#dead-chickens

#dead-chickens

The Competition and Markets Authority found that consumers have overpaid roughly £1 billion in veterinary fees over five years, highlighting a significant issue in the market.

Around a third of UK gardeners use pesticides, and our studies found that house sparrow numbers, for example, were nearly 40% lower in gardens where the pesticide metaldehyde was used. By reducing pesticide use, you can actively encourage birds back into your outdoor spaces, as they rely on invertebrates such as slugs and snails as natural prey.

Bay Area peregrine falcon numbers began plummeting after a massive, global outbreak of avian flu in 2020, the study documents, with only about a third of the nesting sites still in use as of 2025. The news, while dire, nevertheless helps scientists understand how the disease is impacting local populations, and what we can expect for their recovery.

In children below the age of five, whose immune systems are still developing, the infections can lead to malnourishment; they cause up to 42,000 deaths annually. Soon there may be a vaccine to protect against these infections. In the Lancet Infectious Diseases last month, scientists shared the results of the first study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of an ETEC-controlling vaccine in a large pediatric population in Gambia.

Bats carry a lot of very deadly pathogens like Ebola virus, Nipah, Hendra, coronavirus, and also rabies virus. People are finding more and more bat-borne viruses. When such viruses are transmitted to humans, the results are often fatal so there's a lot of interest in trying to prevent spillover in the first place.

Nearly half of the 261 species studied showed big enough losses in numbers to be statistically significant and more than half of those declining are seeing their losses accelerate since 1987, according to Thursday's journal Science. The study is the first to look at more than the total bird population by examining the trends in their decrease, where they are shrinking the most and what the declines are connected to.

Last November, the UK government announced a bold plan to phase out animal testing in some areas of research. Animal tests for skin irritation are scheduled for elimination this year, and some studies on dogs should be slashed by 2030. The long-term vision is 'a world where the use of animals in science is eliminated in all but exceptional circumstances'.

Highly pathogenic avian flu, or bird flu, has been confirmed in the Emerald Necklace. Risk of human infection is currently low. As always, please do not feed, touch, or remove birds from Boston parks.

The PFAS concentrations detected in pet food in this study are a significant source of daily exposure for companion animals. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances are a class of synthetic chemicals often used in plastics, cleaning products and non-stick coatings. They can take over 1,000 years to break down and have been detected in nearly all environments including remote Arctic areas, deep oceans, drinking water and human blood.

"It's a big problem,"

This is exceptionally rapid detection of an outbreak in free-ranging marine mammals, said professor Christine Johnson, director of the Institute for Pandemic Insights at UC Davis' Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. We have most likely identified the very first cases here because of coordinated teams that have been on high alert with active surveillance for this disease for some time.

When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.

I'm thrilled I did, and my learning curve was vertical in this page-turning work that "offers a hopeful and rigorously researched exploration of how science, policy, and industry can work together to satisfy the world's soaring demand for meat, while building a healthier and more sustainable world." There is nothing "radical" about what likely will become a classic, one that is already endorsed by experts in global hunger, global health, climate change, and food security.

From ultra-processed foods to hidden chemicals, we ask whether what's on our plates is making us ill. From ultra-processed foods to chemicals linked to cancer and chronic disease, this episode unpacks what's really inside everyday supermarket products. We examine how mass production and convenience culture reshaped our diets, why some ingredients are banned in parts of the world but legal elsewhere, and what FDA-approved actually means.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book called Meat in disarming fashion: I'm not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won't find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won't find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn't about policing your plate.

The 13-year-old Swiss Brown cow lives in the village of Notsch at the foot of the Carinthia mountains in southern Austria. She's kept as a pet by a local farmer, and can roam her meadow to her heart's delight. Like many other pets, she likes to have her back scratched. If no friendly humans are around to do the job, that's not a problem Veronika uses a brush or stick to do it herself.

DNA variants near a gene called MSRB3 - which is important for hearing in humans - could determine whether a dog's ears are pendulous like a basset hound's or stubby like a rottweiler's. Researchers analysed the genomes of thousands of canines and found that small, single-letter changes to DNA in a region of the genome near MSRB3 could boost the gene's activity. The boost can increase the rate at which ear cells proliferate, resulting in longer ears.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum.

So Tony Cholerton, a zookeeper who had been a motorcycle engineer for many years, invented Robovacc a machine to quickly administer vital jabs without the presence of people. The result, a clever contraption he controlled from an adjacent room with a handset taken from remote-control toy aeroplanes, successfully administered vaccinations to Cinta in a feeding area. The tiger sat up briefly, mid-meal, as the needle penetrated her rear end, then calmly continued eating.

Central to this window is the delivery of colostrum, which provides essential antibodies and energy. To ensure success, she recommends following a "two by four" rule. "...getting colostrum in within those first four hours is really critical to getting the best absorption," says Fowler, specifying that calves should receive two litres by four hours of age and an additional two litres by 12 hours. She points out that failure of passive transfer can lead to a 10-kilogram decrease in weaning weight.

E. coli - you don't want it. You really, really don't. Properly known as Escherichia coli, E. coli are bacteria found in the intestines of humans and animals. While many of them are harmless, some kinds can cause severe gastrointestinal illness, with the most dangerous pathogenic types - such as Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) - potentially leading to kidney failure and death, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems.