DawnWatch End-of-Year Roundup 2024 – Happy New Year!

At the end of year I like to take stock, to sort through the animal news I’ve covered over the year, and share the highlights for us all to enjoy, perhaps over a glass of something bubbly, with furry friends at our feet or on our laps. This New Year’s Even I bring you a Top 12 for 2024:

1) AVIAN FLU

Avian Flu, H5N1, has undoubtedly been the number one animal story of 2024, in terms of the number of articles and op-eds, their prominence, and what they say about our relationships with other species.

We started the year, January 1, with a front-page warning from the Mercury in Northern California: “Bird flu infects Northern California’s historic poultry region, putting small farmers in peril: More than 1 million birds slaughtered in bucolic ‘Egg Capital of the World’”.

By March, the Los Angeles Times front page was announcing an “’apocalyptic’ mass mortality event that has left thousands of sea lions and elephant seals dead on the beaches of South America … as the H5N1 bird flu continues its march across the globe.”

 

In April the New York Times told us:

 

“There has been no stopping H5N1. Avian flu viruses tend to be picky about their hosts, typically sticking to one kind of wild bird. But this one has rapidly infiltrated an astonishingly wide array of birds and animals, from squirrels and skunks to bottlenose dolphins, polar bears and, most recently, dairy cows.”

And the Los Angeles Times, on the front page (to the paper’s credit) informed us that the disease had made its way into the dairy industry and had infected at least two human dairy farm workers.

By October we were reading in the Los Angeles Times about “Bird flu spreading rapidly among dairy cows,” with 93 of California’s 1100 diary herds testing positive for the virus.

It was not until December that the Los Angeles Times front page announced that Governor Newsom has declared a state of emergency,  and an op-ed in that paper announced “We can get ready for bird flu – or court disaster.”

An op-ed in the New York Times, noted a “foreseeable catastrophe” as it informed us:

“The H5N1 avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is raging out of control among the nation’s cattle, infecting roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. …”

And as a warning to humans it told us, “One recent study of 115 farmworkers found that about 7% of them showed signs of a recent, undetected H5N1 infection. They’d been going about their lives — visiting markets, churches, other homes — while harboring the potential seed of a new pandemic…

As we close the year, the Washington Post underlines the hideous impact on other species, reporting on a big cat sanctuary in Washington state where Avian flu has killed twenty big cats.

Comedian Bill Maher stated point blank how the disease got out of control:

“We’re still torturing animals by raising our food in conditions ideal for viruses to make the leap to humans.”

Indeed, Avian Flu is the number one animal story of 2024, not only because it has killed so many animals, but also because of the strong coverage of the way our treatment of other species has led to its spread.

 

The New York Times ran an op-ed, by Alex Tey  which in the International Edition was titled, “Bird Flu is Our Fault,” which included:

“It’s my belief that humans have an obligation to the nonhuman life we share this planet with to mitigate the harm we’ve enabled this virus to cause. Our unsustainable activities — factory farming, climate-warming emissions and habitat destruction, to name a few — have helped turn bird flu from a natural phenomenon into an anthropogenic disaster.”

 

Farm Sanctuary’s Gene Baur had a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle titled, “Who to blame for bird flu’s spread? Real problem is factory farming” which told readers:

“Overcrowding cows, pigs, chickens and other animals in filthy, stressful conditions while giving them enormous quantities of drugs and feeding them feces and dead animals creates a fertile ground for disease.

“Pigs are considered particularly liable to spread disease to humans because their bodies are capable of being infected by viruses from people and birds — creating a petri dish for mutations and viral spread between species that would otherwise be incapable of infecting one another.”

Making a point I know DawnWatch readers can get behind, PETA’s Heather Moore had a piece in the East Bay Times (available only to subscribers) titled, “Spread of bird flu bolsters case to stop eating animal meat.”

And Gene Baur joined forces with Crystal Heath, the veterinarian who runs the nonprofit “Our Honor” and has been a true leader in this field, to write a particularly strong essay for Time Magazine. They noted:

“In June, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told scientific experts the virus would just ‘burn itself out,’ only to have the virus explode in California a few months later.

And:

“Our food systems, heavily dominated by concentrated animal feeding operations, facilitate the spread of pathogens. In crowded and filthy conditions, turkeys and chickens (as well as other farmed animals and human workers) are vulnerable to diseases like bird flu. Meanwhile, our exploitation of animals, both farmed and wild, on a massive scale is putting public health at immense risk. In fact, over 75% of emerging human pathogens are zoonotic in origin.

