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Maddie's Fund - Using Data to Make Austin a No-Kill City - 0 views

  • I founded a low-cost and free spay/neuter clinic, Emancipet, in 1999.
  • The thought was to decrease the number animals entering the shelter through fewer births in the community so fewer would have to be euthanized in the shelter for lack of space.
  • By 2008 and after over 60,000 spay/neuter surgeries, I had expected to see a bigger reduction in city shelter intake numbers.
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  • Although there was an initial decrease in euthanasia from 85% to 50% between 1999 and 2001, after 2001 the AAC (the only open admission shelter in Austin, Texas) consistently took in over 23,000 animals and euthanized an average of 50 - 55% of the animals admitted each year.
  • In fact, AAC euthanized over 14,000 animals in 2007, which was a decade record and showed me that my efforts were not decreasing shelter intake or euthanasia like I had hoped.
  • The other piece of data that was eye-opening to me in 2008 was that the number of AAC live outcomes stayed static at 10,000 per year, year after year, even after budgetary increases.
  • By then, the City of Austin and the Austin nonprofit animal welfare partners were providing substantial community services for spaying, neutering, vaccinations, and wellness clinics; however, the city's live releases had not changed at all in spite of the wealth of community resources that were geared towards lowering euthanasia.
  • It was clear that the city had a system that was capable of producing no more than 10,000 live outcomes per year, regardless of intake numbers, which meant that euthanasia only fluctuated when intake numbers fluctuated. If intake went up, euthanasia went up. If intake went down, euthanasia went down.
  • For years, the city had been measuring "inputs" for city performance standards such as the number of spay/neuters performed, the number of microchips placed, the number of rabies vaccines given; and with the large amounts of city and donor funds going into free and low-cost spay/neuter, it appeared to politicians and foundations from a performance measure standpoint that Austin was at the top of its game.
  • The thing that really struck me was that although "outputs" such as euthanasia, adoption, return to owner, and transfers were being documented and measured, decisions to directly impact those numbers were not being driven by their measurement. Funds were never requested to directly improve live outcomes and city staff was not being directed to strive for higher live outcome numbers. In fact, there was no live outcome improvements projected for at least the five years after 2007 and that was apparent as plans for capacity in building a new shelter got underway.
  • It bothered me that we had no real conclusive studies that showed the impact of spay/neuter on euthanasia in the shelter
  • and that the labors of all my work were not something I could see an impact from in a decade.
  • I felt strongly that there had to be a way to save more lives at the shelter and a more direct way to measure the work that provides that impact.
  • If it takes longer than a decade to see an impact at the shelter euthanasia level through spay/neuter, the work can never be tweaked to have a bigger impact.
  • There had to be a more direct method to save lives that could be measured month-to-month and tweaked quickly if the desired effect is not seen.
  • It appeared that a new and different kind of work needed to be created to really get measurable results on euthanasia figures since it also appeared that all current resources were operating at their max.
  • It was apparent to me that I needed to change what I was doing to effect faster change in the community.
  • The American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) Demographic Sourcebook dispelled my belief that there were not enough homes.
  • In the Greater Austin Area, AVMA calculates that at least 75,000 homes take in a pet less than one year old each year, and the ASPCA has reported that only 20 - 25% come from shelters and rescues. We only had to find homes for up to 14,000 pets per year.
  • This seemed very doable when 75,000 homes are open each year for incoming pets.
  • Using Data to Identify and Fill in the Gaps
  • Using Data to Re-Assess and Fine-Tune Programs
  • The second strategy
  • Using Data to Develop Programs: Filling the Gaps
  • The first strategy
  • the medical help that I provided did not help the sheltered animals leave alive in any larger numbers.
  • off-site adoption programs
  • These were animals with mange or kennel cough, minor behavior issues like being scared, or animals with minor injuries. APA created a large-scale foster program to provide short-term foster for these animals as they overcame their minor problems.
  • neonatal nursery with all the supplies needed for around-the-clock kitten care
  • again built up a large-scale medical foster base for all the injured and ill animals.
  • large breed dogs with behavior problems.
  • The Austin community's demand for adopting a pet is higher than the supply from AAC
  • By bringing in animals from other shelters, APA is able to prevent adopters from becoming pet store pet buyers and thus save a whole lot more lives.
  • adult large breed dogs with behavior issues are adopted each year because of improved customer service,
  • pet-matching practices,
  • behavior modification
  • APA rescued over 5,000 animals last year. No cat, kitten, small breed dog, puppy of any breed, or large breed friendly dog, including pit bulls, died in the City of Austin in 2011 simply because it didn't have a home.
  • increase the number of adoption venues
  • additional exposure.
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ASPCA Funds Poultry Production Operation; Birds treated "with dignity and compassion" s... - 0 views

