By Victoria Moran for The Huffington Post
The ally relationship can be an odd one. I remember my shock in third grade, learning that the Soviets had been our ally in World War II. “How could this be?” I wondered. “Our arch-enemies, the reason we have to crawl under our desks and prepare for The Bomb, were [...]

Animals Austral has applauded Coles for becoming the first Australia supermarket to commit to making its own-brand “Coles Butcher’ pork products “sow stall free” by the end of 2014.
For the past five years Animals Australia’s public awareness campaigns have been highlighting the cruelty of sow stalls which individually confine breeding pigs in metal and concrete [...]

A WA fashion designer has been lambasted by animal rights groups from around the world over claims she is promoting her fur designs as “cruelty free”.
Animal welfare campaigners insist there is no humane way to farm fur, but claim the “cruelty free” description was used in an article promoting designer Harmony Douglas’s raccoon and rabbit [...]

There have been protests as a Western Australian butcher has been given ministerial dispensation to start selling horse flesh for human consumption. According to an article in the West Australian, the Chez Pierre restaurant in Nedlands decided not to serve horse flesh on Bastille Day after customers threatened to boycott the restaurant.
The following article was [...]

The following article was published on the Voiceless site, linked to here.
In 2010, the Voiceless Animal Law Lecture Series returns for its biggest run yet, with law schools, law firms and professional associations across the country gearing up to host what is sure to be their most popular Series.
For the first time the [...]

SIX hundred marsupials will be shot on Maria Island over the next two weeks.
Parks and Wildlife says the operation is in the interests of animal welfare but kangaroo advocates say it is backward and cruel.
The Parks and Wildlife Service said the island’s forester kangaroo, Tasmanian pademelon and Bennett’s wallaby population had increased 30 per cent [...]

There is now much written about the emotional world of animals, about how animals form societies and family bonds, and experience emotions very much like we do.
In-depth studies have been done by people such as Australian Jodi Ruckley from Our Place on Earth who has been filming and writing about her experiences of communicating with [...]

On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw [...]

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.
As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations [...]

Their disappearance has caused alarm throughout Europe and North America where campaigners have blamed agricultural pesticides, climate change and the advent of genetically modified crops for what is now known as ‘colony collapse disorder.’ Britain has seen a 15 per cent decline in its bee population in the last two years and shrinking numbers has [...]

Multi-millionaire Jan Cameron has been a mysterious, reclusive figure since she founded the outdoor equipment company Kathmandu in the 1970s. She has a long record of using her millions to fund generous, but sometimes secretive, philanthropy. A resident of Tasmania, she is a sponsor of the Brightside Farm Sanctuary in Tasmania, and has also sponsored [...]

The results of a study have recently been published which demonstrate a that vegetarians and vegans shown violent pictures have more brain activity in areas relating to empathy. In the study, sample groups of meat-eaters, vegetarians and vegans were shown pictures of animals and humans who had been mutilated, murdered, tortured, wounded, etc.
Psychology Today blogger [...]

MORE than a quater of a million healthy cats and dogs are destroyed every year because there are not enough homes for them.
Behind the numbers there is a vicious debate about the oversupply of animals and what can be done to tackle the problem.
On one side, animal welfare groups backed by Sydney lord mayor and [...]

Sale yards, abattoirs and live export depots are to be visited by officers from the Department of Agriculture and Food to promote national animal welfare guidelines.
Chief Veterinary Officer with the Department, Tony Higgs said the officers were committed to helping the State’s livestock industries meet the national Fit to Load guidelines.
“Failure to comply with Fit to [...]

A SEMI-trailer loaded with pigs has overturned in South Australia’s Murraylands, killing some of the animals.
The truck rolled about 5km south of Palmer about 10.20am (CST) this morning.
A police spokesman said a number of the animals are roaming in the area.
Some of the pigs will have to be destroyed because of their injuries, he said.
“At [...]

New Zealand anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune has broken down while giving evidence at his trial in Tokyo.
Bethune has pleaded guilty to four charges, including trespassing on a Japanese whaling ship in the Antarctic and carrying a knife.
But he is contesting a charge of assault.
Bethune said when he threw the butyric acid at the Japanese ship, [...]

A Malaysian minister has defended an Indian company’s plans to build an animal testing medicine lab in his state, saying that God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans.

The plans by India’s Vivo BioTech Ltd to set up a biotechnology centre in southern Malacca state has come under fire by activists because it [...]

FREMANTLE has adopted a policy aimed at putting an end to live sheep exports from the port.
A historic decision was made last night by the City of Fremantle to support a phase out of live exports.
More than 80 per cent of the nearly 4 million Australian sheep exported in 2006 were loaded through the port [...]

It’s no news that medical scientists use animals such as mice to test drugs, including pain-relief drugs. It also should be no surprise that, in order to assess the effectiveness of pain relief drugs, scientists first inflict pain on the animals.
What’s in the news at the moment is that some scientists are currently performing tests [...]

Last Sunday, over a thousand piglets and more than one hundred adult sows died in a fire at an intensive piggery near Gingin, Western Australia.
Last year Westpork was charged under the Animal Welfare Act 2002 following from a police raid of the piggery in 2007. The West Australian newspaper published an article regarding the charging, [...]