Don't Cancel Your Cable Yet

We know times are hard unless you were skeevy enough to have Madoff with a shit-ton of loot last year. Pay thru March, Tor(rent) up, or just boot off the neighbors for a few days. You must. not. miss. the HBO premiere of Death on a Factory Farm on March 16.

Update on AB 594

The latest activity on AB 594 -- formerly titled "Pigs: tethering and confinement"-- gives pigs the heave-ho in favor of Medi-Cal coverage of programs to help people quit smoking. We'd rather have seen Medi-Cal cover meat/dairy/egg-quit programs, but alas, such is politics. Perhaps the sponsor came to realize that this issue is really one of enforcement of existing CA law, or that a proposed HSUS co-sponsored 2008 ballot initiative to ban gestation crates, veal crates, and battery cages has a far better chance of passage. Get your nominations in on which big-name ballot supporter will be the CA hole card.

Why we need a ballot initiative to further define what is already a punishable offense begs the same question as why we needed an amendment to the Health and Safety Code to do the same thing. But once you actually get in a courtroom on a farm animal cruelty-related matter, you wise-up pretty fast and start initiating even faster. Break in your new non-leather walking shoes and no smoking on the job.

The Jury Is Out

Literally, for Wiles Farm defendants. All three charged individuals, owner Ken Wiles, his son Joe Wiles, and employee Dusty Stroud, waived their right to a jury trial and instead will appear before Judge Stuart Miller only in Wayne County Municipal Court on Tuesday, June 19, 9:00 AM.

Better off with 3–on-1 rather than 3–on-12? Couldn’t seat an acceptable jury? Pressed for time, or just going with the flow? Sometime after 9:00 AM on June 19—exactly how much time after we cannot speculate—we will see how precisely balanced those iconic scales really are and whether or not the origin of Lady Justice’s blindfold is indeed founded on the impartial treatment of parties or just the cartoonish cynicism of a 400–year-old pissed-off German artist.

Update 06-20: The verdict(s) are in. Ken Wiles, charged with two counts of animal cruelty: not guilty on both counts. Joe Wiles, charged with six counts of animal cruelty: guilty on one count, not guilty on four counts, one count dismissed. Dusty Stroud, charged with two counts of animal cruelty: not guilty on one count, one count dismissed. More as we get it.

Judge Stuart Miller may be in, but we're still out on the origins of dear Lady Justice's blindfold. One point, though, of which we are most assuredly and unwaveringly certain: there were fine legal minds in the courtroom -- yes, at least one, plus three-quarters of another. Mammalian anatomy and physiology -- specifically and particularly, swine anatomy and physiology, or even basic, undergraduate general physics -- not so much.

Calves, Chickens Dropped From AB 594

AB 594, formerly titled “Farm animals: confinement” was whittled down to “Pigs: tethering and confinement” yesterday. The amended version, still in the hands of the Agriculture Committee, removes protection from confinement for its clucking or mooing stakeholders. This version also limits confinement to the “seven-day period before the pig’s expected date of giving birth,” introduces a jail term for violation, and pushes the operative enforcement of the bill’s provisions ahead by two years. Compare and contrast: Florida, Arizona, Oregonia (it’s like Canadialand without the rampaging moose, hockey, or LAPD). J/k, we luv the Oregoniaonites, especially the Gov., who actually tried to eat with food stamps for a week.

Here’s some silliness that thankfully failed in Committee despite it’s various amending, and a fine analysis of why it should have done nothing more than fail. LYLAS over there at the AnimalBlawg.

c0demonkey is busy with this pipe-laying project, which we think … aggregating yet another aggregation of aggregators is way redundant. But that nunchuck-waving chimp swears it’ll be the primo-sourced, finely-filtered, JSON-outputted feed for farm animal related stuffs anywhere. Yeah, we’ll just see about that. For what we’re paying, we can’t complain or expect a whole helluva lot.

"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.

Update: June Trial Date for Wiles Farm Defendants

Wiles Farm owner Ken Wiles (middle), his son Joe Wiles (left), and employee Dusty Stroud (not pictured) have another 2-1/2 months to sort out their collective defense to 10 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. A jury trial for the trio is now scheduled to begin on June 19, 2007.

