Month: March 2004

Ebola exposure risk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

FORT DETRICK, Maryland– A National Research Council fellow
doing postdoctoral virology research at the U.S. Army Research
Institute for Infectious Diseases accidentally grazed herself with a
needle on February 11 while injecting mice with a weakened strain of
Ebola virus. Quarantined for 30 days on February 12, at “Level
Four” biosecurity, she remained free of Ebola symptoms at least
through February 18, reported David Dishneau of the Baltimore Sun.
The researcher was trying to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Ebola
victims typically die after several days of high fever, diarrhea,
vomiting, and both internal and external bleeding.

How the U.S. kills sick & “spent” chickens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

SAN DIEGO–Calls to television stations
and letters to newspapers indicate that Americans
were mostly shocked by coverage of live burial
and sometimes live incineration of chickens in
Souteast Asia to stop the spread of avian flu
H5N1–but live burial of chickens is also common
here, to dispose of “spent” hens and surplus
male chicks from laying hen “factories.”
The U.S. egg industry kills about 170
million spent hens and as many as 235 million
male chicks per year. In 2002 about 111 million
spent hens were killed in U.S. and Canadian
slaughterhouses. Nearly 59 million hens, along
with the male chicks, were killed by other
means. That number is expected to increase by
about 21 million in 2004, warned Poultry Times
writer Barbara Olenik in September 2003.
“The USDA purchased approximately 30
million spent hens a year through their canned
boned and diced chicken purchase programs,
making it the largest market for spent hens,”
Olenick explained. “However, in July 2003 the
USDA announced new specifications that fowl
producers must meetŠdue to complaints of bone
fragments and injuries to consumers in the
National School Lunch Program.”

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How Republicans use hunting as a “wedge issue”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C. –With U.S. federal elections
constitutionally mandated to be held on the first Tuesday of
November, it is a verity that the stretch drive of any campaign will
coincide with hunting season, and that close races for seats in
Congress and state legislatures may be decided by whether or not
hunters descend from tree stands to cast ballots.
Already the incumbent Republican majorities in the U.S.
Senate, House of Representatives, and the greater number of
statehouses are scrambling to lure hunter votes. Lacking the chance
to pass legislation, their fall challengers, mostly Democrats,
must rely upon image-building and promises.
Few candidates are likely to actively seek support from opponents of
hunting, even though the number of active hunters in the U.S. has
declined to just 13 million, representing just 4.6% of the U.S.
population. Approximately 10% of the U.S. population hunted a
generation ago.
The Fund for Animals on January 22 distributed a list of the
10 states in which hunting participation fell fastest from 1991 to
2001. Included were Rhode Island, down 59%; Massachusetts, down
39%; California, down 39%; Delaware, down 39%; Illinois, down
31%; Iowa, down 26%; North Carolina, down 26%; Connecticut,
down 21%; Ohio, down 20%; and New Mexico, down 19%.
Eight of the 10 states favored Democratic presidential
nominee Al Gore in 2000, and are expected to favor the Democratic
nominee in 2004. Ohio and North Carolina are considered “swing
states” that could go either way.

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Did Plum Island lab introduce Lyme & West Nile viruses?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ORIENT POINT, N.Y.–The 850-acre Plum Island Animal Disease
Center, just off Long Island, operated by the USDA and the
Department of Homeland Security, is nominally the first line of
defense for Americans against zoonotic diseases associated with
agriculture–like the avian flu H5N1.
Now New York City corporate attorney Michael C. Carroll, 31,
argues in a newly published book entitled Lab 257 – The Disturbing
Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, from
William Morrow Inc., that accidents at Plum Island may have
introduced Lyme disease and West Nile fever to the U.S.
“The first outbreak of Lyme disease occurred in Old Lyme,
Connecticut, in 1975,” Carroll pointed out to Newsday staff writer
Bill Bleyer in a pre-publication interview. “Ten miles southwest of
Old Lyme you have Plum Island directly in the flight path of hundreds
of thousands of birds.”
Carroll asserts that Plum Island was at the time breeding
thousands of ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and were
“impregnated with exotic animal viruses and bacteria.”
According to Carroll, government documents establish that in
1978 holes were found in the roof and air filtration system at the
lab and in the incinerator where infected animal carcasses were
burned. The leaks came to light in 1978 after hoof and mouth disease
escaped from one of the Plum Island buildings, infecting about 200
cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses who were kept outside. All were
killed, lest the disease escape to the mainland.

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Ethiopian animal advocates lose jobs for exposing dog shooting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ADDIS ABABA–Homeless Animal Protection Society of Ethiopia
cofounders Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle were on January 23, 2004
suspended from their jobs at Bale Mountains National Park without
pay, and as of February 23 imminently anticipated termination
notices from Oromiya Rural Land and Natural Resource Authority
director Siraaj Bakkalii Shaffee.
Their apparent offense, not spelled out in their letters of
notification of suspension, is that they shared information with
ANIMAL PEOPLE and Radio Ethiopia about the delayed and tactically
inept response of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Organization
and Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme to an ongoing rabies
outbreak at the park, as detailed in the November and December 2003
editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Dinsho town council chair Tessema Hailu, agitating to have
homeless dogs in the Dinsho region killed, precipitated the
suspensions and probable firings of Legese and Kifle by writing to
Siraaj Bakkalii Shaffee that they had “performed activities which can
affect the fundraising process of the EWCP,” Legese told ANIMAL
PEOPLE.

