Freed in India

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

HYDERABAD––Forty-eight monkeys
reportedly bred for use testing an Indian
version of the anti-cancer drug Interferon by
Shantha Biotechnics Private Ltd. reportedly
scampered into the jungles of Sirisailam in
early August, freed by Blue Cross of India
Hyderabad chapter secretary and award-winning
actress Amala Annikeni and friends.
Wrote S.N.M. Abdi of the South
China Morning Post, “Annikenni, 40, arrived
at the National Centre for Laboratory Animal
Sciences with several vans to carry the monkey
cages. She was also armed with a letter from
the Andhra Pradesh state animal welfare board
ordering the lab to hand over the primates,” due
to allegedly poor care conditions. The transfer
was done “after a three-hour tussle with sloganshouting
activists who refused to vacate the
premises until the monkeys were rescued.”

Ruthless meat trade flogs hormones east and west

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

SEOUL, BRUSSELS, LONDON,
WASHINGTON D.C.––An estimated
50 members of the Korean Animal
Protection Society rallied against dog-eating
and cat-eating on August 16 in front of
Myoungdong Cathedral in central Seoul.
Sympathy rallies occurred in many
other cities around the world, attracting
media coverage in the U.S., Canada, Great
Britain, and South Africa as well as Korea.
But the protests did not deter Grand
National Party legislator Kim Hong Shin and
20 cosponsors from introducing a bill into the
Korean Parliament that same day to repeal six
unenforced prohibitions on dog-eating issued
since 1978 by adding dogs to the list of livestock
species regulated by the Korean
Agriculture Department.

LAST OF THE TULI 30, LOKI/MURTHY, AND THAI LOGGING ELEPHANTS ALL FIND REFUGE

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

JOHANNESBURG, CHENNAI, BANGKOK– –
Seven thousand South Africans marched on African Game
Services owner Riccardo Ghiazza’s farm near Brits on July 11
demanding an end to wild elephant exports and freedom for the
nine elephants of the “Tuli 30” then still with Ghiazza.
Ten burly bikers crashed Ghiazza’s gate and threatened
to free the elephants themselves, said WildNet Africa.
Outrage built for a week after the South African
Broadcast Corporation program Carte Blanche on July 4 aired
National SPCA undercover video of mahouts beating the elephants.
The videotaping was done at the Ghiazza farm over a
two-month interval by NSPCA inspectors Andries Venter, 25,
Yvonne Seaton, 26, and Karen Moller, 24, following instructions
from a High Court judge.

Australians want to sell fruit bats

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

KUALA LUMPUR––Nipah virus
antibodies have been found in fruit bats in
Perak, Malaysia, confirming suspicion that
the deadly disease spread from bats to pigs
and then to people.
Nipah virus killed at least 108
Malaysians in the first six months of 1999,
all of whom lived or worked on pig farms.
More than a million pigs were slaughtered to
contain the disease, causing economic hardship
to about 300,000 people.
It is still premature to name fruit
bats as the natural hosts of the Nipah disease,
cautioned Australian Animal Research
Institute veterinary epidemiologist Hume
Field, who announced the discovery of the
antibodies in fruit bats on July 21.

U.N., U.S. plan world war on feral wildlife

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

TOKYO––Representatives of the 175 nations that
have endorsed the United Nations Convention on Biological
Diversity––including the U.S.––are to assemble in Nairobi,
Kenya, in May 2000 to draft guidelines for purging and blocking
the spread of alleged invasive species. The guidelines are
to be presented for ratification by the CBD members in 2001.
Once ratified, they could constitute a global mandate
in support of the forthcoming recommendations of the cabinetlevel
Invasive Species Council created by U.S. President Bill
Clinton on February 2, under orders to “mobilize the federal
government to defend against aggressive predators and pests.”
The mobilization is to be underway by August 2000.
The definition of “aggressive predators and pests”
addressed by both the CBD and Invasive Species Council could
include––among many other species––feral cats; feral pigs;
the mountain goats of Olympic National Park in Washington
state; street pigeons; starlings; the parrot colonies of San
Francisco, Florida, and the New York City metropolitan area;
and all wild horses and burros on public land except Bureau of
Land Management holdings, where they enjoy limited “squatters’
rights” under the 1971 Wild And Free Ranging Horse and
Burro Protection Act.

MALAYSIA SHIFTS FOCUS FROM PIGS

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

SARIKEI, Malaysia––Pigs are
still killed almost daily as mop-up work
against the deadly Nipah virus continues, but
by the hundreds now instead of the thousands.
Few pigs remain in Malaysia.
More than a million were massacred from
mid-March to mid-May, putting about 1,800
farms out of production, impoverishing an
estimated 300,000 Malaysians whose income
came from the export-oriented pork industry.

Where else dogs and cats are eaten

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

The ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate
that dogs and sometimes cats are also
eaten in parts of Cambodia, China, Japan,
Laos, the Philippines, the Asian portions of
the former Soviet Union, Taiwan, Thailand,
and Vietnam––but almost exclusively by
either members of an ethnic Chinese minority,
or by remote indigenous groups.
Tibetan and Thai Buddhists especially
disapprove of dog-and-cat-eating,
because dogs and cats are believed likely to
possess reincarnated human souls. Resettled
in Tibet as part of the ongoing Beijing government
effort to subvert Buddhist influence,
ethnic Chinese immigrants are at times
accused of deliberately provoking outrage by
butchering and cooking dogs in the streets of
Lhasa. Dog-eating among refugees from
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam likewise
exascerbates ethnic strife in northern Thailand.

Whalers’ covert strategy confirmed

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

TOKYO, VICTORIA (B.C)– –
Whaling industry revival strategies long suspected
by ANIMAL PEOPLE and the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society were bluntly
confirmed in early June, soon after the annual
International Whaling Commission meeting
ended in Grenada without lifting the 1986
global moratorium on commercial whaling.
Citing Hideki Moronuki of the
Japanese ministry for agriculture, forests, and
fisheries as her source, Mari Yamaguchi of
Associated Press on June 3 reported from
Tokyo that “In a bid to gain support for commercial
whaling, Japan hopes to coax developing
countries to join the IWC by giving
them financial assistance. Aid will be given,”
Yamaguchi continued, “to countries that have
been reluctant to join the IWC for fear of damaging
their diplomatic and economic ties with
the West” if they favor whaling.
Moronuki argued that whales, rather
than aggressive fishing led by the Japanese
fleet, are chiefly responsible for globally
declining catches.

The most misleading mailing ever?

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

MUDUMALAI, Tamil Nadu;
NEW DELHI––”The Story of Loki,” the
Performing Animal Welfare Society and India
Project for Animals and Nature boldly headlined
in a joint special report mailed in May
with an appeal to donors, is “the worst case of
animal abuse ever documented.”
And, PAWS and IPAN intimated,
the plight of the elephant Loki was largely the
fault of Maneka Gandhi, the Indian minister of
state for social welfare and empowerment since
April 1998, but best known as founder of
People For Animals, India’s most prominent
animal rights group.
According to the PAWS/IPAN mailing,
Maneka “published a report about Loki
which is full of incorrect information,” allegedly
covering up the purported “worst case of animal
abuse ever documented,” thwarting IPAN
founder Deanna Krantz and PAWS representative
Ed Stewart in their efforts to obtain custody
of both Loki and an orphaned elephant calf.

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