Approximately twenty-five years ago, the Dogs Trust in the United Kingdom began organizing annual conferences, now generally abbreviated as ICAWC (standing for the International Companion Animal Welfare Conference), in different Eastern European cities. The Dogs Trust 2016 Annual Report explains that these conferences share ideas...
After the ban on logging in Thailand, thousands of elephants became "unemployed." Some roamed the big cities like Bangkok, where mahouts sold fruit to citizens and tourists to feed their elephants. A city is not a good place for an elephant, but the elephants could...
A new book, The Rat Trap by Pandora Pound, has just been published, criticizing modern medicine's reliance on animal research. Pound is a medical sociologist now employed by The Safer Medicines Trust, a UK charity whose mission "is to make medicines safer by facilitating a...
The 12th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences ran from August 27-31, 2023, at a hotel in Niagara Falls, Canada. There have been many advances in reducing and replacing laboratory animals since the first of these World Congresses, an initiative...
The Thai Government has a long tradition of managing elephants. Thai laws regulating the treatment of elephants have been adapted to address elephants involved in the tourist industry. If one only seeks improved conditions for the elephants in the service of man, it is the...
The International Fund for Animal Welfare established August 8th as International Cat Day in 2002. Eighteen years later, the British NGO, International Cat Care, took over the custodianship of the day. This August, WellBeing International suggests celebrating the day by reading one of Rudyard Kipling’s...
Part 1: The Asian elephant has been closely associated with people for perhaps six millennia. Still, there are conflicting views on whether the Asian elephant has been domesticated instead of being a tamed wild animal.For example, some animal protection organizations argue that a captive Asian elephant...
The early 1970s in the USA saw a flurry of articles and media comments calling attention to an out-of-control pet population. The Humane Society of the United States estimated that approximately 13.5 million dogs and cats were euthanized in US shelters in 1973. At the...
Joyce D’Silva is a longtime animal advocate, having worked for Compassion in World Farming in various positions (including CEO) for over thirty years. She has also had a long-standing interest in the different faiths’ approaches to how humans should view and treat animals. Her career...
For those of us who enjoy playing with our dogs, such as tossing a ball or stick for them to fetch, the world offers many more challenging exercise opportunities. Now, a new human-pet dog sport has appeared – CANICROSS or CANI-X. In canicross, the owner...
