Awards & honors

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Awards

“Why be kind to tahrs?”

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

CAPE TOWN–Twenty-three prominent South African
environmentalists on April 4, 2004 published a joint letter urging
the immediate massacre of the last Himalayan tahrs on Table Mountain.
Endangered in India, where the goat-like tahrs are native,
they are officially deemed “invasive” in South Africa. The Table
Mountain herd, culled sporadically for nearly 30 years, is
descended from a pair who escaped from the long defunct Groote Schuur
Zoo in 1936. A helicopter count recently found 51, but Table
Mountain National Park staff say there may be as many as 150.
Fifty-four tahrs were killed in 2000 before an effort to
exterminate them was halted at request of former Indian minister for
animal welfare Maneka Gandhi and Friends of the Tahr, who hoped to
repatriate the survivors to India but have not raised enough money to
do it.
“Why be kind to tahrs specifically? Why not a ‘Friends of
the Norwegian rat’ or a ‘Friends of the cholera virus’?” asked the
joint letter from the environmentalists.
The joint letter was reportedly drafted by Working For Water
chair Guy Preston.

Discovering Help In Suffering

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Discovering Help In Suffering
by Ursula Wilby

In late February and early March 2004 I visited India.
Arriving in Delhi I was surprised to see dogs everywhere. Some were
in rather bad shape with mange. But others looked healthy and–at
least from a distance–well fed.
Our first stop after Delhi was Jaipur. I got up at the crack
of dawn, camera ready, and positioned myself in a nearby square,
watching the town wake up. It was fascinating to observe the dogs
and their behaviour toward each other and all the other animals
competing for scraps of food thrown out on huge rubbish piles. The
first thing I noticed was that the dogs, without exception, seemed
happy. Although they did not rush up to me, it was quite obvious
that they were treated well, as they never avoided human contact
either.
I was puzzled by the number of dogs. While there were more
than we normally see in northern European cities, there still seemed
to be too few, considering that there apparently was no human
interference with mating.
I decided to ask at the hotel how the dog population was kept
at a reasonable level. The answer I got was that if there were too
many dogs, the government would round them up and take them away.

Asia

Court Calendar

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

A two-judge panel from the Supreme Court of India on March
11, 2004 upheld the right of civil authorities to ban the sale of
meat, fish, and eggs within the pilgrimage city of Rishikesh. The
ban was first formally proclaimed in 1956, and was extended in 1976.

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI in April 2004 agreed
to pay $2 million to Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney and the
estate of the late Judi Bari in settlement of a civil suit resulting
from the FBI response to a bomb that detonated in their car in
Oakland, California on May 24, 1990. Bari, who never fully
recovered from her injuries, died of cancer in 1997. The FBI
investigated Cherney and Bari as suspects in making and transporting
the bomb, but never charged them, while allegedly ignoring evidence
that the bomb may have been planted by opponents of Earth First!
After a two-month trial in 2002, a federal jury ordered the FBI and
Oakland police to pay $4.4 million to Cherney and the Bari estate.
The city of Oakland agreed to pay $2 million in four annual
installments, but the FBI appealed.

Cat fight at API Primate Sanctuary

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

SACRAMENTO–The Animal Protection Institute took an online
beating from feral cat advocates, other sanctuary operators, and
supporters of former API Primate Sanctuary director Lou Griffin in
late April 2004 after an intern at the sanctuary in Dilley, Texas,
circulated an e-mail asking for help in sterilizing 60 to 80 feral
cats who dwell among the resident Japanese macaques.
Griffin and Aesop Project founder Linda Howard, a
Griffin-era volunteer, agreed that the sanctuary had 19 cats when
API fired Griffin in March 2002, and that all of those cats were
sterilized. API contends that some cats there then were not
sterilized, and that their offspring formed the present colony.
Griffin sued API after she was fired by former executive
director Alan Berger, who left API himself in April 2003 and now
heads the John Ancrum SPCA in South Carolina. The case is still in
court.
An alternate hypothesis is that the cat population grew from
abandonees between Griffin’s exit, after 22 years, and the arrival
of current sanctuary director Nedim Buyukmihci, VMD, about 18
months later.

