OSTRICH AND EMU SPECULATORS: Will they get rich quick or just get the bird?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

DALLAS, Texas––More than 115,000 giant flightless
birds––ratites––roam North American pastures, including 80,000
ostrichs, 35,000 emus, and the occasional rhea. Ratite numbers
have doubled since last year and quadrupled since 1991. At the
present rate of breeding, stoked by speculation, the ratite popula-
tion could double again this year, and perhaps next year, too.
But many of those “pastures” are little more than back yards.
There is as yet no significant market for ratites other than specula-
tion in breeding stock. When no one else wants to cash in insur-
ance policies, mortgage property, and drain life savings to buy
ratites at spectacularly inflated prices, the pyramid of breeders,
dealers, franchisers, and support service vendors will col-
lapse––maybe not this year, but almost certainly soon.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Muriel, The Lady Dowding, died
in England on November 21, 1993, at age
85. A long series of strokes had left her con-
fined to a nursing home, isolated from friends
and deeply impoverished after giving most of
her fortune to animal causes. Her chief regret
late in life, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE
publisher Kim Bartlett, was that she was “no
longer able to do very much for the animals.”
A lifelong vegetarian, Theosophist,
and spiritualist, after her mother’s example,
the Lady Dowding argued in her 1980 autobi-
ography, The Psychic LIfe of Muriel, the
Lady Dowding, that enlightenment cannot be
achieved without sensitivity to animals. She
was long active in the White Eagle Lodge, a
British/American religious group with special
concern for animals.

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BOOKS: Humane Innovations And Alternatives & Between the Species

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Humane Innovations And Alternatives,
Volume Seven, published by Psychologists for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (Box 1297, Washington
Grove, MD 20880-1297.) 547 pages, paperback, $20.
Between The Species, Volume 9, #2, published
by the Schweitzer Center of the San Francisco Bay
Institute/Congress of Culture (POB 254, Berkeley, CA
94701.) 120 pages, paperback, $5.00.
Some day soon, Humane Innovations And
Alternatives must decide whether it wants to be a serious
journal or the Gong Show of animal protection literature.
The 14-member editorial board includes plenty of doctor-
ates from a variety of disciplines, and plenty of worthwhile
material appears in this thick annual, as well, but scientific
probes of fine points in toxicology appear alongside infor-
mal essays on “How I run my animal shelter,” and “The
most unforgetable chicken I ever met.” Even if every item
genuinely deserves print somewhere, few researchers will
ever find the scientific articles, while most of the audience
for shelter how-to and unforgetable chicken stories isn’t like-
ly to be drawn to a publication that calls itself a journal.

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LEFTY DUCKS AND CHICKENS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Lefty’s Place, by Lewis G. Nierman. Kindness
Publications (1859 N. Pine Island Rd., #135, Plantation,
FL 33322), 1993. 32 pages, hardcover, $18.95.
Nature’s Chicken, by Dr. Nigel Burroughs.
Distributed by United Poultry Concerns (POB 59367,
Potomac, MD 20859). 36 pages, paperback, $5.95.
Neither battery-caged chickens nor the feral
Muscovy ducks of Florida have many human friends. As
with bears and whales, children may be among the first and
most ardent to take up their cause. Certainly Lewis
Neirman and Nigel Burroughs hope so. Neirman approach-
es his young audience with a lavishly produced picture-
book, aimed at grades 2-5, which has a reasonable chance
of getting into school libraries as a friendly introduction not
only to Muscovy ducks but also to the broader subjects of
wildlife rehabilitation and coping with disability. Leftys
Place actually begins with a family’s adoption of Lefty’s
mother, Keppy, Lefty, the runt of her ducklings, suffers a
severe foot injury. The daughter of the family, Rebecca,
rehabilitates him to the extent that he can be rehabilitated,
then makes him a pet. Most children will enjoy the story;
those who are themselves recovering from illness or injury
may particularly take heart from it.

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New books for dog-lovers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Curing Your Dog’s Bad Habits: Treating
Behavioral Problems, by Danny Wilson.
Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. (387 Park Ave. South,
New York, NY 10016-8810), 1994. 108 pages,
$9.95, paperback.
Dog trainer Danny Wilson’s advice about dealing
with difficult dogs should be self-evident to any observer
of canine behavior. Yet astonishingly many people, even
purported dog-lovers, substitute a rolled-up newspaper for
good sense when it comes to enforcing canine discipline.
This isn’t hard to understand, as proper dog-training takes
at least 20 minutes a day, which many busy people just
don’t have. It is to be understood that dog-training time, a
concerted period devoted wholly to the dog, is not to be
confused with time spent in the company of both dog and
family, or jogging with the dog, or walking the dog. Any
of these occasions may be adapted into a dog-training ses-
sion, but only if there is a daily opportunity for reinforce-

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Zoos

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
announced December 20 that it has indefi-
nitely ended consideration of requests to
import giant pandas. The verdict came six
months after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
vetoed the San Diego Zoo’s attempt to import
two pandas in exchange for a grant of $1 mil-
lion to loosely monitored “panda conservation”
projects in China, which in the past have
included such activities as building a hydro-
electric dam.

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Horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

New York City entered 1994
with no regulations protecting carriage
horses, after outgoing mayor David
Dinkins vetoed a bill on December 29 that
would have amended the 1989 Carriage
Horse Protection Act to allow horsedrawn
carriages to operate in city traffic except
during the rush hours, when they will be
restricted to Central Park, and to extend
the workday for carriage horses from eight
hours to nine. Carriages had been restrict-
ed to Central Park all day and barred from
operating during rush hours. Introduced
by councillor Noach Dear, the bill was
approved by the New York City Council on
December 21, 29-17, which was consid-
ered a close vote. The Carriage Horse
Action Committee had sought reauthoriza-
tion of the 1989 act, supported by the the-
atre industry and other groups concerned
that the carriages discourage business by
slowing down traffic, plus a faction that
claims the carriage horse trade is a “green
card factory” for Irish immigrants, who
dominate the workforce of drivers and
grooms. There are now 396 licensed car-
riage drivers, up from 266 in 1991, but
there are only 140 horses and 68 carriages
actually out on the job. The CHAC, head-
ed by Peggy Parker, may now seek a total
ban on horsedrawn vehicles in Manhattan.

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FUR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Encouraged by the reopening of
Bloomingdale’s Maximilian fur salon in
New York on November 29, the fur trade
still claims sales are up after a five-year
slump, projecting 1993 retail receipts of
$1.2 billion––but once again hard numbers
tell a different story. As of Christmas,
advertised retail fur prices were still plung-
ing to new lows in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Mink coats, furs priced at $5,000 or more,
and the overall average fur price were all
down 25% from the previous record lows
reached in 1992, The total volume of fur
advertising was down 17%, despite promi-
nent early fall cooperative promotional
efforts. Further indications of falling
demand include the 1993 mink and fox pro-
duction figures published in Fur Age

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Biomedical research

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Despite a warning from senior radi-
ation biologist Dr. Joseph Hamilton that the
experiments had “a little of the Buchenwald
touch, the Atomic Energy Commission con-
ducted extensive radiation research on unwitting
human subjects from the mid-1940s into the
early 1970s, according to newly declassified
documents released in December by Energy
Secretary Hazel O’Leary, who battled her own
bureaucracy for nearly a year to obtain them. In
one experiment, 19 mentally retarded teenaged
boys at a state school in Fernald, Mass-
achusetts, were given radioactive milk with
their breakfast cereal from 1946 until 1956. In
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