Month: July 2004

Turkey, Austria, Italy win animal welfare laurels; Greece pulls up lame

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

ATHENS–Turkey, Austria, and Italy
claimed the gold, silver, and bronze medals for
passing pro-animal legislation on the eve of the
2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Britain tried to
get into the race.
Activists pushing for animal welfare
reform in Greece meanwhile say they have had
little to show for their pre-Olympic efforts so
far except videos of dead dogs and cats, and
livestock being abused en route to slaughter.
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan on
July 1 endorsed into law the most comprehensive
animal welfare statute in the Islamic world.
“I am now in contact with the government
to discuss implementing the law as it affects
stray animal control,” Fethiye Friends of
Animals founder Perihan Agnelli told ANIMAL
PEOPLE.
“I am very pleased,” Agnelli said,
“that as well as neuter/return being lawfully
accepted as the method of animal control [except
in the case of a declared rabies emergency],
compulsory neutering of privately owned dogs is
also to become law.

Read more

HAPS is back at work in Ethiopia

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

ADDIS ABABA–The Homeless Animal Protection Society of
Ethiopia has survived six months of bureaucratic attack by proponents
of killing street dogs, cofounders Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle
e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 5, 2004.
“After all the pressure to destroy us and HAPS through
misinformation became exposed,” Legese and Kifle wrote, “about 98%
of all the higher officials, the local community, and the staff of
Bale Mountains National Park promised to stand beside us and help in
any way they can. We pray for longer life and health so that we can
stop the suffering of homeless dogs here in Ethiopia.”
In June 2004, Legese explained, “The Oromiya Civil Service
commission law court decided that we should return to our work, with
all our salaries paid since the day we were suspended unjustly,” in
January 2004.
Oromiya Rural Land and Natural Resource Authority director Siraaj Bakkalii
Shaffee refused to accept the verdict, Legese said, and
tried to have Legese and Kifle arrested. Legese and Kifle turned
themselves in to the Bale Zone Police Department, who found that the
court had already dismissed the charges.
Radio Ethiopia amplified the outcome.

Read more

Pilgrim’s Pride & pride in slaughter

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

MOORFIELD, West Virginia –The poultry processing firm
Pilgrim’s Pride on July 21, 2004 fired three managers and eight
hourly workers at a slaughterhouse in Moorfield, West Virginia,
where a PETA undercover videographer documented workers killing
chickens by stomping them and beating them against walls.
“The move followed an ultimatum by KFC, a major customer,
that it would stop buying chicken from the plant unless there were
assurances that the abuse had stopped,” wrote Barry Shlacter of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
KFC president Gregg Dedrick told Vicki Smith of Associated
Press that KFC will hire a fulltime animal welfare inspector to
monitor the slaughterhouse, which is one of two similar facilities
in Moorfield that are owned by Pilgrim’s Pride. Altogether,
Pilgrim’s Pride employs 2,300 people in a county of under 13,000.
Pilgrim’s Pride, headquartered in Pittsburg, Texas, is the
second-largest poultry producer in the U.S., employing 40,000 people
at 24 slaughterhouses in 17 states, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
After PETA posted the video on its web site, “The Pilgrim’s
Pride share price fell 3%, while that of KFC’s parent company, Yum
Brands, lost 2%,” Shlacter reported.

Read more

Non-surgical sterilization wait goes on with new hopes & many frustrations

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BRECKENRIDGE, Colorado– The good news about the
long-anticipated arrival of effective, practical, inexpensive
non-surgical birth control for cats and dogs may be that the bad news
is not worse.
One effective and safe chemosterilant for male dogs,
Neutersol, is now available to humane societies at reduced cost. A
similar product for cats is in development.
The early test results are “very favorable,” University of
Missouri at Columbia researcher Min Wang on June 27, 2004 told the
Second International Symposium on Non-surgical Contraceptive Methods
for Pet Population Control, held in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Immunocontraceptives for female dogs and cats are still just
over the horizon.
Breakthroughs anticipated five years ago unfortunately have
not materialized. Research involving porcine zona pellucida (pZP)
may be chasing a mirage, many dog and cat contraceptive developers
now believe.
ZooMontana director Jay Kirkpatrick showed in 1990 that pZP
can be used as a contraceptive in horses.
“Immunization of female mammals with purified glycoproteins
from the outermost layer of oocytes, namely the zona pellucida,
often results in autoimmunity and infertility,” explained Dalhousie
University biology professor Bill Pohajdak. “The three components of
zona pellucida from many species have been cloned and sequenced
Porcine ZP is widely used because of availability.

