Rosebud Sioux Tribe hog factory & Israeli foie gras cases

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe has reached an out-of-court
settlement with the U.S. Department of Interior that will limit the
Sun Prairie hog farming development on the reservation to just the
two 24-barn farms that are already operating, instead of the 13 that
the Bureau of Indian Affairs authorized on behalf of the Rosebud
Sioux Tribal Council in 1998, reported David Melmer of Indian
Country Today on May 9, 2005. In addition, the existing barns may
operate for only 20 years under the current lease, not 50 years,
Melmer wrote. Approval of the settlement by U.S. District Judge
Richard Battey is anticipated. “The two existing farms have 24 barns
that produce 2,000 hogs each per year and will continue to produce a
combined 96,000 hogs per year,” summarized Melmer. “Since the hog
farm lease agreement was announced, Concerned Rosebud Area Citizens,
the Humane Farming Association, and the South Dakota Peace & Justice
Center have tried to shut the project down. In 1999 a new tribal
council began trying to stop the growth of the hog farm, and in 2003
the BIA was asked to close it. The Department of Interior withdrew
the lease; Sun Prairie fought the tribe and the federal government
to keep the hog farms open. Nearly two years ago, Battey ruled that
the lease termination did not comply with due process and found the
lease to be valid.”

Welfare experts quit KFC posts

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Animal welfare consultants Temple Grandin of Colorado State
University and Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph, Ontario,
Canada, resigned from positions as advisors to the KFC fast food
chain during the first week of May 2005, after the parent firm, Yum
Brands, asked them to sign a confidentiality agreement that would
have required them to refer all media inquiries to the KFC corporate
headquarters. “I resigned because there is a document that I can’t
sign,” Grandin told Nichola Groom of Reuters. “I feel very strongly
that I [should be able to] talk freely to the press.” Grandin has
also advised McDonald’s, Wendy’s International, and Burger King
about animal welfare matters, but told Groom that none of them ever
asked her to sign an agreement to not speak to the press. Added
Duncan, “The way that I read it, it wouldn’t allow me to talk in
general terms about animal welfare. If someone phoned and said ‘You
are on the KFC animal welfare committee,’ I was bound to say ‘No
comment.”‘ KFC spokesperson Bonnie Warschauer said the company would
try to work out a new confidentiality agreement with Grandin and
Duncan, who have each advised KFC for about three years.

North America

Changings of the guard at Best Friends, Alley Cat Allies, Farm Sanctuary, Toledo Zoo, et al

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Bonney Brown, founder of the Neponset Valley Humane Society
in Massachusetts in 1992, and outreach director for the Best Friends
Animal Society since 1998, has taken a similar post with Alley Cat
Allies. “Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends have always had a strong
working relationship. We look forward to future collaboration,”
Brown said. Southern Animal Foundation co-founder Paul Berry, with
Best Friends since 2001, will fill Brown’s former position.

Farm Sanctuary cofounder Lorri Bauston, who left the
organization in July 2004 and resigned from the board in March 2005,
has announced that she will open a new 26-acre sanctuary called
Peaceable Kingdom in September 2005. Contact info: 5200 Escondido
Canyon Road, Acton, CA 93510; 661-269-0986;
<info@peaceablekingdomsanctuary.org>;
<http://peaceablekingdomsanctuary.org>.

North America

Editorial: Lessons from finding the ivory-billed woodpecker

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

At least one ivory-billed woodpecker still inhabits the Big
Woods region of Arkansas, the world learned on April 28, 2005.
Yet, 60 years after the brightly colored big bird was believed to
have been hunted to extinction, it is almost certainly still on the
brink.
Gene Sparling, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, first saw the
officially rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker on February 2, 2004
in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, a relatively dense and
impenetrable swamp, not far from U.S. I-40, which runs in an almost
straight line from Memphis southwest to Little Rock.
Ornithologists Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby
Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed the
Sparling sighting after accompanying him to the vicinity. David
Luneau, of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, on April 25,
2004 videotaped the ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from the trunk
of a tree.
Before announcing the find, the scientists enlisted the help
of The Nature Conservancy to purchase more habitat.

Seal hunt ends with “thin ice” incidents

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

HALIFAX, ST. JOHNS–Sealers on the Labrador Front were
expected to complete their 2005 quota of 319,500 seal pelts, the
most in 50 years, in early May. The first phase of the 2005
Atlantic Canada seal hunt, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, killed
107,000. Another 103,000 were killed along the Labrador Front by
April 18.
The Sea Shepherd flagship, the Farley Mowat, tried to
monitor the Labrador Front killing, but was pushed away from the ice
by a storm that delayed the opening of the second phase of the hunt
for three days, and was obliged to give up the pursuit on April 15.
Confused by the delay, the Boston Globe on April 12
published a fabricated article about the Labrador Front opening by
freelance Barbara Stewart. Following an extensive apology and
retraction, the Globe published a long pro-sealing commentary by
indigenous sealing industry spokespersons Kirt Ejesiak and Maureen
Flynn-Burhoe.

