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Editorial: Factory farming toll rises in Asia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

“We are preparing to campaign against burying birds with
influenza alive,” Voice-4-Animals founder Changkil Park e-mailed
from Seoul, South Korea, as the winter avian flu pandemic peaked,
and frantic officials and poultry workers struggled to contain it by
killing all the birds believed to be at risk. “I hope animal people
will have some ideas for us about how animal advocates should view
the massive inhumane treatment of birds,” Changkil Park added,
seeming to speak for thousands whose feelings ranged from shock to
despair.
Finding any good in the often unspeakably cruel culling of
more than 100 million chickens and other birds is admittedly
difficult.
The World Bank has pledged to finance rebuilding the
Southeast Asian poultry industry, moreover, which will probably
mean even more intensive promotion of factory farm methods in the
very near future. If Southeast Asian egg producers adopt the routine
live maceration or burial of “spent” hens that has become standard in
U.S. agribusiness, described elsewhere in this edition, the World
Bank involvement may help to institutionalize some of the cruelty
that is now horrifying television news viewers throughout the world.

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Pro-animal India pols shift alliances for election

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

NEW DELHI–Former Indian minister for animal welfare Maneka
Gandhi, serving in Parliament as an independent since 1996, on
February 16 joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, with her son
Varun.
Varun Gandhi was reportedly expected to join Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the campaign trail preliminary to the April
national election. The Hindu quoted “a party leader” as anticipating
that Varun Gandhi would make his debut as a political candidate in
the next election, after gaining behind-the-scenes experience and
making some public speaking appearances on behalf of other candidates
this year.
Joining the BJP was rumored to be a precondition for Mrs.
Gandhi possibly being reappointed to head the animal welfare
ministry, which Mrs. Gandhi directed from 1998 until mid-2002. The
ministry has reportedly been troubled ever since by indifferent
leadership, but Mrs. Gandhi told ANIMAL PEOPLE that she was not
hopeful.
“I don’t think they will ever give me that ministry [again],”
Mrs. Gandhi said. “But we have two months before the April
elections. Let’s see.”

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

Richard Charter, 53, of Johannesburg, South Africa, drowned
on February 1, 2004 while trying to rescue a white water rafting
companion who had fallen into the Orange River near Glen Lion, and
also drowned. “After a successful business and sporting career, in
which he captained the South African skydiving team, Charter set
about buying degraded farmland and rehabilitating it back to its
natural beauty. His most recent and ambitious project was Glen Lion
in the southern Kalahari,” recalled Chris Mercer of the Kalahari
Raptor Centre, “where Charter and his partner, entrepreneur Pat
Quirk, bought 26 contiguous farms to create a private nature reserve
of some 70,000 hectares (about 180,000 acres) to provide pristine
sanctuary for Kalahari wildlife and in particular, the desert lion
and black rhino. We hope Charter’s untimely death will not end the
Glen Lion project,” Mercer added, “because of the need for suitable
habitat into which rescued predators such as caracals, jackals and
hyenas can be released.”

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Wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

The Nature Conservancy, often criticized for use of cruel
tactics in killing non-native species on its holdings, in early
February 2004 testified before the Hawaii House Water, Land Use,
and Ha-waiian Affairs Committee in favor of a bill to allow USDA
Wildlife Services to shoot feral animals from the air.

Uist Hedgehog Rescue is again trying to rescue hedgehogs from
the Western Isles off Scotland, quadrupling the bounty offered to
residents for safe captures ahead of a cull funded by Scottish
Natural Heritage. Scottish Natural Heritage considers hedgehogs to
be a non-native menace to birds’ nests. UHR saved 156 hedgehogs in
2003.

The 15-nation European Union on January 19 suspended imports
of grizzly bear trophies from British Columbia, six months after
warning the B.C. and Canadian governments that scientific review
indicates the present hunting rules are insufficient to protect
grizzlies from extirpation. The B.C. government estimates that
17,000 grizzlies live in the province, but other investigators
believe there are as few as 4,000. The EU ban is largely symbolic,
as only seven of 228 grizzlies killed by hunters in B.C. in 2003 were
killed by EU residents.

Letters [March 2004]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

Pit bull terriers

I agree that a ban on the breeding of pit bull terriers and
Rottweilers is unfortunately the right thing to do. I am currently
the owner of two American Staffordshire terriers and I have been
volunteering to rescue pit bulls and Rotties for a few years now. I
love the breeds and find them to be very loving companions. I have
had a pit or amstaff in my family for about 15 years.
However, I recognize that these days I am not the typical
pitbull owner. This is where your editorial “Bring Breeders of
high-risk dogs to heel” will fail to garner the needed support. In
giving statistics about the numbers of attacks involving these
breeds, your article implies that these are by nature bad dogs.
However, most owners of these breeds are fighting them, treating
them inhumanely, training and working with them to increase their
aggressive nature, or are just flat out irresponsible. You talk
about how the current attitude of the insurance industry is unfair to
other breeds, but you fail to recognize that this attitude is also
unfair to responsible owners of these maligned breeds.
For those who love these breeds, the real question is does
our opposition of a breed ban help or harm the dogs?

