Month: January 1996

Horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Weeks after dismantling the Bureau
of Land Management wild horse program,
House Republicans on November 7 pushed
through a bill––unanimously passed by voice
vote––ordering the National Park Service to
leave alone about 30 wild horses living in the
Ozark National Scenic Riverways. The bill
directs the Department of the Interior to arrange
for herd management with the Missouri Wild
Horse League, which would be required to
keep the herd smaller than 50. The league and
the Park Service have fought in court since 1990
over a Park Service plan to exterminate the
horses. The bill must clear the Senate to take
effect, with enough support to overcome a
potential presidential veto. Assistant Secretary
for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks George Frampton
opposes the bill, and wild horse protection generally,
consistent with the position of conservation
groups including the Wilderness Society,
which he formerly headed, the Nature Conservancy,
the National Audubon Society, and some
factions of Earth First, that introduced species
should be removed from public lands.

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NIH: investigate mad cow disease link to human illness

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C., LONDON
––Leading researchers from the National
Institutes of Health and other biomedical
research institutions worldwide are calling for
intensive investigation of a long hypothesized
link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), afflicting 53% of British cattle
herds during the past decade, and CreutzfieldJakob
disease (CJD), a once rare degenerative
condition chiefly afflicting the elderly.
In the past three years CJD has killed
three British cattle farmers in mid-life––and in
1995 killed an 18-year-old part-time cowhand
and a 16-year-old girl who ate cow’s brains in
Cyprus. The boy lived with CJD for nine
months to a year; the girl survived for 14
months. Only four other cases of teenagers
developing CJD had ever been reported––in
France, Canada, Poland, and the U.S. None
of the teen victims to date had known exposure
to cattle with BSE, but the disease has a latency
factor of up to 30 years in humans and at
least six or seven years in bovines.

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Call for uniform cruelty-free standards

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The
National Consumers League and the
Massachusetts SPCA have asked U.S.
Commissioner of Food and Drugs David
Kessler to follow the lead of the European
Community in requiring that “any reference
to testing on animals” in product
labeling or advertising “state clearly
whether the tests carried out involved the
finished product and/or its ingredients.”
Consumer surveys done for the
NCL and MSPCA found that while 63%
of women prefer to buy cruelty-free health
and beauty aid products, many are confused
by the six different types of “cruelty-free”
claims in common use, many of
which conceal certain kinds of animal
testing. Lists of cruelty-free companies
circulated by animal protection groups are
rarely up-to-date and accurate. The NCL
and MSPCA said 90% of women would
favor a uniform cruelty-free standard.

Wild and getting wilder

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

The “Wild horse story” featured
on page one of the November 1995 A N IMAL
PEOPLE got wilder on December
17 when Doug McInnis of the New York
T i m e s office in Casper, Wyoming,
revealed that a grand jury probe of alleged
diversion of wild horses from the Bureau of
Land Management adoption program to
slaughter has been underway for four years,
not two as we had believed, with still no
indictments and no indication that key witnesses
have even been called.
The case made national headlines
on September 19, after the American Wild
Horse and Burro Alliance and nine other
groups alleged a coverup of illegal wild
horse slaughter at a press conference
attended by five current and former BLM
law enforcement agents. But the agents,
purportedly gagged by the grand jury,
didn’t speak. The only supporting evidence
offered was a letter from former BLM
staffer Reed Smith, which cited wild horses
only in the first sentence and otherwise
apparently concerned a dispute between
Smith and superiors over an oil-and-gas
leasing case. ANIMAL PEOPLE recognized
Smith as the author of many dubious
claims over the past 33 years, including
that the Nazis didn’t kill millions of Jews.

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BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH & TESTING

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

The December edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE had just hit the mail,
reporting that University of Washington
Regional Primate Research Center acting
director Dr. William Morton had declined to
comment on a series of leaked reports about
animal care problems, when Morton and staff
faxed us confirmation of most of the material
––delayed to coincide with official announcements.
As reported, the Washing-ton RPRC
in October agreed to a $20,000 civil penalty
for alleged violations of the Animal Welfare
Act contributing to the accidental deaths of
exposure of five baboons; half will be spent
for facilities improvements and repairs, environmental
enrichment, and employee training.

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Vealers under scrutiny in Europe, too

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

BRUSSELS––Concerned about the
use of illegal growth hormones in livestock
generally, and increasingly aware, as well,
of animal welfare issues, the European
Union moved recently to address both issues.
EU Farm Commissioner Franz
Fischler on November 29 convened a threeday
conference to review the EU rules on the
use of illegal meat growth hormones. On the
one hand, there is strong sentiment for maintaining
stiff standards and cracking down on
a “hormone Mafia” whose activity last year
included the assassination on the job of
Belgian animal health inspector Karrel Van
Knoppen.

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LETTERS [Jan/Feb 1996]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Who gets the money?
At last! The issue I’ve been waiting for! Too bad I didn’t
have this at my fingertips when I was sending all my waitressing tips
from two long shifts at a restaurant in Seattle and another in Bellevue
to fat steak-eating businessmen who ran animal protection groups to
get fatter on, while I starved. Then in the later years I was one who
fell for those direct mail appeals––until I saw some of the big groups
actually claiming victory and responsibility for a march, demo,
event, etcetera, which I had organized with local grassroots animal
rights activists or some small hardworking group like the Animal
Crusaders, run by three literal little old ladies and a handful of radical
students I’d recruited by my own tabling and conversations.
The ultimate slap in the face came when I put on a fundraiser
for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society at Pier 10 circa 1981.
The major humane society in the area decided they could not help in
any way due to their own local projects and priorities. They wouldn’t
even commit to sending a couple of volunteers down to shuttle crew
members to a local laundromat or to do some laundry for the small
Sea Shepherd staff. When I asked for volunteers at the fundraiser or
an endorsement, I was told by the whole board that the Sea
Shepherds would be gone in a few weeks, so they had to look out for
what was here, and would remain here––their group, their projects.

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Editorial: The King, the Duke, and who gets the money

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

North Shore Animal League president John Stevenson spends more money on animal
sheltering, neutering, and adoption promotion than anyone else ever. He spends more,
too, to help other animal shelters, through North Shore’s Pet Savers Foundation subsidiary.
To support $33 million a year in animal rescue work, Stevenson further spends $10 million on
fundraising––more than any other hands-on animal care organization.
Stevenson strongly favors donor accountability and strict public oversight of
fundraising, to ensure that charities do the work they claim to be doing. The North Shore and
Pet Savers IRS Form 990 filings are among the most detailed of the many we monitor. But,
as a nationally respected expert on nonprofit law long before assuming his present post, who
spends much commuting time contemplating how to make charities in general more honest,
Stevenson admits to being perplexed by donor attitudes. The most important number in the
annual ANIMAL PEOPLE charts on animal protection spending, he believes, should be not
the percentage of receipts an organization spends to raise more money, but rather the amount
of money actually spent to fulfill charitable purposes.

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The Wright stuff

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

REND LAKE, Illinois– – Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition president Steve
Hindi, a licensed pilot, on December 16 startled
the Illinois Department of Natural
Resources, hunters culling deer at the Renn
Lake Wildlife Refuge, and fellow protesters
by soaring up in a paraglider to videotape the
action from above––as deer fled from the
sound of the aircraft, away from the hunters.
“This is going to change everything,”
Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Air
power revolutionized warfare, and it’s going
to revolutionize protest. No longer can the
DNR and the hunters hide anything from us.”

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