A crate carrying one of the 33 lions rescued from circuses in Peru and Columbia is lifted onto the back of a lorry before being transported to a private reserve on April 30, 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
By Andrea Germanos
Animal welfare advocates are praising soon-to-be introduced legislation in the U.S. that would ban the use of wild animals in traveling circuses.
Animal rights activists give water to pigs arriving by truck to the Farmer John slaughterhouse in the early morning hours on Sept. 27, 2018 in Vernon, California. Twice weekly Pig Vigils draw activists who oppose the slaughter of pigs for food at this facility. David McNew / Getty Images
By Ketura Persellin
You probably care a lot about how your fruits and vegetables are grown. You may not think as much about where your family's animal protein comes from, but the conditions in which most meat, poultry and even dairy is produced may give you and your kids pause — even those most likely to clamor for yet another burger or hot dog.
Jason Hosking / The Image Bank / Getty Images Plus
Police are looking for an arsonist who burned several beehives in Alvin, Texas, leading to the deaths of more than half a million bees, CNN reported Wednesday.
Birds flying near skyscrapers in Chicago, the most dangerous U.S. city for migrating birds. FTiare / iStock / Getty Images Plus
What are the most dangerous U.S. cities for migratory birds?
That's the question answered by a new study published last week in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, which looked at the problem of light pollution. Seventy percent of bird species present in the U.S. are migratory, and more than 80 percent of those species migrate at night. The increasing light pollution of cities attracts the avian travelers, who then crash into buildings. Building collisions kill an estimated 600 million birds in the U.S. every year, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which led the study.
The researchers created two lists for the cities that pose the greatest risk to birds during both the spring and fall migratory season, based on both geography and light pollution.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will no longer conduct a controversial experiment that led to the deaths of thousands of cats beginning in 1982, NBC News reported.
The USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) announced Tuesday that it was stopping an experiment that used cats to study the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Its announcement comes weeks after a report from the White Coat Waste Project detailed experiments in which the USDA had bought unwanted cats and dogs from Asia, Africa and Latin America, killed them, and fed them to laboratory cats and other animals.
"We are elated that after a year of campaigning we have relegated the slaughter of kittens to the litter box of history," White Coat Waste Project Vice President Justin Goodman told NPR.
New data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows a steady increase in agriculture-related greenhouse gas emissions, much of it linked to industrial systems of crop production and the rise of factory farm systems of animal production. The annually updated GHG data is designed to track U.S. emissions related to the Paris Climate Agreement and to inform national and state-level climate policy.
The Humane Society of the United States uncovered a one-year pesticide test on 36 beagles contracted by Dow AgroSciences at a Michigan lab. The Humane Society of the United States / YouTube screenshot
A controversial pesticide test that would have resulted in the deaths of 36 beagles has been stopped, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the company behind the test announced Monday. The announcement comes less than a week after HSUS made the test public when it released the results of an investigation into animal testing at Charles River Laboratories in Michigan.
"We have immediately ended the study that was the subject of attention last week and will make every effort to rehome the animals that were part of the study," Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of DowDupont, said in a statement announcing its decision.
A beagle in a cage at an animal testing lab in France; beagles are often used in tests because of their friendly nature. Yves Forestier / Sygma via Getty Images
The beagles' potential fate was only one of several shocking revelations uncovered by an almost 100-day HSUS investigation into the testing of beagles and hounds at Charles River Laboratories in Michigan.
U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors documented 60 percent fewer violations at facilities that use animals in 2018 compared to 2017. The drop, reported by the Washington Post this week and also documented by our researchers here at the Humane Society of the United States, is the latest sign that the federal agency is pulling back from its job of enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, which protects animals used by puppy mills, zoos and research labs, among others.