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Ebola exposure risk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

FORT DETRICK, Maryland– A National Research Council fellow
doing postdoctoral virology research at the U.S. Army Research
Institute for Infectious Diseases accidentally grazed herself with a
needle on February 11 while injecting mice with a weakened strain of
Ebola virus. Quarantined for 30 days on February 12, at “Level
Four” biosecurity, she remained free of Ebola symptoms at least
through February 18, reported David Dishneau of the Baltimore Sun.
The researcher was trying to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Ebola
victims typically die after several days of high fever, diarrhea,
vomiting, and both internal and external bleeding.

How the U.S. kills sick & “spent” chickens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

SAN DIEGO–Calls to television stations
and letters to newspapers indicate that Americans
were mostly shocked by coverage of live burial
and sometimes live incineration of chickens in
Souteast Asia to stop the spread of avian flu
H5N1–but live burial of chickens is also common
here, to dispose of “spent” hens and surplus
male chicks from laying hen “factories.”
The U.S. egg industry kills about 170
million spent hens and as many as 235 million
male chicks per year. In 2002 about 111 million
spent hens were killed in U.S. and Canadian
slaughterhouses. Nearly 59 million hens, along
with the male chicks, were killed by other
means. That number is expected to increase by
about 21 million in 2004, warned Poultry Times
writer Barbara Olenik in September 2003.
“The USDA purchased approximately 30
million spent hens a year through their canned
boned and diced chicken purchase programs,
making it the largest market for spent hens,”
Olenick explained. “However, in July 2003 the
USDA announced new specifications that fowl
producers must meetŠdue to complaints of bone
fragments and injuries to consumers in the
National School Lunch Program.”

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How Republicans use hunting as a “wedge issue”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C. –With U.S. federal elections
constitutionally mandated to be held on the first Tuesday of
November, it is a verity that the stretch drive of any campaign will
coincide with hunting season, and that close races for seats in
Congress and state legislatures may be decided by whether or not
hunters descend from tree stands to cast ballots.
Already the incumbent Republican majorities in the U.S.
Senate, House of Representatives, and the greater number of
statehouses are scrambling to lure hunter votes. Lacking the chance
to pass legislation, their fall challengers, mostly Democrats,
must rely upon image-building and promises.
Few candidates are likely to actively seek support from opponents of
hunting, even though the number of active hunters in the U.S. has
declined to just 13 million, representing just 4.6% of the U.S.
population. Approximately 10% of the U.S. population hunted a
generation ago.
The Fund for Animals on January 22 distributed a list of the
10 states in which hunting participation fell fastest from 1991 to
2001. Included were Rhode Island, down 59%; Massachusetts, down
39%; California, down 39%; Delaware, down 39%; Illinois, down
31%; Iowa, down 26%; North Carolina, down 26%; Connecticut,
down 21%; Ohio, down 20%; and New Mexico, down 19%.
Eight of the 10 states favored Democratic presidential
nominee Al Gore in 2000, and are expected to favor the Democratic
nominee in 2004. Ohio and North Carolina are considered “swing
states” that could go either way.

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Did Plum Island lab introduce Lyme & West Nile viruses?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ORIENT POINT, N.Y.–The 850-acre Plum Island Animal Disease
Center, just off Long Island, operated by the USDA and the
Department of Homeland Security, is nominally the first line of
defense for Americans against zoonotic diseases associated with
agriculture–like the avian flu H5N1.
Now New York City corporate attorney Michael C. Carroll, 31,
argues in a newly published book entitled Lab 257 – The Disturbing
Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory, from
William Morrow Inc., that accidents at Plum Island may have
introduced Lyme disease and West Nile fever to the U.S.
“The first outbreak of Lyme disease occurred in Old Lyme,
Connecticut, in 1975,” Carroll pointed out to Newsday staff writer
Bill Bleyer in a pre-publication interview. “Ten miles southwest of
Old Lyme you have Plum Island directly in the flight path of hundreds
of thousands of birds.”
Carroll asserts that Plum Island was at the time breeding
thousands of ticks, which can transmit Lyme disease and were
“impregnated with exotic animal viruses and bacteria.”
According to Carroll, government documents establish that in
1978 holes were found in the roof and air filtration system at the
lab and in the incinerator where infected animal carcasses were
burned. The leaks came to light in 1978 after hoof and mouth disease
escaped from one of the Plum Island buildings, infecting about 200
cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses who were kept outside. All were
killed, lest the disease escape to the mainland.

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