The Blog – Page 11 – The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, Inc.

The Caring Chicken – Being a Mother Hen

Lori Marino on September 16, 2013

Guest post by Christina M. Colvin

On September 4th, 1,150 chickens from a factory farm in California, took to the air on a chartered plane and landed the following morning in New York. It was all part of a plan, spearheaded by the Animal Place sanctuary and aided by Farm Sanctuary and other groups, to retire a total of 3,000 egg-laying hens to good new homes.

Egg-laying hens are usually consigned to the gas chamber as soon as they become exhausted from laying eggs, which is usually before they are three years old. But in this case the hens got a reprieve.

Despite the continuously emerging evidence that suggests mother hens care about their downy chicks, the factory farming system prevents them from engaging in the very hallmark behaviors for which mother hens are so renowned. Human mothers and chicken mothers have something very important in common – the welfare of their children. But at factory farms, the hens have no opportunity at all to raise their young.

There are lots of very good reasons why mother hens are known as caring parents.

Throughout popular culture, children’s literature, and spiritual texts, one animal pervades as a symbol of maternal care and attentiveness: the mother hen. Despite her recognizability as an emblem of motherly devotion, however, most egg-laying hens in the United States spend their entire lives in the tiny, cramped, filthy quarters of factory farm battery cages, a place impossible for her to live up to her reputation.

Recent scientific studies of mother hens—particularly their responsiveness to the condition of their feathered children—warrant special attention for a consideration of modern agriculture’s treatment of these perceptive and sensitive animals. Indeed, such studies suggest that the care shown by chicken moms for their children is far from the stuff of stories alone, and that the mother hen earned her prestige as a caring parent for good reasons.

Don’t Talk to Strangers

When given the chance, the mother hen is constantly on the lookout for threats to her chicks. All chickens use different calls to designate aerial predators like hawks and owls from ground hunters like foxes and coyotes, showing that they can both assess a threat and tell other chickens how to prepare themselves.

Mother hens in particular evaluate predators according to another criterion—size—in order to determine if a hungry carnivore poses a threat to her chicks specifically. By judging a predator’s size relative to the size of her children, mother hens only sound an alarm when the predator looks big enough to take her chicks away.

Eat Your Spinach

Mother hens even get involved with what their kids eat. One recent study showed mother hens discouraging their children from consuming food they understood to be unsuitable. Conditioned to identify one color of food as preferable and another color of food as unsuitable, this study had mother hens watch from a separate room as their chicks chose to eat the color of feed they (the hens) deemed less preferable.

Perceiving the chicks making an error determining which food was palatable and which was not, the mother hens responded by pecking and scratching the ground more frequently in attempt to attract their chicks away from the bad food and toward the better food.

Come to Mommy!

Mother hens also seem to really empathize with their chicks. One group of researchers exposed hens and chicks to a mildly upsetting (but not harmful) stress: a puff of air. Watching from a connected room but unable to get to their chicks, mother hens responded more intensely when they saw their chicks receive an air puff than when they (the mothers) received one: seeing their chicks in distress, the hens’ hearts beat more quickly, their body temperatures changed, and they attempted to call their chicks to their sides, away from the perceived threat.

Although none of the 3,000 hens rescued by Animal Place had ever been outside, seen the sun or stepped on the grass, the first group of them were soon doing all the kinds of things that are natural to hens – like enjoying their first dust baths. We’re delighted that they’re finding their way to good new homes where they can live out their days as nature intended.

Christina Colvin, who will graduate with a Ph.D. in English from Emory University in May 2014, specializes in 20^th and 21^st-Century American literature and animal studies, with a particular interest in texts depicting ecological crises and odd encounters between humans and animals. Her most recent writing and professional presentations have focused on William Faulkner’s critique of speciesism, the permutations of taxidermy as a cultural signifier, and the vexed relationship between animal welfare and the rhetoric of sustainability. Christina aims for her academic and public scholarship to spark renewed interest in animals in both literary studies and the world.

In Major Medical Journal, Kimmela Discusses Dolphin-Assisted Therapy

Lori Marino on September 2, 2013

Kimmela Center executive director Dr. Lori Marino is quoted extensively in an article about animal-assisted therapies by Adrian Burton in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet Neurology.

