“Nice egg business you’ve got here. It would be terrible for something bad to happen to it.”

Where the foxes caper unmolested… (h/t John N)

Humane Watch;

HSUS, CEO Wayne Pacelle, and ex-employee Scotlund Haisley are defendants in a $5 million federal lawsuit stemming from a September 2009 “raid” on a South Dakota hunting dog breeder. A judge later ruled the raid illegal because the search warrant was wrongfully obtained by an animal control officer who had “intentionally misled the issuing court.”

A photo of HSUS clad Scotlund Haisley kicking in a door.

All of the animal cruelty charges against Christensen were dropped. But he didn’t get all of his dogs back. Some died after they were seized; others apparently were adopted out.

Animal rights extremism is not limited to multi-million dollar activist groups like HSUS – even locally run, rural community shelters can be magnets for zealots, and they often operate hand in hand with these powerful groups. I’ve personally talked to a shelter worker from Estevan, Saskatchewan who volunteered that animal welfare would best be served through the eradication of the family pet, so check out the policies and animal welfare positions at your local humane society before giving them so much as a dime.

ASPCA Pays $9.3 Million in Landmark Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Settlement

That decision found that the plaintiffs’ litigation was based on the untruthful testimony of a paid plaintiff and witness who the Court found received at least $190,000 in payments as his sole source of income over an eight year period by animal special interest groups, including ASPCA, their lawyers and an entity founded and controlled by those lawyers, the Wildlife Advocacy Project.
[…]
Based upon what was revealed in ASPCA, et al., v. Feld Entertainment, Feld Entertainment brought suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against ASPCA, HSUS and other animal rights activists and their lawyers alleging violations of the RICO statute and Virginia Conspiracy Act, malicious prosecution, and abuse of process. The court denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss that case on July 9, 2012.

PETA’s Culture of Death;

Out of 760 dogs impounded, they killed 713, arranged for 19 to be adopted, and farmed out 36 to other shelters (not necessarily “no kill” ones). As for cats, they impounded 1,211, euthanized 1,198, transferred eight, and found homes for a grand total of five. PETA also took in 58 other companion animals — including rabbits. It killed 54 of them.

h/t KevinB

NAIA;

Torrance County Sheriff Heath White said that, in the recent case, [Debra] Swenerton was caught in the act — tossing the dogs one by one from the driver’s side window of her vehicle — by deputies who had been alerted by the puppies’ owner.

To make matters worse, authorities suspect that this isn’t an isolated incident – that Swenerton has been dognapping for years, and may be tied to nearly 60 reports of missing dogs:

Edgewood animal control officer Mike Ring said the arrest of 59-year-old Debbie Swenerton ‘really cracked the case’ of some 60 dogs that have gone missing over the past few years.
Ring believes that Swenerton stole the dogs and then gave them to shelters, saying that they were strays she had rescued. He added that there is a possibility that Swenerton belongs to a larger group of animal activists that are concerned over the treatment of pets.

Furthermore, according to Torrance County Undersherriff Martin Rivera, Swenerton repeatedly called in cases of dog abuse on owners who were taking perfectly fine care of their pets…

Every time producers come up with a design for chicken cages the Humane Society of the United States, the animal rights group that wrote and sponsored Proposition 2, says it’s inadequate.
“HSUS is all over the board,” Arnie Riebli, president of the Association of California Egg Farmers, told our reporter. “It depends on what day we talk to them, what the story is for the day.”
“Statutes don’t always come in sizes,” HSUS attorney Jonathan Lovvorn then told our reporter. “We don’t want to tell farmers what kind of cages to use.”

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Don’t bring a drone to a anti-aircraft missile fight;

Photos provided by the animal rights group show the multicopter smoking on the ground, with its lithium polymer battery supply smoldering. Another photo shows the drone’s video camera smashed. The drone, dubbed “Angel,” was a Cinestar 8 octocopter estimated at $4,000.
This wasn’t the first time SHARK has been shot out of the sky. This is the fourth drone that the group has lost while investigating pigeon shootings. One drone landed on club property, and is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

h/t Punch My Ticket

Via

Thankfully, not all of the cash milked from innocent donors goes towards butchering animals. Some of that 32.3 million goes towards pastries that celebrate other people butchering animals. It’s important for you to know this, if you’re planning on sending [PETA] a cheque.

(sorry, link fixed!)

Animal Rights: The Final Solution

Domestic animals are neither a real or full part of our world or of the nonhuman world. They exist forever in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything and at risk of harm from an environment that they do not really understand. We have bred them to be compliant and servile, or to have characteristics that are actually harmful to them but are pleasing to us. We may make them happy in one sense, but the relationship can never be “natural” or “normal.” They do not belong stuck in our world irrespective of how well we treat them.
[…]
[If] there were two dogs left in the universe and it were up to us as to whether they were allowed to breed so that we could continue to live with dogs, and even if we could guarantee that all dogs would have homes as loving as the one that we provide, we would not hesitate for a second to bring the whole institution of “pet” ownership to an end.
We regard the dogs who live with us as refugees of sorts, and although we enjoy caring for them, it is clear that humans have no business continuing to bring these creatures into a world in which they simply do not fit.

In a little-reported ruling by a judge in the District of Columbia earlier this month, the HSUS is going to court to face charges under RICO statues on racketeering, obstruction of justice, malicious prosecution and other charges for a lawsuit it brought and lost against Ringling Brothers Circus’ parent company Feld Entertainment, Inc.
After winning the case alleging mistreatment of elephants in its circuses brought by Friends of Animals (later merged into HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), lawyers at Feld filed a countersuit with a litany of charges ranging from bribery to money laundering to racketeering. The attorneys for the animal rights groups asked the judge to dismiss all charges, but most remained because the evidence was overwhelming. So in early August, HSUS will be facing the music in a case that should attract the attention of hunters, ranchers, farmers and anyone impacted by HSUS’ radical animal rights agenda.

So why all the hostility from the Humane Society of the United States? Why did I hear from North and South Carolinians who had beaten back attempt after attempt from HSUS to have them taxed, registered, regulated, raided, and otherwise priced out of their hobby? What is it about these men, women, and children, so passionate about running up and down a concrete floor with their pets, that demands intervention from activists who think they know better?

ABC News;

The researchers gave study subjects pork containing androstenone and separated them into two groups — those who found the smell offensive and those who didn’t. Genetic analysis of the subjects revealed that those who didn’t like the smell had two copies of a specific form of a gene known as OR7D4. The others had only one copy of the gene.
But, it turns out, most people don’t even notice the smell of androstenone.

“In North America and Europe, pigs are castrated, so the concentration of androstenone is quite low,” said Hiroaki Matsunami, a co-author and associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University Medical Center. “The only time you find a high concentration of androsteone is when you eat wild boar meat.”

That could soon change, however. The researchers noted that the European Union is considering a ban on castration because of concerns over animal welfare, and this debate has rekindled interest in how humans perceive the smell of pork and why two people may smell it differently.

The European financial collapse cannot come quickly enough.

Returned by his owner for biting…

…local activists then staged a massive media and legal campaign for Trevor’s release, which they ultimately secured in November, 2010. As local commentators noted at the time, however, during the fight to free Trevor at least a dozen other dogs were euthanized by the city due to space concerns.

The Guardian;

Britain’s supermarket shelves could be empty of key products within a month as an acute shortage of eggs threatens to have serious consequences for the country’s food chain. New EU rules banning the housing of hens in conventional cages are being blamed for what some in the industry are already labelling a “crisis”, as competition among food manufacturers to source eggs sends prices rocketing. The price of eggs on the EU wholesale market has nearly quadrupled over the past week to more than four euros a kilo.
“It’s now no longer a question of price, it’s a question of supply,” said one industry source who asked to be anonymous. “I estimate that within three to four weeks some companies will be at breaking point.”

France too.

Math is hard.

“For every unwanted animal in the U.S. to have a home, each man, woman and child would have to adopt 15 dogs and 45 cats each year.” (American Humane Association) There are not enough loving homes to adopt and care for all the abandoned pets in the United States.