Category: Activists & Organizations

General Chatterjee and the Animal Welfare Board

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI––Named for the Buddhist emperor Ashoke,
who issued the first Indian animal protection law circa 240 B.C.,
Lieutenant General Ashoke Kumar Chatterjee trained to head the
Animal Welfare Board of India by commanding first the Indian
peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka and then the United Nations peacekeeping
force in the Maldives.
A former polo player, Chatterjee won the attention of
Indian humaitarians in 1976-1977 when he mobilized troops to relocate
horses and cattle away from severe drought in Rajasthan and
Gujarat. Retiring in 1990, after 38 years in uniform, he was
promptly drafted to revitalize the AWB.
Created in 1960, actually convened in 1962, the AWB
exists to implement the two sections of the Indian
constitution––unique in the world––which mandate animal protection.

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Something in the air

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI––The hub of the Indian humane
movement is not Delhi, the national capital, but Chennai,
formerly called Madras, home of the Animal Welfare Board
of India, the Madras Pinjrapole, and the Blue Cross of
India––and point of origin, 30 years ago, of the Animal
Birth Control program.
Blue Cross of India-Madras vice chair S. Chinny
Krishna is quick to acknowledge that the many Chennai
activists still have their hands full. They are currently fighting
purges of street pigs and cattle, not to keep the animals
on the street but to prevent them from suffering cruel treatment
and slaughter.

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BOOKS: Heads & Tails

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Heads & Tails
by Maneka Gandhi
People For Animals (A4 Maharani Bagh,
New Delhi 110 065, India), 1993.
184 pages, paperback; donate $20.

“I have always detested milk,”
Maneka opined in the first line of her first
syndicated column, entitled Milk, Meat and
Animal Violence. “My son too refused to
drink cow’s milk when he was weaned, and
was given, from the age of three months, a
liquidized mixture of lentil and vegetable,
which he loved. Most children hate milk,”
she continued. “As soon as a child reaches
the age to make decisions, the first thing to
go is that nauseating glass of milk.”

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Maneka, as in “manic, eh?”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

NEW DELHI––Maneka, pronounced
“manic-eh,” is in India quite a common
first name. Yet headlines often refer just
to “Maneka,” and Indians know exactly who
they mean: Maneka Gandhi, the maniacally
energetic founder of India’s leading animal
advocacy group, People For Animals; foe of
corruption; fearless newspaper columnist; and
member of Parliament. She is lampooned
almost daily by cartoonists and fellow columnists,
but is also quoted thoroughly on subjects
that most others in public life dare not address.
“It was pyrotechnics,” the Indian
Express opened on November 1, describing a
typical Maneka speech to a local Rotary Club.
“Maneka had everyone scurrying for cover, as
she launched a loaded attack on policy makers,
parliamentarians, seminar organizers, and ‘all
those who make a big show of environmental
conservation without even understanding what
they are saying.’”

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TROUBLE AT HSUS-SPONSORED SANCTUARY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI– –ANIMAL PEOPLE learned at press time
that the scheduled January 2 hearing of a legal action seeking to
remove Deanna Krantz of Global Communications for Conservation
from the management of the Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society was
delayed to February.
NAWS, a 52-acre facility in the Nilgiri Hills region of
southern India, a popular vacation area, was founded in 1954 by
Dorothy Dean, an English immigrant, and run after her death for
some years by an Australian couple. After they retired, Krantz,
wife of Humane Society of the U.S. vice president Michael Fox,
assumed direction of NAWS in 1996. She apparently received
funding from the Dean estate, the GCC-India Project for Nature,
and Humane Society International, an HSUS subsidiary. Warmly
welcomed by Indian animal rights activists and prominent Jains,
Krantz issued glowing reports about her improvements of facilities
and animal rescues, and her work was profiled–– from afar––by at
least two U.S. animal protection publications. When she ran into
trouble with local people, including a March 1997 physical altercation
with a female neighbor, she claimed it was over her opposition
to cruelty. When major Indian humane societies investigated,

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Huntingdon drops PETA suit
Huntingdon Laboratories in mid-December dropped a
federal suit against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
and undercover investigator Michele Rokke, 31, who after four
years of undercover work has reportedly left PETA and returned
home to Minnesota. In early July 1997, PETA disclosed videotape
Rokke took of alleged abuse of monkeys during tests performed at
a Huntingdon facility in New Jersey under contract to Procter &
G a m b l e. P&G immediately suspended and later discontinued all
dealings with Huntingdon. The videotape came from about 50
hours of clandestine taping that Rokke did while working as a
Huntingdon animal care technician. Rokke had also taken copies
of as many as 8,000 pages of documents. Huntingdon charged
about two weeks after the PETA disclosed the alleged abuses that
Rokke had violated a confidentiality clause she signed when she
was hired, suing under a law that would have allowed the firm to
collect triple damages if successful in prosecuting the case.

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THE SIERRA CLUB SUES AND IS SUED

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Suing under the National Wildlife Refuge
Improvement Act, signed into law by President Bill
Clinton in October 1997, the National Audubon
Society and Sierra Club head a coalition asking a
federal judge in Sacramento, California, to restrict
irrigation, row cropping, and pesticide use on farms
located within the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake
refuges south of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The refuges
host millions of birds each spring and fall, midway on
their migrations from Mexico to Canada and back.
Bluebird Systems, a computer software
company based in Carlsbad, California, has sued the
Sierra Club, alleging negligence, fraud, conspiracy,
and breach of contract. The suit claims former
Bluebird employee Dan Anderson, also sued, ran
the Sierra Club official web site from Bluebird computers
for more than two years without authorization.

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Appeals Court and Congress steal ALDF victories

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.––A threejudge
panel representing the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit on December 9 reversed an October
1996 verdict by the late Federal Judge
Charles Richey that USDA rules for enforcing
the Animal Welfare Act violate the
intent of Congress in passing 1985 AWA
amendments that require animal vendors,
exhibitors, and researchers to provide for
the psychological needs of dogs and nonhuman
primates.

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Sanctuary founder evicted

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

DALLAS––A federal court on December 8
ruled that Texas Exotic Feline Foundation cofounder
Gene Reitnauer must leave her home at the TEFF
sanctuary within 30 days, despite a bankruptcy claim
she filed after a Travis County court ordered her to
pay $1.8 million in restitution and damages for
allegedly converting TEFF assets to her personal use.
The Travis County judgement held that the use of
donors’ funds on the house made it TEFF property
rather than her own.

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