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Delaware Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 44 was adopted on June 30, 2012 creating the Animal Welfare Task Force. SCR 44 states that it is the intent of the Task Force to “consider and evaluate the state of animal welfare in Delaware, including the resources devoted to animal welfare services and whether consolidation, collaboration, or reorganization can lead to more effective use of limited resources.”

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(FDA)

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University spent a week at Replacements delving deeper into the impact of dogs at work. The VCU team surveyed and monitored stress levels among three test groups: those who brought their dogs to work every day, dog owners who left their pets at home, and those who do not own any pets. Their work marks the first quantitative study conducted in the workplace on the psychological and physiological impact of pets.

"What surprised us most is the fact stress actually decreased throughout the day among those participants who brought their dogs to work, while stress levels significantly increased for those who left their dogs at home or don't own pets," says principal researcher Randolph T. Barker, Ph.D., professor of management at VCU's School of Business.

(Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel)

Summer at animal shelters across the country means more animals, more work, more bills and more worries.At the majority of animal shelters in the country, kittens make up problem Nos. 1 through 10 every summer, said Dr. Kate F. Hurley, director of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program at the University of California at Davis Center for Companion Animal Health.

(NY Times)

MANY of them have carpeting, heating and air-conditioning, indoor and outdoor lighting, elaborate music and entertainment systems. Some are even eco-friendly, with solar panels or planted green roofs. In fact, the only superfluous accessory in the modern doghouse may be the dog.

(NY Times)

Entrepreneurs meet demand using innovative but pricey therapies.

Entrepreneurs have built a flourishing market of veterinary treatments that include pet massage, acupuncture, and pricey stem cell treatments. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have recently formed a company to break into the small but growing pet stem cell market.

(Boston Globe)

The surge in orders for safety devices for pets occurred after the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals last month held an awareness event on pet safety in cars. It also explained the NJSPCA's authority to file charges against drivers who fail to properly transport pets, a disorderly person's offense that carries fines of $250 to $1,000, according to a 15-year-old New Jersey animal cruelty statute. An example of improperly transporting pets is keeping dogs in pickup-truck beds.

(North Jersey)

Key food safety rules have now been under administration review for 6 months

Food safety advocates remain frustrated and confused as central Food Safety Modernization Act rules have failed to advance more than six months after they were sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Under FSMA, which President Obama signed in January 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was directed to churn out a final rule for a foreign supplier verification program and a proposed produce safety rule (for "high risk" produce) by January. As of this week, the foreign supplier verification program was supposed to be established and one of the law's most important elements, the preventative controls requirement, was supposed to take effect.

(Food Safety News)

Dogs yawns more often when they were listening to their owner's yawn

Dogs catch yawns from their sound alone, new research indicates. They also catch their owner's yawns easier than those from others, supporting the theory that contagious yawns are empathy-based and emotional in nature, the researchers say.

"Unexpectedly, results showed an interesting interplay between contagion and social effects," Karine Silva, of the Universidade do Porto in Portugal, and colleagues write in their study detailed in the July 2012 issue of the journal Animal Cognition. "Not only were dogs found to catch human yawns, but they were also found to yawn more at familiar than unfamiliar yawns."

(MSNBC)

The Transportation Department wants to expand the reporting of incidents when pets are lost, injured or killed on airline flights.

Currently, only the 15 largest airlines report when animals are involved in these incidents, which total in the dozens each year. But in a proposed rule, to be published Friday in the Federal Register, all airlines with a 60-seat plane would have to begin reporting, which the department says would cover 36 airlines flying 99.6 percent of domestic passengers.

(USA Today)

The allergy-friendly dog may be little more than wishful thinking, a new study of Labradoodles and other allegedly hypoallergenic breeds suggests.To put those claims to the test, Doris Vredegoor at Utrecht University in The Netherlands and her colleagues recruited nearly 200 dogs of four supposedly hypoallergenic breeds. They compared those with a group of 160 standard dogs.

Based on hair and coat samples, the researchers found higher levels of the Can f 1 allergen, one of the proteins that cause dog allergies, in the hypoallergenic group, with Poodles and Labradoodles leading the pack in allergen levels.

(Reuters)