MARINE MAMMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Seal hunt
Canada on April 11 denied an allegation by the
International Fund for Animal Welfare that the Shanghai
Fisheries Corporation and a sealing industry delegation from
the Magdalen Islands of Quebec met the day before in Hong
Kong to sign a deal to increase the export of seal penises to
China. “Because it’s penises, people laugh,” said IFAW
spokesperson Marion Jenkins, “but the Chinese medicine
market has been responsible for the near extinction of the
tiger and the rhino.” Despite the lack of other apparent
viable markets, the seal slaughter shifted from the
Magdalens to Newfoundland in mid-April, encouraged by a
quota of 186,000 and a federal bounty of 20¢ per pound on
seal carcasses landed. Newfoundland fisheries minister Bud
Hulan claims the Atlantic Canada seal population is circa
eight million, and that the seals are contributing to the
decline of cod, recently pronounced “commercially extinct.”
However, current research by Thomas Woodley and David
Lavigne, of the International Marine Mammal Association,
indicates there are no more than 3.5 million harp seals, prob-
ably fewer; 400,000 hooded seals; and 142,000 grey seals,
the only species whose numbers are increasing. Cod make
up only about 1% of the seals’ diet.

Read more

CLENBUTEROL SCANDALS STILL SURFACING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

SAN FRANCISCO––Five months
after Humane Farming Association investiga-
tor Gail Eisenitz disclosed through the
December 1994 edition of ANIMAL PEO-
P L E a year-long series of USDA, U.S.
Customs Service, and Food and Drug
Administration raids on veal industry facilities
in at least five states, seeking an illegal live-
stock growth stimulant called clenbuterol,
related scandals continue to surface.
Hard to detect, until the recent
development of a test that finds traces in a
slaughtered animal’s retinas, clenbuterol
residues in meat can be lethal to humans.
Among the newly revealed cases:
Clenbuterol was found in a black-
faced lamb exhibited by Brian Wade Johnson,
22, of Gotebo, Oklahoma, who was named
the Future Farmer Association’s American
Star Farmer of 1994 even as ANIMAL PEO-
P L E went to press with Eisenitz’s findings.
The lamb was Grand Champion at the North
American International Livestock Expo, held
last November in Louisville, Kentucky.

Read more

Animal health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Fifteen thousand cattle have
died so far in Tanzania from an outbreak
of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia––
and it could spread to Zambia, Malawi,
and the rest of southern Africa, United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion animal health officer Peter Roeder
warned on March 29. “Cattle movements
from Uganda and Kenya, sometimes as
result of civil strife, have already caused
major outbreaks in Zaire and Rwanda,” he
said.
Canine distemper is on the
wane in Serengeti National Park, says
Melody Roelke-Parker, chief veterinarian
for Tanzania National Parks––after it
killed 80% of the now rebounding lion
population.

Read more

LEMSIP’S LAST STAND: MOOR-JANKOWSKI FIGHTS FOR CHIMPS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

STERLING FOREST, New York––One would think New York University

wouldn’t want to fight with Jan Moor-Jankowski. As a youth, he fought the Nazis in occu-

pied Poland. As a researcher, he’s battled disease for 30 years at his Laboratory for

Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), widely considered the world’s

most advanced in primate care––and the most accessible to people who care about primates.

As a humanitarian, he was among the first researchers to adopt the principles of “reduction,

refinement, and replacement” as his laboratory policy toward animals. As editor of the pres-

tigious International Journal of Primatology, Moor-Jankowski from 1983 until 1991 battled

a libel suit filed by the Austrian pharmaceutical firm Immuno AG, in response to a letter-to-

the-editor authored by Shirley McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.

Paying expenses largely from his own pocket, Moor-Jankowski won landmark victories for

press freedom in the Supreme Court and New York Court of Appeals.

Yet despite Moor-Jankowski’s for-

midable reputation, NYU has moved to dis-

mantle LEMSIP in apparent retaliation for his

criticism of drug addiction experiments con

ducted by fellow NYU primate researcher

Ronald Wood. Moor-Jankowski in turn has

delayed his scheduled retirement for at least a

year to fight for the lives of the 225 chim-

panzees in LEMSIP custody.

