Cell phone videocams open factory farms to public view

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
BOULDER, URBANA–Ignoring 20 years of
warnings by leading U.S. agribusiness educators
and pundits has begun to cost the livestock
industry serious money and– perhaps–consumer
confidence.
Increasingly frequent and effective
undercover exposés are acquainting ever more of
the public with meat, egg, and dairy production
practices, including with the ineffecacy of
agribusiness at improving animal welfare despite
frequent promises.
More than a hundred activists have now
worked undercover at many hundreds of factory
farms and slaughterhouses, documenting
procedures with thousands of hours of video.

Editorial: Sick & injured animals hide. Shelters need to be seen.

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Two members of the ANIMAL PEOPLE team had recent occasion to
deliver an injured rabbit to a world-renowned wildlife rescue center.
The drive should have taken less than an hour, including a 20-minute
ferry boat crossing. Unfortunately, no one at ANIMAL PEOPLE had
ever been there before. There was neither a map nor a physical
address on the center’s web site. Instructions received from center
staff before beginning the journey proved to be incomplete.
Directions downloaded from Google maps proved to be wrong. Also,
the center is located on a dead-end street whose name we were given,
but there are two dead-end streets of the same name within about half
a mile of each other, probably once connected but no longer.
Altogether, finding the wildlife rescue center took four
hours, eight telephone calls, and half a tank of gasoline. Along
the way, the ANIMAL PEOPLE expedition met another carload of people
with another injured animal who also could not find the center. Each
call to the center brought a different set of directions.

Letters [June 2010]

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

Using credit cards in adoption screening

Thank you for publishing “Rethink-ing
adoption screening in the computer age” in your
May 2010 edition.
Many of the points addressed in this
editorial are valid, but as a consumer who is
concerned about identity theft and financial
privacy, I would be very leery of an
organization that required presentation of a
credit card if I had planned to pay via cash or
check. Further, if it were not revealed to me
ahead of time that my credit would be checked
when I was not applying for credit, employment
or a security clearance, adverse publicity for
the organization could result.
While I understand the reasons for
requiring a credit card for non-credit purposes,
applicable shelters should make these
requirements known in publicity materials.
–Cecily Westermann
St. Louis, Missouri
<cwestermann@sbcglobal.net>
Read more

Letters

“Tong wars” in Ahmedabad make dogcatching methods an Indian national issue

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
AHMEDABAD–“Tong wars” in Ahmedabad, India, in mid-June
2010 made dog-catching methods a national issue, hotly debated in
multiple articles in the Times of India, Daily News & Analysis,
The Mirror, The Express–in short, most of the leading newspapers
covering northwestern India.
The issue exploded out of the ongoing efforts of Ahmedabad
resident Lisa Warden, a Canadian citizen, to bring the city into
compliance with the Standard Operating Procedure Manual for
Sterilization of Stray Dogs, published in 2009 by the Animal Welfare
Board of India.

Obituaries [May 2010]

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
Gopal Tanti, 56, died on May 11, 2010 after a six-year
struggle with a neurological disorder that ended his career as “the
guru of tranquilization,” as Tanti was memorialized by Sunderban
Tiger Reserve assistant field director Anjan Guha. “In 33
adventurous years, Gopal Tanti is believed to have tranquillized 84
tigers, a dozen elephants and several rhinos,” recalled Prithvijit
Mitra of the Times News Network. Tanti joined the Suderban Tiger
Reserve in 1977. Standard practice, pioneered by Man-Eaters of
Kumaon author proto-tiger conservationist Jim Corbett, was to kill
any tiger whose activities appeared likely to incite hostility toward
all tigers by neighbors of tiger habitat. Shankar Ghosh had
introduced the use of tranquilizer darts, to capture rogue tigers
instead of killing them, but Tanti discarded his methods and instead
emulated Corbett, who emphasized getting close enough to do the job
with a single well-placed shot. “He would walk straight into the
tiger’s den and shoot a dart from very close range,” wrote Mitra.

Obituaries

Commissions to probe death of Kyiv Zoo elephant

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
KYIV–The Kiev city government on May 5, 2010 announced that
two separate commissions of senior personnel from other zoos in the
Ukraine and Russia would investigate the April 26, 2010 death of the
Kyiv Zoo elephant Boy, 39.
Kyiv Zoo director Svitlana Berzina claimed Boy had been
poisoned, but SOS Animals Ukraine founder Tamara Tarnawska produced
skeptical statements from British and German zoo experts. Tarnawska
has long campaigned against substandard conditions at the zoo, which
was considered particularly unsuitable for an elephant.
“In 2008, as part of a campaign to urge citizens to help
support the zoo, Kyiv mayor Leonid Chernovetsky said he personally
pays $6,000 a month for the feeding and care of Boy,” recalled
Svitlana Tuchynska of the Kyiv Post.

BOOKS: Naming Nature: The clash between instinct & science

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Naming Nature: The clash between instinct & science
by Carol Kaesuk Yoon
W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110),
2009. 344 pages, hardcover. $27.95.

Taxonomy is the science of naming and cataloguing life forms.
What taxonomists do is order biological knowledge. The 18th century
botanist Carolus Linnaeus is widely recognized as the originator of
scientific taxonomy, but as Carol Kaesuk Yoon points out in Naming
Nature, Linnaeus’ contribution was chiefly that he found a means of
reconciling older taxonomic constructs to accommodate the findings of
the Age of Discovery.
Heraldic taxonomy, ranking species as “higher” and “lower”
according to recognized traits, had been recognized in various forms
throughout Europe, Asia, and much of Africa for thousands of years
before Linnaeus.

BOOKS: Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters by Leslie Irvine
Temple University Press (1852 N. 10th St., Philadelphia,
PA 19122), 2009. 176 pages, hardcover. $24.50.

Who fills the ark in time of disaster? Leslie Irvine in
Filling the Ark examines who is evacuated and who is left behind?
Practically everyone old enough to watch TV remembers
gut-wrenching scenes of National Guard troops yanking bewildered dogs
and cats away from the arms of hysterical children during the
evacuation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in late August
2005. Some pets were shot in the streets by sheriff’s deputies.
Charges against the deputies were dropped in 2008. Other animals
were tied up and shot sadistically in a school that had served as an
evacuation center. No one was charged with those killings. Tens of
thousands of pets were left to fend for themselves. Many were
rescued by the largest and longest sustained animal rescue operation
in the U.S. ever, but many others died before help could arrive.

BOOKS: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, & Wear Cows

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, & Wear Cows:
An introduction to carnism
by Melanie Joy, Ph.D.
Conari Press (65 Parker Street, Suite 7,
Newburyport, MA 01950), 2010. 204 pages,
hardcover. $19.95.

Melanie Joy opens Why We Love Dogs, Eat
Pigs, & Wear Cows by describing guests sitting
around a dinner table. The host smiles as she
dishes out a savory stew. Oh, by the way, did
I tell you it’s made from five pounds of golden
retriever? Do the guests vomit? Storm out in
protest? Or slap their napkins across the cook’s
face?
In a second scenario the savory stew is
made from marinated beef tips in a red wine
sauce, served over a bed of steaming white rice.
Most people dig in and perhaps ask for seconds.
Why do humans eat beef, chicken, lamb,
pork and seafood without blinking, yet in much
of the world are repulsed and outraged by the
idea of dining on dog?

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