agriculture

South Africa's commercial captive lion breeding industry has drawn global attention for its practices and impact on wildlife conservation. This industry is marked by several concerns and challenges that need urgent attention.

In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly inseminated to stay pregnant in order to produce milk. Their calves are considered by-products, and are taken from their mothers to be reared in lonely environments. Each year, over 300,000 calves are raised and slaughtered in Belgium.

Snakebites already inflict tremendous suffering across South Asia, where lack of awareness and access to treatment leaves thousands dead or disabled each year. Now, climate change threatens to dramatically worsen this humanitarian crisis.

The World Food Programme has announced that to reduce malnutrition in Afghanistan, they have distributed food to approximately 6 million women and children suffering from malnutrition.

Dealing a blow to three of the world’s biggest agrochemical companies, a U.S. court this week banned three weed killers widely used in American agriculture, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broke the law in allowing them to be on the market.

\As concerns over animal welfare, public health, and environmental impact intensify, the once-thriving fur farming industry in Europe is facing a reckoning. A citizen's petition demanding an EU-wide ban on fur production has garnered over 1.5 million signatures, far surpassing the required threshold to initiate a potential law change.

The once bustling streets of dog meat restaurants in central Seoul turned deserted, Wednesday, as consuming the meat fell out of favor among Koreans. This void was accentuated as Korea officially banned this age-old practice on Tuesday.

Li, a plant geneticist at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing, is working on a wild rice species from South America called Oryza alta. It produces edible, nutritious grains, but they cannot be harvested because the seeds drop to the ground as soon as they ripen. To tame the plant, Li and his colleagues need to remove this trait, known as seed shattering, and alter a few others.

A revised Regulation on live animal transport, possibly together with rules on cat and dog breeding, is the only piece of updated legislation that will be put forward in this political term. This is at a time when we, and millions of European Citizens, fully expected the European Commission to deliver on its firm commitment to revise all animal welfare rules.

Shocking new report reveals suffering endured by around 44 million farmed animals a year – including unweaned calves and lambs – on horrific journeys lasting up to three weeks. Inadequate and misleading official records are masking the true horror and scale of the EU’s long-distance trade in farmed animals, a shocking new report released today by international NGOs Eurogroup for Animals and Compassion in World Farming reveals.