Cell phone videocams open factory farms to public view

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
BOULDER, URBANA–Ignoring 20 years of
warnings by leading U.S. agribusiness educators
and pundits has begun to cost the livestock
industry serious money and– perhaps–consumer
confidence.
Increasingly frequent and effective
undercover exposés are acquainting ever more of
the public with meat, egg, and dairy production
practices, including with the ineffecacy of
agribusiness at improving animal welfare despite
frequent promises.
More than a hundred activists have now
worked undercover at many hundreds of factory
farms and slaughterhouses, documenting
procedures with thousands of hours of video.

Editorial: Sick & injured animals hide. Shelters need to be seen.

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Two members of the ANIMAL PEOPLE team had recent occasion to
deliver an injured rabbit to a world-renowned wildlife rescue center.
The drive should have taken less than an hour, including a 20-minute
ferry boat crossing. Unfortunately, no one at ANIMAL PEOPLE had
ever been there before. There was neither a map nor a physical
address on the center’s web site. Instructions received from center
staff before beginning the journey proved to be incomplete.
Directions downloaded from Google maps proved to be wrong. Also,
the center is located on a dead-end street whose name we were given,
but there are two dead-end streets of the same name within about half
a mile of each other, probably once connected but no longer.
Altogether, finding the wildlife rescue center took four
hours, eight telephone calls, and half a tank of gasoline. Along
the way, the ANIMAL PEOPLE expedition met another carload of people
with another injured animal who also could not find the center. Each
call to the center brought a different set of directions.

BOOKS: Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Filling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters by Leslie Irvine
Temple University Press (1852 N. 10th St., Philadelphia,
PA 19122), 2009. 176 pages, hardcover. $24.50.

Who fills the ark in time of disaster? Leslie Irvine in
Filling the Ark examines who is evacuated and who is left behind?
Practically everyone old enough to watch TV remembers
gut-wrenching scenes of National Guard troops yanking bewildered dogs
and cats away from the arms of hysterical children during the
evacuation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in late August
2005. Some pets were shot in the streets by sheriff’s deputies.
Charges against the deputies were dropped in 2008. Other animals
were tied up and shot sadistically in a school that had served as an
evacuation center. No one was charged with those killings. Tens of
thousands of pets were left to fend for themselves. Many were
rescued by the largest and longest sustained animal rescue operation
in the U.S. ever, but many others died before help could arrive.

Ringworm, rabies, parvo, feline calicivirus, & FIP challenge animal shelters

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

Reminders of the importance of disease control in animal
shelters came in April 2010 from five shelters whose staff
cumulatively euthanized more than 400 exposed animals due to disease
outbreaks.
Most controversially, the Ontario SPCA announced on May 11,
2010 that it would kill about 350 animals due to ringworm, after
containment and treatment efforts begun on February 22 repeatedly
failed. Six workers were also infected. Tests showed that every
room at the Ontario SPCA branch shelter in Newmarket, Ontario had
become contaminated. Said Canadian Press, “The branch will undergo
a thorough cleansing and an inspection to ensure the ringworm is
eradicated.”

Judge dissolves embattled Hudson SPCA

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
JERSEY CITY–Ruling that the Hudson County SPCA “has
repeatedly conducted business in an unlawful manner, at a great
loss, with great prejudice to the interests of creditors, in a
manner prejudicial to the public,” Hudson County Superior Court
Judge Thomas Olivieri on April 22, 2010 ordered that the
121-year-old society be dissolved.
“The Hudson County SPCA has suspended ordinary activities for
lack of funds,” Olivieri found, while “The record clearly and
convincingly substantiates that at least $800,000 disappeared.”
Olivieri ruled in a case brought by the New Jersey attorney
general, Hudson Animal Advocates, and the Jersey City Division of
Health, against Hudson SPCA president Hector Carbajales, his wife
Zoey Carbalales, and unnamed board members.

Kinship Circle & Chilean coalition help in earthquake aftermath

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
ST. LOUIS–While U.S. animal rescuers watched and waited for
the Deepwater Horizon oil slicks to drift ashore and wreak havoc,
Kinship Circle founder Brenda Shoss tried to alert the world to a
little noticed humane crisis in Chile–including a growing risk that
dogs might be massacred in the tent cities housing much of the
displaced population of Talquahano.
Aftershocks from the February 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake
and tsunami continued into May. The initial earthquake measured 8.8
on the Richter scale, among the strongest ever recorded. The entire
captial city of Santiago was moved 11 inches to the west.

Money crunch brings another leadership change at Wild Animal Orphanage

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
SAN ANTONIO–Under new management for the second time since
September 2009, Wild Animal Orphanage remains mired in litigation
pertaining to the leadership transitions, and in a cash flow crisis
coinciding with the national recession of the past two years. But
ANIMAL PEOPLE was told by sources with conflicting views about a
variety of other matters that many of the most alarming rumors about
the sanctuary circulating in early May 2010 appeared to be
exaggerated.
“Our office has taken no legal action against this San
Antonio facility nor do we anticipate any, at this point,” Texas
Office of Attorney General spokesperson Tom Kelley told ANIMAL
PEOPLE. “We are monitoring their efforts daily, nothing more.”
“We have made the proper arrangements, are currently in good
standing, and are in no way getting foreclosed,” acting Wild Animal
Orphanage director Jamie Cryer told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Royal SPCA of Great Britain “prioritizes” by declining to accept surrendered pets

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:

LONDON–Non-Royal SPCA British animal
shelters and some RSPCA affiliates are still
assessing the impact of an RSPCA policy decision
to “prioritize” shelter admissions to
“RSPCA-generated” animals.
“The only change,” insisted RSPCA chief
superintendent Tim Wass to the Times of London,
“is that spaces in our own animal centres are
being prioritised for animals rescued by RSPCA
inspectors from cruelty and neglect. This means
that the abandoned, abused, sick or injured
animals who are most in need receive our care
before animals whom people simply don’t want any
longer. We will never turn away an animal in
need,” Wass said.

JAAN reaches out to horses in the Gili Islands of Indonesia

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
JAKARTA–Encouraged by success with a working horse aid
program in Jakarta initially funded by ANIMAL PEOPLE, the Jakarta
Animal Aid Network hopes for similar results in the Gili Islands.
Located off the north coast of Lombok, Gili Trawangan, Gili
Meno and Gili Air offer reef diving and night life that attract
tourists from around the world. “No motorized vehicles are allowed
on the islands,” explains JAAN founder Femke den Haas. Horses are
the main means of transport.
Surveying the condition of the Gili horses during the first
nine days of April 2010, den Haas “learned that the horse owners all
came from Lombok in the 1990s,” she told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Many,”
den Haas found, “started with little to no knowledge about horses,
as they were mostly fishers.”

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