Author: Dylan Forest

Coping with elephant moods

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

The debate over whether elephants can be kept safely and
humanely spread to China after a sick elephant named Qing Qing on
June 8, 2006 used his trunk to smash the head of 15-month Shanghai
Wild Animal Zoo attendant Li Guohoa, as Guohoa, 43, prepared to
clean the elephant’s food basin.
But zoos continue to believe they can somehow find ways to
resolve the many problems associated with elephant-keeping.
An elephant named Patna died from cancer in early May 2006 at
the Zagreb Zoo, in the capital city of Croatia. The keepers feared
they would lose Patna’s longtime companion Suma, too.
“Suma was refusing to eat, became uncommunicative, and
showed all the signs of a serious depression,” Zagreb Zoo director
Mladen Anic told Agence France-Presse.
Suma in early June blew stones through her trunk at five
musicians who came to the zoo to play classical music. “But as soon
as the concert started,” Anic recalled, “Suma leaned against the
fence, closed her eyes and listened without moving” through
compositions by Mozart, Vivaldi and Schubert. This inspired Anic
and staff to begin daily music therapy sessions.
“We are so glad that we can provide things that Suma really
enjoys,” Anic said.

PETA, Ringling clash in Austin

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

AUSTIN–Members of PETA and Action for Animals claimed on
July 6, 2006 that police improperly seized their videotapes and
refused to take a cruelty complaint that they sought to bring against
the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Activist Robert Hutton reportedly alleged that he saw blood
behind an elephant’s ear, possibly caused by use of an ankus, while
circus staff walked a group of elephants from a performance site to
the Ringling train.
Another activist, Karina Hilliard, “said she called 911 to
report that trainers made sexually harassing comments to her,” wrote
Susannah Gonzales of the Austin American-Statesman. “When police
officers arrived, Hilliard said, they accused Hilliard of lying
about the harassment so that police would respond to the previous
reports of animal cruelty. Hilliard denied the accusation and said
she did not know that complaints of animal cruelty had been made.”

Post-Hurricane Katrina pet custody cases challenge adoptions

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

BATON ROUGE–Pet custody cases arising out of the
post-Hurricane Katrina animal rescue effort are presenting a
nationwide challenge to some animal advocates who have worked for
decades to promote recognition of pets as family members, and to
strengthen anti-pet theft laws.
“People who first considered themselves foster caregivers now
say some Katrina pet lovers don’t deserve their animals back,”
summarized Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Kathy Boccella in a
mid-July profile of four cases that are expected to soon go to court.
“They cite failure to have animals spayed or neutered and not getting
rabies and heartworm prevention as evidence of unfit care.”
Also often mentioned by defendants in Katrina-related custody
disputes is that many people who were displaced by Katrina were
allegedly slow to begin searching for their animals. Most apparently
waited until they returned to their homes and found no trace of
missing pets before going to the Internet, many as first-time
Internet users.

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Executive changes at major regional humane societies

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

Longtime Massachusetts SPCA vice president Carter Luke has
been promoted to president, succeeding Larry Hawk. Luke has served
the MSPCA in various capacities under every MSPCA president since
Eric H. Hansen, the fourth president of the 138-year-old
organization, who was hired in 1942. Recruited from the American
SPCA in 2003, Hawk resigned in March 2006.
“Hawk increased revenue and took a more businesslike approach
to running the organization,” laying off 20 employees and
eliminating 32 vacant jobs, reported Sacha Pfeiffer of the Boston
Globe. Among Hawk’s first major actions was killing the
award-winning but money-losing Animals magazine, begun as Our Dumb
Animals by MSPCA founder George Angell.
However, Pfeiffer wrote, “several former MSPCA employees
said Hawk left after persistent concerns that his brusque management
style damaged morale without doing enough to improve the MSPCA
finances. Hawk also hired his wife and two children to do paid
consulting,” at total cost of $37,000, about 10.5% of Hawk’s own
salary, “and outsourced fundraising activities that resulted in
donations not being acknowledged. The MSPCA endowment has lost
nearly a third of its value since the late 1990s,” although Hawk
doubled direct mail expense, “and for years,” Pfeiffer wrote, “the
MSPCA has been violating its own spending policy by bypassing limits
on the percentage of endowment gains that may be used to pay
operating costs.”

N.J. coin can fundraiser fined

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

ELIZABETH, N.J.–New Jersey Superior Court Judge Thomas
Lyons on June 14, 2006 barred Patrick G. Jemas of Woodbridge, New
Jersey, from fundraising within the state, fined him $330,804, and
ordered him to help the state Division of Consumer Affairs to locate
and remove hundreds of coin collection canisters that Jemas placed in
businesses throughout New Jersey in the name of the “National Animal
Welfare Foundation.”
Lyons did not have the authority to dissolve the National
Animal Welfare Foundation, or to stop Jemas’ reported fundraising
activities in New York and Pennsylvania.
New Jersey Attorney General Zulima V. Farber and Consumer
Affairs Director Kimberly Ricketts alleged that Jemas “collected
$70,795 in canister donations, but spent $75,891 on fundraising,
payroll, meals, automobiles, printing, and other undefined areas.
In only one fiscal year,” they said, “did reported donations exceed
reported expenses.”

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New Animal Welfare Board chair hopes to eradicate rabies from India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

CHENNAI–Major General R.M. Kharb, named chair of the Animal
Welfare Board of India on May 9, 2006, took office in June with a
pledge to “eradicate rabies from India by mass vaccination of stray
dogs, and further strengthen Animal Birth Control by encouraging
rehabilitation and adoption of stray dogs.”
Adoption has long been seen as unlikely in India, due to of
the abundance of street dogs, but “In the past two years, over 2,000
people have adopted homeless dogs from our center,” Pet Animals
Welfare Society president R.T. Sharma, of Delhi, recently told
Prashant K. Nanda of the Indo Asian News Service. “Besides Delhi,”
Sharma said, “the trend is prevalent in the Gurgaon and Noida
suburbs.”
To accomplish rabies eradication, Kharb and new vice chair
V.N. Appaji Rao outlined plans to increase the number of animal
welfare organizations supported by the Animal Welfare Board from the
present 2,200 to more than 10,000.

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Israeli foie gras ban now is in force

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

JERUSALEM–“Foie gras production has ended in Israel,”
Israeli activist Adela Gertner affirmed on July 13, 2006.
“Suspected delinquents are being investigated. Otherwise, producers
are obeying the law.”
ANIMAL PEOPLE had asked Gertner to find out if Israeli foie
gras producers were at last complying with court rulings against
force-feeding. Most recently, the Israeli High Court of Justice
ruled on February 22, 2006 that force-feeding geese was to end by
April 15, 2006, “while expressing harsh criticism against the
state for not enforcing” an earlier ruling that force-feeding was to
have ended in March 2005, attorney Keren Klar told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Klar represented Let the Animals Live and Anonymous for Animal Rights.

Roaster ducks go without water

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

LONDON–Cruel as the foie gras industry
is, ducks on French foie gras farms live under
more natural conditions than most ducks raised
for meat.
“Farmed ducks endure worse conditions
than battery hens,” bannered The Independent,
of London, above a July 6 exposé of the roaster
duck industry by Sanjida O’Connell.
Both wild and domestic ducks who are
given their choice of habitat spend about 80% of
their time in water, but “Most of the 18 million
ducks reared for meat in Britain have no access
to water,” O’Connell reported. The same is true
of most of the 26 million ducks raised for
slaughter in the U.S., and actually of most
ducks raised for slaughter almost everywhere
except southern Asia-where governments are trying
to abolish rice paddy duck-rearing to stop the
spread of avian flus.

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Foie gras is banned by Chicago council, but subsidized by New York governor

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

ALBANY, N.Y.–While other jurisdictions are moving to end
the foie gras industry, the tax-supported Empire State Development
Corporation in late May 2006 authorized a grant of $420,000 to help
Hudson Valley Foie Gras increase production by about 10% per year
over the next three years.
Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which accounts for about half of
all U.S. foie gras production, would be raising about 325,000 birds
per year at the end of the planned $1 million expansion. The
expansion would add 10 jobs to the present staff of 150.
The Empire State Development Corporation is “a public
authority that answers to Governor George Pataki, but not the
Legislature,” explained Syracuse Post-Standard staff writer Michelle
Breidenbach. The corporation “will borrow $140,000 for the project
and use cash from the state’s general fund for the remaining
$280,000.”

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