010

Last week there was a slew of articles about the agreement in Ohio between the farm industry and animal welfare activists to expand cage sizes for calves (veal), hens and pigs. This concession was to avoid a November ballot vote a la California's Proposition 2.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 19, 2011

I hope, when I reach their age, I'm as active and effective as Bob Barker and Betty White are in the animal rights movement. Legendary game show host Bob Barker says it will cost $200,000 to move three elephants from the Toronto Zoo to a California sanctuary, and he doesn't mind paying for it himself. Excerpted from CBC News.

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Critter News

JANUARY 11, 2012

I don't support the destruction of property or any physical threats against people who harm animals whether through medical testing or through conventional agriculture. And, this happened in Fresno County which is in the San Joaquin Valley of California. I grew up there. Believe me, they are NOT helping their cause at all.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 24, 2012

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Tom Regan , The Case for Animal Rights , updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

An animal rights group has called for a federal investigation into the death of an elephant at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The Northern California-based In Defense of Animals called for the Department of Agriculture, which does inspections of zoos, to investigate Umoya's death.

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Critter News

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I used to support the bloodless bullfights held in California. But within the last year, an animal cruelty investigation almost shut one down because spikes were being used to antagonize the bull. This was a clear violation of animal law. Next time, though, I might want to hook up with an animal rights group to protest.

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Animal Ethics

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

All that the rights view prohibits is science that violates individual rights. There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard. ( If that means that there are some things we cannot learn, then so be it.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

War has erupted between Toronto Zoo elephant keepers and the animal rights group helping to co-ordinate a move of three aging elephants to a California sanctuary. Excepted from the Toronto News. That’s insubordination — city staff can’t go above their managers’ head and do those kinds of things,” Woodyer said.

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Critter News

JANUARY 25, 2012

To offset yesterday's crappy news about California, here's good news from the EU! Emeritus Chair in Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph in Ontario and the President of the Animal Welfare Foundation of Canada. Full article on Food Safety News. As of Jan. Duncan, Ph.D.,

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Critter News

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Animal rights group Compassion Over Killing was the first to uncover the alleged systematic slaughter of healthy dairy cows in California. A Seattle law firm is taking on dairies, claiming that a price-fixing scheme has consumers paying too much for milk.

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

She's supposedly a vegetarian and is friends with Walk the Line co-star Joaquin Phoenix who is a huge animal rights activist and vegan. She knew it was an animal skin.and she spent $4,000 on it? I don't know what she's going to do with it, but at least she'll stop carrying it. I still don't understand what she was doing.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 24, 2012

The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e., To secure the philosophical foundation for animal rights requires abandoning utilitarianism. (

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 27, 2012

Unlike [John] Rawls, whose considered views on our duties regarding animals are unclear at best, [Immanuel] Kant provides us with an explicit statement of an indirect duty view. To treat moral agents in this way is to treat them as if they had no value in their own right or, alternatively, as if they were things.

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Animal Person

NOVEMBER 21, 2010

Here's the good news: This is a very readable explanation of how animals in the Hundred Heartbeat Club (there are 100 or fewer individuals in the wild today) got to be in the club. This is irksome, as the premise is that we need to save the animals (and which ones is an interesting discussion) because we will suffer if they are gone.

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Animal Ethics

JUNE 12, 2012

That individuals can be harmed without knowing it has important implications for the proper assessment of the treatment of animals. Modern farms (so-called factory farms), for example, raise animals in unnatural conditions. Those animals who are raised intensively, then, let us assume, do not know what they're missing.

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 15, 2012

The rights view is not opposed to efforts to save endangered species. If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 20, 2008

The temple says the money goes toward caring for the tigers (each animal eats 13 pounds of meat a day) and construction of "Tiger Island," where it is hoped the tigers will soon move to live in larger enclosures.A recent report by wildlife organization, Care for the Wild (CWI).

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Critter News

FEBRUARY 26, 2009

This short article reports that Vancouver, BC is considering a measure similar to Prop 2 in California, but there are concerns amongst advocates of the poor. Hetty Alcuitas, a volunteer with Grassroots Women, said she sympathizes with the environmental and animal-rights arguments against caged chickens.

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Animal Ethics

MAY 28, 2012

With the argument of the present chapter serving as the backdrop, the conclusion we reach is that to deny consciousness or a mental life to mammalian animals is an expression of human chauvinism. (

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Animal Ethics

JULY 12, 2010

A Humane Egg The life of animals raised in confinement on industrial farms is slowly improving, thanks to pressure from consumers, animal rights advocates, farmers and legislators. In California last week, Gov. Animals with more space are healthier, and they are no less productive.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 8, 2012

Indeed, precisely because one expects indifference from animals but pity or mercy from human beings, people who are cruel by being insensitive to the suffering they cause often are called "animals" or "brutes," and their character or behavior, "brutal" or "inhuman." Cruelty is manifested in different ways.

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Animal Ethics

OCTOBER 2, 2007

As you know, the Animal Legal Defense Fund is committed to protecting the lives of animals everywhere. But you may not know that we have filed a lawsuit against Mendes Calf Ranch for its violation of California animal cruelty laws. Greetings, We need your help. Video footage here.)

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Animal Ethics

AUGUST 2, 2008

Kristof, who takes note of the trend represented by the animal welfare proposition on the ballot in California this fall. It’s time that our tax dollars no longer finance the inhumane conditions—for workers and animals and the climate—of factory farms. We know that animals suffer as well. To the Editor: Nicholas D.

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Animal Ethics

JULY 14, 2012

Whether individuals have legal rights depends on the laws and other legal background (e.g., the United States) citizens meeting certain requirements have the legal right to vote or run for elected office; in other countries (e.g., Libya) citizens do not have these rights. First, moral rights, if there are any, are universal.

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Critter News

APRIL 16, 2009

Here in Seattle, NARN (Northwest Animal Rights Network) has been staging protests at a local restaurant that serves foie gras. I guess small protests like NARN's seem futile when compared to the overwhelming issue of animal welfare, but you have to think that a number of small protests over time can have a large cumulative impact.

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Animal Person

AUGUST 10, 2010

Families, so the commercials go, don't engage in untoward aspects of animal husbandry that might hurt the cows. The cows are walking around green fields, similar to those in the criminally misleading California cows commercials. Families are just as capable of horrendous policies toward animals as anyone else.

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