Nathan Daniels, 21, and Bradley Green, 24, damaged enclosures and allegedly threw bottle at giraffe’s head
Two men have admitted breaking into a zoo and damaging the penguin and giraffe enclosures during an incident in which a bottle was allegedly thrown at a giraffe’s head.
Nathan Daniels, 21, admitted damaging the penguin enclosure at Marwell zoo, near Southampton, while Bradley Green, 24, admitted damaging an enclosure containing giraffes.
Continue reading...Farmers’ lobby welcomes move by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition, claiming animals are getting ‘ever closer’ to homes
Italy’s ruling right-wing coalition is set to loosen hunting rules to deal with what the country’s farming lobby has called an “invasion” of wild boars.
The boars are common in the countryside, but have recently also been spotted in central parts of Rome, attracted by the Eternal City’s chronically overflowing rubbish skips.
Continue reading...Exclusive: charities say animal abusers are not being held to account as figures show small number of inspections
Just one in 300 complaints about animal welfare at UK farms led to a prosecution over the last four years, with half of the accused holdings not even inspected, analysis has shown.
A report by Animal Equality and the Animal Law Foundation also said that fewer than three in 100 of the UK’s estimated 291,000 farms had an annual inspection by a public body between 2018 and 2021.
Continue reading...Magistrate rules TT-Line made no inquiries to ensure the horses were individually stalled and there was adequate ventilation
Spirit of Tasmania ferry operator TT-Line has been found guilty of breaching animal welfare laws over the deaths of 16 polo ponies on a summer Bass Strait voyage.
The horses had competed in a tournament in Tasmania and were travelling from Devonport to Melbourne in a converted refrigeration trailer on the night of 28 January 2018.
Continue reading...Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s new standards put pressure on the UK to extend its animal welfare laws to fisheries
One of the world’s leading organisations for farmed seafood is to introduce new welfare rules after accepting fish can feel “pain, stress and anxiety”.
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), which oversees a global certification scheme for farmed fish, is consulting on new draft welfare standards, including more humane slaughter practices. The ASC provides certification labelling for British supermarket fish, from sea bass to smoked salmon.
Continue reading...New Yorker accused of hiding large Burmese pythons in trousers while crossing from Canada in July could face 20-year sentence
A New York City man faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly attempting to smuggle three large snakes across the US-Canada border – in his pants.
Queens resident Calvin Bautista, 36, is accused of hiding three Burmese pythons while on a bus crossing into the US at the Champlain port of entry in New York state on 15 July 2018, the Associated Press reported.
Continue reading...A ruling against the state’s Prop 12 animal welfare law could affect a range of regulations across the country
Next week, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments in a case that could put climate, public health and animal welfare regulations across the country on the chopping block – from California’s ban on gas-powered cars by 2035 to state bans on food packaging that contains BPA or lead.
The case will consider the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 12, a law that bans the sale of meat and eggs from animals raised using certain kinds of extreme confinement. The pork industry has been fighting Prop 12 since it passed by ballot measure in 2018 – with more than 62% of the vote and the backing of animal advocacy groups like the Humane Society of the United States – because it bans gestation crates: metal enclosures where pregnant pigs are kept for most of their lives that are so small that they can’t turn around or stretch their limbs.
Continue reading...While France and Germany have introduced bans, Britain continues to slaughter 29 million unwanted chicks every year
UK retailers are blocking moves to end the killing of millions of day-old male chicks each year, farmers and breeding companies have said.
The industrial-scale culling of unwanted chicks is common practice around the world, with 330 million males slaughtered by crushing or gassing each year in Europe, according to campaigners, 29 million of those in the UK.
Continue reading...Welfare group says breeding numbers are still too high and surpass the industry’s capacity to rehabilitate the dogs
The rehoming of Australian racing industry dogs has flatlined in the last three years, according to research by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds.
Just over 2,000 dogs were rehomed annually by industry adoption bodies, a figure that has not increased since 2017-18, a CPG report found.
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Continue reading...Animal shelters nearing capacity are encouraging people to adopt by slashing fees and hosting events to make room for other animals in need
The end of Covid lockdowns and the spiralling cost of living have left animal shelters overflowing, with organisations now forced to host adoption drives and slash their fees in an effort to get more animals out of shelters and into their forever homes.
This was in stark contrast to the high adoption rates and shelter shortages across Australia during the early days of the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdowns.
