Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media
American Humane Association Film & TV Unit.
Free download, from www.americanhumane.org/film.

Nominated for eight Oscars, Brokeback Mountain collected
three on March 5, 2006 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts &
Sciences. For making Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee was named best
director, after winning the Independent Spirit award a few days
earlier for producing the best non-studio film of the year.
But March opened with an embarrassment for Lee when American
Humane Association president Marie Belew Wheatley complained that he
had apparently ignored the AHA Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals
in Filmed Media while filming in Canada.
“The excessively rough handling of the sheep and horses
leaves viewers questioning whether anyone was looking out for the
safety of those animals,” Wheatley wrote. “Many also wonder how the
filmmakers got the elk to lose its footing and crumple to the ground
‘on cue’ after being shot. They ask if our safety protocols were in
place to protect the animals during filming. The answer is: They
were not.”

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BOOKS: Animal Ethics

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Animal Ethics
by Robert Garner
Polity Press (230 Main St., Malden, MA 02148), 2005. 189 pp.,
paperback. $24.95.

University of Leicester political scientist Robert Garner
brings clarity of thought and a political perspective to bear upon
the complexities of moral arguments about animal rights.
Comparing and contrasting the views of moral philosophers,
including Peter Singer and Tom Regan, Garner tries like any good
politician to find a feasible compromise. His conclusions are
entirely predictable: we should prohibit the cruel excesses of
factory farming, but tolerate traditional farming and meat eating as
legitimate. We should subject animal experimentation to much closer
scrutiny of costs and benefits, but not ban it completely. We
should try to make hunting, circuses, and zoos less cruel, without
banning them.

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Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Leo L. Lieberman, 91, DVM, died on February 15, 2006,
in Swampscott, Massachusetts. A 1935 graduate of the Ohio State
University School of Veterinary Medicine, Lieberman joined the U.S.
Army after graduation, became the youngest lieutentant in the
Veterinary Corps., and served in Europe during World War II.
Leaving the Army as a lieutenant colonel, after 13 years of service,
Lieberman practiced veterinary medicine for more than 30 years in
Waterford, Connecticut. “In the 1940s and 1950s,” recalls Marcia
Hess in The History of Spay/Neuter Surgery, “anesthetics were not
terribly safe, especially for young animals. Surgical instruments
now used to find a tiny uterus did not exist. Vets were mainly men.
They had big hands, and had to find that uterus with their fingers.
Since a uterus is bigger and much easier to find after an estrus, or
after having a litter, the advice of waiting until after the first
estrus or after a litter began and persists.” Lieberman began to
question the conventional wisdom after noting that early-age
sterilizing prevents mammary tumors in dogs, and that the few vets
who did early-age sterilizing had gotten good results for as long as
20 years–including a Dr. Flynn of Chicago, who developed the basic
technique in 1925, but could not convince other vets to try it. “I
did a literature search and found nothing on why the ages were set at
what they were,” Lieberman recalled. He began doing early-age
sterilization in 1970. As then-president of the Connecticut
Veterinary Medical Association, Lieberman set an influential
example. The American SPCA in 1972 became the first major humane
society to endorse early-age sterilization. Lieberman’s 1987 Journal
of the American Veterinary Medical Association article “A case for
neutering pups and kittens at two months of age” turned veterinary
opinion in favor of early-age sterilization by explaining that
guardians of dogs and cats who were spayed or castrated young
reported less aggressive behavior, less obesity, and fewer medical
problems. Lieberman followed up in JAVMA in 1988 and 1991. Research
funded by the Winn Feline Foundation, conducted by Thomas J. Lane,
DVM, of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of
Florida, Gainesville, in 1991 and 1992 supported Lieberman, as did
a major study of early-age sterilization done by the Massachusetts
SPCA at Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston. In March 1993 Lieberman
faced off in ANIMAL PEOPLE against early-age sterilization critic
Leslie N. John-ston, DVM, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; defended early-age
sterilization before a gallery of critics at the World Veterinary
Congress in Berlin, Germany; and in July 1993 won endorsement of
early-age sterilization from the AVMA. Lieberman in 1993 received
the Alex Lewyt Veterinary Medical Center Award of Achievement for
exceptional innovation, and in 2001 received a Lifetime Achievement
Award from Spay/USA.

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BOOKS: Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations by Betsy McFarland
Humane Society Press (c/o Humane Society of the U.S., 2100 L Street,
NW, Washington, DC 20037), 2005. 120 pages, paperback. $15.95.