The article, entitled “Dolphins, dogs, and robot seals for the treatment of neurological disease” asks:

A growing body of evidence suggests that animal-assisted therapies and activities involving all kinds of real and even robotic animals can have beneficial effects in people with neurological disease or mental illness. But what is the quality of that evidence, and do these interventions really provide any health benefits?

Burton notes that while there are numerous reports of animal-assisted activities and therapies being beneficial to people with neurological or mental disorders, this growing field lacks “high-quality evidence regarding the value of such therapies.”

Dolphin-assisted therapy is an especially lucrative activity that’s offered by facilities all over the world, making claims, among others, that swimming and interacting with dolphins increases attention span, motivation, motor function, and language skills in severely disabled children, and provides similar therapeutic benefits for those with autism, epilepsy, Angelman’s syndrome, dyslexia, or Tourette’s syndrome.

But how good is the science behind these claims? Dr. Marino says most of it is of very low quality:

“Many reports in the literature are observational or, when prospective, involve very small numbers of patients or lack critical control conditions. As a result, most suffer from problems with construct validity—i.e., the inability to identify which components of the study (being in a pool, human interactions, new settings, etc.) are causally related to any observed short-term changes.

“… Most studies are plagued by major threats to construct validity such as placebo effects, novelty effects, demand characteristics, experimenter expectancy effects, [and] informant bias,” she says. “If it cannot be determined that the dolphin is an important therapeutic ingredient then there is no basis for most of the claims made by the lucrative industry that has grown up around dolphin-assisted therapy.”

Burton described the difficulties and expenses involved in constructing clinical tests that could provide valid evidence. Trudie Lang, a trials expert at Oxford University, U.K., describes a possible trial to assess whether interactions with a dog helped to reduce depression. You might, for example, recruit patients of the same age, who lived in the same kind of setting, have the same kind of depression, and are all given the same kind of dog, all trained in the same way.

“There is no basis for most of the claims made by the lucrative industry that has grown up around dolphin-assisted therapy.”

“However,” she tells Burton, “it would be difficult to apply any findings to more elderly depressives, or those given a terrier! Setting up a study with more variables would give more meaningful data—ie, it would measure real effectiveness—but would need to be vast and therefore very expensive.”

On the other hand, a pilot study in Australia that enabled elderly people with dementia to interact with a robotic baby seal, has produced some very interesting results. According to Burton, it paves the way for more such studies – perhaps “a controlled trial in which residential aged care facilities will be randomized to one of three conditions: the robotic animal, a plush toy, or the usual care.” Those studies, in turn, could pave the way for studies including real animals.

For Marino and other scientists who require convincing scientific evidence that animal assisted therapy offers more than general short-term “feel good” effects, the evidence, particularly for dolphin assisted therapy, is long overdue.

The Lancet is one of the world’s best known, oldest and most respected medical journals, founded in 1823, and editorial offices in London, New York, and Beijing.

NOAA Says No to the Georgia Aquarium

Lori Marino on August 9, 2013

In a stunning victory for the anti-captivity movement this week, the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) denied the Georgia Aquarium’s application to import 18 wild-caught beluga whales from Russia and share them around the country with SeaWorld and Shedd Aquarium.

It would have been the first time since 1993 that an aquarium had imported dolphins and whales directly from the wild. And it would have set a major precedent, regressing to a time before public outcry forced the captivity industry to agree to stop capturing marine mammals to put on display.

Animal protection groups organized major opposition to the Georgia Aquarium’s plan. The Kimmela Center played a key role in providing scientific support for opposition arguments and reaching out to colleagues in the scientific community. Executive Director Lori Marino helped to create and submit a Scientists Statement Opposing the Beluga Imports by the Georgia Aquarium to NOAA last year and it was signed by nearly thirty prominent marine mammal scientists. She also provided testimony opposing the application at a public hearing last October.

A decision by NOAA has been expected since February. And word went around in May that NOAA was expected to give a thumbs-up to the Georgia Aquarium any day.

But this week, NOAA issued its decisions: No to the Georgia Aquarium. The agency described its decision as having hinged on three key criteria:

* NOAA Fisheries is unable to determine whether or not the proposed importation, by itself or in combination with other activities, would have a significant adverse impact on the Sakhalin-Amur beluga whale stock, the population that these whales are taken from;

* NOAA Fisheries determined that the requested import will likely result in the taking of marine mammals beyond those authorized by the permit;

* NOAA Fisheries determined that five of the beluga whales proposed for import, estimated to be approximately 1½ years old at the time of capture, were potentially still nursing and not yet independent.

