Word: livestock
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...times a day at slaughterhouses across the U.K. - could soon be a thing of the past if the recommendation published last week by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (F.A.W.C.) that all animals be stunned before slaughter becomes law. Both Islam and Judaism forbid consuming animals' blood and require that livestock be conscious when killed so that the blood pumps out. Animals used for halal and kosher meat must be healthy and uninjured when slaughtered for consumption. Although animal-cruelty regulations throughout Europe say that livestock must be stunned before slaughter, Britain and most countries allow exemptions on religious grounds. Spain...
...have long suspected that humans were originally infected with common-cold coronaviruses by contact with an unknown animal many centuries ago, had already posited a possible animal connection in the current outbreak. The fact that many of the initial victims in China's southern province of Guangdong worked in livestock markets and restaurants was also a promising indicator. After the virus's genome was decoded in mid-April, that assumption looked increasingly likely: SARS was fundamentally different from human-cold viruses and therefore couldn't be a mere mutation. Farmers in Guangdong, who often test positive for antibodies against...
...mystery is where the disease came from. Coronaviruses have long been known to veterinary medicine because they routinely infect livestock, ducks and other domestic animals. In humans they had never caused anything worse than a cold, but this strain is clearly different. Given belated access to Chinese records just three weeks ago, WHO teams are looking carefully at the records of human cases. They also plan to conduct more detailed studies of unusual infections in animal populations. If they can find the animal hosts, they might be able to prevent new animal-to-human transmissions...
...summit and drop into the valley below, it's late afternoon. Beneath us are the handful of dwellings that shelter Yubeng's 65 ethnic-Tibetan inhabitants; in the crook of a slim, glacial stream, a white, sagging stupa glows in the low sunlight. The locals feed and water their livestock, while one of the women invites us to dinner cooked over an open hearth before showing us to the small wooden outbuilding reserved for travelers...
...would be tempting to blame global sanctions for this poverty, but in fact, the Bedouins wouldn't be much affected by sanctions. They are a self-contained economic unit, and throughout history have managed to maintain a substantial wealth in livestock. A more plausible explanation for the poverty is that Saddam's totalitarian government is attempting to run a socialist economic model: there is no reason, after all, for people to accumulate wealth if Saddam's government is going to take everything from them...