Volunteer Management for Animal Care Organizations opens with
the results of a Humane Society of the U.S. survey of humane
organization volunteer managers which found in late 2002 that
volunteers are considered twice as helpful, on average, as boards
of directors.
Author Betsy McFarland does not state the findings quite so
bluntly. She adds a disclaimer that the survey was not “a
representative sample.” With 289 respondents, proportional
weighting could have made the sample as representative as any–and
perhaps it already is.
Worth a mention might have been that boards almost always serve on a
voluntary basis. In effect, they are volunteers who supervise the
paid staff, opposite to the role of paid staff in supervising
volunteers.

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People & positions

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Daphne Sheldrick, founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife
Trust elephant and rhino orphanage in Kenya, on March 4, 2006
received the Order of the British Empire. Other animal advocates who
have won the honor in recent years include Chimpanzee Rehabilitation
Association founder Stella Brewer Marsden, of Gambia (2006); Care
For The Wild founder Bill Jordan, who now heads the Bill Jordan
Wildlife Defence Fund (2005); Dogs Trust chair Clarissa Baldwin
(2003); and Animals Asia Foundation founder Jill Robinson (1998).
Compassion Over Killing on March 17, 2006 announced the
hiring of Lauren Ornelas, Viva!USA chief since 2000, as campaigns
director, and Casey Diment, a former volunteer fundraiser for the
Animal Defense League of Chicago, as development director.

BOOKS: National Geographic Complete Birds of North America

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

National Geographic Complete Birds of North America
Companion to the Natl. Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America
664 pages, hardcover, illustrated. $35.00.

National Geographic Field Guide to Birds –Washington & Oregon
271 pages, paperback, illustrated. $14.95.

Both edited by Jonathan Alderfer
National Geographic Society * 1145 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036

 

National Geographic Complete Birds of North America “is too
large to be a field guide,” opens editor Jonathan Alderfer, “so
what is it? We envision it residing on bookshelves and car seats,
ready to be consulted when a field guide doesn’t provide enough
information.”
As if to ensure that Complete Birds will be used, Alderfer
also edits regional field guides, exemplified by the National
Geographic Field Guide to Birds, Washington & Oregon edition, which
sure enough probably do not contain enough information to satisfy
most serious observers.

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BOOKS: The Master’s Cat: The Story of Charles Dickens as told by his Cat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

The Master’s Cat: The Story of Charles Dickens as told by his Cat
by Eleanor Poe Barlow
Dickens Publishing (Dickens House, 48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N
2FL), 1998.
132 pages. $16.95/paperback, $24.00 hardcover.

Charles Dickens’ fictionalized exposes of social ills in 19th
century England led to a raft of social, legal, and educational
reforms, and inspired the rise of liberal thinking.
Dickens was very fond of his cat and several dogs, with whom
he used to take long walks in the countryside almost every day.
Dickens was also instrumental in enabling Mary Tealby to make a
success of Dogs Home Battersea. But before society could evolve
toward more caring treatment of animals, it had to create a culture
of caring for humans. It had to abolish slavery, emancipate women,
and invent a social safety net to help the unfortunate. No one did
more than Dickens to achieve those goals.

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Rights-&-Freedoms defense failed for Sea Shepherds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I.–Rejecting a “freedom of expression”
defense in December 2005, Prince Edward Island Provincial Court
Judge Nancy Orr on January 17, 2006 convicted 11 crew members from
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel Farley Mowat of being
within half a nautical mile of sealers during the 2005 Atlantic
Canada seal hunt.
The 11 defendants were arrested after several were assaulted
by sealers, who were not charged.
Orr found Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson not guilty
because he did not leave the Farley Mowat during the March 31, 2005
confrontation, and “because it was established that the Farley Mowat
was a place of residence,” Watson said. The Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans requires anyone who approaches sealers to have a
permit, but people may witness the hunt from their homes.
Three days later the Crown Prosecutor dropped charges against
Watson for alleged violations of the Canadan Shipping Act filed over
the same incident.

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UARC files First Amendment case in Salt Lake

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Utah Animal Rights Coalition members Eric Waters and David
Berg on March 1, 2006 sued representatives of six different state
agencies for allegedly violating their First Amendment right to
freedom of expression, one day after Utah Highway Patrol trooper
Preston Raban stopped them from leafleting outside the Utah state
capitol against two bills which would lower the minimum age for
hunting.
Waters and Berg are represented by Salt Lake City attorney
Brian Barnard, who has handled other high-profile civil rights cases
involving animal advocates.
“According to court documents, Raban told Berg and Waters
that handing fliers to anyone who didn’t ask for one was against
state law and was considered soliciting,” summarized Jennifer Dobner
of Associated Press. “The lawsuit also contends that Raban
threatened to arrest Berg and Waters.”

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