BELLEVILLE, Ill. (AP) — State wildlife officials suspect that bird flu killed at least 300 waterfowl recently found dead at public hunting sites across southern Illinois.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources said Tuesday the wild birds, mostly snow geese, have been found dead at Baldwin Lake, Pyramid State Recreation Area, Rend Lake and Carlyle Lake.
The wild birds are believed to have died of avian influenza, the DNR said in a news release. The state agency is asking anyone who sees 20 or more dead birds at one spot to report those birds deaths to a district wildlife biologist, theBelleville News-Democratreported.
Wednesday, November 30, 2022 |Updated Nov 30, 2022 9:14 am CST
GUN DEER SEASON HUNTING INCIDENTS
At the publication time of this news release, the DNR reports eight firearm-involved injuries and one fatality for the entire 2022 gun deer season.
Sauk County, Woodland Township:On Nov. 19, 2022, at approximately 11:10 a.m., a 22-year-old male was the victim of a gunshot wound to the thigh. During a deer drive, a 20-year-old male shooter, who was a driver in the hunting party, shot at a running deer, striking the victim, who was a stander in the hunting party. The victim was transported to the hospital and treated.
Marquette County, Mecan Township:On Nov. 19, 2022, at approximately noon, while in a ground blind in a field, a 69-year-old female was…
So asked the headline in a Washington Post column about National Pork Producers Council v. Ross. The Supreme Court case, argued in October, involves a voter-passed ban in California on in-state sales of meat and eggs from livestock confined by means the electorate deemed animal cruelty.
The law, Proposition 12, bans sales of pork produced with gestation crates, enclosures that the Post columnist, a supporter of the law, described: “Five-hundred-pound pregnant sows are confined in a metal crate sized to fit their bodies. For 16 weeks of gestation, the sows can’t turn around or stretch their legs. When they’re ready to give birth, the pigs are taken to the ‘Farrowing Barn’ for a week to 10 days where they deliver their tiny progeny. The piglets scramble through another confined space to suckle their mothers, who are soon returned to the Gestation Barn for another round of 16-week torture.”
But while Californians consume 15 percent of the nation’s pork, they produce almost none themselves, importing it from other states. Therein lies the challenge before SCOTUS from the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation: California, they say, is regulating how producers in other states must raise their animals and increasing their production costs. The plaintiffs say that this violates the “dormant commerce clause,” the US Constitution’s implicit, long-understood rule that states cannot inordinately intrude on interstate commerce.
Roughly two-thirds of producers use gestation crates. But producers such as Tyson Foods have said they can sate Californians’ appetite for pork without crates, while companies like the Cheesecake Factory are phasing out their use. Economists found negligible effects on the industry from Prop 12, passed in 2018.
Lawyer and animal rights advocate Steven Wise (LAW’76), founder and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, has argued for decades, in print and in court, that higher animals such as chimps and elephants deserve legal status as autonomous beings, with the right to freedom from captivity. He worries that a loss by California before the high court would jeopardize animal welfare laws elsewhere, as he told BU Today.
Q&A
WITH STEVEN WISE
BU Today: On the legal merits, should the justices uphold California’s law?
Wise: Setting aside the relevant animal welfare questions, Pork Producers deals with whether a California law can dictate to all 50 states how pork production is managed—which is a tremendously complex question. The constitutional stakes involve troublesome questions that arise when, for example, one state with limited pork production enacts a law that will likely have significant economic effects in other states, especially when a majority of the pork producers in the United States are from outside the enacting state. There are many layers to the “legal merits” here.
The plaintiffs say the California law will raise pork prices nationwide, but some major pork producers have said otherwise. Is the uncertain effect California’s strongest argument for upholding the law?
In my view, the question of pork prices is not relevant. Upholding the law could lead to rising prices. Or it could not. This is not an area of expertise for me. What is clear to me is that pigs that are raised for food are treated inhumanely, and this law rightly seeks to address that issue.
What is clear to me is that pigs that are raised for food are treated inhumanely, and this law rightly seeks to address that issue.Steven Wise
Approximately 20 years ago, the New York Times wrote that pigs and laying hens are the most cruelly mistreated of factory farmed animals. That concern moved 62-plus percent of California voters to approve this law; is a state’s right to make its laws likely to sway most justices?
I can only guess about what will sway these justices in this particular case. Many states have their own laws related to animal welfare and food safety. All California did here was ban the sale in California of pork from pregnant and nursing pigs confined to spaces so small they can’t turn around. While there is a dormant commerce clause argument to be made, in truth, this law simply gives pork producers a choice if they want to sell their products in California to meet California’s standards.
Some worry that if California wins, we’ll have an unmanageable regimen that will allow each state to decide what cannot be sold within its borders—say, genetically modified food. What about that concern?
This is a typical slippery slope–type argument that we hear in our cases all the time. At the end of the day, this case is about Proposition 12, a law passed by the people of California, regarding pork production. That is what the court should be looking at.
If the court should rule against California, are there alternative animal welfare measures that would pass legal muster? Or are we simply not at the point where sufficient numbers of Americans are troubled by how our food is produced?
If the court should rule against California, my worry is that there might be animal welfare measures that could be similarly challenged. I believe there are growing numbers of Americans that are troubled by how our food is produced and the many other ways we treat nonhuman animals inhumanely. My hope is that they won’t stand for a rollback of animal welfare jurisprudence in this case or any other.
The first incident occurred the weekend before Thanksgiving on November 20 in Wisconsin, where 11-year-old Easton Thom, a sixth-grade student at Berlin Middle School, was shot. A statement from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said that when the 41-year-old man accompanying Thom on theirdeer-hunting tripattempted to unload a firearm on the back seat of a vehicle, he accidentally fired the weapon and hit the young boy in the chest.
This stock image shows a hunter with a gun, left. and a…
Now that Pennsylvania’s statewide firearm deer hunting season began on Saturday, Nov. 26, drivers need to be especially cautious as hunters will be pushing deer through the woods and across busy highways and panicked wounded deer will be running into the roads. In addition, when a matriarch doe is killed, whose job it is to safely cross her family, her orphans will run into the roads without caution.
Studies show that hunting actually increases car-deer collisions. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, most car-deer collisions happen during hunting season. Pennsylvania’s second largest insurance company (the nation’s 12th largest insurer) — Erie Insurance — collected data that showed a five-fold increase in car-deer collisions on the first day of hunting, and that car-deer collisions remain high throughout hunting season.
ACCIDENTA 58-year-old man was taken to hospital in Brest on Sunday afternoon
Illustration of an Orne hunter on 09/25/2022.//—SICCOLI PATRICK/SIPA
A a new hunting accident occurred on Sunday afternoon in Finistère, at Plouigneau near Morlaix. An elderly man 58 years old was injured during a hunting party the woodcock, reports the newspaperLe T&légramme.
The victim would have been affected by the head by lead, around 2:30 p.m., while she was with five friends. The man was transported at the Brest hospital center by the firefighters, called to the scene, indicates the daily. An investigation was also carried out. opened by the gendarmerie.
