Tsunami & vegetarians

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

KHAO LAK–Exposure to death revived the Thai tradition of
Buddhist vegetarianism, at least among tsunami relief workers, the
newspaper Matichon reported on January 12.
“After we turned to vegetarian food and lighting jos sticks
to the spirits asking for help, the job became much easier,” Khao
Lak body recovery team leader Chatchawan Suthiarun said. “
Indicating that a vegetarian soup kitchen was among the most
popular with Khao Lak refugees, Matichon quoted a tsunami survivor
as saying that the smell of death had put her off meat.
Most Thais today eat some meat, chiefly fish and poultry,
but Thailand was for centuries –like India and Sri Lanka–a
vegetarian enclave.
While the World Conservation Union and other environmental
organizations pointed out that logging coastal mangrove swamps to
start shrimp farms had left coastal Thailand unprotected against
tsunamis, the International Vegetarian Union noted that the shrimp
farms exist to produce meat.

Dog-cooking conviction

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

HONG KONG–Eastern Court Magistrate Julia Livesay on October
19, 2004 fined Chan Yuk-sim, 44, the equivalent of $220 U.S. for
killing and cooking a dog on February 8 on Mount Davis.
Seeing her and two unidentified men butchering the dog,
nearby resident Leung Chui-wa called police officer Lee Pak-kuen,
who caught the suspect and seized the dog carcass. The men were not
found. It was the first dog-eating case in Hong Kong since 1999,
reported Felix Lo of the South China Morning Post.

Asia
Law

Ric & Helene O’Barry return to Taiji

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Representing the French group One Voice, dolphin defenders
Ric and Helene O’Barry returned to Taiji, Japan on October 27, 2004
to again witness and document the annual massacre of dolphins, who
are driven into a shallow cove and hacked to death after some are
selected for live sale to oceanariums and swim-with-dolphins resorts.
The O’Barrys, who also helped to document the Taiji
slaughter in 2003, said the fishers were joined this year “by about
20 young people in wetsuits. Some displayed the logos of the Taiji
Whale Museum, World Dolphin Resort, and Dolphin Base. All of these
facilities are located in Taiji,” but are believed to export
dolphins abroad.
The fishers argue that the killing and captures protect fish stocks.
“It seems the fishermen have simply fished themselves out of
a job,” observed Paul Kenyon, director/producer/reporter of a
November 8 BBC special entitled Dolphin Hunters. “But, back in
Taiji, the hunt is going ahead,” Kenyon continued. “The activists
trying to stop them are likely to be exclusively outsiders. That is
not necessarily because the Japanese support the trade. During the
three weeks we were[in Japan], we found no one outside the dolphin
hunting towns who even knew that dolphins are eaten. So, perhaps the
challenge is not to change minds, but to inform them.”

Poacher Veerappan killed in India

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CHENNAI–Koose Munisamy Veerappan, 52, the most wanted
poacher and wildlife trafficker in the world after sometime elephant
ivory and rhino horn trafficker Osama bin Laden, was killed on
October 18 in an hour-long shootout with members of the Tamil Nadu
Special Task Force. Killed with Veerappan were his close associates
Sethukuzhi Govindan and Madegowda, and Tamil separatist guerilla
Sethumani, also known as Sethumalai.
The STF unit caught Veerappan in an ambush at about 11 p.m.
on the road between the towns of Padi and Papparapatti in the jungle
of Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu, near the Karnataka border.
Introduced to elephant poaching at age 10 by another poacher
of note, Selvan Gounder, Veerappan killed his first human at age
17, took over the gang at age 18, was briefly jailed for murder at
age 20, but was bailed out by a Tamil separatist politician, and
went on to kill as many as 2,000 elephants, along with uncounted
thousands of blackbuck, monitor lizards, languors, and tens of
thousands of fish. His favorite fishing method was reputedly
dynamiting ponds.

