Category: Asia

Diet & Health

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

MILK PRODUCED WITH RBST GOES ON SALE
Milk produced through the use of recombinant
(genetically enginneered) bovine somatotropin growth hor-
m o n e went on sale to the general public for the first time on
February 4, a month after a review of the scientific literature
on the production stimulant by the White House Office of
Management and Budget concluded that, “There is no evi-
dence that rBST poses a health threat to humans or animals.”
The Pure Food Campaign led anti-rBST protests in at least nine
cities. The drug boosts milk production per cow and extends
the time a cow can be milked between the births of calves. It is
bitterly opposed by many dairy farmers because in reducing the
number of cows needed to meet the demand for milk, it will
put some farmers out of business. Consumer advocates are
concerned that despite government assurances, residues may
get into milk, producing such effects as earlier puberty and
greater breast development in young women––and perhaps
stimulating hormonally triggered cancers. Concerned about
boycott pressure, the Food and Drug Administration warned
dairy producers and distributors that they can identify milk as
being produced without the use of rBST if they can prove it,
but cannot say simply “rBST-free,” since milk produced with
rBST is also technically rBST-free. They must also state on a
label that, “No significant difference has been shown between
milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.”

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Humane Enforcement
The toughest cruelty sentence ever
issued in Vermont went to Donald Bliss, of
Barre, on a December 14 plea bargain. Bliss
admitted to keeping a starving Belgian mare staked
outside for most of the winter of 1992-1993. He
drew a year in jail with immediate probation, a
suspended fine of $2,000, was ordered to donate
$1,000 to the Central Vermont Humane Society,
and was obliged to pay the town of Barre $1,100
for boarding the mare until she was adopted by
Anne Cole Butler, of Orange.

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ANIMAL HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Rabies update
New Hampshire state veterinarian
Clifford McGinniss warned January
15––after a rabid kitten was found in a
Merrimack College dormitory––that feral cats
must be exterminated to protect Hampton
Beach visitors. Disagreeing, Hampton Beach
is pursung a $24,000 cat control plan combin-
ing catch-and-kill with selective neuter/
release. The plan is also opposed by New
Hampshire SPCA executive director Bonnie
Roberts, who told the Boston Globe that the
feral cats “are going to tangle with rabid ani-
mals and spread the disease.” In fact, rabies
vaccination is a prerequisite of the Hampton
Beach plan, and of all properly managed
neuter/release programs. There are no reports
on record of any cat in any recognized
neuter/release program anywhere ever con-
tracting rabies, while several neuter/release
programs including one coordinated in 1991-
1992 by ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim
Bartlett have been credited by public safety
officials with creating an immunized barrier
between rabid wildlife and family pets.

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Animal Control & Rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The Canadian SPCA
was stunned February 3 when it
lost the Montreal pound contract
to a private bidder, Berger Blanc,
for at least a two-month trial period.
Berger Blanc handles animal control
for several Montreal suburbs, but
has been accused of selling animals
to biomedical research. The
Montreal contract forbids such sales.
The CSPCA was nearly bankrupted
under its previous two-year pound
contract, loosely modeled after the
contract New York City has long
had with the ASPCA, under which
it was expected to provide pound
service at a substantial loss––
$450,000 in 1993––in exchange for
the proceeds from all dog licenses
sold after the first 10,000.

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Sea life

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Foiled when a crew from the Shedd Aquarium in
Chicago caught three Pacific whitesided dolphins on
November 27, protesters who hoped to disrupt the capture
effort instead spent the next month keeping the dolphins’ hold-
ing pen at the Kettenburg Marine wharf in San Diego under
around-the-clock surveillance. Steve Hindi of the Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition took video that he claimed shows dol-
phins swimming “in a bathtub ring of their own excrement,”
which a Shedd spokesperson claimed was salt added to the
water to simulate the chemistry of the ocean. The video also
showed “frenzied Shedd officials erecting a barrier to obscure
the traumatized dolphins from view,” Hindi said, and enabled
members of the Whale Rescue Team to identify “a steady
stream of visitors,” including Tim Hauser, who reputedly cap-
tures marine mammals for many aquariums, and a number of
Navy personnel, whose presence was unexplained. The Navy
has applied, however, to do underwater weapons testing in one
area where the dolphins might have been caught, the Outer-Sea
Test Range. Designated in 1946, the range lies seaward of the
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The proposed test-
ing will involve “incidental” deaths and injuries to any marine
mammals who happen to be near test explosions, and is
opposed by many of the same groups that opposed the dolphin
captures, as well as the usually conservative National Audubon
Society. As Christmas approached, the Shedd team was hold-
ing daily “desensitizing drills,” preparing the dolphins for trans-
port by raising and lowering them in a cargo sling.

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Wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Maine wildlife officials have
confirmed that wounds on the carcass of a
bobcat who was killed in a fight with a much
larger cat may have been made by an eastern
cougar. The fight was witnessed by hunter
Anthony Fuscaldo. Officially extinct in
Maine since 1938, and in the rest of New
England and eastern Canada much earlier,
the eastern cougar was restored to the list of
living species last year when tracks and scat
were found in New Brunswick, shortly after
a farmer shot one in western Quebec.
Sightings continued throughout the decades
of supposed extinction, but most turned out
to involve bobcats, lynxes, the occasional
extra-large housecat, and some tame exotic
cats who were released by their keepers after
growing too big to handle safely.

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AGRICULTURE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

World meat production is up from
177.2 million tons in 1990 to 184.2 tons in
1993, says the Intergovernmental Group on
Meat, an industry task force. Cattle produc-
tion slid from 54.3 million tons to 52.8, but
pork is up from 69.7 million tons to 73.8, and
poultry is up from 39.9 million tons to 44.2.
Total production in developed nations fell
from 104.2 million tons to 100.6, due mostly
to declines in the former USSR, but produc-
tion in developing nations jumped from 73
million tons to 83.6 million––an expenditure
of soil and water resources many of them can-
not afford to make.

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Diet & Health

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

Unhealthy diet follows smoking as
the leading cause of preventable death i n
the U.S., according to a new study co-
authored by Dr. Mcihael McGinnis, deputy
assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services. McGinnis is
responsible for designing U.S. disease pre-
vention strategy. Preventable deaths account
for about half of the U.S. death rate. The
study appeared in the Journal of the American
Medical Association.

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

Crimes against wildlife
Hong Kong authorities confiscat-
ed $20,000 worth of rhinoceros horn in a
series of late October raids on apothecaries,
following leads provided by the London-based
Environmental Investigation Agency. But the
raids may have come too late to save rhinos in
the wild, as fewer than six remain in protect-
ed areas of Zimbabwe, according to wildlife
veterinarian Dr. Michael Kock, who could
find only two in a two-week aerial search.
There were 3,000 when Zimbabwe achieved
native sovereignty in 1980. Kock sawed the
horns off about 300 rhinos a year ago, trying
to make them worthless to poachers, but dis-
covered that even the nub left behind after
dehorning will fetch $2,400 U.S. Kock says
he has evidence that the Asian poaching car-
tels are actively trying to “kill every rhino,”
because, “If they eliminate the rhino, the value
of the horn will skyrocket. They can sit on a
stockpile for 10 years; they know there is
always going to be a market.”

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