A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Houndsmen are convicted by video in Maine & worried in Indiana
BELFAST, Maine; LINTON, Indiana–A Superior Court jury in Waldo County, Maine on April 23, 2012 deliberated for less than an hour before convicting Randall Carl of Knox, 46, of aggravated cruelty for setting four bluetick coonhounds on an illegally trapped and tethered bobcat in February 2009. The bobcat was killed. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
SCAD/Soi Dog Foundation merger falls through
BANGKOK— -Soi Cat & Dog Rescue, of Bangkok, and the Soi Dog Foundation, of Phuket, will not merge after all, SCAD advisory committee chair Annelize Booysen announced on May 19, 2012. The two leading expatriate-founded humane societies in Thailand had jointly announced a merger on February 28, 2012.
“Despite the announcement,” Booysen said, “we have not been able to successfully conclude our merger. The Soi Dog Foundation will proceed with their expansion plans in Bangkok without SCAD and we wish them all the best. This development has forced us to take a very long and hard look at SCAD,” Booysen continued, describing SCAD as “an overstretched team with overstretched finances.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Animals’ Angels of Germany finds EU livestock haulers come up short
FRANKFURT–“Despite increased enforcement efforts, livestock transporters and organizers still do not comply with the very basic requirements of European Union legislation on the protection of animals during transport,” charged the German charity Animals’ Angels in a May 2012 document entitled Report on insufficient internal heights in long distance transports of cattle from Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia to Turkey, observed between 16th and 19th April, 2012. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Exotic cat exhibitor Joe Schreibvogel responds to HSUS exposé with threat of “a small Waco” if cats are confiscated
Wynnewood, Oklahoma–– National television broadcasts on May 16, 2012 featured longtime traveling tiger exhibitor Joe Schreibvogel and his GW Exotic Animal Park at Wynnewood in central Oklahoma, but the self-described “Joe Exotic” probably did not enjoy the spotlight.
“With Congress and the state of Ohio considering bills to restrict private ownership of dangerous exotic animals, CBS This Morning broke news of another Humane Society of the U.S. undercover investigation,” blogged HSUS president Wayne Pacelle, describing Schreibvogel as “perhaps the largest private owner of tigers in the nation.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Top non-breed-specific insurer pays record sum to settle dog bite claims in 2011
LOS ANGELES–State Farm Insurance, believed to be the largest U.S. home insurer that does not enforce breed-specific restrictions on what dogs it will cover, in 2011 paid 9% more dog bite claims than in 2010, and paid out 21% more money to settle the claims, spokesperson Eddie Martinez told media on May 16, 2012.
State Farm in 2011 paid out $109 million to settle 3,800 dog bite claims nationwide, up from $90 million paid out in 2010 to settle about 3,500 dog bite claims, Martinez disclosed. The Insurance Information Institute estimated that all U.S. home insurers combined paid out nearly $479 million to settle dog bite claims in 2011, spokesperson Loretta Worters told Sue Manning of Associated Press–a 16% increase from $413 million in 2010. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
New Indian data cuts worldwide human rabies death toll by 40%
DELHI, CHENNAI, VISAKHAPATNAM–New Indian data on April 29, 2012 cut the estimated worldwide human death toll from rabies by more than 40%, with global repercussions for street dog population control, public health, and disease eradication funding priorities that are just beginning to be felt as rabies control experts become aware of the finding.
Presenting the most recent Indian government statistics on mortality from all causes to the Lok Sabha, the Indian parliament, Indian health minister Gulam Nabi Azad mentioned almost in passing, after discussing heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, that only 223 human rabies deaths were recorded in India in 2011, barely 1% of the 2002 government estimate, and just a seventh of the Indian toll from snakebites. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Feral cats not to blame in Southern California murine typhus scare
SANTA ANA, California–Fear of “Typhus moggie” appeared to be receding in Orange County, California by June 1, 2012, just a few days after emerging, but anti-neuter/return bloggers had already amplified misleading claims far and wide about an alleged link of feral cats to murine typhus.
In truth there was no cause to associate either of two cases of murine typhus occurring three months apart with feral cats.
Murine typhus is a rare flea-borne disease, easily cured by antibiotics, which is entirely unrelated to typhoid fever, the once common and often deadly disease of which “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, 1869-1938, was the first known immune carrier. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Indian official lynched for stopping crocodile show called “sacrifice”
BANGALORE–Madan Naik, 54, assistant conservator of forests in Danduli, Karnataka, India, was on May 6, 2012 allegedly dragged from his car and stoned by a group of 16 drunken visitors to Crocodile Valley, a tourist attraction illegally operating on the bank of the Kali River near the Dandelappa temple, inside the Dandeli-Anshi tiger reserve. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
How Arizona ranchers won a partial exemption from cruelty laws
by Debra J. White
Under the headline “Legislation in the cowboy states,” the May 2012 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE reported that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in mid-April endorsed into law a bill by state representative Peggy Judd (R-Wilcox), HB 2780, which exempts dogs used in ranching and herding from anti-cruelty laws. Judd introduced the bill after one of her constituents, a Cochise County rancher, was charged for leaving two dogs in a horse trailer for two days without food or water. Three others were left tied without clean water. Read more