BOOKS: In My Family Tree & In the Kingdom of Gorillas

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

In My Family Tree:
A Life With Chimpanzees
by Sheila Siddle, with Doug Cress
Grove Press (841 Broadway, New York, NY
10003), 2002. 284 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

In The Kingdom of Gorillas:
Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land
by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas,

New York, NY 10020), 2001
.
370 pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Sheila Siddle, cofounder with her
husband David of the Chimfunshi Wildlife
Orphanage in central Zambia, never seems to have
doubted her calling, once she found it.
Certainly she never lacked the courage to accept
a challenge.
At age 16, in 1947, Siddle traveled
with her family by ferry and truck from England
to South Africa. When one of her brothers fell
ill, the brother and both of her parents
returned to England for a year, but Siddle
remained behind in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe), to study toward becoming a nurse.

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Appeals failed, Ferdin jailed

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

LOS ANGELES–Actress Pam Ferdin, 41, on July 16 began
serving a 30-day jail sentence in Los Angeles, California, after
exhausting her appeals of a January 2000 conviction for allegedly
possessing a weapon while on a picket line.
What Ferdin actually had, everyone on either side of the
case agreed, was an ankus, or “bull hook,” used by elephant
handlers. Ferdin displayed it as a prop during an August 1999
demonstration against a San Fernando Valley performance of the Circus
Vargas–and ran afoul of a 1978 ordinance that was passed to curtail
violence during labor disputes. Ferdin fought the charge as an
alleged infringement of her right to free speech.
Ferdin’s husband, surgeon and noted animal advocate Jerry
Vlasek, M.D., on July 18 said she had begun a hunger strike. Both
Ferdin and Vlasek have conducted previous hunger strikes after
arrests in connection with protest.
Ferdin debuted as a child actress in 1964 and worked steadily
in both screen and voice roles through 1979. She continues to do
occasional voice roles, but has focused on a nursing career and
animal advocacy since circa 1990.
A brief but influential Ferdin performance was her 1973 role
in the animated feature Charlotte’s Web as the farm girl Fern, who
pleads with her father to spare the life of the runt piglet she has
raised by hand.

Mascots: Avian disease mycoplasma galliseptum grounds Auburn University eagles

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

AUBURN, Alabama–A deadly outbreak of the avian bacterial
disease mycoplasma galliseptum is expected to end ceremonial eagle
flights at Auburn University home football games this fall, just
three years after the short-lived “tradition” started.
The use of live animals as football mascots has come under
intensifying protest from PETA, SHARK, and other animal rights
groups at colleges, universities, and even some high schools in
recent years. Auburn Univeristy appeared to have successfully
addressed the controversy back in 2000, however, by transferring
responsibility for the care of the caged eagles who symbolically
represent the War Eagles football team from the Alpha Phi Omega
fraternity to the Southeastern Raptor Rehabilitation Center.
Alpha Phi Omega had looked after a succession of four “War
Eagles” since 1960.
Southeastern Raptor Rehabilitation Center director Joe
Shelnutt taught a 24-year-old golden eagle named Tiger to circle
Jordan-Hare stadium on cue.

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Spooked by SARS, China kills dogs to fight rabies & “scare the monkeys”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

BEIJING–“Beijing has no more Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome patients,” city deputy health chief Liang Wannian told the
People’s Daily on July 29.
Hu Jintao, President of China, one day earlier lauded the
Communist Party leadership for eradicating SARS–nine months, more
than 8,500 cases worldwide, and at least 789 deaths after the
disease first appeared among food workers in Beijing and Guangdong.
About half of the cases and deaths came in mainland China, with
nearly 300 more deaths in Hong Kong. SARS also hit hard in Taiwan
and Vietnam, afflicting people in more than 30 nations altogether.
Other informed observers were critical of the Chinese government
response, as well as increasingly skeptical that Chinese authorities
have the will to enforce the complete shutdowns of wildlife
trafficking and live meat markets that could ensure no repetition of
the SARS outbreak and the economically devastating ensuing panic.
“It is now evident,” editorialized the moderators of the
ProMed online information network maintained by the International
Society for Infectious Diseases, “that China’s suppression of news
about SARS helped fuel a global epidemic that could have been
controlled more quickly, with fewer casualties and much less
economic damage, if news of the outbreak had been reported rapidly
and fully to the world.”

