Tag Archives: Pigs

In Defense of Animals Asks Judge to Reconsider Feral Pig Slaughter Ruling

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In Defense of Animals in August asked a judge to reconsider a July decision that rejected its efforts to stop the National Park Service’s plan to eradicate wild pigs on Santa Cruz island in California.

Pigs were first introduced to the island in the mid-19th century. Ever since, according to the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, they have been eroding the soil and damaging native plants and animals.

To put an end to the problem once and for all, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy plan to hire a New Zealand firm, Prohunt, to eradicate the pigs. The firm will only receive its $3.9 million fee once there are no more pigs left on the island. Prohunt began killing pigs on Santa Cruz in April 2005.

In Defense of Animals has so far unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the plan in court. Their objections to the slaughter of the animals provides an interesting look at how animal rights ideology conflicts with environmental protection efforts.

The major claim made by the park service is that the presence of the pigs indirectly threatens the Santa Cruz Island fox. According to the park service, golden eagles are attracted to the island to feed on pigs, and while they’re there they also feed on the foxes to the point where there are believed to be only about 150 foxes left on the island.

Nature Conservancy spokeswoman Julie Benson told the Los Angeles Times that the choice was clear — wild pigs exist in large numbers throughout the world, whereas this particular fox only inhabits this island. Killing the pigs to save the foxes is, to Benson, the obvious choice.

Not so to IDA president Elliott Katz who told the Los Angeles Times that trying to make this sort of decision is attempting to foist human morality on to nature (emphasis added),

Northern California veterinarian Elliot Katz said that allowing the deaths of thousands of pigs for the benefit of a few foxes
doesn’t seem to be a fair balance of nature. Katz, founder and president of In Defense of Animals, a nonprofit animal rights
organization based in the Bay Area city of Mill Valley, supports halting the pig slaughter and says he intends to contact
Feldman about lending his support for the lawsuit.

“Our position is to take a step back and not to be killing animals for man’s belief of what’s right and wrong,” Katz said.
“Allowing an injunction will permit everyone to step back and rethink this thing and also to further evaluate whether it’s
necessary to remove each and every pig from the island.”

Presumably since relying on human standards of morality is not possible, Katz will be channeling supernatural powers to guide human interaction with the environment.

Sources:

Suit Filed to Halt Pig Eradication on Santa Cruz Island. Gregory W. Griggs, Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2005.

Has FDA Vascillation Effectively Killed Market for Cloned Farm Animals?

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The Associated Press ran a story this month outlining fears by the dairy industyr that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s inability to come to a decision about the safety of food from cloned animals may have already doomed that market. It has already led to the failure of one company that was prepared to sell cloned farm animals.

In 2003, the FDA issued a draft safety assessment that found food from cloned animals was probably as safe as food from non-cloned animals. But it also effectively banned the sale of food from non-cloned animals until it makes a final determination.

Several additional studies have been published in the interim confirming the FDA’s draft assessment that food from cloned animals is safe and indistinguishable from that produced by non-cloned animals, but the FDA’s final determination of safety is still nowhere in sight.

One company, Infigen, has already went out of business thanks to the FDA waffling. In 2002 and 2003, Infigen made headlines for advances it made in cloning pigs that allowed it to produce cloned pigs with just one round of embryo implantation in a single pig compared to earlier methods which required multiple rounds of embryo implantation in multiple animals to produce viable clones. Infigen co-founder Michael Bishop told the Associated Press that the FDA’s delay in approving food from cloned animals was the straw that broke his company’s back,

It’s hard to find people who want to do business with you when a government agency could possibly regulate against the food products entering the food chain.

According to the Associated Press, Bishop believes that cloned farm animals will never be economically viable.

This sentiment is apparently shared by many dairy farmers whom would otherwise benefit the most from cloned animals. As the Associated Press notes, because cloned animals are so expensive its unlikely they would ever be used for slaughter. Instead they would be beneficial in things like a dairy operation where a farmers could clone particularly productive dairy cows.

