Wise-use wiseguys

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Farmers For Fairness, a front for
factory hog farmers, “has begun to achieve
its purpose” in North Carolina, Raleigh News
& Observer staff writer James Eli Shiffer
warned on July 13. “For several months, the
industry has mounted a broad-based campaign
to clean up the image of the hog business,”
Shiffer explained. “The push has
included the state’s top lobbyists, rallies in
front of the General Assembly, and a
$300,000 advertising blitz,” including as
many as 400 TV commercials and 200 radio
commercials a week. It paid off when “a hog
control bill in the state House was broadened
to become the ‘Clean Water Responsibility
Act’ in the Senate, with a focus on sewage
plants and golf courses.” According to
Shiffer, Farmers for Fairness principals
include president Nick Weaver, “an executive
in the Goldsboro Milling hog company,”
secretary/treasurer Lu-Ann Coe, who is also
publicity director for the hog farm building
firm Hog Slat Inc., and political consultants
Carter Wrenn and Paul Shumaker, who
are respectively director of the Conservative
Club and chief political advisor to state
House speaker Harold Brubaker.

Henry Richard Spivey, 44, construction/land
manager for Buckman Farms,
a 5,760-sow breeding facility under development
in Hickman County, Kentucky, was
charged with assault on August 14 after
allegedly shooting local farmer M a l c o l m
Blount in the shoulder and neck, about 24
hours before representatives of Beckman
Farms, the Kentucky Natural Resources
Cabinet, and the Sierra Club had scheduled
a conference call to discuss several community-splitting
pollution and economic issues.
Blount, 51, was reportedly in stable condition.
After the Blount shooting, at least three
protesters said, they began packing guns of
their own. The sow facility is owned by
Kenneth Buckman, of Mayfield, the town
that purportedly inspired the fictional
Mayberry, locale of The Andy Griffith Show,
and is to supply hogs to Carroll’s Foods Inc.,
of Warsaw, North Carolina.
Todd Mascaretti, Wisconsin
regional director of Ted Nugent United
S p o r t s m e n, resigned July 20 after Nugent
refused to stop in Racine en route to an
appearance at the Iowa State Fair to thank
local Hunters for the Hungry program volunteers.
According to Mascaretti, Nugent
responded, “I don’t need you. I don’t need
those people. Tell them to go home. Tell
them to kiss my ass.” Nugent and Mascaretti
previously clashed in October 1995, when
Mascaretti used the Ted Nugent United
Sportsmen name in opposing plans to build a
new stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers
baseball team.
“It’s well known that certain
overseas nongovernmental organizations
will stop at nothing to impose their agenda,”
charged Zambezi Society chair D i c k
Pitman in the June 22 Sunday Mail Reporter,
of Harare, Zimbabwe. “Animal rights groups
are known to employ poachers,” and according
to Pitman might set up poaching incidents
during the 18 months that the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species
recently gave Zimbabwe to set up a fraudproof
means of selling stockpiled elephant
ivory to Japan.
The Electoral Office in New
South Wales, Australia, has reportedly
deregistered the Fishing Party, formed by
recreational anglers, at request of party “registered
officer” Paul Kidd, and is screening
the membership lists of two similar organizations,
the Four Wheel Drive Party and the
Shooters Party, after receiving allegations
that the lists of petitioners for recognition of
each new party included the names of people
who were added without their knowledge.
Deputy Electoral Commissioner J o h n
W a s s o n t o l d Mark Riley of the S y d n e y
Morning Herald that his office had written to
27 purported Fishing Party members whose
signatures were “remarkably similar,” and
found that half had never signed the registration
papers. Wasson said the case might soon
be referred for criminal investigation.