USDA puts Hawthorn Corp. out of the elephant business–Clyde-Beatty Cole Bros. quits, too

April 23, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

RICHMOND, Illinois–Hawthorn Corporation owner John F. Cuneo
Jr., 73, on March 7, 2004 agreed to a 19-point consent decree in
settlement of 47 Animal Welfare Act charges that requires him to
divest of his remaining 16 elephants and have them removed from his
property near Richmond, Illinois by August 15. Cuneo is also to pay
a civil penalty of $200,000.
The consent decree, finalized on March 15, marks the first
time that the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service has
ordered a circus to cease exhibiting elephants.
Hawthorn Corporation will be allowed to keep 60 white tigers,
27 conventionally colored tigers, and an African lion.
None of the elephants’ destinations have been determined.
Dehi, 57, whom the USDA removed from the Hawthorn premises in
November 2003, was sent to the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald,
Tennessee. A 200-acre facility with seven Asian elephants and three
African elephants at present, the Elephant Sanctuary plans to expand
up to 2,700 acres soon, divided between Asian and African elephant
habitats.
The most recent arrival, in March 2004, is Flora, the
17-year star performer of the single-elephant Circus Flora, for whom
circus owner David Balding tried unsuccessfully to found the Ahali
Sanctuary in South Carolina.

Tibetans take up “direct action”

April 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

KATHMANDU–“Large numbers of troops and police are patrolling
the streets of Rebkong, Quinghai Province, Tibet, to prevent a
bonfire of skins originally scheduled for February 12, 2006. It
appears that the Chinese government has banned the public burning of
chuba costumes trimmed with tiger, leopard and otter skins,” the
Wildlife Protection Society of India posted on February 15, based on
information received from Tibet Info Net.
Fiery protests resembling western-style “direct action”
continued in Tibet into March 2006, despite the military presence,
according to Nepal-based Radio Free Asia, and have occurred for at
least eight months, contrary to previous belief that they began with
fur burnings in January 2006.
Radio Free Asia on February 1, 2006 reported that in August
2005 at Manikengo, “Tibetans, some of whom said they were angry
because they had been pressured to sell their animals for slaughter
at below-market prices, broke into a Chinese-owned slaughterhouse
during the annual Tibetan horse race festival, which attracts
thousands of people. They found what they described as a large
number of animals, including dogs and horses, sources said.

Pricing, politics, & the race to perfect animal birth control

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

FAYETTE, Missouri; BANGKOK–If humane organizations could
afford to use Neutersol in high volume, it might have taken over
much of the male dog sterilization market share already, worldwide.
But the maker of the first commercially distributed injectible
sterilant for dogs, Addison Laboratories of Fayette, Missouri, has
priced Neutersol to avoid cutting into U.S. veterinary profits.
Because Neutersol is unaffordable in the economically disadvantaged
nations where roving street dogs are most a problem, foreign
competitors are rushing to perfect their own injectible sterilants
and grab market share before Addison can introduce a two-tier pricing
system that would make Neutersol the injectible sterilant of choice.
At request of Neutersol product director Cord Harper, ANIMAL
PEOPLE on November 17, 2003 e-mailed to Addison Laboratories a list
of 37 humane organizations in 20 nations that might be willing to use
Neutersol if it could be provided to them at cost. At least five of
the organizations have already experimented with injectible
sterilants and still favor the concept, despite some early product
failures.
Four months later, Neutersol is still not affordably
available to help control street dogs.
Internationally recognized rabies control expert Henry Wilde,
M.D., of the Queen Savabha Memorial Institute operated by the Thai
Red Cross in Bangkok, was enthusiastic enough about the potential of
Neutersol that he bought some at the regular U.S. price and tested it
on several adult dogs in anticipation of two-tier pricing. Then he
waited.

