Baseball greats caught at cockfight

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
SANTO DOMINGO, D.R.–Pedro Martinez, a
three-time Cy Young Award winner as the best
pitcher in his league, and Juan Marichal, the
first Latin American player elected to the
National Baseball Hall of Fame, are at the
center of a controversy bringing cockfighting in
the Dominican Republic under probably more
scrutiny and criticism than at any point since it
was introduced by Spanish sailors nearly 500
years ago.
“Martinez and Marichal were shown in a
video posted this week on YouTube releasing
roosters just before they engaged in a fight at
the Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo, in the
country’s capital,” summarized Jorge L. Ortiz of
USA Today on February 7, 2008.
Organized animal advocacy has little
presence in the Dominican Republic, but
Ameri-can denunciations of Martinez and Marichal
were soon quoted by Dominican media that closely
follow the deeds of 99 current Dominican major
leaguers–more than 10% of the major league work
force.

U.S. to phase out animal testing

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

BETHESDA, Maryland–Animal testing to meet U.S. federal
regulatory requirements is officially on the way out at last.
“The Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology
Program and the National Institutes of Health have signed a
memorandum of understanding to begin developing the new methods,”
reported Elizabeth Weise of USA Today on February 14, 2008,
scooping most other media by about 24 hours. “The collaboration is
described in a paper in the February 15 edition of the journal
Science.”
“We propose a shift from primarily in vivo animal studies to
in vitro assays, in vivo assays with lower organisms, and
computational modeling for toxicity assessments,” wrote National
Humane Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins, EPA
research and development director George M. Gray, and National
Toxicology Program associate director John R. Bucher.

Whalers spend winter hiding

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
HOBART, TOKYO–Sea Shepherd Conservation Society captain
Paul Watson on March 2, 2008 reported that the crew of the Sea
Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin had pitched two dozen bottles of rancid
butter onto deck of the Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshiin Maru
in Porpoise Bay, off Antarctica.
The stink bomb attack came toward the end of a winter-long
campaign that saw Sea Shepherds, joined at times by Greenpeace and
the Australian coast guard, stalking the Nisshin Maru since the
Steve Irwin sailed from Melbourne on December 5, 2007. The Nisshin
Maru, four whale-catching vessels, and the supply ship Oriental
Bluebird spent most of the winter trying to elude observation,
rather than killing whales. The Japanese coast guard vessel
Fukuyoshi Maru #68 had shadowed the Steve Irwin since January 15,
but was ultimately not able to keep the Sea Shepherds away from the
Nisshin Maru.

“Right to rescue” cases in Michigan, Texas, and Ontario, Canada

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
The nationally publicized prosecution and sentencing of Dogs
Deserve Better founder Tammy Grimes was only the most prominent of
several similar cases attracting significant regional attention at
almost the same time.
“Two dogs chained for five frigid weeks outside an abandoned
home in Eaton County [Michigan] are now in compassionate hands at the
Capital Area Humane Society,” reported John Schneider of the Lansing
State Journal on February 23, 2008. “After arguing with concerned
neighbors for more than a month that he had no legal right to
intervene, Eaton County Animal Control Director Larry Green seized
the dogs Friday morning and delivered them to the humane society.
“Green had been telling residents urging him to act on behalf
of the abandoned animals–and who, out of pity, had been giving
them food and water–that as long as they were being fed and watered,
Animal Control couldn’t use ‘neglect’ as grounds for intervention,”
Schneider recounted.

Obituaries

January 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:
Perry Fina, 59, died on January 6, 2008 in New Milford,
Connecticut, after a long fight with cancer. A former U.S. Navy Seal
who served three tours in Vietnam, Fina upon leaving the Navy became
an animal behaviorist. He and his wife Linda operated Hearthstone
Kennels in New Milford for 29 years. North Shore Animal League
president John Stevenson hired Fina as an animal training consultant
in 1993. Fina joined North Shore fulltime in 1995 as director of
special adoptions, training animals as companions for disabled
people. He became director of operations in 1997, director of
corporate development in 2003, vice president of national shelter
outreach in 2006, and vice president of planned giving in 2007.
Recalled North Shore in a memorial statement, “Ever the gentleman,
Perry was renowned for his distinctive voice. At many League events,
his was the ‘Voice of God’ that magically filled the room. Perry
Fina devoted his energy, his mind, and above all his heart, to a
vision of a better world for companion animals.” Fina was also noted
for his deadpan sense of humor, and was especially remembered for
his leadership on September 11, 2001, when he saw the two hijacked
aircraft hit the World Trade Center on his way to work. Among the
last commuters to cross the Whitestone bridge before it was closed,
Fina bunked for the duration of the crisis at the North Shore
shelter, with other staff, who followed a disaster plan previously
practiced during severe snow storms. By sundown North Shore had a
mobile unit at Pier 40, near the World Trade Center, assisting the
rescue dogs and pets stranded in the area. Fina also supervised
distributing a temporary excess of donated food to other shelters
throughout the region.

