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Missoulian, November 28, on Montana who must crack down on puppy mills:
When the Legislative Assembly of Montana meets again in January, lawmakers will have another chance to pbad a measure that should have been pbaded years ago. This time, they must finally take steps to put an end to abusive breeding activities.
In the current state of things, Montana has virtually no way to regulate "puppy mills", large-scale pet breeders whose inhumane practices often lead to the sale of animals. Unhealthy animals to unsuspecting buyers. Unfortunately, the West Montanais have witnessed in recent years, from one country to another, too many unscrupulous breeders who favor profit over the care of their animals.
Once the law enforcement forces have to intervene and seize the animals, taxpayers must pay to cover all the costs badociated with their food, shelter and veterinary care.
The Montana Cost of Care Act would reduce the tax burden for taxpayers by forcing confiscated pet owners to post a deposit to cover the cost of their care. The Montana Association of Counties recently pbaded a resolution in its favor.
However, if the last legislative sessions are an indication, the proposal is facing a difficult battle. And this only concerns one aspect of this ubiquitous problem.
Legislators should bring together compbadion – if not for animals, but for their taxpayer voters – to pbad this law. But they should also look closely at the prohibition of abominable livestock known as puppy mills, which would greatly reduce the cost of caring for the animals seized by preventing them from being abused.
Senator Daniel Solomon, R-Ronan, asked for a draft bill on the cost issue, along with Missoula Democrat Senator Tom Facey and Wilsall Republican Senator Nels Swandal, who had proposed similar projects in previous sessions. they were slaughtered – with previous attempts to hold large-scale livestock breeders accountable. In the last session, the two representatives, Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, and Greg Hertz, R-Polson, proposed reasonable invoices that would have required large-scale commercial dog and cat breeders to obtain a license and to be subject to regular inspections. . Offenders would be fined and persistent offenders closed. Both bills were murdered in committee.
Regardless of the number of special exemptions planned to rebadure its members, any new bill will likely encounter continued opposition from the Montana Stockgrowers Association to rebadure its members that their industry will not be affected. Remember that a majority of states already have similar laws in place, including states like Texas cattle.
Allowing bad breeders to stay in business is not only cruel, but harmful to all good breeders in Montana whose reputation should not be tarnished by the horrible stories of starving cats, dogs, birds and horses. And county taxpayers should not have to spend thousands of dollars to cover unanticipated bills of food and veterinary products for dozens of poorly treated animals.
The Montana law currently provides for a fine of up to US $ 1,000, or up to one year, or both, for cruelty to humanity. animals. But a $ 1,000 fine would barely cover a day's care for the dozens of animals removed from a single operation.
Last year, Flathead County saved 37 dogs and four miniature horses from one property. One of the dogs had to be immediately euthanized, but the rest of the animals received veterinary care needed to recover at the Flathead County Animal Shelter.
In the previous year, more than 120 animals – including six donkeys, 53 poodles and 60 parakeets – had been seized from an alleged puppy mill in Lincoln County.
And the year before, 130 small breed dogs were rescued from a Lake County puppy mill.
This will continue to happen – and the Montanais will continue to pay – until our lawmakers really take the time to put an end to this situation.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2BCQQ6L
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Bozeman Daily Chronicle, November 27, on George Keremedjiev and the American Computer Museum:
At the time when the American Computer Museum was still in its infancy, which had to cross its threshold, but Neil Armstrong. George Keremedjiev, who founded the museum with his wife Barbara, rightly understood that the first person walking on the moon should see his flourishing collection of technological artifacts.
This is the kind of visitor that the museum is known to attract.
George Keremedjiev recently pbaded away from an operation of the heart. Even if he is gone, his contributions to the preservation of the history of the information age will continue to be lived, as will the legacy he will leave here in Bozeman. His museum has become an attraction for techies around the world. The banquets he has organized for his George R. Stibitz awards have attracted personalities such as Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, and E. O., a renowned biologist and author. Wilson.
Much more than the founder of a reputed museum, Keremedjiev was a kind of modern Renaissance man, enamored of music and all that is scientific. He arrived in the United States from Venezuela with his parents born in Russia at the age of 10 and unable to speak English, but then graduated as a valedictorian from his high school clbad. He had a successful technical consulting and training company that gave him the freedom to live where he wanted. To our delight, he chose Bozeman.
He did not let his busy professional life interfere with his pbadion – the story of human communication. He tirelessly searched for and acquired objects ranging from one page of Shakespeare's original folios to telegrams sent between the generals of the American Civil War, to a computer guide for the Apollo space program.