But the FDA lack of a decision and the current ban clearly creates the impression that milk from cloned cows may not be safe. Susan Ruland, a spokeswoman from the International Dairy Foods Association, told the Associated Press,

There’s a strong general feeling among our members that consumers are not receptive to milk from cloned cows. This seems to be one of the things where technology seems to drop something in the lap of the food companies. It’s not driven by the market or any benefit to the consumer.

There are currently farmers in the United States who have cloned dairy cows, but they feed the milk to family and employees rather than sell it for the moment. Wisconsin dairy farmer Bob Schauff, for example, tells the Associated Press that he had four clones of a prize-winning Holstein dairy cow made four years ago. Schauff calls the ban,

. . . ridiculous. It’s a phobia more than anything scientific. We need to get FDA to come along and say it’s fine. They’re as normal as any other animal. Common sense has to take over soon.

So when will the FDA finally resolve the matter one way or another? That’s anybody’s guess. According to the Associated Press, an FDA official said that the agency has no timetable for making a final decision.

The full text of the FDA’s draft assessment can be read here.

Source:

Dairy industry skeptical about cloned cows. Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press, August 11, 2005.

Animal Rights Group Protests at Sausage Sale

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A couple weeks ago, I mentioned the controversy over a pig and cow raised at Daylesfor Secondary College in Australia to give students there exposure to traditional farming methods — i.e., the animals were raised to be slaughtered for sausage.

Members of Ballarat Organization for Animal Rights showed up at the Glenlyon Food and Wine Fayre in late July to protest the sale of the sausages made from the animals.

BOAR spokesman Trevor Wilson told The Courier,

They [the students] have all suffered. . . . We would hope to get the message through so that it never happens again. . . .When you desensitize people [to violence], who knows what they can turn into.

Wilson added that his groups thinks Australia’s Education Minister should ban schools from raising animals for slaughter,

We feel that Lynne Kosky should make a requirement that animals are not used this way in education.

Liam Thoryncraft, who helped organize the school’s participation in the young gourmet contest at the food fair, said that the sausages sold well. He added that if the project is repeated there would be some changes,

We understand [the controversy raised by keeping the animals on school grounds] and we did make the mistake of putting the pig in the school grounds for people to get attached to it. We would do it all again, but would change some things.

Source:

Protest at sale of sausages. The Courier (Australia), July 31, 2005.

Australian RSPCA Angered by Mock Killing of Pig on Reality Show

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The Australian Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals publicly objected in July to the mock killing of a pig in which no pig was actually shown.

During an airing of the Australian reality TV show “Australian Idol,” contestant Shaye Biancha demonstrates how she would kill a pig by pretending to stab judge Kyle Sandilands.

This was enough to outrage the RSPCA. According to Australian Associated Press, the RSPCA’s Michael Beatty said,

Let’s make this easy for you Australian idol. Animal cruelty is not hilarious. It is not funny. The links between animal cruelty and other forms of abuse are quite clear and very frightening. . . . In one episode of Australian Idol you’ve broadcast a message that not only condones animal cruelty, but supports it.

Australian Idol responded to these charges by saying that what was depicted was not animal cruelty at all. A spokesperson for the show told the Australian Associated Press,

Shaye Biancha’s hobby of bush hunting is considered a legitimate activity in Far North Queensland, where feral pigs are declared pests under Queensland legislation. Shaye’s mock re-enactment of hunting a pig with Kyle Sandilands was not done in a serious manner.

Source:

Idol promoting animal cruelty: RSPCA. Australian Associated Press, July 28, 2005.

Debate Over School's Slaughter of a Pig

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In May, Daylesford Secondary Collage in Australia decided to participate in a national competition called Young Gourmet. The point of the competition is to encourage awareness and experience with traditional farming methods.

To that end, the school purchased a pig with the intent of having students raise it before having the animal slaughtered and turned into bullboar sausages to enter into the competition.

Several students, led by one Freeman Trebilcock, 17, objected to the plans to slaughter the pig. Trebilcock was among a group of students who circulated a petition which 100 students ultimately signed asking for the pig to be spared.

