Month: October 2004

International Legal Precedents

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

 

Justice Richard C. Gates of Ontario Superior Court on
September 7, 2004 struck down a 2002 city of Windsor bylaw barring
exotic animal acts, on grounds that it violates circus performers’
right to freedom of expression, as defined by the Canadian Charter
of Rights & Freedoms. While the bylaw was written as a public
safety measure, Gates explained, and as such could have overridden
the relevant degree of concern for freedom of expression, “because
it was passed for the ulterior purpose of animal welfare, the
Respondent City failed to provide at least a reasonable degree of
evidence to causally link exotic animal performances to public
safety. There was insufficient examination of any evidence to
rationally support the secondary purpose of protection of the
public.” Issued on behalf of the Shriners Circuses, the Ontario
ruling may be cited as a precedent in an anticipated follow-up
lawsuit against animal act bans passed in 1999 by the Town of Mount
Royal and Ville St. Laurent, then independent cities and now
boroughs of Montreal.

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Bogus charges filed against snake-charming foes prove to be their lucky charm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

AHMEDABAD–Being arrested on bogus charges as an alleged
dangerous criminal proved to be a blessing in disguise for Animal
Help Foundation founder Rahul Sehgal, his associates, and the
snakes they were trying to rescue, Sehgal told ANIMAL PEOPLE
afterward.
When it happened, though, it sounded bad.
“Twelve activists of the Animal Help Foundation were booked
for kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and unlawful assembly,” the
Indian Express reported from Mumbai on September 16, “after snake
charmers from Ganeshpura village in Ganghinagar district filed a
police complaint accusing the activists of abducting them from the
village on September 3.
“Snake charmer Babulal Madari said he and six others were
returning home when they were intercepted by the activists on the
highway and beaten up,” the Indian Express continued.
More than 30 years after the 1973 Wildlife Protection Act
outlawed capturing snakes from the wild, and 14 years after the
Supreme Court of India upheld the portions of the act banning
commerce in snake products and wild animal fur, Indian
snake-charmers still capture more than 400,000 snakes per year,
Wildlife Trust of India researcher Bahar Dutt reported in June 2004.

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Australia bans animal to human transplants

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

PERTH–The Australian National Health & Medical Research
Council in mid-September 2004 imposed a five-year moratorium on
animal-to-human transplants, called xenographs.
“There were ethical concerns, there were social concerns,
but the major area of concern were the risks,” NHMRC chair Alan
Pettigrew told news media. “There were risks to health, not only of
the individual but to their immediate family, and from there to the
wider population.”
In July 2002 the NHMRC issued draft guidelines that allowed
researchers to exprimentally transplant parts from genetically
modified pigs into humans. These guidelines have now been narrowed.
Pettigrew said that the NHMRC had decided the organs from
nonhuman primates should not be transplanted into humans in any
future clinical trials. Therapies involving use of animal cells but
not entire organs are still under review, he said.

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Galapagos rangers win exit of pro-fishing boss

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

 

Quito, Ecuador–Ecuador environment minister Fabian
Valdivieso on September 27, 2004 appointed Galapagos National Park
biologist Victor Carrion interim park director, ending a 17-day
strike by the 300 park rangers.
Moving to placate fishers and their Ecuadoran Navy allies, Valdivieso
on September 10 touched off the strike by firing former park director
Edwin Naula.
Several international scientific and environmental
organizations froze funding to the park in anticipation of Naula’s
ouster, park spokesperson Diego Anazco told Associated Press. In
consequence, the rangers had not been paid since July.
Naula, a marine biologist, had led Galapagos National Park
staff efforts to halt sea cucumber poaching since 1997. The local
fishers responded with escalating mob violence. After the Ecuadoran
Navy failed to support the park rangers, Naula in 2000 invited the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to help patrol the Galapagos marine
reserve.
The Sea Shepherds in 2001 “documented an admiral accepting a
bribe to release a poaching vessel in the marine reserve,” according
to Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson. The admiral lost his job. The
navy retaliated in June and August 2004 by attempting to evict the
Sea Shepherds from Ecuadoran waters.

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Hunting dog neglect cases overshadowed by dogfighting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

CHARLESTON, S.C.–Broad exemptions in humane laws for
standard hunting practices have historically tended to exempt hunting
packs from scrutiny.
Parallel neglect cases in North and South Carolina might now be
challenging lawmakers and public officials to rethink the presumption
that an investment in breeding and training ensures that dogs will be
cared for–but that aspect of at least one case is overshadowed by
crowded shelter conditions resulting from an unrelated case involving
dogfighting.
Responding to an anonymous tip that starving dogs were eating
each other, Citizens for Animal Protection of Warren County
investigator William Roberts on September 10, 2004 visited the
Parktown Hunting Club near Warrenton, North Carolina, and soon
called for help from animal control officer James Solomon,
veterinarian Chris O’Malley, and a sheriff’s detective.
Acting on the erroneous advice of Solomon and Warren
magistrate W.T. Hardy that suffering dogs could be seized without a
warrant, Roberts took 24 of the 60 dogs they found to his home.
O’Malley took the two in the weakest condition to his clinic.