“After learning the unsavory truth about the industry, informed consumers are beginning to become conscientious objectors to the oppression of our fellow animals by avoiding products derived from their exploitation. Despite fluctuations in consumer demand, animal agriculture receives billions of dollars of public support to ensure its survival in the face of changing consumption habits. In fact, 73% of dairy profits come from some form of subsidy, according to a 2015 report made for the dairy industry.”

I particularly love the Heath and Baur suggest that businesses “dependent on animal-based ingredients” start replacing them, “for their financial security but for public and planetary health.” Pushing businesses to change will have more impact than trying to veganize one individual at a time. But then businesses are made up of individuals, who run them according to their own beliefs, so I am not, in any way, discounting the power of persuading individuals to see things differently and make changes!

We also saw coverage of the horrors of animal transport and its impact on Avian Flu.  The Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed piece by Gwendolen Reyes-Illg which warned:

“Each year, millions of dairy cattle are transported long distances in the U.S. under grueling conditions — deprived of food, water and protection from extreme heat and cold. Transport stress additionally compromises animals’ immune systems. In particular, hundreds of thousands of newborn calves are transported on journeys that can exceed 1,000 miles. Male calves, typically considered a ‘low-value byproduct’ of the dairy industry used for veal or beef production, are often fed unpasteurized waste milk, putting them at high risk of contracting H5N1, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

Meanwhile the New York Times’ Emily Anthes (who has been the closest thing to that paper’s counterpart of the Los Angeles Times’s Susanne Rust in her focus on this issue) wrote , with Linda Qiu, “Farm Animals Are Hauled All Over the Country. So Are Their Pathogens,” informing us:

“The conditions of transport can also take a physical toll. Animals may be subject to extreme heat and cold, hauled for hundreds of miles without a break and deprived of food, water and veterinary care, experts said. There is virtually no data about how many get sick or die from the journeys.

“‘Such stressful conditions “compromise the animal’s health and welfare and also weaken their immune system, which obviously increases the risk of disease transmission,’ said Ben Williamson of Compassion in World Farming, an animal-welfare nonprofit.’”

Finally on this topic: the DawnWatch mission is to encourage the media to cover animal issues well so that consumers can make informed choices in line with their own values. One of the prime tactics towards that end is encouraging animal advocates to write letters to the editor. Our letters let papers know they are on the right track when they cover animal issues well. They educate and persuade powerful people – the letters page editors.  They also educate readers and remind them that they care about animal suffering. And they populate the letters pages, which serve as barometers of public opinion for legislators and other decision makers. And so, I will reshare here a letter published just last week in the Los Angeles Times, which epitomizes the guidance I often give, reminding DawnWatch readers that one doesn’t have to be an eloquent writer, with numerous nuanced thoughts on a topic, in order to get published – quite the opposite. Alison Grimes nailed it with her two-line response to reports of the spread of Avian Flu with:

“Another option to limit the spread of H5N1 is for people to stop drinking the milk of another animal. How did we buy into the notion that we have to consume cows’ milk to survive?”

Having moved to Texas recently (the DawnWatch office is still in California) and keeping a closer eye on the papers here, some of which have huge circulations,  I responded to a KFF Health News story published on the front page of the Dallas Morning News with the following letter, which I was pleased to have published:

“Re: ‘How bird flu in cows got past safety news — It seemed so unlikely that testing began late, posing potential for epidemic,’ May 25 news story.

“I was struck by a line in this front-page story on the spread of avian flu: ‘Cows are mainly vegetarian.’

“Mainly?

“Then I remembered tales from years ago of cows being fed ground-up poultry waste, a practice banned as mad cow disease became a threat. A little research brought me to a Forbes article from which I learned that the revolting practice has been reinstated. I read, ‘Poultry litter is used as feed among cattle because it’s a cheap source of protein and an inexpensive way to dispose of the waste, according to the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Missouri.’

“Yet people are surprised that avian flu has spread to cows, and the media even goes so far as to blame the droppings of migrating birds.

“If we don’t radically change our attitude to animals, and our willingness to treat them unconscionably, our own cruelty will eventually wipe us out.

“Karen Dawn, Austin

Founder and director of DawnWatch, an animal advocacy nonprofit organization”

I share that knowing that Avian Flu isn’t going away anytime soon, and in the hope that along with Alison’s perfect two-liner, it may inspire you to use Avian Flu coverage to remind people that, for so many reasons, we must change our relationships with other species.