Smouldering for months, the con-

flict erupted on August 16, 1994, when

Moor-Jankowski resigned from the

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee

that oversees Wood’s work, in protest of what

he terms “highly reprehensible” conduct that

“must be stopped.” Moor-Jankowski isn’t

allowed to discuss details, under IACUC rules

of confidentiality, but according to the fal

1994 edition of the American SPCA magazine

Animal Watch, “NYU sources claim Wood’s

studies involve extreme negligence and animal

cruelty, and have prompted temporary sus-

pension of Wood’s experiments last spring,

the resignation of former NYU head veterinar-

ian Dr. Wendell Niemann, the firing of sever-

al people with direct knowledge of wrongdo-

ing possibly because of their ‘whistleblower’

status, and two federal investigations.”

Weeks later, Moor-Jankowski

recalls, “I was shocked to learn that NYU

intended to dispose of LEMSIP,” which he

founded in 1965 and had run under NYU aus-

pices since 1967. On August 23, 1994, NYU

had without Moor-Jankowski’s knowledge

informed the USDA, which enforces the

Animal Welfare Act, that LEMSIP was no

longer a “site of the NYU Medical Center.”

The import of that, Moor-Jankowski

explains, is that while he personally raises

LEMSIP’s annual budget of $4 million, mostly

from industry, “The money goes through NYU.

As soon as I started opposing Wood’s experi-

ments, the money was withheld, jeopardizing

our ability to meet USDA standards.”

Elaborates Suzanne Roy of In

Defense of Animals, “Moor-Jankowski had

arranged for over $450,000 in funds from the

U.S. Army to underwrite the establishment of a

chimpanzee retirement facility in South Texas.”

Also to house retired LEMSIP chimps, the

facility was to be run by the Buckshire

Corporation, whose president, Glen Wrigley,

rattled the research establishment by filing a

brief in support of Moor-Jankowski and

McGreal during the Immuno case. The contract

was to cover lifetime care for 12 chimps, all

over 30 years old, formerly used in military

experiments at the Delta Regional Primate

Center in Louisiana. Those projects ceased in

1991. Three of the chimps are now at the

Buckshire headquarters in Pennsyvlania, while

LEMSIP has five; four remain at Delta.

“But NYU wouldn’t sign the deal,”

Moor-Jankowski continues. “They wanted to

keep the money. And they wanted to fire me,

but they couldn’t, so they fired the lab.”

While Moor-Jankowski pursued the

transfer of LEMSIP to the Aaron Diamond

Foundation, a longtime sponsor, preparatory to

his own retirement, NYU associate dean David

Scotch “appears to have actively courted the

participation of Fred Coulston in a takeover

plan,” Wisconsin Regional Primate Center

librarian Larry Jacobsen charged in a February

9 posting on Primate-talk, an Internet bulletin

board for primatologists. University of

California at San Diego anthropologist Jim

Moore backed the posting on February 14 with

an extensive bibliography of sources.

Neither NYU representatives nor

Coulston have been willing to discuss the situa-

tion in detail with media.

Coulston

Coulston, 80, is owner of the White

Sands Research Center in Alamogordo, New

Mexico, and founder of the Coulston Found-

ation, sited at nearby Holloman Air Force Base,

which keeps 140 chimps left over or descended

from the NASA “space monkey” program of the

1950s and early 1960s. Since Coulston took

over the Holloman facility in June 1993, three

chimps died from overheating on October 31,

1993; four macaques died of bloat and vomit-

ing on June 14, 1994, their first day in outdoor

housing; two chimps died in July 1994, one of

apparent untreated pneumonia and meningitis,

the other of apparent oversedation for a routine

physical; and in December 1994, according to

Jacobsen, “An as yet unrevealed number of

monkeys died of thirst and dehydration in a

room where the water was shut off.”

A staffing ratio of one person per 33

primates, criticized by the National Institutes of

Health in a June 1994 site visit report, may

have contributed to the deaths. “The report also

notes that the Coulston

Foundation veterinary

staff is too small, largely

undertrained and inexpe-

rienced,” Jacobsen said.