North America

Discount deal on Neutersol for humane societies in developing nations

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

FAYETTE, Missouri; CONCORD, N.H.– One day after the April
2004 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, noting that the
U.S.-approved chemosterilant Neutersol is still not affordably
available to help control street dogs in developing nations,
Neutersol product director Cord Harper announced that the
manufacturer, Addison Biological Laboratory Inc. in Fayette,
Missouri, “would like to show a strong commitment to the
international animal welfare community by offering 100,000 vials of
Neutersol at $15 per vial to a coalition of groups that could put it
to good use in developing countries where it is desperately needed.”
Harper, who had not yet seen the ANIMAL PEOPLE coverage,
made the offer through Peter Bender and Anne Ostberg of the Pegasus
Foundation.
Based in Concord, New Hampshire, with a second office in
West Palm Beach, Florida, the Pegasus Foundation funds dog and cat
sterilization in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and the Navajo Nation,
including parts of Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico.
“Neutersol has begun gaining acceptance in the U.S. animal welfare
community. Many of the largest shelters in the country are beginning
to adopt it,” Harper said. “We have inventory that would be much
better utilized to permanently and humanely sterilize hundreds of
thousands of dogs rather than sit in a warehouse.”

Medicine

House bill opens fire on mute swans

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The House of Representatives Resources
Committee on May 5 sent to the full House the so-called Migratory
Bird Treaty Reform Act (H.R. 4114) and the less controversial Marine
Turtle Conservation Act (H.R. 3378). Both bills were introduced by
Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans Subcommittee chair Wayne
Gilchrest (R-MD).
Both bills are expected to advance rapidly through Congress
as two of the major election year Republican gestures toward
environmentalists.
The Marine Turtle Conservation Act provides funding for foreign
conservation programs.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act would exempt
“non-native” species from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918,
reversing recent court rulings and consent decrees signed by the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service in settlement of activist lawsuits which
stipulate that the act covers all migratory waterfowl–including mute
swans and the giant Canada geese introduced across the U.S. by the
Fish & Wildlife Service during the 1950s through the 1970s.
The giant Canada geese do not actually migrate, and for that
reason have been exempted from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act since
1994 by decree, but they are hybrid look-alikes for the migratory
variety, bred and released by the Fish & Wildlife Service in hopes
of rebuilding the migratory flocks so that more geese could be hunted.

“Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting city”

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

BARCELONA–Ernest Hemingway, in Death In The Afternoon
(1932), mentioned Barcelona as perhaps the only city where
bullfights could be watched all year round. Barcelona then supported
three of the world’s largest bullfighting stadiums –and tourists had
just barely begun to attend.
On April 5, 2004, the Barcelona city council voted by
secret ballot, 21-15 with two abstentions, in favor of a
non-binding resolution stating “Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting
city.” The vote affirmed a petition circulated by the Asociacion
Defensa Derechos Animal, signed by 250,000 Barcelona citizens.
Opinion polls showed that 63% of Barcelonians now disapprove
of bullfighting; 55% favored banning it.
The Barcelona resolution will not close La Monumental, the
last functioning bull ring in the city. About 100 bulls per year are
killed at La Monumental, chiefly to thrill tourists, in a season that
now runs from March through September. More bulls are killed only in
Madrid and Sevilla.
Bullfighting in Barcelona can actually be banned only by the Catalan
regional parliament. The Catalan parliament in mid-2003 barred
children under age 14 from attending bullfights, 18 months after
Mexico City restricted bullfight and cockfight attendance to persons
over 18 years of age.

Storm over dogs & cats in the Carolinas

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.–Hurricanes
often hit the Carolinas, raining dogs and cats.
But they rarely blow so far inland and never rage
so long as the storms over animal control policy
underway for almost a year now, driven by fatal
maulings, dogfighting incidents, and rising
awareness that the region has one of the highest
rates of shelter killing in the U.S.–and the
world, since despite recent progress in reducing
the numbers, the U.S. stills kills more dogs and
cats per 1,000 residents than most other nations.
A federal grand jury on April 27, 2004
indicted pit bull terrier owner Roddie Philip
Dumas, 29, of Charlotte, North Carolina, for
possessing crack cocaine with intent to sell,
using and carrying a firearm during a drug
trafficking offense, being a convicted felon in
possession of firearms and ammunition, and
intimidating and interfering with a U.S. mail
carrier, reported Charlotte Observer staff
writer Gary L. Wright.

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