Ridglan, Cage-Free Eggs, and Dog Sled Delusion: Animal Abusers Having a Very Bad Week | Rising Anxieties

Uh, don't forget we're a podcast. We're on YouTube. Please subscribe. Hit like wherever you listen. And let's get to this first story, which might be, this might be the most worrisome. Um, NABR, I think they call it Neighbor, uh, the National Association of Bi... biological... for Biologic... for biomedical research, uh, condemns, alleged break-in and theft at Midwest research and breeding facility.

They're of course talking about Ridglan and what's been going on there, and they're upset. There's no doubt about it. It's just that when they're upset, you know, sometimes they scare me 'cause they're scary. They're very scary people. Alright, the National Association for Biomedical Research condemns the alleged unlawful violent actions.

Violent? Well, you know, I guess if you count like violence against a door, um, of animal rights, extremists who are EXTREMISTS. I meant to say it with that tone. Who on March 15th are alleged to have, they say alleged everywhere. It, I think they're nervous about getting sued, are alleged to have trespassed on and damaged the property of a Midwest research and breeding facility.

Neighbor stands in solidarity with the greater research community in condemning such a legal activity committed by animal rights EXTREMISTS. Uh, and they talk, they, they talk a lot about, um, the pivotal role that animal research has had in nearly every medical advance, which, you know, uh, if it was true, wasn't true of every, probably was true of some, I'm not gonna deny it. And things are changing. Animal use is no longer like really, uh, really, really the desirable, uh, kind of science that, that biomedical researchers are doing.

Alright, what else? They're concerned by the quote, magnitude and violence of this planned event. This is the scary line. We hope these alleged illegal actions will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law as they would appear to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

You know, they have not, they have not gotten AETA out of the closet so far for any of these DXE, uh, open rescues. As far as I know, as far as I know, I could be wrong, but I think they want to and they wanna get the feds involved and God knows the feds are peculiar these days. Um, so that is that, that, that's worrisome 'cause that could be very distracting though.

Of course these DxE people, they always want prosecutions 'cause that's how you get attention. So, you know, as a lawyer, I, I tend to like not want a prosecute, people to be prosecuted when I'm on their side. But you know, the world is topsy-turvy. They point out that most of the dogs at the facility are involved in research to develop veterinary treatments for diseases like parvo, distemper, heartworms, kennel cough and pain relief.

That as far as I know, it's not true. 'Cause my understanding is that these, these were animals that were bred there at Ridglan and um, were going to be sold into research. That's my understanding. Uh, and so they wouldn't be involved in research at the time, right now, but they really wanna emphasize this fact that, that the research being done on these dogs, or it's going to be done on these dogs, uh, is according to them, going to be completely about veterinary medicine. It is important to reiterate, they say that when animals are the intended patients, as in veterinary medicines, it is both scientifically and ethically essential that these therapies are developed and evaluated in the species for which they're intended just as human medicines must ultimately be tested in humans before approval.

Alright, like, hold the phone here. Um. If, if animal research were in fact necessary, which, you know, I certainly don't concede, in order to develop these medications and if these medications were really considered absolutely necessary to develop, which, you know, I'm not conceding, uh, like when they do research on humans, they don't normally lock them up in little cages for their lives and then do, and then treat them like, like they're just, uh, I don't know, uh, equipment and then kill them when they're done and not treat the... so like, the comparison to research being done on humans is a little, it's a little off, I would say. Uh, the fact that these research animals exist to directly contribute to the health and wellbeing of Americans' pets...

See, they're on the side of animals. You know, that's the point they wanna make. Makes this alleged activity tantamount to stealing the cure from the very animals they're trying to save. Yeah. All right. I, I, I won't go on, you know, you get the point. Oh!

Why suing California won't bring US egg prices down. This is from Watt Poultry. That last story, by the way, was from morningstar.com. I dunno what that is. I think it's just a collection of, of PR, uh, releases. Anyway, I like to say who, who, where these things were published, Why Suing California won't bring us egg prices down. This is a very interesting article because the egg industry is very split on this issue, and that's pretty apparent because this is an egg industry publication.

It's by Meredith Dawson and she says, The avian influenza outbreak that's driving egg prices and state housing laws are not correlated. And her point is that the. the law, particularly in California, that requires, um, eggs sold in California, shell eggs sold in California to comply with, uh, you know, the, the very, very minimal but, but better than anywhere else space requirements, uh, for the hens, uh, has nothing to do with avian influenza, which obviously it doesn't. Like nobody in the industry is claiming that, but apparently the Trump administration decided that it was, and a federal judge just dismissed the administration's lawsuit against California's cage-free egg laws last week that was based on that.

