New Animals’ Agenda editor quits; board sacks Greanville

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

MONROE, Connecticut–– Apparently on the verge of bank-
ruptcy after seven months of late issues and falling circulation, The
Animals’ Agenda magazine is again rudderless as well. Acting editor
Jim Motavalli quit in late February, acting publisher Patrice Greanville
was fired two weeks later in a move of questionable legality, and the
salaries and hours of the two staffers left, art director Julia Timpanelli
and part-time business manager Peter Hoyt, were cut in half.
Motavalli quit, he said, “because it was taking too much of
my time, and I didn’t want a career in animal rights.” He had worked
one day a week for a stipend of $200/week since August 1992. Other
sources said he was tired of second-guessing by the board of directors.
As editor of the Fairfield Advocate, a local weekly, Motavalli had no
background in animal work, but was elected to the board in 1991 upon
the nomination of Jim Mason, a board member 1988-1991, following
a stint as both editor and board member, 1981-1986. Motavalli suc-
ceeeded to the editorship after helping orchestrate the firing of Merritt
Clifton, news editor from mid-1988 until the July/August 1992 issue.

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North Shore Animal League changes guard, offers free neutering

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. –– North Shore Animal League president David Ganz resigned
March 1, just as the March issue of ANIMAL PEOPLE reached readers with a page one probe of NSAL’s
unconventional approach to promoting adoptions and neutering. The investigation discovered that the NSAL
approach is substantially reducing both pet overpopulation and euthanasia rates wherever tried, and found little
current evidence to support criticisms often directed at NSAL by more conventional humane groups.
Although a successor to Ganz was not named immediately, NSAL chairperson Elizabeth Lewyt said,
“It is business as usual at NSAL, with all divisions running smoothly,” adding, “All NSAL programs and poli-
cies, including support and assistance for other animal shelters, will continue without interuption.”
NSAL attorney John Stevenson is now acting chief executive officer. “As chairprerson,” Lewyt con-
tinued, “I am now taking a more active role in the management of the shelter.”
As Lewyt’s first public action, she announced that, “Commencing April 1, NSAL will be providing
free spaying and neutering to all NSAL adopters.”

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Houston Humane Society then and now; $15 neutering vs. 93% euthanasia rate

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

Then
In September 1980, Houston Humane Society
board president Sherry Ferguson drafted a 12-page report to
her fellow board members. Opened in February 1963, HHS
was in every sort of trouble: badly overcrowded because of
a no-kill policy, financially shaky because of weak admin-
istration, and struggling to adopt out 700 animals a year.
By comparison, the Houston SPCA was adopting out
15,000 a year, and Citizens for Animal Protection, a group
founded to reform HHS, was adopting out 2,500 even
though it had no shelter.
That wasn’t the worst of it. HHS had no neutering
requirement for animals who were adopted out. When there
wasn’t space for newcomers, people who tried to surrender
animals were turned away––so many came at night and sim-
ply abandoned the animals on the property, alongside a
busy secondary highway. Many were killed by traffic
before staff arrived in the morning. Vermin infestations
were so severe that Ferguson said she wondered if HHS had
become a shelter for rats.

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The Project BREED Directory: access to a lifesaving network

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

GERMANTOWN, Maryland––
Shirley Weber, by her own admission, is in
over her head. Her savings are gone, her
telephone bills sky-high. Her assets include
four dogs and four cats, a condominium in
a rough part of town, and two volumes of
something called The Project BREED
Directory. (BREED is short for Breed
Rescue Efforts and Education.)
Weber also has the belief that what
she has done in creating The Project
BREED Directory is important, that it will
make a difference for thousands of animals
from coast to coast. The paperback direct-
ory includes contact information for every
group Weber could find that rescues pure-
bred dogs, some groups who rescue other
specific kinds of animal, and a considerable
amount of useful advice.

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Guest column: Helping all dogs through breed rescue by Gina Spadafori

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

Some nights the telephone never stops ringing for
Sheltie Rescue.
The local humane society is holding a dog and
hopes we will pick her up soon––like today. A rescuer who
works with a different breed has pulled a Sheltie from a
municipal shelter two counties away––when can we pick
him up? A veterinarian is calling in hopes we can help a
middle-aged dog left for euthanasia when the family
moved. Two people want to dump their dogs tonight, and
we have no place to put them.
“If you don’t come get this dog right now,” hisses
one caller, “it’s dead. And I’m going to tell everyone what
hypocrites you are. Sheltie Rescue my ass.”

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Editorial: Listen, talk, dicker

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

Members of the ardently pro-vivisection Foundation for Biomedical Research got
quite a shock with their January/February 1993 newsletter. On pages four through six, the
editors extensively, respectfully, and congenially interviewed Henry Spira, the most effec-
tive antivivisection activist of our time and perhaps of any time. He’s not a household word,
because he doesn’t do big direct mailings touting his accomplishments, nor does he head a
multimillion dollar organization, or go on television regularly to shout about victories he
barely acknowledges, because he believes gloating is counterproductive. Still, working
virtually alone, with a miniscule budget, Spira has accomplished more over the past 17
years toward getting animals out of laboratories than any of the national animal rights
groups and antivivisection societies; perhaps more than all of them put together. The bio-
medical research establishment certainly knows his name, and significantly, some of the
most influential people in that establishment thought it was high time to open public,
friendly dialog––even if they got bashed for it by colleagues conditioned to view animal
use/protection as a war zone, a Manichean struggle between good and evil in which one
side or the other must ultimately be annihilated.

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American SPCA drops New York pound contract: “Killing animals shouldn’t be the business of a humane society.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

NEW YORK, N.Y.––The Amer-
ican SPCA announced March 25 that it will
cease providing animal control service to
New York City after September 1994, and
will begin turning operations over to the city
as promptly as possible.
Losing money on animal control
work, the ASPCA has threatened to pull out
many times since 1977, most recently in
1991. Each time, New York offered conces-
sions and the work of picking up and eutha-
nizing strays went on as usual. In 1991, for
instance, the ASPCA returned responsibility
for selling dog licenses to the city––an intend-
ed fundraising function that had become a
loser––and accepted a bigger direct subsidy
instead.

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CHILDREN & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

$40 million in public funds are
used to teach “hunter education” to
700,000 U.S. school children a year. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts up $32.2
million, while the balance comes from the
states; all 50 states participate. “They’re
teaching hunting as ‘gun safety,’ ‘physical
education,’ and any other excuse they cna
think of,” says Katherine Trimnal of
Columbia, South Carolina, who has been
investigating the program for some time.
This program is completely separate from
Project Wild, which also promotes a pro-
hunting message at cost of $23 million a
year.

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Diet & Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Responding to public panic over
tainted meat, President Bill Clinton on
February 11 ordered the USDA to hire 160
more meat inspectors, while Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy promised a complete
overhaul of the meat inspection
system––which the Ronald Reagan and
George Bush presidential administrations
had streamlined by reducing the number of
inspectors. The panic began in December
when a six-year-old girl in San Diego
County, California, died after eating a
tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, and
escalated January 22, when a two-year-old
boy died in Seattle, Washington, from the
same cause. More than 400 people who ate
Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers developed E.

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