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Three years for using dog to “discipline” kids

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

PORTLAND, Oregon–Washington County Presiding Judge Marco
Hernandez on September 23, 2004 sentenced David E. Hoskins, 46,
of Hillsboro, to serve three years in prison for disciplining his
7-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son for at least two years by
allowing a dog named Nigel to attack them.
After completing his prison term, Hoskins is to have contact
with the children during the next two years only with the written
consent of child welfare workers.
The sentence was widely seen as far too light, especially in
comparison to the 10-year sentence given earlier in September to
dogfighter Carey D. McMillian, 23, of Dallas, Texas, who was
charged with a single incident. (Page 14.)
Hernandez indicated that he would issue an even lighter
sentence on October 14 to the children’s mother, Joyce Hoskins, 47,
“based on the woman’s limited mental abilities,” wrote Holly Danks
of the Portland Oregonian.
Neighbor Voight Barnhardt called police on March 19 in
response to screams from the girl.
“Officers found Joyce Hoskins more worried about the animal
than her daughter, who was bleeding on a bed” from at least 12 bite
wounds that will cause permanent scarring, summarized Danks of
testimony by deputy district attorney Andrew Erwin.

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Education & certification for animal welfare professionals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

MIAMI–Advertised as paying the
successful applicant from $82,403 to $130,446,
depending on qualifications and experience, the
open executive director’s job at the Miami/Dade
County Animal Services Division is among the most
demanding positions in the animal
care-and-control field.
The hiree will supervise 70 people, from
veterinarians to low-wage cage-cleaners. Serving
one of the most culturally diverse communities in
the U.S., the new executive director will be
expected to perform as a top-drawer white-collar
professional.
Yet, like most similar posts, the
Miami/Dade job is described to applicants as a
senior post for personnel of mostly blue-collar
background. Some formal education, is
expected, but the job description anticipates
that most applicants will have worked their way
up through the ranks, like master sergeants,
not graduates of officer candidate school.

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Sending cattle to slaughter by train

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

NEW DELHI–India’s first major animal welfare-related
political confrontation since the Congress Party returned to power in
May 2004 appears to have ended in victory for the ousted Hindu
nationalists.
At issue was cattle transport to slaughter by railway, with
animal advocates on either side of the debate. Cattle slaughter is
legal in only three Indian states, in deference to Hindi religious
sensitivities, but because slaughter is by far the most profitable
means of disposing of surplus male calves and worn-out milk cows, up
to 15 million cattle per year are illicitly sent to slaughter in
those three states plus neighboring Bangladesh.
The 1978 Cattle Transport Act outlawed moving cattle from
state to state or abroad except for use in milking herds or to escape
drought.
Toppling the Congress Party coalition that had ruled India
for 48 of the 49 preceding years in 1998, the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Dal coalition beefed up the Cattle Transport Act by
banning cattle transport by train in March 2001, under the 1960
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The action had long been urged
by then-animal welfare minister Maneka Gandhi and then-Animal Welfare
Board of India chair Guman Mal Lodha as an essential step toward
ending cattle slaughter, which increased 20-fold between 1977 and
1997 as Indian milk production tripled.

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Lab demand threatens Asian urban monkeys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

“For lab animals who have died for the health of humans,”
reads the inscription on the front of a newly installed monument in
front of the Wuhan University animal research center, in Hubai
state, China.
On the back it reads, “In special memory of the 38 rhesus
macaques whose lives were devoted to SARS research.”
Both inscriptions were authored by vaccine researcher Sun
Lihua, the Xinhua News Agency reported in early October 2004.
Researchers rarely welcome such public reminders that their
work causes animals to suffer and die.
In 1903, for example, British National Anti-Vivisection
Society president Stephen Coleridge had a fountain built in the
Battersea district of London to mark the life and death of a dog who
had been vivisected at nearby University College. Seven years of
frequent street fighting followed between medical students trying to
smash the fountain and local working class youths who defended it.
The Brown Dog Riots, as the conflicts are remembered, ended
after the city council had the fountain removed in 1910, but
modern-day University College students and faculty objected when a
replica fountain was installed at Battersea Park in 1985.
Opposition to animal research tends to be quiet in China.
Protests of any kind have long been repressed, and there is no
visible antivivisection movement.

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