  • The Farm Forward board chair, Steven J. Gross, is father of University of San Diego theology professor Aaron Gross, who founded Farm Forward in 2007 and is chief executive officer. For approximately 10 years, 1998-2007, Friedrich and Steven J. Gross represented PETA in a variety of farm animal advocacy campaigns.
  • the lack of heritage breed birds is a significant barrier to the development of high-welfare poultry rearing.
  • Suzanne never mentioned that she and the ASPCA had already arranged to help finance a poultry operation and promote chicken and turkey consumption.
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  • Responded Humane Farming Association founder Brad Miller, “It is simply delusional to think that getting humane organizations into the business of promoting meat from heritage breed chickens will result in even the slightest reduction of animal suffering. The ASPCA decision to fund the commercial production of chickens for meat raises a number of troubling issues,” Miller continued. “Beyond the obvious ethical issues from the animals’ standpoint, there is also the matter of using charitable dollars to further the commercial interests of a privately owned, profit-driven poultry company. This is just the latest,” Miller charged, “in a growing trend on the part of several major animal organizations to, in effect, merge with the livestock industry.” Miller noted that Farm Forward has previously promoted a variety of federal and state legislation that HFA regarded as more likely to entrench the status quo in animal agriculture than to bring about meaningful change.
  • “A commercial animal production operation is not an alternative to factory farming, but an extension of it. In this instance, chickens and turkeys are being mass-produced in mechanical hatchery incubators, raised motherless for human consumption by the thousands, and slaughtered, i.e., factory farmed.
  • “In addition to cruelty and commodification of animals being falsely represented as ‘humane,’ ‘compassionate,’ ‘anti-factory farming,’ etcetera,” Davis added, “is that these relatively smaller farms seek to grow and expand. Regardless of what size they are, they do not reduce the amount of resources needed to raise and slaughter animals
  • “It is unethical for an ‘animal welfare’ organization,” Davis concluded, “to suggest to the public that millions and billions of people can continue to eat the same number of animals, as long as these animals are raised ‘humanely’ on non-factory farms. Humans will never set aside hundreds of millions or billions of acres of land to accommodate billions of animals living ‘free range,’ yet this is the false prospect being offered to a public that wants to believe that incompatible desires and realities can be reconciled.”
  • If you think it is wrong for the ASPCA to use charitable donations to fund and promote poultry slaughter, expand poultry breeding and hatchery facilities and pretend that a factory farm is Not a factory farm, while doing NOTHING to promote genuine compassion and respect for these birds,
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Raising the bar - 0 views

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    "With the November election drawing near, a coalition of animal welfare groups is determined to help pass the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, which would improve the lives of dogs in commercial breeding operations in Missouri and have a resounding effect on the puppy mill industry throughout the country.
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Pet Overpopulation, Puppy Mills, and Lessons from Proposition B : Nathan J Winograd - 0 views

  • To claim to want to shut down puppy mills, but to ignore or fight reform efforts to stop shelter neglect, abuse, and killing (as groups like HSUS and PETA do) is not only ethically inconsistent, it is morally bankrupt.
  • Neglect is neglect, abuse is abuse, killing is killing regardless of by whose hand that neglect, abuse, and killing is done.
  • To look the other way at one because that neglect, abuse, and killing is done by “friends,” “colleagues,” or simply because the perpetrators call themselves a “humane society” is indefensible.
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  • These organizations have built a dependency model where you give them money and they promise to take care of things, rather than empowering the grassroots to actually go out and solve the problem.
  • community education and protest
  • make it easy for people to do the right thing, and they will
  • we must expose these organizations for what they really are
    • pepa garcía
       