Closely related to that number one story, are stories on

2) FOOD INDUSTRY CRUELTY

The Time Magazine article I pointed to above, by Crystal Heath and Gene Baur, fell into this category as well as that above as it covered the killing of animals via VSD+:

“As the COVID-19-induced bottleneck closed slaughterhouses due to worker illnesses, pig producers resorted to sealing up buildings, pumping in heat and steam, and waiting hours for their excess pigs to die in a process known as ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+). The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) states that VSD+ should be reserved for only ‘constrained circumstances,’ but when bird flu struck again in 2022, the poultry industry’s failure to plan led VSD+ to become one of the most commonly used methods of killing. What’s more, taxpayers were forced to bail out producers while those same billion-dollar companies made record profits. It’s a system that rewards businesses that act in irresponsible and callous ways toward the animals with a recklessness that also jeopardizes public safety and the health of workers.”

Heath’s work in the field was also featured on the front page of the New York Times, in an article by Andrew Jacobs titled, “A Cruel Way to Control Bird Flu?” It detailed the horrors of VSD+ and told us:

“Among the biggest recipients of the agency’s bird flu indemnification funds from 2022 to this year were Jennie-O Turkey Store, which received more than $88 million, and Tyson Foods, which was paid nearly $30 million. Despite their losses, the two companies reported billions of dollars in profits last year…

“… By compensating commercial farmers for their losses with no strings attached, the federal government is encouraging poultry growers to continue the very practices that heighten the risk of contagion, increasing the need for future cullings and compensation.”

We learned from that article that all the shockingly cruel death may have served little purpose other than to enrich the subsidy recipients:

“Some animal welfare advocates, pointing to recent outbreaks that were allowed to run their course, question whether killing every bird on an affected farm is even the right approach. When H5N1 hit Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary in California in February 2023, killing three birds, the farm’s operators steeled themselves for a state-mandated culling. Instead, California agriculture officials, citing a recently created exemption for farms that do not produce food, said they would spare the birds as long as strict quarantine measures were put in place for 120 days.

“Over the next few weeks, the virus claimed 26 of the farm’s 160 chickens, ducks and turkeys, but the others survived, even those that had appeared visibly ill, according to Christine Morrissey, the sanctuary’s executive director. She said the experience suggested that mass cullings might be unnecessary. ‘There needs to be more research and effort put into finding other ways of responding to this virus,’ Ms. Morrissey said, ‘because depopulation is horrifying and it’s not solving the problem at hand.'”

Vox has, again this year, published numerous important articles for animals, including an article by the dynamo Jessica Scott-Reid on livestock auctions titled, “A special investigation reveals the places where farm animals endure ‘sadistic’ abuse” with the subheading, “These marketplaces are the backbone of the meat industry, where cruelty to animals is the norm.”

Vox also brought us, “Most ‘humane’ farms are lying to you — and the government isn’t stopping them: A new investigation finds false advertising continues to dupe consumers.”

The UK saw a huge animal cruelty story in the Times when Chris Packham and Caroline Lucas quit their jobs at the head of the RSPCA after Animal Rising exposed the RSPCAs ethical labelling scheme as fraudulent.  Lucas acknowledged the RSPCA was at risk of  “misleading the public and legitimising cruelty.’”

Also on that subject of meat industry cruelty, Korea’s dog meat ban got a lot of coverage.

Finally, it was a true joy, in December, to see one of the world’s most prestigious publications, The New York Review of Books, print an essay by Professor Martha Nussbaum titled, “Reports from the Slaughterhouse. A century after Upton Sinclair exposed the inhumane and unhygienic conditions of Chicago’s stockyards, life for animals in America’s factory farms and slaughterhouses is still gruesome.”

3) MEAT AND ENVIRONMENT

This year the New York Times published a series of eight essays under the titled, “What to Eat on a Burning Planet.”

The Wall Street Journal put “N.Y. Accuses Meatpacker of Lying About Climate” on its front page (in February). And the subject of that article was also given an in-depth look by the fabulous folks at Vox.

In fact VOX, always so great on animals, may have outdone itself this year, publishing, in August, “a package of stories on the past and future of the movement against factory farming.” The series was supported by Animal Charity Evaluators.

This year we got great news about a “Fart Tax” in Denmark: “Gassy cows and pigs will face a carbon tax in Denmark, a world first — Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming.”

The Guardian  ran a piece by George Monbiot, warning us to beware an ‘eco-friendly’ new film called “Six Inches of Soil” because, “There’s no such thing as a benign beef farm.

