In 1964, Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison was published in the UK. The book described how farmed animals were kept closely confined in new industrial animal farming systems (commonly described as “factory farming”). The book launched an uproar in British society, prompting the government to...
The February and March issues of WellBeing News carried articles on the emergence of a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. While the world is thoroughly sick of hearing about pandemic virus threats, we are adding another update because of the high risk to biodiversity of...
WellBeing News has carried several articles describing specific fisheries' rise and fall. Perhaps the most notorious overfishing example of a once-abundant fishery is cod's collapse and prolonged, slow recovery in the northwest Atlantic. But there are many other examples of the impact of over-fishing. Fisheries...
Crowded 21st-century city streets carrying high-speed traffic are inappropriate places for horses. This seems obvious, but 2,000-pound horses may still be observed weaving through heavy traffic daily in cities across the US and worldwide, to the peril of themselves and all the pedestrians, motorists, and...
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...
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...
As the world trends more urban, the opportunities for animals that have evolved to live close to humans (e.g., house mice and black and brown rats) have also increased. The UN estimates that 55% of the world’s population is urban, whereas the EU estimates that...
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...