School officials would have none of it, saying that the pig was purchase for the purpose of the food competition, and had the animal slaughtered in July and students made the sausages for sale at a local food fair. According to Australia Associated Press,

Brooke Santurini, who was part of the 11-member student group that entered and voted to remain in the competition, said she was surprised and angered by the student opposition.

“We are a rural school,” she said.

“A lot of people, the parents of our students, they are farmers, that’s their living. We are not doing anything illegal; we haven’t done anything cruel to the animal.”

Ms Santurini said the pig was kept at the back of the school and was only visible to students who chose to visit it.

“They knew the pig was coming to the school because we were going to make bullboars out of it,” she said.

“If someone wanted to see the pig it was their choice to see it, they chose to get personally attached. The main positive that came out of it is it is bringing the students to realise that is where our food comes from.”

Animal rights activists and their allies complained the school was causing potential psychological damage to the children at the school and would burden them with guilt by slaughtering the pig.

Bernie Williams, executive producer of a new Charlotte’s Web film, fired off an e-mail to the school saying, in part,

I have worked with pigs over the past 11 months and I have so much respect for these animals. The bullboar sausages will soon be forgotten after the food fair, but the guilt of killing this pig which has been domesticated will last forever on those that have a conscience.

Meanwhile, Animal Liberation Victoria offered to provide legal assistance to any students who wanted to sue the school and the Education Department for causing “torment and distress.”

Sources:

Furore as Charlotte made into sausages. Channel Nine (Australia), July 24, 2005.

Plea to spare animals from sausage meat. The Courier (Asutralia), July 21, 2005.

Pig Domesticated Repeatedly Throughout Human History

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Scientists at the University of Durham recently published the results of their DNA analysis of pigs suggesting that pigs were domesticated independently at least 7 times throughout human history and in different parts of the world.

Lead researcher Keith Dobney said in a press release,

Many archaeologists have assumed the pig was domesticated in no more than two areas of the world, the Near East and the Far East, but our findings turn this theory on its head. Our study shows that domestication also occurred independently in Central Europe, Italy, Northern India, South East Asia and maybe even Island South East Asia. The spread of farming into these areas during the Neolithic seems to have kick-started local independent domestication of wild boar.

The first evidence of pig domestication occurs in both Eastern Turkey and China about 9,000 years ago. It was believed that from those two initial domestications that the domesticated pig then spread across the world through trade and immigration.

But the DNA evidence examined by Dobney’s team suggests that, instead, other pockets of human civilization domesticated the pig independently, accounting for the animal’s widespread domestication.

As Greger Larson, who collaborated on the research, put it,

Our data show domestication was not as rare as previously thought and that the question now is not “where were pigs domesticated?”, but rather “where were they not domesticated?” This forces us to reconsider our assumptions about early human history and the beginnings of domestication.

Dobney and Larson’s research was published in the March 11, 2005 edition of Science.

Sources:

Pigs domesticated ‘many times’. The BBC, March 11, 2005.

Pigs force rethink on human history. Press Release, University of Oxford, March 11, 2005.

Activists Angered by Researchers Plans to Test Stun Gun Safety on Pigs

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With the ongoing controversy in the United States over the safety of stun guns manufactured by Taser International, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to use an animal model with pigs to test whether or not illegal drugs may be playing a role in the high profile deaths of individuals who have been tasered.

According to the Associated Press, since 70 people have died in North American since 2001 after being shot by Tasers (though that’s a pretty useless statistic, since it does not give any indication of how frequently Tasers are used by police).

Taser International maintains its devices are safe for use on human beings. The media, including the Associated Press, make much of the fact that the Tasers pump out about 50,000 volts of electricity, but typically fail to note that this electricity is delivered with only 0.04 amps.

Fifty thousand volts is certainly going to be extremely painful, but its difficult to see how a mere 0.04 amps could cause the death of an otherwise healthy person. Generally, fatal electrocution is believed to require 0.1 to 0.2 amps in otherwise healthy people.

So one of the possibilities is that those being shocked and killed by Tasers share some other factor that it is increasing their vulnerability to low-amp shocks.

