Month: November 1999

Pork barrel politics

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

Corporate Hogs at the Public
Trough, a new Sierra Club report slamming
government subsidies to factory hog farms,
was released on September 15 in Kansas City
and September 17 in Oklahoma City. “This
money is not creating economic development;
it’s creating environmental destruction,”
said Missouri chapter director Ken
Midkiff. Added Sierra Club president
Chuck McGrady, “God never intended for
100,000 pigs to poop in the same place.”

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Fur trapping and fashion

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

The last chance in the present Congress
for a ban on leghold and neck snare trapping in
National Wildlife Refuges introduced by Senator
Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) and Representative Sam
Farr (D-California) was to come in a October joint
House/Senate committee meeting to resolve differences
between their respective Interior
Appropriations Bill versions. The full House of
Representatives on July 14 approved the Farr bill as
an amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill,
259-166, over strenuous opposition from House
Resources Committee chair Don Young (R-Alaska),
who reportedly snapped a leghold trap on his index
finger and gesticulated in a seemingly obscene manner
at his opponents. Trappers then intensely lobbied
the Senate, where the Torricelli companion to the
Farr bill failed, 64-32, on September 9.

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Singapore fixes ferals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

SINGAPORE––Animal control
cat pickups fell 5% in the first year
after the Singapore Primary Production
Department began a neuter/return project
in 25 precincts under 11 town
councils, according to data PPD urban
animal management branch head
Madhavan Kannan recently shared with
Grace Ma of the Straits Times.
Formerly trying to catch and
kill any cat found at large, the PPD has
since August 1998 allowed volunteers
to vaccinate and neuter cats in supervised
colonies at their own expense.

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BULLFEATHERS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

Matador Cristina Sanchez,
27, retired on October 11 after
killing two bulls at the Las Ventas
ring in Madrid, fulfilling a threat she
issued in May after having difficulty
getting prestigious bookings. Male
chauvinism drove her out, she said:
male bullfighters would not appear in
the same ring with her. Sanchez
fought bulls professionally for four
years, after six years as a novice.

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ACTIVIST COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

The Connecticut Department of Animal
Protection on October 11 agreed to suspend fur trapping
on state land pending completion of new rules
for bidding on trapping rights, in settlement of a
September lawsuit brought by the Animal Rights
Front, Friends of Animals, and non-lethal nuisance
wildlife trapper Arlene Corey. Because of the length
of the comment and notification periods required to
produce new rukes, the agreement means that in
effect there will be no fur trapping on Connecticut
state land this winter, Fund for Animals representative
Julie Lewin told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Lewin
was among the activists who last winter bought the
trapping rights on 47,000 acres––approximately a
third of the state land offered––but were excluded by
a change of rules this year which stipulated that bidders
be able to prove they had actually sold trapped
pelts during the previous four winters.

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DISASTERSVILLE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

RALEIGH, N.C.– – Disastersville
Center after Hurricane Floyd was expected to
be Jacksonville, Florida. It turned out to be
Greenville, North Carolina, and Manville,
New Jersey, as Floyd blew ashore on
September 16 more than 150 miles farther
north than predicted, skipped lightly over
Washington D.C., and then socked central
New Jersey, right at the fringe of the greater
New York City metropolitan area.
Some newscasters called Floyd less
deadly than anticipated, because it didn’t hit
the big cities. The 48 known human deaths
from Floyd were just a tenth of the estimated
toll from a comparable tropical storm that hit
the Mexican Gulf Coast three weeks later, triggering
floods and mudslides from Veracruz to
as far inland and above sea level as Puebla.

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Korea waits until after World Cup to legalize dog-eating

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

SEOUL, South Korea––Stalling
for time, the South Korean Ministry of
Agriculture and Forestry reported to the
National Assembly on September 27 that it
would not recommend legalizing the sale of
dog meat for human consumption until after
the 2002 World Cup soccer finals, to avoid
bringing on an international boycott.
Coming 10 days after a protest
against dog and cat eating embarrassed South
Korean president Kim Dae-jung on a visit to
meet Australian leaders in Sydney, the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry position
reprised the South Korean response to threats
of boycott issued by the International Fund for
Animal Welfare and other groups before the
1988 summer Olympic Games, held in Seoul.

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BLM hopes to sell wild rides at the Mustang Ranch

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

RENO––Sex sells. Sex was notoriously
sold at the Mustang Ranch brothel in
Storey County, Nevada, for 32 years.
Holding more than 5,500 wild horses
captured in past roundups, more than roam the
range in any state but Nevada, and under pressure
to capture more, the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management desperately needs to sell more
Americans on adopting a mustang, or two
mustangs, under a foal-and-dame program
started in 1998––or needs to sell Congress on
funding more wild horse sanctuary space, not
open to competitive use such as cattle grazing.
In 1997 the BLM rounded up 10,443
wild horses, managing to adopt out 8,700, but
ranchers, hunters, and environmentalists
opposed to the presence of allegedly nonnative
species want another 16,500 horses
removed from the range, immediately. Their
ire was elevated earlier this year when Cornell
University researcher David Pimentel reported
that wild horses eat about $5 million worth of
forage per year, otherwise accessible to cattle,
sheep, and hunted populations of deer, elk,
and pronghorn.

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