For the Month of June 2009

Editor's Note: Thank you all so much for your patience last month during my absence from work and the temporary suspension of The Animals Voice's online newsletter. But now it's June and it's back — and this one is full of all kinds of stuff because I had an extra month to catch up on. -Laura Moretti, Founder, The Animals Voice

And a very special thank you to those of you who continue to donate to The Animals Voice and keep it online and thriving as we broaden the scope of our work.

To visit The Animals Voice home page, click here.

CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS

June 27-29: Let Live Northwest Animal Rights Conference (Portland, OR)
Through an open, respectful, and friendly environment this conference will provide an opportunity for attendees to learn skills and strategies to become better advocates for the animals, no matter ones experience level in activism...

July 4: Animal Acres 4th of July Pignic (Acton, CA)
Come celebrate a festive Fourth at Animal Acres! Join us for our annual pignic for farm tours, face-painting, delicious picnic food and old-fashioned field games...

July 13-18: Minding Animals Conference (Newcastle, Australia)
The 2009 International Academic & Community Conference on Animals & Society, a transdisciplinary conference exploring the interrelationships between animals and society...

July 16-20: Animal Rights 2009 National Conference (Los Angeles)
World’s largest and oldest animal rights conference; 100 sessions, including plenaries, workshops, raps, reports; 90 speakers from 60 animal protection groups in 9 countries...

July 24-27: Taking Action for Animals Conference (Washington, DC)
Learn how to plan effective campaigns, walk the halls of Congress to lobby your federal legislators on animal protection issues, and hear from speakers...

MORE CALENDAR EVENTS

IN MEMORIAM
Les Stewart
"Dr. Leslie Stewart was one of the most loyal, hard core animal activist I have ever met. He was well known for (the kick that was heard around the world) kicking in the doors at the vivarium of the UCLA Brain Research Institute earning him the nickname 'Lead Foot Les'..."

FEATURED ACTION ALERTS & CAMPAIGNS

Tell Sprint Nextel Corporation to Stop Exploiting Chimpanzees
To train great apes, trainers forcibly remove infants from their mothers. These babies are punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks and fists as part of the training process to ensure that they perform correctly in the fewest takes possible while on set. Great apes can live to be more than 60 years old, but at around 8 years of age, they become too powerful to be safely handled... MORE

Live Dogs Mutilated and Abused in OSU Laboratory
For the past 27 years, Ohio State University (OSU) experimenter George Billman has used taxpayer dollars to cut dogs open and induce heart attacks in them. He inserts a cuff around an artery, sews the dogs back up, then forces the dogs to run on a treadmill. He then tightens the cuff, causing a coronary artery occlusion... MORE

FEATURED PETITIONS

Stop Live Skinning of Cats and Dogs
Millions of cats and dogs are bred in inhumane conditions and sold to markets for their meat, or skinned (sometimes not completely unconscious) for their fur. The methods at which these animals are slaughtered are cruel and must be stopped immediately... MORE

"No Great Apes in Entertainment" Pledge
"As a leader in our industry, our organization pledges not to use live great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans or bonobos) in connection with any of our products or services or for advertising, entertainment or any other purpose..." MORE

FEATURED LEGAL ISSUES & LEGISLATION, ETC.

California's AB 241: The Responsible Breeder Act of 2009
AB 241 is designed to crack down on puppy mills in California; it passed the full California Assembly by a vote of 60 to 14 on Thursday May 21, more than a 4 to 1 margin. For more information, contact Social Compassion in Legislation and subscribe to its newsletter... MORE

Urge California Lawmakers Not to Make Sheltered Dogs and Cats Victims of Budget Crisis
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has again proposed to suspend the "animal adoption mandate," which would reduce the holding period for stray dogs and cats in the state's municipal animal shelters by three days... MORE

Northern Rockies Gray Wolf Delisting Challenge 200
Challenge against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's April 2009 decision to delist the northern Rockies wolf population, thus removing their protections under the Endangered Species Act and relinquishing management to the states of Idaho and Montana... MORE

