BOOKS: Animal Laws of India

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

Animal Laws of India
edited by Maneka Gandhi, Ozair Husain, & Raj Panjwani
Third Edition
Universal Law Publishing Co. (c/o <sales@unilawbooks.com> or
<www.unilawbooks.com>), 2006.
1,236 pages, hardcover. 995 rupees (about $22.00) plus shipping.

Indian animal advocates often claim that India has the laws
most favorable to animals of any nation, and the most favorable
courts at the upper appellate levels.
Thus Indian animal advocacy tends to emphasize improving
enforcement and trying to move as expeditiously as possible through
often incompetent and corrupt local courts to reach the upper levels.
This distinctly contrasts with the emphasis of activism in the U.S.,
where seeking passage of new laws generates many times as many
appeals and e-mails as seeking enforcement–although activity on
behalf of stronger humane law enforcement has increased exponentially
since the advent of Alison Gianotto’s enforcement-oriented web site
<www.Pet-Abuse.com>.

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Wildlife Fund Thailand shuts down

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
BANGKOK–Wildlife Fund Thailand president Pisit na Phattalung
on June 19, 2007 abruptly suspended WFT operations and laid off all
40 staff and volunteers, effective on July 27.
“Pisit cited financial constraints. WFT staff were
skeptical,” reported Apinya Wipatayotin of the Bangkok Post, “saying
Pisit used the financial problems to get rid of staff who had accused
him of misconduct– such as involvement [through his private company
Asian Wildlife Consultancy] in the export of eight Thai elephants to
Australian zoos [in November 2006], providing rare species of
wildlife to the Chiang Mai Night Safari park, and using his position
as foundation president to attain a post at the privately-run Siam
Ocean World aquarium.”

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Ex-Thai forest chief indicted for tiger sale

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
BANGKOK, BEIJING–The National Counter Corruption
Commission of Thailand on August 10, 2007 unanimously indicted
former Thai forest department chief Plodprasop Suraswadi for a
variety of alleged criminal offenses in authorizing the 2002 export
of 100 tigers from the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo in Chon Buri to the Sunya
Zoo in Hainan, China.
“Under the [Thai] Wildlife Protection Act, exports of
protected wildlife can be made government-to-government for research
and conservation purposes,” the Bangkok Post explained. “However,
the NCCC found that the tiger export was commercial, because Sri
Racha Tiger Zoo and Sunya Zoo are private entities.”
Responded Plodprasop, “The tigers were not from the wild and
not native to Thailand. The Sri Racha Tiger Zoo imported Bengal
tigers and raised and bred them for 10 years.”

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Shanghai cat rescue is biggest yet in China

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
SHANGHAI–Rallied by Duo Zirong, 39,
“cat lovers in suburban Shanghai’s Xinzhuang area
stopped a truck carrying more than 800 cats to
diners in Guangdong Province,” reported Zhang
Kun of China Daily on July 10, 2007. The rescue
was at least the third by opponents of cat-eating
since June 2006, when activists stormed and
closed the newly opened Fang Company Cat Meatball
Restaurant in Shenzhen, winning a promise from
the owner that he would no longer sell cat meat.
“Duo called the police and stopped one
truck,” Zhang wrote. “According to Duo, three
trucks loaded with cats left before the police
took action. Duo claimed many of the cats were
hers, but the cat dealers presented documents
showing they were from a farm in Anhui Province,
with inspection and vaccination papers.”

