International campaigns & organizations

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

World Animal Net, a project of
former World Society for the Protection of
Animals staffers Wim de Kok and Janice
Cox, offers an online animal protection directory
listing more than 6,000 organizations and
providing links to more than 1,200 web sites,
at >>http://www.worldanimal.net<<. A print
edition, forthcoming, is to supersede the
annual directories of animal protection organizations
published for the past several years
by Bunny Huggers’ Gazette, de Kok said.

Cox, of Oxfordshire, England, “helped with
the development of almost 100 newly established
animal protection societies in central
and eastern Europe,” de Kok said. Originally
from The Netherlands, now living in Boston,
de Kok was reputedly chief engineer of the
antifur campaign that virtually extinguished
the Dutch retail fur industry. While with
WSPA, de Kok was noted for both anti-fur
work and organization of international animal
disaster relief missions. He subsequently
served as executive director of the Bostonbased
Center for Animal Protection,
departing to found WAN.
Members of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species
rhino specialist group, meeting on April 23
at the Mount Etjo Safari Lodge i n
Windhoek, Namibia, on exiting a nearby bar
stumbled into a gang of alleged drunks who
were tormenting three captive leopards with
cigarettes. They called the Namibian Police
Protected Resources Unit, obtaining the
arrest at the scene of alleged South African
wildlife traffickers Willem Adriaan Nel and J.
Knoesen. The leopards, the J o h a n n e s b u r g
Mail & Guardian reported on May 1, “had
come from the very venue where they had
been meeting, the Mount Etjo lodge, property
of controversial Namibian game farmer
Jan Oelofse,” who, the Mail & Guardian
continued, “has been accused by conservationists
including Save The Rhino Trust’s
Blythe Loutit, of being party to unethical
hunting practices,” namely running canned
hunts. Nel and Knoesen were reportedly
fined 500 rand apiece, worth about $1,815.
Alison Swann, 44, formerly editor
of The Cat, the magazine of the British-based
Cat Protection League, was awarded
£15,000 for unfair dismissal on April 16 by an
industrial tribunal in Croydon, South London.
Swann, of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, succeeded
her father Harry Boothby as editor,
upon his resignation in 1997, during a dispute
with CPL chair Linda Reeves. Two other
CPL board members resigned with Boothby,
whom The London Times credited with building
the 70-year-old organization “into a thriving
concern, after joining as assistant director
in 1977.” Swann resigned under pressure in
November 1997. The CPL, said The Times,
“rescues 80,000 animals a year.”
An anonymous article in the May
edition of The Field, a leading British hunting
magazine, asserted that dogs are better
company than women, in part because,
“Dogs can’t talk. Dogs find you amusing
when you’re drunk. Dogs don’t mind if you
give their offspring away,” and “When a dog
gets old and and starts to snap at you incessantly,
you can shoot her.” Explained editor
Jonathan Young, “You need to understand
the relationship our average reader has with
his or her dog. I know lots of people who
would rather sleep in a bed with their
Labrador than their spouses.”
Body Shop International founder
Anita Roddick, 55, stepped down as chief
executive on May 11 in favor of P a t r i c k
G o u r n a y, recruited from the French food
firm Groupe Danone. The Body Shop chain
lost $2.7 million in the U.S. last year, and
suffered same-store sales volume losses of 5%
in the U.S., 6% in Asia, and 19% in Japan.
The Indonesian economic crisis apparently
caused the slumps in Asia and Japan. The
U.S. slump coincides with publicity about the
longtime failure of the Body Shop to implement
an “against animal testing” motto as an
actual enforced policy against the sale of
products tested on animals.
The Data Protection Registrar,
which regulates the transfer of personal information
among British corporations, on May 1
announced it is probing the sale of Countryside
Alliance membership addresses to the
Conservative Party. Said assistant registrar
David Smith, “We would not regard a political
party as a related good or service. We do
not accept that someone who joins the
Countryside Alliance,” formed chiefly to
defend fox hunting, “would expect their
details to be passed on to political parties,
unless membership literature clearly states”
that this might be done. “Small print is not
sufficient, either,” Smith added. Founded as
the Countryside Movement, the Countryside
Alliance has expanded into an umbrella also
representing the British Field Sports Society
and the Countryside Business Group.
Kate Parminter, 33, head of press
and public affairs for the Royal SPCA, has
been named director of the 46,000-member
Council for the Protection of Rural
England, effective June 29. At the RSPCA,
Parminter was spokesperson for the
Campaign for the Protection of Hunted
Animals, formed by the RSPCA, the International
Fund for Animal Welfare, and the
League Against Cruel Sports. She also promoted
the RSPCA’s “Freedom Foods” campaign,
which sells free-range eggs and meat.
Janet George of the British Field Sports
Society and Conservative e n v i r o n m e n t
spokesperson Tim Yeo warned that Parminter
had better not oppose hunting in her new post.