Biggest cat rescue yet succeeds in China

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

BEIJING–More than 200 animal advocates on November 24, 2009
converged on the Hongqiao district of Tianjin, about 70 miles from
Beijing, to free more than 800 cats from a trader who intended to
export them to Guangzhou, far to the south, for sale to cat meat
restaurants.
More than 200 people surrounded the caged cats for more than
24 hours and beseiged the Shaogongzhuang police station for three
hours, reported Li Qian of the Global Times, before Qin Xiaona,
head of the Beijing-based Capital Animal Welfare Association,
managed to meet with police and arrange for the cats’ release. The
trader claimed the cats were strays, but the rescuers pointed out
that they were clean and many wore collars and bells.
The mass cat rescue was the latest and largest of many such
incidents occurring in China since 2007.

Efforts continue to ban the “elephant hook”

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

BOSTON–“All ears to the plight of the
GOP symbol,” according to Boston Herald reporter
Jessica Van Sack, Massachusetts state senator
Robert Hedlund has tried since 2004 to ban
keeping elephants in chains and striking them
with the ankus, or bullhook. The 2006 edition
cleared the Massachusetts senate, but not the
house of delegates. The 2009 edition reached a
legislative hearing on November 16.
A Republican representing Weymouth,
Plymouth and Norfolk, Hedlund distances himself
from those he calls “politically correct
left-wing do-gooders,” but concerning chaining
and the ankus, “”The more I got involved in the
issue, the more I became passionate about it and
emotionally tied to it, knowing the abusive
conditions these animals have to endure,” he
told Van Sack.

Editorial: No-kill sheltering & the quest for the holy grail

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

PetSmart Charities, as the November/December 2009 edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press, is celebrating four million adoptions
achieved through the Luv-A-Pet adoption centers located in each
PetSmart store, the first of which opened in February 1992.
“That’s four million lives saved, thanks to the
collaborative efforts of PetSmart Charities, more than 2,500 local
animal welfare groups and shelters across the U.S., and PetSmart,
Inc.,” said PetSmart Charities communication manager Kim Noetzel.
PetSmart Charities is also expecting to grant $10.3 million
to “local animal welfare agencies, shelters, and rescue groups to
support their pet adoption efforts” this year, Noetzel
mentioned–an increase of $1.3 million from 2008, when PetSmart
Charities was already granting more money to small animal charities
than any other grant-giving institution.
Few other funders have increased their aid to animal
charities at all in the past two years. Many foundations have cut
their grantmaking. Some have ceased operation.
Yet Friends of the Plymouth Pound, on Cape Cod, called a
boycott of PetSmart because, after 10 years, the PetSmart store in
Hyannis chose to work with a different adoption partner. Friends of
the Plymouth Pound had placed 49 cats through the Hyannis store in
2009. Other adoption partners had placed 821 cats through the
PetSmart store in Plymouth.

Dog dealers raided at jet speed

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

PHILADELPHIA–Will air power trump horse-and-buggy in the
courts of law and public opinion?
Main Line Animal Rescue founder Bill Smith on October 7,
2009 bet that it will, relying on jet speed to gather evidence that
he hopes will finish the image of Pennsylvania puppy millers as
plain, simple people who are just out of step with modern times.
Amish dog breeders in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and
upstate New York have come to dominate the dog breeding industry in
the northeastern U.S. during the past 20 years. The Amish reputation
for producing quality handcrafted furniture, growing pesticide-free
fruit and vegetables, and managing farms that look like those of a
century ago has helped the dog breeders–but traditional commercial
dog-breeding practices were unacceptable to the humane community even
120 years ago, and are much less so in light of vastly increased
knowledge about what dogs need to become happy, healthy,
well-behaved pets.

“God is not Dracula”–but sacrifice continues

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

KATHMANDU, MULTAN– “God is not Dracula!” protested Animal
Save Movement Pakistan president Khalid Mahmood Qurashi via posters,
web postings, and press releases as the annual Eid ul Azha began in
Saudi Arabia on November 27, 2009, and continued around the world
for four days.
Qurashi reminds fellow Muslims every year that Islam requires
charitable acts at the Eid, not blood sacrifice. This year Qurashi
found himself reminding Hindus, too, as the Eid slaughters were
compounded by the sacrificial massacre days earlier of more than a
quarter of a million animals in Bariyarpur, a Nepalese village near
the Bijar border.

Awards & honors

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November-December 2009:

The Humane Society of the U.S. on October 29, 2009 honored
the Animal Compassion, Advocacy, Respect, & Education Club of
Sweetwater Union High School in National City, California, as 2009
Humane Society Youth Club of the year. The Animal CARE Club has
about 100 members. Among the club projects were sterilizing about
200 dogs for free or at low cost; raising funds for the Baja Animal
Sanctuary in Rosarita, Mexico; and hosting a program to train high
school students as certified veterinary assistants.

Struggle for humane euthanasia continues in U.S., Philippines

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

An employee of the Lincoln County Animal Shelter in
Lincolnton, North Carolina escaped serious injury on October 20,
2009 when a newly installed gas chamber exploded. The man had just
killed several dogs. “Carbon monoxide was clearing out of the
machine when a fireball, propelled by pressure, blew open the door
of the gas chamber, burning the man and slamming the chamber door
into him,” reported Diane Turbyfill of the Gaston Gazette.
North Carolina Coalition for Humane Euthanasia secretary
Michele King, of Garner, North Carolina, forwarded to ANIMAL
PEOPLE a purchase order which she said “shows that the gas chamber
was formerly used in Reidsville, at Rockingham County Animal
Control,” where King said it “leaked repeatedly and was finally
removed. The same gas chamber company, Cutting Edge Fabrication in
Gastonia, sold another used gas chamber to Iredell County last
year,” King added. “That chamber also later exploded,” on July 22,
2008, with 10 dogs inside at the time.

Dogs & cats off the job–rats storm flooded Manila

October 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

MANILA–Rats may leave a sinking ship, but not a flooded city.
Humans, the pets they could carry, work animals, and many
street dogs fled Manila, Rizal, and their suburbs by the thousands
after tropical storm Ketsana dumped a typical month’s worth of rain
in only nine hours on September 26, 2009.
Cats and dogs who were not evacuated and found no escape
routes climbed to high places, if they could, above the torrents,
but water spilling over 80% of the Manila metropolitan area kept most
of them wherever they ended up for at least the next four days, when
the flood began receding. Some were stranded for weeks. Much of the
metropolis was left to the rats and mice–and the Philippines are
known for rat and mouse biodiversity, with 62 native mouse and rat
species. Many are found in the greater Manila area, along with
non-native but ubiquitous Norway rats and at least three problematic
species who were accidentally imported from mainland Asia.

The 1st Church of Animal Rights tried to launch the movement in 1921

October 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

What if the animal rights movement had launched out of the
older humane movement 55 years earlier, before factory farming
methods were invented, before laboratory use of animals expanded
into big business, before wildlife management was funded by hunting
license fees, before the humane movement came to be dominated by an
“animal welfare” rather than “animal rights” philosophy?
This is no mere fantasy. It could have happened, impelled
by the brief confluence of Diana Belais and Royal Dixon, flamboyant
and charismatic personalities whose talents and background,
differently mixed, paralleled those of the late Cleveland Amory,
who founded the Fund for Animals in 1968, and Ingrid Newkirk, who
cofounded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981.

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