A Los Angeles Times op-ed titled, “A Way to Save the Colorado River: Eat Fewer Burgers,” told us how much Colorado River water irrigates cattle feed — almost a third of all river consumption, according to a recent study while a front-page article in that paper noted”46% of Colorado River diversions go to hay.”

Of course I was thrilled to see the resulting letters page headline “Chickens Would Like a Word” with three letters printed on the topic telling us that swapping beef for chicken “makes sense from a water consumption perspective, but not from an animal welfare perspective” and noting, “For a healthier and kinder planet, the trick is to reduce animal consumption across the board.”

4) STARBUCKS

In March, the Los Angeles Times ran “Surcharge for alternatives to dairy milk stirs up lawsuit against Starbucks.” In November, we got the long-awaited announcement that Starbucks would stop upcharging for nondairy milk. It made huge news, partly thanks to the full page ads taken out by Starbucks!  Now there’s a company that knows how to make lemonade!

Naturally, Vox did a particularly good job of covering the news, telling us:

“It’s a change that plant-based food advocates have long campaigned for, citing the dairy industry’s grave animal welfare and climate impacts. In 2022, Succession actor James Cromwell — in partnership with PETA — superglued himself to a Starbucks counter in New York City in protest of the upcharge.

“The dairy business model depends on artificially inseminating cows and separating them from their calves at birth so humans can take their milk. The calves are typically forced to live alone in small enclosures while dairy cows are kept in large, industrial sheds, spending little to no time in pasture.

After multiple cycles of pregnancy and birth, when a dairy cow’s milk productivity wanes, she’s typically sent to slaughter.”

One truly disappointing story this year, was the failure of an anti-factory-farming bill in Sonoma County. CBS news reported:

“A controversial ban on large animal farms in Sonoma County appears to be heading for a major defeat, as early returns show 85% of the voters rejecting Measure J.”

I share that as I introduce the next topic, to help explain why some of us suspect it is our only hope of ending the horrors visited upon animals, given how little people seem to care what’s behind their meat:

5) CELL CULTURED MEAT

Early in the year we saw a  New York Times guest essay titled, “$3 Billion Later, Where’s The (Planet-Saving, Lab-Grown) Beef?” The online version was depressingly titled, “The Revolution That Died on Its Way to Dinner.” Happily, we soon also saw a full New York Times letters column in response, which I posted on  https://Twitter/X printed out in all its glory. Five letters!

At least the Chicago Tribune ran a welcome editorial , which was also printed in the Baltimore Sun, titled, “Don’t write off fake meat just yet.”

Cell cultured meat (which I often call Slaughter-free Meat), became a political issue in 2024 as Florda voted to ban it, with Governor DeSantis making statements that associated it with the progressive left. Alabama soon followed suit.  The good news is that those actions seemed to push the left to start taking a real interest in its success!

We saw a New York Times article titled, Bills to Ban Lab-Grown Meat Have Wide Ramifications,” and a New York Times column by Paul Krugman titled, “Meat, Freedom and Ron DeSantis,” which made the point:

“Still, if and when lab-grown meat, also sometimes referred to as cultured meat, makes it onto the market at less than outrageous prices, a significant number of people will probably buy it. Some will do so on ethical grounds, preferring not to have animals killed to grace their dinner plates. Others will do so in the belief that growing meat in labs does less damage to the environment than devoting acres and acres to animal grazing. And it’s at least possible that lab-grown meat will eventually be cheaper than meat from animals.

“And if some people choose to consume lab-grown meat, why not? It’s a free country, right?”

Ari Nessel made a similar point op-ed in The Hill which noted:

“If we value freedom, why remove this choice? Whether it’s cultivated meat or Doritos, isn’t the freedom to choose what we consume quintessentially American? The hypocrisy is particularly stark in a state that prides itself on individual freedom and market-driven solutions. ”

Current Affairs was less subtle, with a story titled, “The Ban on ‘Lab-Grown’ Meat is Both Reprehensible and Stupid.”

The Los Angeles Times op-ed on the issue was titled, “Banning the Wrong Kind of Meat” and included:

“Forget for a moment the horrific suffering that animals endure before they wind up as packaged bits in your grocery store. Just consider the environmental toll that it takes to feed the ribeye coalition. Raising cows and other animals for food consumes a huge amount of scarce land and water; an estimated 80% of agricultural land is used for animal grazing and animal feed production. It also produces a huge amount of waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, making it a leading contributor to deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change. This is the industry DeSantis, Ivey and Fetterman want to defend from disruption?…

“The production of cell-cultivated meat, plant-based meat and other such alternatives is nowhere near harmful enough to warrant a ban. Ironically, however, industrial animal agriculture is. It inflicts an enormous amount of harm on everyone whether we participate or not. The recent outbreak of avian flu in dairy herds is only one of countless dangerous externalities that plausibly warrant government intervention.”

