House bill opens fire on mute swans

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The House of Representatives Resources
Committee on May 5 sent to the full House the so-called Migratory
Bird Treaty Reform Act (H.R. 4114) and the less controversial Marine
Turtle Conservation Act (H.R. 3378). Both bills were introduced by
Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans Subcommittee chair Wayne
Gilchrest (R-MD).
Both bills are expected to advance rapidly through Congress
as two of the major election year Republican gestures toward
environmentalists.
The Marine Turtle Conservation Act provides funding for foreign
conservation programs.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act would exempt
“non-native” species from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918,
reversing recent court rulings and consent decrees signed by the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service in settlement of activist lawsuits which
stipulate that the act covers all migratory waterfowl–including mute
swans and the giant Canada geese introduced across the U.S. by the
Fish & Wildlife Service during the 1950s through the 1970s.
The giant Canada geese do not actually migrate, and for that
reason have been exempted from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act since
1994 by decree, but they are hybrid look-alikes for the migratory
variety, bred and released by the Fish & Wildlife Service in hopes
of rebuilding the migratory flocks so that more geese could be hunted.

“Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting city”

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

BARCELONA–Ernest Hemingway, in Death In The Afternoon
(1932), mentioned Barcelona as perhaps the only city where
bullfights could be watched all year round. Barcelona then supported
three of the world’s largest bullfighting stadiums –and tourists had
just barely begun to attend.
On April 5, 2004, the Barcelona city council voted by
secret ballot, 21-15 with two abstentions, in favor of a
non-binding resolution stating “Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting
city.” The vote affirmed a petition circulated by the Asociacion
Defensa Derechos Animal, signed by 250,000 Barcelona citizens.
Opinion polls showed that 63% of Barcelonians now disapprove
of bullfighting; 55% favored banning it.
The Barcelona resolution will not close La Monumental, the
last functioning bull ring in the city. About 100 bulls per year are
killed at La Monumental, chiefly to thrill tourists, in a season that
now runs from March through September. More bulls are killed only in
Madrid and Sevilla.
Bullfighting in Barcelona can actually be banned only by the Catalan
regional parliament. The Catalan parliament in mid-2003 barred
children under age 14 from attending bullfights, 18 months after
Mexico City restricted bullfight and cockfight attendance to persons
over 18 years of age.

Storm over dogs & cats in the Carolinas

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C.–Hurricanes
often hit the Carolinas, raining dogs and cats.
But they rarely blow so far inland and never rage
so long as the storms over animal control policy
underway for almost a year now, driven by fatal
maulings, dogfighting incidents, and rising
awareness that the region has one of the highest
rates of shelter killing in the U.S.–and the
world, since despite recent progress in reducing
the numbers, the U.S. stills kills more dogs and
cats per 1,000 residents than most other nations.
A federal grand jury on April 27, 2004
indicted pit bull terrier owner Roddie Philip
Dumas, 29, of Charlotte, North Carolina, for
possessing crack cocaine with intent to sell,
using and carrying a firearm during a drug
trafficking offense, being a convicted felon in
possession of firearms and ammunition, and
intimidating and interfering with a U.S. mail
carrier, reported Charlotte Observer staff
writer Gary L. Wright.

Animal Welfare awareness of Chinese youth

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Animal Welfare awareness of Chinese youth
by Peter Li, Zu Shuxian, & Su Pei-feng

In early 2002 five bears at the Beijing Zoo were attacked on
two separate occasions with sulfuric acid by a mysterious visitor.
For months Chinese media gave extensive coverage to the incident,
including the eventual prosecution and conviction of perpetrator Liu
Hai-yang.
Coming from a single-child family, Liu Hai-yang was among
China’s 80 million “little emperors” who reputedly harbor an
inordinate sense of entitlement. A science major at Beijing’s
prestigious Tsinghua University, Liu showed no signs of remorse. He
questioned his detention, demanded his release, and defended his
act as a “scientific experiment.”
To animal advocates, the incident illustrated why the
passage of anti-cruelty legislation must not be delayed any longer.
Yet others, including some Chinese officials, argued that
proposals to legislate animal welfare are beyond what China is ready
to accept.
The Liu case was among the topics most discussed at an
October 2002 symposium on animal welfare held in Heifei, Anhui
Province. Responding to the issues raised there, with
co-sponsorship from the World Society for the Protection of Animals
and the University of Houston downtown campus, we surveyed Chinese
college students to investigate whether the alleged “little emperor”
syndrome can actually be found in attitudes toward animals, and what
the prevailing attitudes toward animals are likely to be in coming
decades, as today’s college students become China’s future leaders.

Asia
Culture

How Muslims can wage jihad against “Islamic” cruelty

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

How Muslims can wage jihad against “Islamic” cruelty
by Kristen Stilt

The stories have become sadly familiar: a Society for the
Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt volunteer encounters a young boy
on a Cairo street throwing stones at a dog. She restrains the boy
and asks him: “Why are you harming this dog, who is one of God’s
creatures?”
The boy replies: “Because the Imam in the mosque said that
dogs are impure.”
Or SPARE president Amina Abaza sees a group of children
trying to drown a puppy in a canal on the outskirts of Cairo. She
rushes to the edge of the canal and seizes the animal, telling the
offenders that God will punish them for committing a wrong. “We are
doing no wrong,” they reply, “because we heard in the mosque that
dogs are dirty.”
In Egypt such incidents and comments are both common and
tragic. Because of mistaken understandings of Islamic teachings,
some Muslims in Egypt-and beyond-commit cruelty in the name of their
religion. Arguments that call upon religion, even incorrectly, can
only be defeated with proper religious citations. A careful look at
the Islamic texts clearly shows that the behavior of these children
and many others acting like them is completely wrong. But
reprimanding the children by telling them that their actions are
unkind, cruel, or unjust does not counter the underlying motivation
for their behavior.

Letters [May 2004]

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Whole Foods & Foie Gras

I wanted to share with you part of a
conversation I just had with an attorney friend,
a vegan. She mentioned to me how upsetting it
was to her to see foie gras sold at the Whole
Food stores in New York. I wanted to make
certain Whole Foods really sells foie gras before
I denounced it, so I took a cab over to Whole
Foods and what I found was a product called
Alexian Duck & Pork Liver Mousse with Cognac or
Alexian Duck w/cognac mousse pate. The words
foie gras were not on the package, but someone
in customer service told me this was foie gras
because it contains duck liver.
VEG News has on its current cover Whole
Foods CEO John Mackey, presenting him as a hero.
In the article Mackey states that he is a vegan,
lists the books he has read on this and related
issues, talks about his discussions with PETA
and other animal rights groups, and talks about
making farming more humane. Mackey says that he
is not the only person in charge of the company
and the company must listen to the demands of
customers who are now–as a result of the Atkins
diet and mad cow disease–demanding more high
quality meat.

Letters

Gopher derby halted

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Canada –The Ken Turcot Memorial
Gopher Derby was not held in 2004, after participants reportedly
killed as many as 100,000 Richardson’s ground squirrels and prairie
dogs in 2002 and 2003. The first edition of the killing contest
attracted 211 hunters. The 2003 edition drew just 120.
Saskatoon Wildlife Federation business manager Len Jabush
indicated to Sean Pratt of the Western Producer that the gopher derby
might be revived in 2005, “just to annoy” protesters and critics.
Sponsored by the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation, an affiliate
of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation and Canadian Wildlife
Federation, the gopher derby was opposed by the U.S.-based National
Wildlife Federation. The NWF has no authority over the Canadian
groups, but they distribute NWF publications and sponsor classroom
use of the NWF’s Project Wild lesson plans.
NWF membership recruitment mailings have for at least eight
years emphasized NWF efforts to list prairie dogs as a threatened
species in the U.S.
“I can tell you that NWF was clear and unequivocal in
opposition to such killing sprees as this gopher derby,” former NWF
vice chair Edward Clark told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “but that position was
expressed behind the scenes. I would have preferred a stronger
public position,” Clark said.

BOOKS: Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights
by Tom Regan
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200,
Lanham, MD 20706), 2004. 200 pages. Hardcover, $21.95.

Tom Regan, professor emeritus of
philosophy at North Carolina State University in
Raleigh, is so well known as to need little
introduction. The author of more than 20 books,
he has long been among the most respected
intellectual leaders of the animal rights
movement.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in his foreword opines
that Empty Cages is the single best introduction
to the topic of animal rights ever written. We
can commend the clarity of the logic and the
conciseness of the presentation. Regan takes the
arguments most frequently used by animal
exploiters, gives us the facts, and then knocks
the arguments down with incisive reasoning. If
you want to better put over the arguments for
animal rights, then you must read–and
learn–this book.

Human obituaries

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

John “Jack” O’Brien, believed to be in his early seventies,
died on April 30, 2004 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. A former Roman
Catholic priest, who married former novice turned flamboyant animal
rights activist Dorothy Checci, O’Brien “was always in the
background, but his presence was felt. Jack was Dorothy’s #1
supporter,” said longtime friend Gayle Fitzpatrick. After Dorothy
Checci-O’Brien died at age 70 in August 2001, Jack O’Brien “tried to
continue her work, but was wheelchair-bound after several strokes,”
Fitzpatrick added.

Virginia Denton, 78, died on January 24, 2004. Born in
Brooklyn, spending much of her life in Ohio, Denton relocated to
Brooksville, Florida in 1982, where she and her husband Jim founded
the Compassion Spay/Neuter fund and volunteered for the Herandon
County Humane Society. She is survived by her husband, two sons,
and a daughter.

Obituaries

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