      cómo es en chile? hay informes sobre las condiciones etc. de los criaderos de perros?
  • legislation that prohibits puppy mill dogs from being sold either at pet stores or online,
  • , when we work to reform local shelters, we are also working to impact the puppy mill trade.
  • When shelters turn away good homes because of poor customer service or arbitrary rules, we fuel the pet shop trade
  • when shelters go head to head with the competition, they win.
  • uring the 1990s, at the height of its adoption success and popularity, the San Francisco SPCA had seven offsite adoption locations throughout the city seven days a week. Consequently, the number of pet stores which sold puppies was reduced to zero.
  • T]he more animals dying in a given community (which traditionalists claim means lack of homes), the greater number of pet stores that sell dogs and cats (which shows homes readily available). Generally, pet stores succeed when a shelter is not meeting market demand or competing effectively, and because animal lovers do not want to go into a shelter that kills the vast majority of the animals…
  • we can file civil lawsuits and push for criminal prosecution.
  • we can attempt to regulate and/or eliminate puppy mills directly through legislation, as several states have done
  • severe lack of state inspectors
  • Protest, educate, litigate, legislate, push for enforcement, and reform the shelter. And oh yeah, don’t buy from a pet store, sign my pledge, and send me money. (Just kidding.)
  • the bill will require commercial breeders to provide each dog with sufficient food and clean water, necessary veterinary care, housing, sufficient space, regular exercise, and limits on how many times per year a dog can be bred.
  • It continues the breeding, buying, and selling of dogs.
  • It specifically excludes dogs in animal research labs. It excludes breeding operations who sell “hunting dogs.” And it excludes animal shelters
  • the opposition is using the support of groups like the Humane Society of the United States to claim this is part of a radical animal rights agenda.
  • Compromises must often be made to achieve piecemeal success which can be built on over time.
  • For example, I would support laws banning the killing of animals in shelters altogether. But given tremendous opposition from the shelter killing industry, and the support of that industry by powerful groups like (ironically) the Humane Society of the United States, the ASPCA, and Best Friends, local and state governments are not willing to do that at this time in history, so I work on legislation like the Hayden Law and Assembly Member Micah Kellner’s rescue access bill in New York State to reduce the number killed. T
  • Historically, HSUS has a disturbing pattern of raising money on an issue, and immediately moving on, just as they did when they raised $30 million on Hurricane Katrina rescue, spent $4 million, shipped the animals off to kill shelters, announced “Mission: Accomplished,” and went  home $26 million richer with two criminal investigations on their fundraising practices in their wake.
  • we need local and other national groups to act less like simpleton cheerleaders of HSUS and more like what they should be—groups whose mission is to advocate for dogs.
  • HSUS taking some of its $110 million annual budget (of which only ½ of one percent goes to shelters)
  • ASPCA taking some of its $120 million in annual revenues,
  • Best Friends taking some of its $40 million per year it takes in to rescue only 600 animals per year (at a whopping $70,000 each
  • If HSUS and others fully commit resources and energy into creating a safety net for dogs currently in puppy mills who will be discarded when Proposition B passes, any potential downsides resulting from this legislation would be eliminated.
  • In truth, I believe people are ready for laws banning puppy mills altogether and that would make sense, so long as we do not inadvertently open up markets to puppy mills from places like China, where medieval levels of barbarity would likely be the norm and they would remain out of regulatory reach.
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Do You Wear Wool? - 0 views

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    Shearing is generally seen as an innocuous procedure, like getting a haircut, even as a kindness by humans who relieve the sheep of those hot, heavy fleeces. It may come as a surprise to learn that wild sheep shed their wool naturally, and that it is only through selective breeding that farmed sheep have become dependent on humans for such a basic aspect of their welfare. Instead of growing a thick coat for winter and shedding it in summer as they would do in nature, they are now subject to the vagaries of wool prices and the schedules of farmers, leaving them vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. An estimated one million sheep die in the 30 days after shearing. Following the deaths from hypothermia of 1200 sheep near Bairnsdale in April 2004, a livestock manager advised, with a noted lack of concern, that "it was not unusual for freshly shorn sheep to die in the cold weather". Similarly, a British industry spokesman remarks enthusiastically that "winter shearing is the future of sheep farming. You take their coats off, they have to eat more to keep warm. You end up with a better meat-to-bone-and-fat ratio."
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What's a Coonhound? Three new dog breeds announced - TODAY Pets & Animals - TODAY.com - 0 views

