Animal Rights

"Tyson Foods has opened an office of Animal Well-Being, seeking to assure retail and food-service customers as well as consumers that it takes humane animal handling seriously," PR Week reports.
"Animal-rights groups fault large American meat and poultry processors for what they see as inhumane handling of animals. These groups have protested in public for years about the plight of animals raised by companies like Tyson.
... The new office will oversee audits of animal-handling practices and make them available to customers on request, but likely wouldn't publicly disclose audit results.

"Two former government scientists who
spent years investigating stress in dolphin populations
charged this week that superiors at their federally
financed laboratory shut down their research because it
clashed with policy goals of the Clinton and Bush
administrations. The scientists ... said their research indicated that the practice of chasing and encircling dolphins to catch tuna exposed the
dolphins to dangerous amounts of stress. The accusations, by Dr. Albert Myrick, a wildlife
biologist, and Dr.

As Bob Burton revealed last year in PR Watch, the whaling industry is using "scientific research" as PR subterfuge to revive commercial whaling.

While cockfighting is only legal in three states -- New Mexico, Louisiana, and Oklahoma -- interstate shipment of gamecocks is still allowed. However federal lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have been trying to pass legislation that "could put breeders out of business and cramp cockfighting everywhere," according to the Wall Street Journal.