Enter University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher John Webster. Webster has received a two year $500,000 grant from the Justice Department to study whether or not cocaine might make people’s hearts susceptible go going into fibrillation even from the sort of low-amp shock present in a device like the Taser.

Webster plans to conduct experiments shocking 150-pound pigs with a device to simulate the effect of a Taser in a human being. Webster will use three groups of pigs, one that will be administered cocaine but not receive the shock; another that will not be administered cocaine but will receive the shock; and a third that will be administered both cocaine and the electrical shock.

Webster told the Associated Press,

If the hypothesis is correct that Tasers do not electrocute the heart, then why are people dying in custody after they have been shot by Tasers? The people on our team have hypotheses why that’s true and we intend to answer that question. Our goals is to save lives.

Of course activists, especially People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, were out in force urging calls and letters to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to stop the experiments.

But in doing so, PETA once again revealed its scientific illiteracy. As Webster mentions above, his group’s working hypothesis is that Tasers alone are not capable of causing the human heart to stop. Webster states that hypothesis in his grant documents, which leads PETA to conclude,

But rather than designing a study that would utilize information available from humans who have been stunned with Tasers, they elected to revert to cruel and antiquated tests on animals. John Webster was the perfect person to satisfy their safety claims, as he is already convinced that Tasers do not cause fatal cardiac arrest.

In another press release, PETA quotes from Taser critic James Angelo Ruggieri, who claims that,

The information conveyed in many other of Dr. Webster’s slides is also problematic. For instance, in one slide, Dr. Webster asks the question:

“Is 50,000 volts from the Taser the problem?”

Dr. Webster then answers his own question:

“No … the current, time duration and charge are too small to cause electrocution of the heart.”

This unsupported conclusion serves to undermine his hypothesis and appears to be an attempt to predetermine the outcome of future experiments Dr. Webster proposes to undertake–demonstrating an unprofessional research bias and violating the basic precepts of equipoise.

Wow, give that man a Nobel Prize. Ruggieri and PETA have single-handedly reduced the work that scientists will have to carry out by denying that stating or testing a hypothesis is a necessary part of scientific research. Instead, scientists from now on will simply make bald assertions without any sort of evidence or investigation — a lot like PETA and Ruggieri already do.

Perhaps someday Ruggieri will bother to learn why real scientists like Webster perform experiments with control groups and varying levels of blindedness.

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Eric Sandgren, who heads the university’s animal use committee, told the Associated Press,

I think this is an outstanding example of one of those questions that can only be answered using animals. Boy, there’s been a lot of deaths frmo this. If the altenrative is to go back to using bullets, let’s find out how to make this safe.

Sources:

Professor to test stun gun theories on pigs. Ryan Foley, Associated Press, March 28, 2005.

UW-Madison and John Webster—a Lethal Combination. Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Undated.

He Wants to Do What? Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Undated.

Study Suggests It May Be Possible to Transplant Animal Embryonic Stem Cells to Grow New Human Organs

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In a study published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science published the results of their experiments in implanting embyronic stem cells from pigs into mice.

The researchers wanted to establish at what point it was best to implant the embryonic stem cells, so it took stem cells from varying stages of development of the pig embryo, and implanted them in the liver, pancreas and lungs of immune-deficient mice.

The researchers discovered that transplanting embyronic stem cells at too early or too late a stage would not result in new cell growth, but that if transplanted during the correct window of opportunity, the pig stem cells did lead to cell growth in the mice. Dr. Bernard Herring, at the Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota, told National Geographic News,

What he [lead researcher Yair Reisner] has shown is that there’s a window of opportunity . If you obtain this tissue at a very defined point in time, then you can see development into islets [portions of the pancreas that secrete hormones like insulin] without risks such as teratoma formation. That’s clearly something that makes us feel very strongly that this could be a real opportunity, one that can be translated into tangible benefits much faster than other technologies.

In a statement about the research, Reisner said,

Considering the ethical issues associated with human embryonic stem cells or with precursor tissue obtained from human abortions, we believe that the use of embryonic pig tissue could afford a more simple solution to the shortage of organs.