Unfortunately, it's not dismissed permanently. It was dismissed on procedural grounds and it could be back. So the government is saying things about how the egg industry is being victimized, that even the egg industry apparently isn't saying. Uh, Meredith points out, The US egg industry seems to keep finding itself involved in lawsuits that don't address what would actually help producers.

Uh, yeah. There, there's a little infighting going on here, clearly. The DOJ lawsuit, she goes on to say, frame state housing laws as the problem in the country's egg priced instability. However, the real problem affecting egg prices is the ongoing HPAI, that's, that's bird flu outbreak that has claimed more than 150 million layers and pullets.

And they don't want the lawsuit. What they want is money. Uh, the, what the egg industry needs from federal agencies is a path to HPAI vaccination and improvements in biosecurity infrastructure, not more lawsuits. Just give us wasting money, suing people. Just give us money. And then we'll, we'll of course the vaccination issue, as we've discussed many times before is, is complex. Um, but that's Meredith's position.

Alright, this is a sad update. Florida successfully defends lab grown meat ban in court. This is in Pork Business and uh, this is the appeal. I actually covered this case on, on the Animal Law Podcast. Uh, and. Florida, of course, is one of the states that has a ban on cultivated meat, even though cultivated meat isn't yet on the market.

And, and they basically, uh, you know, put a ban on selling it there. Uh. Reassuringly, Bruce Friedrich, who I just interviewed, um, and that interview will be up soon, says, these lawsuits are completely beside the point. Like if, if, if it gets on the market and it's price, uh, comparative and it starts selling in other states, these states are gonna say, Oh, nevermind.

Uh, and that did make sense. There are currently, uh, six other states: Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska and Texas that have similar bans.. But even though this is bad news, now that I've spoken to, to Bruce about it, I feel better about it. Um, alright. From Hordes Dairyman, this is one of those, you know, I have a bunch of these articles that are really about arrogance, uh, different types of arrogance about how people talk about animals and the assumptions they're willing to make about the animals.

What's going on inside the animals. And of course, we're all making assumptions all the time about what other humans are thinking or feeling, certainly what our animals are thinking or feeling. We try to do it in good faith. We can't be sure we get it right. Well, I don't know about the good faith here.

Bovine masseuse, getting our spring scratches in. This is by Molly Iday Schmidt, who's an Iowa dairy farmer, and she's just pleased as punch with herself because they have replaced the scratching, uh, uh, bristles. The bristles on their swinging cattle brushes. Yeah. I mean, you've probably seen them, they're these like circular brushes and the, the cows can brush up against them and kind of get a scratch. She thinks it's just the best thing since sliced bread. Um, one of these jobs is much appreciated. She's talking about the, the spring jobs she's doing. One of these jobs was much appreciated by the cows, as we recently replaced the bristles on our swinging cattle brushes.

The old ones had been well loved and are now finding homes with our small herd of goats and horses to enjoy this summer. The cows, however, are now getting the ultimate pampering with brand new brushes, which, you know, I'm sure that totally makes up for the fact that their babies are taken away from them.

Um, and she says mostly, you know, the the reason, um, for these brushes is just mostly for the sake of cow comfort 'cause you know, clearly they care about their cows so much. She does mention that, um, she thinks it's mainly something that's fun and comforting for the cows.

They also keep the cow's coats clean. They remove dust, dirt, loose hair, and dead skin. Um, the massaging motion helps promote increased blood circulation, which aids in cow welfare, but also potentially boosts milk production. Oh boy, money in the bank. Um, she thinks it's a way to reduce stress. But then also acts as an incentive for cows to get up and move around the free stall barn, which, in turn, leads them to drink more water and consume more feed, thus promoting milk production.

It all works out so well, doesn't it? Uh, when you make those assumptions about what the animals really want. Alright, here's another assumption article. It's a little different. I have, I think three of them.

This is from The Fence Post, um, and by Rachel Gable, who is, uh, described elsewhere as a longtime agriculture writer, particularly versed in legislation and the protein industries. I guess they really don't like to call it animal agriculture, I guess. I write from Northeastern, Colorado, Colorado. Gotta remember to pronounce that right.

Colorado, where I'm part of one of the state's, 12,400 cattle producing families. Cattle producing. Well, I think of cattle as producing cattle, but you know, I guess she produces cattle too. Those who cannot live without wild things. That's the title of this article. Um, and she starts out talking about Aldo Leopold, who wrote in his San County Almanac. There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.

