A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
HONG KONG––A Sea Shepherd Conservation Society video posted to YouTube on February 26, 2013 shows the Sea Shepherd vessel Bob Barker being repeatedly crunched between the much larger Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru and the Sun Laurel, a Panamanian-flagged fuel oil tanker reportedly carrying a South Korean crew. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
BELFAST––Challenging the global scientific, regulatory, and humane communities to recognize crustacean sentience, Robert Elwood of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on January 16, 2013 published his third major study in six years to demonstrate that crustaceans feel and respond to pain. “Billions of crustaceans are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry,” wrote Elwood of his latest research, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “In contrast to mammals, crustaceans are given little or no protection, as the presumption is that they cannot experience pain. Our research suggests otherwise. More consideration of the treatment of these animals is needed,” Elwood emphasized, “as a potentially very large problem is being ignored.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013
WASHINGTON D.C.—All five branches of the U.S. military were on March 3, 2013 due to send to Congress written plans to phase out live tissue training, meaning the use of deliberately mutilated animals to teach emergency livesaving techniques to combat medics. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
HONIARA, Solomon Islands; BERKELEY, Calif.––Dolphin hunters in the Solomon Islands, dolphin broker Christopher Porter, and some far-right U.S. news media are blaming the Earth Island Institute Marine Mammal Project for the massacre of more than 1,000 dolphins in December 2012 and January 2013. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
MADISON, Wisconsin––Maternal deprivation research appears to be again underway at the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin. “The research in question is a new type of maternal deprivation research designed to study anxiety by creating adverse early rearing conditions and then exposing the maternally deprived young [male] monkeys to a snake and other frightening stimuli. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
MELBOURNE––Run since 1861 on the first Tuesday of each November, fourteen years longer than the Kentucky Derby, the Melbourne Cup is marketed as “’The race that stops a nation.” What stopped Australian attention most in November 2012, though, may have been undercover video posted online by the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, showing injured racehorses being shot dead at the Laverton Knackery west of Melbourne. Read more
Editorial from ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013
By Kim Bartlett & Merritt Clifton
The title character in Life of Pi, possibly the most memorable film in years with a pro-animal theme, is a Hindu vegetarian boy raised in Pondicherry, India, whose parents run a zoo on leased land in the city botanical garden. Pi in adolescence becomes preoccupied with a spiritual quest which leads him to become also–simultaneously– Catholic and Muslim. As Pi explains, “There are 33 millions gods in the Hindu religion..We get to feel guilty before hundreds of gods, instead of just one.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
TEL AVIV––The Israeli laboratory monkey supplier Mazor Farm “is expected to close down in two years,” Ilian Lior of Haaretz reported on January 6, 2013, “following environmental protection minister Gilad Erdan’s decision to ban the export of animals born in the wild for experimentation. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
SHREVEPORT––The National Institutes of Health Council of Councils Working Group on January 23, 2013 “agreed that all but 50 of hundreds of chimpanzees kept for federally funded research should be retired from labs and sent to a national sanctuary,” summarized Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press. “Already,” McConnaughey reported a day later, “nine chimpanzees have arrived at Chimp Haven, outside Shreveport, Louisiana, “from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s New Iberia Research Center, which no longer has an NIH chimp research contract.” Another 102 chimps were expected to come from New Iberia during the next few months. Four NIH chimps at New Iberia were said to be too ill to relocate. About 230 chimps belonging to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette are to remain at New Iberia. The NIH pledged in 2011 to phase out most invasive research on chimps. An 86-page set of recommendations released by the Council of Councils Working Group suggests that chimps should henceforth be used in research only if there is no other way to investigate a risk to human health. Read more