Month: December 2005

Wild horses & cattle at risk in the Danube Delta

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Wild horses & cattle at risk in the Danube Delta
by Andreea Plescan with further research by ANIMAL PEOPLE

Untamed and undiscovered by tourism and
development, the Danube Delta is home to more
than 300 bird species, 160 fish species, and
more than 800 plant families.
Protected as a wetlands biosphere
reserve, the Romanian portion of the Danube
Delta occupies 2,622 square miles of channels and
canals, widening into tree-fringed lakes, reed
islands, marshes, some oak forest intertwined
with lianas and creepers, desert dunes, and
some traditional fishing villages.
The Danube Delta is also home to the
largest population of wild horses and cattle in
Europe. Their combined population is officially
estimated at about 7,500. Some escaped from
farms to join wild herds during the 2005 floods.
Some escaped earlier, or their ancestors did.
Many were released to graze on the biosphere
reserve by farmers who hoped to recapture them
later, but abandoned them when horse flesh and
beef prices dropped.

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Letters [Dec 2005]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Irish greyhounds

I am concerned that people reading your November 2005 article
“How Irish dog racers muzzle humane critics” will think that Limerick
Animal Welfare takes money from the Irish Greyhound Racing Board, or
that we in some way support the greyhound racing industry. Limerick
Animal Welfare is opposed to greyhound racing, as it encourages the
overbreeding and abuse of greyhounds. Indeed I have just bought
some greyhound coats for our next protest which state “Race Cars not
Dogs.”
We cannot speak for other welfare organizations, and it is
unfortunate that some have decided to accept money from the Greyhound
Racing Board. This gives the board the opportunity to say that they
are working with welfare groups and saving many greyhounds.
Unfortunately, the amount expended on greyhound welfare by the Board
is a pittance despite the huge government subsidies they receive.
Limerick Animal Welfare has been rescuing greyhounds and
lurchers from dog pounds and other sites for 12 years. Avalon, the
greyhound sanctuary, of which I am a director, has done this work
for at least eight years. Avalon usually shelters 75 greyhounds and
lurchers.

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Elephant Sanctuary to get last Cuneo eles

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

CHICAGO–The Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, in
late December 2005 expects to receive nine female elephants from the
Hawthorn Corporation of Richmond, Illinois. The move will put John
Cuneo, 74, out of the elephant training and rental business after
48 years.
Cuneo started the Hawthorn Corporation as a traveling circus
in 1957. Later Cuneo found a more profitable business niche in
leasing animals to other circuses and boarding exotic animals.
Cuneo agreed in March 2004 to settle 47 alleged Animal Welfare Act
violations by divesting of his 16 elephants by August 2004. The
divestiture was repeatedly delayed by disputes over where to send
them.

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Trafficking brings H5N1 threat home

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

NEW HAVEN–Pickled “jellyfish” could bring the potentially
deadly H5N1 avian flu virus to the U.S., a courtroom learned on
December 15 in New Haven, Connecticut. Food King Inc. owner
Vichittra “Vicky” Aramwatananont pleaded guilty to smuggling more
than 27,600 pounds of chicken feet into the U.S. from Thailand,
mislabeled “jellyfish” to evade inspection. The chicken feet were
sold in 11 states.
“Aramwatananont faces up to six months in prison, but is not
expected to receive jail time when she is sentenced on March 24,”
reported Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo. “Food King will pay
$170,000 as part of a plea agreement.”
Still passing mostly from bird to bird, rarely crossing into
humans and even more rarely into other mammals, H5N1 has killed 71
people in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Cambodia since
2003: just over half the total number of people known to have become
infected. Most victims were poultry workers, cockfighters, or
members of the families of poultry workers and cockfighters, who
shared their homes with sick birds.