More details from NOAA on their decision are here, where the agency also describes what comments from the public were the most impactful:

The comments that were most helpful to our decision-making process addressed the specific MMPA and regulatory criteria that we must use to make a decision and discussed why the commenter felt the application did or did not meet them.

The comments we received pertaining to humaneness determinations (capture and transport), the age of the animals at capture, the status of the Sakhalin-Amur beluga stock, and the effects of the ongoing capture operation on beluga stocks were directly related to the MMPA issuance criteria and considered further in the decision making process.

In general, comments regarding opposition to captivity were not considered substantive as the MMPA allows for public display of marine mammals. Also, the comments we received related to the care and maintenance of marine mammals in captivity fall under the purview of the Animal Welfare Act and the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, so we were unable to respond to them as part of this process.

The Georgia Aquarium issued a statement saying they have yet to decide whether or not they will appeal. On NOAA’s decision, they offered the standard talking points used to justify keeping wildlife in captivity:

“Sadly, the decision places the long-term global sustainability of an entire species in limbo. The animals in question would help to ensure the sustainability of beluga whales in human care in the U.S. for the purposes of education, research and conservation.

“Through ongoing conservation and research efforts, our team is proactively seeking solutions to learn all we can to protect these incredible animals in the wild in the face of increasing challenges to their survival as the effects of climate change, increased shipping and exploration for natural resources impact them in their natural habitats.”

Neither the Georgia Aquarium, nor SeaWorld, nor any other marine mammal captive facility has, in fact, presented any evidence that they are helping to protect and “conserve” belugas. It is striking that the criteria NOAA used to deny the imports directly mention the possible negative impact upon the whales by the Georgia Aquarium’s proposed actions.

NOAA’s decision is not the end of the story. Beyond the fact that the Georgia Aquarium may well appeal the decision, there is the question of what happens to the belugas now.

However, this decision has been important for preventing the proliferation of the international trade in wild-caught marine mammals in the U.S., which the Georgia Aquarium was hoping to reinstate.

Some Special Folks from the Someone Project

Lori Marino on June 30, 2013

The Kimmela Center has just finished the first stage of our work for the Someone Project, a joint project with Farm Sanctuary that will be used to increase awareness about the complex minds and lives of farmed animals and influence farm animal policy for the benefit of the animals themselves.

In this first stage, we’ve been compiling the scientific evidence for cognitive, emotional and social complexity in pigs and chickens. The next stage will involve doing the same for other factory farmed animals such as cows and goats.

A great deal of work has gone into gathering all this evidence, and much of it has been done by the all-volunteer team of scholar-advocates who are invaluable members of the project:

Christina M. Colvin: Tina will graduate with a PhD in English from Emory University in May 2014. She specializes in 20th and 21st century American literature and animal studies, with a particular interest in texts depicting ecological crises and odd encounters between humans and animals.

Her most recent writing and professional presentations have focused on William Faulkner’s critique of speciesism, the permutations of taxidermy as a cultural signifier, as well as the vexed relationship between animal welfare and the rhetoric of sustainability.

Christina aims for her academic and public scholarship to spark renewed interest in animals in both literary studies and the world.

Heather Harrison: Heather is attending Antioch University of New England for a Masters in Environmental Studies with a concentration in advocacy, and recently completed an internship with the Humane Society of the United States’ Farm Animal Protection Campaign. Through her work with the Someone Project, she hopes to enrich her knowledge of farm animal intelligence in order to effectively increase public awareness.

Heather is currently working as the education intern at Farm Sanctuary’s Animal Acres shelter in California.

Beth Snead: Beth is the assistant acquisitions editor at the University of Georgia Press. She graduated from UGA in 2007 with a BA in English and has been working in the field of scholarly publishing ever since. She is currently exploring the possibility of implementing an animal studies series at the UGA Press.

Beth is a strong advocate for animal rights and is particularly concerned about the plight of laboratory animals and factory farmed animals in the U.S. She is thrilled to be assisting Farm Sanctuary with the “Someone” project.

Julia Tsai: Julia is an undergraduate at Stanford. She entered college intending to major in Biology as a pre-vet, but after living on an organic farm, became increasingly interested in the social and environmental issues surrounding our food system and society’s perception of food.