And from Canada, Jessica Scott Reid’s superb piece in the Toronto Star was titled, “Cultivated Meat is the Future” and closed with:

“It’s humanity at its best, where genius and innovation meet compassion and logic. It’s progress, it’s necessary and turning on it due to misconceptions about tradition or safety or politics would be a serious step back in our evolution.”

I will share here that In 2024 I became a big fan of the indie media podcast Breaking Points, because the hosts come from opposite political stands but have respectful conversations about the issues. You might enjoy their coverage of Florida’s ban, with one of the hosts referring numerous times to the horrors of factory farming.

6) FISHING AND WHALES

The number of stories of whales caught in fishing line increases every year, overwhelmingly.  In December  the New York Time released a heartbreaking and important essay  informing us that right whales, “first assaulted by whaling, now the collateral victim of shipping and fishing — could be functionally extinct within two decades.”

Media this year has made it clear that we are starving those we aren’t drowning in fishing line, with the Los Angeles Times at least willing to put that on the front page. An article by Susanne Rust, of course, titled, “What happened to their food?” told us:

“Now — after more than 700 gray whales have washed ashore in Mexico, Canada, California and other U.S. states since late 2018 — new research published Tuesday in PLOS One suggests the culprit was a critical drop in food availability in the mammals’ Arctic and sub-Arctic seafloor feeding grounds.”

It’s not just whales starving. KTLA and the Malibu Patch covered mass pelican die-offs reporting, “’They are coming in emaciated, and hypothermic,’ rescue workers told KTLA. ‘Initial lab work is confirming they are in starvation mode. A large percentage are coming in with fishing gear entanglement.'”

The Los Angeles Times covered “struggling salmon” and announced a coastal salmon fishing ban for a second year “amid steep population declines.” That particular article did not mention that, unlike humans,  orcas rely entirely on those fast-disappearing salmon for survival.

A PBS News Hour piece covered the human toll of commercial industrial fishing.

At least Euronews brought us happy news announcing, “Greece becomes the first country in Europe to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas.”

We saw a report in the New York Times  and one on NPR’s Weekend Editon discussing whale intelligence – noting that whales use a much richer set of sounds than previously known – “a sperm whale phonetic alphabet.” The New York Times podcast, The Daily, aired an episode on that issue.

And just in case that kind of whale intelligence isn’t enough to make you want to can the industrial fishing industry to save whales, I will share that we also learned this year, reported by the BBC, that fish have passed the quintessential mirror test.

For whales, death at human hands is not only by accidental drownings and starvation: the Associated Press shared the disappointing news that Iceland has issued licenses for 128 whales to be hunted this year.

And the Guardian reported on the Australian government’s “deep disappointment” with Japan’s decision to expand its commercial whaling target list.

Meanwhile, the US government reinstated the Makah Tribe’s permission to hunt gray whales.

I had the following letter published in the New York Times on the Makah hunt:

“Re “Tribe Wins U.S. Consent to Hunt Gray Whales Off Washington Coast” (news article , June 14):

“While the Makah traditions should be respected, the tribe’s right to hunt whales must be weighed against the whales’ right to live, the right of most of us to treasure and protect their lives, and the right of society to impose animal welfare standards, which it seems unlikely the traditional harpoon hunt can meet.

“Let’s remember that the Makah can choose to let their tradition evolve and find a different way to celebrate, or commemorate, their history of hunting whales.”

And finally, no whale story made more news than the widely covered arrest of Captain Paul Watson in Greenland, his threatened extradition to Japan where he would have faced life in prison, and finally his release in time to spend the holidays with his family. The Japan Times reported on that release and his vow to end whaling worldwide.

7)  CAPTIVITY’S TOLL

Whales also featured prominently in stories this year on the toll of captivity. Numerous outlets, including WPLG Local 10 in Miami have covered the many animal welfare violations at the Miami Seaquarium, which has been fighting an eviction notice.

Hopefully, next year I will get to report that it has finally closed.

Canada’s Marineland is similarly embattled, with negative reports culminating in a Toronto Star piece by the inimitable Jessica Scott-Reid, asking “What more will it take to shut down Marineland?” after the park had its fifth beluga die in one year, the 17th since 2019.

This year pandas became a focus of the trouble with zoos. The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page, above-the-fold photo of a panda with the sensitive headline, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Adorable.”

The San Francisco Standard ran a strong piece objecting to the import of pandas, under the title, “The broken and neglected San Francisco Zoo is no place for giant pandas.”

A New York Times report told us “A Times investigation found that zoos knew conservation money went toward apartment buildings and roads. But they wanted to keep displaying pandas, so nobody looked too closely.”

It remarked on the conservation efforts involving panda’s:

“Today, China has removed more pandas from the wild than it has freed, The Times found. No cubs born in American or European zoos, or their offspring, have ever been released….

“Along the way, individual pandas have been hurt.

“Because pandas are notoriously fickle about mating in captivity, scientists have turned to artificial breeding. That has killed at least one panda, burned the rectum of another and caused vomiting and injuries in others, records show.”

Canada’s Hamilton Spectator put “Does ‘captivity equate to cruelty?” on the front page, with a story about the African Lion Safari fighting a bill that would end the keeping of elephants in Canada.

The UK’s Independent ran a piece by Chas Newkey-Burden, titled, “Why there’s no such thing as a kind zoo.”

And Bella, a beluga trapped alone in a Korean mall, is starting to get the coverage she needs.

8)  FLACO AND RODENTICIDE

Flaco’s escape to freedom from New York’s Central Park Zoo spurred conversations about captivity and about rodenticide.  Mark Thompson and I , for example, chatted first about his freedom on Mark’s show, covering a New York Times article published on the anniversary of his escape, and then discussed his death, probably as a result of rodenticide https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/nyregion/flaco-owl-central-park-zoo-death-cause.html?unlocked_article_code=1.f00.I9Co.nuzAJUFT8jKz&smid=url-share ,  after one year of freedom.

(That second segment first discusses our movement’s sorrowful loss of Steve Wise in 2024.)

Unsurprisingly, the most sensitive coverage of Flaco may have come from the New York Times’ Margaret Renkl, who wrote:

“To protect the animals we love, we’ll need to think differently about the animals we do not love. To live peaceably among them, we’ll need to work harder to do what wildness requires of us.

“Wild animals are not our enemies. They are our neighbors. Every owl is Flaco. Looked at through the lens of biodiversity loss, every toad and rabbit and squirrel and fox and coyote and goldfinch and cricket and lacewing and roly-poly — they could all be Flaco. We just need to learn to love them the way we loved him.”

Flaco’s death led to discussions of better ways to deal with New York’s rat population, but, I am thrilled to report, not only because of the effect on wildlife. A New York’s Daily News article about a Brooklyn Assembly contest noted varying stances on rat control:

“Huntley, who’s backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and is a protege of state Sen. Jabari Brisport, told the Daily News on Friday that killing rats sends the wrong message and is ‘not really the solution.’

“It makes more sense, he said, to give the critters birth control and have the city Sanitation Department step up its efforts to keep streets clean.

“’The idea of thinking that killing individual, random rats is going to bring about a solution is, I think, wrong-sided,’ Huntley said….

“Huntley’s stance on the cheese-eaters aligns with that of his mentor, Brisport, who along with animal rights activists wrote to then-BP Adams in 2019 to criticize him about his unorthodox rat-murder methods.

“’Rats are wildlife, and part of our urban ecosystem,’ they wrote at the time. ‘Rats live emotionally rich lives, form strong interspecies bonds, have rituals, and mourn family losses.’”

Later in the year we got great news from the New York Post under the headline, “NYC to control rat population with birth-control pills instead of poison — saving ‘lots of precious little lives.’”

We learned that the City Council, in honor of Flaco, approved a measure in favor of rat contraceptives.

Meanwhile, with Los Angeles having lost the beloved mountain lion, P-22, to rat poison last year, this year the Los Angeles Times printed an editorial calling strongly for better bans.

And Science Magazine, with references to both Flaco and P22, reported on “Rat poison’s long reach.”

9) SHELTER CRISIS

 

The shelter crisis was on the front page of USA Today on New Years Day, 2024, with that paper following up in February to let us know that  “shelter kill numbers for dogs are heading in the wrong direction for the first time in years.”

The Guardian published “America’s animal shelters are overwhelmed. Pets – and staff – are at breaking point.”

 

 

The blessed Los Angeles Times put the issue on the front page numerous times throughout the year, ran letters columns full of our letters, and conducted its own investigation into the situation telling us that “dogs are languishing in crowded, unsanitary shelters, which can lead to them either being traumatized or becoming ill.”  In December we finally read “After Times investigation, L.A. County seeks to add kennels, review policies at animal shelters.”

The Times investigation inspired local media such as a  strong Fox 11 segment on the “euthanization” of healthy and friendly dogs in Los Angeles for lack of shelter space.

Closely related to the shelter crisis are puppy mills, on which the Los Angeles Times also did its own special report. And KQED aired a great podcast interview with the investigative reporters behind that Los Angeles Times “Puppy Mill Pipeline” feature.

The Los Angeles Times’ year of great shelter coverage culminated in an editorial from the paper titled, “Let’s Stop Killing Animals in Shelters and Get More Adopted.” Then an entire letters section , six letters long, was devoted to the issue, under the heading, “City of Suffering Shelter Animals.” (Here on Yahoo).

New York has faced a similar shelter crisis, as covered in a New York Daily News piece by Elizabeth Forel.

And the New York Post also brought us an expose of puppy mills.

That’s the kind of expose that helps support the ban on retail sales of pets in New York, which went into effect late this year.

The New York Times ran a touching article in the Real Estate Section titled, “Forced to Choose Between Housing and a Pet.”

And a book by Carol Mithers, “Rethinking Rescue” brought the socioeconomics of caring for pets a lot of great coverage this year, including a piece in the Los Angeles Times (available on the Cordova without a paywall) that notes:

“The animals that fill shelters are less likely to have belonged to humans who abused or didn’t love them than to those who lacked education, information and, most of all, money.”

On the topic of shelters, the amazing Mutts cartoon did more than its part, in hundreds of papers throughout the world, with its “Shelter Appreciation Week” cartoons.

Finally, one of my favorite media stories this year was Time Magazine’s piece , by bioethicist Jessica Pierce, “The Case Against Pets,” which didn’t assume that once out of a shelter and in a human home, an animal is automatically happy. It is wonderful food for thought.

 

10)  PRIMATE BREEDING AND IMPORT

 

People don’t seem to think about the horrors of primate experimentation until something happens – like the escape of forty monkeys from a breeding facility. Then folks notice themselves routing for them. Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker covered that issue beautifully in a piece titled, “Escaped monkeys might be trying to send us a message,” in which she noted, “No one likes to think about the 70,000 monkeys per year that wind up in U.S. research laboratories for drug and other experiments.”

She wrote:

“Suffice to say, there’s big money in monkeys, which sold for around $2,000 before the pandemic and often much higher since. With demand greater than supplies these days, it would seem imperative that alternative research measures be pursued with greater urgency. Economic considerations aside, sparing monkeys, dogs and other animals from the tortures of experimentation would be good for the human soul.

“To this end, Congress two years ago passed legislation to end the mandatory use of animals in research — the FDA Modernization Act 2.0.  Apparently, the Food and Drug Administration failed to implement or enforce the new law, so Mace and one of her Republican colleagues from Georgia, Rep. Buddy Carter, are co-sponsoring another bill — this time 3.0 — which is basically a directive for FDA to do what it was told to do.”

 

Even before that South Carolina escape, a story about protests against plans for a monkey breeding facility in Georgia made the cover of USA Today, got a double page spread in the National Enquirer and  strong coverage on NBC.

UK’s Independent focused on animal testing horrors with, “Monkeys flown to UK for lab tests found ‘injured and terrified’ in blood-soaked plane crates.”

The front page of Canada’s Toronto Star and papers all over Canada complained about macaques flooding into Canada for experimental use. (And we saw three strong letters under the headline, “Why continue experimenting on monkeys?” which referred to primate testing as barbaric, sickening and cruel.)

And in November, the Montreal Gazette ran a stunning story, titled, “Researchers beg Canada to stop importing monkeys for experimentation,” which took up most of the front page of the Montreal Gazette. You can check out a screenshot of that on the DawnWatch X feed to see the drama of the presentation.

In May we read in the New York Times and elsewhere about the Alamogordo Chimps, stuck at facility in New Mexico despite a judge’s ruling that they be moved. By November we learned, from an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican:

“The legal path is now clear to move a colony of former test subject chimpanzees from an Alamogordo facility to a forested sanctuary in Louisiana where they can live out their remaining years.

“The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently dropped its appeal of a court ruling in favor of moving the animals out of Holloman Air Force Base’s Alamogordo Primate Facility, where they were used for biomedical experiments until 2015…

I can’t wait to give you an update on that one, with video, in 2025!

