#human-welfare

[thepersonalwords]

In an era of globalization, we recognize that we are part of a global society, but we have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to guide us in this endeavor. We have not yet found a way to expand the spiritual ideals of democracy so that they pertain to every human being, every animal, and every plant. Until we do, human civilization and the Earth's ecosystem will continue to be in peril.

Victor Shamas, The Way of Play: Reclaiming Divine Fun & Celebration

[the-shadows-request-candy-corn]

Trump may be about to sign the death sentence of the National Institute of Health, and, by extension, the Office of Lab Animal Welfare.

He gutted research animal protections.

Any vertebrate that isn't a mammal will have no rights.

Neither will mice or rats.

If NIH grants are stopped, researchers can't pay anyone. They can't perform research. They can't pay for veterinary services.

They won't be required to provide veterinary services.

The only medical research that will happen will be self funded by big pharma, and they can torture the animals and skew all the lab results that they want.

Just like Musk did to the primates in his neuralink research.

I don't know what's going to happen to me or anyone else at the university where I work. My job is to make sure the animals are treated humanely and to provide veterinary care. I'm especially scared about what's going to happen to those research animals if veterinary staff gets laid off. The USDA only covers mammals, and it doesn't even cover all of them. Every rat I've ever made a tiny paper gift box full of marshmallows for, every mouse I've ever watched grow up, every rodent I've ever separated from an aggressive dominant brother and then treated their tiny wounds, they have no protections if NIH goes down. Decades of research into humane handling, euthanasia, and animal behavior will be tossed aside and wasted.

Please, do everything you can. Protest. Contact your representatives. Anything you can do. Do it for science, for medicine, for people's lives, for people's jobs, and for the animals.

Edit: thank you to everyone who's spreading this, but please reblog the updated reblog that I have pinned to my profile. The NIH is no longer frozen, but "indirect expenses" limits is just as big a threat to lab animal welfare, scientific integrity, and people's jobs as an NIH freeze.

[orcinus-veterinarius]

In the past month, I’ve seen:

A “community cat” with a fractured jaw, respiratory distress, and massive hemorrhaging after being hit by a car

A kitten with one fractured leg, one severely lacerated, and another degloved (skin removed) with torn ligaments after being found in the street

A young cat unresponsive with an uncontrollably high fever due to a tick-borne disease

A beautiful, well-loved kitten who stopped breathing due to a suspected brain bleed and was unable to be revived while preparing for surgery to repair a shattered pelvis after being hit by a car

Again, all these happened in the past month. And these are just the really bad ones I can think of off the top of my head.

All these cats, except one, are now dead.

But yeah, free-roaming is good for cats. They know how to take care of themselves.

[liberalsarecool]

Republican tax breaks for the wealthy create losses in tax revenues that become debts we borrow with interest to pay, and it gets added to the deficit.

Billionaire welfare is being used to dismantle our society. Republican tax policy is poison for the public safety net.

[unbfacts]

In Germany, it is illegal to kill any vertebrate animal without a valid reason, such as illness or posing a danger to humans. As a result, all animal shelters in the country operate as no-kill facilities.

[wanderingcritter]

Massive gripe ive been having with primarily the therian community lately, I really dont feel like we focus enough on animal rights causes considering how "connected" we're supposed to be to nonhumans.

Like I see it around for sure, but when I do it usually isn't more than just "hunting for sport is bad👍" or "dont beat your dog 👍" and that's it. The main focus of the community is still very much on biologically human individuals rather than on bio nonhumans, who are very literally treated like garbage in society and it's frustrating because i feel like we should be right there on the front lines when it comes to animal liberation.

Im not saying all of us need to be members of ALF or anything, im not even vegan and have no plans to be, but as of rn the community's overall acknowledgment and support of animal rights causes is pretty pathetic. Hell, I still hear therians confidently and proudly infantilize adult/highly intelligent nonhuman species ("animals have the intelligence of human toddlers") and spread blatant misinformation about them. Shit just annoys me

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

I’m by no means any sort of expert on any animal’s behavior so please feel free to ignore this random observation/ opinion.

But something I find interesting about people defending Moo Deng’s treatment is the frequent assertion that her keepers love her, as if that excuses everything. I honestly don’t doubt that her keepers love her, but that doesn’t mean their actions are appropriate.

To me it’s reminiscent of someone cornering and petting a dog against it’s will because “I just LOVE dogs!!!”. Loving the animal doesn’t mean you can’t inadvertently harm them with your actions.

Idk, I just have a lot of feelings on this and this was my attempt to sum them up. Hope it makes some sort of sense 😅

Oh yeah tell me about it! I appreciate you sharing this because I feel like I'm going insane when I see people being given the same information as I have and drawing a totally different conclusion from it.

Like... it's not okay just because they harass her a little bit. That's... not how that works.

Also I find the "trust the keeper" argument super ironic coming from someone who worked with dolphins - the species in human care that EVERYONE has an opinion on. And you'll tell people "hey, trust me on this. I see these dolphins every day. They participate in their own health care and don't do something if they don't want to. They are objectively in good welfare based on all the current data we have of what that looks like. I do behaviour records every day to prove this. And if I didn't think they were doing well, I'd be fighting tooth and nail to improve their lives or I would leave my job." (which I have done, btw)

And I'll still be told I'm enslaving dolphins and I do it for the money (when it was free labour - yay for animal industry exploitation - or absolutely bugger all). Trust the keeper... unless I watch a biased documentary packed full of misinformation. Then I know *more* than the keeper will and the keeper is just a moron who doesn't need a science degree and years of unpaid internship experience for this job!

