Awards & honors

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Humane Farming Association investigator Gail Eisnitz, author
of the 1997 expose book Slaughterhouse, is recipient of the 2004
Albert Schweitzer Medal, presented by the Animal Welfare Institute
for outstanding achievement in animal welfare. In 1994-1995 Eisnitz
had a significant role in exposing illegal veal industry use of the
synthetic steroid clenbuterol, leading to the criminal convictions of
several prominent U.S. veal producers. In April 2000 Eisnitz
obtained videotape documenting extensive but still unprosecuted
alleged violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at the IBP meatpacking
plant in Wallula, Washington. Eisnitz has been helping Sioux
opponents of factory pig farming to fight plans by Sun Prairie Inc.
to establish pig barns on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South
Dakota since 1998. Sun Prairie began raising pigs in 24 barns at two
Rosebud sites in 1999. In February 2003, however, the U.S. Supreme
Court declined to review an April 2002 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
verdict that may evict Sun Prairie from the reservation–if Sun
Prairie loses a crossfiled case still underway. Meanwhile Eisnitz
has submitted 65 pages of employee interviews and photos to South
Dakota attorney general Lawrence E. Long, asking him to prosecute
Sun Prairie for multiple acts of alleged cruelty.

Lynette Shanley of Portland, Australia, founder of the
advocacy organizations Primates for Primates and Wild Cats Plus, is
a 2004 recipient of the World League for Protection of Animals
Compassion Award. Fighting cancer since 1998, Shanley in a recent
interview with Tracy Sorensen of the Australian newspaper Western
Advocate mentioned as well as her concern for nonhuman primates and
felines of all sorts her disgust with “People leaving dogs chained up
all day, and people who deliberately run over lizards and snakes.”
Sorensen also noted a successful campaign that Shanley led against
the use of live ducks to teach “parenting” skills to primary school
children.

North Shore Animal League America volunteer and Best Friends
Animal Society intern Ariel Morgan Kravitz, 15, of Manhasset Hills,
New York is recipient of the first Humane Teen of the Year Award,
from the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education.
NAHEE is a subsidiary of the Numane Society of the U.S., long
intensely critical of the no-kill approach to animal sheltering
exemplified by both North Shore and Best Friends. HSUS is also
sponsoring a teaching track at the Conference on Homeless Animal
Management & Policy this year, organized by North Shore, founded in
1995 as the No Kill Conference.

Zhang Xingguo, 32, of Hulado, Liaoning province, China,
was given the honorary title “Green Chef” on April 20 by the China
Wildlife Conserv-ation Association. A chef for 13 years, Zhang
Xingguo has been fired eight times for refusing to cook hedgehogs,
pangolins, and other wildlife.

Lulu, 4, an eastern grey kangaroo, is to receive the
Australian Animal Valor Award, the Royal SPCA announced on April 28.
Cattle rancher Len Richards, 51, raised Lulu after her mother was
killed by a logging truck. In September 2003 Richards was knocked
out by a falling tree limb while working alone on his ranch, 100
miles east of Melbourne. Richards told Associated Press that he was
apparently out for half an hour before his nephew Brendan Richards
responded to frantic activity by Lulu and came to the rescue.
“Brendan said she was standing over me with her big hind legs at my
back,” Richards said. “She looked like she’d rolled me over to keep
my airway clear, but we’ll never know for sure.” Lulu is the second
kangaroo listed in the ANIMAL PEOPLE log of heroic and compassionate
animals, begun in 1994. The first was an orphan raised by Nigel
Etherington, whose remote home is closest to Perth. In March 1997,
several years after a kangaroon was released, he woke Etherington by
pounding furiously on his door to alert him to a housefire.