Shelter manager sold cadavers for lab use

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
VISALIA, Calif.–After an eight-day trial and two days of
deliberation, a Tulare County Superior Court jury on September 24,
2008 convicted former Tulare County Animal Control Shelter manager
William Harmon of two felony counts of accepting bribes, a felony
count of embezzlement and a misdemeanor charge of accepting an
unlawful gratuity.
“The jury found him not guilty of falsifying public
documents,” reported Brett Wilkison of the Visalia Times-Delta.
“The jury found Harmon accepted and requested restaurant gift
certificates from Michael Sargeant,” allegedly in exchange for
providing Sargeant with the remains of dogs killed at the shelter.
Sargeant’s business, Wholesale Biologicals of Bakersfield, sells
animal carcasses to laboratories. The transactions allegedly
occurred from 2002 through 2006.

What became of the puppies after cloning client didn’t pay?

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
The bizarre backstory to the reported first-ever commercial
dog cloning, reported in the July/August 2008 edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE, gained another chapter on September 24, 2008 when Joyce
Bernann McKinney, 58, repeatedly called Friends of Animals
president Priscilla Feral at her home and then spent nearly two hours
on the telephone to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
McKinney sought help in a last-minute effort to win
possession of the five pit bull terrier puppies whom RNL Bio of
Seoul, South Korea claimed in August 2008 to have cloned from the
frozen ear of McKinney’s deceased pet Booger.

Murder-by-dog Conviction reinstated & other dog attack case

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
SAN FRANCISCO– San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte
Woolard on September 22, 2008 sentenced former attorney Marjorie
Knoller, 53, to serve 15 years to life in prison for causing the
January 2001 dog attack death of lacrosse coach Diane Whipple, 33,
in the hallway of the apartment house where both dwelled.
“Knoller, who has served three years in prison, will have
to serve 12 more years before she can apply for parole,” reported
Associated Press writer Paul Elias.
Whipple bled to death from at least 77 wounds inflicted by
one and possibly both of two Presa Canarios kept by Knoller and
Robert Noel, her husband and law partner, for white supremacist
Paul “Cornfed” Schneider. Serving a life sentence in the California
penitentiary system, Schneider was legally adopted by Knoller and
Noel as an adult inmate.

RSPCA asks EC to publish new lab regs

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
LONDON, BRUSSELS–Royal SPCA of Britain
chief executive Mark Watts on September 11, 2008
asked European Commission president José Manuel
Barroso to expedite publication of proposed
changes to the European Union rules governing
animal experimentation, now long overdue.
“We are repeatedly told that publication
of the proposals is imminent, only to find it
has been put back–and put back again,” said
RSPCA senior European campaign manager Peter
Craske. “Legislation needs to be debated fully,
but this debate seems to have gone on forever.”
EU nations use about 12 million animals
per year in experiments; Britain uses about
three million of the total.

Austrian activists freed after 104 days, still face charges

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
VIENNA–Association Against Animal
Factories founder Martin Balluch, Vier Pfoten
campaign director Jürgen Faulmann, and eight
other Austrian animal advocates were released
from jail on September 2, 2008, 104 days after
they were arrested in a series of dawn raids on
May 21.
Three other activists who were arrested
at the same time were released earlier.
The ten who were released on September 2
were arraigned in July for alleged involvement in
a variety of “direct action” offenses between
2002 and 2007. All have pleaded innocent.

Judge tells the USDA to sit out California Proposition Two fight– Feds barred from using promo funds on ads backing agribusiness

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. District Judge
Marilyn Hall Patel on September 22, 2008 ordered
the USDA to stay out of the agribusiness effort
to defeat the California Prevention of Farm
Animal Cruelty Act, Proposition Two on the state
ballot. Judge Patel ruled that the USDA may not
legally spend funds collected from egg producers
by the American Egg Board to promote the egg
industry on television ads that may affect the
election outcome.
The American Egg Board is a an 18-member
panel appointed by the U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture. The two ads at issue suggest buying
locally raised eggs. They feature the same
spokesperson who appears in ads directly funded
by the egg industry which assert that Proposition
Two will drive egg producers out of California.
“A government lawyer described the ads as
‘neutral and educational’ and said they were
unrelated to Proposition Two,” wrote San
Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko.

Appalled by Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund endorses Obama

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 200*:

WASHINGTON D.C.-The Republican nomination
of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run for U.S.
vice president alongside presidential candidate
John McCain inspired the Humane Society
Legislative Fund to break with precedent in
unanimously endorsing Democratic presidential
nominee Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe
Biden.
The Humane Society Legislative Fund board
includes prominent Republicans as well as
Democrats.
“While we have endorsed hundreds of
Congressional candidates for election, both
Democrats and Republicans, we have never before
endorsed a presidential candidate,” wrote Humane
Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian
in his September 22, 2008 blog.

Closer regulation of exotic cat facilities may follow two tiger attacks in Missouri

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

ST. LOUIS–Kenneth and Sandra Smith, owners of the now
closed Wesa-A-Geh-Ya exotic animal park in Warren County, Missouri,
and Wesa-A-Geh-Ya board member Roy Elder were on September 19, 2008
charged with evidence tampering for allegedly trying to mislead the
county sheriff’s department into believing that a pit bull terrier
rather than a tiger attacked volunteer Jacob Barr.
“Barr, 26, had part of his leg surgically amputated
following the August 3 mauling,” recounted Associated Press writer
Betsy Taylor. “Elder and Sandra Smith are accused of lying to
investigators. Kenneth Smith, who shot and killed the attacking
animal, is accused of moving the dead tiger’s body to a different
location.”

Editorial feature: Animal welfare & conservation in conflict

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

While in Indonesia for the August 2008
Asia for Animals conference, the fifth in a
series co-sponsored by ANIMAL PEOPLE since 2001,
ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett joined
several other conference attendees in a visit to
the International Animal Rescue facilities in
West Java, near Bogor, two hours by car south
of Jakarta.
The visit provided an unexpectedly stark
illustration of some of the sharpest edges and
conflicts in the three-cornered relationship
among animal welfare, wildlife species
conservation, and habitat protection.

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