Month: April 1996

WOOFS & GROWLS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Adopt-A-Pet, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, quiet for several
years, recently issued a bulletin “introducing our statewide
service,” a purported mobile adoption-and-rescue program,
and soliciting donations. Adopt-A-Pet in 1986-1992 raised
$6,840,756 via the Watson and Hughey direct mailing empire,
which renamed itself Direct Response Consulting Services after
paying $2.4 million in 1991 in out-of-court settlement of
charges pertaining to alleged use of misleading sweepstakes
appeals. Adopt-A-Pet was among the W&H/DRCS codefendants
in a series of cases brought by 22 states. In 1987-1989,
Adopt-A-Pet reportedly spent 97% of revenues on further
fundraising. Overall, according to incomplete IRS Form 990
filings obtained and abstracted by The Chronicle of
P h i l a n t h r o p y in September 1993, Adopt-A-Pet spent at least
55% of revenues on fundraising, with 6% spent on other documented
activities and 39% apparently unaccounted for.
W&H/DRCS also represented the Cancer Fund of America,
which sought donations by claiming it didn’t fund animal-based
research. It apparently funded––and funds––little or no
research of any kind.
German freelance TV producer Michael Born
faces up to 10 years in prison for allegedly defrauding customers
of more than $203,000 by faking at least 22 documentaries
between 1991 and December 1994. In one episode he
purportedly paid an actor to pose as a hunter shooting a housecat.
Born defends his creations as “docu-drama,” in which
players act out real events.
National Audubon Society president John Flicker
says he cancelled publication of an article for the A u d u b o n
magazine by former New York Times columnist Tom Wicker as
part of “a relatively minor adjustment we’re making” to policy.
Wicker had charged that the Clinton administration has not
demonstrated a clear commitment to environmental protection.
The British Advertising Standards Authority censured
the International Fund for Animal Welfare o n
Valentine’s Day for the fourth time in a year, holding that ads
urging Tesco supermarket chain chair Sir Ian MacLaurin to
cease selling Canadian canned salmon “unfairly discredited
Tesco by its false implication about the supermarket’s involvement
in seal killing.” IFAW was previously rapped for likening
hunters to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (who serially torturekilled
wildlife before turning to human victims); using a photo
allegedly depicting John Wayne Bobbitt’s severed penis in an
anti-sealing ad, which pointed out that the major profitable
market for seal products is Asian aphrodisiac demand for dried
penises; and suggesting that South Koreans kill 400,000 cats a
year for use in soup. Cat-eating is technically banned in South
Korea, but is reportedly still commonplace.

Parody
Students United to Protest Research on
Sentient Subjects, now doing business as The Nature of
Wellness, startled Washington Post readers on February 25
with a parody of Americans for Medical Progress a d s
attacking antivivisectionists. Surrounding a photo of a bonneted
baby was the headline, “Most people see a beautiful,
healthy child…We see a cure for Feline Leukemia.”
Continued the text below, “Outrageous, isn’t it? How can
anyone possibly believe that a cat disease can be cured by
conducting research on healthy human beings? Ridiculous.
But, unfortunately, millions of Americans have been led to
believe that it is possible to cure human diseases by conducting
research on healthy animals.”

The hunting lobby at work

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

British Field Sports Society deputy chair Lord
Mancroft and the Duchess of Devonshire in early March
asked the reputed 80,000 BFSS members to join the 28,000-
member Royal SPCA so as to influence policy away from
opposition to fox hunting and other blood sports. The RSPCA
has formally opposed hunting since 1976. New members had
to join the RSPCA by March 22 to be eligible to vote at the
organization’s June annual meeting––and as many as 1,500
hunters reportedly did, as RSPCA board members and staff
scrambled to find a way to legally bar them.
“The biennial conference of the parties to the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
is due to be held in Zimbabwe in 1997,” reminds Shirley
McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.
“Problems are developing, as the government of Zimbabwe
wants to hold the meeting in Victoria Falls. Hotel rooms for
government officials are available in the town, which has a
total of 900 beds, but usually 1,500 or more people attend
CITES conferences. Because of the room shortage, representatives
of non-governmental organizations would be lodged far
away, in Zambia and Botswana, out of the action.” This
would give Zimbabwe more opportunity to lobby officials in
favor of abolishing the international ban on ivory trafficking.

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FEAR AND LOATHING IN TORONTO THE GOOD

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

TORONTO––A Divisional Court ruling by Justice
Edward Saunders is expected soon as to whether the Toronto
Humane Society must release to the public copies of the
pound contract it holds with the City of Toronto.
Claiming a need to protect the security of animals
and staff, THS has appealed a December 29, 1995 order
from Tom Mitchinson, assistant commissioner of the
Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario, to release
both the current contract, signed in 1995, and the contract
that preceded it, signed in 1985, with an automatic annual
renewal clause that will expire on July 31.
The Toronto City Council on March 5 authorized
the negotiation of another one-year renewal, over the objection
of Councillor Pamela McConnell, who held the THS
board seat reserved for the City Council from November 30,
1994 to February 7 of this year.

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Breeding & biotech notes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

The United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization warns that about 30% of the world’s 3,882 known
breeds of domesticated animal species are in effect endangered
or threatened species, as factory farming with standardized
breeds takes over husbandry. The greatest loss of diversity
looms in Asia, where 68 domesticated mammals and 37 domesticated
birds are at imminent risk of extinction, while 865 mammals
and 131 birds are represented by fewer than 1,000 females
or fewer than 20 breeding males. “In Europe,” FAO geneticist
Keith Hammond says, “half of the breeds that existed at the turn
of the century have become extinct; 41% of the remaining 1,500
breeds are in danger of disappearing over the next 20 years. In
North America, over a third of the livestock and poultry breeds
are rare or in decline.”