California's SB 250 Passes Senate, Moves to Assembly
SB 250 provides a reasonable, fiscally responsible step towards reducing pet overpopulation in California. The bill simply requires that dogs be spayed or neutered unless their owner/guardian obtains an unaltered dog license when they license their animal... MORE

Bill would give farm animals more space
Beacon Hill (Massachusetts) lawmakers considered a bill yesterday that would impose comprehensive restrictions on farms, requiring that animals be housed with room to stand up, lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs or wings... MORE

Animal rights group continues investigation of Thornton bullfight
The animal rights group that claims bullfighters in Thornton violated state law by using three-inch nails to anger bulls in the ring is continuing its investigation in several counties before approaching law enforcement agencies... MORE

FEATURED FACT SHEETS & OTHER VALUABLE INFORMATION

Australia's Dirty Secret
Australia's unique heritage of indigenous animals has been treated with contempt and brutality since white man arrived. Australia is a nation led by soul-less politicians whose only concern is money, power and the ability to destroy this continent's ecology behind a protective wall of propaganda and extraordinary irresponsible legislation, which guarantees extinction... MORE

Cruel Oil: How Palm Oil Harms Health, Rainforest and Wildlife
From our inbox: "My name is Nikita Parker-James. I am a 13-year-old girl and I really love animals. I am sending this email in regards to an issue that my friend and I feel very strongly about and have been trying to stop. Many food and cosmetic companies are using palm oil in their products. It is thought to be the healthiest option of oil but many of these companies don't know or don't care about the harm that the use of palm oil in their products is doing to the orangutangs in the wild"... MORE

FEATURED EDITORIAL

Animals and Their Jewish Guardians by Sandra Nathan. "Circuses sneak into towns to avoid them, celebrity chefs eliminate customary ingredients that offend them, hunters detest them, mass media denies them airtime, and lucrative corporate conglomerates dread their wrath. Recently, a number of fast food and mega grocery chains abruptly reconsidered tried-and-true purchase practices to appease them, and more than one U.S. jumbo meat processor modified long-standing production methods in order to quiet them. So, what do Jews have to do with them?"... MORE

Humanity Even for Nonhumans by Nicholas D. Kristof (from April). One of the historical election landmarks last year had nothing to do with race or the presidency. Rather, it had to do with pigs and chickens — and with overarching ideas about the limits of human dominion over other species... MORE

He no longer heard the cries of the animals or saw the flowing blood by Jason Miller. "Vivisection, the anachronistic practice of condemning nonhuman animals to the sterility, isolation, and confinement of laboratory cages and subjecting them to slicing, jabbing, sticking, shocking, burning, poisoning, and addicting, bears a much closer resemblance to medieval torture than to 21st century scientific research"... MORE

My monkey: The sad life of r04040 by Bill Lueders. "The first entry, for April 26, 2004, sets the tone for much of what follows: 'Born today, rejected by mother, male infant.' Thus begins the life story and paper trail of r04040, a rhesus macaque monkey at the National Primate Research Center in Madison"... MORE

Five-Part Series on Animal Experimentation. Part I: "Where's Pepper?" All articles by Daniel Engber (research scientist turned writer). "First, Ivan Pavlov would sever a dog's esophagus and sew the loose ends to its throat, leaving a pair of adjacent holes that connected, by separate passages, to its mouth and stomach. Then he'd slice through the dog's abdomen, carve a hole in the wall of its stomach, and stitch open another permanent wound"... MORE

This little piggie went to the science lab. "Watch out, little white lab mouse. Barnyard animals are gunning for your job. A bullish group of agricultural scientists says that farm animals have been vastly underrated as a resource for improving human health"... MORE

Fighting a high-tech war with a low-tech mule. U.S. Marines and soldiers are training to fight in Afghanistan, where mules and donkeys can haul supplies and weapons to places where Humvees and helicopters can't easily go... MORE

