Animal-Use Industries Rolodex

The Final Nail. Fifty states-worth. Get it while it’s red hot. Laboratory animal dealers, fur “farmers,” trappers, slaughterhouses, and animal carcass processors. Federally-inspected joints only. Maybe it’ll help clear up some of the local incredulity every time a bloody lamb or baby goat is found staggering around the old, urban (213). Hat tip: GITNR.

Countdown to AR2007

The Big Daddy of conferences is back in our backyard again!! Five full days and evenings of all animal, all the time advocacy, plus a ginormous exhibit hall full of more veg*n vending than your VegNews tote bag can safely lug around.

And we’re missing it … f^$iN%! ARRRGGGHHH s0n$*@bi+(|-|!! TowerPrincess stuck in Albuquerque till the 22nd, Manny in FL for two weeks, and c0demonkey “on vacation” till whenever, so guess who that leaves to hold it down here? What can they possibly do to make up for this?! Haven’t decided yet, but it’s gonna be expensive and last for the same number of days as this monster mega-con we’re missing.

Taking Action for Animals

Conference happening July 28–30 in DC. Want to go but short on funds? AVAR is offering two scholarships this year to cover your transport, conference reg fee, and a comfy stall so you can bed down at night. To apply, visit the scholarship application page of the conference site. Need more info? Drop abodai@humanesociety.org an email. This year’s hot topic area is farmed animals. So near, so dear.

We love us some animal conferencing, but they all seem to lack one thing that another esteemed con is notorious for, that being this. Let’s try to remedy the situation for AR2007. STF is more fun than a curbside seat for celebrity jailarity—trust us!—and quite apropos.

The Fifth Law of Robotics

Might come around to haunt you.

It’s a sweet story about some soldiers, their little bots that blow stuff up, and how emotionally attached the fellas are to their fallen friends. “Near the Tigris River, operators even have been known to take their bot fishing. They put a fishing rod in its claw and retire back to the shade, leaving the robot in the sun.”

It’s Be Kind to Animals Week. Bot has no need or desire to kill for food, fun, or “progress.” At what point does bot’s inevitable, logical conclusion escape you? Before or after it drops the rod?

"Food Defamation" Bill Comes to CA

AB 698 (Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks) would allow “a producer of a perishable agricultural product, as defined, who suffers actual damages as a result of another person's disparagement of the producer's product to recover those actual damages if certain facts are found to be true.”

Because so-called "false reports of contamination regarding agricultural products" hurt you and you "cannot assess which reports of contamination are reliable." IOW, you’re too stupid to figure out that

• animal agribusiness manure run-off made spinach kill people,


• feral swine, as biological vectors in a human disease-transmission algorithm, wouldn’t have left enough spinach leaves behind to bother harvesting,


• pigs don’t waste time on spinach when vineyard grapes are a just trot away.

Didn’t we go over this already?

Yep, we did. Just checking.

Protect The Center

Michigan State University Law School professor David Favre and the Animal Legal & Historical Center are under attack and an attempt at takedown by sporthunting proponents and the professor’s own elected representatives.

The Animal Legal & Historical Center is a 2005 Webby Award Nominee in the Law category. We’re proud to link to the Center, to include search results from the Center as a promoted site for our Swicki, and to encourage you to make tax deductible donations to the Center, which operates as a public library.

Keep this valuable research resource up, running, and growing despite the tortured howls of animal thrill-killas over some perceived infringement of their constitutional “right” to just blast another Bambi before deer season ends. Don’t forget—these are the same ones who were infringed upon by some postage stamps with a picture of a rooster and the words “Protecting Farm Animals.”

No, we don’t know when rooster season is, either.

Sunday Triple-Header

Folks in Michigan would like a state legislator brave enough to step forward in their state and make cruelty to animals a felony.

Apparently, leaving them to resort to cannibalizing their own offspring just to stay alive, die with their heads stuck in a fence trying to reach food on the other side, and rot beside the bodies of their starving herdmates is still a misdemeanor. If the pic-link to the Port Huron Times Herald video above is broken, you can download it from us.

The Nebraska Unicameral (it’s their one-of-a-kind Legislature) is considering a bill that would make animal cruelty a felony. If the bill isn't maimed or killed in Committee by the usual suspects, LB 227 would protect animals other than companion dogs and cats, i.e., ones that have hooves, horns, beaks, and snouts.