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Even “Shangri-La” needs animal sanctuaries & rabies control

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
THIMPHU, Bhutan–Touring the U.S. to raise support for the
Jangsa Animal Saving Trust, Lama Kunzang Dorjee hesitated to call
his work in Bhutan uniquely difficult.
Yes, Kunzang acknowledged, it is difficult coordinating the
activities of half a dozen animal sanctuaries scattered throughout a
nation which is still connected mainly by footpaths, especially when
dozens of long-horned bullocks have to be moved to and from their
summer pastures over swaying single-file suspension bridges–but all
of the Jangsa locations are now connected by mobile telephone,
Kunzang quickly added.
Yes, the Jangsa Animal Saving Trust needs money, Kunzang
explained. Money is needed to start an Animal Birth Control program
in the capital city of Thimphu. This will be modeled after the
Animal Birth Control program directed by Help In Suffering
veterinarian Naveen Pandey in Darjeeling, India. Money is needed
for equipment, vehicles, vaccines, and surgical supplies, all of
which must be imported.

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Bogus vaccines contribute to human rabies death toll in China

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
BEIJING–Counterfeit human post-exposure rabies vaccine has
resurfaced as a factor in the fast-rising human rabies death toll in
China, Chinese media reported in late July 2007. The fake vaccine
reappeared two years after officials believed it had all been
destroyed, following the deaths of two boys who received worthless
“post-exposure” treatment.
Human rabies deaths in China have increased from 163 in 1996
to 3,215 in 2006, with 1,043 in the first five months of 2007. The
rise is roughly parallel to the increasing popularity of dogs as
pets–but the rabies cases are overwhelmingly concentrated in the
southern and coastal areas where dogs are raised for meat. So-called
“meat dogs” are not required to be vaccinated, unlike pet dogs.
For the second consecutive year dogs were massacred amid
spring rabies panics in Qhongqing province. News coverage of the
killing was suppressed, unlike in 2006, when the officially
directed dog purges were much criticized by both official news media
and on public Internet forums.

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Monkey-laundering?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:
HONG KONG–Is a small amount of monkey-eating in southern
China covering for a large amount of monkey trafficking from the wild
to U.S. labs?
Among the reasons for vigilance:
* Monkey-trapping and smuggling appear to be increasing
throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly for Chinese markets. Yet
reports from within China indicate no rise in monkey consumption,
amid increasing efforts to suppress eating contraband wildlife.
* U.S. lab use of nonhuman primates has more than doubled,
from 25,534 in 2002 and 25,834 in 2003, to 54,998 in 2004, and
57,531 in 2005, the latest year for which the USDA Animal & Plant
Inspection Service has complete data.

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Global warming: Animals at risk from drought in Zimbabwe, flooding in India and Bangladesh

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

 

HARARE, GUWAHATI, DHAKA– “Climatic
change” does not really describe the impact of
global warming on Zimbabwe, northern and eastern
India, and Bangladesh.
Zimbabwe has always consisted largely of
dry forest and high desert, plagued by frequent
drought. Heavy monsoons have often battered
northern and eastern India. The floods of the
past three summers just accentuated the trend.
Bangadesh, 90% of which lies 10 meters
below sea level, was inundated in 1988 and 1998,
as well as 2007.
The disasters of 2007 afflicting much of
Zimbabe, India, and Bangladesh are the result
not of climatic change but of climatic norms
intensified by global warming to extremes beyond
the capacity of people and animals to adequately
prepare.

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70 years of missing the link

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
CHENNAI–Non-recognition of the
relationship between Indian street dog purges and
monkey invasions is no new phenomenon–and not
only Indians have failed to observe it.
Separate articles on page 22 of the July
1938 edition of the National Humane Review,
published by the American Humane Association,
detailed both a dog pogrom in Chennai, then
called Madras, and the industry of shipping
monkeys to U.S. laboratories that had emerged in
several leading Indian cities. Neither the
British correspondents who furnished the
information nor the Americans who wrote the
articles appeared to be aware that one practice
might be fueling the other.
“Stray dogs are a problem in India, as
in our own country,” the editors observed, “and
city handling in India is as revolting as in many
American cities. Through the endeavors of the
Madras SPCA, electrocution has taken the place
of clubbing dogs to deathŠThat the practices of
city dog catchers are much the same the world
over is indicated by a complaint that the dog
catchers were taking only healthy dogs and
passing up the diseased ones.”

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