Besides the tall skyscrapers, the crowds and the Mac Store, 59th street 5th avenue in Manhattan this past summer has had a new addition added. Posters, chants, clipboards and horse costumes. NYCLASS has hit the streets hard this summer to stop the abuse in the horse carriage industry.

NYCLASS, New Yorkers for Clean Livable And Safe Streets, is a nonprofit animal welfare and advocacy group started in 2009 committed to improving the quality of life for residents and animals of New York City.

NYCLASS has been along the west side of central park every Saturday afternoon throughout this summer with over a hundred volunteers to protest, sign petitions and educate people on how unsafe and unhealthy it is for the horses to work on New York’s busy polluted streets, dodging traffic and sleeping in stables that do not allow the horses to rest properly for the next day.

There is an estimate of 220 carriage horses,293 drivers and 68 licensed carriages. The unexpected NYC working horse residents work nine hours a day seven days a week in rain, sunshine, blistering cold and in the scolding heat. Unlike us: when we work an eight or nine hour shift we have breaks in-between. NYCLASS and others have seen the horses work nonstop with no well deserved breaks or rest.

Recently, the public’s eyes were open further. In the past three months, two horse drawn carriage accidents took place injuring the horses, the drivers and the tourists who were on the carriages.

Today, NYCLASS has well over 93,996 supporters and hopes the city will soon pass Intro.86 to ban the horse carriages and replace them with eco-friendly electric cars. Unlike the carriages, the electric vehicles will comply with government safety regulations and will be registered with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. All drivers must obtain driver’s licenses and become licensed tour guides in order to operate the new electric vehicles. Currently, only 50% of the carriage drivers have valid licenses.

The eco-friendly cars will carry liability insurance equivalent to the insurance carried by taxis, black cars, and pedicabs. Horse-drawn carriages are only required to carry $20,000 per carriage in insurance, compared to the $2 million for each pedicab company and the $200,000 for each pedicab. Also, the cars can hold seven passengers at a time, are able to travel up to 10 hours on a single charge, has raised stadium seating, a heating system for the winter months and a convertible top for the spring/summer seasons.

If the transition happens, the horses themselves would be transported to the ASPCA so they can find permanent homes in sanctuaries, farms and private adopters rather than the usual: being sent to slaughter.

But the horse carriage drivers have no smiles on their face when it comes to this alternative, and fear most will lose their jobs.

Allie Feldman, lead organizer of NYCLASS, believes it is more than just the drivers who are afraid they will lose their jobs. She said, “change is scary for these guys, and using cash only they are allowed to charge more for their rides, and with the cars they need to also pay proper taxes, so there is no hiding.”

Indeed the horse carriage industry is a cash only business that also does not use meters. NYCLASS claims on their website that the carriage drivers routinely charge residents and tourists higher rates then what they are requisite. This in turn causes the city to lose revenue and the city already pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to monitor the horses and repair the city streets the carriages damage.

When asked to answer a few questions about the horses and their treatment, several drivers said they wish to not speak. Only one new young female driver, who just started working two months ago, answered some questions. She preferred to be anonymous, but said she was against getting rid of the horses: “I don’t think it would be the same. Would lose business because the children and people love the horses.” She also said she is not aware if the horses receive veterinary care, that only the owner would know. The horses get water every 30 minutes and food three times during the nine hours.

But a lot of bystanders support the movement. On the days the volunteers have protested, many New Yorkers have said to the volunteers they can tell by the horses’ eyes and body language they are not happy.

It is still an ongoing debate and NYCLASS hopes to continue the fight through this coming fall season.

For more information visit www.nyclass.org or www.aspca.org.

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Hidden-camera video secretly shot at a North Carolina Butterball factory farm by an undercover investigator with the animal protection organization Mercy For Animals (MFA) has led to felony and misdemeanor animal cruelty charges of five Butterball employees by state authorities.

Additionally, Dr. Sarah Jean Mason, the director of Animal Health Programs (Poultry Division) with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, has pled guilty to obstruction of justice after admitting to leaking confidential information to Butterball about the criminal cruelty investigation by state law enforcement officials.

MFA’s Executive Director Nathan Runkle will reveal details of the investigation and the organization’s reaction to the animal cruelty charges against Butterball employees tomorrow morning at a news conference.