We’re ending our Sunday with a story out of the Inland Empire which, if it didn’t get your attention the first time around, might make you look twice this time. In September, 2000, Godwin Collins Onunwah put a bunny in a plastic bag, tied the bag closed, and waited for the bunny to die in his special education classroom at LAUSD’s Gage Middle School.

Since the school district didn’t provide animals for dissection, perhaps because it isn’t permitted in middle schools and only permitted in high schools if the animals are sourced through biological supply houses, Onunwah asked his special education students to supply their own animals for the exercise. The suffocated bunny was purchased by a student from a pet store. When the bunny didn’t succumb before the end of the school day, Onunwah put the closed bag in a cabinet for the weekend.

His first trial on one misdemeanor count of animal cruelty ended in a hung jury voting 11–1 to convict. He was acquitted following a second trial.

This bunny’s exquisite face is courtesy of the House Rabbit Society, where you can discover just about everything you’d need for companion bunny care and habitat.

House Rabbit Society, like the educator resource TeachKind, is a child-and-bunny-safe site, free of plastic bags, suffocation experiments, administrative leave, multiple aliases on undisclosed public employee records, and predators who target developmentally disabled children and defenseless animals. We hope you'll visit both. In at least one case, we'd like to make it a 2nd-strike felony not to.

Vegan Mall Police: Everybody panic!

‘Meat Lady’ is gutting Tarrytown
(reg may be required; BugMeNot-operative)

First off, we’re dumbfounded that there’s a mall somewhere that’s even trying to keep it cruelty-free. Number two, it’s in a pretty cool town. And thirdly, owner Jeanne Daniels won the 2003 Proggy for Pioneer of the Year! The only downside to Tarrytown Shopping Center is that it’s surrounded on all four sides by Texas.

Would the whining be as loud (or at all) if Jeanne’s commercial tenant’s agreement stated that only businesses selling animal-derived products may lease space? Doubt it. That clause probably appears on the first page of the CCF Galleria agreement.

Here’s an audio clip of this story, read by an annoying CG voice we’re guessing doesn’t belong to columnist John Kelso.

New year, same "science"

Pigs will replace dogs in terminal procedures labs

What private educational institution rakes in more NIH loot than any other medical school in the country? Why, the same one of only two in the country that still puts dogs to death in a taxpayer-funded effort to teach their students how to keep each other alive.

"It's a shame that an outside group with a philosophical position is resulting in a change in the way that medical education is done," said Gale Davy, executive director of the Wisconsin Association for Biomedical Research and Education.

Yep, it's a shame. Darn those emotional, non-scientist do-gooders. The market selection pickins’ among incarcerated men, indigent women, rural black farmers, US servicemen, and mentally-challenged orphans just ain't what it used to be, is it, Gale?

See that dark spot over the dog’s right eye? The right eye, not the eye on the right side of the head in the picture. Yeah, that one. We paid for that area on the billboard with our very own PCRM 2006 donation!

See that 18–wheeler in the background? If MCW decides to kill juvenile pigs instead of dogs and keep a death-grip on the continuance of terminal procedures labs, we might just fund that diesel demon as the PCRM Multimedia Billboard on Wheels and park it right about here. No static, sad-eyed puppy pictures. Think 80” plasmas mounted on a 48’ flatbed, bloodier, and +/-110 dB. Wee budget be damned.

We don't need no stinkin' badges

Alright, so we got scooped by everybody on this one. Just kill us. Do you have any idea how much cash and hardware are behind those other guys?! We're on a budget here.

But the artwork’s still hot, the backstory’s still evolving, and the arm-hair-raising hilarity still ensues. Grab your own full copy of this year’s Christmas classic, brought to you by the heavily armed guardians of real America’s unreal family values and little ol' us, with our wee hosting plan and budget.

Signed, Sealed & Delivered

There’s an exponential amount of coverage about the inking of this bill into law relative to the "debate" coverage it received in the House and Senate. You can find it on your own without a lot of linkage. For proper credit, we’d love to find the artist who created this image. Looks a bit like a Coe but we don’t think it is.

Meet your neighbors

On the Tree of Life.

Best viewed with at least 200% magnification in Acrobat or a double-wide, blueprint-capable printer. And a conscience.

