Short Takes

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), known for capitalizing on video footage of animal abuse on farms and in slaughterhouses as it pushes its animal rights agenda, is getting a taste of its own medicine.

In late May, a group that watches animal rights organizations released a video shot at the HSUS-managed Duchess Horse Sanctuary in Oregon. A release from Humanewatch.org states: “Though HSUS claims its Oregon facility offers ‘1,120 acres of rolling pasture,’ the HumaneWatch.org video shows horses in overcrowded conditions wading through a field of mud, manure, and hazardous fallen tree branches.”

If you’re going to film a commercial about happy California cows, do it in California, OK folks?

That’s the message the California State Assembly sent in late May when it ordered state agencies, commissions and departments to spend promotional funds on California in California.

It took two work crews, one bucket truck, and two flagmen to rescue a cat stuck on a hydro pole near Ottawa. But the power distributor isn’t talking about what it cost to bring that cat down.

“We have not assigned a specific cost as we had crews in the vicinity and they were able to accommodate the request for assistance without impacting their work schedule or workload,” says Daniele Gauvin, a spokesperson for Hydro One. She explains resources used had to do with the type of line on the pole and traffic on the adjacent road.

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But with the tide of  interest come questions and concerns – about the  backlog of approvals, about new domestic content rules and about what equipment to choose

by Mary Baxter

In 2008, Tilbury-area farmer Bert Rammelaere waited two weeks for the Ontario Power Authority to approve his application to sell solar-generated energy to the province’s electrical grid.

This year, it took the 75-year-old cash cropper two months to obtain the
OPA’s conditional agreement to buy power from a unit he’s installing on another property.  

According to the online newspaper ChinaDaily, the Yuzhong Food Additive Company in Jiagsu province is adding pulverized lime to the bleaching agent it produces and is selling the adulterated product to flour millers.

ChinaDaily cites Chen Junshi, a leading researcher with the national food safety and risk assessment committee, as saying that the unregulated use of additives in Chinese food production in China is unavoidable in the current developmental stage of Chinese society.

“Only when the number of peasant households in the country is reduced, say from the current 200 million to two million, could we possibly solve the food-safety problem at the source,” he says.

Farm and construction machinery manufacturer J C Bamford Excavators Ltd. of Britain takes patent infringement seriously.

Charging that three “Far Eastern” companies at the BAUMA international construction show in Munich in April were displaying pirated knockoffs of its “world leading” backhoe loader and Loadall machines,  JCB successfully applied for a preliminary injunction, forcing the machines to be either removed from the show, or concealed from view.

The Washington-based Center for American Progress wants the U.S. government to quit sending subsidy cheques to people who don’t farm, or might even be dead, and instead redirect the money to rural alternative energy projects.

In a column published on the Center’s website in April, Jake Caldwell, director of policy for agriculture, trade and energy cited a Government Accountability Office report that found the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had paid 69,120 individuals who had been dead at least three years between 1999 and 2005.

Fresno California has air quality problems and the huge number of cows in the San Joaquin Valley has been taking the blame. Turns out that ozone may not be coming from the cows after all, but from their feed.

There are 15 million cows in the valley, the largest dairy producing area in the United States, which is under a federal mandate to reduce its ozone levels. Farmers had installed methane digesters to treat manure, to no avail. Ozone levels kept rising, even though there isn’t nearly as much auto traffic as in urban areas and efforts were being made to reduce it.

There’s a new pecking order in a henhouse in Basildon, England, and a fox was at the bottom of it recently.

According to Sky News Online, Michelle Cordell went to the hen pen at the bottom of her garden in April and found a partially grown and very dead fox, covered in blood marks from its legs to its head.

The mistress of the hens surmises that they kicked over the table on which they roosted onto the fox, knocking it out, and then pecked it to death. There had been fox attacks before, with the fox always winning.

Cordell credits Dude, the cockerel for leading the attack, but allows that Izzy, one of the four hens, is a big bird, too. BF