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Honolulu Zoo to keep orangutan

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

HONOLULU–368 days after Orangutan Foundation Inter-national
announced that it would “build a state-of-the-art orangutan sanctuary
at Kualoa Ranch in Oahu, Hawaii, for Rusti,” 24, brought to
Hawaii from the defunct Scotch Plains Zoo in New Jersey in 1997, OFI
founder Birute Galdikas announced a new plan.
Now Rusti is to occupy a 4,000-square-foot exhibit built
around a tall banyan tree near the tortoises at the Honolulu Zoo–the
same zoo that evicted him last year to replace his old habitat with a
lorikeet exhibit, after housing him for six years under what was to
have been only a temporary arrangement until OFI could develop a
sanctuary. OFI is to remain Rusti’s legal custodian.
Pamela Davis and Cathy Goeggel of Animal Rights Hawaii
expressed skepticism that the latest OFI strategy will advance any
farther than the last several.
“It would be lovely to have Rusti stay,” Goegel told ANIMAL
PEOPLE, “if a suitable enclosure can be built. OFI’s track record
makes me wonder if this will happen. $200,000 doesn’t buy much these
days,” she added, noting that the Honolulu Zoo chimp exhibit “cost
over $1 million.”
Both Davis and Goeggel pointed out that the Honolulu city
council was not consulted about the new plan, although the zoo is
city property, and that many legal and political obstacles may lie
ahead.

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Activist “trespassers” fined $1.00 each

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

MUNCIE, Indiana–Apologizing to Ball State University
professor Abel Alves and artist Carol Blakney, his wife, Judge
Wayne Lennington of the Delaware Circuit Court in Muncie, Indiana on
February 24, 2004 fined them each $1.00 for trespassing and released
them without further conditions.
A jury earlier convicted Alves and Blakney of trespassing,
for briefly viewing the Seldom Rest hog farm from a roadside in
October 2002.
“Lennington said he couldn’t call the jury’s decision to
convict ‘despicable.’ But he indicated that is how he felt,” wrote
Seth Stabaugh of the Muncie Star Press.
“Several months before being accused of trespassing,”
Stabaugh explained, “Blakney filed a complaint against Seldom Rest
with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. IDEM accused
[owner] Kaye Whitehead of housing pigs in an unpermitted structure,”
and of allowing manure to pollute a creek. Whitehead corrected the
alleged violations, but is believed to have pursued the trespassing
charges in retaliation.
Whitehead chairs the Delaware County Farm Bureau and the
Delaware County Republican Party. Prosecutor Judy Calhoun is
daughter of a Randolph County farmer and cousin of a Randolph County
Farm Bureau official, Stabaugh wrote.

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True Grizz: Glimpses of Fernie, Stahr, Easy, Dakota, and Other Real Bears in the Modern World

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

True Grizz:
Glimpses of Fernie, Stahr, Easy, Dakota,
and Other Real Bears in the Modern World
by Douglas H. Chadwick
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St.,
San Francisco, CA 94105), 2003.
176 pages, hardcover. $24.95

Meet the bears: Fernie with her two cubs swim the Hungry
Horse Reservoir looking for food. Stahr opens a door to a screen
porch and, surrounded by 50-pound bags of dog food, naps on the
couch. Dakota hangs out on a street corner in Whitefish, Montana so
often she is named for it.
A few years ago these grizzlies would have been killed. No
questions. No second chances. Douglas Chadwick in True Grizz tells
how Montana is now trying to save the bears with creative and
innovative new methods.
Long gone is the era when grizzlies roamed from Kansas to the
California coast, finding plenty to eat on the way: elk, bison,
mule deer. Males may have weighed close to 1,000 pounds and females
600.
By l975 an estimated 99% percent of the grizzlies in the
Lower 48 had been killed. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the
remaining bears would barely have covered a used car lot. Because
the public demanded that these fabled giants should survive,
grizzlies were among the first species added to the U.S. endangered
list. There were then 750 to 1,000 bears left in the U.S. outside of
Alaska. Today there are 1,000 to 1,300.

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15-year-old puts bill to ban circuses on the ballot in a longtime Ringling stronghold

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

DENVER–Denver voters on August 10 will
be asked to approve an initiative to ban circus
performances, placed on the ballot through
petitioning by Heather Herman, 15, and Youth
Opposed to Animal Acts, a group she founded.
Herman is challenging Feld Entertainment,
owners of the Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey
Circus, in a Ringling stronghold.
“The Ringling circus has performed in
Denver since 1919,” noted Cindy Brovsky of
Associated Press, “The city’s Barnum
neighborhood is named after circus founder P.T.
Barnum, who bought 760 acres in 1882 as a winter
respite for his showŠCity officials estimate the
circus’ annual two-week stint pumps $8 million
into the local economy.”
Herman will be working against ruthless
as well as influential and affluent opposition.
PETA in a lawsuit filed in May 2001 and refilled
after amendments in 2002 alleged that Ringling
and Feld Entertainment hired the private security
firm Richlin Consultants to infiltrate and
disrupt PETA from 1989 until 1992.

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