CHILDREN & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

Serbian soldier Borislav Herak, 21, who may
become the first person executed for war crimes since 1945,
told New York Times reporter John Burns in November that
senior personnel taught him to kill by having him assist in
cutting pigs’ throats. Herak is charged with murdering 29
Moslem civilians between July and late October, and has
confessed to participating in more than 220 murders––most
of the victims women and children, many of them killed in
connection with rape. Herak, captured in mid-November
by Bosnian troops, goes to trial this month.
The first known controlled clinical trial of thera-
py and education involving animals, conducted by the
University of Pennsylvania, has confirmed what pet therapy
and classroom pet advocates have insisted all along: that
children learn more readily in the presence of other species.

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Agriculture

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

“If the livestock industry demonstrates good
faith toward animal advocacy, it should suffer little eco-
nomic impact from increased regulation to enhance animal
contentment,” Ohio State University agricultural economists
Carl Zulauf and Matthew Krause recently told Feedstuffs
readers. Zulauf and Krause assumed that consumers would
be willing to pay marginally higher prices for animal prod-
ucts to be assured that they were not obtained by cruel meth-
ods. Some individual farmers would be hurt by obligatory
changes of method, they said, but others would prosper,
and the overall net effect would be nil. Much of the cost of
replacing equipment and facilities would be absorbed into
the ongoing cost of upkeep. Zulauf and Krause did not con-
sider the possibility that consumers might continue to move
toward vegetarianism at the unprecedented pace of the past
decade––a trend that could encourage many farmers to
abandon animal production.

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Animal Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons on
November 10 announced that it would ask the British
Parliament to ban routine docking of dogs’ tails as, “an
unjustified mutilation and unethical,” over the objections
of Buckingham Palace. Under the RCVS proposal, vet-
erinarians who perform medically unjustified tail-dock-
ing could lose their licenses. Princess Anne vehemently
defended tail-docking at a recent meeting of the British
Veterinary Medical Association. Of the 7.5 million dogs
in Britain, about 1.3 million have been tail-docked,
mostly by breeders. Among the 185 breeds registered by
the Royal Kennel Club, about 50 are traditionally tail-
docked, including corgis (a royal favorite), boxers,
Dobermans, old English sheep dogs, poodles, and
Rottweilers.

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Who gets the money?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

BUDGETS, EXPENSES, AND ASSETS
The major national animal and habitat protection
groups are listed below in alphabetical order, together with
selected other organizations of importance and influence in
the animal protection community. Each group is identified
in the second column by apparent focus and philosophy: A
stands for advocacy, C for conservation of habitat via
acquisition, E for education, H for support of hunting
(either for “wildlife management” or recreation), L for liti-
gation, P for publication, R for animal rights, S for shel-
ter and sanctuary maintenance, V for focus on vivisection
issues, and W for animal welfare. The R and W designa-
tions are used only when an organization seems to have
made a particular point of being one or the other. Although
many groups are involved in multiple activities, available
space limits us to providing a maximum of four identifying
letters.

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Woofs & Growls

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

Introduced October 5, an agribusi-
ness-backed bill to gut the Endangered Species
Act died with the closure of the 102nd Congress,
but will be reintroduced in the 103rd, according
to the sponsors, Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.) and
W.J. Tauzin (D-La.) The bill, which has no
number or title pending reintroduction, is
endorsed by the National Cattlemen’s
Association, American Farm Bureau Federation,
and 38 other groups. It would subordinate
Endangered Species Act enforcement to econom-
ic considerations, and probably won’t be favored
by the Clinton administration. The ESA came up
for renewal this year but was ducked by legisla-
tors up for re-election, and now must be either
extended or amended by the 103rd Congress.

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Humane Society of U.S. refuses to disclose salaries; ANIMAL PEOPLE BARRED FROM ANIMAL CARE EXPO

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The salaries of the chief executives of the
Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society International were omitted
from the copy of IRS Form 990 that HSUS/HSI filed with the New York State
Charities Bureau in April 1992.
Known for providing prompt media access to tax records on nonprof-
its, the N.Y. Charities Bureau confirmed November 16 that the missing records,
Schedule 3 on the 1991 form, had apparently never been filed––although
required by law. Other information essential to determining the true balance of
program and fundraising expenditures was also missing. ANIMAL PEOPLE
then requested Schedule 3 directly from HSUS/HSI. November 17, HSI exec-
utive secretary Janet D. Frake advised ANIMAL PEOPLE to seek the missing
information through the Freedom of Information Act. ANIMAL PEOPLE has;
the information will be published when located by the IRS, which began a data
search for it on November 18.

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Vegetarian in an Orphanage

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

Few American-born people have
been vegetarians longer than Marion
Friedman, of Philadelphia. Now 68,
Friedman quit eating meat in 1935, at age
11, as a resident of the Northeastern
Hebrew Orphans Home––”An Orthodox
home,” she points out. “I lived there from
age four to age 18, when I graduated from
high school. I never knew my father, as
my parents divorced when I was an infant,
and I never was in touch with him. My
mother (suffragist and labor activist Reba
Gomporov) put me in the home only
because she was unable to care for me in
the difficult Depression times, but she saw
me every Sunday.”

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They’ve spayed/neutered 5,000 animals––this year!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

DENVER, Colorado––If people won’t take
their animals to a veterinary clinic for spaying or neuter-
ing, Jeff Young takes the Planned Pethood Plus clinic to
the animals. Working out of a bus, in cooperation with
local humane societies and activist groups, veterinarians
Young and business partner Mark Chamberlain set out
to alter 6,000 animals during 1992; surpassing 5,000 in
mid-November, they were right on pace, Young said.
The humane organizations publicize Young’s arrival in
each community and get the paperwork done in
advance. This enables him to go right to work, per-
forming as many as 32 surgeries per day, at average
fees of $15/tomcat, $20/queen, $25/male dog, and
$35/female dog.

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Dogs And Cats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:

President elect Bill Clinton’s first clash with the
White House press corps came November 18, before he
even got to the White House, when he ordered photogra-
phers to stop harassing his daughter’s altered tomcat,
Socks, outside the Arkansas governor’s mansion.
New York restauranteur Laura Maioglio
imported $2,500 worth of white truffles from Italy and
buried them in her restaurants’ garden November 23, to
allow Princess Diana of Britain to show off the skills of her
pet truffle-hunting terrier. The dog found the truffles, all
right––and ate them before a handler could get them away.
The County Prosecutor in Middlesex, New
Jersey, has barred use of police dogs in crowd control
situations. The city faces legal action in connection with a
biting incident in such a situation, and the trained dogs are
considered too valuable to risk exposing to injury.
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