He wrote that conservation is difficult because land is regarded as a commodity, belonging to us rather than a community to which we belong. Treated with love and respect farmers, ranchers, hunters, anglers, outdoor recreationists, and others unable to live without wild things make up the commu... I think Aldo might have been talking that part of the community was the animals, but I don't know, maybe I, maybe I'm wrong. Did he really just think it was all the people who killed the animals? Um, other, on others unable to live without wild things make up the community, actively involved in conservation and damned for it by people who live much further from the land but purport to know better.

Uh, yeah. I think that would be us. So, you know, only if you're there exploiting the land, are you able to talk about it. Uh, then she goes on to talk about Leopold, another guy, um, Gifford Pinchot. Pincho or Pin Shot, who is the first chief of the National Forest Service and also Teddy Roosevelt. And it sounds like all of these people were of that era and of that era, they were conservationists.

I mean, of course Teddy Roosevelt's house, if you've ever been in it, in on Long Island, is full of the heads of dead animals. 'cause they, they didn't have the same kind of animal consciousness that people have come to have, but they did have a very strong... they, the, these people did heroic work because they saved a great deal of land and of course the national parks and, and, um.

So, you know, conflicted feelings. But I understand thinking that, that, that their ethos was certainly valuable, more valuable than the people who otherwise would have gained sway over the entire west at that time, which is, you know, just total exploiters, uh, with no recognition of value. So mixed feelings.

She doesn't have mixed feelings, she thinks they're great, but she also, she thinks that she, because she's a cattle rancher, I guess, that she's one of them. Like what? Uh, today's professional wildlife managers and keepers of the habitats, yeah. That's what wildlife managers do, they, they fix everything. That allow the greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.

Yeah. Again, the people, uh, are following the lead of Leopold, Pinchot and Roosevelt. Those who cannot live without wild things know the re... apparently killing wild things and eating them must... I guess, I guess that does, you know, keep you alive. Um, know the resources and the responsible science-based management are the inheritance to all.

Well, apparently not to all. I mean, I think, I don't think we get any. And the defense of wise management is the debt owed to the visionaries. Yeah. That's what cattle ranching is all about.

I mean. It's the arrogance and all of these articles and so many of the articles that I write, I think they mean it. I think they just think they're fabulous.

Alright, the final one is bad. This is like the most annoying article I've read in a long time. It's in the New York Times, I'm told it was the front page of the New York Times magazine, uh, you know, the Sunday magazine. Um. Their power feels like mine. A dog sled racer says goodbye to her pack. So this is this, this woman, and apparently she's a writer.

Her name is Blair Braverman. She's written a couple of do books, um, and she's, she's done, uh, dogsled racing for many years and she wanted to do it one last time and she, she wanted to get published and she wrote this like beautiful article, which is particularly beautiful because she knows everything her dogs are thinking and it's all, you know, pretty good.

Wouldn't that be nice? I wish we were like Blair. Um. She starts out by talking about a moment when in Wisconsin when they were, she was like running around with these dogs when a black wolf emerged from the trees. And she says, if my dogs related to the wolf and I to them, then what did that make me? I don't know.

What does it make you? What do you think it makes you, do you think it makes you like a wild thing or something? Or do you think it makes you, is that good, is that bad? She doesn't define it. Alright, so there's a number of stories of, um, wolves following them. This was an overnight, you know, not a, not a, um, extended run like the Iditarod. An overnight. Uh, and there are a number of times that wolves are chasing them, um, she's not scared. She feels that they were probably tracing their crumbs because she gave each dog a frozen chicken thigh every hour. And when they chewed, they left chips of meat in the snow. Uh, you know, just a cute little, uh, set the scene kind of fact.

These days most sled dogs are Alaskan Huskies, a fancy name for Northern breed mutts, with a yearning to pull. That's, you know, one of her first indications she knows exactly what these dogs are thinking. They're just yearning to pull, pull her, of course, and a dash of hound for speed.

Um, she wasn't a natural racer when she first started. She sought adventure more than speed. You know, don't you just love her? Um, but she had two main strengths. One of them, like the dogs, I didn't quit. These people. Like who says that? Like, who says that about themselves? Um, so when they reached the trails end in the tiny city of Nome, in, in another race, uh, the bustling world was too much.

I wanted to turn around where they and I could be alone. Well, did you, uh, 'cause you know, uh, really? Oh, that was when she did the Iditarod. Yeah, as soon as she finished the Iditarod, she wanted to turn around and go back into the wilderness. Maybe she did. I don't know.

They'd been through fire, running successive Iditarods, spending years... this is her and her husband who just broke up, um... running successive Iditarods. Oh my God. The poor things they had to be in the Iditarod. They had to? Um, did they have to? Spending years in a one room cabin with no plumbing. Yeah. No wonder they're getting divorced. And 30 dog... oh, in a one room cabin with no plumbing and 30 dogs.