Fish boycott to save seals

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

NEW YORK CITY–Legal Seafoods, a 31-restaurant chain with
anchor franchises in New York City and Boston, on May 9 joined
Tavern-on-the-Green in Central Park and the 168-store Whole Foods
Market chain in endorsing a boycott of Atlantic Canada seafood called
by the Humane Society of the U.S. in protest against the Atlantic
Canadian seal hunt (see page 7).
The boycott targets snow crabs, lobsters. shrimp, mussels,
and ground fish.
The Legal Seafoods announcement coincided with the arrival in
New York City of Canadian ambassador Frank McKenna, who was to make
several prominent appearances.
While HSUS is promoting the boycott through a media strategy,
Anthony Marr of Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 13 set out on a
90-day “Terminate the Seal Hunt Campaign Tour” of the western U.S.
and Canada. Pushing the boycott through personal persuasion and
petitioning, Marr said he had 35 speaking engagements already
booked, with about 20 more still being finalized.
“Carmen Crosland, age 14, president of Youth Against Animal
Abuse, will display a web page at <www.YAAAonline.org> of all the
seafood merchants” who join the boycott, Mar said. Mar will also
post the list at his own campaign web site, <www.HOPE-CARE.org>,
and welcomes pledges and inquiries about his itinerary at either
<Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org> or 604-222-1169.

Petting zoos can make children sick

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

PLANT CITY, Florida–At least six lawsuits filed against
Ag-Venture Farms and the Florida Strawberry Festival, both of Plant
City, may hasten the demise of petting zoos. Two sheep, two cows,
and a goat exhibited by Ag-Venture Farms at the Florida Strawberry
Festival, the Florida State Fair near Tampa, and the Central
Florida fair in Orlando allegedly infected 30 to 80 visitors with an
often disabling and sometimes deadly form of e-coli bacteria during
March and April 2005, said the Florida Health Department.
The bacterium attacks the kidneys of victims, causing
hemolytic uremic syndrome, a severely painful condition that in
early stages is often mistaken for a stomach flu. Many victims are
incapacitated for life.
About 90% of the ill petting zoo patrons were children. How
many will suffer longterm effects is uncertain. There were no
verified fatalities. Tests failed to confirm a suspected link to the
March 2005 death of Kayla Nicole Sutter, 12, of Wesley Chapel, who
visited the Florida Strawberry Festival.
All 37 Ag-Venture Animals “will be quarantined for the rest
of their lives,” health officials told Saundra Amrhein of the St.
Petersburg Times.

Greyhound racing in New England staggers after two big tracks shut down

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

PLAINFIELD, Ct., BELMONT, N.H.–The last big bet on
greyhound racing in New England may be whether it survives at all,
after two of the five top tracks in the region closed within two
weeks of each other in April and May 2005.
The Plainfield Greyhound Park in Plainfield, Connecticut,
opened in 1976, closed at least temporarily on May 14, after
rushing through the 100 racing days it had to offer in 2005 to keep a
gambling license.
New England Raceway developer Gene Arganese, of Trumbull,
Connecticut, acquired an option to buy the dog track in 2004.
Arganese closed the track, he said, in order to proceed with a $343
million plan that would use the site for a 140,000-seat auto race
track, a convention center, a 700-room hotel, and an
800,000-square-foot shopping center.
But Arganese is hedging his bets.
“We’re hoping to have dog racing back by the end of 2006,” he said.
Susan Netboy, president of the California-based Greyhound
Protection League, touched off an Internet frenzy on April 29 when
Hartford Courant staff writer Steven Goode paraphrased her warning
that as many as 1,500 greyhounds might be homeless when the
Plainfield kennels close.

Charges against University of Nevada laboratory whistleblower dropped

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

RENO–University of Nevada at Reno president John Lilley on
April 29 informed animal nutrition professor Hussein S. Hussein by
letter that Lilley has accepted the recommendations of a hearing
officer and three-member university panel that misconduct charges
filed against Hussein should be dropped, university spokesperson
Jane Tors announced on May 2.
“After a seven-hour evidentiary hearing on April 19, the
panel and former Carson City District Judge Michael E. Fondi found
the charges groundless,” reported Scott Sonner of Associated Press.
“Lilley said in the April 29 letter to Hussein that he was
accepting their recommendations even though he still believes Hussein
acted inappropriately” in seeking veterinary help during May and June
2004 for 10 boars that he found inexplicably placed in the same barn
as his own research animals,” said Sonner.
Hussein testified that the boars “were copiously foaming at
the mouth, including one who broke out of a pen and chased two of
his graduate students, and he thought they might be rabid or have
other diseases,” wrote Frank X. Mullen Jr. of the Reno
Gazette-Journal.

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