Rep. Mervyn Dymally, a senior member of the CA Legislature, former Lt. Governor, and member of the House Committee on Agriculture, has introduced a bill to amend the Health and Safety Code that would prohibit the keeping of any mammal or bird used for the production of food or fiber in conditions that do not allow "sufficient space for each animal to stand, lie down, get up, move his or her head freely, rest, turn around completely, and extend all limbs and wings without touching any part of the enclosure or other animals." Thirty-six years of "you can’t make us" on the part of CA industrial animal production interests is about enough, but $1000 a day in fines ain’t nowhere near enough. You’re encouraged to write in support of AB 594.

In totally unrelated geek news, we’re supposed to say something nice about c0demonkey’s efforts of late with regard to the overall look and feel of our various joints:

"Thanks!"

Screechy little twit Greybox'd the Pierce College Farm Property Map so it magically fades in ala beautifulness, and built us a Google Earth flyover of the known animal-holding areas, complete with groovy, red binocular icons. There may be some issues with our Greybox implementation if you’re using Firefox on MacOS (or so said Greybox/Orangoo Labs developer Amir S. when we finally got around to showing it off to him …), so if it doesn’t work for you, let us know. ‘m0nkey can’t really test on MacOS until the new toy arrives. So try the flyover. As far as we can tell, it works just dandy.

This One Will Make It

Update 2/26/2007: The efforts to care for these rescued sheep continues and we urge you to read more about them courtesy of chimerae over at LiveJournal. chimerae’s brother is a veterinarian assisting with the survivors’ ongoing rehabilitation.

We have some additional donation/contact information below for those organizations accepting emergency care funds, projected to be in excess of $120,000 even before the Oklahoma Supreme Court hears this case on March 13. Dr. Marcotte said it best:

The new law is supposed to empower law enforcement to act quickly to secure the resources to provide for the care of animals in need. It’s a tragedy that that the law has to be tested for the first time when the need and expense is so great.

Craig County is desperately underfunded for this effort. Please give what you can to help save these innocent lives. And when we say “save lives,” that does not include auctioning them off to cover the cost of their rescue and rehabilitation.

Craig County Livestock Rescue Fund
First National Bank of Vinita
102 W. Illinois Ave.
Vinita, OK 74301

Marcotte Veterinary Service
30588 S 4400 Rd.
Vinita, OK 74301

The Kelly Family (providing care for 1200 sheep, 300 cattle)
26644 South 4360 Rd.
Vinita, OK 74301

Dr. Justin Roscoe holds an infant lamb rescued from the Bluejacket, Oklahoma “farm” where thousands of sheep were left to die of starvation when their owner, David Bradley Bell, couldn’t afford to feed them anymore.

Bell, who was previously investigated for failing to care for the cattle on his property, has lost his bid to have the surviving sheep in the current case returned to him.

David Bradley Bell doesn’t look like he’s missed many meals to us. His sheep didn’t fare so well.

Their feed bunks and barns held only the decomposed bodies of their herdmates.

Rescuers and caretakers of the survivors need your help to provide food, shelter, and veterinary care for them. Please consider donating to:

Oklahoma Alliance for Animals

Craig County Oklahoma Sheriff's Office
301 W. Canadian Ave.
Vinita, OK 74301

Nubby and Hood

Read the story of small town citizens who came to the rescue of two neglected, abused little calves and did all they could to keep them safe. Watch the slideshow of Nubby and Hood’s intensive care at the Warren Animal Shelter.

PFW loves you, too.

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.

Tuesday Three-fer

Wiles Farm owner Ken Wiles, his son Joe Wiles, and Wiles Farm employee Dusty Stroud were arraigned this afternoon in Wayne County Municipal court on 10 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals. All defendants have entered pleas of not guilty and are free on their own recognizance. Defendant Joe Wiles, charged with six of the ten counts of animal cruelty including “mutilating and killing animals by hangings, using inappropriate gun shots ... depriving pigs of basic veterinary care, food, and water ... beating animals to death with hammers,” entered a not guilty plea on January 25th with a trail date set for March 14th.

