Avian flu, Orca loses calf, Trump’s “pro-animal” line-up, rodeo, veganism 1-6-25

Happy New Year!

Those who have read the DawnWatch End-of-Year Roundup know I cited avian flu as the number one animal story of last year. We have it back on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, the first weekend of 2025. We see heartbreaking, prominently displayed news in the Washington Post about the orca Tahlequah’s newly diseased calf. On a happier note, the Washington Post has also just released a piece about the “surprisingly pro-animal” line-up of incoming President Trump’s cabinet! The New York Times Magazine this week shares a gruesome tale of a fatal mountain lion attack on a hunter. The San Diego Union Tribune ran a pair of op-eds debating the rodeo. And today’s Canadian papers are packed with vegan friendly pieces that need responses.

Before I discuss those, I must thank all who wrote to the New York Times about Michael Grunwald’s shocking opinion piece praising factory farms. Now I get to share the fabulous news that the full letters column on Sunday, January 5, was devoted to refuting him. Five detailed letters!

Here’s a gift link for you to enjoy and be inspired by. I know many of us wrote, which is why a whole letters column got devoted to the topic. If you read the letters, you are likely to see the points you made covered in the selection presented, as I saw, even though mine wasn’t published. Our having written, definitely contributed to this happy outcome!

Same goes for the Canadians (and any other folks) who wrote to the Toronto Star in response to the piece on last year’s deaths at the Toronto Zoo. Thanks to all of you, Saturday’s paper, Jan 4, carried the letters headline, “A Zoo is Nothing More than a Tourist Attraction.” In case you can’t access those on the Star website, I have them displayed on the DawnWatch X page. Enjoy!

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Saturday’s, January 4, front-page Los Angeles Times story about bird flu is titled, “Bird flu renews debate over a tool of promise, risk.” It examines gain of function research.

The article includes:

“Felicia Goodrum, a molecular virologist at the University of Arizona, said gain-of-function research could enable health officials to recognize worrisome H5N1 mutations and identify targets for antivirals and vaccines…

“Critics of this line of research don’t see it that way. They say the work is too dangerous, making it possible for a souped-up pathogen to escape into the environment where people have no natural immunity. Even worse, they argue, it could wind up in the hands of nefarious actors who could use it as a bioweapon.

“These risks outweigh the promise of work that may not be as helpful as its supporters suggest, said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

‘What scientists and health officials need to know to contain the outbreak,’ Lipsitch argues, ‘are things like which animals are infected, which people have been exposed, how many of them caught the virus and how sick they became as a result.’

“’Those are basic epidemiology and veterinary questions,’ Lipsitch said. ‘I can’t think of any route by which gain-of-function studies could have informed — much less answered — those questions.’”

Today, Mark Thompson and I discussed this issue on his show, focusing on the lack of government attention to the spread of the disease, and the hideous factory farming causes behind it. You might enjoy that segment. If you do, please make sure to hit the “like” tab. Gosh, even if you don’t have time to listen, don’t hesitate to hit it anyway, if you trust us to have put in a good word for animals, so that YouTube shows it to more people. Positive feedback, including “likes,” matters a lot.

I shared with you, in my 2024 roundup, a perfect two-line letter printed in the Los Angeles Times asking why we are consuming the milk of another species. And I also shared my own letter on the subject, printed in the Dallas Morning News, which covered some of the revolting practices covered in today’s podcast. More avian flu coverage means more opportunities to write, so if you have not yet been published in the Los Angeles Times on the issue, why not weigh in, for animals’ sake?

Today’s, Monday January 6, Washington Post story, page A2, titled, “An orca mother’s grief ritual highlights species peril” has a more informative online title:

“This orca’s grief stunned the world. Now she’s mourning the loss of another calf: The southern resident killer whale, known as Tahlequah, has now lost another calf in what the Center for Whale Research called ‘devastating’ news.”

Just in case reading about Tahlequah’s mourning is not distressing enough, we read of the Southern Resident Killer Whales as a whole:

“But their population was depleted by captures for marine park exhibits in the 1960s and ’70s. Despite being added to the endangered species list in 2005, their numbers have continued to dwindle due to ship disturbances, pollution and the precipitous decline of their main food source: Chinook salmon.”

And later we read:

“The Chinook salmon that is their primary prey have dwindled from a combination of habitat loss, climate change, commercial fishing and dam construction, causing the whales to starve.”

Mmmmm… salmon.

I hope you will check out this sad but important article. And I urge you to respond. Though the story only appeared in print today, we read, at the top of the comments section, “This conversation is now closed. To share any additional thoughts, please reach out to us at letters@washpost.com and we may publish your response.”

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The Post’s “Trump’s Cabinet lineup so far is surprisingly pro-animal” has just appeared online today. The subheading reads, “As Vivek Ramaswamy put it: ‘Animal cruelty will eventually become a genuine concern for conservatives.’

The piece is well worth checking out and I am happy to offer you this gift-link. Unsurprisingly, given how controversial Trump is, and given the passionate slant of the paper and most of its readers (Washington conservatives read the Washington Times) the welfare of animals is not the main concern addressed in the comments. If you are up for helping redirect the comments section towards animals, or happy to support those trying to, or would send an animal friendly letter to the paper, that would be wonderful.