  • AKC recognition benefits families who are choosing a pet. “You can get a dog that has specific qualities that are going to work with your family,” Duffney said. “That’s the great thing about a purebred dog — there’s one for everyone.”
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    AKC recognition benefits families who are choosing a pet. "You can get a dog that has specific qualities that are going to work with your family," Duffney said. "That's the great thing about a purebred dog - there's one for everyone."
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The Myth of Sustainable Meat - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.
  • Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows.
  • If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs).
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  • Advocates of small-scale, nonindustrial alternatives say their choice is at least more natural. Again, this is a dubious claim. Many farmers who raise chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing well: fatten quickly in confinement.
  • In essence, what we see as natural doesn’t necessarily conform to what is natural from the animals’ perspectives.
  • confinement pays
  • confinement pays.
  • These businesses — no matter how virtuous in intention — would gradually seek a larger market share, cutting corners, increasing stocking density and aiming to fatten animals faster than competitors could.
  • Barring the strictest regulations, it wouldn’t take long for production systems to scale back up to where they started.
  • advocates of alternative systems make one undeniably important point about the practice called “rotational grazing” or “holistic farming”: the soil absorbs the nutrients from the animals’ manure, allowing grass and other crops to grow without the addition of synthetic fertilizer.
  • In other words, raising animals is not only sustainable, but required.
  • employs chickens to enrich his cows’ grazing lands with nutrients.
  • he feeds his chickens with tens of thousands of pounds a year of imported corn and soy feed
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The Politics of Pet Dogs and Kennel Crates | Psychology Today - 0 views

  • Apparently, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recently began an ad campaign condemning the use of crates for dogs, under any circumstances. Thus a recent half page ad in the Wall Street Journal has the heading "Be an Angel for Animals" and goes on to say "Don't ever crate or chain them."
  • "No matter what a pet shop owner or dog trainer might say, a dog crate is just a box with holes in it, and putting dogs in crates is just a way to ignore and warehouse them until you get around to taking care of them properly."
  • PETA is not against the practice of crating, but it is actually against the practice of pet ownership.
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  • Thus they state "we believe that it would have been in the animals' best interests if the institution of 'pet keeping'-i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as 'pets'-never existed."  They also go on to say, "This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering".
  • The crux of their argument against pet keeping seems to be that we are "depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. They are restricted to human homes, where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to." I must admit that I found this to be particularly puzzling and unsatisfying. My wife and I have raised five children, and have nine grandchildren, and when they were young they were taught to obey simple commands and requests as part of their socialization. Our children were only given the opportunity to eat and drink according to our scheduling, and certainly were not allowed to urinate anytime and anywhere that they chose during the period of their toilet training. We certainly did not feel that we were engaging in child abuse by utilizing these basic child-rearing practices. To treat a dog in much the same way that we treat our own children, including providing the love and support that they need, does not appear to me to constitute animal abuse, or an argument against the keeping of pets.
  • It seems to me that their actual desire for banning crating is that in so doing they would make keeping dogs in the house more difficult and the housebreaking of puppies less reliable.
  • This advances their anti-pet agenda by taking away some of the pleasure of pet keeping and in that way it would further their programme aimed at denying us the companionship of our dogs and cats.
  • Tying a dog out for a few minutes on a shopping trip does not constitute dog abuse, but legislating against such a common practice could discourage people from having dogs since it would mean they could not take their pets with them when they move around town. This appears to be the kind of thing that PETA really wants to advance— to bring about an end to the keeping of dogs and cats as pets—not the protection of animals.
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Interview with PETA Official Bruce Friedrich - The Stanford Progressive - 0 views

  • That's an interesting eventual philosophical discussion. Obviously, with animals rights we don't mean the same as human rights like liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Attempting to figure out precisely how one would apply those as inalienable rights to animals is going to be very difficult. What PETA has focused on and what the animal rights movement has focused on is the right of animals not to be eaten, worn, or experimented on (unless it is in their own best interest—similar to experiments which involve human beings), and not to be used as a mean of human amusement. And there are going to be some grey areas. One of the big grey areas right now is the fact that about 8 million animals are dropped off at shelters every year but there are only homes for about 4 million of them. So what do you do with the other 4 million animals? We know that if they were turned loose on the streets most would die horrible deaths. There aren't old feral cats, and thus, right now, until we can create a world in which people are not breeding animals and selling animals, in which everyone is going to a shelter to adopt an animal, it is in those animals best interest to be humanely euthanized. So there are some grey areas, there are some dicey discussions to be had, but at the end of the day eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals—those are pretty easy philosophical and scientific discussions to have.
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