Author: Dylan Forest

Moral relativism & Marine World

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

VALLEJO, California––Any day now the fishing
crews of Iki, Japan, may string nets between their boats and,
banging metal objects together to make a noise that carries
underwater, herd scores of Dall’s porpoises and pseudorcas
into an inlet to be harpooned and hacked apart with machetes.
Spring is the season for such massacres, conducted intermit-
tently at least since 1900 and almost annually since 1967
despite international protest. The traditional rationale is
reducing competition for yellowtail; also, much of the por-
poise and whale meat is either eaten or sold.
A few months later, Eskimo hunters in power boats
will shoot walruses up and down the Bering and Arctic
coasts, ostensibly for meat but perhaps mostly to get ivory
tusks, according to witness Sam LaBudde, a research biolo-
gist and native of Alaska who has observed the killing for
Friends of Animals. LaBudde’s testimony is backed by
Alaskan eco-journalist Tim Moffat. Some hunting parties
retrieve whole carcasses, those that don’t sink; others just
hack off tusked heads, carve out genitals, and leave the rest,
contrary to Marine Mammal Protection Act requirements.

Read more

MONEY TALK

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

“By significantly expanding the scale and
scope of their groups’ activities” during the past decade,
“the directors of environmental organizations hoped to
capitalize on Americans’ increasing demands for environ-
mental quality,” say Christopher Boerner and Jennifer
Chilton Kallery of the Center for the Study of American
Business at Washington University in St. Louis, in a new
report entitled Restructuring Environmental Big Business.
“Unfortunately, as many U.S. corporations have discov-
ered, expansion away from an organization’s core compe-
tency often has numerous disadvantages,” including inten-
sified competition for donor dollars and loss of concentra-
tion on achieving key goals. Examples of groups in trou-
ble include Greenpeace , down to 3.5 million members
from a peak 4.8 million; the Sierra Club, down from
630,000 members to 500,000; the Wilderness Society,
down from 400,000 members to 275,000; the National
Audubon Society, which posted a deficit of $1.7 million
in 1993; and the National Wildlife Federation, which
has been reducing staff since 1992. Humane societies and
animal rights groups have not been hit as hard, partly
because most have remained more closely focused.
However, Boerner and Chilton Kallery note that groups
“employing highly emotional and often misleading cam-
paigns,” including “apocalyptic prophecies,” have suf-
fered significant erosion of public trust.

Read more

Success in San Francisco: No-kill animal control

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

SAN FRANCISCO––If San Francisco SPCA ethical stud-
ies coordinator Pam Rockwell hadn’t supported her January 5 report
to president Richard Avanzino with three pages of graphs and statis-
tics, it might have been mistaken by outside readers for a work of
utopian fiction.
“Every adoptable dog and cat in San Francisco’s shelters
found a loving new home in 1994,” Rockwell stated. “Older cats
and dogs, blind animals, deaf animals, animals missing limbs or
otherwise disfigured––as long as they were healthy and of reasonably
good temperament, these dogs and cats were all adoptable. Each
was and is guaranteed a new home under the Adoption Pact,” which
the SFSPCA negotiated with the San Francisco Animal Care and
Control department just a year ago. “Since this group of animals
would be considered unadoptable and be euthanized in most shelters,
the fact that in San Francisco all these animals were saved would
appear to be an unprecedented achievement.”

Read more

Political intelligence and other oxymorons

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

The Green Scissors Coalition,
led by Jill Lancelot of the National
Taxpayers Union Foundation and Ralph
DeGennaro of Friends of the Earth, has
recommended to Congress a series of bud-
get cutbacks that would trim $33 billion
from the federal budget over the next
decade-plus with benefits for wildlife
habitat. The cuts aren’t likely to be made,
however, as they include irrigation subsi-
dies to big landowners in Republican-
dominated southern California and would
require significant amendment of the
Mining Law of 1872, any changes to
which have been fought by the wise-use
lobby. The law allows mining firms to
buy mineral rights to federal land for
under $5.00 an acre, while paying no roy-
alties on the proceeds of what they extract.

Read more

Activists

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

The Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society urgently seeks volunteer crew to
mount a voyage in protest of resumed
large-scale sealing in Atlantic Canada.
Get details from 310-301-7325 or fax 310-
574-3161.
Several anonymous Internet
p o s t i n g s in late January claimed a Sea
Shepherd vessel had collided with the
Norwegian destroyer King Olaf Gustav near
Valdheim Island. “The Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society has not been involved
in any such accident, nor do we have a ship
anywhere near the area described,”
responded Sea Shepherd Internet representa-
tive Nick Voth.

Read more

FARM campaign backfires

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

“In September and October,” The Farm Animal Reform Movement recently told members,
FARM conducted a massive letters-to-the-editor writing campaign that published over 100
letters on five topics in 60 of the nation’s largest newspapers.
We estimate that this brief campaign alone has reached between two and five million
readers, some more than once, raising substantially public awareness of the destruc-
tive impact of animal agriculture.”
That claim raised the awareness of Robert G. Zimbelman, executive vice
president of the American Society of Animal Science, who soon informed newspaper
editors across the U.S. that someone using the name “Tom Oliver” and a variety of
apparently bogus addresses had published letters following the FARM format in 22
newspapers between December 5 and February 5.

Read more

Horses

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Washington governor Mike
Lowry intervened with an emergency order on
January 24 while the state legislature rushed
through special legislation to allow animal res-
cuer Carlene Whitesell and sons Israel, 12,
and Benjamin, 8, of Paterson, to keep a pony
named Blaze. After postmaster Beth Allen
found the pony wandering along a railroad
track on December 30, she and the Whitesells
captured him, searched unsuccessfully for the
owner, then called the state brand inspector––
who moved to seize and auction the pony in
compliance with a state law governing the
roundup of unclaimed cattle. Authorities now
believe the pony was abandoned deliberately.

Read more

AGRICULTURE

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Livestock show judge Lynn
Holley, 42, of Bowling Green, Ohio, was
indicted December 22 along with Dallas
Miller, 42, also of Bowling Green, and
Gregory Garmyn, 41, of Hicksville, for
allegedly trafficking in clenbuterol, a banned
steroid. The drug is illegally used as a growth
stimulant for veal calves and a performance
booster for both human and equine athletes.
Residues in meat can cause illness and even
death. Holley was caught when Ohio
Department of Agriculture investigators dis-
covered at slaughter that vegetable oil had
been injected into the rump of his son Mike’s
steer, named grand champion at last year’s
Wood County Fair. The oil enhanced the
steer’s appearance but violated pure food laws
and the rules of fair exhibition. Looking far-
ther, the ODA found that eight award-win-
ning animals in the junior livestock division
at the Ohio State Fair had been tampered
with––three by injections of vegetable oil,
two with clenbuterol treatments, and three
with both substances.

Read more

ZOONOSIS UPDATE

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

A technical advisory committee set
up by the Indian government announced
February 7 that data review had confirmed
that a major disease outbreak in the city of
Surat last September was indeed pneumonic
plague, as first diagnosed, even though it did
not spread as fast or kill as many people as past
outbreaks have. A slightly earlier outbreak of a
disease reported as bubonic plague in
Maharashtra state is still under study. Both
forms of plague may be spread by rodent infes-
tation.
Yevgeny Belyaev, head of Russia’s
Epidemics and Sanitary Control State
Committee, told media February 8 that stray
dogs had become a serious threat to public
health in the Chechnyan war zone. He said the
chance that the dogs might spread cholera was
the greatest concern.

Read more

1 … 548 549 550 551 552 … 648