Animals in War: You Don't Have to Be Human to Die by the Millions by Stephanie Ernst. "'They' refers to the literally millions of animals killed in twentieth-century wars — horses, mules, donkeys, pigeons, elephants, glow worms, and camels among them. Indeed, 'eight million horses and countless mules and donkeys died in the First World War'"... MORE

FEATURED WEB SITES & GROUPS

International Primate Protection League (IPPL). A grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the world's remaining primates, great and small. IPPL also maintains a sanctuary at our Headquarters in Summerville, South Carolina, where dozens of gibbons currently reside... MORE

Compassionate Travel. Whether you are just getting started on planning your next trip or have just returned from vacation, Compassionate Travel provides all the information that a traveler needs to make their trip animal-friendly... MORE

Evacuate My Pet. Expressing her interestes in developing a disaster plan for people and their pets in her neighborhood, Conejo Valley (Ventura County) Realtor Toni Hanson called her friend June, the wife of the former California Senator David Roberti... MORE

Humane Research Council HumaneSpot.org. HumaneSpot.org is a unique research website tailored to the needs of animal and environmental advocates. The website offers a wide range of useful tools and resources, including access to about 1,000 independent research studies (based on surveys, focus groups, etc.) relating to animal protection issues... MORE

Inti Wara Yassi Community. Juan Carlos and the children decided to take action. A wildlife refuge was founded on the grounds of Parque Machía, near Villa Tunari, to house and rehabilitate wild animals. Everyone is welcome to help us run the refuges and rehabilitate the abused animals... MORE

Soi Dog Foundation. Soi Dog Foundation is a not-for-profit, legally registered charitable organization, based in Phuket, Thailand, with the aim to reduce the number of unwanted dogs and cats and to better the lives and living conditions of the street and stray dogs and feral cats in Thailand, currently focused on the island of Phuket... MORE

Thanking the Monkey: The Official Blog of Karen Dawn. When Michael Vick got out of prison last week, news reporters speculated about who would pick him up. Nobody expected the answer to be the Humane Society of the United States! Best Friends got the Vick pitbulls, and HSUS got Vick. I think Best Friends got the better deal... MORE

Animal Legal Reports Services is the only subscription based report providing trend setting animal related legal court decisions, jury verdicts and settlements for lay readers and lawyers alike... MORE

FEATURED BOOKS & VIDEO, ETC.

Video: Tom McPhee's An American Opera: The Greatest Pet Rescue Ever! In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, America suffered the worst domestic animal crisis in its history. Tens of thousands of house pets were left to perish in neighborhoods all across the gulf when the owners were forced to evacuate without their pets... MORE

Book: The Missing Peace: The Hidden Power of Our Kinship with Animals by Tina Volpe & Judy Carman This sensitively written book shines a light on something we, as individuals and as a society, often neglect to see: the missing piece — our relationship with animals. The book is full of true, life-altering stories, guaranteed to prompt us to take a deeper look at our own dietary and lifestyle choices... MORE

Book: My Desert Sun by Diana Tuorto is the story of Cayuse, a young, free-spirited mustang who lives in the desert and mountains of the American Southwest. While life in the desert is often peaceful and serene, Cayuse spends many days merely fighting for survival. However, he soon learns that survival among mankind is much more difficult... MORE

Earthlings Now An Audiobook. Nation Earth, a film production company dedicated to socially urgent issues, announced its award-winning film Earthlings, a feature-length documentary about the suffering of animals used for food, fashion, pets, entertainment and medical research, is now available in audiobook format... MORE

Video: Pig Treatment in Egypt. This audio-visual was taken by the cameras of Almasry Alyom (a newspaper called Egyptian Today). It shows the brutal procedures carried out by the Egyptian veterinary services and health and security services to take live pigs to their execution with the use of chemicals from factory waste, and finally burying them using quicklime... MORE

VegE-News Online. The VegE-News is a monthly e-newsletter featuring current news stories and items of interest to vegetarians. This is a free publication... MORE