Between his two

facilities, Coulston

already has about 540

Chimps and

800 macaques. He reportedly

offered NYU $1 million

for LEMSIP, the acquisi-

tion of which would give

him more than half the lab chimps in the U.S.

“This,” observed Jacobsen, “despite the fact

the Coulston’s enterprises in New Mexico are

marginal financially.”

At deadline, Moor-Jankowski hoped

criticism of a possible deal with Coulston from

other scientists might make NYU back off.

PETA

Meanwhile, according to Roy, “a

PETA undercover investigation has shown

Buckshire is in serious violation of the Animal

Welfare Act in both its chimpanzee housing

area, where conditions are at best bleak, and its

cat colony.” In February, the USDA cited

Buckshire for housing chimps in undersized

cages and failing to provide adequate medical

care––situations Moor-Jankowski attributes to

the NYU hold on the funding.

In mid-March, Army Medical

Research Acquisition Department director

Gregory Doyle ordered NYU to remove the

chimps from Buckshire.

In between, on February 24, Wrigley

offered to sell PETA all the chimps to which

Buckshire holds title. PETA refused the offer

on February 27. However, wrote PETA direc-

tor of research, investigations, and rescue

Mary Beth Sweetland, “We are always willing,

in conjunction with the Great Ape Project and

the Chimpanzee Rescue Centre [an English

s a n c t u a r y ] , to talk about a donative transfer.

Perhaps a condition under which Buckshire is

released from providing for the chimpanzees’

lifetime care would make such a transfer more

attractive to you.”

“We have 40 adult chimps,”

Buckshire spokesperson Sharon Hersh told

ANIMAL PEOPLE, “ranging from 13 to 35

years of age, who would be able to leave their

current situation for residence outside of the

research community. We have assigned costs

ranging from $12,000 to $18,000, depending

upon their breeding status. Many are ex-per-

forming chimps who had worked with trainers.

Some were part of a large group imported from

Africa for breeding in the late 1960s. Others

were born within the research community. We

would entertain selling specific animals.”

Neuter/release proves cost-effective: City fixing to fix feral cats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

