Month: January 1995

Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Greg Locklier of the Alabama Office of the Attorney
General, 1-800-392-5658, wants to hear from anyone who’s had dealings
with Ann P. Fields, Marge Jacobs, or Rebecca Garcia of Love and
Care For God’s Animalife Inc., a no-kill shelter in southeastern
Alabama, now soliciting funds under the name Care For Our Lord’s
Animals Inc., from an address in Cathedral City, California. Begun
circa 1983 by Fields and ex-husband Jerry, the organization has changed
names and post office boxes several times while dodging creditors, and
moved to Alabama from Georgia in 1988 to avoid closure for zoning vio-
lations. Fields has recently circulated a videotape purporting to show the
Alabama shelter, which Locklier believes was actually made at a shelter
near Palm Springs, California.

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Hunting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

An unidentified American, two Germans, and a South
African safari guide waited in Tanzania on December 15 until the old-
est bull elephant in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park and three male
companions wandered over the border, then blew them away point-
blank from a jeep. Often photographed by tourists, all four elephants
were virtually tame. The eldest, dubbed R.G.B., was 47 years old,
and had been studied by researcher Cynthia Moss since 1976. As the
killing was legal, the American will be allowed to import his trophies.
Showing similar hunting skill, John Joyce, 53, and Robert
Gerber, 70, of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, were arrested on
November 24 in connection with the baiting, trapping, and jacklight-
ing of a 494-pound bear out of season. They were caught trying to fig-
ure out how to remove the carcass from a heap of doughnuts.

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DIET & HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

From the December 5 Newsweek
cover feature: “The saturated fats in meat,
butter, and whole milk have long been demon-
ized, and for the most part rightly so. Recent
research on heart disease and several can-
cers––including colon, prostate, and
ovary––points to one overwhelming message:
eating a lot of red meat is really a bad idea.”
The article coincided with a White House
press conference at which First Lady Hillary
Clinton and former U.S. Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop announced “Shape Up
America,” a campaign against obesity, which
kills an estimated 300,000 Americans a year.
The campaign is modeled after Koop’s anti-
smoking drive. Consumption of animal-based
foods wasn’t mentioned in most news releases
about it, but Koop is known for seeming to
target one thing while hitting another, e.g.
becoming an outspoken defender of animal
experimentation in 1990 while investing much
of his own fortune in developing the “Adam”
computerized alternative to the use of animals
and human cadavers in practice surgery.

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OBITUARIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Brigid Brophy, 66, British author and feminist, died August 7 in London after a
12-year battle with multiple sclerosis. Best known for her successful crusade to require British
libraries to pay royalties to authors whenever their books are checked out, leading to the pas-
sage of the 1979 Public Lending Rights Act, Brophy was a vegetarian and animal advocate
throughout her adult life. Her first novel, Hackenfeller’s Ape (1954) attacked vivisection. “I
am the very opposite of an anthropomorphiser,” she wrote in Don’t Never Forget. “I don’t
hold animals superior to or even equal to humans. The whole case for behaving decently to
animals rests on the fact that we are the superior species. We are the species uniquely capable
of imagination, rationality and moral choice––and that is precisely why we are under the
obligation to recognize and respect the rights of animals.” Later, Brophy added,
“‘Sentimentalist’ is the abuse with which people counter the accusation that they are cruel,
thereby implying that to be sentimental is worse than to be cruel, which it isn’t.” In all,

Brophy’s aphorisms on animal rights occupy six pages of The Extended Circle, Jon Wiynne-
Tyson’s “Commonplace Book of Animal Rights.”

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AGRICULTURE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Responding to a year-long cam-
paign against face-branding, led by the
Coalition for Nonviolent Food, the USDA on
December 22 proposed new rules to identify
Mexican cattle imported into the U.S., to take
effect January 23. The new rules require tail-
head branding, by either the hot-iron or freeze
method. Freeze branding must be done at
least 18 days before import, to give the mark
time to become visible. The Coalition, led by
Henry Spira, now seeks to halt the use of
face-branding to identify cattle with tuberculo-
sis and brucellosis. (See ad, page 10.)
The scandal over the use of the
banned synthetic steroid clenbuterol in veal
feed, revealed in December by the Humane
Farming Association and ANIMAL
PEOPLE, continues to spread, as the USDA
in early December confirmed finding traces in
feed seized from five Wisconsin dealers.

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Bear farm phase-out

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

HONG KONG––Conceding that
bear-farming boosts demand for bear prod-
ucts and therefore encourages bear poach-
ing, the China Wildlife Conservation
Association, a branch of the Chinese
Ministry of Forestry, has signed an agree-
ment with the World Society for the
Protection of Animals, the Hong Kong
environmental group Earthcare, and the
International Fund for Animal Welfare to
cut bear farm production by a third within
three years; ensure no new cubs are put into
restrictive cages or tapped for their bile,
which many Chinese believe has medicinal
value; research and promote medically
approved alternatives to bear bile, including
herbal remedies; close down unlicensed

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Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Encouraged by rumors of a fur
resurgence that sent pelt prices soaring at
winter auctions a year ago, fur farmers

worldwide bred more foxes than they had
since 1989, producing 3.2 million pelts for
this year’s auction season. Mink production
rose too, though the 22.6 million mink pelts
to be auctioned are still barely half the 1988
volume of 41.8 million. North American fox
production held even, at 60,000 in Canada
and 25,000 in the U.S. Canadian mink pro-
duction dipped from 700,000 to 650,000, but
U.S. mink production rose from 2.5 million to
2.6 million. After the animals were bred,
auction prices fell back to 1993 levels.

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ZOONOSIS UPDATE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Rabies roundup

Because continued funding for an
experimental raccoon rabies oral vaccina-
tion program begun last spring hasn’t been
approved on schedule by the Massachusetts
legislature, the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine may be obliged to lay off
project coordinator Allyson Robbins on
December 31, dean Franklin Loew told ANI-
MAL PEOPLE on December 23. It also
won’t be able to order the vaccination baits in
time to be sure of having them on hand at the
optimum time to use them, when mothers
come out of their dens with newly ambulatory
babies. The initial oral vaccination budget
came from a dormant Food and Agriculture
Department fund set up to fight equine
encephalitis. However, while the vaccination
work was underway, trying to keep raccoon
rabies off Cape Cod as a demonstration of its
effectiveness, equine encephalitis reappeared
in Massachusetts, and the Food and

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