WTF!

[A. Spectre]

NYT: The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here's the Full List.


Completed

1. Weakened Obama-era fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks.

2. Revoked California’s power to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government.

3. Withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that limited mercury emissions from coal power plants.

4. Replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which would have set strict limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, with a new version that would let states set their own rules.

5. Canceled a requirement for oil and gas companies to report methane emissions.

etc......lots more


In progress

20. Submitted notice of intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. (The process of withdrawing cannot be completed until November 2020.)

21. Proposed relaxing Obama-era requirements that companies monitor and repair methane leaks at oil and gas facilities.

lots more.....

Drilling and extraction

completed

29. Lifted ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

30. Rescinded water pollution regulations for fracking on federal and Indian lands.

31. Scrapped a proposed rule that required mines to prove they could pay to clean up future pollution.

35. Revoked an Obama-era executive order designed to preserve ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters in favor of a policy focused on energy production and economic growth.

36. Permitted the use of seismic air guns for gas and oil exploration in the Atlantic Ocean. The practice, which can kill marine life and disrupt fisheries, was blocked under the Obama administration.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...rollbacks.html

This list just goes on and on.....

This motherfucker can NOT be frogmarched out of the WH fast enough. He is pure evil, there is not one ounce of good.

[C0LLETTE]

15,000 mink died from coronavirus in U.S. since August; Denmark prepares for nationwide cull

More than 15,000 mink in the United States have died of the coronavirus since August, and authorities are keeping about a dozen farms under quarantine while they investigate the cases, state agriculture officials said.

Global health officials are eyeing the animals as a potential risk for people after Denmark last week embarked on a plan to eliminate all of its 17 million mink, saying a mutated coronavirus strain could move to humans and evade future COVID-19 vaccines.

The U.S. states of Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan – where the coronavirus has killed mink – said they do not plan to cull animals and are monitoring the situation in Denmark.

“We believe that quarantining affected mink farms in addition to implementing stringent biosecurity measures will succeed in controlling SARS-CoV-2 at these locations,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Tuesday.

The USDA said it is working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state officials and the mink industry to test and monitor infected farms.

The U.S. has 359,850 mink bred to produce babies, known as kits, and produced 2.7 million pelts last year. Wisconsin is the largest mink-producing state, followed by Utah.

Sick mink in Wisconsin and Utah were exposed to people with probable or confirmed COVID-19 cases, the USDA said. In Michigan it is still unknown if the mink were infected by humans, according to the agency.

In Utah, the first U.S. state to confirm mink infections in August, about 10,700 mink have died on nine farms, said Dean Taylor, state veterinarian.

“On all nine, everything is still suggesting a one-way travel from people to the minks,” he said. Coronavirus testing has been done on mink that die and randomly on the affected farms, Dr. Taylor said. Like people, some mink are asymptomatic or mildly affected, he said.

The CDC said it was supporting states' investigations into sick mink, including testing of animals and people.

“These investigations will help us to learn more about the transmission dynamics between mink, other animals around the farms and people,” the CDC said. “Currently, there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to people.”

Coronavirus is thought to have first jumped from animals to humans in China, possibly through bats or another animal at a food market in Wuhan, although many outstanding questions remain.

In Wisconsin, about 5,000 mink have died on two farms, state veterinarian Darlene Konkle said.

One farm is composting the dead mink to dispose of the carcasses without spreading the virus, Dr. Konkle said. Authorities are working with the second farm to determine how to dispose of the mink, and dead animals are being kept in a metal container in the meantime, she said.

“They are basically in a metal container, a roll-off type container, that is sealed off at this point,” Dr. Konkle said.

Michigan declined to disclose how many mink have died, citing privacy rules.

U.S. authorities are urging farmers to wear protective gear such as masks and gloves when handling mink to avoid infecting the animals.

State officials said they are working with the USDA to determine whether farmers can sell the pelts of infected mink. The pelts are used to make fur coats and other items.

[Stone-Butch]

OMG 15,000 mink have died from c. virus and 2.7 have been farmed for pelts and this is within months or a year. Other animals farmed are foxes, chinchillas, racoons for coats and other items. NONE of these animals are eaten. Wild animals are hunted by licenced hunters for coats etc. are bobcats, beaver, lynx, sables and weasels only beaver parts are eaten by some. My WTF is that the world at large complains about the hunting of seals (no whitecoats have been hunted for many many years). These animals are clothing as well but also food for a good few people of Eastern Canada and Northern Canada and the northern USA. Most complaints are from people who have never seen a live seal in the wild or eaten any. (I have, it is delicious). This hypocritical nonsense boils my blood. P.S. I have eaten beaver too and not fussy about it.

[C0LLETTE]

I believe the point of the article was to discuss animal / human virus transmission . The mink being a possible example in North America.

Also while it might be fine to eat seal meat, it's preferable not to eat corona virus riddled mink or seal.

No one here was being hypocritical.

[Stone-Butch]

No one here was definitly not being critical. I would not eat a mink, infected or not. If I thought for one moment I would defend you by my post I certainly would have thought it through before expressing my own personal opinion in my own personal way. How foolish of me.

[Stone-Butch]

In my last post I did not mean defend I meant offend. I like to make sure I am being right on the post.

[Gemme]

My WTF is that Denmark wants to kill ALL of their 17 MILLION mink.

[Kelt]

It really isn’t all that uncommon for humans to kill, or cull, animals carrying diseases that are known to threaten humans. Last year in China roughly 150,000,000 pigs either died or were killed for carrying African swine flu. In 1992 mad cow disease in England resulted in over 4 million head of cattle being killed.

The mink in Denmark are just a new chapter and I believe I saw an article talking about North American mink farms in I think it was Oregon that are also slated to be culled.

It’s quite horrible and very much WTF, unfortunately it is what it is…

[C0LLETTE]

“If it’s not for animal welfare, if it’s not for the environment, if it’s not because it’s a failing business, surely a pandemic would inspire the political will to finally create space to have conversations about transitioning people out of this industry,”


" At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, all eyes were on China, where the country’s wet markets – which in some cases sold live animals in cramped cages and unhygienic conditions that served as potential breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases – were linked to the early transmission of the novel coronavirus.

Now the world’s gaze has turned to Denmark, where at least 12 people have contracted a particularly worrying mutated version of COVID-19 from mink, prompting the region to lock down and begin the cull of tens of millions of farmed mink and causing the U.K. to ban travel to and from the Scandinavian country. Mink are the only known animals capable of catching the virus from humans and spreading it back, and since the beginning of the pandemic, mink infected with the virus have also been found in the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Greece, and the United States.

But while our heads may shake at these foreign places, tut-tutting at these “others,” Canadians should be looking at the mink farms in our own backyard and recognize that real risk exists right here – a risk our government helps fund.

According to 2018 data from Statistics Canada, we are home to 98 mink farms. When asked if mink on Canadian farms are currently being tested for COVID-19, representatives from Nova Scotia, B.C. and Ontario replied that the focus is instead on upping biosecurity measures. Similarly, the federal Minister of Agriculture assured me, in an email, that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is “collaborating with the Canada Mink Breeders Association on communicating the importance of biosecurity measures,” relying on the industry’s own, voluntary codes of practice, which are overseen by the non-governmental National Farm Animal Care Council. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture, meanwhile, says farmers and farm veterinarians are “monitoring for any respiratory signs compatible with an infectious respiratory disease.”

But looking for respiratory symptoms is just not enough.

A typical mink farm holds as many as 20,000 animals, says Lesley Fox, the executive director of the Fur-Bearers, an animal-advocacy group. “And during pelting season right now, it’s even closer to 60,000 on some of these farms," she said in an interview. "So how in the world would one, two, three people max with a checklist and a clipboard be able to properly evaluate that many individuals?”

She’s not the only one with concerns. Jan Hajek, a clinical infectious disease specialist at Vancouver General Hospital, says he wishes the medical community would better acknowledge the public-health risks associated with farming such large numbers of animals. “Although the extent of the risk is uncertain, it is certain that a risk exists, and this risk includes devastating pandemic disease,” he said in an interview.

Indeed, the public should be asking whether farming mink is worth the potential risk. After all, as a fashion product, mink is increasingly falling out of favour. Prices for fur have plunged around the world. A recent survey by Research Co. found 81 per cent of Canadians are not in favour of killing animals for fur, and global fur sales have plummeted in recent years.

Yet governments continue to fund mink farming in Canada. The CBC has found that, since 2014, as much as $100-million in provincial and federal money has been spent or tied up in loans to keep mink farms alive. “The government knows these farms have the capacity and potential to further spread COVID-19,” said Ms. Fox. “To subsidize the industry is to contribute to this reservoir for disease.”

It is certainly curious that, with so many sectors of the Canadian economy being forced to shut down to try to curb the spread of COVID-19, fur farms are permitted to carry on with business as usual. “Mink farming in Canada has long imposed cruel costs on the animals and now poses real risks to human health,” said Liberal MP Nathanial Erskine-Smith. “It was unacceptable before, and it is even more unacceptable now.” He added that federal compensation to mink farming “should be tied to transitioning farmers into less problematic economic opportunities.”

Animal and environmental advocates have long called for the end to fur farming in Canada. Today, there is even greater reason than before. “If it’s not for animal welfare, if it’s not for the environment, if it’s not because it’s a failing business, surely a pandemic would inspire the political will to finally create space to have conversations about transitioning people out of this industry..."


Globe and Mail Nov 16 2020