The Impossible Burger with fries available at all Red Robin locations. On Saturday night, Jennifer and I went to Red Robin, a nationwide chain, for the first time ever. Endless soda refills, bottomless fries, a roll of paper towels on every table, music playing, walls decorated with images that scream Americana (Einstein sticking out his tongue; a woman on the boardwalk rollerskating while holding a boombox), and families with children spilling their cokes and falling…
Among the dead are the young and healthy kittens pictured above. Donations to PETA are being used to round-up healthy kittens to be killed. Norfolk, VA, taxpayers subsidize the effort, paying for the barbiturates used to poison them through a fatal overdose. According to records obtained under the Public Records Act, the vast majority of kittens rounded up by PETA employees in 2018 and delivered to the Norfolk, VA, pound — nearly seven out of…
A few weeks ago, National Park Service biologists in the Santa Monica Mountains tracked a mountain lion’s GPS collar after it sent out “a mortality signal.” They found the mountain lion, dubbed P-47, dead. P-47 weighed 150 pounds, the largest and most robust of any in the region. He was only three years old. What killed him? Or more accurately, who killed him? According to a local ranger, A necropsy revealed that he may have…
Is it ethical to keep pets? That is the question a sociologist at the University of Kent in England is asking. Her answer is “No.” Though Professor Wrenn admits that “we love them, care for them, celebrate their birthdays and mourn them when they pass,” she argues that, “The institution of pet-keeping is fundamentally unjust as it involves the manipulation of animals’ bodies, behaviours and emotional lives.” She notes that one of the problems is…
I’m sorry for this photo. I really am. But this is from The New York Times which is cheerleading an Australian slaughter of up to 2,000,000 cats by peddling it as a scientifically-based public policy worth pursuing, dismissing the concerns of ethical people all over the world as misguided and “emotional.” They got it backwards. The piece, replete with photos of cats being gutted, includes the following celebration of killing: “Long after midnight, as the…
When it comes to his city’s most vulnerable dogs and cats, the reality doesn’t match Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s rhetoric about his rehabilitation of South Bend, IN. There’s simply no excuse for killing dogs and cats in 2019, especially after seven years at the helm as mayor. There’s an old Ghandi saw that is almost certainly apocryphal. A mother brings her young son to Ghandi and asks him to tell her kid to stop eating so…
PETA recently argued in Long Beach, as they have elsewhere, against shelter reform and the pursuit of a No Kill city. They claimed that the only goal worth pursuing is a “no birth” nation. Here’s why that argument is simply not true and what is behind the deceptive claim. Spay/neuter and limiting breeding are important for all kinds of reasons, which is why sterilization is a core program of the No Kill Equation model of…
Two dogs are dead this week because of the gross indifference and incompetence of the pound staff in Hillsborough County, Florida. Clyde died in what was described by a local veterinarian as a “very painful event.” Clyde ate a blanket, but for six days, pound staff did nothing while the blanket worked its way into the dog’s intestines. “It had tore his intestines apart.” Similarly, Lola dog bled to death because staff once again ignored…
Two weeks ago, I wrote about a nationwide tour by Roger Haston of PetSmart Charities. Despite being called “The Future of Animal Welfare,” PetSmart Charities harkens back to the days when killing was central to sheltering, especially of dogs Haston says no one wants and calls “blocky-headed whatevers” (but which most people label “pit bulls”). The presentation was entirely consistent with PetSmart policy, which prohibits “pit bulls” from playgroups and other services because of the…
This week, we’re celebrating my dad’s birthday. It’s a special one, though he will insist we not make a fuss. He was born in April of 1919, before the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending the Great War (WWI). In fact, he was born before women could vote, before Talkies at the movies, before the invention of television, the discovery of antibiotics, the creation of state highways, indeed before the vast majority of U.S. cities…