I send thanks to Paul Shapiro for making sure we saw that piece.

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This week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine story, page 30, was titled, “Cat Country.” Online it is titled, “A Mountain Lion Attacked My Nephews. What Could Have Stopped It? As dangerous encounters in California continue to rise, local residents and wildlife experts are trying to figure out how humans and big cats can coexist.”

The description of the attack, which killed one of those nephews, is gruesome. Naturally, by the end of article, the nephew who lived is back out in the wild with his turkey hunting buddies.

Sigh.

Here’s a gift link to the story. I share it with a challenge of a sort, as I wonder how well we can speak for animals without alienating fellow humans. If you feel like taking me up on that one, the New York Times Magazine section takes letters at magazine@nytimes.com . Maybe we can get another page of them!

The San Diego Tribune’s dueling op-eds are 1) a piece titled, “Rodeos hurt animals to make money for corporations. Why is this being allowed at Petco Park?” and 2) a piece titled, “Don’t believe misconceptions about rodeo. It unites people with shared values.”

If this is a topic you know anything about, please weigh in at letters@sduniontribune.com , remembering that your “letter must include a full name, community of residence and a daytime phone number (not for publication)” and be “a maximum length of 150 words.”

If this is a topic you know nothing about, please visit https://RodeoCruelty.com

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Canadian papers are packed with good stuff today! The activist extraordinaire, Jessica Scott-Reid, has a piece in the Toronto Star titled, “Plant proteins are still on the table,” (page A9).

She opens with:

“After plant-based meat alternatives hit the mainstream a few years back and movements like Veganuary (going vegan for January) gained momentum, you may have since heard that plant proteins are not actually that good for you.

“You may have also heard in the last year that ecologically damaging animal farming, if done “right,” can actually be beneficial for the climate. You might not know where you heard these things — maybe it was on TV or TikTok or Facebook — but it’s very unlikely that you heard it from a doctor or scientist.

“That’s because the growing pro-meat narrative, steeped in misinformation, is rooted not in fact but in industry influence. As we move into 2025, don’t be fooled by the corporate rhetoric; Veganuary and plant proteins are still very much on the table.”

Then she reminds us, “No matter how industry spins it, animal agriculture is still a leading cause of climate change,” and that “a plant-based diet need not even include meat alternatives” because “Whole foods such as beans, lentils, tofu, nuts, seeds and whole grains all contain protein, along with heart and gut healthy fibre, and without harmful saturated fats and cancer-causing nitrates found in many animal meats.”

What a great opportunity to speak for animals on a letters page that has shown its willingness to let us! Incidentally, the paper does publish letters from outside Canada, from people who’ve read the Star’s articles online.

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Meanwhile, other papers owned by the Torstar corporation, which owns the Toronto Star, ran a piece by Wayne Poole titled, “Let’s Rethink How we Get our Protein.”

I love Poole’s focus on fishing. He opens with:

“Meeting the protein needs of an increasingly populous and food-insecure world, while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, will be challenging.

Whether omnivore, vegetarian or vegan, protein is an essential part of everyone’s diet. Where and how we get that protein is important, not only to our health, but also to that of the planet.

“Seafood is a high-grade source of protein, requiring no fertilizer, pesticides, antibiotics or growth hormones. Modern day fishing practices and ships are efficient, but they’re indiscriminate, scooping up everything. The bycatch, including turtles and other sea creatures, suffocate in the nets or die on the deck of the ship before being dumped back into the sea, a tragic waste. Unsustainable practices are depleting fish populations faster than they can be replenished.”

And he ends with:

“As we further deplete fish stocks and as emissions from the meat industry continue to exacerbate climate change, can we expect a paradigm shift, away from farmed meat protein and toward plant proteins and lab-made “meat,” to address food insecurity? Is it time to rediscover the humble legume?”

That piece was in today’s, Monday January 6,  Peterborough Examiner, St. Catharine’s Standard, Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada), Waterloo Region Record, Welland Tribune, Niagara Falls Review, and St. Catharine’s Standard. Canadians, if any of those is localish to you, I urge you to respond! And you are certainly welcome to even if they aren’t!

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In other animal related mainstream media, which I have shared on the DawnWatch X Feed and DawnWatch Facebook page over the last week:

The UK Daily Mail shared a charming story about a Texas cheerleader charged for poisoning her rival’s show goat. (The New York Times has picked up that story online and it may soon appear in that paper.)

WDRB News covered the rescue of 13 severely neglected horse including a famous racehorse.

CNN reports that Sweden is allowing at least ten percent of its wolf population to be killed.

The Columbian has shared PETA’s report on wins for animals in 2024.

Current Affairs Magazine has interviewed Animal Equality’s Dulce Ramirez about Mexico’s groundbreaking constitutional change on behalf of animals.  (Thanks to Hillary Rettig for making sure we saw that.)

And the CBC reports that fur traps sometimes catch the wrong animal.

As if there’s a right animal.

Yours and all animals’,
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch