Editorial: Mainstream no longer accepts meat at humane events

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“With friends like theseŠ” was the first
thing that came to mind after reading the Carbon
County Friends of Animals raffle ticket I’d just
bought,” wrote Michael J. Frendak of Lansford,
Pennsylvania, in the August 2005 edition of
Reader’s Digest.
“I could win one of the following, it
said: a 10-pound box of chicken legs, one
smoked ham, four T-bone steaks, five pounds of
fresh sausage or hot dogs, or a box of pork
chops.”

How Irish dog racers muzzle humane critics

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

SALLINS, County Kildare–Greyhound
racing issues in Ireland converge on the People’s
Animal Welfare Society, halfway between Dublin
and the Newbridge Greyhound Racing Track, just a
few miles beyond at Naas. Greyhound breeding,
training, and boarding are big business right in
the neighborhood.
PAWS founder Deirdre Hetherington, 73, is among
the most prominent critics of the Irish greyhound
industry.
Yet PAWS is also increasingly reliant on
funding from both the Irish government and the
Irish Greyhound Board, reputedly made available
as part of a co-optive strategy to distract
opposition by rehoming a relative handful of the
greyhounds who are bred to race.
Many of the PAWS dogs are boarded with a
prominent local greyhound racer.
Hetherington operates PAWS from her home,
Sallins Castle, built to withstand armed foes.

Remoteness of deadly Pakistan earthquake thwarts aid

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

KARACHI–An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale
killed more than 30,000 people and countless animals on October 5,
2005 in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
The remoteness of the region, lack of established animal
welfare infrastructure anywhere in Pakistan, and lack of official
interest in helping animals thwarted prompt response by international
organizations.
“I just got back to Karachi after spending two weeks filming
in Balakot.” e-mailed Pakistan Animal Welfare Society representative
and Geo TV assistant producer Mahera Omar on November 11.
Omar, more than a month after the earthquake, was nonetheless among
the first pro-animal representatives to bring back first-hand
testimony about what is needed.
“Balakot is a small town in the North West Frontier Province,
about 60 miles north of Islamabad,” Omar explained. “Located near
the quake’s epicenter, it is said to be among the worst devastated.
“We visited a few small villages up in the mountains around
Balakot,” Omar recounted. “The people in these areas depend on
subsistence farming and their livestock. Many of the livestock have
been killed. The rest are without any sort of shelter. Many people
are still without tents. Some have provided makeshift shelters for
their animals, using cloth or plastic sheets. Without shelter,
their livestock will not survive the harsh winter. The animals also
require veterinary care.

New Orleans rescue ends with a storm

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

NEW ORLEANS–The biggest animal rescue
effort in U.S. history officially ended on
October 25, 2005.
On advice of assistant state veterinarian
Martha Littlefield, Louisiana Governor Kathleen
Blanco allowed the temporary permits issued to
out-of-state veterinarians assisting animal
relief efforts in New Orleans to expire.
Out-of-state rescuers still operating
temporary shelters and feeding programs were
thanked and asked to return home, to leave the
remaining work to local agencies.
“We are literally seeing animals on the
streets starving to death,” objected
AnimalRescueNewOrleans founder Jane Garrison, of
Charleston, South Carolina. “We need more
volunteers to feed and water the thousands of
traumatized animals still on the streets, we
need to keep trapping animals so we can reunite
them with their guardians, and we need a massive
spay/neuter program.”

BOOKS: Man the Hunted

October 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Man the Hunted:
Primates, Predators, & Human Evolution
by Donna Hart & Robert W. Sussman
Perseus Books (2300 Chestnut St., Philadelphia,
PA 19103), 2005. 312 pages, hardcover. $29.95.

I first encountered Man the Hunted co-author Donna Hart more
than 20 years ago, while investigating the U.S./Canada transborder
traffic in exotic cats, as a reporter for the Sherbrooke Record. I
had already seen and photographed the cats, on the premises of a
small private hunting preserve that would now be called a “canned
hunt.”
With the help of Montreal activist Anne Streeter, and local
sources who chose to be anonymous, I had traced the substantial
criminal history of some of the people who were involved. I had
interviewed the bad guys. Now I needed an informed pro-animal source
to comment on the veracity of what I had been told about where the
big cats came from, how they were bred, how they were kept, and
what would become of them.
Animal rights and humane organizations, at the time, mostly
had little institutional knowledge of exotic cats and “canned hunts.”
But three different people mentioned that I should talk to
Donna Hart, if I could find her.

