NEWSBYLISA POISSO

This fall ushers in what's apparently the year of the fur vest — but is it made from animal pelts, a "certified animal-friendly" faux fur alternative, or yet another alternative from a manufacturer better known for its children's toys?

Luxury fashion house Bottega Veneta is bringing fashionistas tailored coats made from the same shaggy fabric used by the stuffed-animal experts at German toymaker Steiff. In Style magazine reports that Bottega Veneta creative director Tomas Maier "flipped" for the Steiff-favored faux wool and alpaca, noting, "They do a poetic job of imitating animal furs."

Both real and faux fur are seemingly everywhere in fashion this season, much to the chagrin of advocates who claim we shouldn't even wear as much as a scrap of faux trim. The idea, of course, is that wearing fake fur promotes the idea that fur is stylish. The more we want, the more we'll buy — and that's a problem, in a system rife with mislabeling in which your faux fur clothing may not be as faux as you think.

I'm not really sure why some people find it so improbable or difficult to accept the bald realities of climate change. Personally, I find it pretty hard to ignore the raw facts. Wildlife behavior, in particular, simply doesn't lie. And changing their behavior is exactly what tens of thousands of Alaskan walruses have been doing this year, as they are forced ashore due to melting Arctic ice.

Researchers along Alaska's northwestern coast have been tracking the movements of hordes of walruses that swam ashore after their home on the ice of the Chukchi Sea simply disappeared — a phenomenon unheard of as recently as a handful of years ago. Even more puzzling is the fact that what wildlife biologists are calling a "wall of walruses" seems to be made of exclusively of adult females. Where are their calves? Researchers simply don't know.

September is National Pet Health Insurance Month — and despite the not-so-lovely transparency of the industry's attempts to snag your attention (and your dollars) this month, the idea's definitely worthy of consideration for those of us living with companion animals.

Some 60 percent of American households include at least one dog, cat, bird or other companion animal. With projected pet expenses for 2010 at $47.7 billion, a financial safety net for emergency care sounds like an obvious strategy. The cost of veterinary services has gone up some 80 percent since 2000, in contrast to a 28.1 percent inflation rate for services in all other industries. And savvy pet owners recognize how quickly even routine expenses add up over time.

Still, even pet owners who warmly embrace their animals as members of the family sometimes hesitate to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on pet health care.  Their hesitation could actually be putting their own health at risk — that's right, because nurturing a pet means better health for you, too. Pet ownership confers a number of documented benefits, including a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, higher survival rates from heart attacks, significantly lower use of general practitioner services, a reduced risk of asthma and allergic rhinitis for children exposed to pet dander during their first year of their life, and better physical and psychological well-being for seniors.

Veterinarian and attorney Christopher J. Allen, DVM, JD, of Endwell Anim

Ready for some dinnertime fun and games? How about scooping up live lobsters from an enclosed tank inside an automated arcade-style machine? Eager seafood diners are working a little joystick action into their culinary experiences thanks to The Lobster Zone, an arcade-style machines that lets diners maneuver a grabber-claw and crane inside the tank and snag a live lobster. The lobster gets cranked up and out of the tank and plunked down a chute, after which it's whisked off to become dinner.

This "game" is nothing but sheer cruelty, claims People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling The Lobster Zone games nothing more than "lobster-torture machines."  But does the cruelty lie with The Lobster Zone contraption itself — or what happens to the lobster afterward? There are definitely problems on both ends of this compassionless situation.

PETA's account of what happens to the hapless creatures  is dramatic: "Once

Why did the wildlife cross the road? And did they make it to the other side? Scientists hope that pinpointing where traffic is killing wildlife on roadways will help them understand the environmental impact that roads have on wildlife. They hope that more accurate information about roadkill occurrences will enable them to pinpoint locations where animal crossing warning signs might be most effective and eventually predict and prevent roadkill hot spots.

Existing estimates of the carnage are big, scary and not especially accurate. Some 1 million animals are killed by vehicles every single day, according to the Humane Society of the United States. A 2008 Federal Highway Administration report puts annual total of accidents involving large animals between 1 million to 2 million. Then there's the property damage: more than $8 billion annually, by some estimates. Add in the human toll for accidents with large animals, which comes in at something like 200 deaths per year, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and you've got a whole lot of accidents piling up.