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No dogs or homeless humans allowed in Bangkok historic zone

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

BANGKOK, PHUKET, Thailand– Street dogs and homeless humans
are barred from the Rattanakosin historical district in central
Bangkok, city governor Samak Sundaravej declared on August 1.
Issuing an edict that would have excluded the Buddha and his
followers from an area famed for its Buddhist temples, Samak spoke
at a Thai Foreign Ministry meeting held to discuss plans for
beautifying Bangkok before the October 21-22 Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit.
Said Samak, according to Supoj Wancharoen of the Bangkok
Post, “Our city is not Calcutta. We must not allow such an eyesore.
They [street dogs and homeless people] must not be there at all
times, not just during the APEC summit.”
Continued Supoj, “A city hall source said the Livestock
Department has set up a shelter in Sa Kaew for some 1,000 stray
dogs,” at estimated cost for feeding and vaccination of $240,000 per
year.

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Top U.S. & British medical journals report–Hormone drugs from pregnant mare’s urine can cost lives & minds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

LONDON–Sales of hormone supplements made from pregnant
mare’s urine, already down 65% in less than a year, may fall even
faster after the August 9 publication by the British Medical
Association journal The Lancet of new evidence that taking popular
combinations of estrogen and progestin appears to produce a 66%
greater risk of developing breast cancer within five years, and a
22% greater risk of dying from it.
Taking estrogen alone increased the risk of developing breast
cancer by 30%.
The data came from clinical observation of nearly one million
British women between the ages of 50 and 64, who were surveyed at
annual mammogram appointments beginning in 1996.
The $10 million study was directed by Valerie Beral, M.D.,
of Oxford University, with funding from the British government and
Cancer Research U.K., a private charity.
Beral and team estimated that taking estrogen/progestin
combination drugs could be linked to 15,000 more cases of breast
cancer during the past 10 years than would otherwise have occurred.
Taking estrogen alone could be associated with 5,000 additional cases.

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WHO gets the point about factory farming

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

GENEVA–The World Health Organization on August 13, 2003
recommended that national governments should phase out the addition
of antibiotics to animal feed when the drugs are given to healthy
animals “for the sole purpose of growth promotion.”
“WHO’s recommendation does not require nations to act,”
explained Washington Post agriculture writer Marc Kaufman. “But this
will add to the movement to stop routine use of antibiotics on farms,
and to the kind of public pressure that recently led the McDonald’s
fast-food chain to tell suppliers to cut back on antibiotic growth
promoters.”
“We have believed for some time that giving animals low
dosages of antibiotics throughout their lives to make them grow
faster is a bad idea,” WHO antibiotic project leader Peter Braam
told Kaufman. “Now we have solid scientific data,” from a newly
completed five-year study of the results of a voluntary phase-out of
antibiotic growth promoters in Denmark, “that producers can
terminate this practice without negative effects for the animals,
and with good effects for humans.”

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Letters [Sep 2003]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

Pigeons

Thank you very much for the mention of PICAS USA in your
July/August 2003 edition.
PICAS USA has already evolved considerably since I provided
the information published then. Our first official consultation has
been for an architectural firm in Chicago that is renovating the
landmark Ambassador Hotel. We are also doing an exploratory study for
the city of Duluth, Minnesota, and are assisting private citizens
who have contacted us hoping to start PICAS projects in New York
City, Philadelphia, and Pompano Beach, Florida, among other
cities.
I have also uncovered some misconceptions about the European
method of pigeon control:
1) Ever-unassuming, PICAS’ director Guy Merchant only
recently revealed to us that he had implemented the nestbox/egg
removal approach nearly a decade before the Swiss study that made it
famous.
2) Some of the greatest successes come from the U.K. and
other locations besides Switzerland.

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AVMA dithers on farm animal welfare

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

DENVER–Distributing photographs of sows in gestation stalls,
Massachusetts delegate Peter Theran, VMD, on July 20, 2003 warned
the American Veterinary Medical Association House of Delegates that
if it continues to endorse the stalls, it might as well cease
pretending to advocate for animal welfare.
Theran, vice president of the Massachusetts SPCA hospital
division, urged support of a resolution submitted by Farm Sanctuary
asking the AVMA House of Delegates to withdraw a pro-gestation stall
position statement approved in 2002 at request of the American
Association of Swine Veterinarians.
Instead, the House of Delegates defeated that resolution,
then passed a resolution calling for more study of the issue.
Also, for the fifth consecutive year, the AVMA House of
Delegates rejected a resolution against starving laying hens to
induce a forced molt.
“Meanwhile, within the past three years, fast food giants
McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s, under pressure from animal
welfare advocates, have all banned forced molting through new
regulations for their egg suppliers. The practice is also banned in
Europe and the United Kingdom, and the Canadian Veterinary Medical
Association has taken a stand against it,” pointed out Association
of Veterinarians for Animal Rights representative Holly Cheever, DVM.

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