Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:
Greg Miller, 38, cofounder of the
Primarily Primates sanctuary in San
Antonio, Texas, died October 7 at his home
in Allegan, Michigan, of complications
resulting from a prolonged bout with AIDS.
Local newspapers took note of his courage.
“Greg’s greatest joy in life was working with
animals,” relatives agreed. He joined
Wallace Swett in starting Primarily Primates
in 1978, after gaining experience with mon-
keys during a stint at the San Antonio Zoo,
and remained involved with the sanctuary
until 1988.

Books about cats and other pets

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

The Golden Song,
by Jan Brinckerhoff Chase. J.N. Townsend
(12 Greenleaf Drive, NH 03833), 1993.
32 pages. $16.95, hardback.
Pictures and story lilt across the
pages of a sunny picture book about a little
old lady, Mrs. Thackeray, who adores
above all else her canary named Caruso. His
happy music charms every moment of her
otherwise quiet life. She recognizes his
longing to join the wild canary flock that
brightens her garden one day, but she fears
that any avian companionship might end his
singing. She broods about the potential loss,
but finally gratitude and love impell her to
the pet shop to choose a big cage and their
prettiest female canary. When the others fly
that night, and he and the cage come in, is
she wrong to expect a cheerless silence
where there had been joyful song?

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BOOKS: The Hidden Life of Dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

The Hidden Life of Dogs, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
Houghton Mifflin (215 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10003), 1993, 148 pages,
hardcover $18.95. ISBN 0-395-66958-8.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who
has studied primitive human cultures and
wolves, in The Hidden Life of Dogs casts
an anthropologist’s eye on a species in
some ways related to both. Like all such
experiential narrativeses, hers is less hard
science than informed observation. Her
interpretation of life among a family of
dogs (her own) is unashamedly anthropo-
morphic. She recognizes, too, the influ-
ence of her own emotional bonds and
weighs them in the balance. The result is
both informative and unexpectedly moving.

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BOOKS: Animal Welfare & Human Values

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

Animal Welfare & Human Values by Rod Preece and Lorna
Chamberlain. Wilfrid Laurier University Press (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L
3C5), 1993. 334 pages, hardcover, $45.00 U.S.
Early in Animal Welfare & Human
Values, authors Preece and Chamberlain
acknowledge that, “Sometimes the philo-
sophical complexities (of constructing argu-
ments against cruelty) are greater than the
difficulties of making judgements them-
selves.” They then quote Lord Chief Justice
Mansfield, the 18th century head of the
English judiciary, who advised fellow
judges to, “Consider what justice requires
and decide accordingly. But never give
your reasons; for your judgement will prob-
ably be right, but your reasons will certain-
ly be wrong.”

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PERFORMING ANIMALS: Iditarod race critic John Suter has poodle skeletons in closet

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

Reporter Doug O’Hara of the mag-
azine We Alaskans revealed October 17 that
Iditarod sled dog race critic John Suter, of
Chugiak, Alaska, is “the man who drove
poodles in the trans-Alaska race until the
practice was effectively banned as inhumane
two years ago.” Suter has mailed more than
2,000 letters to animal rights groups since,
alleging cruelty by trainers and breeders,
including dicing cull puppies to feed adult
dogs. His letters have been used as source
material by numerous national organizations
in organizing opposition to the Iditarod.

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FUR IS STILL DEAD: Industry numbers confirm collapse, despite claims

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

Daniel A, the successor to the bankrupt Antonovich fur chain, itself declared bank-
ruptcy in early October. The high-profile collapse, on the heels of a previous collapse, under-scored the continuing crash of the fur trade. Despite the Fur Information Council of America claim that retail fur sales rose to $1.1 billion last year, ending a four-year decline, other data newly released by the fur trade itself confirms the ANIMAL PEOPLE projection based on gar-ment and pelt prices that sales actually fell to between $648 and $750 million. Evans Inc., annu-ally accounting for about 10% of U.S. fur sales, sold $107 million worth of goods––but trim items with minimal fur content accounted for $30.4 million of it. The fur trade claimed mink pelt prices were up 30%, but Wisconsin, accounting for nearly 25% of U.S. mink production, recorded a 16% drop in sales and a 13% drop in revenue, indicating only a marginal price rise. The number of U.S. fur garment wholesalers also fell, from 2,200 at the start of 1992 to just 1,500 going into this winter. Finally, a study of the fur trade done by Southwick Associates for the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies confirms the accuracy of the ANI-MAL PEOPLE model of fur trade economics, coming within 11% of the ANIMAL PEOPLE projections in 17 of 18 major categories of information. The only wider variance is in the esti-mates of retail jobs produced: Southwick found four times as many by counting all employees of retailers who sell fur, instead of counting only those who actually work in fur sales. The ANI-MAL PEOPLE model was developed in early1988 by editor Merritt Clifton, under contract with the Humane Society of the U.S., and has been used to produce yearly estimates of fur trade eco-nomic data ever since. The Southwick Associates model is based on 1990 statistics obtained directly from the fur trade and state wildlife departments.

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Diet & Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

Men who eat a lot of animal fat,
especially the fat from red meat, have more
than two and a half times the risk of develop-
ing prostate cancer than men who eat little or
none, a team of Harvard University and
Mayo Clinic researchers reported in the
October Journal of the National Cancer
Institute. The study investigated the eating
habits of 47,855 men. Over 165,000
American men develop prostate cancer each
year, often losing their sexual function in
consequence; 35,000 American men per year
die of prostate cancer.

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AGRICULTURE

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

A House/Senate conference com-
mittee agreed October 7 to raise the grazing
fee on federal land from $1.86 per animal unit
month to $3.45 over the next three years, and
to increase government supervision of ranching
activities on leased federal land. The higher
fee––still far lower than the going rate for leas-
ing privately owned grazing land––is expected
to sharply reduce the number of cattle and
sheep on the range in 16 western states. Final
approval of the grazing bill is pending.
October 16, both the House and the Senate
voted to eliminate $500 million in subsidies to
the slumping sheep industry. Wool and lamb
prices have fallen to record lows in each of the
past three years. The American Sheep Industry
Association predicted 25% to 30% of U.S.
sheep ranches would go out of business.

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