But if it's a cute animal that has no preconceptions established of their welfare in human care? It's free game to coo over. Sure the keeper just dropped that squirming, panicking baby hippo he was trying to force into a tub! But he has so much experience because someone on reddit said so! It's actually all just desentisation! (not how desensisation works ever)

Can you tell I'm frustrated? Yeah...

Anyway I am usually the first in line to defend a zoo and their keepers - I know it's not easy to work in a zoo that's underresourced or in an education vaccum. But I'm going to call out bad handling when I see it. Especially when it's reinforced by social media clout and is being encouraged to continue by people justifying it as "desenitisation" or "actions of an experienced keeper."

[uncanny-tranny]

I just find it very interesting that all the labour classed as lesser (most often seen as "women's labour") becomes indispensable in moments of crisis. It's just interesting to see how quickly people turn to that labour and then discard it in moments of peace or prosperity, devaluing it until another crisis hits.

[acti-veg]

Researchers for the Animal Law Foundation found that only 2.5% of the more than 300,000 UK farms were inspected at least once in 2022 and 2023, a marginal decrease from 2018-21 when Covid-19 might be expected to have affected inspection rates.

When inspections did take place, 22% of farms were found not to meet animal welfare law standards but only 1% of non-compliances were prosecuted, a slight increase from 2018-21.

[without-ado]

Pro-Life! (x)

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Sometimes I think about how when I was a little kid, I got an advertisement in the mail from HSUS asking people to write their state congresspeople about banning horse slaughter in the United States. Had a beautiful picture of a horse running wild and free on the envelope and provided a template to follow.

Little me wrote my representative, and I even got a response assuring me that they would support the bill. It ended up passing, and yay we saved the horsies!

Then I grew up and got a job in vet medicine, and was told by an experienced equine vet how because of that bill, horses whose owners either can’t or won’t have them euthanized will be sold to slaughter operations in Canada or Mexico, necessitating them to be transported sometimes hundreds of miles by trailer instead of being granted a swift, merciful death—which they often desperately need. One they would have if humane slaughter of horses was still legal in the United States.

So when I think about the HSUS backing the SWIMS Act, I get scared. Because somewhere out there, there’s going to be a sweet little kid who just loves animals writing their representative, asking them to save the whales. Without realizing they’re only making things worse.

[ihazyourkitty]

Some advice

If you're trying to get into the Zoo/Aquarium industry, you'll often hear people tell you to have a backup plan. This often sounds patronizing and discouraging. But in and of itself, it's not bad advice.

The truth is that these jobs are highly competitive, and sometimes few and far between. By all means, pursue your dreams. Don't let this discourage you if this is what you really want to do. This field needs dedicated and talented people.

But I've also learned that it is valuable to have a diverse skill set (regardless of what kind of field you want to go into tbh). This can give you something to fall back on if you suddenly find yourself without a job like I have (it's a long story, don't ask, I'm not interested in airing this dirty laundry).

More than that, however, it's really easy to become singularly absorbed in the animals you care for that you lose your sense of self. This is part of what happened to me. Trust me, you can only go on for so long like this before you burn out, and when you burn out, your quality of work drops.

Being separated from my aquarist job has been really hard, but it has also given me the opportunity to reconnect with some of the hobbies I used to enjoy (and monetize somewhat). In hindsight, I should have been doing more of this to begin with, not just for monetary reasons, but for my own sanity's sake. Yes, your time and energy will be much more limited when you're working full-time in animal husbandry. But do what you can to take care of yourself, and explore other interests outside of the animals.

This will both give you skills to fall back on should you become unemployed, and improve your own mental welfare.

[unbfacts]

Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, donated over $8 billion to various causes, including health science and human welfare. He spent his final years in a rented San Francisco apartment, with remaining assets of $2 million.

[blueboyluca]

I am so frustrated by my local community's attitude towards animal welfare right now. The most horrific case of animal abuse potentially worldwide happened in my direct locale. And while it's the most vile and terrible case, these crimes were committed by an incredibly disturbed individual and it does not reflect some kind of wider problem. But this terrible – truly terrible – case has meant that a certain subset of people have been pushed hardcore to the right and are now advocating for a focus on punitive measures for animal welfare violations of any kind – with no consideration for the social injustices that lead to the most common welfare issues with animals.

My community is suffering income inequality, cost of living crisis, homelessness and more than a century of racial injustice. And in response, the largely white population has lurched back to the right in a knee-jerk reaction to an insufficient centre-left government, with the total focus on CRIME in big bold letters. And now because of this Adam Britton case we are dealing with extreme paranoia around animal welfare and all these things melding together means that we've now got people calling for extremely harsh penalties for problems that are fundamentally systemic and rooted in lack of resources, money and education.

I want to shake all these people and say, how can you realistically believe that the humans "responsible" for the condition of a suffering dog are not also suffering in some comparable way? How do you not understand? How do you not see the reality out there that animal welfare is intrinsically tied to human welfare?

[princess-of-thebes-bc]

[cognitivejustice]

In a landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has today ruled that climate change violates the right to respect for one’s private and family life.

The case was brought by an association of older Swiss women concerned about the impact of global warming on their health, who claim the Swiss government is not taking enough action.

The ECHR ruled by 16 judges to 1 that the KlimaSeniorinnen (Swiss Elders for Climate Protection) were subject to a violation of Article 8 as well as (unanimously) Article 6 - the right to a fair trial in their country.

“While we do not have all the details yet - this decision is historic!” writes Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmmental Law. “The Court has found the petition admissible and finds a violation of the rights of the Klimaseniorinnen both on process and on the substance!”

Two other climate cases - brought by a former French mayor, and six Portuguese youth - were found to be inadmissible, however.