• Rodents in Animal Research


• What About the AWA?!


• When You Need Help

House passes AETA

Will Potter has details from the floor.

ETA: Here's a map of Ohio's 10th Congressional District, home of the only elected member of both Houses of Congress with enough courage to speak for you.



Some small measure of thanks is due.

Breaking News: AETA House vote on Monday

The same fast-track hustle that allowed only one day for opposition viewpoints to be heard before the Senate passed this legislation is at work again. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was rushed onto the House Suspension Calendar for Monday, Nov. 13.

Your only chance to be heard is now, and you speak for those without a voice. The victories for them, from this moment on, are in jeopardy, as is your civil right to engage in legal, nonviolent advocacy on their behalf.

Call your representative or go through the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121. Let them hear your voice now. Email and fax contact information for your representative is also available through the House web site.

If you can make it to DC by Monday morning, join up with the opposition lobby (details coming soon at noaeta.org).

Book Bag

Click on a book cover below and learn more about the title, meet the author, or buy the book. Ingrid Newkirk is signing 50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals at Dutton's Brentwood store on Saturday, Nov. 11 at 2PM. It'd be a good idea to show up early. We'll keep digging through the book bag as the holiday season draws closer.

We're calling it early

Just in from our embedded reporter in Phoenix:

It's about 9:30pm here in Phoenix, the Arizonans for Humane Farms rally ended a little while ago, and with about 16% of precincts reporting, Proposition 204 is leading 60% in favor. Yes, Humane Farms supporter Sheriff Joe was at the rally and said he didn't get involved in campaigning for or against other ballot issues because he was "concerned about the pigs," and offered KTAR News 92.3 a sincere paraphrase of Gandhi's quote about judging the morality of a nation by the way it treats its animals.

Have fun, celebrate for the animals, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Lock 'em up, Joe

Sheriff Joe Arpaio may turn out to be AZ animals’ best badge-sporting friend. And he’s got your room ready and waiting in the Maricopa County Jail facilities if you’re bent on abusing and neglecting them, then leaving them to slowly die alone and in pain. Repeatedly.

“The horse was sick on the ground in deep pain for 36 hours,” Arpaio told CBS 5 News. "According to the employees that talked to our detectives, she said the horse is going to die anyway. We don't have $200 in our school budget, so just let him stay there and die.”

Can you imagine a Sheriff Joe in LA, Ventura, Riverside, Orange, and San Bernardino County—a sheriff who runs his own Animal Safe Hospice and cuffs animal abusers to the stainless steel sofa for the night? No citiation for the round-file, no tip-offs in advance of his own Animal Cruelty Investigative Unit jump-out, no negotiation. Just jail.

Can you imagine a Sheriff Joe in Kings, Merced, and Tulare County? We can. So for the next few days we’re outta here like last year for the final Prop 204 push before Election Day, and what an uphill battle it’ll be when you’re polling better than 70%. Back on Wednesday to drop in on a little get-together you might check out, too, if you

• are even mildly interested in getting habeas corpus and the First Amendment off life-support when it comes to animal protection, rights, or welfare advocacy,


• anticipate using the USPS to convince 10,001 people to forego spending $1 each on something animal-use industry related,


• are not cool with the whole stainless steel sofa thing.

World Go Vegan Days!

That's all. Unless you want us to repeat our previous 26 suggestions on how to get busy over the next 2 days.

How much do we love this?

We know registration is closed, but you can always try to squeeze in at the last minute.

Student Animal Legal Defense Fund
National Center for Animal Law
Lewis & Clark Law School
10015 SW Terwilliger Blvd.
Portland, OR 97219
503-768-6849
503-768-6795

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To be an animal sacrifice.




This video was shot at 8644 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles CA, Oct. 12, 2005. Ritualistic slaughter of animals is illegal in the city of Los Angeles and claims of "religious freedom and/or persecution" don't harbor an exemption. You can stop criminal activity such as this from repeating in 2006. It's not too late.

Call the LA County Dept. of Public Health's Environmental Health Division at (213) 351-7893 and ask them to do their job.
Call LA Animal Services at (213) 847-1417 and ask them to do their job.
Call the organizers and paticipants at (310) 652-1533 and ask them to stop.
Attend a demo on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006 from 10AM-12:30PM at 8644 Pico Blvd., 90035.