Obituaries

Dogs Deserve Better founder to be sentenced after Have A Heart for Chained Dogs Week

January 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:

HOLIDAYSBURG, Pa.–Tammy Grimes, 43, who founded the
anti-chaining organization Dogs Deserve Better in 2002, will
celebrate Valentine’s Day 2008 by coordinating her 6th annual “Have A
Heart for Chained Dogs Week,” which annually delivers valentines and
treats to as many as 8,000 dogs who live their lives on chains.
Grimes will then be sentenced on February 22 for theft and receiving
stolen property.
Grimes on September 11, 2006 removed an elderly and
apparently painfully dying dog from the yard of Steve and Lori Arnold
of East Freedom, Pennsylvania, after the Central Pennsylvania SPCA
failed to respond to repeated calls about the dog from neighbor Kim
Eichner. Grimes took the dog to the office of Altoona veterinarian
Noureldin Hassane, who testified that he found the dog was in
extremis. Later Grimes took the dog from the clinic and placed him
in a foster home for the remainder of his life. He died on March 1,
2007.

Editorial feature: What is the future of Islamic animal sacrifice?

January 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:
Editorial feature

What is the future of Islamic animal sacrifice?

At each of the past two Eids, the Feast
of Sacrifice that culminates the Haj or Islamic
season of pilgrimage to Mecca, ANIMAL PEOPLE
publisher Kim Bartlett and son Wolf Clifton were
in cities where many Muslim people practice
animal sacrifice in honor of the occasion:
Mumbai, India and Luxor, Egypt.
Also in Egypt for the 2007 Eid was Animal
People, Inc. alternate board member Kristin
Stilt, an Islamic legal historian on the faculty
of Northwestern University law school in
Evanston, Illinois. Stilt had been in Jordan
the two days prior to the Eid, helping with an
Animals Australia investigation of the livestock
trade, but had returned to Cairo by the time the
Eid began. It was not her first Eid in the
Middle East.

BOOKS: Listening to Cougar

January 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:

Listening to Cougar
Edited by
Marc Bekoff & Cara Blessley Lowe
University Press of Colorado
(5589 Arapahoe Ave., Suite 206-C
Boulder, CO 80303), 2007.
200 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

The 20 contributors to Listening to Cougar among them look at
pumas in about every way imaginable, from perspectives including
those of predator protection activist Wendy Keefover-Ring, popular
nature writers Rick Bass, Ted Kerasote, and Barry Lopez,
primatologist Jane Goodall, a couple of mystics or would-be mystics,
and of course those of the editors, Cougar Fund cofounder Cara
Blessley Lowe and ethologist Marc Bekoff.

BOOKS: Rat & Rats

January 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:

Rat by Jonathan Burt
Reaktion Books Ltd. (33 Great Sutton St., London EC1M 3JU, U.K.), 2006.
189 pages, paperback. $19.95.

Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat
of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
Bloomsbury (175 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10010), 2004. 242
pages, hardcover. $23.95.

Immersing myself in Rat, by Jonathan Burt, and Rats, by
Robert Sullivan, during my flight to Egypt for the December 2007
Middle East Network on Animal Welfare conference, I sat a few
evenings later in front of the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx during a
bombastic sound and light show and contemplated the role of rats in
creating the spectacle before me.
No matter what the Pharoah Cheops and his successors thought
they were doing, no matter what their scribes wrote down, and no
matter what anyone believed about an afterlife, the Giza pyramids
and Sphinx are first and foremost monuments to a temporary conquest
of rats by the first civilization to entice help from cats. Read more

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