Month: May 1995

MARINE MAMMALS

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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.

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Scotland Yard to seek ALF

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

LONDON – –Scotland Yard
has established a special police unit to
investigate the Animal Liberation Front,
headed by anti-terrorist branch chief
David Tucker.
Said deputy assistant commis-
sioner John Howley, who oversees both
the Special Branch and the anti-terrorist
branch, “The people we are interested in
are extremists who are prepared to use
criminal tactics or commit public order
offenses to achieve their ends. I want to
emphasize that animal rights extremist
activity is not terrorism,” he continued.
“There is a definition of terrorist con-
tained in the Prevention of Terrorism
Act, and it is basically the advancement
of political objectives by means of vio-
lence with a view to overthrowing the
government. What these sorts of people
are indulging in is akin to terrorism or
political violence, but not quite on the
same level yet. But it requires very simi-
lar methods of investigation.”

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POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Sierra Club, National Audubon
Society, and Natural Resources Defense
Council on April 4 unveiled a $1.3 million TV
campaign and a $500,000 radio blitz to inform the
public about how regulatory rollbacks under the
Republican “Contract with America” will affect
“the food they eat, the water they drink, and the
air they breathe,” and about the links between
“those who pollute and those who write the laws
on pollution.” Sierra Club director Carl Pope
called it the largest such effort “ever launched by
the environmental community.” The announce-
ment came five days after Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich accused “left-wing environmental-
ists” of using environmental protection laws as a
vehicle to “oppose free enterprise, jobs, and eco-
nomic activity.” They look for the “hysteria of
the year,” Gingrich charged, “whether it’s going
to be nuclear winter or global warming or whatev-
er this year’s particular hysteria is.”

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Deep in the heart of Texas

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

AUSTIN – -Anti-animal bills
crowded state legislative calendars in
many states this spring, as newly elect-
ed wise-use wiseguys joined entrenched
good old boys in the effort to make the
world safe for hunters––but those intro-
duced in Texas were uniquely flamboy-
ant. Major items, with apparent status
at deadline:
SB-97, a long-awaited bill to
restrict canned hunting, has been
amended to apparently prohibit only the
point-blank dispatch of animals other
than pumas and “nuisance” species who
are held in small cages. (Active.)

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ZIPPO raid

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“As a portable source of flame, the
Zippo windproof lighter has always been the
natural choice for those who care about the envi-
ronment,” claims a press release for the Zippo
“mysteries of the forest” collectible lighter
series. “Zippo believes it is vital,” the flaks
add, “that we safeguard the delicate balance of
the remaining wilderness for both the animals
that live there and for future generations of
humanity.”

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Agriculture

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Academy Award-winning actress
Whoopi Goldberg has agreed to appear in a
Friends of Animals ad campaign publicizing
horse slaughter. In 1994 U.S. slaughterhouses
killed 348,000 horses; another 28,612 U.S.-
born horses were killed in Canada. Most were
young “surplus” from speculative breeding.
A South African Airways flight
from London to Johannesburg with more
than 300 people and 72 prize breeding pigs
aboard returned to England for an emergency
landing on April 6 when, as a spokesperson
put it, “The collective heat and methane that
the pigs gave off in the cargo hold caused the
alarms to activate.” Fifteen pigs suffocated
when automatic fire extinguishers filled the
hold with halon gas.

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CLENBUTEROL SCANDALS STILL SURFACING

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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.

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ANIMALS IN LABORATORIES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Chimpanzee expert Dr. Jane Goodall, Henry Spira of
Animal Rights International, Holly Hazard of the Doris Day Animal
League, and Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society of the U.S. are to
speak at the 1995 National Association for Biomedical Research con-
ference on May 1, in a forum moderated by Franklin Loew, dean of
the Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. The forum was organized,
NABR said, when “Prompted by her open letter calling for public
forums on the use of animals in research and education, NABR asked
Dr. Goodall to address some of the complex ethical questions and other
issues she raised.” Wrote Goodall, at the urging of ANIMAL PEO-
PLE subscriber Walter Miale, “Animal experiments are conducted for
reasons such as advancing knowledge and curing disease. But treating
our fellow creatures as we do, on the scale we do, raises critical ques-
tions. Failure to examine them honestly is a failure of our own humani-
ty. Many areas of discussion do not resolve neatly into black and
white,” she added. “Learning from and reasoning with those who do
not share our views is one way we grow.” Miale, an independent envi-
ronmental researcher who lives in Philipsburg, Quebec, has worked to
start dialogue among activists and scientists since 1989.

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