“Striving for justice,” huh? In an unpublished opinion, CA’s 2nd Appellate has affirmed the trial court’s decision to deny Farm Sanctuary standing to sue CorcPork under the Business and Professions Code section of the Unfair Competition Law. As you may remember, the decision in the original case hinged upon the applicability of an amended version of Proposition 64. In a nutshell, Prop 64 + no person showing actual monetary or property damage = you can’t sue CorcPork. Unpublished opinions only hang around the web site for 60 days after they’ve been…put up there (we were gonna say “published” but that didn’t make any sense). Grab it from us if the drive-thru window is closed.

Neither down nor out, the ALDF/EBAA v. Clougherty Packing/Farmer John/CorcPork action, with plaintiffs alleging actual monetary damages, moves forward as Case Number SCV-240050 in the Superior Court of Sonoma County. Plaintiffs are represented by Evans & Page in San Francisco. We’ve got $ on this one.

We wonder—will CorcPorkers again allege that plaintiffs lack standing because CorcPork has been confining pigs in crates since 1989 and the statute of limitations has run out, and that Penal Code section 597t is “unconstitutionally vague,” and that even it if is constitutional, it doesn’t apply to them anyways? Somebody take a swat at those last two, puh-lease.

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.

Wiles Farm Prosecutor Files Charges

WKYC Evening News anchors acknowledge the worldwide reaction to their story in this follow-up report and interview with Special Prosecutor Frank Forchione. More than 30,000 viewers have seen the story that aired in November as a result of investigative efforts by the Humane Farming Association.

Owner Ken Wiles faces arraignment on two second-degree misdemeanor charges of animal cruelty later this month. His son, Joe Wiles, is charged with six misdemeanor counts and Wiles employee Dusty Stroud, previously seen mugging for the camera as a helpless sow is strangled by hanging, will face two counts as well. Jail time is a possibility if they are convicted, 150 90 days per misdemeanor, as well as fines of $750 per count and the mandatory surrender of the remaining animals housed at the facility.

Do the sentencing guidelines seem like paltry, cost-of-doing-business annoyances to you? We think so, too. Felony indictments and convictions for cruelty in industrial animal production facilities are far too few. The value of an innocent life, spared by the selfless acts of one brave person, is a price above rubies.

We’ll keep you apprised of developments in the Wiles Farm case as they unfold.

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.

Pick Your Perp

Take some pictures, give them to the world for free, save the life of a starving, sick, and battered innocent, and get six months in jail. You can contribute to this “terrorist’s” defense fund here.

Conspire to drag an unarmed, disabled civilian from his home, execute him with four shots to the face, six more to the body, plant a borrowed assault rifle next to him complete with fingerprints lifted from his corpse, be the first to cut a deal to testify against your seven accomplices, and do less than a year in jail. You can contribute to this “patriot’s” defense fund here.

Pick your perp.

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.

Channel 597: Yes, In Your Backyard

Nothing against DirecTV, but this is way better. 'm0nkey decided to get up on YouTube, spruce up the Channel and make some playlists. Tag queries in the Google Video API key scoop some bizarre results--there's some freaks up on this Internet, people!--so don't expect to see that little search box widget-thing popping up in our sidebar anytime soon.



We especially like this one. Footage guaranteed to never appear in an animal agribusiness industry PSA. Have a look at where your food comes from.

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

Docket-Watch: 8,034 miles to Corcoran

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has filed suit to put an end to the illegal confinement of thousands of pregnant and nursing sows at California’s CorcPork, Inc.

It just keeps getting better. This isn’t CorcPork, Inc.’s first time in the hot-seat, either. And wtf are those big, black spots on that map, anyway? And the long metal structures? Those would be the “barns.” We just figured something out: if you lined up all the crates housing all the units of industrial animal production piglet-making equipment in the US end-to-end, they would stretch from LA to Montreal and back again, with enough miles left over for a road trip to Chicago.

She can never stretch.

Subtract the minute, fractional percentage of breeding sows in the US who don’t “live” like this from the 6,060,000 who do, then just work the 2–step math problem like we did.

One metal container, 22x84 inches
6,060,000 mothers
1 mile=63,360 inches

Our take give on the pending ALDF case: