LATEST NEWS
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Follow Kinship Circle on Facebook for ongoing animal news, updates, victories and progress. In addition to animal rights reports, we monitor disasters to assess severity of impact on animals. If Kinship Circle Disaster Animal Response Team deploys, we post requests for volunteers and support.
PROGRESS
New Iberia Chimps Leave Labs
New Iberia Primate Center is among labs Kinship Circle targeted for use of chimpanzees to test human drugs, vaccines. Some 100 chimps, now classified as ineligible for research, retire to Chimp Haven Sanctuary on the heels of a landmark findings that most chimp labs are unwarranted…
VICTORY
Israel Bans Horse-Drawn Carts
Kinship Circle followed CHAI's (Concern For Helping Animals In Israel) lead on efforts to ban horse-drawn carts. Now comes good news for battered horses and donkeys, fatigued and dehydrated, with chronic hoof problems and lameness… photo credit: Tomer Appelbaum, Haaretz.com
VICTORY
Ann Taylor: No Exotic Skins
Upscale retailer Ann Taylor, a one-time Kinship Circle target that deleted fur goods in 2006, now sheds exotic skins too. Alligators and crocodiles are knifed in the neck or bashed with metal bats. Snakes have been seen nailed to trees so skin is ripped from…
VICTORY
Roadless Rule Upheld
Kinship Circle opposed efforts to overturn a President Clinton era Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The Supreme Court rejected an appeal to a prior ruling, especially good news for threatened or endangered animals who inhabit 58.5 million acres of unpaved U.S. woodlands…
UPDATE
Israel: Mazor Primates Spared
Israel nixed consent for Mazor Farm to ship monkeys to a Texas lab for experimentation. At least 40 monkeys were spared from brutal experiments when Mazor lost its last overseas client. The breeder sells primates abroad and in… photo: Let The Animals Live
PROGRESS
Night Monkeys Escape Lab Life
Wide-eyed and cute, they're annually stolen from Colombia's Amazon jungle and sold to malaria research. But Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo just lost permits to snatch 4,000 night monkeys for his jungle lab, FIDIC. Snared in trees and shoved in mesh sacks, they scream as boats…
VICTORY
WI Med College: No Animal Labs
Medical College of Wisconsin's physiology curriculum now contains no live animals! Kinship Circle, together with key group PCRM and others, protested MCW drills such as exposing a dog's heart with scalpels and bone saws to inject chemicals and shock the heart…
UPDATE
The Vick Files: Years Later
Dogs were seized from Michael Vick's enterprise, Bad Newz Kennels, where the NFL quarterback helped electrocute, drown and hang those who underperformed. Pre-bust, fight dogs were killed. A landmark court ruling sent Vick Dogs to no-kill rehab. Can Vick's case set precedent…
UPDATE
Virtual Dissection Gets Boost
Nat'l Assoc. of Biology Teachers and virtual-lab leader Froguts team-up to increase use of humane classroom tools. Dead animals often come from shelters that gas animals, like cats dissected in Miami-Dade high schools in Kinship's original alert. Earlier, Nat'l Science Teachers…
PROGRESS
No Random-Source Cats In Labs
Nat'l Institutes of Health will “transition from use of Class B cats” when a ban on cats from random-source B dealers takes effect. Dealers buy shelter animals to sell to labs. They also amass dogs'cats from free-to-good home ads or use bunchers to steal them…
VICTORY
Puerto Rico Boots Bioculture
Good job to Kinship Circle activists who fought to keep Bioculture's breed-for-research farm out of Puerto Rico. In a final adieu, a PR Supreme Court confirms Bioculture can't legally operate in Guayama. The ruling strikes a blow for planned capture of 4000 monkeys…
VICTORY
MI Shelter Ends Pound Seizure
Mecosta County Animal Shelter in Michigan won't hand over dogs to Class B random-source dealers, notorious for selling one-time companions to research labs. Kinship Circle's original alert asked Commissioners to stop pound seizure, selling pound dogs and cats…
NEWS
KC's Kate Danaher Honored
At the National Animal Rights Conference, Kate Danaher (left) wins the prestigious Grassroots Activist Of Year. Kinship Circle's Brenda Shoss introduced Kate at the Los Angeles awards ceremony. The two met when they teamed-up to save animals after Hurricane Katrina…
UPDATE
Hiatus For Alamogordo Chimps
About 200 chimpanzees at Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico won't go to a Texas lab for experimentation. The chimps (some lifelong lab inmates) remain at APF indefinitely. An NIH pardon unfolded after a landmark report found chimp studies… photo: nih.gov
PROGRESS
Chimp Experiments Suspended
They are like us, yet not enough to cure us. Institute of Medicine agrees. Sort of. New findings say chimpanzee experiments are unwarranted. IOM calls for stern limits, with chimps as a last option when tests (animals artifically induced with human disease, poisoned, killed) are…
UPDATE
India Pounds Like Prisons
Our India sources thank Kinship Circle for amplifying global outcry against dungeon-like pounds in Hyderabad. Officials have begun to transfer management to local NGOs. Activists demanded reforms for dogs packed 10-15 per cage, animals eating corpses, fatal surgeries…
PROGRESS
No-Animal Trauma Training Leads
Thanks to diligent Kinship Circle activists, with Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine leading the way — trauma training has a new face, and she isn't furry. Just five ATLS programs in the U.S. and Canada use live animals, while 259 use human simulators…
VICTORY
Army Ends Monkey Nerve Gas Tests
A monkey is dosed with a nerve-gas drug. He seizes. Oozes bodily fluids. Suffers respiratory failure… A Defense Dept. spokesperson told Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (who opposes monkey-use for human nerve gas tests) that the Army will end chemical weapons drills on monkeys…
VICTORY
Canada: No Animal Trauma Labs
Two Canadian trauma training courses go animal-free, marking an end to live labs nationwide. University of Sherbrooke in Quebec and Sacre Coeur Hosptial in Montreal won't use dogs or pigs to teach incision, drainage, intubation, etc. Instead, human-patient simulators…
NEWS
Mary Kelly: KC Super Volunteer
Mary Kelly has earned Kinship Circle Super Volunteer status for her 24-hour notice trek to New Jersey to manage a people/pets evacuation shelter for Hurricane Irene. Mary never met a crisis she couldn't handle, from 4 Katrina pit bulls left behind to riding out Irene with animals…
VICTORY
Reprieve For Cats, Pigs At Labs
At Indiana University students won't practice medical drills on cats or other animals in a pediatrics residency program. At Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD pigs get reprieve from use in Advanced Trauma Life Support instruction courses…
EVENT
Demo: UCLA Primate Tests
My hands are coated in fake blood, my tee splattered red. For this demo, I am a primate experimented upon inside University of California L.A. research labs. Terrified. In pain. I march alongside hundreds of others to protest Animal Welfare Act violations, negligence, cruelty…
VICTORY
Felony Charges For Research Lab
Kinship Circle urged the D.A. to seek prison plus fines for staff at Professional Laboratory & Research Services, a North Carolina lab exposed for cruelty in a PETA undercover probe. In a rare win for lab animals, a grand jury indicts four PLRS workers on 14 felony charges…
JUSTICE
Karley's Killer Gets No Deal
Retired L.A. County assistant fire chief Glynn Johnson smashed 6-month old Karley's head in with a rock. His violent act summoned activists nationwide to seek justice for Karley's stolen life. Johnson tried to cut short a 3-year probation term, after 90 days in jail…
VICTORY
No Live Animal Vendors
California live vendors (unregulated for decades) cage birds without water or shade, squashed in closed bags. CA Penal Code 597.3 exempts “poultry,” so birds are tossed from trucks and crushed in tiny enclosures. But a new rule prohibits live retail…
