Editorial: How expanding animal agriculture swamped Pakistan

July 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Is the world close to reaching finite ecological limits on
the production capacity of animal agriculture?
Flooding inundating more than a fifth of Pakistan in recent
weeks may demonstrate that the limits have already been exceeded,
doing catastrophic harm to more than 20 million displaced people and
30 million livestock, plus untold millions of dogs, cats, and
wildlife.
Critics of industrial agriculture and diets centered on
animal products have been predicting such an impending crisis for
more than 40 years. Among the most influential were Paul Ehrlich in
The Population Bomb (1968), Frances Moore Lappe in Diet for A Small
Planet (1971), and E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful (1973).
Their insights and dire prophecies helped to build the environmental
movement–but, focused on the collision course of human population
growth and food security, Ehrlich, Moore Lappe, and Schumacher each
hugely underestimated the human capacities for invention,
adaptation, and denial.

Resistance to Indian company plan to site animal lab in Malaysia

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
KUALA LUMPUR, DELHI– Protesting a variant on the chemical
and pharamceutical industry practice of outsourcing animal testing to
developing nations with lax regulation, “Animal lovers, activists,
a senator, and Miss Malaysia/World 2009/2010 Thanuja Ananthan were
among those who gathered in front of the Indian High Commission” in
Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysia capital city, on June 10, 2010 “to
protest a plan by Vivo Bio Tech to build an animal testing laboratory
in Malacca,” the Star of Malaysia reported.
Leading the demonstration were the SPCA Selangor, Sahabat
Alam Malaysia, which represents the international organization
Friends of the Earth in Malaysia, PETA/Malaysia, and
representatives of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
and the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments.

“Tong wars” in Ahmedabad make dogcatching methods an Indian national issue

June 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
AHMEDABAD–“Tong wars” in Ahmedabad, India, in mid-June
2010 made dog-catching methods a national issue, hotly debated in
multiple articles in the Times of India, Daily News & Analysis,
The Mirror, The Express–in short, most of the leading newspapers
covering northwestern India.
The issue exploded out of the ongoing efforts of Ahmedabad
resident Lisa Warden, a Canadian citizen, to bring the city into
compliance with the Standard Operating Procedure Manual for
Sterilization of Stray Dogs, published in 2009 by the Animal Welfare
Board of India.

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.”

AWBI chair Kharb makes an example of Ahmedabad

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
AHMEDABAD–Animal Welfare Board of India chair Rammehar Kharb
on April 20, 2010 warned the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation against
“persisting with the completely outdated, barred practice of dumping,
and even destroying dogs” by capturing them violently with iron tongs
and abandoning them at desert dump sites.
“Not only are the Animal Birth Control rules being flagrantly
violated,” Kharb wrote, “but the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Act is also being violated. Your actions, and the actions of your
employees, constitute an offence under the Penal Code.”
Kharb released his warning to Ahmedabad media less than 60
days after asking the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation “to cancel
your ABC contract awarded to Animal Shelter & Hospital at Ahmedabad
Foundation, which is not recognized or registered with AWBI,
failing which AWBI will be constrained to initiate action in the
matter.”
Kharb notified ABC providers after the 2009 publication of
the AWBI Standard Operating Procedure Manual for Sterilization of
Stray Dogs that they must comply with the SOP to continue to receive
AWBI funding.

Is Zimbabwe loading animals two-by-two to send to North Korea?

May 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2010:
HARARE–“We were recently informed that two of every species
of animal in Hwange National Park are to be sent to a zoo in North
Korea,” charged Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair Johnny
Rodrigues in a May 13, 2010 e-mail alert.
“According to the report,” Rodrigues said, “the animals
will include two 18-month-old elephant calves. It is believed that
this is a gift from Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, to Kim
Jong-il, president of North Korea.
“Capture and spotting teams have been seen in the park,”
Rodrigues continued, “and there have been reports of armed men
standing around key waterholes waiting for the animals to appear so
they can radio the information back to the capture teams. There have
also been reports of National Parks vehicles towing cages around.

Blue Cross of India cofounder Usha Sundaram, 86

April 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

Usha Sundaram, 86, died on April 6, 2010 in Chennai.
Taught to fly at age 20 by her husband Captain V. Sundaram, who was
among the first pilots for Tata Airways, Usha Sundaram initially
flew the VT-AXX that was personal aircraft of the Maharaja of Mysore,
Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur, a noted patron of music. The name of
his plane has recently been revived for an Air India jetliner. From
1945 to 1951 the Sundarams were pilots for the first Indian prime
minister, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru. After Usha Sundaram became the
first graduate of the Indian government flight training school in
Bangalore in 1949, she continued alone as Nehru’s pilot while her
husband devoted more of his time to airline business. Flying a

U.S. backs deal to let Japan legally kill whales in the Southern Oceans

April 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Japan is likely to be authorized to engage
in commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and
coastal waters, and Norway and Iceland are likely to be allowed to
continue commercial whaling, now with International Whaling
Commission approval, at the 2010 IWC meeting in Agadir, Morocco,
to be held June 21-25.
Japan has engaged in “research” whaling at commercial levels
throughout the global whaling moratorium declared by the IWC in 1982,
and has killed whales within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary ever
since the sanctuary was designated in 1994. The IWC has not
previously addressed Japanese coastal whaling, which mostly kills
species smaller than those regulated by the IWC. Norway has killed
minke whales in coastal waters since 1993. Iceland has wobbled
between authorizing and prohibiting whaling.

ACRES wins wildlife center pollution case

April 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

SINGAPORE–The Animal Concerns Research and Education Society
on March 24, 2010 won an order from Singapore High Court Justice Kan
Ting Chiu that ANA Contractor Ltd. must pay damages for building most
of the ACRES wildlife rehabilitation center on a footing of woodchips
contaminated with toxic materials believed to be residue from
sandblasting.
ANA Ltd. subcontracted the job of filling and leveling the
site in Choa Chu Kang to another firm, Lok Sheng Enterprises.
“Shortly after the land was filled, the area was plagued by a foul
stench and brackish water started to seep through the surface,”
recounted K.C. Vijayan of Straits Times. Toxic leachate also
polluted the nearby Kranji Reservoir, and appeared to menace a
commercial fish farm.

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