Farmers have freed more than 80 million hens from especially cruel and cramped lives in one of the most significant changes to animal welfare legislation in decades: the end of battery cages. But while almost all British egg producers will be compliant with the new European Union-wide law - which will ban the keeping of egg-laying hens in barren battery cages from this Sunday - many European countries will continue to keep battery hens.
Read more in the New Zealand Herald...
Out of the spotlight for years, the gut-wrenching debate over slaughtering horses for human consumption is moving back to center stage.
Last month, what was effectively a ban on operating a company engaged in that practice was lifted. But Congress already is crafting a bill, called the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011, that would outlaw the practice again.
Once again, absolutely nothing to do with law whatsoever... but this video from www.lifewithdogs.tv sure is cute...
Even the National Institutes of Health may finally... if not somewhat grudgingly... be coming around to the view that it is not necessary to chimpanzees in research. 
A new study shows that rats actually are empathetic and will altruistically lend a helping paw to a cage mate who is stuck in a trap.
A thoughtful editorial by Nobel prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee (probably known to readers of this blog for his book "The Lives of Animals", although that is not specifically the work for which he received the prize) today (or guess yesterday by now, in Australia). 
Forty years after hunters lassoed a young killer whale off Whidbey Island and sold it to a Florida theme park, whale advocates are turning to an unusual tactic to try to force the orca's release: the Endangered Species Act. In a move legal experts said could have significant implications for other zoos and aquariums, animal-rights activists recently sued the federal government, arguing that the law may require Lolita, the killer whale who still performs at the Miami Seaquarium, be reunited with pod members in the Northwest because Puget Sound's southern resident orcas were listed as endangered in 2005.
Read more in The Seattle Times...
Horses could soon be butchered in the U.S. for human consumption after Congress quietly lifted a 5-year-old ban on funding horse meat inspections, and activists say slaughterhouses could be up and running in as little as a month.![[PNS122411]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AO680_PNS122_NS_20111223174802.jpg)