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Can cloned sheep, Select-A-Bull save the Empire?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

LONDON––Uncertainty over the future of the British
cattle herd erupted just six days after the Holstein Friesian
Society of Great Britain and Ireland introduced Select-A-Bull,
billed as the most advanced system in the British Isles for managing
herd reproduction. About five million of the 11 million
cattle in Britain are Holstein Friesians. If the British herd is
slaughtered and rebuilt from breeding stock, the Select-A-Bull
genetic repository could be invaluable.
Meanwhile, many farmers are likely to postpone
decisions to breed.
The BSE scare stole the farm press spotlight from a
series of scientific breakthroughs in livestock breeding, beginning
last December when a Colorado State University research
team announced it had invented a way to preselect the sex of
calves. Likely to be commercially available in three to four
years, the method requires the use of only 200,000 sperm per
insemination, instead of the 20 million typically used now,
which in turn multiplies the reproductive capabilities of top
bulls. It also permits farmers to preselect for males, who gain
weight faster, if breeding for meat; daughters, if breeding to
replace milking cattle.
In February, a team in Kyodo, Japan, reported conceiving
hogs from frozen fertilized eggs, a potential quantum
leap in further standardizing hog breeding.
On March 6, embryologist Ian Wilmut of the Roslin
Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, reported that he and colleagues
had cloned five female Welsh mountain lambs, of
whom two survived––the first-ever success at cloning a mammal.
Wilmut said he started with 250 embryos, of which 34
were transplanted into Scotts mothers. However, he predicted,
“It may be up to 20 years before this could be used to produce
large numbers of identical animals.”

Wolves

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

More Yellowstone releases
Yellowstone––Following the release of 28
Canadian-captured grey wolves in Yellowstone National
Park and central Idaho last spring, 38 wolves are to be
released in the Yellowstone region this spring.
The second round of the high-profile reintroduction
of wolves––extirpated by the forerunner of the
Animal Damage Control program in 1922––began in
January with the apprehension of the wolves by British
Columbia bounty trappers. The B.C. wildlife branch has
contracted to supply up to 180 grey wolves to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service over the next four years. The
wolves will be taken out of a region overlapping the area
where B.C. wildlife branch officers killed more than 700
wolves during the mid-1980s, to make more ungulates
available to trophy hunters. The present wolf population
of the region is estimated at 300.

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Farm bills

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

A joint House/Senate committee
was working to reconcile differences in
their respective editions of the new Farm
Bill as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press.
Of perhaps most importance to animal protection,
the final version is likely to phase
out all dairy subsidies by 2000, which may
accelerate the demise of the small dairy
farm––and the reduction of the national
dairy herd, as genetically engineered
“supercows” take over from those of simple
selective breeding. This in turn would
reduce the number of calves available to the
veal industry, already declining for 50
years. Controversial parallel actions
include a Farm Bill rider introduced by
Senator Hank Brown (R-Colorado), which
would eliminate Forest Service authority
over stream flow below either public or private
lands, and S. 1459, the “Public
Rangelands Management Act” introduced
by Senator Pete Domenici (R-Utah), to
make grazing the primary purpose of leased
public lands. The latter was approved by
the Senate, 51-47, and is expected to clear
the House, but may be vetoed by President
Bill Clinton because it would end the longstanding
doctrine of multiple use.

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Mad cow disease panic hits beef-eaters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

LONDON––British health secretary
Stephen Dorrell touched off global panic on
March 20, telling the House of Commons that
an advisory scientific committee had advised
him that consumption of cattle afflicted with
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) a
decade or more ago was “the most likely
explanation” of the origin of a seemingly new
variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Both
diseases cause the formation of sponge-like
holes in the brain.
Within days British government officials
seriously discussed the possible costs and
consequences of slaughtering the entire national
herd of 11 million cattle, in a gamble that
this would facilitate the recovery of the British
beef industry rather than its demise.
BSE, also known as “mad cow disease,”
has killed more than 160,000 cattle in
Britain since 1985––some directly, most in
government-ordered slaughters intended to
keep BSE from spreading. Over the same
time, British beef sales have fallen 12%; 40%
of Britons say they have cut down on meat
consumption; 11% say they don’t eat red
meat; and 4.3% are now vegans.

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DIET & HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

More veggies, less fat fights cancer
WASHINGTON D.C.–– A 20-member National Research Council panel reported
February 16 that about a third of the 1.35 million new cancer cases detected in the U.S. each
year are attributable to diet; that excess calories and fat are far more likely to contribute to
cancer than either natural or synthetic chemicals in food; and that the best way to avoid cancer
is to eat more fruits and vegetables, but less fat.
That’s a tall order for meateaters, as recent studies have found that fat is the part of
meat they most crave. The National Cancer Institute reported in January that U.S. children and
teenagers eat the right volume of vegetables, but that french fries account for a third of their
consumption, while intake of dark green and yellow vegetables with cancer-fighting properties,
such as spinach and carrots, tends to be low.
The NRC report was critical of the use of animal studies to predict human health risk
from chemical consumption, pointing out that test animals typically ingest far more of a suspect
substance in a short time than most humans would ever encounter.

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