Global effort exposes bid to dismantle Indian lab animal welfare regulations

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

NEW DELHI–An apparent covert attempt to
erase regulatory protection of rats, mice, and
birds in Indian laboratories, in the name of
harmonizing Indian regulations with international
standards, was flushed into the open and at
least briefly delayed on March 19 when an
appalled insider leaked the strategic blueprint
to ANIMAL PEOPLE through a chain of street dog
rescuers.
The document was received on a Friday afternoon.
ANIMAL PEOPLE immediately forwarded
copies to regulatory experts throughout the
world, including several in India, soliciting
comment.
The Indian experts promptly recognized
that the proposed “harmonization” was more a move
to dismantle the entire Indian laboratory animal
welfare assurance structure.
Working through the weekend to provide
informed reinforcement were Humane Farm Animal
Care founder Adele Douglass, who led the effort
to obtain the 1990 addition of dog and cat source
tracking requirements to the U.S. Animal Welfare
Act; Aesop Project founder Linda Howard; Animal
Welfare Institute president Cathy Liss; and
International Society for the Protection of
Exotic Animal Kind & Livestock founder Marc
Jurnove, whose case in 1998 established the
right of private citizens to sue the USDA to
obtain Animal Welfare Act enforcement.
By Monday morning cabinet-level e-mails
forwarded from New Delhi indicated that the
status of the strategic blueprint had been
downgraded to “internal brainstorming,” and
there seemed to be a strong likelihood that no
action would be taken until after the current
Indian national election campaign, and perhaps
not then, depending on the strength and
direction of ongoing global response.

U.N. Food & Agricultural Organization includes animal welfare considerations in plan to “stamp out” deadly avian flu

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

GENEVA–The United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organization, not known for
pro-animal stances, on March 18 recommended as
part of the FAO “Control Strategies for Highly
Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) in Asia” that
involved nations should “Provide humane
euthanasia methods for all animals to be
euthanized.”
The recommendation was included as the
sixth of nine points emphasized under the subhead
“Stamping-out policy for infected poultry
(including Valuation, Disposal, Cleaning and
Disinfection, Biosecurity and Animal Welfare).”
The inclusion of an expressed concern for
animal welfare, while not unprecedented, hints
at an FAO response to the view expressed earlier
by World Health Organiz-ation spokesperson Peter
Cordingly that, “It might be time, although
this is none of WHO’s business, that humans have
to think about how they treat animals and how
they farm them, how they market them–basically
the whole relationship between the animal kingdom
and the human kingdom.”
WHO and the FAO are parallel entities
established under U.N. auspices, and often work
together in combating epidemics.

Editorial: The Prime Directive for handling feral cats & street dogs

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Puppy-and-kitten season has again arrived, and again we are
hearing familiar cries of dismay.
From communities lacking TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return) programs to control
the reproduction of street dogs and feral cats, we are hearing of
overcrowded shelters and exhausted, demoralized animal control
staff, to whom it is no comfort that shelter killing rates have
plummeted over the past several decades when they themselves, right
this minute, may feel obliged to kill an animal for whom there is no
adoptive home and no cage space.
From communities that do have TNR, we are hearing far too often of
increasingly militant organized resistance.
An election campaign underway in India, for instance, has
encouraged demagogues in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Sringar, and
Cochin to blame street dogs for disease and filth, and to pledge
that if elected, they shall hire the unemployed to purge the dogs.
Many of the dogs who might be killed are sterilized and vaccinated,
and all of them are vital parts of the front line of Indian national
defense against the consequences of poor sanitation.
Similar political ploys recently victimized street dogs in several
parts of central and eastern Europe, including Athens, site of the
2004 Olympic Games.