Like, like, like with the dogs in the cabin? Because I don't think so. Training the race team, a herculean task, together. Oy. As I, and the dogs, faced retirement from racing, I hoped they would teach me how to move on. Yeah, that's not really their job, honey. Learn how to move on yourself.

Um, the, the relationship between musher and lead dog is intimate and intense. It's with the understanding that she will comply only if she agree... this is the dog... only if she agrees and she will agree only to the extent that she regards me as competent and useful. I prove my use by learning and anticipating her needs. Yeah, really? Is that what's going on when you train a dog to do something?

Is that really what's going on? That they're just like volunteering? 'Cause if you think that you're crazy. I'm not saying you shouldn't train dogs. We have to train dogs if we're going to have them. And, uh, you know, they have to learn how to do certain things. They don't have to learn how to pull your sled around.

Um. The, the lead dog's name is Pepe. I don't know why she has the name Pepe, but she does. And emotion embarrasses Pepe, like interesting. And they have a picture of Pepe with her hands... her hands... her front paws crossed in front of her to, I guess, to show that she's embarrassed. I don't know.

Pepe, one of the lead dogs, is embarrassed by emotion and saves her excitement for work. Uh, yeah. Really? Maybe she just doesn't like, like you. She's stoic and rarely wags. Yeah. Maybe she just doesn't like you. Maybe she's not that happy. I have a recurring insecurity that she doesn't like me very much. Yeah. You might be right.

Who could blame her? Not me. I mean, I know that we all project the emotions that our dogs are feeling. I mean, that's not unusual. I don't mean to be overly sarcastic. Yeah, I do. Um, but you know, at least we try to do it hopefully in a way that doesn't serve us.

The dog glances back at her with the look of simultaneous exasperation and pride. That's a lot to read into a glance from a dog who's pulling a sled that you're on the back of. But you know, I'm sure, I'm sure she knows her dog. Um, it's a very long article. I'm just paging through a few, uh, getting a few features.

When sled dogs slow down at eight or nine or 11, they can get discouraged. They feel bad about not keeping up with their friends. Yeah. Is that what they feel bad about? You know, it probably does. Old age is not fun. You know, probably the fact that they're, I, I really, there there's a, there's kind of a picture of the, the shelters that they're living in, that they're small and horrible in the middle of snow, so that may be part of the depression.

Um. And they go to, what, what they can do is go, then go to Chilly Dogs, which is a retirement, Kennel in Minnesota. So when they're eight or nine or 11 and they get discouraged, they come to Chilly Dogs and there they're the youngest and they get a new lease on life, pulling tourists at their own pace and teaching scouts how to mush.

So, you know, no retirement for these dogs. No just like, Oh, do what you want. They have a new job. 'cause you know, I'm sure they really love to work. Oh, she feels their movements through the sled. Passing into my fingers, my feet. New mushers are shocked, always, by a dog team's power. This power feels like mine.

Well, it's not. Well, it kind of is because you control 'em, even though you don't wanna admit it. Sled dogs, even old ones, hate to stop. Colbert patters his feet when I call woah. Maybe they like to stop when they like to stop. They don't like to stop when you tell 'em to stop. Maybe that's what's going on.

Suddenly, I understand, Pepe's not avoiding me. She's working with me. I'm sitting up, so she's sitting up. We're guarding our team together. She knows exactly what that dog's thinking. Uh, she tells this horrible story of, um, a dog giving birth where two of the puppies died. Really glad I got the chance to read that.

Um, when we get back to Jake's, that's the husband, I'll refer to these dogs as mine and then correct myself. Your dogs, I mean, or both of ours. And Jake will correct me back. They're their own dogs, he'll say. We're just the people who get to love them. So Jake sounds like a prize himself, doesn't he? Pepe, I say, and the name releases her.

She launches down the trail. She knows what I'm suggesting. She's been waiting for it too. This is like when, uh, they, they see a wolf. And the dogs actually seem to get along really well with the wolves. It's not really a problem. All right, the last line, Pepe steps closer, brushing against my leg and I rest my hand on her neck. She stares at the others, ears tucked, and the intensity of her gaze tells me I'm not the only one who doesn't like to let go.

I, I, I'm not gonna say anything more. This is, this is the shit that really drives me crazy. As you may have wondered. Though, you know, that's a short drive.

Um, alright. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today on rising anxieties and, and listening to me once again. Uh, and if, if you're still here and sat through that nonsense, thank you extra special amounts.

Um, thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and comment on your favorite pod catcher on YouTube wherever. Um, and tune into our other podcasts, The Hen Report and The Our Hen House interview, which as I mentioned, will be an interview with Bruce Friedrich.