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Showing posts from February, 2021

WHAT'S IN A PROMISE? The end of gestation crates in Canada was scheduled for 2024. Now, it’s 2029.

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Factory Farm Collective    A sow in a steel crate. If pigs could talk. In 2014, the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC) updated their industry guidelines for pig welfare and recommended that the pork industry end the use of gestation crates (or sow stalls) by 2024. This statement is taken from NFACC’s website under the heading, What The Science Says: Here. RELATED: Manitoba hog farmers pledge sow stall phase-out. 

HUMANS HAVE COEXISTED WITH WILDFIRES FOR MILLENNIA, CLIMATE CHANGE AND INDUSTRIAL LOGGING ARE MAKING THINGS WORSE

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Sierra Club BC   Wildfires devastate Fort MacMurray, Alberta, CA. Satellite photo by NASA. Intact Forests Are Our Biggest Allies Against Worsening Wildfires, But We Are Logging Them To The Brink. Story here.

Nothing quite like blubber: Polar bears have few options as global heating makes seal-hunting more difficult.

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Journal of Experimental Biology   "Polar bear with seal kill, Baffin Island" by vtluvbug79 As Arctic sea ice disappears, polar bears will lose access to their preferred prey – highly caloric seals. The authors say that, on land, a polar bear would need to eat about 1.5 caribou, 37 Arctic char, 74 snow geese, 216 snow goose eggs, or 3 million crowberries to get the digestible energy they now get from the blubber of one adult ringed seal.  Read the full study here. READ another version of this story: Here. Can polar bears and narwhals cling on as the ice shrinks?

U.N. blueprint on climate emergencies reminds us of man's legacy of deadly pollution and destruction of wildlife.

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EcoWatch Ducks swim through an "algal soup" - a stream in Manitoba Canada probably  over-fertilized  by livestock and human waste. A PinP photo. The head of the world body sounds the alarm on what he calls humanity's "senseless and suicidal war on nature." Details here.

Release of nutrients from lake-bottom sediments worsens Lake Erie's annual "dead zone"

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Science News "Lake Erie, Canada" by Earth Hour Global Robotic laboratories on the bottom of Lake Erie have revealed that the muddy sediments there release nearly as much of the nutrient phosphorus into the surrounding waters as enters the lake's central basin each year from rivers and their tributaries. Story here.

Will the world’s addiction to industrial livestock production bring an end to the age of the “miracle drug?”

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by Larry Powell -  *Hog Watch Manitoba  (Note: Asterisks link   to references at bottom.) A pork processing plant in Neepawa, MB.  Photo credit - HyLifeFoods. Antibiotics have been bestowing a world of good on the human condition ever since Alexander Fleming discovered the most famous one - penicillin - almost a century ago. Thanks to their ability to counter deadly infections, millions of lives have been saved -  truly a turning point in the history of mankind. But, for some years now, clouds have been gathering. Numerous agencies, from the **World Health Organization (WHO) to our own ***Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), have been sounding similar alarm bells. All the wondrous benefits inherent in these life-saving medications may already be in jeopardy.  As PHAC states on its website, “There’s increasing evidence that the use of antimicrobial agents in veterinary medicine and livestock production is an important contributing factor in the emergence of bacteria in people which h

Eating the Earth

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The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Cattle in the Amazon.  How industrial food is devastating the planet and driving climate change.

Step up adaptation to climate change now or risk ‘enormous toll’

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Reuters Unseasonal weather on the Canadian prairies in recent years has left vast amounts of food crops in the fields, unharvested over winter. A PinP photo. Scientists warn of risks of ignoring issue as COVID measures cuts climate funding. Story here.