Now, her focus has turned to our production of animals for food. The Someone Project’s goal to use scientific material to influence the policies surrounding the treatment of farm animals is such a novel approach to advocate for a change in the way we view animals and use them for our benefit.

Julia is still thinking of attending vet school in the future, but her goals have become more nuanced, shifting from learning how to treat animals in a medical setting to how to understand and treat them psychologically and educate others about them.

* * *

Scholar-advocacy, the basis of Kimmela’s approach, focuses on applying scholarship, science and expertise to animal advocacy issues, and these talented and accomplished volunteers exemplify this model perfectly.

Many thanks to all of them as we move on to the next stage of the project.

India Bans Dolphinariums

Lori Marino on May 19, 2013

In a stunningly progressive move, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests released a statement on May 17th that they are banning dolphinariums in India.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India have decided not to allow establishment of dolpinarium in the country.

The State Governments are advised to reject any such proposal for dolphinarium to any person/ persons, organizations, Government agencies, private or public enterprises that involves import, capture of cetacean species to establish for commercial entertainment, private or public exhibition and interaction purposes whatsoever.

Kimmela collaborated with the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) and their international partners to provide the scientific evidence that convinced the Indian government that it would be morally wrong to keep dolphins in captivity because of their complex intelligence and poor survival in captivity. The Ministry noted this in its preamble, saying:

Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that their unusually high intelligence, as compared to other animals, means that dolphin should be seen as “non-human persons” and as such should have their own specific rights and [that it] is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose.

Whereas cetaceans in general do not survive well in captivity, [and] confinement in captivity can seriously compromise the welfare and survival of all types of cetaceans by altering their behaviour and causing extreme distress.

The Kimmela Center was originally contacted by FIAPO which was preparing to advise the Animal Welfare Board of India (which advises state governments and wildlife wardens) on efforts to capture, transport or keep dolphins and whales in captivity. The board then ruled that dolphin shows and exhibits would violate the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. In its new policy directive, the Ministry has now ratified that ruling.

The Indian government’s decision is advanced in comparison to the United States, which still permits dolphin captivity for entertainment. Moreover, their acknowledgement that dolphins are nonhuman persons with basic rights is an unprecedented step forward for animal advocacy.

Best Way to Murder a Dolphin

Lori Marino on April 8, 2013

A recent study entitled A Veterinary and Behavioral Analysis of Dolphin Killing Methods Currently Used in the “Drive Hunt” in Taiji, Japan recently published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science is stirring up a heated controversy over its conclusions. The authors of the paper take a welfare-based approach to dissecting the current methods used by the hunters in Taiji, Japan to kill thousands of dolphins, bringing the ongoing and increasingly pointed debate about welfare versus rights to the fore.

I’ve voiced my concerns about this paper on Facebook and on several websites. But Michael Mountain has written a piece on his own website that captures Kimmela’s position on this issue with clarity and flair. I present it here as a guest blog post.

Best Way to Murder a Dolphin

By Michael Mountain

A new study by four scientists is arguing for more “humane” ways of killing the dolphins at the annual Taiji massacre in Japan. (That’s the massacre that was portrayed in the Oscar-winning movie The Cove.) What they are saying could set back the entire movement to bring an end to this horror. Here’s why.

Two years ago, the dolphin protection group Atlantic Blue captured video of the latest way of killing the dolphins in the cove: driving a metal rod into to the top of the spinal cord, thus paralyzing the dolphins, then plugging the wound so there won’t be so much blood in the water. (The video is here. But note that it is very distressing; you see the dolphins shaking and trembling as they slowly die.)

Now four scientists have produced a study that itemizes the cruelty involved in this method of killing. Two of them, Courtney Vail and Philippa Brakes, are from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). The third, Andrew Butterworth, is a veterinarian at the University of Bristol. And Diana Reiss conducts research on captive dolphins at the Baltimore Aquarium. (See my 2010 interview with her here.) They write:

This killing method does not conform to the recognized requirement for “immediate insensibility” and would not be tolerated or permitted in any regulated slaughterhouse process in the developed world.

And they conclude:

There thus appears to be no logical reason to accept a killing method that is clearly not carried out in accordance with fundamental and globally adopted principles on the commercial utilization, care, and treatment of animals.