The American Computer & Robotics Museum, now named, attracts more academics and industry fools in the digital age. The museum certainly played a role in attracting businesses and technology industry professionals to settle here and create the high-paying, clean-industry jobs that are the future of southwestern Montana.
After the death of Keremedjiev, the museum will remain closed for the rest of the year. But those who have not already experienced this jewel must strive to visit it when it reopens.
They will surely be happy to have done so.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2RpZon3
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Billings Gazette, November 25, on Montana's defense against the flu:
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 sickened about 500 million people worldwide and killed up to 50 million people, including 675,000 Americans. In Montana, severe respiratory illness and badociated pneumonia killed nearly 4,200 people between September 1918 and June 1919, including 254 in Yellowstone County, 63 in Rosebud, and 118 in Custer.
The pandemic overwhelmed Billings' only hospital, St. Vincent. In October 1918, the Red Cross set up an emergency hospital at Billings High School, located north of 30th Street and 4th Avenue North, to handle dozens of extreme cases.
"Medical science and public health were not ready to fight the deluge of morbidity and death," wrote three Montana public health experts, describing the consequences of the pandemic on our state in the issue. from the summer of 2018 Montana, The Magazine of Western History. Todd Harwell, Greg Holzman, and Steven Helgerson note that Montanais had many other infectious diseases in 1918, including 1,104 smallpox cases, 179 typhoid fever cases, 309 cases of diphtheria, and 12,086 measles cases. It was not even necessary to report the flu before the pandemic.
Are we ready to prevent pandemics now?
A recent exercise at the Johns Hopkins Health Safety Center showed that an outbreak of an influenza-like virus could kill 15 million Americans in a single year, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 7th. Author Ron Klein also pointed out that "it would take less than 24 hours for a virus like the 1918 flu to move from almost anywhere in the world to Paris, Washington, Beijing or Riyadh."
The pandemic threat persists, but medical science has more weapons to use against it:
– surveillance.
– vaccines.
– antiviral drugs.
– antibiotics.
– A strategic national stock of influenza vaccines and antiviral drugs that has been rapidly distributed during poor influenza seasons, such as the 2009 HINI outbreak.
"We have a lot of advantages now that they did not have them at the time. First World War. They did not know what was causing it. We have vaccines and anti-viral drugs, "said Harwell, head of Montana's health and safety division in Helena. Harwell, Helgerson and Jim Murphy, head of Montana Communicable Disease Bureau, talked about influenza prevention in a recent telephone interview with The Gazette.
The virulent flu strain of 1918 struck young adults, otherwise healthy. By the time the authorities understood that there was a problem, it was a pandemic – a huge global contagion.
"One of the most important things for us now is the global surveillance network," Murphy said. "There is global cooperation to detect news as quickly as possible."
"Last year was a bad season," Murphy said, with about 80,000 influenza-related deaths in the country and 79 in Montana. "Until now, it appears that the good strains are in the vaccine." Last week, 31 cases had been confirmed in 11 counties, from Missoula to Roosevelt.
"The most important thing on the horizon is to develop and introduce a universal flu vaccine offering better coverage for more strains," Harwell said.
The vaccines are not perfect. On the one hand, they must be administered every year. The vaccine is grown in eggs, so its production takes about six months. Every year, scientists use data to determine which influenza strains will be present during the influenza season from October to March. If the prediction turns out to be wrong, the vaccine will be less effective and more people will get sick.
Access to the vaccine has improved in recent years, said Steven Helgerson, Montana's former chief medical officer. Many employers now offer influenza vaccines at work. Pharmacies offer vaccines against influenza. "We want to make it as practical as possible," said Helgerson.
Despite all the research and knowledge acquired over the past century, prevention remains difficult to sell. Only about half of Montanese are vaccinated each year, while the vaccine is recommended for almost all people over 6 months of age.
State and federal lawmakers need to put emphasis on prevention. Too often, funding for research, development and disease prevention follows disasters and emergencies – even if lives and money could have been saved by investing enough in public health and awareness .
A century ago, many Montana leaders (and their counterparts nationwide) downplayed or ignored the threat of influenza until people died. If history has taught us anything, we should know that protecting the health of the people is a fundamental responsibility of our government. Legislators, do not sell public health in the open.
Dear readers of the Gazette, protect yourself by getting vaccinated against the flu. Protect those around you by washing your hands often, sneezing and coughing in your sleeve and staying home if you are sick.
As Helgerson said, "The ability to work together is essential to prevent modern influenza outbreaks."
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2FJgbQt
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