Editorials

Evacuations of Greek dogs & cats for adoption are halted by rumors

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

ATHENS–Two activists taking advantage of the publicity
surrounding the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens to promote adoptions of
street dogs and cats from Greece were accused in a heavily publicized
March 11 confrontation at the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport near
Athens of covertly supplying dogs and cats to laboratories.
Greek Animal Welfare Society representative Carol McBeth
rushed to the airport to refute the spurious charge, on behalf of
the less well known people and organizations who were accused. Greek
Animal Welfare Society president Vesna Jones also vouched for the
rescuers in subsequent correspondence. Nonetheless, airport
officials did not allow the export of six puppies who already had
adoptive families waiting in Belgium, and as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to
press, had clamped down on all dog and cat exports by organizations
which do not operate licensed animal shelters in Greece.
The incident reportedly started when Iris Roussi, vice
president of Zoofiliki Ilioupolis, and Mieke Schuddinck, founder of
the Belgian organization Poezenboot Caprice, were intercepted at the
airport by Greek Animal Lovers Organization president Ioannina
Karagouni, an attorney who accompanied her, and Alpha-TV reporter
Spyros Lambrou. Lambrou and H. Anastasaki of the newspaper Espresso
then extensively amplified Karagouni’s claims.

Cock & bull stories

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Oklahoma cockfighting ban upheld

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on March 30, 2004 upheld the
constitutionality of the initiative ban on cockfighting that was
approved by state voters in 2002. Chief Justice Joseph M. Watt and
six other justices ratified the verdict, while two abstained.
The ban passed by a margin of 125,000 votes, but local
judges in 27 counties then ruled that the initiative was
“unconstitutionally vague” and “unjustly deprived cockfighters of
their property.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected both
contentions.
“Next it will be hunting, fishing and rodeos,” complained
state senator Frank Shurden. Shurden for the past two years has
pushed a bill to reduce the penalties for cockfighting from felonies
to misdemeanors.

Bullfight protesters beaten by cops

Members of Corporacion RAYA, also known as Red de Ayuda los
Animales, of Medallin, Colombia, were on February 28 beaten by
police during a protest against bullfighting for the second time in a
month.
“As happened on February 7, the anti-riot squad took
advantage of their jobs and hit the marchers,” an activist calling
herself “Girl From Mars” e-mailed to
<www.hsi-animalia@lists.hsus.org>, an electronic bulletin board
maintained by the Humane Society of the U.S.
“A 15-year-old boy was seriously injured in his eye and was
kept prisoner for about five hours, and so was a 17-year-old girl,”
the report added.

Bullfighting arena built in Beijing

South China Morning Post correspondent David Fang on March 13
reported that “A 3,000-seat bull ring, Asia’s biggest, is nearing
completion in the Daxing district of Beijing, next to the Beijing
Wildlife Park.”
Jiao Shenhai of the Daxing tourist bureau told Fang that the
ring was to host both Spanish-style bullfights and U.S.-style rodeo,
but outbreaks of mad cow disease in Spain had blocked the import of
Spanish fighting bulls.
“Communist China is quick to adopt any vice from any
culture,” commented Chinese animal advocate Peter Li, now teaching
at the Universiy of Houston.
Disagreed Peking University School of Journal-ism &
Communication professor Guan Sijie, “Chinese see the bull as
industrious, honest, and good friends. I don’t think Chinese
people will accept bullfighting.”

Canadian seal hunt underway

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island–“The Inter-national
Fund for Animal Welfare is out on the ice to monitor sealing and
document hunting violations,” IFAW communications coordinator Kerry
Branon e-mailed on March 24, the first day of the 2004 Atlantic
Canada offshore seal hunt.
The sealing season opened on November 15, 2003, but the
killing does not start in earnest each year until a new generation of
seal pups become accessible on the Gulf of St. Lawrence ice floes.
“The hunt, which is heavily subsidized by the Canadian
government, is expected to take as many as 350,000 seals over the
next few weeks,” Branon continued. “Seals may be killed once they
begin to moult their fluffy white coats–as young as 12 days old.
Ninety-five percent of the seals killed in the hunt are under three
months of age.
“In the last five years,” Branon charged, “IFAW has
submitted video evidence of more than 660 probable violations of law
to the Department of Fisheries & Oceans. Not one has been
investigated. These abuses include skinning live seals, dragging
live seals across the ice with hooks, and shooting seals and leaving
them to suffer.

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