Peggy Larson, DVM and Doctor -of-Law: Committed, compassionate, qualified to castrate or sue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

BURLINGTON, VERMONT––Among the
heroes and heroines of animal protection are ex-vivisectors
turned animal rights advocate, veterinarians who do low-
cost neutering, whistleblowers who challenge the meat
industry, articulate writers and speakers, and attorneys who
secure better humane enforcement.
Tough, skeptical, and able to debate any subject
she addresses, Peggy Larson is all the above and more. Her
37 years of professional research, activism, and advocacy
began with two years of neurophysiologic experiments on
cats at the University of Minnesota in 1956-1957, as one of
the first women to break into an overwhelmingly male-dom-
inated field. This work, she recalls, “was horrible. Succinyl
choline was commonly used at that time, which paralyzes
the cat but does not anesthetize him.”

Read more

COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Undercover probe nabs Wisconsin dog dealer; local judge lets him go
Circuit judge Donald Poppy, of
Calumet County, Wisconsin, on June 14
dismissed a felony cruelty charge against
USDA-licensed Class B animal dealer
Ervin Stebane, 72, for tying, shooting,
and disemboweling a dog he sold as meat.
Poppy claimed Wisconsin law allows peo-
ple to kill their own dogs in a humane man-
ner, called the slaughter humane, and
added, “If the legislature intended for peo-
ple not to kill dogs as food, the legislature
should pass such a law.”

Zoos

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt told the San Diego Zoo on June
25 that, “Frankly, at this time, I am not
optimistic that our biologists can issue the
permit” the zoo seeks to import three pan-
das from China under a captive breeding
loan, because the import might violate the
Endangered Species Act. Babbitt said the
zoo would be allowed to bring in the pan-
das only if it can prove that the breeding
loan “will ultimately result in enhanced
protection for the species.” He added that
his staff was concerned “that this transac-
tion will set a precedent and generate irre-
sistible pressure for the capture and export
of pandas from the only region where they
are found wild.” The San Diego Zoo has
already spent more than $1 million in
preparation to receive the pandas, who are
expected to be a record-breaking attrac-
tion, and has agreed to pay China $1 mil-
lion a year during their visit plus $600,000
per cub who lives longer than six months.

Read more

FUR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

A frequent target of animal
rights protesters for keeping marine mam-
mals in captivity, Marine World/Africa
USA is also under fire from the California
Fur Industry Inc. for describing the near-
annihilation of wild serval cats by the fur
trade during educational presentations at the
amusement park’s Wildlife Theatre.
“Fur trade officials are now
receiving Indian Affairs funds, which
should be going to First Nations,” the
Aboriginal Trappers Federation of Canada
charged in a public statement at the recent
North American Fur and Fashion Exposition
in Montreal. The statement referred to the
allocation of funds from Indian and Northern
Affairs Canada to the Wildfur Council of
North America, a pro-trapping group with
little Native American representation.

Read more

Did AmEx renege on “no fur” pledge to Roddick?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Did or did not American Express pledge to drop fur from
its catalogs, to secure an endorsement from Body Shop skin and
hair care products founder Anita Roddick?
Catching flak for appearing in AmEx television commer-
cials while the firm is under boycott by PETA and other groups,
Roddick issued a written statement on April 15 asserting that,
“Before agreeing to do the commercial, I had a meeting with
American Express where I was assured that the current catalog
would be the last one to include fur.” Receiving Roddick’s state-
ment directly from The Body Shop, ANIMAL PEOPLE pub-
lished it in May.

Read more

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

The premise of the hit film Jurassic Park is that
scientists might some day clone dinosaurs from bits of their
DNA, containing their genetic codes, which may be found
in the bellies of blood-sucking insects whose remains are
preserved in amber. Considered far-fetched by many, that
scenario moved closer to reality in June when a team of
California-based researchers reported in Nature that they
had extracted recognizable DNA segments from a weevil
who became caught in tree resin 120 to 135 million years
ago. The resin harrdened into amber, and was eventually
excavated near Jezzine, Lebanon. Paleontologist Jack
Horner of Montana State University topped that June 30,
announcing that his graduate assistant Mary Schweitzer had
discovered apparent blood cells in the deep interior of a
tyrannosaur bone, where the thickness of the bone protected
them from fossilization and decay. Horner’s team is now
trying to extract DNA from the blood cells.

Read more

Animal Health & Behavior

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

CDC goes to rat-@#$%
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention blame an unknown Hantaan virus probably
transmitted by rodents for causing flu-like symptoms that
killed 19 residents of the Four Corners region of New
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado during May and
June. Most of the victims were Native Americans.
Hantaan viruses are typically transmitted through inhala-
tion, after becoming airborne with evaporated urine.
The transmission route for this as yet unidentified virus
has not been found, and investigators have been thwarted
by the reluctance of Navajo victims’ families, in particu-
lar, to speak either of the dead or of matters involving
their religion and rituals. However, Nevada paleoenvi-
ronmental researcher Peter E. Wigand, who seeks clues
to ecological history in ancient deposits of crystalized rat
urine, may have unwittingly provided a clue to the out-
break last January, before it actually occurred. Wigand

Read more

Diet & Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Thirty of 90 beef slaughterhouses inspected by
the USDA during last winter’s outbreak of E. coli bacterial
poisoning of hamburger were temporarily closed for clean-
up, Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy announced May 27.
Twelve plants were put in a special enforcement program,
with which they must comply or lose USDA certification.
The last of 143 people who were hospitalized during the E.
coli outbreak, 10-year-old Brianne Kiner, was released as
an outpatient from Children’s Hospital in Seattle on June 29.
Stricken after eating a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger on
January 13, Kiner spent 41 days in a coma and lost her
large intestine. Four children died––three in the Seattle area
and one in San Diego.

Read more

CHILDREN & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Lucinda Randolph Benjamin of the 4-H Club
and Margaret Barker of the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology are coordinating a study of inner city pigeon
life, funded by the National Science Foundation and actu-
ally carried out by 15 young residents of the Bedford-
Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. The partici-
pants, ages 9-14, are to closely observe the pigeons in
their neighborhood, documenting everything the birds do.
Carol Stevenson, principal of the Ladera del
Norte Elementary School in Farmington, New Mexico,
rewarded a class of 23 second graders for reading 7,000
pages of library books during May by eating six live worms
in front of them. The geek show was apparently the chil-
dren’s idea, inspired by one of the books they read.
1 609 610 611 612 613 648