Date: Thursday, February 16, 2012
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Location: Hilton North Raleigh-Midtown, Sandalwood Room, 3415 Wake Forest Rd., Raleigh, NC

The names of the Butterball employees charged with criminal activity that have been released so far include Ruben Mendoza, Terry Bernard Johnson, and Jose Garcia. The charges stem from an MFA undercover investigation at a Butterball turkey semen collection facility in Shannon, North Carolina between November and December of 2011. The shocking undercover footage reveals:

• Workers violently kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or into transport trucks in full view of company management;
• Employees bashing in the heads of live birds with metal bars, leaving many to slowly suffer and die from their injuries;
• Turkeys covered in flies, living in their own waste, unable to access food or water and suffering from severe feather loss and necrotic (dead) muscles and skin;
• Birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, rotting eyes, and broken bones; and
• Severely injured turkeys, unable to stand up or walk, left to die without any veterinary care, because treating sick or injured birds was too costly and time consuming, as the farm manager explained to MFA’s investigator.

Mercy For Animals’ undercover video shows that the lives of turkeys in Butterball’s factory farms are brutal and filled with fear, violence and prolonged suffering. Butterball’s turkeys have been selectively bred to grow so large, so quickly, that many of them suffer from painful bone defects, hip joint lesions, crippling foot and leg deformities, and fatal heart attacks.

Due to the company’s lack of meaningful animal welfare policies, training or procedures, Butterball subjects countless turkeys to immeasurable cruelty and neglect each year. ”We commend law enforcement for taking swift and decisive action in bringing these animal abusers to justice,” said Runkle. “These arrests should send a clear message to the meat industry that cruelty to animals will not be tolerated.”

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Undercover video footage exposing animal abuse and suffering inside Hawkeye Sow Centers (HSC), a pig breeding factory farm in Leland, Iowa, is being released on February 15 by animal protection organization Compassion Over Killing (COK). The video was filmed by a COK investigator who worked at the facility in December 2011 and wore a hidden camera to document the day-to-day miseries forced upon thousands of female pigs and their piglets.

Iowa is the largest pork-producing state in the U.S., and agribusiness interests are currently trying to pass an “ag-gag” law (HR-589/SF-431) in the state to effectively make whistleblowing exposes on factory farms, like this investigation, illegal.  COK’s video exposes standard industry practices that the industry is desperately trying to hide, including:

• Pregnant and nursing pigs nearly immobilized in tiny crates, unable to even turn around
• Piglets screaming while workers slice off their tails and cut out the males’ genitals without any pain relief
• Poorly performed castrations that resulted in herniated intestines
• Workers pushing the herniated intestines back inside the piglets, then wrapping the area with tape
• Countless sick or injured piglets left to suffer without veterinary care, many of whom later died
• Forced cannibalism: intestines from dead piglets are turned into “gruel” to feed back to pigs
• Layers of feces caked on the floor of crates and  filthy, fly-infested conditions

As our investigator was told, many of the piglets born at this facility will end up on store shelves under the brand name, Hormel. While Hormel recently issued a statement that its company-owned facilities will be phasing out gestation crates, it did not commit to extending this welfare policy to the hundreds of independently-run facilities that ultimately supply Hormel, like HSC, which comprise the majority of Hormel’s pork.

With the news this week that McDonald’s—one of the biggest buyers of pork in the U.S.—is moving to end gestation crate confinement of pigs in its U.S. supply chain, the writing for this inhumane practice is on the wall. It’s time for Hormel for end the use of cruel gestation crates in its entire supply chain.

There’s also no disputing that without anesthesia, male piglets endure immense pain when their testicles are ripped from their bodies. Welfare concerns have prompted Switzerland and Norway to ban this barbaric process, and many other countries have implemented alternatives—alternatives which are also available in the U.S. and should immediately implemented by the pork industry here as well.

“When it comes to the meat industry, animal cruelty is standard practice,” says COK’s executive director Erica Meier. “And rather than try to prevent the worst abuses, Big Agribusiness is trying to prevent Americans from finding out about them with ag-gag bills designed to ban these exposes.

The most effective way consumers can stand up for animals and help stop the cruelty is to simply leave pigs, and all animals, off our plates.

For more information, including investigative footage and photos, visit http://www.cok.net/camp/inv/iowapigs.

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Friends of Animals recently celebrated a victory for scimitar-horned oryx, addax, and dama gazelles who are routinely bred and killed on hunting ranches here in the United States. These animals, on the brink of extinction in their native homelands in northern Africa, have been the targets of paying trophy hunters seeking a thrill-kill.

On 5 Jan. 2012, a new rule in the U.S. Federal Register was published, reflecting two decades of work by Friends of Animals to protect these antelope. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will now protect all members of these three species under the Endangered Species Act—including those bred on U.S. soil and sold for sport-hunting.

60 Minutes will recount the story of how these animals ended up on the verge of extinction, and how Friends of Animals, through its project in Senegal, is protecting these animals so they can recover their footing and freedom in their own habitat.

“We’re grateful that 60 Minutes is telling this landmark story,” says Friends of Animals’ president Priscilla Feral, who worked with 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan in the late spring of 2011—recounting Friends of Animals’ work on this project that began in 1999 with a trip to Senegal.

Friends of Animals, with the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, sued the federal government to list the these antelopes as “endangered” under U.S. law. In September 2005, the FWS did list the three species as “endangered,” noting that desertification, human encroachment, ranching, regional military activity, and hunting imperil these antelopes.

Yet on the same date, the FWS published an exception to the rule removing take and transport prohibitions from the very animals that the United States has the strongest power to protect—those kept by U.S. enterprises.  The blanket exemption authorized killing, commercial transport, and interstate or foreign commerce—hence, allowing continued exploitation of these animals on hunting ranches.

A court case brought by Friends of Animals and WildEarth Guardians in 2009 challenged the loophole and secured a court order finding that the exemption violated Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act. The judge call the blanket exemption “anathema” to the ESA, and in June 2009 remanded the rule to the FWS for the appropriate change.

Friends of Animals currently supports an increasing population of 175 oryxes (and dozens of dama gazelles) in northern Senegal within two, semi-desert reserves encompassing thousands of acres—and is committed to seeing these numbers grow.

“Even though this project is decades long, we’re just beginning,” says Feral. “We’re committed to ensuring these animals thrive in freedom once again.”

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It is not uncommon these days that the animal rights group PETA causes commotion with their controversial marketing endeavors. They have tried anything from nude-celebrities-against-fur to racy videos with women having erotic moments with vegetables on Youtube in support of veganism.

But all of that has nothing on their newest venture: PETA confirmed to the Huffington Post that they have registered a XXX porn site which will be targeting pro-vegan messages at their visitors.

“We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals,” said PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt to the Huffington report.

“We really want to grab people’s attention, get them talking and to question the status quo and ultimately take action, because the best way we can help the greatest number of animals is simply by not eating them.”

According to Rajt, the site will have enough adult content to qualify as a XXX domain but it will also feature graphic images of animals. Australian Herald Sun could report that alongside the expected content, viewers will be treated to galleries and videos of “the sinister world of animal mistreatment uncovered but the group’s hidden camera investigations.”

Rajt explains their main content contributors: “There will be a lot of girl and boy next door content, but we haven’t ruled out celebrities on the site as well.”

She defined their supporters further as “people who are extraordinarily dedicated to helping animals and who are willing to do whatever it takes to draw attention to the suffering they endure.” PETA has before collaborated with adult film stars Sasha Gray, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson for campaigns, according to the Huffington Post.

Despite the fact that going all the way on the XXX campaign isn’t that unexpected considering PETA’s previous initiatives, blog reporter Carmel Lobello of deathandtaxesmag.com points out a significant “content mismatch” on the upcoming site. Lobello admits that the idea of porn for animal rights makes some sense – essentially taking advantage of the term “sex sells” in the most literal of ways.

What she finds baffling is the juxtapose between porn and animal abuse: “For any sane person, images of mistreated animals should be an instant boner-killer.”

Lobello also hints at one of the criticisms that women’s rights groups have raised against PETA’s heavy use of female nudity: “By tapping into the porn industry aren’t they essentially exploiting one famously messed up industry to try to save the victims of another?”

The accusation that PETA’s interest in improving animal welfare leads to the cruel objectification of women has been echoed in other forums. One group, Real Women Against PETA, have objected fiercely to a Save The Whales billboard that attacks obese women.

The Huffington Post quotes one headline as “Pro-vegetarian group treats women like meat.” The spokeswoman from PETA explained that despite the controversy, their tactics are carefully thought out: “we try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals.”

