A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
BOSTON––The New England Primate Research Center is to close by 2015, the Harvard Medical School announced on April 24, 2013. The center houses about 2,000 monkeys, among them about 1,500 rhesus macaques and colonies of cotton-top tamarins and squirrel monkeys, and hosts about 130 current studies, employing 200 scientists and primate caretakers. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
HOUSTON––U.S. federal prosecutors on May 16, 2013 dropped the last two of seven obscenity charges filed in October 2012 against alleged “crush video” producers Ashley Nicole Richards, 22, and Brent Wayne Justice, 51, and filed a notice of appeal on five counts that were dismissed on April 17, 2013 by U.S. District Judge Sim Lake. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
MILWAUKEE, LONDON, JOHANNESBURG––As the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service sees it, the critical issue in rhinoceros conservation is not rhinos are being killed in record numbers, but rather, who gets the money from killing them. Anyhow, this was the reasoning that emerged from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service explanations of why trophy hunter David K. Reinke, 52, of Madison, Wisconsin, was recently allowed to become the first American to legally import the remains of a black rhino since the species was federally listed as endangered in 1980. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
Anna Merz, 83, died on April 4, 2013 at a hospital in Melkriver, South Africa, her home since 1996. Born in England, Merz was among the many London children who were relocated to Cornwall during the Nazi bombing attacks of early World War II. Studying politics and economics at Nottingham University, she read for the bar at Lincoln’s Inn, but instead of practicing law, she relocated to Ghana with her first husband. There, recalled The Times of London, she “owned a crankshaft grinding workshop, developed a love of riding, worked as honorary warden in the game department and took off on expeditions across the Sahara and around Uganda and northern Kenya.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
Editorial feature: Ag-gag laws & changing frameworks of perception
The most deeply held conviction shared among U.S. meat industry executives and advocates of not eating meat may be the belief that if most people witnessed slaughter, they would not eat meat. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
About Experiencing Animal Minds
Debra J. White’s review of Experiencing Animal Minds, in the March 2013 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, came to my attention at just about the same time as I received my copy of the book. I was shocked to see the sentence in the review which states, “Mount Royal University psychology professor Alain Morin in a chapter entitled ‘What Are Animals Conscious Of?’ asserts that ‘Wild animals have never been observed worrying and do not seem to experience sleeping difficulties as a result.” In the actual essay Professor Morin begins this sentence, on page 249 of the book, with the caveat, “To the best of my knowledge wild animals …” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
RICHMOND, MADISON––Since dogfighting is a felony in all 50 U.S. states, why is allowing a dog to kill or injure other animals outside of a fighting pit not subject to criminal penalties in any state?
Why is introducing dogs into enclosures to chase coyotes and foxes not only legal but licensed in several states? Why does the pretense persist in law that the mauling deaths of coyotes and foxes in chase pens is accidental? Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May/June 2013:
WASHINGTON D.C.––Adoption failure rates may now be as little as half of what they were 20 years ago, suggests a newly published study by the American Humane Association’s Animal Welfare Research Institute ––but also appear to be about twice as high as is now conventionally believed. Read more
From Animal-People May/June 2013
CHENGDU––Guizhentang Pharmaceutical, China’s largest producer of bear bile, in April 2013 for the second time in two years withdrew a proposal to sell stock to raise the capital needed to increase the number of bears it keeps from 400 to 1,200. Read more