CHILDREN & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

$40 million in public funds are
used to teach “hunter education” to
700,000 U.S. school children a year. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts up $32.2
million, while the balance comes from the
states; all 50 states participate. “They’re
teaching hunting as ‘gun safety,’ ‘physical
education,’ and any other excuse they cna
think of,” says Katherine Trimnal of
Columbia, South Carolina, who has been
investigating the program for some time.
This program is completely separate from
Project Wild, which also promotes a pro-
hunting message at cost of $23 million a
year.

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Diet & Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Responding to public panic over
tainted meat, President Bill Clinton on
February 11 ordered the USDA to hire 160
more meat inspectors, while Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy promised a complete
overhaul of the meat inspection
system––which the Ronald Reagan and
George Bush presidential administrations
had streamlined by reducing the number of
inspectors. The panic began in December
when a six-year-old girl in San Diego
County, California, died after eating a
tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, and
escalated January 22, when a two-year-old
boy died in Seattle, Washington, from the
same cause. More than 400 people who ate
Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers developed E.

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Where horse rescue gets hot by Sharon Cregier

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

AMMAN, Jordan –– The sound of a stick on
hide summons Chris Larter to her second-story balcony.
“It’s the donkey-beaters,” Larter explains. Below, a
mare, foal at foot, plows a stony verge. Sheep and shep-
herd dodge four-lane traffic to graze the edges of con-
struction projects. And of course there are boys driving
donkeys. “Last time they were trying to cut a donkey’s
ears off,” Larter continues. She recalls braving a hail of
stones to take photos, locating the parents of the donkey-
boys, and pleading for the donkey’s welfare.
Today, courage requires police reinforcement.
Obtaining backup, Larter partially unloads a staggering
donkey, obliging the donkey-boys to make multiple trips
to finish moving their cargo.
Larter is field supervisor, publicity officer, and
photographer for the Jordanian Society for the Protection
of Animals, sponsored by the 70-year-old Society for the
Protection of Animals in North Africa. Based in England,
SPANA is among the last and most popular remnants of
the British occupation of Jordan, 1920-1946.

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Gene and Diana Chontos: Helping the tough and stubborn

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

“Talking to someone about myself beyond my life
with burros seems abstract to me now,” Diana Chontos told
ANIMAL PEOPLE, “since my life has become burros and
their continued survival. I am a daughter of the pioneers of
Washington, and continue to live by many of the same val-
ues as my great-grandparents, except that during my child-
hood I found the practice of slaughtering and eating animals
abhorent. As soon as I possibly could, I became a vegetari-
an.” Her first animal rescue may have been at age 13,
when, “I rode my horse, galloping bareback, between a
gun-happy bounty hunter and a beautiful coyote I had been
watching as she caught and ate grasshoppers.”
Gene Chontos, Diana’s partner of 18 years, came
to animal rescue later in life, but no less dramatically. “I
was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1937,” he
remembers, “son to Hungarian immigrants. My father and
all his kin served the Bethlehem Steel Company as cheap
labor and resided in lower class poverty, replete with ethnic
prejudice, hatred, and violence. I escaped at age 17
through a four-year enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

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Guest column: Stop the war on wild horses! by Anna Charlton

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

A modern-day range war is underway on the vast
prairies of Nevada. Unless there is drastic and immediate
action, the casualty of this war will be the wild horse,
whom ranchers and bureaucrats seem determined to exter-
minate.
The wild horse is an enduring symbol of the
American west. The sight of a herd of these magnificent,
proud animals thundering across the open range evokes the
image of freedom. Responding to public outrage over the
slaughter of wild horses, Congress in 1971 passed the Free
and Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, which calls for
the protection, management, and control of all wild horses
and burros on public land. But despite this legislative pro-
tection, wild horses are still shot, poisoned, and rustled.
The greatest threat to their survival, however, comes from
the Bureau of Land Management––the agency Congress
entrusted as their guardian. The BLM appears intent upon
“managing” wild horses out of existence, to increase the
profits of cattle and sheep ranchers.

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A fish named Alice by Margaret Hehman-Smith

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

I have an unusual animal I’d like to tell
you about: a fish named Alice who does tricks.
You don’t believe it? Everyone says that until they
see my fish for real. Then they admit they have
never seen a fish do that before; and then they
don’t know what to say or do. On the one hand
here is a koi fish who performs learned behaviors
on cue, and on the other, there is the suggestion
that we should regard fish as intelligent, sentient
beings, who don’t belong grilled on a plate.
My Japanese Imperial koi fish is sleekly
beautiful, pearl-white, 24 years old, about the
size of a small dog. She lives in a 100-gallon tank
in my den. She has been taught to ring a bell, go
through a hoop, react to hand signals, push a ball,

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Early neuter: cruel or kind?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Cruel! by Leslie N. Johnston, DVM

There is a trend now to establish
what are called spay/neuter clinics at all of
the city and county animal pounds and at the
various so-called humane animal shelters all
across our country. The term spay/neuter is
incorrect use of the English language. The
simple term neuter is enough.
The people running these clinics
are also ignorant about neutering dogs and
cats. The trend now is to neuter the dog or
cat before he or she leaves the facility,
regardless of age (as early as six weeks of
age). To neuter a dog or cat this early is
cruel, inhumane, deceptive, and the most
sadistic vivisection that could be done to a
poor little animal.

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LETTERS [March 1993]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Money and power
The feature article in your
January/February 1993 issue about the role
or non-role of minorities in the movement
was top-notch. I am proud to have worked
for seven years at the Michigan Humane
Society’s downtown Detroit facility, promi-
nently mentioned in your article as one of
the only major U.S. humane societies still
committed to serving animals and people in
an often dangerous environment where
needs are greatest. Some important facts
not noted in your article are that the MHS
has minorities on its board of directors and
in supervisory positions, and that its
Detroit-based charitable animal hospital
helps thousands of animals each year––pri-
marily at reduced cost, no cost, or with
extended payment plans. In my current

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Editorial: How do you tell Brooklyn from the Balkans––or the Berkshires?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

The editor, the publisher, and the animal control officer were perplexed. Sipping
mugs of coffee on a recent frozen afternoon, they compared notes.
“Jogging up the road here a few minutes ago,” the editor said, “I ran into a young
guy in camoflauge, carrying a gun. It’s not hunting season. There’s nothing he could legal-
ly shoot that would be out at this time of day. Then I saw three kids coming the other direc-
tion, and every one of them had a BB gun. The only animals they could be shooting at are
animals they’re killing just because they’re alive.”
“I moved my family up here from Brooklyn,” said the animal control officer, “to
get away from an environment of poverty and stress and kids with guns. But now that I’m
here, it looks just like the Balkans.”

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