Coffee fad revives civet farming (long version)

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010

DENPASAR, HANOI–Just seven years after
China banned civet farming because of the
association of civet consumption with more than
800 human deaths from Sudden Acute Respiratory
Syndrome, a vogue for pricy civet coffee has
brought the industry back perhaps bigger than
ever–and certainly in many more places.
Sold to coffee snobs as kopi luwak, the
Indonesian word for it, civet coffee is brewed
from the beans that civets excrete after eating
coffee berries, one of their favorite foods.
Civet coffee is by reputation stronger and
usually more aromatic than most coffees.
Collecting and salvaging the excreted
beans from wild civets is so laborious that civet
coffee, known for centuries, has historically
been so costly to produce as to be consumed only
in small amounts by the very rich and jaded. But
civet farming in coffee-growing country has
brought civet coffee within occasionally reach of
the merely affluent–at prices of from $50 to
$100 a cup.

Read more

Whole Foods introduces multi-tiered animal welfare certification

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
AUSTIN, WASHINGTON D.C.– The 300-store
Whole Foods Markets chain and the Animal
Compassion Foundation, begun by Whole Foods
founder John Mackey, on November 15, 2010
introduced a new system of identifying how
animals slaughtered for meat were raised. The
first standards are for pigs, cattle, and
chickens raised for meat. After a trial interval
the system is to be extended to laying hens and
dairy animals.

Read more

Animal Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

Spunk, 10, a therapy dog kept by a 75-year-old retired
teacher in Taman Merdeka, Ipoh, Malaysia, was shot by dogcatchers
on October 29, 2010 while the woman fetched paper to clean up after
him. Made public by her son, Rohan Marshall of Bangkok, Thailand,
the killing rallied national and international support for efforts
led for years by Sabhat Alam Malaysia, the Ipoh SPCA, Noah’s Ark
Ipoh, and PetPositive to abolish dog-shooting. The Ipoh City
Council banned dog-shooting on November 16, 2010. PetPositive
president Anthony Sivabalan, who is also a Petaling Jaya city
councilor, told Ivan Loh of the Star of Malaysia that “The council
will send its officers to their counterparts in Petaling Jaya next
week to learn dog-catching methods. They are also studying the
possibility of setting up an animal shelter. A committee set up by
the council will have meetings later to discuss neutering the
animals.”

Read more

Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

 

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
–William Shakespeare

Avi Sivan, 53, was killed in a helicopter crash on November
23, 2010 while flyng between Doula and Yaounde, Cameroon. A former
commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Duvdevan unit, Sivan
served as a security advisor for Cameroon President Paul Biya.
Sivan founded the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund in 1997, which became
Ape Action Africa in 1999. Operating a sanctuary in Mefou National
Park for more than 250 apes and monkeys, Ape Action Africa in 2000
became a charter member of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance and
hosted the 2010 PASA management workshop.

Read more

“Lizard King” sentenced

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

 

PETALING JAYA, Malaysia–Anson Wong Keng
Liang, 52, on November 6, 2010 saw the
Malaysian High Court increase to five years a
six-month sentence he received from Selang
Sessions Court on September 6 for smuggling boa
constrictors.
Initially trafficking in reptiles via the now
defunct Bukit Jambul Reptile Sanctuary, Wong was
called by Bryan Christy “the most important
person in the international reptile business” in
Christy’s 2008 exposé book The Lizard King.
Arrested in Mexico City in 1998, Wong was
extradited to the U.S., where he served a a
71-months prison term after pleading guilty to
40 counts of smuggling, conspiracy,
money-laundering, and other violations of
wildlife laws.

Read more

Animals’ Friend Hospital raided in memory of founder Crystal Rogers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

 

DELHI–Avenging the memory and intentions of Animals’ Friend
Hospital founder Crystal Rogers, 32 years after her forced
resignation by trustees she alleged were only trying to grab the
land, deputies for the Animal Welfare Board of India on October 23,
2010 removed all 18 dogs from the premises. The dogs were relocated
to the Friendicoes animal shelter, also in Delhi.
“With the dogs safe, we can work on taking action against
this so-called hospital, and the shocking cruelty that it was
perpetrating on the animals,” attorney Anjali Sharma e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE. “It is now being used by an unscrupulous
industrialist for housing his office and staff, with the hospital
merely a front.”

Read more

Review: The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Harper (10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10022), 2010. 239 pages,
hardcover. $25.99.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop
Loving joins a growing pack of authors who in the fall/winter 2010
publishing season attempt to reprise past best-sellers with a volume
focusing on a favorite dog.

Read more

Review: They Had Me at Meow

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

They Had Me at Meow by Rosie Sorenson
Self-published c/o <www.theyhadmeatmeow.com>, 2010.
102 pages, paperback. $15.95.

They had Me at Meow author Rosie Sorenson became involved
with homeless cats after a car accident scrapped her working career.
By chance she met a man who cared for a cat colony. Soon hooked,
Sorenson is now high priestess of cats at a place called Buster
Hollow in northern California.

Read more

Cockfighting seizures up 20%– & more “rescue” hoarding in 2010 than puppy mill neglect

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:

 

With more than a month of 2010 remaining, U.S. animal
agencies had already impounded record numbers of gamefowl in alleged
cockfighting cases and dogs and cats in alleged mass neglect cases,
but impoundments in alleged breeder neglect cases were down 58% from
2009.
The numbers of dogs and cats taken in from failed animal
shelters and nonprofit shelterless rescues in 2010 appear likely to
exceed the numbers impounded from breeders for the first time in the
19 years that ANIMAL PEOPLE has kept track. About 4,600 dogs and
cats had been taken in from failed shelters and rescues as of
Thanksgiving 2010, almost the same as the then-record number taken
in from failed shelters and rescues in the whole of 2009. The 2010
figure projects to a total of nearly 5,000 for the year, or 25% of
the total number of dogs and cats impounded in neglect cases.
About 3,840 dogs and cats had been impounded from breeders at
Thanksgiving 2010, projecting to 4,200 for the year: 22% of the
dogs and cats impounded in neglect cases.

Read more

1 2 3 5