vegansaurus!

Sign the petition, volunteer, adopt, and donate to help the 50,000 chickens left to starve!  »

The fight to save the rescued hens from Stanislaus County continues. This is the largest ever farmed animal rescue in the United Sates. Conditions were terrible but people were able to help some of the birds!:

“When we arrived on the scene outside the abandoned egg farm, I was horrified at the suffering of the chickens happening in front of me, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the cruelty,” said Anne Martin, Harvest Home board member. “By the next morning, we had partnered with sanctuaries, volunteers from across Northern California, and thousands of supporters following the rescue of these chickens. Together, we were able to save 4,460 hens who will never again suffer the severe confinement of an egg farm, and from this time forward, will know only human kindness.”

The picture at the top is by Marji from Animal Place. This hen has never seen grass or felt the sun, she is about to take her first step outside! Marji says they are still in need of donations but also, they are in desperate need of volunteers. So if you are able, go volunteer with the rescue chickens!

If you want to volunteer, email marji@animalplace.org or call her at 530-798-5114. To donate, click here! 

The hens will be up for adoption within the next two weeks. If you want to adopt one, fill out the application at www.animalplace.org.

Finally—and I know you can all do this!—sign the petition started by Harvest Home, ”calling on the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute A&L Poultry’s Andy Keung Cheung for willfully starving 50,000 chickens.” Do it!

Update on the 50,000 chickens left to starve, many rescued need your help!  »

One of the rescued hens. You can see more pictures of the rescue on Flickr.

We got an update from Marji at Animal Place:

We actually took out 4,610 hens total - more than 3,000 are currently at our Rescue Ranch facility. The hens were released into Animal Place and Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary custody. They are slowly recovering…we could really use help w/ this rescue. This is the largest and most expensive rescue we have ever undertaken.

Please donate if you can! So sad! They need our help!

Update on the 50,000 chickens left to starve in California  »

The news site wouldn’t let me embed their video…come join us in the 21st century, KTVU! This is a still though—they can’t stop my screengrabbing! Can’t stop won’t stop.

Here’s an update on the 50,000 chickens that were left for dead in Stanislaus County. Apparently, while most of the 50,000 chickens were euthanized because of their poor condition or they were already dead when rescuers got there, 500 chickens have been rescued. Still, 2000 chickens have to stay over night without food again. I’m not sure if that means they are being rescued tomorrow or just that they definitely aren’t being rescued tonight. 

A petition has been started on Care2 to let the shelters rescue the surviving chickens. It takes a minute to sign and certainly can’t hurt the situation! Happy petitioning. 

Big news: Bon Appétit is ditching gestation crates, battery cages  »

Sweet rescued egg-laying hens at Animal Place. Can’t see the video? Watch it at Vegansaurus.com!

I’ve never heard of Bon Appétit, I thought it was a magazine. But apparently it’s a cafe college food chain thing? With 400 locations. I checked out the site—it looks pretty good. But! That’s not my point! The important news is that Bon Appétit is planning to phase out suppliers that use gestation crates for pigs and battery cages for hens. Instead they want to get meat from “higher-welfare group housing systems” and eggs from cage-free farms. They are also going to ditch foie gras and veal from confined sheep.

They are pretty serious about it; From their site:

Bon Appétit will continue to work with the most responsible meat and poultry producers to pursue Animal Welfare Approved, Food Alliance, Humane Farm Animal Care or Global Animal Partnership certification of their animal welfare practices. These four programs have standards that not only prohibit such cruel practices as gestation crates and battery cages, but also require animals to be allowed to engage in their natural behaviors.

So it’s not just adding a few inches to their cages.

Fedele Bauccio, a cofounder of Bon Appétit, seems like an interesting dude:

“I have never forgotten the terrible things I saw when touring factory farms,” said Fedele Bauccio, cofounder and CEO of Bon Appétit Management Company. From 2006 to 2008 Bauccio served on the prestigious Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which issued a landmark report calling for an end to gestation crate, battery cage, and veal crate confinement of farm animals.

“We’ve been asking the industry to do the right thing, but we can’t wait anymore,” Bauccio said. “We have to send the message that these practices are unacceptable. If the supply doesn’t catch up by our deadline, we’ll do what we have to — even if that means cutting back on bacon.”

Cutting back on bacon?! That’s un-American!

The Humane Society is on board with kudos from Wayne Pacelle himself. I know we will get some people who will call this “happy meat” and dismiss these changes; Of course ultimately, I want all the animals to be free, but in the meantime, this is going to mean a lot to that chicken who would otherwise be crushed to death on the bottom of a battery cage.

“Matrix” chicken farms are creepy art, not reality  »

Here’s a creepy idea: Given that modern chicken farming causes so much pain, why not just lobotomize the things and turn them into unconscious protein-growing machines, à la Matrix? Wired posted about it last week, a reader told us about it, and we kinda freaked out here in the back room. How is that better than going vegan?! That’s so f-ed up!

Then we chilled out. Because as the savviest (nerdiest) of nerds such as myself might notice, Wired’s post is on the mag’s culture blog, not on any of its science pages. Deep breaths, vegans. This ain’t real; this is an architecture student’s creation for a design show. ART. It’s supposed to make you think, not actually happen. And people thinking about the logical extension of how their food is currently produced? I’d call that good news all around.

Read a whole big long interview with the artist if you’re so inclined. You’ll notice dude’s not a saint—he says he could never go vegan, which is a ridiculous thing to say—but I think he’s clever and provocative and good news in general. Red pills for all!

Sponsor a dear chicken this Valentine’s Day! They need love too!  »

Harvest Home Sanctuary is having a sponsor-a-thon RIGHT NOW until Valentine’s Day! For $15, you can sponsor a sweet rescue chicken for one month! Select recurring payments to sponsor your pal every month! I’m partial to Little Wayne above (nickname: Pretty Ricky!) who was rescued from a hoarder last year. I just donated my $15 for Pretty Ricky and you can too!

From Harvest Home:

Among the 200 animals living at Harvest Home, 100 chickens call the sanctuary home. Our goal for this campaign is to find a sponsor for each chicken by Valentine’s Day. 

For just $15 a month, you can sponsor a rescued hen or rooster. Sponsorships make marvelous gifts for your animal-loving family and friends. You can make a meaningful impact in the life of one of our adorable birds this year.

Click here to donate! Show your love and compassion this V-Day. 

Paul Shapiro presents: Animal News You Can Use!  »

It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! Yay!

First, some good news: A bill (H.R. 3798) was introduced in the Congress this week to ban barren battery cages for laying hens, ban starvation molting, require egg producers to label “eggs from caged hens” on their cartons, and more.  You can see a joint statement from major animal protection organizations on why they support this bill, and a joint statement from nearly all of the agribusiness trade groups on why they oppose it. Who would you side with?

I was on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday talking about the above effort to help laying hens. Check it out.

Some bad news: The U.S. Supreme Court this week struck down portions of a law passed in California shortly after HSUS’s landmark Hallmark/Westland slaughter plant investigation (which led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history). While federal regulations still prohibit the slaughter of adult downer cattle for human consumption, the parts of California’s law prohibiting slaughtering other downer animals are no longer in effect.

Back to good news: Get a coffin, since Florida’s “ag-gag” legislation is now officially dead. However, Iowa is still debating its whistle-blower suppression bill, and similar bills are still pending in other states.

Time has a compelling online video about undercover investigations and these ag-gag bills that you won’t want to miss.

Video of the week: Ever try to teach a pig to sit? Here you go.