New York didn’t reinstitute pound seizure
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:
ALBANY, N.Y––Frantic online postings from vari-
ous activists who wanted New York governor George Pataki to
veto state bills A8002 and S3869B, together with a follow-up
posting by James Corrigan of Animal Rights America, “con-
gratulating” the American SPCA on their passage, produced a
fast-spreading rumor in mid-August that New York, at instiga-
tion of the ASPCA, had backhandedly repealed a 1977 ban on
the sale of shelter animals to biomedical research.
The rumor struck a nerve, especially among antivivi-
sectionists old enough to remember that the ASPCA supported
the institution of pound seizure, the mandatory sale of animals
to research, in the 1940s, and fought the 1977 law. A8002
pertained to the use of animals in endotracheal intubation train-
ing, further alarming those who recalled that the ASPCA
allowed cats who were anesthetized for neutering to be used in
such training until 1990, when executives and the board were
advised by counsel that this could constitute a violation of the
1977 law. Subsequently, in 1992, the ASPCA sought retroac-
tive legalization of the intubation training.
But that was history and paranoia was unwarranted,
ASPCA senior legislative counsel Lisa Weisberg told A N I-
MAL PEOPLE. First off, the ASPCA opposed A8002, she
said, which allows the state Commissioner of Health to require
intubation training at his/her discretion as part of accredited
courses in advanced medical technology. Secondly, the new
law provides that intubation may be practiced only on sedated
or anethetized animals, once per animal, in medically appro-
priate situations. Only owned animals may be used as subjects.
Animals from shelters and pounds are excluded.
S3869B, Weisberg explained, “permits New York
courts “to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a person con-
victed of animal cruelty should retain legal custody and/or
ownership of the abused animal, or forfeit the animal” to an
SPCA or humane society. Dogs and cats must be adopted out
to persons other than the convicted, or be humanely eutha-
nized. Livestock may be sold.
“The definition section of the forfeiture bill was
revised this session,” Weisberg said, “to make crystal clear
that dogs and cats are not livestock and therefore not subject to
a judicially ordered sale. Despite claims to the contrary, the
forfeiture bill will not allow, or mandate under any circum-
stances, the sale of dogs and cats to research facilities.”
Other lab-related legal matters
American Cyanamid has received a judicial order
to do tests to determine if contaminated oral polio vaccine
could have transmitted AIDS to an Illinois girl with no known
risk factors, the August 4 edition of Science reported. Some
investigators have hypothesized since 1991 that the simian
AIDS virus, SIV, mutated into the human AIDS virus, HIV,
after entering humans via polio vaccine cultured in the tissues
of green vervet and/or rhesus monkeys and then administered
en masse in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s, shortly
before the first known HIV cases occurred. The theory has
been rejected by most mainstream authorities.
Hennepin County district judge Myron Greenberg
ruled July 28 that the University of Minnesota must disclose
“animal useage forms,” detailing protocols for laboratory ani-
mal use, to the Animal Rights Coalition, under the state open
records act.
