A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
HONG KONG–Trying to shake bad publicity and attract
investment, a leading Chinese bear bile producer apparently planted
news items with two Wall Street Journal subsidiaries in 2009 that
paralleled bear bile farming with the work of a U.S. company founded
to develop a synthetic analog of a hormone produced by North American
black bears.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
PHOENIX–A two-day Bureau of Land Management consultation
meeting on wild horse and burro management strategy, to be held on
March 10-11, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona, is likely to focus on why
the BLM on January 21 rejected a proposal from philanthropist
Madeline Pickens to accommodate 1,000 wild horses on 18,000 acres of
Nevada ranch land she purchased in 2010–and then began removing
about 2,000 wild horses from nearby public land.
“The Elko County ranches, which Pickens renamed the Mustang
Monument preserve, come with grazing rights on roughly 564,000 acres
of public land,” noted Martin Griffith of Associated Press.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
TOKYO–“It’s official. The Japanese whaling fleet has called
it quits in the Southern Ocean, at least for this season,” the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society cautiously acknowledged on February 17,
2011, a week after the whalers suspended operations in Antarctic
waters on February 10, and two days after global media declared the
Sea Shepherds the winners after seven winters of stalking the whalers
through the ice fields.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
CAIRO–The conflict of old and new in Tahrir Square, Cairo,
was perhaps most starkly illustrated by the February 2, 2011 charge
of 18 whip-wielding men on horseback and two on camels against the
tens of thousands of people demanding the resignation of
then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The demonstrators had
occupied the square since January 25.
Mubarak left on February 11, ending a 30-year dictatorial
regime, but on February 2 the outcome of the protests was still in
doubt. “In Dokki, in western Cairo,” reported Al Jazeera,
“thousands of Mubarak supporters gathered in Lebanon Square,
chanting ‘He won’t go,’ in reference to Mubarak, as they watched
camel riders and horse-cart drivers parade in circles.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
“Give me a lever and a place to stand,”
the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes
reputedly said, “and I shall move the earth.”
His premise affords a metaphor for how
animal advocates sometimes manage to motivate
animal use industries to change-and an
explanation of why some seemingly promising
efforts fail.
As large and influential as some of the
biggest animal advocacy organizations appear to
be from within the cause, the budgets and assets
of the entire cause, worldwide, are still
substantially less than those of supermarkets in
any major U.S. metropolitan area. Graphing the
economic magnitude of animal advocacy compared to
that of agribusiness is much like trying to graph
the size of the earth in proportion to the rest
of the solar system.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
Decompression–now the AHA-approved way to kill chickens
Just a quick note to let you know I’m
reading some of the literature on decompression
of poultry, as endorsed in September 2010 by the
American Humane Association.
It seems from what I’ve read that the
main case Yvonne Vizzier-Thaxton et al are making
for the Low Atmospheric Pressure System’s
“humaneness” to chickens is the rate of
decompression. If the rate is slowed down to
what they are using in the experiments, the time
it takes for the birds to go limp and appear
insensible is said to be about four minutes.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.–Rural Missouri lawmakers backed by
agribusiness hope to overturn the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act,
approved by almost a million voters in November 2010–52% of the
electorate–as Proposition B on the state ballot.
Leading the lobbying effort against the Puppy Mill Cruelty
Prevention Act is Missourians for Animal Care, a coalition including
the Missouri Agribusiness Associ-ation, Missouri Cattlemen’s
Association, Missouri Corn Growers Association, Missouri Dairy
Association, Missouri Egg Producers, Missouri Equine Council,
Missouri Farm Bureau, Missouri Federation of Animal Owners,
Missouri Livestock Marketing Association, Missouri Pet Breeders
Association, Missouri Pork Associ-ation, Missouri Soybean
Association, the Poultry Federation, the Professional Pet
Association, and two financial institutions.