Month: April 2011

Anti-animal legislation in Iowa, Florida, Virginia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
DES MOINES, TALLAHASSEE,
RICHMOND–Stealth bills to rescind or handicap
animal protection flew through the Iowa and
Virginia legislatures in early 2011 and appeared
to be close to passage in Florida too as the
April 2011 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press.
Iowa governor Terry Branstad on March 24,
2011 signed into law a bill rescinding the state
prohibition on hunting mourning doves, which had
stood since 1918. Branstad had sought to open an
Iowa mourning dove hunting season since 1973,
during his first term in the Iowa legislature.

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Ecuador to hold referendum on cockfighting & bullfighting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
QUITO–Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa has included among a
list of 10 referendum questions to be submitted to voters as early as
May 2011 a proposal to ban blood sports, including cockfighting and
bullfighting.
Both cockfighting and bullfighting were introduced to Ecuador
by Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago. “The more
well-heeled in the Andean nation, as in Mexico, favor the stylized
rituals of the bullfight in colonial-age ‘plazas de toros,’ where
the animals are killed by celebrated Spanish matadors,” wrote Dolores
Ochoa of Associated Press. “In Ecuador, as in neighboring Colombia
and Peru, the rings are a place to see and be seen, fixtures in the
society pages.”

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Dolphins to be freed from traveling shows

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
JAKARTA–“We have identified 73 ‘blood dolphins’ who were
captured illegally from the Indonesian national parks,” Dolphin
Project founder Ric O’Barry e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on March 26,
2011. Working with the Indonesian Foresty Ministry, O’Barry said,
“We will confiscate them in groups of three to five.”
The Jakarta Animal Aid Network and the Dolphin Project,
working in recent years under the auspices of Earth Island Institute,
expect to release back to the wild 70 dolphins from Karimun Jawa
National Park in Central Java and three more from Ujung Kulon
National Park in Banten.

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Animal Welfare Board of India bans forced molts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
CHENNAI–The Animal Welfare Board of India on March 9, 2011
ordered all egg producers in India to cease starving hens to induce
forced molts. The AWBI advised egg producers that forced molts
violate the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.
Forced molts simulate winter by depriving hens of food for as
long as two weeks, while keeping them in darkened barns. Water may
be withheld for up to two days. When food, water, and light are
restored to normal, the hens who survive the ordeal–in which they
typically lose a third of their weight–respond by starting a new
egg-laying cycle.

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Ohio reneges on veal calf deal

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
COLUMBUS–Can the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board keep a promise?
Only 11 members of the 13-member board on
March 2, 2011 voted on a proposed regulatory
standard for raising veal calves, but six of the
11 approved of a standard which violates a June
2010 agreement brokered by former Ohio governor
Ted Strickland that kept off the November 2010
ballat a proposal to ban veal crates, sow
gestation crates, and battery cages for laying
hens.

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Camel Rescue Centre in India is world’s first

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

JAIPUR, India–Help In Suffer-ing on March 13, 2011 opened
a new Camel Rescue Centre at Bassi, on the outskirts of Jaipur. The
announcement was of global humane significance because, as best
ANIMAL PEOPLE can determine, the Help In Suffering Camel Rescue
Centre is the first facility built specifically to help camels in
humane movement history, and only the second dedicated camel
hospital in the world.
The first was the Dubai Camel Hospital, opened in 1990 by
Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum to treat the 3,000 racing and
dairy camels “belonging to the Maktoum family and their friends and
relatives,” wrote BBC News science reporter Anna-Marie Lever in
January 2009.

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How Japanese zoos & aquariums fared

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

TOKYO–Fourteen zoos and aquariums were hit by the Thoku Chih
earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, Japan Association of
Zoos & Aquariums chair Shigeyuki Yamamoto confirmed on March 18,
2011, but for most the earthquake and tsunami were much less
problematic than trying to keep animals alive amid the shortages of
supplies, electricity, and transportation that followed.
“Due to the inability to distribute resources, including
feed, water, electricity, and other basic necessities,” Yamamoto
said, “zoos and aquariums have suffered greatly in their ability to
acquire the proper commodities for the animals. JAZA, in
cooperation with our member institutions, has already been
cooperating in supplying as many resources as possible to those
members affected.”

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Editorial feature: Art, nukes, & ethical energy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

Chilean shock artist Marco Evaristti won global notoriety in
February 2000 with an exhibit at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding,
Denmark, consisting of 10 blenders containing live goldfish.
Visitors were invited to puree a goldfish.
Friends of Animals/Denmark, not affiliated with the U.S.
organization Friends of Animals, won an injunction ordering that the
electricity supply to the blenders should be cut off. When two
goldfish were pureed anyhow, FoA/Denmark pursued criminal charges
against Evaristti and museum director Peter Meyer. The case against
Meyer went to court in May 2003. Meyer was acquitted, but even in
Denmark, whose national identity is intertwined with commercial
fishing, whale massacres in the Faroe Islands, and the Copenhagen
fur trade, public opinion clearly rejected the notion of pulverizing
live fish as “art.”

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Letters [April 2011]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

Cruelty to catfish

This is ust a quick note of thanks for covering Mercy for
Animals’ investigation at Catfish Corner (“Mercy for Animals exposes
cruelty at a Texas factory catfish farm,” March 2011). We
appreciate you bringing this important issue to the readers of Animal
People.
–Nathan Runkle, executive director
Mercy For Animals
3712 N. Broadway, Suite 560
Chicago, IL 60613
Phone: 937-470-9454
<nathanr@mercyforanimals.org>
<www.MercyForAnimals.org>
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