And, of course, one of biggest stories about primates, used for experimentation, entertainment, and company, was the release of the superb HBO series Chimp Crazy! It is well worth watching!

11) BIPARTISAN ANTI VIVISECTION STANDS

 

Primate testing wasn’t the only animal testing well covered in the media in 2024.

 

We got wonderful news from Washington State, brought to us by KPUG 1170, on a ban on the sale of cosmetics tested on animals!

We saw great coverage from News 5 Cleveland told noted the introduction of House Bill 495, which would stop the majority of animal testing for cosmetics sold in Ohio.”

Both the Washington Post and The Dallas Morning News ran a huge story (Page 2 in the DMN but noted on the cover) about a property, which used to be an animal testing laboratory, being turned by the Beagle Freedom Project into a sanctuary for victims.

The conservative Washington Examiner brought us news, in April, of the PAAW ACT, calling it “the latest in a string of efforts to curb tax dollar support for animal testing.” Sponsored by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL),  “It would end most federal funding of tests on cats and dogs…”

Then in September a piece in The Hill by Rep Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-Nev.) touted a successful similarly bipartisan effort to end the horrendous experiments on dogs and cats at the VA!

I think it is fair to suspect that at least some of the right’s passion against animal testing can be tied to antipathy for Anthony Fauci who has been closely linked to it. This year a thoughtful Washington Post article explored that link under the title, “Unpacking the story of Fauci and painful experiments involving dogs: Documents obtained by an animal rights group show that NIH was not fully transparent when the controversy erupted in 2021.”

Glenn Greenwald, one of the few investigative journalists to look closely at animal issues, covered that issue on his show.

No matter what the motives, the result is that we have seen Rand Paul on Fox & Friends protesting the expenditure of “hundreds of thousands of dollars to drill holes into cats heads, spin them around rapidly and study motion sickness” noting, “Sounds more like animal cruelty than it does like an actual experiment.”  And we saw Lara Trump, who has a history of supporting the Beagle Freedom Project, on Hannity saying, “I think we all, as American Taxpayers, want to know our tax dollars are going to fund things that matter, not these crazy experiments on animals that have no part of our federal government.”

As I wrote on my X post of that one, no matter where one comes down politically, if one cares about animal cruelty that comment is heartening to hear.

And animal advocacy as a bipartisan issue is heartening to see!

12) PEANUT AND POLITICS

 

That brings us to Peanut the Squirrel and his raccoon brother Fred. Until they hit the news, there had been a couple of other viral stories tying animals to politics:

We saw the disqualification of Kristi Noem as a possible running mate for Trump after the Guardian leaked parts of her memoir revealing her pride at having personally shot a difficult dog and disliked goat.

And we saw RFK Jr’s questionable treatment of the dead bodies of a bear cub and a whale.

The story of New York state seizing and then “euthanizing” (in quotes because the animals were healthy) a beloved rescued pet squirrel, Peanut, and his less famous raccoon brother Fred, broke on November 1, which was almost the eve of the US presidential election. Those of us who didn’t already known Peanut met him post mortem through coverage that included lots of cute Instagram video and an interview with his adoptive dad. Peanut was everywhere, from the New York Times to coverage in the UK, showing its disgust and reflecting our disgust, with the authorities.

While Elon Musk, JD Vance and even Donald Trump weighed in, Democrats remained silent, perhaps because the government that killed Peanut and Fred was Democratic. And so the New York Times  ran the story , “Death of a Pet Squirrel is a GOP rallying cry.”

Mark Thompson and I discussed the issue on his podcast. While DawnWatch is strictly nonpartisan politically, Mark, who is adamantly anti-Trump, expressed his disappointment that the Democrats had ceded that ground. We talked about the impact it may have had on the election. The segment also has loads of video of Peanut, and I explained the story in detail, in case anybody in the world missed it.

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I end this report on 2024 animal media with Peanut and Fred, sharing my hope that no matter the reasons, animals increasingly become a bipartisan issue, so that we see progress for them in the coming year.

I send this out with gratitude, knowing that much of the DawnWatch readership works in the animal advocacy field, or volunteers in it. I thank you for your efforts, your compassion, and for every animal friendly comment you have left on a story, and every note you have jotted off to an editor.

Major mainstream media still matters – it’s where a huge chunk of the public still gets it news, and it provides the stories on which the independent media comments. And animals matter. Thank you for lending them your voice.

Happy New Year!

Yours and all animals’,
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch