Humane Society Of The United States

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it was investigating a Chino-based supplier of meat to the National School Lunch Program after release of a video showing slaughterhouse workers using inhumane and illegal practices on weak and sick cows.

To protect his identity and frustrate possible retaliation, the undercover investigator behind the biggest beef recall in U.S. history refuses to disclose his name, his marital status, his hometown, his job background or even his age. One of the few personal things he will reveal is his culinary preference: He's a vegan.

A national animal rights group wants to put some fur-clothing makers and high-end retailers in the doghouse. The Humane Society of the United States plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission today to fine designers and retailers of apparel that contains mislabeled fur from dogs, wolves and raccoon dogs. The group also wants inventories seized and perhaps criminal charges filed.

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and the Humane Society of the United States plan to announce today that Puck's $300-million-a-year food empire is beginning a program to fight animal cruelty. If the plan is carried out as promised, it means no foie gras -- fatty liver produced by overfeeding ducks and geese -- would be served at Spago or any of Puck's 14 other fine-dining restaurants. Spago's famous weiner schnitzel would be made exclusively using veal from roaming, not shackled, calves.

A fire gutted the Humane Society headquarters in Jacksonville, killing dozens of animals including nearly all the cats in the building, authorities said. Up to 200 animals were in the facility, but it could take days to tally the dead, officials said. The fire destroyed the main shelter building, which housed cats, puppies and exotic animals. Most dogs escaped serious injury because the kennels are in the back, but dozens of cats died, officials said.

The head of the Humane Society of the United States on Tuesday accused a Westside pet store catering to celebrities of selling puppies obtained from puppy mills. Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the society, a national animal advocacy organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C., made a presentation on what he called an undercover investigation of Pets of Bel Air, a pet store and grooming business tucked into the Beverly Glen Circle shopping plaza in Bel-Air.

In an ongoing campaign to unfetter the caged hen, the Humane Society of the United States plans to file a lawsuit in California today challenging a partial sales tax break for agricultural producers who purchase cages that animal welfare activists consider cruel and torturous.

She was a Broadway musical star, swathed in fur, eating a steak a day. But Gretchen Wyler's worldview changed in the late 1960s after a visit to a local dog pound near her country home in Warwick, N.Y. That chance encounter provided the inspiration for what would be the actress' second-greatest passion: animal rights activism.

Animal rights groups are seeking to ban foie gras production in New York, one of the leading U.S. producing states, arguing that overfeeding birds to fatten their livers makes the animals sick. The Humane Society of the United States and other animal rights groups filed a formal action with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets to stop the practice under a state law that makes it illegal to produce food from diseased animals.

The Humane Society of the United States said Wednesday that it would give China $100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if the nation promised to immediately stop slaughtering the animals in areas where humans have died of the disease. The financial aid was offered to help set up a rabies control program in Jining, a city in the coastal province of Shandong. Officials there killed thousands of dogs last week after 16 people died of rabies over an eight-month period.