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Individual Compensation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Individual Compensation
(Chief executives &/or top-paid staff & consultants)

Nonprofit chief executive salaries rose 2.2% in fiscal 2004,
according to a national survey by the Nonprofit Times. Fundraisers’
salaries rose 15%, said the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
The Pay column below is information taken from the IRS Form
990 filings of those organizations listed in “Who gets the money?”
that have filed Form 990. Since balance sheets rarely include
equivalent data, and nations other than the U.S. do not require
public disclosure of individual compensation, no compensation data
is presented for other organizations. Pay combines salaries,
benefit plan contributions (if any), and expense accounts for the
few people who are not required to itemize expenses. Some
independent contractors such as attorneys, accountants, and
consultants are listed as well as directors and regular staff.
Included below are chief executive officers, highest paid
staff if other than chief executives, and other top-paid staff of
note, for example often quoted in news coverage, as well as close
relatives of top-paid staff who may also be in leadership positions.
Chief executives who claim no compensation are listed as
OthrIncm, short for “has other income.” Where possible, the
occupations of those who have other work are identified. Others are
most often retired, supported by a spouse, or have investment
income. Some may receive royalties and/or speaking fees.

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Animal Friends Croatia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Page 1–

“Many citizens were surprised on November 5, 2005 to see
Robert Francizsty’s performance ‘T4-Work in Progress’ in downtown
Zagreb,” writes Animal Friends Croatia. Organized to promote a
seminar on the Charles Patterson book Eternal Treblinka: Our
Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, the performance coincided
with the arrival of avian flu H4N1 in Croatia and the ensuing
slaughter and incineration of tens of thousands of factory-farmed
poultry in a “stamping out” effort symbolically represented by shoes
and chicken carcasses. Helping Francizsty were fire swallower Senata
Hren, narrator Nina Coric, composer Igor Bogdanic, and video
director Drazen Jeren.

Page 12–

Striding through a poultry market in a gas mask, Robert Francizsty
startled shoppers and butchers in Zagreb, Croatia on November 5 with
a protest against factory farming that coincided with massacres of
factory-farmed fowl to combat the avian flu H5N1.
(Animal Friends Croatia)

BOOKS: Japan’s Dolphin Drive Fisheries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Japan’s Dolphin Drive Fisheries: Propped up by the Aquarium Industry
& “Scientific Studies”
by Sakae Hemmi (Supervised by Eiji Fujiwara)

Elsa Nature Conservancy
(Box 2, Tsukuba Gakuen Post Office, Tsukuba 305-8691, Japan), 2005.
33 pages paperback, no price listed.

Sakae Hemmi and the Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan
published this expose of “The reopened dolphin hunts at Futo on the
Izu Peninsula in Shiuoka Prefecture and the dolphin export plan of
Taiji Town in Wakayama Prefecture” just before the 2005 dolphin
drives were to begin, on the eve of an international day of protest
against the dolphin killing led by Ric O’Barry of One Voice.
Hemmi, campaigning against the Futo and Taiji dolphin
massacres since 1976, nearly nine years ago wrote A Report on the
1996 Dolphin Catch Quota Violation at Futo Fishing Harbor. That
report served chiefly to alert the international marine mammal
activist community to the longtime existence of committed opposition
to dolphin slaughter and commercial whaling within Japan.
Capturing dolphins for use in exhibition and
swim-with-dolphins attractions had already emerged as a lucrative
secondary market for the dolphin-killers, whose primary motive has
traditionally been attempting to exterminate competitors for fish.

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Obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Tina Nelson, 48, executive director of the American
Anti-Vivisection Society since 1995, died on October 19, 2005,
after fighting cancer for a year and a half. Hired by the Bucks
County SPCA after earning a biology degree from the Delaware Valley
College of Science & Agriculture, Nelson became chief cruelty
investigator, then worked as a domestic relations officer for the
Bucks County court system, program coordinator for the Great Lakes
Regional Office of the Humane Society of the U.S., and founder of
Kind Earth, a cruelty-free products store in Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, which she sold to take on the AAVS leadership. Under
Nelson, AAVS sued the USDA for excluding rats, mice, and birds
from federal Animal Welfare Act protection in 1970 by writing them
out of the definition of “animal” in the enforcement regulations.
This meant that more than 95% of all animals used in U.S.
laboratories have no coverage. In September 2000 the USDA agreed to
protect rats, mice, and birds in an out-of-court settlement. The
USDA then delayed implementing the settlement. In May 2002 former
Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) attached a rider to a USDA
budget bill that made the exclusion of rats, mice, and birds from
the enforcement regulations an actual part of the law.

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