Read more

Editorial: Treating people like animals

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

A photograph of U.S. Army Private First Class Lynndie
England, 21, dragging a naked Iraqi military prisoner on a dog
leash emerged early during the investigation of abuses to prisoners
by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The photo, part
of a sequence featuring England mistreating naked Iraqi men, could
scarcely have been more illustrative of how the standard treatment of
dogs in a society tends to set the floor for the treatment of humans.
While the standard for the treatment of dogs in the U.S. is
still low, it does exist. The legal definitions of abuse in many
states remain weak, and the definitions of neglect are often weaker,
but the federal Animal Welfare Act and the anti-cruelty laws of all
50 states specifically set some limits on what may be done to a dog.
For the most part, the U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib who have
been disciplined for mistreating prisoners were accused of doing
things that they could have done to dogs with impunity. Only seven
guards who allegedly went beyond what could be done to dogs were
criminally charged during the preliminary investigation.
Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek of the U.S. Army Office of
the Inspector General on July 23 disclosed 94 additional cases of
abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 39 deaths of
which 20 were homicides. Criminal charges are anticipated in
connection with these cases.

Read more

New Jersey standards

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

TRENTON, N.J.–The American SPCA, New Jersey SPCA,
Farm Sanctuary, and Humane Society of the U.S. on July 20, 2004
sued the New Jersey Department of Agriculture for allegedly failing
to meet a 1996 mandate to develop humane standards for farm animal
care.
On May 4, 2004 the New Jersey Department of Agriculture
issued standards that allow the use of gestation crates for sows,
veal crates, and withholding food from laying hens to force a molt.
(See AVMA vs. AVAR, page 12.)

The chips are down in high-stakes battle over scanner tech

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

PORTLAND, Ore.; NORCO, Calif.–The microchip wars have reignited.
A decade after American Veterin-ary Identification Devices
and the Schering-Plough Animal Health Corporation resolved
compatibility problems between AVID microchips and the HomeAgain
chips made for Schering-Plough by Digital Angel Corp., lawsuits and
threats of lawsuits involving microchips are flying with surprising
velocity considering that only about 2.5% of all the dogs and cats in
homes in the U.S. carry microchip identification.
The present size of the microchip market appears to be less
at issue than growth potential. AVID and Schering-Plough donated
thousands of scanners to animal shelters just to get them into use,
and even then, the National Animal Control Association vocally
objected to having microchip scanning added to the animal control
workload.
Microchipping has now proved itself, including in alerting
shelters to the previously seldom detected practice of unhappy
neighbors or estranged “significant others” surrendering stolen pets
to shelters as their own.
A recent NACA survey indicates that about 37% of U.S. animal
control shelters now microchip the animals they adopt out. Microchip
makers are betting that soon most pets will be microchipped.

Read more

Hired

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

James Bias is the new president of the SPCA of Texas in
Dallas, succeeding Warren Cox, who left in November 2003. Bias
previously headed the Humane Society & SPCA of Bexar County in San
Antonio, Albuquerque Animal Services, and the Humane Society of
North Texas in Fort Worth, and was operations director for Citizens
for Animal Protection in Houston. Cox, running animal shelters
since 1952, is now interim chief at the Montgomery County Animal
Shelter in Dayton, Ohio.

Mike Russell, 59, was in June 2004 named president and CEO
of the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, succeeding Monte Hummel, the
head since 1978. Russell formerly chaired AADCO Automotive Inc.,
and held marketing posts with Sunoco, Petro Canada, and Shell
Canada.

AVMA bars Association of Vets for Animal Rights from tabling

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

PHILADELPHIA–Fuming over public criticism of American
Veterinary Medical Association farm animal welfare policies, AVMA
executive vice president Bruce Little on July 21 barred the
Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights from tabling at a
booth it had already reserved and paid for during the five-day AVMA
annual conference, July 24-28.
AVAR vice president Holly Cheever was allowed to address a
pre-conference meeting of convention delegates, but AVAR was
otherwise excluded for “espousing philosophies or actions in
opposition to those of the AVMA.”
Explained Cheever on the AVAR web site, “On June 21, 2004,
a full-page ad ran in the New York Times asking, ‘Has anyone
betrayed more animals than the American Veterinary Medical
Association?’ The ad,” similar to one published in the April 2004
edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, “was sponsored by Animal Rights
International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
United Poultry Concerns, and the Association of Veterinarians for
Animal Rights.
“While AVAR did not create the ad,” Cheever said, “we were
asked if we wished to sign it, since it addressed many issues which
AVAR has brought before the AVMA.

Read more

1 2 3 4