The Foie Gras Assembly Line. Cruelty exposed inside Elevages Perigord, Canada's largest foie gras producer. An investigation by Farm Sanctuary and Global Action Network... MORE

Seal Alert-SA Releases "Touching Seals" DVD to Save Cape Fur Seals in Southern Africa. "Since my meeting with the Prime Minister of Namibia to attempt to persuade him to stop the seal culling in 2007, I have secured Namibia’s two largest incoming tourist countries, Netherlands and Germany to introduce a ban on Cape fur seal product imports, and later the whole of the E.U."... MORE

Whale Wars: Season Two Now Airing. In March 2009, when the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel The Steve Irwin docked in Hobart, Tasmania, it was met by two dozen members of the Australian Federal Police. They were there to confiscate hundreds of hours of videotape... MORE

Pig Business. Despite Poland’s traditional food being amongst the best quality in Europe, the agenda of the global banks and big agribusiness, aided and abetted by E.U. bureaucrats, is to consolidate Poland’s three million farmers into mechanized factory farms... MORE

FEATURED NEWS

Farms downsize with miniature cows. Walking through their lowing herd of several hundred cattle, Ali and Kenny Petersen were like two Gullivers on a Lilliputian roundup. The half-sized cows barely reached Kenny's waist. The ranch's border collie stared eye-to-eye with wandering calves... MORE

Dairy farmers in desperate straits by Jerry Hirsch. The California Milk Advisory Board continues to ply its "Happy Cows" advertising campaign, but there are few happy dairy farmers right now. Frustrated with low milk prices, dairy farmers are selling cows for hamburger meat and threatening to dump milk into sewers... MORE

Nutro Products Announces Voluntary Recall of Limited Range of Dry Cat Food Products. The cat food is being voluntarily recalled in the United States and ten additional countries. This recall is due to incorrect levels of zinc and potassium in our finished product resulting from a production error by a US-based premix supplier... MORE

Animal rights groups try to halt Mirage from importing dolphins by Amanda Finnegan. In the days before a dolphin named Sgt. Pepper died last week at The Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, two animal rights organizations had filed a complaint against the Mirage’s request to import two more dolphins for its habitat... MORE

Wild Horse Advocates Try to Sway Senator Reid. Those who attended a private fundraising event for Nevada Senator Harry Reid Tuesday night paid big money for a chance to bend the senator's ear and get a few minutes with the president. One of the beneficiaries could be the wild mustang herds that roam Nevada and other western states... MORE

Montana OKs equine slaughter plants. Montana now allows horse-processing plants to be built within its borders, and a handful of other states soon may do likewise in response to increasing numbers of unwanted and neglected horses in the declining economy... MORE

Bobcat fur coats raise trapping concern in West. Bobcat fur coats have become a hot item among the fashion-conscious in Russia and China, leading to a big jump in prices and exports for the soft, spotted pelts... MORE

No golden monkeys coming to L.A. Zoo. The long-awaited golden monkeys from China have some bad news: They're not coming to the Los Angeles Zoo. The arrival of the exotic blue-faced simians was part of a deal struck during a 2002 trade trip to China by former Mayor James K. Hahn. He wanted pandas but was offered the loan of three golden monkeys instead... MORE

Animal rights group wants to buy slain abortion doctor's clinic. An animal rights group said Thursday it wants to transform a Kansas abortion clinic that was shuttered after its owner was murdered into an animal cruelty education center. "We want to take a building that has been a flashpoint for conflict on one moral issue and turn it into a place of dialogue on another one... MORE

Calgary Zoo to close Cownose ray exhibit after 41 animal deaths. The Calgary Zoo will close its Cownose ray exhibit — which gained notoriety after 41 of the marine animals died last year — in the next few weeks, officials said Friday... MORE

Reports show animal welfare violations at three labs. Government inspection reports cited three research laboratories for a host of animal welfare violations, ranging from problems with surgeries that forced researchers to euthanize a dog and a primate to leaving a live hamster in a walk-in freezer... MORE

