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This Blog Is Republishing All the Animal Welfare Records the USDA Deleted (vice.com)
Last year, thousands of animal welfare records were removed from the web by the Department of Agriculture. Now, a government transparency blog is on a mission to recover and republish as many of these records as possible. From a report on Motherboard: "Whenever there are documents that were online, but got pulled offline, they're automatically important," said Russ Kick, who runs the blog The Memory Hole 2, where many of the documents have already been re-published. "Nobody's going to go through the trouble to delete something that doesn't matter." The documents, which were removed by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) late last week, included inspection records and annual reports made under the Animal Welfare Act and the Horse Protection Act. The USDA indicated that removing the documents was in response to a court decision, but a spokesperson contacted by Motherboard would not specify what court case. The records were typically used by animal welfare groups to keep tabs on how well these laws were being enforced, but were also used by the general public to research the inspection records of everything from dog breeders to circuses and zoos. "I've learned that if I see something and think 'I'm really surprised the government posted this,' I need to download it," Kick told me. "So when I found these reports, I thought 'this is surprising,' and I downloaded them."
Trump did not order the files taken down, having been done under the not-so-watchful eye of Barack "Government should be transparent" Obama.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I work at a place that gets inspected by APHIS. APHIS also puts our material into quarantine.
We have permits for all kinds of things that sound icky and salacious. If someone read the reports they might think, "Wait, something bad is going on here- why are they doing this? Let's follow the trail and find out what they are doing!"
They would be very disappointed to find out what is really going on- that it is all part of 'normal' business. That the icky sounding stuff would be absolutely pedestrian if you understood it.
APHIS is a prettyboring place once you get over the idea of 'quarantine'. My guess is that these records would be boring at first glance, andpretty much just spreadsheet data regardingregular inspections once you have an understanding of what they are doing.
But...maybe that's all just a conspiracy...
No reason to lie.
People will take you more seriously if you don't lead with idiotic nonsense like Animals should be treated as a separate nation.
Not posting as an AC would also help.
It's possible to make a strong moral case against meat-eating, but you're not even close.
BS, the reason most offices implement the shred everything rule is so that the employees don't have to make a decision about whether or not something meets the "Shred This" criteria. Better safe than sorry.
"The review of APHIS' website has been ongoing, and the agency is striving to balance the need for transparency with rules protecting individual privacy.
In 2016, well before the change of Administration, APHIS decided to make adjustments to the posting of regulatory records.
In addition, APHIS is currently involved in litigation concerning, among other issues, information posted on the agency's website.
While the agency is vigorously defending against this litigation, in an abundance of caution, the agency is taking additional measures to protect individual privacy.
These decisions are not final. Adjustments may be made regarding information appropriate for release and posting."
A blatant and stupid lie.
Trump administration forgets that people from the Obama administration are still alive and around.
Matt Herrick, director of Communications of USDA under Obama, tweeted this regarding the disappearing of animal abuse reports:
Decision by @usda 2 remove animal abuse reports not required.
Totally subjective. Same option given 2 past admin. We refused. #transparency
And it's not the first (and probably not the last) time that Trump administration, once caught doing something they shouldn't be doing, tries to blame it on Obama.
Like the Muslim ban, Yemen raid fiasco (BTW, that was "winning"), Trump's disastrous calls to Mexican and Australian heads of state... and now this.
More here.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"Trump's raid on Yemen was actually a great success, but the left-wing media doesn't want you to know that."
You are welcome on my lawn.