If those sound like big, round numbers, they are. Projects like the California Roadkill Observation System and the Maine Audubon Wildlife Road Watch are rallying citizen volunteers for help documenting each furry or feathery mishap on area roads. The proliferation of GPS devices and digital cameras has simplified the grisly process of collecting and recording information, allowing steely-stomached volunteers to document roadkill details for collection sites such as WildlifeCrossing.net. Site organizers are keeping their fingers crossed for the inevitable smartphone app, which would further streamline the process and help attract a younger generation of volunteers.

Victory sometimes arrives in the most undramatic packages — reasonable consumers presenting reasonable facts and preferences in a reasonable fashion. That's exactly what happened at women's clothing retailer Talbots, which has once again given fur the cold shoulder, thanks to requests from the public.

Eyebrows first shot up a few weeks ago, when reports starting trickling in to the Humane Society of the United States that fur had been spotted on the pages of the Talbots catalog, despite its being listed in the society's fur-free shopping guide. Could it be true?

In fact, it was — and in the face of mounting complaints, Humane Society mem

I've always found the idea of death by fire to be gruesomely horrific. Still, I guess I can imagine how some diners could push aside thoughts of creatures struggling to escape vats of boiling water, thrashing to crawl off a hot grill or writhing in agony as their limbs are chopped off bit by bit ... After all, it's all in the name of a gourmet meal, right? Out of sight, out of mind, right? ... Right?

What I simply can't wrap my head around at all, however, is the idea of diners digging into living beings writhing in pain on their plates — but that's exactly what was happening at one California restaurant, before PETA stepped in to point out the cruelty the owners were serving up.

Nishiki Sushi in Sacramento has informed PETA that it will no longer serve live shrimp, a Japanese delicacy called "dancing prawns." The dish's name refers to the frantic writhing of the shrimp after their protective shells are ripped off and diners squeeze acidic lemon juice across their bodies in order to make them "dance."

Let's get real. Crustaceans like lobsters, shrimp and prawns don't feel pain

It's hard to miss all the commotion about salmonella-plagued eggs, between tales of woe from coworkers who had to scramble to find "safe" eggs for baking Labor Day weekend treats, and grocery store placards trying to guide customers through the confusion of egg terminology ("all safe," "cage-free," "free range," "organic," "Omega-3 fortified," "certified humane"). Consumers are left pecking over personal choices on one hand and clucking over a morass of legislative proposals on the other. Virtually everyone worries over the health ramifications of factory farming practices. Yet virtually no one seems to be able to agree on a single, sensible and humane strategy to ensure the safety of both the chickens and the eggs.

While legislators sink into the debate over voluntary vs. mandatory guidelines, religious leaders may, in fact, be leading the way toward building consensus. At the end of August, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama added his voice against cage farming cruelty, urging the public to shun battery cage eggs in favor of cage-free products.

In a statement, the Dalai Lama said he's always found the abuse inflicted on

Is downtown the hip new in-spot for bees? Indeed, it turns out that French bees are finding a chic new home on the rooftops of Paris — while across the Atlantic in Canada, scientists have tagged a hitherto-unidentified species of bee buzzing about in downtown Toronto. What could be behind this unexpected habitat shift?

As dismaying as it sounds, the truth may be that bees are thriving more in cities because pesticides and environmental conditions are less and less amenable in the country. A French hotelier who keeps bees on her Paris rooftop told The New York Times that the bees thrive there because "flowers and plants are changed constantly and there aren't pesticides." The French are encouraging urban beekeeping with a three-year-old program — the largest of its kind in the world — designed to help bolster sagging bee populations nationwide.

Across the ocean in Toronto, the urban landscape provided an ironic collecti

It's easy for advocates of a particular cause to become so wrapped up in their own passions and perspectives that they can't see the forest for the trees — the forest, in the case of animal advocates who are pushing for human awareness of animal awareness, being  ... well, more awareness.

Nearly a month after Time magazine published what amounts to a twice-over retread of a cover story on animal thought and consciousness, the dust is settling without animal advocates' having done much more than tossing off a few caustic blog posts lambasting Time for recycling content. Shouldn't the fact that animals think and have feelings be obvious by this point, they ask?

Captain Obvious to the rescue: Apparently not, folks.