In other words, they basically advocate not for the end of the massacre at Taiji, but for a more “humane” way of conducting it.

They are advocating not for the end of the massacre, but for a more “humane” way of conducting it.

Reiss is interviewed by Andrew Revkin of the acclaimed “Dot Earth” blog, where she says, on the one hand, that “dolphins are a cognitively and socially complex species that exist in their own societies in the seas” and, on the other, that “the methods used to herd dolphins and then kill them is off-the chart in terms of any concern for animal welfare.”

But what goes on at Taiji is not about “methods”; it’s about murder.

For their part, Vail and Brakes are signatories to the Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans: Whales and Dolphins, which was initiated by the WDCS, and whose first three clauses state that:

Every individual cetacean has the right to life.
No cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude; be subject to cruel treatment; or be removed from their natural environment.
All cetaceans have the right to freedom of movement and residence within their natural environment.

How do they reconcile, what they’re saying in their new paper, which is about “methods” of murder, with the declaration that “every individual cetacean has the right to life?

This takes us back to the classic debate of animal welfare vs. animal rights.

Animal rights advocates are basically abolitionists. We say there’s no such thing as “humane slaughter.” Killing is simply wrong.

We say there’s no such thing as “humane slaughter.” Killing is simply wrong.

Animal welfarists, meanwhile, work for incremental change – like in the efforts of the Humane Society of the U.S. to press for better conditions at factory farms and more humane ways of killing the animals.

Similarly, in the world of homeless pets, humane societies and shelters that “euthanize” the dogs and cats they take in tell themselves that it’s in the animal’s best interests. The no-kill movement, on the other hand, draws a line in the sand and says that killing companion animals for any reason other than when they are painfully and terminally sick is just plain wrong. (And the no-kill movement has driven the number of dogs and cats being killed at shelters each year down from 17 million a year in the early 1990s to around 3 million today.)

By the end of January this year, the number of dolphins who had been driven into the infamous cove at Taiji, Japan, for the annual massacre had topped 1,209. There were still two months to go and we don’t have the final figures. But they were already way over the 848 last year. (Mark Palmer of Earth Island Institute projects that the number killed in the massacre this year was 899. Those not killed were sent to entertainment and research facilities or were released – mostly to die alone later.)

In response to the new study on dolphin-killing methods, many animal protection advocates are already arguing that we should all work together for whatever change we think we can get. For example, Marc Bekoff, the prolific writer on the emotions and cognitive abilities of nonhuman animals, supports the conclusions of the WDCS folks and researcher Reiss in wanting to focus on the inhumane methods of murder:

I realize that some people want much more action and they want it now. They are frustrated by the slow progress that is being made on the egregious and thoroughly unethical and inhumane murder of these amazing sentient beings. … [But] those who share common goals must work for the animals and not against one another. There really is strength in numbers.

To which, Lori Marino, director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, responds:

I would ask the authors: Exactly what is the appropriate way to kill a dolphin? You are right – the dolphins need all the help they can get. And what they do not need are so-called dolphin advocates implying that the problem with Taiji is that they are not killed according to the same standards used to kill farm animals. … This paper takes us ten steps backwards and, in my opinion, is inexcusable.

I agree. And I compare the massacre of dolphins to the death camps of Nazi Germany. Half of my own family perished at Auschwitz, and the idea that people supposedly trying to help them might have come along with the compromise plan that they should be killed according to some kind of “globally adopted principles” would be abhorrent. It is abhorrent to take anything less than an abolitionist position in relation to the murder and enslavement of any nonhuman animal.

The idea that people supposedly fighting slavery might settle for better conditions for the slaves is abhorrent.

And it is, to me, equally abhorrent to take anything less than an abolitionist position in relation to the murder and enslavement of any nonhuman animal.

Let those who kill and enslave the animals and who want to appease the animal protection movement negotiate with themselves by finding more “humane” ways to kill. Perhaps, if I were one of the dolphins at Taiji or one of humans at Auschwitz, I’d prefer a quicker, easier way to be killed. But either way, I’d be dead. Come to think of it, if I understood that in going along with that I’d just be helping to legitimize yet more murder, I’d rather go out painfully and have it on video. At least I’d know that my death might make a difference.

Bottom line: I just don’t buy the argument that humane killing is better. It doesn’t stop the killing; it just condones it.