NY Times front page on cultured meat, LA Times on bears, Wash Post Wuhan 9/22/24

Today’s, Sunday, September 22, New York Times, has a superb front-page story on the advent of cell cultivated meat. The Los Angeles Times includes a thoughtful lead story on bears breaking into houses. And both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, and numerous other outlets, have covered a report suggesting, once again, that the Covid-19 pandemic began at the Wuhan live animal market, providing us with an opportunity to write about animal cruelty.

Before I cover those, let me thank all who sent letters to the Los Angeles Times in response to last Sunday’s superb investigative report on puppy mills. Today’s Los Angeles Times has a stunning page of letters under the headline, “Turn off the Puppy Mill Pipeline.” I have printed them out on the DawnWatch Facebook page in case you hit by a paywall trying to read them. They are inspiring!

The first, by Lisa A. Landres, suggests, “It’s time for a national referendum to outlaw puppy mills. A rule change petition to rewrite U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations in regard to canine care would be an easy place to start.”

The idea of national referendums has been brough up elsewhere recently, and the idea that the first might be on a bipartisanly popular puppy mill ban is an interesting idea indeed.

What a joy to see the New York Times front-page headline today, “After We Exhaust the Earth’s Limits, Bioreactor Beef Might Be Next on the Menu.” The same article online is titled, “Our Taste for Flesh Has Exhausted the Earth,” with that line coming straight from the article itself, and then the subheading, “Are we ready for the future of meat?” Here’s a gift link from DawnWatch.

I highly recommend checking it out and sharing it!

I know better than to recommend you write, giving animals a voice in mainstream media, but can’t help myself from sharing the paper’s plea for more letters from women.

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“American dream turns into bear necessity,” by Nathan Solis, is on the cover of Sunday’s Los Angeles Times California section, replete with a photo of a bear standing on a balcony, leaning against the railing and gazing off into the distance. The same article is available on Yahoo without the paywall but also without that photo.

It’s thoughtfully written, telling us of the home break-ins:

“The behavior is a result of humans moving deeper into the wildlands where bears reside, said Erinn Wilson, the South Coast Region regional manager with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.”

And we read of the reactions:

“’The residents are kind of torn, because Sierra Madre has a lot of people who love wildlife and they want to protect the bears,’ Giragosian said. ‘There are also residents who are afraid for their lives’.”

Don’t hesitate to weigh in!

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The Saturday, September 21 article in the Los Angeles Times, by Karen Kaplan, on page A4, is titled, “China animal market likely origin of coronavirus.” AOL has the same article available without a paywall.

Washington Post coverage of the same scientific paper, which appeared in the journal Cell, makes clear:

“The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus’s origin.”

In sharing those articles, I feel compelled to also share a New York Times piece, titled, “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points,” by Dr Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard.  It was published in June but carries the note, “This article has been updated to reflect news developments.” Here is a gift link.

Having read Dr Chan’s New York Times piece, and the LA Times and Washington Post articles, I would say the issue is far from resolved. As an animal advocate who wants to see all live animal markets gone, I certainly prefer the market theory! But regardless of whether Covid came from that awful market in Wuhan, or from the laboratory in Wuhan where similar diseases were being studied, what the latest report makes clear is that such a disease could most certainly have come from such a market and could in the future. We can thus use the information for letters to the editor that speak against our society’s treatment of animals.

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The San Diego Union-Tribune has just released, online today, a vomitous op-ed titled “Rodeo is an Opportunity to Unite Over Shared Values, Not Divide Us.” I definitely do not wish to see that one shared widely but do hope those of you familiar with the horrendous abuse behind rodeo will respond .

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Over the last week I have shared the following major media animal stories to the DawnWatch Facebook Page :

The Globe and Mail ran a great piece by Jessica Scott-Reid, focusing on the largely unnoticed speciesism inherent in Donald Trump’s remarks about pets being eaten.  She included:

“When Mr Trump shocks the world with the prospect that dogs and cats are being butchered and eaten somewhere in the U.S., he is not only othering the imagined group of people doing it; he is also ignoring the fact that North Americans butcher and eat more than 27 million animals every single day. Inherently categorizing a dog as worthy of protection from slaughter and consumption, and a pig as unworthy, is an example of the same kinds of arbitrary criteria that also allow racism to thrive.”

The Telegraph and other UK papers shared a shocking and heartbreaking investigation under the heading, “Cows stabbed and beaten at flagship M&S farm. Undercover investigation at dairy farm used in Marks & Spencer adverts reveals employees kicking and stabbing animals.”

KDVR, Fox 31 in Nevada, covered the latest mustang roundups poorly. I wrote :
Heartbreaking mustang roundup with helicopters! What a horrible shame to here FOX31 KDVR.com’s Heather Willard sharing the ridiculous oversimplification that the purpose of the roundups is to “maintain the local ecosystem.” In fact, the roundups are done at the behest of the wealthy cattle ranching lobby, as the ranchers use the taxpayer owned land for their own personal business, and don’t want the gorgeous wild mustangs competing with their cattle for resources. Both allowing the ranchers to use our land, and then charging taxpayers for the cruel roundups, is a disgraceful misuse of taxpayer dollars which should be reported on responsibly.

Perhaps Denver7, instead, can take a more careful look at the awful situation.

There’s a lovely double-page spread on the history of the RSPCA in the current edition of the UK’s Women’s Weekly magazine.

A piece in The Hill, by Rep Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-Nev.) touted a successful bipartisan effort to end the horrendous experiments on dogs and cats at the VA! I send thanks to Jackie Raven for making sure we saw that one.

And Washington Post shared a touching story about a “dog” (who is clearly largely pit bull) lying on top of her paralyzed human to take the brunt of the heat and smoke during a house fire.

Yours and all animals’,
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch