Factory farming practices cannot be considered humane simply because they are widely used, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, setting a legal precedent for further actions to end the worst abuses on factory farms throughout the United States.
In a unanimous decision, the court struck down the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s regulations exempting [...]
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President of the Animal Welfare Institute Cathy Liss and Director of the Animal Welfare Approved program Andrew Gunther are pleased to announce a new initiative that will offer grants of up to $10,000 for the sole purpose of improving animal welfare on farms. Current Animal Welfare Approved farmers and those who have applied to join [...]
A farm irrigation canal would seem a healthier place for toads than a ditch by a supermarket parking lot.
But University of Florida scientists have found the opposite is true. In a study with wide implications for a longstanding debate over whether agricultural chemicals pose a threat to amphibians, UF zoologists have found that toads in [...]
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Milk goes green: Cows that receive recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rbST) make more milk, all the while easing natural resource pressure and substantially reducing environmental impact, according to a Cornell University study.
Producing milk uses large quantities of land, energy and feed, but rbST — the first biotech product used on American farms — has been in [...]
Along the Mississippi River, they’re watching the levees. In northern Missouri, they’re watching the walls of lagoons holding back millions of gallons of animal waste.
Rains this week were filling waste lagoons on industrial farms, and some were leaking and overflowing.
State officials, worried that lagoon walls might collapse, have told farmers that they can lower lagoon [...]
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The tradition of farming the land in northern New Mexico’s Espanola Valley had been passed down from Don Bustos’ Spanish ancestors who tilled the same soil centuries before.
But when Bustos realized the traditional farming techniques could harm his children’s health, he went organic 15 years ago. Now, Bustos says, he has found an even safer [...]
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While consumers are increasing demand for pork produced without antibiotics, more of the pigs raised in such conditions carry bacteria and parasites associated with food-borne illnesses, according to a new study.
A comparison of swine raised in antibiotic-free and conventional pork production settings revealed that pigs raised outdoors without antibiotics had higher rates of three food-borne [...]
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Factory farming takes a big hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America’s economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and [...]
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Tender veal cutlets. Sizzling pork chops. Savory omelets.
For a growing number of Californians, these meals are sparking a moral conundrum: Should they worry about how animals lived before their products hit the plate?
California voters will answer that question in November with a new animal welfare ballot initiative. If passed, the measure would [...]
Weekly contact with farm animals may help in treating people with psychiatric disorders, researchers in Norway say.
Bente Berget and Bjarne Braastad of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in As, Norway, conducted a randomized controlled study of 90 patients — 59 women and 31 men — with schizophrenia, affective disorders, anxiety and personality disorders. The [...]
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