FEATURED BEST PEOPLE

Kristina Klebe. Kristina is not your ordinary actress, every day she is involved in the rescue process of a homeless animal. For the past several years, Kristina has been a volunteer for Best Friends Animal Society, fostering homeless dogs and finding homes for them... MORE

Their Calling Is Defending Rats, Yet These Folks Aren't Lawyers. In her fight for the rights of some of the smallest creatures, Stephanie Ernst offers a video of a frolicking, fluffy mammal snuggling up with a pet cat. "Rats don't get a fair shake," she writes in an introduction to the video on her animal-rights blog. "This one is quite adorable and may lead you to see rats a little differently"... MORE

Francois Hugo. This man is just incredible. He is my hero. Most people don't know about the plight of the Namibian seals. Francois Hugo has been documenting the horrific seal cull in this country. But, unlike groups that document other seal killings, he also rescues and rehabilitates them... MORE

Musicians for Apes. We are a growing global community of musicians using our talents and our art to speak out for those who can't, our closest relatives, the Great Apes. We neither accept nor support their use in the entertainment industry, where they are used and forced to appear in films, corporate advertisements, live stage shows, and photo shoots. The breeders and trainers who "prepare" Apes, chimpanzees and orangutans, for these unnatural uses take advantage of and damage these innocent lives... MORE

Pretenders concert moves from Zoo over animal rights issues. Rock and Roll Hall of Famers the Pretenders will move their Aug. 19 performance from the Minnesota Zoo to a yet-to-be-determined venue. But it's safe to say it won't be the Minnesota State Fairgrounds... MORE

Pangarden Studio: The Art of Chris McCasland. "My art represents a lifetime of observation to determine what is beautiful, what is true, and what is noble. Art is life and life is art and reflected in my art is my reverence for nature, and my compassion for all creatures..." MORE

ANIMAL RESCUE & SANCTUARIES

Seal Alert SA: Private Baby Seal Rescue Center. Annually government and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) policy of banning CITES Appendix II listed endangered and protected Cape fur seals from all their original endemic islands in order to make these islands exclusively for seabird conservation — has its environmental and cruel negative side... MORE

Pigs Peace Sanctuary is dedicated to providing a safe home for unwanted, abused or neglected animals in need and is committed to spreading the message of compassion and respect for all animals... MORE

Angel Dogs Foundation is a not-for-profit organization formed solely for the purpose of providing mobile spay/neuter and outreach/educational services to companion animal owners in The County of Los Angeles and The County of Kern... MORE

Living With Jaguars: Getting Up Close With Animals at Bolivia's Ambue Ari Reserve. Deep in the jungles of Bolivia, Ambue Ari is an animal reserve like no other. Journey to a place where there's nothing separating humans with wild animals. It has become a hot destination for backpackers touring South America. The reserve draws an international mix of Americans, Europeans, Israelis and Australians... MORE

NEAT THINGS

The Animal-Friendly Giving Guide. Many people who care about animals are supporting organizations whose policies and activities would shock and anger them if they only knew about them. The Animal-Friendly Giving Guide was created for everyone that ever wanted a way to find organizations that address the issues that they care about and that care about animals too... MORE

Gobble Green. Gobble Green is an online marketplace where you will find a diverse and frequently updated selection of healthy, pre-packaged vegan meals... MORE

Peace, Justice & Environment Project. Peace, justice and environmental organizations in 45 states representing over 1200 local groups and organizations use the Actions Options Tool web application to facilitate online communication and cooperation... MORE

Publish a Letter. Have an opinion? Want to write letters to the editor of a newspaper or magazine — anywhere in the world? Don’t know where or how to begin? You’ve come to the right place... MORE

Today's Front Pages. Front pages of newspapers from around the world... MORE

Listen to Animals Today Radio. With Dr. Lori Kirschner... MORE

Free 800 Information from Google. Call 1-800-goog411 (1-800-4664-411)

Tiny URL. Making long URLs usable. More than 170 million of them. Over 1.75 billion hits/month... MORE

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