China bans eating civets

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

BEIJING–The Chinese federal health ministry on November 2
banned the slaughter and cooking of civets for human consumption, to
promote “civilized eating habits,” the state-run Beijing Daily
reported.
“The announcement came a week after the government said 70%
of civets tested in the southern province of Guangdong were carrying
the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus,” observed Associated
Press.
The October 23 disclosure hinted that civets were not the
source of SARS, as no civets from northern and eastern China were
infected. The Guangdong civets are believed to have been
captive-raised for slaughter, while the civets from northern and
eastern China, where “wild” animals are rarely eaten, were
apparently trapped.
The Chinese ban on eating civets came just under three months
after U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced
a health embargo on the import of either live or dead civets plus
civet parts, such as civet pelts.

Chinese live markets feed the fur trade

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

NEW YORK CITY–“Real Fur Is Fun Again,”
headlined the October 11 edition of Newsweek.
“It’s less expensive and more popular than ever.
But as young people snuggle up, where are the
protesters?”
Fur appeared on 36 of the 270 pages in
the “Women’s Fashion Fall 2004” edition of The
New York Times Style Magazine: as many pages as
in all editions from 2001 through 2003 combined.
Fur is more visible now than at any time
in the past 20 years. Furriers are buying more
ad space in The New York Times and other
periodicals known to reach affluent younger
women, anticipating a profitable winter–if the
economy holds up.
But furriers have often misread market
demand. Expecting a boom in the winters of
1993/1994 and 1997/1998, chiefly through
believing their own propaganda, furriers drove
fur pelt prices up at auction with panic buying
to increase inventory, stepped up their
advertising, and experienced busts instead.

New concept draft of Korean animal protection law eliminates potential exemptions for “meat” dogs & cats

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

SEOUL–More than a year of acrimony over
animal definitions in a 2003 draft update of the
1991 South Korean animal protection law appeared
to be resolved on October 5, 2004 when the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry presented a
new draft of recommendations for legislation
called Comprehensive Measures for Animal
Protection.
Comprehensive Measures appears to
eliminate loopholes in the 2003 draft update that
might have exempted dogs and cats raised for meat
from coverage.

Greyhound exports to Southeast Asia

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

KIDDERMINSTER, U.K.– Greyhound Action International
announced on September 16 that newly obtained 2003 statistics show “a
drop in the number of greyhounds exported from Australia to South
Korea, but an increase in the number sent to Macau.” Greyhound
racing has recently been introduced into Macau, Vietnam, and
Cambodia, and has expanded in the Phillipines.
Greyhound Action International notes that dogs are eaten in
all of these places, and alleges that the exported greyhounds “are
ending their days being butchered in the dog meat industry.”
Australian activist Lyn White inspected the Vietnamese
greyhound racing facilities and dog meat markets for the Animals Asia
Foundation in late 2002 and found no evidence that greyhounds were
being sold for human consumption, or could be, since Vietnamese
consumers prefer fat puppies rather than hard-muscled older dogs.
However, greyhounds were at the time still scarce in
Vietnam. If intensive breeding for competition produced a perennial
surplus, as exists in nations with an established greyhound racing
industry, it is not inconceivable that an entrepreneur might find a
way to sell their remains, perhaps as a pre-cooked canned stew.

Dog meat trafficking

October 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Thai police on October 1, 2004 seized 1,070 dogs from three
trucks and arrested four men who were allegedly about to cross into
Laos from Sakon Nakon province, en route to dog meat markets in
Vietnam. The dogs were impounded under quarantine. The men would be
fined if found guilty of illegal trading, said police colonel
Sunthorn Kongkraphan, but would not be jailed.

Philippine police on August 10, 2004 seized 80 trussed-up
street dogs from a truck taking them from Cavite province, south of
Manila, to a slaughterhouse in Baguio City, the reputed dog meat
capital of the Philippines. The truck was intercepted following an
11-mile hot pursuit after trying to evade a police checkpoint. The
driver was charged with violating the national animal welfare act.

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