Continue reading...World Health Organization issues statement after reports of animals being poisoned in Brazil
The World Health Organization has stressed that monkeypox outbreaks are not linked to monkeys, following a number of reported attacks on the primates in Brazil.
“What people need to know is that the transmission we are seeing is happening between humans,” a WHO spokesperson, Margaret Harris, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Animal welfare groups find sows in Europe forced to spend weeks in cages so small they can only stand and lie down
Animal welfare campaigners are calling on UK supermarkets to stop selling premium ham, including Parma, produced in “sow stalls” on EU farms.
An undercover investigation conducted by Compassion in World Farming (CWF), an animal welfare campaign group, found that sows are forced to spend many weeks in cages so small they can only stand up and lie down.
Continue reading...Chaos overtakes city of Espinal after wood and bamboo stands collapse during cultural festival
At least four people were killed and hundreds injured in Colombia on Sunday after spectator stands at a bullfight collapsed, authorities said.
The bull reportedly escaped from the plaza hosting the spectacle and was causing panic in the streets of Espinal, Tolima, a city of nearly 60,000 people about 145km (90 miles) south-west of Bogotá, the capital.
Continue reading...Controversial asphyxiation method used in 73% of culls this year despite vets urging its use to be limited
The US poultry industry has increasingly switched to “the most inhumane method available” to cull tens of millions of birds during the latest outbreak of avian influenza, according to government data.
Outbreaks of the disease, also known as bird flu, have wreaked havoc across Europe and the US this year, with 38 million birds killed in the US so far.
But how these birds are killed has generated controversy, with veterinarians and animal welfare campaigners urging an end to the use of the ventilation shutdown method, which kills animals by sealing off the airflow to the poultry sheds and increasing temperatures to lethal levels.
Workers have described the method as like “roasting animals alive”. European officials have said it should not be used in the European Union.
Sellers could pass off elephant products as derivatives from unprotected mammals, Born Free Foundation says
Ivory peddlers may continue to sell elephant tusks after a new ban by disguising their products as walrus or narwhal derivatives, campaigners have warned.
From Monday, trade in elephant teeth and tusks is illegal in the UK, punishable by fines of up to £250,000 or up to five years in prison under the Ivory Act. Pre-1975 musical instruments and antique items of “outstanding importance” are exempted from the act, as well as ivory from non-elephant species.
Continue reading...Opposition says it will recommit to phasing out live sheep exports from Western Australia but has not indicated when it will do so
The Greens and animal welfare groups have called on Labor to commit to a timeline for phasing out live sheep exports, after the opposition said it still intended to ban the trade.
Labor told the Alliance for Animals that it will recommit to its policy of phasing out the live sheep export trade, which it announced in 2018 in response to whistleblower videos of a deadly voyage in which 2,400 sheep died.
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Continue reading...Experts launch Australian Alliance for Animals to push for independent national animal welfare commission
Two RSPCA animal welfare experts have left the organisation to campaign for a national independent animal welfare commission, saying the current regulatory structure is “broken”.
Dr Bidda Jones stepped down as chief scientific officer at RSPCA Australia in late 2021, after 25 years. Dr Jed Goodfellow stepped down as a senior policy officer in October.
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Continue reading...Woman hit by stray bullet during wild boar hunt sparks row over stricter regulations before presidential election
The accidental killing of a hiker by a teenager who was hunting wild boar has rekindled a bitter debate over stricter regulations of France’s hunting tradition before the presidential election in April.
The 25-year-old woman was walking with a friend along a marked trail near Aurillac in the heavily forested Cantal region when she was hit by a stray bullet on Saturday. She died instantly.
Continue reading...Delayed legislation includes ban on trophy hunting imports and stricter sentences for puppy thieves
Some of the government’s most prized new animal welfare policies are being put on pause in what supporters see as a sneaky attempt to ditch the “woke” measures altogether.
Senior sources in the Conservative party have confirmed to the Guardian that a series of policies including a ban on trophy hunting imports, stricter sentences for puppy thieves and a ban on live exports of livestock have been put on pause after a campaign led by Mark Spencer, the chief whip.
Continue reading...Analysis: As doctors monitor world’s first human recipient of pig heart, safety and ethical concerns remain
The world’s first transplant of a genetically altered pig heart into an ailing human is a landmark for medical science, but the operation, and the approach more broadly, raise substantial safety and ethical concerns.
Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center spent eight hours on Friday evening transplanting the heart from the pig into 57-year-old David Bennett, who had been in hospital for more than a month with terminal heart failure.
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