Wild Turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

Wild turkeys, with their distinctive feathers and gobbling call, were Benjamin Franklin's choice for the national bird of the United States.

Photograph courtesy Gary M. Stolz/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The turkey was Benjamin Franklin's choice for the United States's national bird. The noble fowl was a favored food of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived, they made it one of only two domestic birds native to the Americas—the Muscovy duck shares the distinction.

Yet by the early 20th century, wild turkeys no longer roamed over much of their traditional range. They had been wiped out by hunting and the disappearance of their favored woodland habitat.

Wild turkeys typically forage on forest floors, but can also be found in grasslands and swamps. They feed on nuts, seeds, fruits, insects, and salamanders.

Wild turkey reintroduction programs began in the 1940s, and the birds were relocated to areas where populations had been decimated but woodlands were recovering. Such efforts worked so well that wild turkeys now live in areas where they may not have occurred when Europeans first reached the Americas. Today, flocks are also found in Hawaii, Europe, and New Zealand.

Only male turkeys display the ruffled feathers, fanlike tail, bare head, and bright beard commonly associated with these birds. They also gobble with a distinctive sound that can be heard a mile (a kilometer and a half) away.

Females lay 4 to 17 eggs, and feed their chicks after they hatch—but only for a few days. Young turkeys quickly learn to fend for themselves as part of mother/child flocks that can include dozens of animals. Males take no role in the care of young turkeys.

Domestic turkeys have white-tipped tails because they are the descendants of a Mexican subspecies that was taken to Europe for domestication in the early 16th century. The feature distinguishes them from most modern wild turkeys, though captive diet, lifestyle, and breeding have caused other physical discrepancies.

Read full here... http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/wild-turkey/

Canvasback

 

Aythya valisineria

Canvasbacks are diver ducks well equipped with their own form of flippers—large webbed feet that make them smooth and graceful swimmers.

Photograph by Jac6.Flickr, Flickr

Canvasbacks are diver ducks well equipped with their own form of flippers—large webbed feet that make them smooth and graceful swimmers. They spend much of their time in the water and use their long bills to feed by digging through bottom sediments in search of aquatic plant stems and roots, or submerged insects, crustaceans, and clams.

On land, canvasback movements are clumsy and the ducks seldom stray too far from the water’s edge. But when “cans” take to the air they can cover a lot of ground.

Each year when winter weather begins to chill northern lakes, ponds, and prairie wetlands, the canvasbacks’ food becomes scarce and the ducks take flight in enormous flocks. Thousands of birds migrate together each year to traditional wintering sites like the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Gulf Coast, and Mexico. The majority of North American canvasbacks breed in the Prairie Pothole wetlands and migrate via the Mississippi Flyway to the Mid-Atlantic and Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, or along the Pacific Flyway to the California coast.

The Chesapeake Bay’s Susquehanna Flats area was once the winter home of perhaps half of the North American canvasback population. But the shoals’ lush beds of wild celery have declined with compromised water quality and increased sedimentation. Chesapeake canvasback numbers followed suit and have declined some 80 percent over the last 50 years.

Rad full here.... http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/canvasback/

Cloned beef

Cloned beef has now entered the food supply

(NaturalNews) The U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently announced that the meat from a cloned cow has made its way into the food supply. According to a recent BBC report, a U.K. farmer purchased cloned bull embryos from the U.S., bred the animals and sold one of them as food back in July 2009.


The report states that Steven Innes, the farmer who purchased the cloned embryos and sold the cloned meat, did so in full accordance with the law.

"We investigated whether this was legal at the time and understood that there was no issue," he explained in a statement. "We acted in good faith throughout and have been fully compliant with the relevant authorities."

He went on to explain that the British government had expressly authorized theanimalsto enter the food chain. However, an investigation is currently underway as Innes did not properly notify authorities about thecloned meatnor identify it as such when selling it asfood, two very serious violations.

Tim Smith, chief at FSA, responded to the news by saying he has no specific concerns about the safety of cloned beef enteringthe food supply, but that European law requires those who supply it to get proper approval under "novel" food regulation guidelines before selling it toconsumers.

Smith also expressed that consumers "deserve to know the origin of all foods they purchase".

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared in 2008 that meat andmilkfrom cloned animals is safe for human consumption. Biotechnology companies have since been creating cloned animals for the expressed purpose of increasing milk andmeatyield.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/029411_cloned_beef_food.html#ixzz1viMXrfCO

Antibiotics used on animals

70 Percent of antibiotics used on animals slaughtered for food
(NaturalNews) Widespread antibiotic use in animal agriculture is drawing increasing fire as a primary cause of the growing prevalence of drug-resistant and ever more lethal superbugs.

"There is clear evidence of the human health consequences [from agricultural use of antibiotics, including] infections that would not have otherwise occurred, increased frequency of treatment failures (in some cases death) and increased severity of infections," the World Health Organization wrote in 2003.

Seventy percent of allantibioticsused in the United States are used promote growth or preventinfectionin healthy farmanimals-- in other words, animals that are not showing any signs of disease.

"The heavy reliance on routineantibioticuse is a byproduct of the way we raise animals forfood: packed into dim and dirty enclosures where they live amid their own filth, eat food that they haven't evolved to digest, and are pretty much stacked atop one another," writes columnist Ezra Klein in theWashington Post.

The foodindustryclaims that such antibiotic use is necessary to keep food prices low for consumers.

"That really is a strange defense," said U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter. "We keep animals in such deplorable conditions that they'll become sick as a dog if we don't dose them?"

The industry's argument is weak on financial grounds as well, Klein says. According to a study conducted by researchers at Tufts University, antibiotic resistantinfectionscost the U.S. health-care system $50 billion per year. In contrast, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that ending non-therapeutic antibiotic use in farm animals would raise the cost of meat consumption by $5 to $10 per person per year.

"I'd pay that for a lower risk of super-staphylococcus," Klein writes.

Slaughter has introduced a bill, H.R. 1549, that would ban non-medical use of the most effective human antibiotics.

"The bill preserves the seven most effective classes of antibiotics for human use only," she said. "They can be used to treat sick animals, but they can't be used to simply raise animals."

Sources for this story include:www.washingtonpost.com.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/028024_antibiotics_animals.html#ixzz1vcRPtngf