SAN JOSE, California––”Are you feeding stray cats?”
the fliers ask. “The City of San Jose will give you FREE spay/neuter
vouchers to alter either your own cats or the strays you are feeding.
Simply take the voucher with the cat to a participating veterinarian.
Your owned or stray cat will be altered for free.”
Initially printed and distributed in December by the San
Jose-based National Pet Alliance, the fliers drew the attention of
reporter Linda Goldston, who amplified word of the free neutering
offer in the February 21 edition of the San Jose Mercury-News.
More than 1,000 vouchers were distributed during the next three
weeks, while voucher redemptions shot up from 575 during the first
two months of the program to 1,032 by March 13. The vouchers
were used to neuter 631 female cats and 401 toms.
“At least half of the cats were strays, according to the
questionaires attached to the vouchers in the last month,” NPA
board member Karen Johnson told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Almost a
third of respondents claim to be feeding stray cats in their neighbor-
hood. Not everyone fills out the questionaire. There is still some
suspicion about getting something free, and those who are feeding
multiple cats are understandably nervous, since there is a two-cat
limit in San Jose and the program is run out of the dog licensing
office,” which enforces the pet limit.
Johnson’s goal is to emulate the success of the San Diego-
ased Feral Cat Coalition in lowering the local euthanasia rate by fix-
ing feral cats. City of San Jose animal control records indicate, as
the neutering program announcement explains, that “More than 37%
of the cats euthanized at the shelter are either wild, or their
unweaned offspring.” And the numbers could go up, for while NPA
survey data indicates 86% of the owned cats in the San Jose area
have already been neutered, about 10% of the households also feed
unowned cats––an average of 3.4 cats apiece, of whom 97% have
not been neutered. In the rural district south of San Jose,
including Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy, 17.8% of
households feed an average of 5.25 unowned cats apiece,
amounting to 62% of the known cat population. In all,
unowned cats are 41% of the known cat population of the
Santa Clara Valley, in which San Jose is the principal city.
“Handling these wild cats and kittens costs tax
money,” the neutering program fliers continue. “Altering
one pair of stray cats now will save the cost of handling thou-
sands of their offspring over the next 10 years.”
Indeed, Johnson’s cost/benefit analysis shows that
neuter/release not only cuts the numbers of homeless cats
faster than conventional trap-and-kill, but is also more cost-
effective. Setting the cost of testing cats for common conta-
gious diseases, vaccinating them against rabies, and neuter-
ing them at $52 apiece, substantially more than the $21.11
average cost per cat in the San Jose program (which covers
only neutering), Johnson discovers savings of $18 per cat
over the cost of keeping a cat for the mandatory three days in
a shelter prior to euthanasia.
Will pay for itself
“Looking at the figures from San Diego,” she says,
“one can readily see that for a cost of $163,956, they have
reduced the expenses at their shelter by at least 6,500 cats, or
$455,000 over a two-year timespan.” Thus the San Jose pro-
gram “will pay for itself through less shelter costs.”
As Johnson recounts in the current edition of the
Cat Fanciers Association Almanac, “The nonprofit Feral Cat
Coalition has trapped, altered, and released in excess of
3,100 cats over the past two years. Prior to this project, the
San Diego County Animal Management Information System
reported an increase of roughly 10% per year in the number
of cats handled by San Diego Animal Control shelters from
1988 to 1992. The increase peaked at 13% from fiscal year
1991 to fiscal year 1992, with a total of 19,077 cats handled.
After just two years, with no other explanation for the drop,
only 12,446 cats were handled––a drop of 35%. Instead of
another 10% annual increase, euthanasias plunged 40% from
1991-1992 to 1993-1994. Clearly, the project to trap, alter,
and release cats in San Diego County has had a dramatic
effect on the number of cats handled and euthanized at their
shelters, which even historical or nationwide downward
trends cannot explain.”
Closer to home, Johnson and San Jose officials are
impressed at the accomplishments of the Stanford Cat
Network, formed in 1989 in response to a Stanford
University plan to exterminate an estimated 500 feral cats liv-
ing on campus. Among the first organizations to openly
administrate a neuter/release program in the U.S., SCN
picked up, socialized, and adopted out 60 kittens in its first
year. “By 1994,” Johnson reports, “only four kittens were
found.” The total Stanford cat population is down to 300.
The San Jose policy has also been influenced by the
example of the San Francisco SPCA, which since giving up
the city animal control contract in 1989 has promoted neuter-
ing so successfully, including neutering thousands of feral
cats for free, that a year ago San Francisco became the first
city in the U.S. to embrace a no-kill animal control policy.
Under the Adoption Pact, more fully described in the March
1995 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, the SFSPCA accepts
and guarantees placement of all dogs and cats not placed by
S.F. Animal Care and Control, including the aged and the
recoverable sick and injured. Only the unrecoverable, the
vicious, and animals requiring rabies testing are euthanized.
Precedent
But the San Jose program differs from those of San
Diego, Stanford, and San Francisco, whose neuter/release
activity has been wholly funded and managed under private
auspices. Although other cities have funded no-questions-
asked low-cost neutering, including Los Angeles city and
county for more than 15 years, San Jose is the first major
city in the U.S. to actively endorse and promote
neuter/release as part of official animal control policy. The
initial budget of $100,000 came from a surplus in animal
license division revenue. “There is expected to be another
surplus for the next fiscal year,” Johnson says, “so the pro-
gram can be continued. At this point it is estimated at over
$60,000. There has been some discussion re vouchers for
dogs and allocating a portion of the funding in that direc-
tion,” Johnson adds. But it probably won’t happen. “Costs
for dogs would run approximately $40 each, so two cats
could be done for each dog,” she explains. In addition,
records kept by Chris Arnold, executive director of the
Humane Society of the Santa Clara Valley, show that only
5% of dogs received are puppies under four months of age,
while kittens under four months of age account for over half
of all incoming felines. “There is not a problem with too
many puppies,” Johnson concludes, “so the need for altering
more dogs is not as urgent.”
The San Jose initiative is apt to draw fire from the
Humane Society of the U.S., People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, and the Fund for Animals, which
favor regulatory approaches to pet overpopulation; hold that
outdoor life is inherently cruel to cats; hold that euthanasia is
more humane than allowing unowned cats to remain out-
doors; and are already aggressively critical of both private
neuter/release programs and the Adoption Pact.
But San Jose isn’t alone in its position, even in the
Santa Clara Valley. The Palo Alto Humane Society is also
actively encouraging neuter/release, likewise influenced by
NPA and the SFSPCA. Providing free neutering to the needy
for 15 years, PAHS recently formed CatWorks, to expand
the service throughout the San Francisco Bay area. “We
want to make sure people don’t feel as if they’re working
alone,” president Carole Hyde told Goldston, “and we want
to provide a way to help those who would prefer to make
donations” to a neuter/release program, rather than a humane
society practicing trap-and-kill.
Other Bay area agencies practicing and/or assisting
neuter/release include Animal Birth Control Assistance Inc.,
Companion Animal Rescue, the Nike Animal Resource
Foundation, Friends of the Feral Cats, the Ohlone Humane
Society, the Oakland SPCA, and the Santa Cruz SPCA.
[NPA memberships fund pet overpopulation
research. Write to POB 53385, San Jose, CA 95153.]

BOOKS: Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing: A Veterinarian’s Journey from
Physical Medicine to Spiritual Understanding, by Allen M. Schoen, DVM,
and Pam Proctor. Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 1995. 236 pages, $22.00.
I didn’t know what to expect when I
saw a testimonial by Henry Kissinger on the
cover of Love, Miracles, and Animal
H e a l i n g. It was so bizarre as to pique by
interest immediately. When did Henry
Kissinger begin to concern himself with the
“emotional as well as the physical needs” of
animals? Allen Schoen, the New England
veterinarian who authored the book with Pam
Proctor, sounded like the Norman Vincent
Peale of the finned and fuzzy. In fact, I sus-
pected Dr. Schoen himself was a bit fuzzy.

Read more

Zoos

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

SAN DIEGO GETS PANDAS, LOSES RHINOS
SAN DIEGO––The San Diego Zoo
is dusting off plans to exhibit pandas––and
struggling to recover from the abrupt extinc-
tion of its Sumatran rhino breeding program.
Eighteen months after refusing to
give the zoo a panda bear import, Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt reversed himself on
January 14, after a personal visit to the facili-
ty, and granted the permit as the prototype for
a new national panda policy to be announced
in mid-March. Two pandas, a 13-year-old
male named Shi Shi and a three-year-old
female named Bai Yun, are expected to arrive
in spring on a 12-year loan from China.

Read more

AGRICULTURE, DIET, & HEALTH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Polls of children and teens done by
the National Live Stock & Meat Board’s
“Youth Initiative Task Force” found in 1992
and 1993 that 50% were concerned about the
fat and cholesterol in beef, 37% were con-
cerned about the fat and cholesterol in pork,
and 16% were concerned about the fat and
cholesterol in chicken––but only 4% saw cru-
elty in beef production, 3% saw cruelty in
pork production, and 2% saw cruelty in poul-
try production. Just 1% saw ecological harm
in eating beef; none saw ecological harm in
eating pork and poultry. A follow-up survey
is scheduled for this year.

Read more

Animal health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Rabies roundup
A four-year-old girl from Centralia, Washington, on
March 16 became the first person to die of rabies in that state since
1939. Relatives found and killed a bat in her bedroom in February, but
did not report the incident to anyone until after she was hospitalized with
depression, constant drooling, and seizures. She lapsed into a terminal
coma on March 9.
Texas during the second week in February began airdrop-
ping 850,000 dog biscuits laden with the new oral rabies vaccine
over an area the size of Maryland, Delaware, and Rhode Island
combined, to stop an outbreak of canine rabies in coyotes and foxes
before it spreads from the southern end of the state to San Antonio. The
$1.9 million project is the biggest test of the oral vaccine on wildlife yet.

Read more

1 38 39 40 41 42 55