This finding helps explain, in part, why previous efforts to transplant pig embryonic stem cells failed, since previous research had harvested the cells at a much later gestational age than what Reisner’s study found was optimal.

Of course there are still a number of major hurdles to overcome before such technologies could be used in human beings even if researchers figure out how to make embryonic stem cells produce cells in human beings, including producing pigs free of viruses that could possibly infect human beings and avoiding an immune response to the transplant of such cells.

Sources:

Pig Stem Cells to Be Used to Grow Human Organs? Stefan Lovgren, National Geographic News, February 15, 2005.

New Organs Could Come from Pig Embryos – Study. Reuters, February 14, 2005.

Some Activists Unhappy with HSUS' Use of Dead Pigs in Bear Experiments

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The Humane Society of the United States is making some animal rights activist unhappy with an otherwise animal rights-style project.

The HSUS has reached agreements with Six Flags Wild Safari in New Jersey to carry out an experiment in using contraception rather than hunting to control bear populations. The HSUS will do two separate tests, one in which it will inject female bears with PZP and another where it will administer a chemical castration compound, Neutrosol, to male bears.

It is the PZP experiment that had New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance activist Joe Miele complaining in a post to AR-NEWS that “HSUS [is] exploiting pigs to save bears.” When injected into bears, PZP causes an immune system reaction that has a byproduct of preventing sperm from fertilizing a female’s eggs. PZP is obtained by taking tissue from dead pigs.

Vegan birth control it ain’t. Presumably it was undertaken on one of the days of the week when HSUS doesn’t oppose animal research.

Source:

Bear contraception to be tested at Six Flags. Brian Murray, New Jersey Star-Ledger, October 8, 2004.

Uncaged Campaigns Upset Over Korean Xenotransplantation Plan

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Earlier this month the Associated Press reported that South Korea was preparing to spend $73 million to kick start an effort to mass produce organs for transplant from pigs into human beings. The South Korean project will included 90 researchers and aims to produce pigs whose organs can be transplanted into human beings by 2010.

Dan Lyons of Uncaged Campaigns quickly put out a press release opposing the plan under the headline, “Korean pig organ transplant plans sparks international alarm.” From reading the press release, however, the “international alarm” appears to be limited to Lyons perhaps being outraged about it while on an intercontinental flight.

In the press release, Lyons is quoted as saying,

Pig-to-primate organ transplant experimentation has caused controversy across Europe and North America because of the appalling cruelty involved and the danger of creating a new viral epidemic. With South KoreaÂ’s terrible animal welfare reputation – symbolised by dog eating – and the recent lethal SARS outbreak in the Far East, this announcement will ring alarm bells around the world.

What is the point of Britain refusing to allow cross-species transplants if they take place in countries with no regulation? Viruses donÂ’t need passports.

Well, it should ring alarm bells in Great Britain — if it remains a hostile venue for animal research, groundbreaking work such as on xenotransplantation will simply shift to Asia, leaving the UK at risk of falling permanently behind in biosciences research.

As far as pig-to-primate organ transplant experimentation causing controversy, at least in North America the only group that seems to really find this controversial are animal rights activists. Of course, by that standard the diet of 98 percent of North Americans “has caused controversy.”

Lyons continues,

Xenotransplantation is more like bioalchemy than biotechnology. Drug companies have sacrificed tens of millions of pounds and tens of thousands of innocent animals, only to find that the whole idea is a cruel deception. With 180 million years of evolution separating pigs from humans, and advances in stem cell technology and other alternatives, we urge the South Koreans to consider whether this is really a good investment.

Lyons, of course, neglects to mention that those advances in stem cell technology are do in large measure thanks to exactly the sort of basic animal research that Uncaged Campaigns opposes. Whether or not xenotransplantation will ever be a viable alternative to human organ transplants remains to be seen, but it is certainly much more likely to happen than seeing Lyons and his compatriots actually maintain a consistent, truthful position about animal research.

Source:

Korea to mass-produce pig organs for human transplants. Associated Press, June 1, 2004.