PRIMATES IN RESEARCH

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, MD, founder and for 30 years
director of the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery
in Primates at New York University, and Louis Dinetz, former
LEMSIP assistant director, on August 13 sued seeking $20 million
damages from NYU and the USDA for allegedly covering up
“scientific misconduct and fraud” and violating federal whistleblower
protection laws, by terminating them both last year and
turning LEMSIP over to primate dealer Frederick Coulston, after
Moor-Jankowski went public with allegations of negligent care in
the primate laboratory of NYU addiction researcher Ron Wood.
The allegations were upheld; NYU was ordered to pay a
$450,000 civil penalty for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
However, while USDA investigators reported that NYU had illegally
retaliated against Moor-Jankowski by shutting down LEMSIP,
other USDA officials rejected his administrative complaint,
forcing him to court to seek redress. Moor-Jankowski is represented
by Philp Byler, who also represented him in his landmark
1991 libel case victory over the Austrian pharmaceutical firm
Immuno AG, which had sued him for publishing a letter by
International Primate Protection League president Shirley
McGreal, in his capacity as editor of the Journal of Primatology.

Feces-flinging in the Texas sun

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

SAN ANTONIO––Figurative feces-flinging escalated
around Primarily Primates over the summer, apparently
stimulated by a sniff of government funding for laboratory
chimpanzee retirement.
Language authorizing funding for investigation of
chimp retirement was in the version of the National Institutes
of Health budget bill approved by the Senate on September
12. Earlier, the House Committee on National Security and
the Senate Committee on Armed Services recommended that
retirement be considered as an option for disposing of the 150
chimpanzees now kept at the Primate Research Complex at
Holloman Air Force Base in Arizona, managed under contract
by the Coulston Foundation.

Help from Paradise

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

PARADISE, Calif.––Retired
physicist Bob Plumb, now a director of the
Promoting Animal Welfare Society in
Paradise, California, is developing spreadsheet
planning models with help from pet
demographer Karen Johnson of the
National Pet Alliance, into which animal
control and shelter directors can plug whatever
dog and cat population data they have
from their community to project the probable
perimeters of data they don’t have, to
help focus budgets and programs.
For instance, Plumb says, “If we
have 100 cats, half male, a three-year
average lifespan and an average litter size
of four, then each year we need to catch
and kill or adopt out 247 cats to stay at 100.
The yearly cost, at $70 per animal,” the
U.S. norm, “is $17,306. It costs $2,660 to
spay 38 female cats at the start of the year,”
Plumb continues. This is enough to keep
the birth rate equal to normal attrition, “if
we do four more spays each year. The
yearly cost of the spaying needed to maintain
the population, after start-up costs are
paid, is $280.”

Activists & Organizations

Dangerous dogs

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Dogbite data published by
Jeffrey J. Sacks, M.D., of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention,
shows 109 Americans were killed by
dogs 1989-1994, including 11 infants
under four weeks old who were killed in
their beds. Of all the victims, 57% were
under age 10; of these, 45% were killed
by an unrestrained dog on the owner’s
property, while 29% were killed after
wandering too close to a chained dog.
Of 41 fatal attacks in which the sex of
the dog was known, 25 were by male
dogs, and 20 of those dogs had not been
neutered. Pit bulls killed 57 people;
Rottweilers killed 19.

Animal control & rescue

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The Whidbey Animal Shelter, of
Coupeville, Washington, is staggering under a
77% increase in owner-surrendered cats and kittens
this year, and a 48% overall increase in feline
intakes, despite the apparent huge popularity of
the Whidbey Animals’ Improvement Foundation
low-cost neutering, fostering, and supervised
neuter/release programs. In Louisiana, the
Jefferson Animal Shelter, of Jefferson Parish,
with a 6% rise in dog and cat intakes after a 10%
decline in 1994, and the New Orleans SPCA,
with an 11% rise after a 10% decline in 1995, are
experiencing similar, amid publicity about a 28%
increase in adoptions in Jefferson Parish and the
expansion of neutering programs at both shelters.

The Great American Meatout & multiple climax

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The Media’s Response to
Animal Rights Activism: Tracking
Print Coverage of Three Annual
Events, by Dena M. Jones of the
Center for Animals and Public Policy
at the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine, sends a strategic
heads-up to animal protection campaigners
with a statistical look at the
impact of Fur Free Friday, World
Day/Week for Laboratory Animals,
and The Great American Meatout.
Fur Free Friday c o mmenced
in 1986 at a low level of coverage,
gained increasing attention until
1989, continued to have a high profile
in 1990, and then––as fur sales
crashed––dropped virtually out of sight
until the 1994 arrest of talk show host
Ricki Lake during an anti-fur protest.

A tough week for the North Shore Animal League

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y.––The
North Shore Animal League was named in late July
along with 78 for-profit firms in a Federal Trade
Commission lawsuit filed on behalf of the Connecticut
attorney general’s office, alleging violations of
direct mail sweepstakes laws, and was simultaneously
rapped by the Council of Better Business Bureaus
Philanthropic Advisory Service for failing to meet the
CBBB requirement that “Soliciting organizations’
financial statements shall present adequate information
to serve as a basis for informed decisions.”
Neither matter is as serious as it sounds,
North Shore president John Stevenson told ANIMAL
PEOPLE. North Shore was wrongly included in the
FTC lawsuit, Stevenson said; as a nonprofit, North
Shore isn’t covered by the same law as the other
defendants, and holds a legal opinion issued by the
Connecticut attorney general’s office just two years
ago agreeing that North Shore sweepstakes mailings
comply with the applicable law.

AVMA adopts position statement on abandoned and feral cats

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

SCHAUMBERG, Illinois––The neuter/
release approach to feral cat control came of age on
July 19, when as one of the first orders of business
under new president Mary Beth Leininger the
American Veterinary Medical Association board ratified
a set of neuter/release guidelines.
The full statement:
The AVMA encourages and supports
actions to eliminate the problem of abandoned and/or
feral cats. The actions by humane, animal control,
wildlife, and public health agencies that will minimize
the numbers and impact of abandoned and/or
feral cats include a combination of activities such as
licensing requirements; discouraging free roaming
cats; requiring rabies vaccinations for cats and issuing
citations for unvaccinated animals; encouraging
permanent animal identification; and encouraging
sterilization.

FoA goes to the IRS seeking World Week missing money

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Dissatisfied with World
Animal Awareness Week organizer Peter Gerard’s September
3 statement of income and receipts, Friends of Animals is
pursuing legal action to force more complete disclosure.
At deadline several other World Week sponsors
indicated that they might join the FoA initative if Gerard
failed to promptly provide a specific list of donors and the
amounts they gave, along with an itemized list of expenditures.
Wrote FoA counsel Herman Kaufman to Gerard on
September 4, “Friends of Animals Inc., cognizant of your
failure and refusal to respond to the organizations’ requests
for a true accounting of the revenues and expenses generated
in connection with World Animal Awareness Week and the
March for Animals, has directed me to request an audit and
examination of your books by the Internal Revenue Service.”

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