Reviews

Designed for disaster

October 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

HOUSTON, BUCHAREST, SAN DIEGO– Insisting in 1996 that the
current Houston SPCA shelter be built to withstand a Category 4
hurricane, longtime executive director Patty Mercer was accused of
alleged extravagance–but Mercer had seen in 1992 the damage done to
shelters in southern Florida by Hurricane Andrew.
Mercer looks like a seer today. The Houston SPCA, already
handling more than 35,000 animals per year, took in 270 animals from
the Louisiana SPCA and much of the Louisiana SPCA staff just ahead of
Hurricane Katrina, and continued to house most Louisiana SPCA
activities for weeks afterward, after Katrina wrecked the Louisiana
SPCA shelter and inundated most of New Orleans for a month.
More than a million Houstonians evacuated ahead of Hurricane
Rita, but the Houston SPCA didn’t. Animals were trucked to shelters
farther away, so that the Houston SPCA could accommodate evacuees
from elsewhere–like 57 dogs and 28 cats who arrived the evening of
September 25 from the Humane Society of Southeast Texas in Beaumont.
In Romania, Asociatia Natura cofounder Carmen Milobendzchi
showed similar foresight. An architect by trade, Milobendzchi opted
to build slowly, as funding became available, rather than take
chances, cut corners, and get the job “done” only to have to
rebuild after one disaster.

Obituaries

October 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, 81, died on August 27, 2005 in New
York City after a brief illness. Born in Poland, Moor-Jankowski
joined the Polish Army at age 15 to help fight the 1939 Nazi
invasion, then fought in the resistance. “Moor-Jankow-ski’s
underground exploits included impersonating a German officer in an
elaborate scheme to forge travel documents,” recalled Douglas Martin
of The New York Times. “After an explosive bullet burst in his knee,
he was shifted from hospital to hospital, speaking German even under
anesthesia. The last of his 27 escapes from German and Soviet
prisons was into Switzerland. He earned his medical degree there,
partly by writing his thesis on the leg brace he invented for
himself.” As a blood researcher, Martin added, “Moor-Jankowski
experimented on himself, but refused an offer to do medical tests on
American prisoners. He started working with apes,” eventually
developing ethical qualms about that, too. Moor-Jankowski emigrated
to the U.S. in 1963 to found the New York Primate Center at New York
University. In 1965 Moor-Jankowski formed the Laboratory for
Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, LEMSIP for short,
which for the next 30 years was widely seen as the standard setter in
humane treatment of laboratory primates. “He was dismissed by NYU on
August 9, 1995,” Martin summarized, “the day after the USDA told
the university that he had reported violations” of the Animal Welfare
Act at another of its labs. ANIMAL PEOPLE reported the firing on
page one. Moor-Jankowski ensured before leaving that all of the
LEMSIP primates were retired to the Primarily Primates and Wildlife
Waystation sanctuaries. Moor-Jankowski may be best remembered,
however, for spending $2 million of his own money in a successful
defense against a libel suit brought against him in his capacity as
founding editor of the International Journal of Primatology.

Obituaries

Hurricane Katrina helps captive marine mammals make a jailbreak

October 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

An inadvertent release of dolphins from the Marine Life
Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi ended on September 20 when a
capture team led by former Free Willy/Keiko Foundation trainer Jeff
Foster retrieved the last escapees from the Mississippi Sound.
“Before Katrina hit the coast on August 29,” explained
Valerie Bauman of Associated Press, “the dolphins were moved to a
pool at the Marine Life Oceanarium that had withstood the destruction
of Hurricane Camille in 1969. Katrina destroyed that pool and pulled
the dolphins out into the Gulf of Mexico. Biologists located the
dolphins on September 10 by performing aerial surveys. They were
monitored and fed from boats, and four were rescued within days,
but the other four had left the area.”
Marine Life Aquarium owner Moby Solangi said three of the
eight dolphins “were born at the facility, and had never been wild.”
“So far, none of the media have investigated Solangi’s
background,” complained longtime dolphin freedom advocate Ric
O’Barry, who now works for One Voice, of France. O’Barry took
time out from organizing an October 8 day of international protest
against coastal dolphin massacres and captures for the exhibition
industry to elaborate.

Slidell rooftop rescue

October 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

The first widely publicized post-Katrina animal rescue was
managed as a Labor Day photo op for Sahara star Matthew McConaughey.
McConaughey helped to evacuate anesthesiologist James
Riopell, 50 dogs, 18 cats, and two hamsters from the roof of the
Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Slidell, Louisiana, isolated for a
week by high water.
“A day before McConaughey’s mercy mission,” a press release
recounted, “another helicopter trying to rescue the animals and
their guardian crashed outside the hospital.”
While awaiting rescue, “The doctor euthanized some animals
at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned
and starve. He made a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog
kennel,” wrote Mike Stobbe of Associated Press.
“The bigger dogs were fighting it. When I saw that, I said
‘I can’t do it,'” said Lorne Bennett. His wife Valerie Bennett had
offered boat rescuers her wedding ring and her mother’s wedding ring
to save their four dogs, Stobbe reported. They were eventually
among the saved.

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