Month: July 2008

Infiltrator Sapone exposed again

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
WASHINGTON D.C.– New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg on
August 7, 2008 asked the National Rifle Association to disclose full
details of the alleged espionage activities within gun control
organizations of Mary McFate, 62, also known as Mary Lou Sapone.
McFate/Sapone was exposed a week earlier by James Ridgeway,
Daniel Schulman, and David Corn of Mother Jones magazine.
“According to Mother Jones,” summarized Lautenberg to NRA
president John C. Sigler, “Mary McFate spent more than a decade
rising through the ranks at several gun violence prevention
organizations, including CeaseFire PA, Freedom States Alliance, and
States United to Prevent Gun Violence. At the same time,
McFate-going by the name Mary Lou Sapone-reportedly was a paid
‘research consultant’ for the NRA. As a result, McFate/Sapone was in
a position to learn about, and to report back to the NRA on, the
concerns, plans and strategies of various gun violence prevention
groups.

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CITES okays China to buy ivory stocks

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
GENEVA–The Con-vention on International Trade in Endangered
Species on July 15, 2008 authorized China to buy 119 metric tons of
elephant ivory from the official government stores kept by Botswana,
Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
The stockpiles include ivory from elephants culled in the name
of population control or to protect crops and human life, as well as
ivory taken from poachers and illegal traffickers.
“Poaching has already reached a level surpassing that before the
1989 ban on the ivory trade,” said former Kenya Wildlife Service
director Michael Wamithi, now heading the Inter-national Fund for
Animal Welfare elephant program.
“A little legal ivory is sufficient to launder a lot of illicit
ivory,” warned the French conservation group Robin des Bois, “and
there is no doubt the price of ivory will skyrocket after China’s
entry into the ivory stock exchange,” in competition with Japan,
the only other approved bidder.

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WSPA president objects to coverage

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
World Society for the Protection of
Animals president Dominique Bellemare responded
as shown at left to the print edition of the June
2008 ANIMAL PEOPLE article “Rise of Quebec
politician to WSPA board presidency raises
questions.”
ANIMAL PEOPLE of course regrets that we
did not learn earlier that Bellemare’s former
legal partner Harry Bloomfield was eventually
acquitted on appeal of the alleged offenses for
which he was convicted four years earlier.
Bellemare could have provided that information
before the press date in response to our
questions, but he did not do so.

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SHARK wins a round in court re use rodeo videos

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
CHEYENNE–U.S. District Judge William Downes on July 29, 2008
dismissed a lawsuit filed by Romeo Entertainment Group Inc. against
Show-ing Animals Respect & Kindness, better known as SHARK.
The case alleged that SHARK used “false and misleading
information” and “threats of negative publicity” to influence singer
Carrie Underwood and the band Matchbox 20 to cancel shows at the
Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in 2006 and 2008.
Downes ruled that while the case could not be pursued in
Wyoming, due to lack of jurisdiction, it could be refiled in either
Illinois or Oklahoma. Romeo Entertainment attorney J. Kent Rutledge
told Associated Press writer Bob Moen that either the ruling would be
appealed or the case would be refiled in another state.

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Dog racing ban on Massachusetts ballot

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
BOSTON–The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on July
16, 2008 allowed the Committee to Protect Dogs, co-chaired by Grey
2K cofounder Christine Dorchak, to place on the November 2008 state
ballot an initiative that would ban greyhound racing and would put
the last two tracks in Massachusetts out of business by January 2010.
The first Grey 2K effort to ban greyhound racing in
Massachusetts failed by 1% of the vote in 2000. In July 2006 the
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected as overbroad a
proposed ballot initiative that would have prohibited greyhound
racing and would have provided stiffer sentences for dogfighting and
harming police dogs.
The greyhound industry may have less money this year for
campaigning. The city of Revere, Massachusetts in July 2008
foreclosed on the Wonderland Greyhound Park over $789,293 in unpaid
taxes, and is owed $16,674 in water and sewage bills, reported
Katheleen Conti of the Boston Globe on August 1. “Wonderland is the
city’s eighth-largest taxpayer, and now its largest tax delinquent,”
Conti wrote. “In 1994, Wonderland paid $1.6 million in back taxes.
The city placed a lien on the property in June 2007.”

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South Korea begins regulating dogs as livestock under new pollution law

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
SEOUL–The South Korean Minis-try of Food, Agriculture,
Forestry and Fish-eries in mid-August 2008 announced that it will
start regulating dogs as livestock for the purpose of enforcing a
newly revised Livestock Night Soil Disposal Act, effective on
September 28.
The South Korean dog meat industry has long sought to add
dogs to the list of designated meat animals, to overturn the
unenforced 1991 law that was promoted to the world as a ban on
selling dog meat, but only prohibits the public sale of “disgusting
foods.”

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To buy or not to buy–that is the question in dealing with puppy millers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
MILWAUKEE–Southern Wisconsin ClearChannel radio stations on
August 20, 2008 unleashed 14 hours of “Beaglemania” broadcast from
the Wisconsin Humane Society to help Wisconsin Humane find adopters
for the first 300 of more than 1,100 dogs acquired from the former
Puppy Haven Kennel in Markesan.
Wisconsin Humane bought Puppy Haven from breeder Wallace
Havens in July 2008 for an undisclosed sum that WHS board member Tony
Enea told Jackie Loohavis-Bennett of the Milwaukee Journal was
“pennies on the dollar.”
Selling about 3,000 dogs a year at peak, Puppy Haven owner
Wallace Havens was suspended and fined by the American Kennel Club in
2006 for record keeping and care violations.

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ABC halts, street dog numbers rise in Bangalore

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
BANGALORE–Unpaid by the city in four months, Krupa Loving
Animals, Karuna, and Compassion Unlimited Plus Action have
suspended doing Animal Birth Control program surgeries for Bangalore
municipality, and the Animal Rights Fund will stop on September 1,
2008, Afshan Yasmeen of The Hindu reported on August 15, 2008.
A fifth animal charity, Ahmedabad-based Animal Help, has
sterilized more than 5,000 dogs recently in outlying parts of
Bangalore, demonstrating the efficacy of same-day release of dogs
after surgery, in lieu of the multi-day holding periods for
post-surgical recovery that are practiced by most ABC programs. The
Animal Help approach, abbreviated as CNVR, requires using
high-speed, small-incision surgery under much more strictly aseptic
conditions than is the ABC norm.

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U.S. shelters killed 2.3 million cats & 1.9 million dogs last year. Nearly half of the dogs were pit bulls.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:

 
Six of the eight major geographic regions of the U.S. show
continuing declines in shelter killing, but two have gone backward
according to the 15th annual ANIMAL PEOPLE review of recent shelter
exit data.
Newly received data from shelter polls in Ohio and Louisiana,
covering the years 2004 and 2005, respectively, show that the
headline “U.S. shelter killing toll drops to 3.7 million dogs & cats”
above publication of our 2007 analysis was much too optimistic.
The Ohio survey was directed by Ohio State University
graduate student Linda Lord. The Louisiana survey was done by Garo
Alexanian of the Companion Animal Network. Lord et al found that the
Ohio rate of shelter killing was within 1.5 animals per 1,000 of the
2007 ANIMAL PEOPLE projection, but Alexanian found that the ANIMAL
PEOPLE projection for Louisiana was 3.2 animals low. Together, the
Ohio and Louisiana findings pushed a recalculation of the mid-2007
national shelter killing toll up to 4.0 million animals, at a rate
of 13.6 per 1,000 Americans.

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