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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Efforts to Close “Painful” Loophole in Animal Slaughter Regs

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Friday, May 16, 2014   

PHOENIX – Some see it as a painful loophole in animal slaughter regulations.

It affects so-called downer calves – cattle that are on the ground and can't get up.

Paul Shapiro, vice president for Farm Animal Protection with the Humane Society of the United States, says federal law currently prohibits the slaughter for food of adult cattle that are too sick, injured or weak to stand on their own.

But the law does not protect younger, veal calves in the same situations.

"That loophole needs to be closed,” he stresses. “If downer cattle shouldn't be subjected to the rigors and torment that we have seen in slaughter plants, then certainly neither should be downer calves."

A dozen U.S. senators have written a letter calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to prevent the slaughter of downer calves for food.

A similar House letter co-signed by 72 members of Congress was sent to the USDA in February.

Shapiro says his group in undercover investigations recently documented inhumane treatment of downer calves, and it led to action.

"We've seen the Bushway slaughter plant in Vermont get shut down for extreme criminal, cruelty to animals, and it was because of their torture of these downer calves," he says.

Shapiro says the senators pointed out in their joint letter to the USDA that it has been four years since the Humane Society requested what it asserts is common-sense legislation, but to date, the agency has not even offered a proposed rule.






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