OSTRICH AND EMU SPECULATORS: Will they get rich quick or just get the bird?

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

DALLAS, Texas––More than 115,000 giant flightless

birds––ratites––roam North American pastures, including 80,000

ostrichs, 35,000 emus, and the occasional rhea. Ratite numbers

have doubled since last year and quadrupled since 1991. At the

present rate of breeding, stoked by speculation, the ratite popula-

tion could double again this year, and perhaps next year, too.

But many of those “pastures” are little more than back yards.

There is as yet no significant market for ratites other than specula-

tion in breeding stock. When no one else wants to cash in insur-

ance policies, mortgage property, and drain life savings to buy

ratites at spectacularly inflated prices, the pyramid of breeders,

dealers, franchisers, and support service vendors will col-

lapse––maybe not this year, but almost certainly soon.

OBITUARIES

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Muriel, The Lady Dowding, died

in England on November 21, 1993, at age

85. A long series of strokes had left her con-

fined to a nursing home, isolated from friends

and deeply impoverished after giving most of

her fortune to animal causes. Her chief regret

late in life, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE

publisher Kim Bartlett, was that she was “no

longer able to do very much for the animals.”

A lifelong vegetarian, Theosophist,

and spiritualist, after her mother’s example,

the Lady Dowding argued in her 1980 autobi-

ography, The Psychic LIfe of Muriel, the

Lady Dowding, that enlightenment cannot be

achieved without sensitivity to animals. She

was long active in the White Eagle Lodge, a

British/American religious group with special

concern for animals.

Obituaries

BOOKS: Humane Innovations And Alternatives & Between the Species

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Humane Innovations And Alternatives,

Volume Seven, published by Psychologists for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals (Box 1297, Washington

Grove, MD 20880-1297.) 547 pages, paperback, $20.

Between The Species, Volume 9, #2, published

by the Schweitzer Center of the San Francisco Bay

Institute/Congress of Culture (POB 254, Berkeley, CA

94701.) 120 pages, paperback, $5.00.

Some day soon, Humane Innovations And

Alternatives must decide whether it wants to be a serious

journal or the Gong Show of animal protection literature.

The 14-member editorial board includes plenty of doctor-

ates from a variety of disciplines, and plenty of worthwhile

material appears in this thick annual, as well, but scientific

probes of fine points in toxicology appear alongside infor-

mal essays on “How I run my animal shelter,” and “The

most unforgetable chicken I ever met.” Even if every item

genuinely deserves print somewhere, few researchers will

ever find the scientific articles, while most of the audience

for shelter how-to and unforgetable chicken stories isn’t like-

ly to be drawn to a publication that calls itself a journal.

LEFTY DUCKS AND CHICKENS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Lefty’s Place, by Lewis G. Nierman. Kindness

Publications (1859 N. Pine Island Rd., #135, Plantation,

FL 33322), 1993. 32 pages, hardcover, $18.95.

Nature’s Chicken, by Dr. Nigel Burroughs.

Distributed by United Poultry Concerns (POB 59367,

Potomac, MD 20859). 36 pages, paperback, $5.95.

Neither battery-caged chickens nor the feral

Muscovy ducks of Florida have many human friends. As

with bears and whales, children may be among the first and

most ardent to take up their cause. Certainly Lewis

Neirman and Nigel Burroughs hope so. Neirman approach-

es his young audience with a lavishly produced picture-

book, aimed at grades 2-5, which has a reasonable chance

of getting into school libraries as a friendly introduction not

only to Muscovy ducks but also to the broader subjects of

wildlife rehabilitation and coping with disability. Lefty‘s

Place actually begins with a family’s adoption of Lefty’s

mother, Keppy, Lefty, the runt of her ducklings, suffers a

severe foot injury. The daughter of the family, Rebecca,

rehabilitates him to the extent that he can be rehabilitated,

then makes him a pet. Most children will enjoy the story;

those who are themselves recovering from illness or injury

may particularly take heart from it.

New books for dog-lovers

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Curing Your Dog’s Bad Habits: Treating

Behavioral Problems, by Danny Wilson.

Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. (387 Park Ave. South,

New York, NY 10016-8810), 1994. 108 pages,

$9.95, paperback.

Dog trainer Danny Wilson’s advice about dealing

with difficult dogs should be self-evident to any observer

of canine behavior. Yet astonishingly many people, even

purported dog-lovers, substitute a rolled-up newspaper for

good sense when it comes to enforcing canine discipline.

This isn’t hard to understand, as proper dog-training takes

at least 20 minutes a day, which many busy people just

don’t have. It is to be understood that dog-training time, a

concerted period devoted wholly to the dog, is not to be

confused with time spent in the company of both dog and

family, or jogging with the dog, or walking the dog. Any

of these occasions may be adapted into a dog-training ses-

sion, but only if there is a daily opportunity for reinforce-

Zoos

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

announced December 20 that it has indefi-

nitely ended consideration of requests to

import giant pandas. The verdict came six

months after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt

vetoed the San Diego Zoo’s attempt to import

two pandas in exchange for a grant of $1 mil-

lion to loosely monitored “panda conservation”

projects in China, which in the past have

included such activities as building a hydro-

electric dam.

Horses

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

New York City entered 1994

with no regulations protecting carriage

horses, after outgoing mayor David

Dinkins vetoed a bill on December 29 that

would have amended the 1989 Carriage

Horse Protection Act to allow horsedrawn

carriages to operate in city traffic except

during the rush hours, when they will be

restricted to Central Park, and to extend

the workday for carriage horses from eight

hours to nine. Carriages had been restrict-

ed to Central Park all day and barred from

operating during rush hours. Introduced

by councillor Noach Dear, the bill was

approved by the New York City Council on

December 21, 29-17, which was consid-

ered a close vote. The Carriage Horse

Action Committee had sought reauthoriza-

tion of the 1989 act, supported by the the-

atre industry and other groups concerned

that the carriages discourage business by

slowing down traffic, plus a faction that

claims the carriage horse trade is a “green

card factory” for Irish immigrants, who

dominate the workforce of drivers and

grooms. There are now 396 licensed car-

riage drivers, up from 266 in 1991, but

there are only 140 horses and 68 carriages

actually out on the job. The CHAC, head-

ed by Peggy Parker, may now seek a total

ban on horsedrawn vehicles in Manhattan.

FUR

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Encouraged by the reopening of

Bloomingdale’s Maximilian fur salon in

New York on November 29, the fur trade

still claims sales are up after a five-year

slump, projecting 1993 retail receipts of

$1.2 billion––but once again hard numbers

tell a different story. As of Christmas,

advertised retail fur prices were still plung-

ing to new lows in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Mink coats, furs priced at $5,000 or more,

and the overall average fur price were all

down 25% from the previous record lows

reached in 1992, The total volume of fur

advertising was down 17%, despite promi-

nent early fall cooperative promotional

efforts. Further indications of falling

demand include the 1993 mink and fox pro-

duction figures published in Fur Age

Biomedical research

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Despite a warning from senior radi-

ation biologist Dr. Joseph Hamilton that the

experiments had “a little of the Buchenwald

touch, “ the Atomic Energy Commission con-

ducted extensive radiation research on unwitting

human subjects from the mid-1940s into the

early 1970s, according to newly declassified

documents released in December by Energy

Secretary Hazel O’Leary, who battled her own

bureaucracy for nearly a year to obtain them. In

one experiment, 19 mentally retarded teenaged

boys at a state school in Fernald, Mass-

achusetts, were given radioactive milk with

their breakfast cereal from 1946 until 1956. In

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