She also says that they wouldn’t use nudity if it didn’t work so well for their campaigns.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.facebook.com/PETA.Foundation.UK

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Two crucial bills that would continue to protect the agribusiness industry in Minnesota and Florida have died a slow agonizing death, no pun intended. The “ag gag” bills in both states would have prohibited photography and video inside factory farms in an attempt to stop the undercover investigations by animal rights groups. Despite protest from the agriculture industry, the bills did not make it to the legislative floor for debate.

Animal rights advocates say the bills amount to an unconstitutional infringement on free speech that would have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers trying to bring attention to cases of animal cruelty. Supporters of the bill do not believe this is the case. “It’s aimed at people who are harassing and sabotaging these operations,” said Sen. Doug Magnus, R-Slayton.”These people who go undercover aren’t being truthful about what they’re doing.”

Howard Goldman, Minnesota director of the Humane Society of the United States, called the bill and similar measures elsewhere, “an attempt to criminalize whistle-blowing at a time when we need more transparency about animal welfare, not less. It goes after people with a really broad brush.”

The House sponsor, Rep. Rod Hamilton, (R-Mountain Lake), made the old-standby argument that people who document animal abuse would be “guilty of abuse” if they don’t report it immediately to an operation’s owner, management or law enforcement.

Fortunately the public thinks we ought to know what goes down on these plants that produce our food. There are pending ag gag bills in other states including Iowa, even though only 21 percent of the population support it. Time and time again, despite the agriculture’s industry denial, the majority of people would rather pay more than have animals treated inhumanely.

Thanks to undercover video of the Humane Society in 2008, we saw the horrendous “downer” cows entering a food supply at the Hallmark slaughterhouse in California, which led to the country’s biggest ever recall of meat. Just last December, the Humane Society again exposed abuses of pigs at the Smithfield Foods. Pigs were never seen by veterinarians and were slaughtered even with disturbing growths and illnesses. They were confined in gestation crates and showed severe symptoms of distress such as biting the cage until they bled. Gestation crates are banned in the entire European Union and many fast food chains have eliminated or reduced their use of pork from pigs bred using gestation crates.

Iowa’s ag gag bill has passed the Republican controlled house and is currently pending in the Democrat-controlled Senate. An ag gag bill is also pending in New York where it has passed out of committee.

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The states of Oregon and Washington are attempting to follow in California’s footsteps by expanding the size of cages that egg-laying hens are confined to. In 2008, Californians passed Proposition 2 in a landslide decision which essentially phases out cages to confine hens. Since then, California also passed a law requiring that all whole eggs sold statewide be battery cage-free by 2015. The rest of the Pacific Northwest took notes and are now trying to get their own initiatives on the upcoming ballots.

Washingtonians for Humane Farms has been collecting signatures to place its measure on this November’s ballot, which would require that egg-laying hens have enough room to extend their wings. The measure would require that eggs sold in the state are produced in compliance with this modest standard. It would prevent Washington factory farms from cramming over six million egg-laying hens into tiny cages where they can barely move for their entire lives. And Oregonians for Humane Farms recently began efforts to place a similar measure on the November 2012 ballot—one that would improve the lives of about 2.5 million egg-laying hens in the state.

Various veterinarians, small farmers, businesses, and animal welfare, environmental, and food safety organizations have endorsed the Washington and Oregon initiatives. Many Pacific Northwest restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, and schools have joined the national movement away from serving consumers eggs from caged hens.

Caged hens are kept in cramped and dismal conditions. They are caged alone for most of their life, even though chickens are social creatures. These factory farms do little in the way of hygiene, allowing the chicken feces to gather up in huge mountains underneath the cages. The hens on lower cages are also covered in feces from roommates on the top levels. A normal hen produces 100 eggs a year; these caged hens are forced to lay 250-300 eggs a year. The nearly daily egg laying has depleted the hen’s system of calcium. Because of the tremendously small cages, nearly 90 percent of egg-laying eggs have osteoporosis.

These factory farms have put rural farmers out of business by forcing the hens to overproduce so dramatically. Whether you care about the chicken’s plights or you want to support small, locally owned businesses, consider paying the extra dime or two to buy caged free eggs at your market. Until all states follow California’s lead, which they will eventually, you can lead the charge in your state.

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