Accidental rabies imports emphasize value of quarantine

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
LONDON, BRUSSELS–Health experts are hoping the prominence
of the most recent rescuer involved in accidentally importing a rabid
dog will emphasize to the international rescue community the need to
quarantine as well as vaccinate.
SOS Sri Lanka founder Kim Cooling and two workers at the
Chingford Quarantine Kennels in northeast London were repeatedly
bitten by an eight-week-old puppy between April 23 and April 25,
2008. The puppy died later on April 25. Rabies was diagnosed a few
hours afterward.

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Comparative costs of dog & cat sterilization worldwide

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
Nonprofit humane societies in Japan,
Lebanon, and South Korea may pay 30 times more
to sterilize a dog or cat than counterparts in
India, ANIMAL PEOPLE found in an early 2008
survey of more than 35 agencies in 14 nations,
chiefly in Asia and eastern Europe.
The table at right shows the findings,
ordered by nation, city, and the type of
veterinary practice that the reporting humane
societies use.
In-house clinics are included in “nonprofit.”
Column headings describe the costs of
supplies used, including anesthetics, other
pharmaceuticals, and surgical items; the wages
paid to veterinarians and veterinary technicians;
and post-operative expense. The last two columns
state the average total cost of sterilizing male
and female animals.

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Efforts to restrain island nations’ bird massacres

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
LONDON–The Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds and the National Audubon
Society refocused attention on Greenland after
Malta on April 25, 2008 banned spring quail and
turtle dove hunting and trapping.
Malta acted in compliance with a
provisional ruling by the European Court of
Justice that the traditional Maltese spring bird
season violates the 1979 European Bird Directive,
adopted five years before Malta joined the
European Union. The European Court of Justice is
to review the Maltese response to the provisional
ruling in two or three years, reported Agence
France-Presse.

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Caught to eat, then abandoned

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
WINDHOEK–The all-volunteer Cat Protection Society in
Windhoek, Namibia in mid-April 2008 rescued hundreds of cats who
were abandoned in company housing after the Malaysian firm Ramatex
closed a clothing factory that at peak operation employed 7,000
workers. Many other cats died from neglect before the rescuers
learned of their existence, wrote Denver Isaacs of The Nambian.
Opened in 2002 with heavy government subsidies,
Ramatex-Namibia tried to impose Asian sweatshop conditions, claimed
labor organizers. When the Namibian employees unionized, Ramatex
quickly settled a strike, but then hired “trainers” from China, the
Philippines, and Bangladesh to take over much of the work.

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Pet theft-to-eat cases prosecuted in China, Korea, Hawaii

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
ZHENGZHOU–Eating dogs and cats is legal
in China, but stealing them isn’t, a Zhengzhou
judge emphasized recently, fining “a man
surnamed Zhang” $214, about two weeks’ wages,
for “killing and cooking what he thought was a
stray dog,” the Zhengzhou Evening News reported.
The dog was actually a lost pet belonging to a woman surnamed Liu.
Summarized China Daily, distributing the
story nationwide, “Zhang, who likes to eat dogs
and cats, hung the dog’s skin from a fence over
a bridge so that he could dry and sell it. Upon
seeing the skin, Liu tracked down Zhang and
demanded that he pay her for killing her pet.
The woman recognized her pet’s skin because she
had dyed his fur.”
Chinese state-run media have reported
increasingly critically about dog and cat
consumption in recent years. Reportage linking a
disapproved practice to crime is a frequent
prelude in China to regulatory discouragement.
Also seen recently in connection with wildlife
consumption, this trend is more familiar to
westerners in reference to praise of the Dalai
Lama, the practice of Falun Gong, and uses of
Google and Yahoo search engines to research
banned topics.

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Booking agency sues SHARK for dissuading entertainers from performing at rodeo

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
CHEYENNE–Romeo Entertainment, incorporated in Omaha but
based in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, on April 16, 2008 sued the
animal advocacy organization SHARK, of Geneva, Illinois, for
allegedly using “false and misleading information” and “threats of
negative publicity” in successful efforts to dissuade singer Carrie
Underwood and the band Matchbox 20 from performing at the Cheyenne
Frontier Days rodeo in July 2006 and July 2008, respectively.
SHARK founder Steve Hindi sent video of alleged animal abuse
at past Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo performances to both Underwood
and Matchbox 20, he acknowledged. Romeo Entertainment, headed by
Bob Romeo, “has arranged for night show entertainers for Cheyenne
Frontier Days at times over the last 20 years,” says the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed nine days before Cheyenne Frontier Days
animal care committee chair Bob Budd announced a ban on “the use of
hand-held electric shock devices at the rodeo except in emergency
situations where they are needed to prevent injuries,” according to
Cary Snyder of the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

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South Korean capital defines dogs as “livestock”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
SEOUL–Acknowledging the existence of at least 528 Seoul
restaurants that sell dog meat, plus 70 more that may offer dog meat
as a summer special, Seoul city health officials on April 12, 2008
announced that they would begin inspecting dog carcasses.
“The city will take samples of dog meat from about 530
restaurants and examine them to see if they contain harmful
substances such as heavy metals, antibiotics, and bacteria,” wrote
Korea Times staff reporter Kim Tae-jong.
The unilateral city inspection initiative follows years of
efforts by the dog meat industry to have dogs recognized as a “meat”
animal, on the pretext that traffic in species not so recognized
cannot be regulated under the existing hygiene laws.
Selling dogs’ meat for human consumption has been technically
illegal since 1983, but the law has never been enforced, and
provides no means for it to be enforced.

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New legislation addresses violent entertainment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:

Nebraska governor Dave Heineman on April 16, 2008 endorsed
into law a bill to ban horse tripping, a common event at
charreada-style rodeos. The language that “No person shall
intentionally trip or cause to fall, or lasso or rope the legs of,
any equine by any means for the purpose of entertainment, sport,
practice, or contest” makes the Nebraska law “the strongest such law
in the nation, far better than California’s,” or those of Texas,
New Mexico, Maine, Florida, Oklahoma, and Illinois, said Action
for Animals founder Eric Mills. A bill modeled on the California law
cleared the Arizona house of representatives on March 30.

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The $64 million question: is Moscow building new shelters promised in 1999?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
MOSCOW–“Moscow Dog Attacks Spur $64 Million Castration
Drive,” the international financial news web site Bloom-berg.com
bannered on April 14, 2008.
The headline, in a publication founded by New York City
mayor Michael Bloomberg, seemed to promise the largest dog
sterilization campaign anywhere, ever.
Bloomberg.com Moscow correspondent Henry Meyer reiterated in
the lead paragraph of his article that the $64 million would be spent
“to castrate as many as 50,000 stray dogs,” in response to dog
attacks now occurring at about an eighth of the U.S. rate.
But reality–as Meyer acknowledged five paragraphs later–is
that Moscow chief veterinarian Natalia Sokolova told a television
audience that the city plans to spend the $64 million to build 15
animal shelters, meant to impound about 2,000 stray dogs apiece per
year. The shelters are to be opened in 2009, ten years after they
were first promised.

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