Category: Europe

Monty Roberts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

A coroner’s inquest in Middlesbrough,
County Durham, United Kingdom,
ruled on October 20 that the March 2 death of
Middleton Equestian Centre stable girl
Alyson Carter, 19, was an accident. Contrary
to standard procedure, Carter removed the bridle
of a three-year-old stallion named Ski, then
tried to maneuver him into his stall by hitting
him on the neck, and when he wouldn’t go,
struck him on the rump with the bristle end of a
broken stable brush. Ski kicked her on the left
side of the face with both feet.

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Born to be wild, big cats break loose

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

ALACHUA, Fla.–– Responding
to a “Help!” call from Doris Guay, co-owner
of Ron and Judy Holiday’s Cat Dancers
Ranch in Alachua, Florida, tiger trainer
Charles Edward “Chuck” Lizza III, 34, was
killed on October 7 by a bite to the neck.
Reported staff writer Karen Voyles
of the Gainesville Sun, “It was about 7:45
a.m. when Ron Guay began walking Jupiter,”
a 400-pound, three-and-a-half-year-old white
tiger tom, “from a night cage to a day kennel.
Workers arriving to install fencing for a new
kennel apparently startled the big cat. Ron
Guay,” Doris’ husband, “said he called to
Doris to bring out a couple of chicken necks
to take Jupiter’s mind off his anxiety. When
that failed, Guay asked his wife to wake
Lizza, but without his glasses or contacts, he
(Lizza) was unable to see which animal Guay
had on a leash. Wearing a pair of slightly too
big mocassins as slippers, Lizza stumbled
over a scrap of chain link fencing and fell to
the ground. The tiger attacked him,” as Ron
and Doris Guay togther were unable to hold
the animal back.

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The bloody British

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

The Countryside Alliance,
near collapse only six months after mustering
250,000 protesters in London to
oppose a ban on fox hunting, issued a
new eight-point mission statement on
September 10. The Alliance goals are
now stated as being to “preserve the freedoms
of country people and their way of
life; lead campaigns for country sports,
their related trades and activities, and the
countryside; and to cooperate closely
with other organizations to promote and
protect the rural way of life.” The
Alliance, depending for numbers upon
uniting small numbers of hunters with
large numbers of nonhunting rural residents,
has struggled from the start with
the conflict between defending hunters’
presumed right to trespass in pursuit of
wildlife and land owners’ wish to control
the activities of trespassers also including
hikers and birdwatchers.

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RABIES UPDATES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Afflicting the Atlantic seaboard
and New England since 1976, the midAtlantic
raccoon rabies pandemic shows signs
of containment through the escalating use of
Raboral, an oral vaccine developed by the
Wistar Institute of Philadelphia. Used successfuly
against fox rabies in Europe for more
than 20 years, Raboral has kept Cape Cod
free of rabies since 1993, Alison Robbins,
DVM, of the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine announced in late
August. Earlier, Texas officials credited
Raboral with stopping the only recorded mass
outbreak of rabies in coyotes. The Tufts program
is now expanding to vaccinate the raccoons
of Plymouth, Wareham, and Carver,
and as funding becomes available, Massa –
chusetts Department of Public Health

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ALF & fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

British junior agriculture minister
Elliot Morley told the House of
Commons in July that he intended to introduce
legislation to close the 15 remaining
mink farms in Britain, but remembering the
Labor government’s failure to promptly pass
a ban on fox hunting, promised during the
1997 election campaign, Animal Liberation
Front members released as many as 6,000
mink from the Crow Hill Fur Farm i n
Hampshire on August 8, touching off mayhem.
About 500 were soon caught, still on
the premises, and others reportedly returned
within a few days, seeking food, but others
invaded the nearby New Forest Preserve,
devastating native wildlife and also killing a
caged owl and kestrel at the New Forest Owl
Sanctuary. Another 2,000 mink were shot or
trapped by a 20-member Ministry of
Agriculture hit squad during the next few
days, but as of August 13 at least 2,000 more

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Proposed zoo standards would violate sovereignty, says EC president Senter

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

BRUSSELS––Fourteen of the 15
environment ministers representing European
Union member nations on June 17 approved a
draft directive advanced by Great Britain
which sets a framework for certifying and
licensing the European Union’s estimated
1,000 zoos, animal parks, and menageries.
“The (proposed) law is also backed
by leaders of the European Parliament,”
reported Charles Bremner of the London
Times, “which voted overwhelmingly this
year for binding measures to insure the wellbeing
of captive wild animals.”
But the plan is reportedly strongly
opposed by European Commission president
Jacques Senter, as an example of allegedly
unnecessary intervention in national sovereignty.
Taking the same position, Germany
abstained from the vote by the council of environment
ministers. The EC killed a previous
British effort to set EU zoo standards in 1991.

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Witch doctors tell Swiss voters what to say: “Ooh-ee ooh ah ah!”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

GENEVA, JOHANNESBURG,
WINDHOEK, LONDON, ATLANTA– –
Swiss voters on June 7 rejected a proposed
moratorium on research involving genetically
modified animals by a 2-to-1 margin.
Swiss referendums have historically
favored animals. The very first, held more
than 100 years ago, banned the slaughter of
livestock without prestunning. However,
Swiss-based multinational drug firms reportedly
spent more than $35 million to defeat the
proposed genetic research moratorium. The
coalition of 50 animal protection groups who
backed the measure spent only $1.3 million.
Swiss citizens may have relatively
little concern about the outcomes of genetic
research, but in Eehama-Omulunga, Angola,
sensational reports of transgenic experiments
fed rumors that goats kept by Mateus Shihelp
and Ricardina Otto have given birth––twice
since March––to creatures with goat-like bodies
but human heads. Neither survived.

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Foreign

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

British armed forces minister John Reid on
June 12 suspended British participation in NATO exercises
which involve shooting sedated pigs to give
medics practice in treating gunshot wounds, pending
review of the value of the procedure, which is reportedly
often used in training U.S. combat surgeons.
Reid’s action came as the Home Office was
reportedly preparing to release statistics showing that
the number of animals used in British laboratories is up,
for the second year in a row. About 20% more animals
were used in genetic work in 1996 than in 1995, and
that trend is expected to continue, even as the numbers
used in conventional product safety testing continue a
long, slow drop.

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VIVISECTORS IN SPACE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

MOSCOW, CAPE CANAV
ERAL––Fifteen two-year-old
Oriental newts and 80 snails were
brought aboard the Russian space station
Mir on May 18, to resume neurological
studies of the effects of
weightlessness on anatomy that were
disrupted in February when eight
newts died during their return to earth
aboard a cargo shuttle.
The newts and snails are to
remain in orbit until August––if they
endure that long.
Similar work undertaken by
the 16-day, $99 million “Neurolab”
flight of the NASA space shuttle
Columbia during April and early May
brought mostly unplanned early
deaths of the specimens. The casualties
might have contributed to
NASA’s May 5 announcement that
the Neurolab would not fly a second
time in August, as had been tentatively
planned.

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