Month: July 2000

Whaling or sanctuary?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

ADELAIDE, Australia– – Japan
was to introduce a plan to expand its “scientific
whaling” program to kill 10 sperm whales
and 50 Bryde’s whales next year as well as
more than 500 minkes at the 52nd annual
meeting of the International Whaling
Commission, to be held July 3-6 in Adelaide.
The Japanese fleet killed 439 whales
out of a self-allocated quota of 440 this year.
Against intense Japanese opposition,
including direct mailings to Adelaide residents,
Australia and New Zealand were to
seek designation of a South Pacific Whale
Sanctuary.
The new sanctuary would extend the
protection zone for southern hemisphere
baleen whales to encompass their breeding
areas, as well as the feeding locations already
protected within the existing Southern Ocean
and Indian Ocean sanctuaries.

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“Talk about animals,” Goodwin tells PETA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

DALLAS––Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade founder J.P. Goodwin, 27, who was among the most militant animal rights activists of the 1990s, told the world on June 4 via the online forum that recent tactics of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are off target, ineffective, and at times “a betrayal of the cause.”

Began Goodwin, “Extra recently did a piece glorifying eating meat. They claimed many celebrities, such as Sarah McLaughlin, had gone back to eating meat, partly as a backlash against ‘political correctness.’ Perhaps there would be no backlash,” Goodwin suggested, “if current vegetarian campaigns focused on compassion for animals rather than impotence, Jesus, models in lettuce, and just about every single other thing possible except animal suffering.

“CAFT opposes goofy stunts, such as the PETA ‘Got beer?’ campaign and pie throwing, which completely overshadow animal suffering,” Goodwin continued.

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Show us real love for dogs, Korean anti-dog-meat activists tell dog-swapping heads of state

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

SEOUL, Korea; NEW YORK, N . Y .––South Korean president Kim Dae-jung marked the first-ever visit to North Korea by a South Korean head-of-state by presenting North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-il a pair of husky-like chindo hunting dogs.

Kim Jong-il reciprocated by giving Kim Dae-jung a pair of pung-san dogs.

Broad though the differences between the two Koreas are, both leaders and their nations prize their distinctive dogs.

But few people can afford a dog in famine-plagued North Korea. Most dogs in the north were long since killed and eaten.

South Korea by contrast has a booming dog-breeding industry: purebreds for pets; mongrels for meat, after death by torture.

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Can shelters co-exist with upscale homes?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

For a number of reasons the site of our current shelter is not suitable, and about 10 years ago the municipality agreed to give us a new plot of land more accessible to city residents. It is in a ravine zoned for light industry. The shelter is to be built at one edge, beside a forest which is to be preserved. Bureaucracy here moves slowly, however, and as the development of the ravine and our shelter was approaching a final okay, another group of developers announced their intent to build luxury housing above the ravine. The housing developers are opposing construction of the shelter.

We understand that the municipality will be much more likely to give us the go-ahead if we can show that other successful shelters border on residential zones. Can you tell us of any ?

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Alabama animals need help

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

As an avid reader of ANIMAL PEOPLE, I truly appreciate the work that your paper does. That is the reason I feel compelled to write to you now.

Our organization, Friends for Animal Welfare of Randolph County, is in desperate need of assistance. Randolph County is rural, filled with chicken farms, good old boys, and elderly retirees. The two counties bordering us are practically the same. None have ever had any type of animal control, shelter, animal laws, or public sympathy for animals.

Our local dog and cat population in 1998 was over 10,000–– half our human population––but only a third of those animals had been vaccinated against rabies.

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SOMETHING THAT WORKS IN LOS ANGELES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

It has been my experience
as a director for three major
humane societies and animal control
agencies over the past 35 years
that there are two basic approaches
to animal welfare: you can attempt
to compel compliance through
punitive measures, or you can
encourage compliance by creating
incentive programs.
I have found that incentives
work better than punishment,
although the punishment option
needs to be available because some
pet owners simply will not comply
with the most basic animal care
laws unless they are forced to do so.

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Humane Society of Indianapolis was indifferent, so FACE fixes them

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

IDIANAPOLIS––The Foundation Against Companion Animal Euthanasia (FACE) altered 7,000 dogs and cats at $20 to $30 apiece within a year of opening, and then picked up the pace.

Reaching 10,000 in just three more months, FACE set in motion plans to add more veterinary staff and build a pet adoption center. Founders Scott Robinson, M.D., and wife Ellen––expecting their first child any day but continuing to manage the FACE clinic–– were also investigating possible expansion into Bloomington, and/or adding a mobile clinic to serve rural Indiana.

As a specialist in human internal medicine who works in a Zionsville hospital emergency room, Scott Robinson wasn’t seeking a parallel career in veterinary humane work back in 1993 when he began bringing FACE together. He and Ellen, an animal rights activist since high school, had not yet met. All Robinson set out to do, he says, was encourage Humane Society of Indianapolis executive director Marsha Spring to look into some of the breaking-edge techniques that were and are knocking down the shelter killing toll elsewhere around the U.S.––notably the Animal Foundation high-volume low-cost neutering clinic in Las Vegas.

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LETTERS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

Golf: facing nature with a club

Since I started golfing
about a year ago, I have often wondered
why no one has ever done
anything about preventing injuries to
animals from balls. Some are killed;
lots are maimed. I move ducks and
geese into ponds away from golfers
when I am playing––and I let the
course management know I will take
the injured ones. Some golfers brag
about injuring birds and doing nothing
or killing them—this is something
that should be exploded! And
we don’t know how many foul balls
end up clunking a bunny or squirrel
over the head. Balls are bullets flying
at over 200 miles per hour. It is
very sad to see beautiful animals
walking with a dangling broken leg.

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Editorial: No-kills have no cause to smirk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

“Too many animal control departments and humane societies which still hold animal
control contracts have a vested interest in doing what they have always done,” ANIMAL PEOPLE editorialized in May 2000. “Going a different and more successful way would
mean accepting some of the blame for causing barrels to fill, day after day, with furry bodies.
Complain though many animal control and humane society people might about the stress of
killing, they still find killing animals easier than doing what is necessary to stop it.”
But proponents of no-kill sheltering had no cause to smirk. Unfortunately, even as
too many conventional sheltering organizations resist change, too many no-kill advocates conduct
themselves and their own operations as cases of arrested development––and in some
instances deserve arrest on criminal charges for warehousing animals in filthy, noisy, overcrowded
kennels, where they enjoy neither a good life nor any prospect of adoption.
Those people may be a minority of the no-kill community, but they are a conspicuous,
ubiquitous, and problematic minority, collectively constituting the strongest case that
opponents of no-kill sheltering such as PETA and the Humane Society of the U.S. can make.

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