Foreign

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

British armed forces minister John Reid on
June 12 suspended British participation in NATO exercises
which involve shooting sedated pigs to give
medics practice in treating gunshot wounds, pending
review of the value of the procedure, which is reportedly
often used in training U.S. combat surgeons.
Reid’s action came as the Home Office was
reportedly preparing to release statistics showing that
the number of animals used in British laboratories is up,
for the second year in a row. About 20% more animals
were used in genetic work in 1996 than in 1995, and
that trend is expected to continue, even as the numbers
used in conventional product safety testing continue a
long, slow drop.

Awards, honors, and appointments

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

San Francisco SPCA president
Richard Avanzino on April 15 received the
first-ever ALPO Humane Achievement
Award, presented by Friskies PetCare
Company, Inc.
Peter Singer, author of Animal
Liberation, is relocating in August from
Australia to Princeton University, where he
is to become DeCamp Professor of Bioethics
at the Princeton Centre for Human Values.
Sangeeta Kumar, formerly outreach
director for the Toronto Vegetarian
Society, has relocated to San Diego, where
she has founded a new organization,
Compassion In Action, initially sponsored
by philanthropist Kanwar Jain.

Easter bunny blasters want more targets

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

DUNEDIN (New Zealand)––Of all the animal massacres
assocated with spring religious observance, the Easter
bunny shoot at Alexandra, New Zealand, most nakedly celebrates
killing for the hell of it.
The 12-member Tuturau Titty Ticklers blasted 712
rabbits to win the 24-hour, 25-team killing contest this year,
as shooters griped of an alleged paucity of targets caused by
the unauthorized release last summer of rabbit calicivirus
(RCD). The bag fell to 5,290, from nearly 24,000 in 1997.
“A group called the Waihou Virus shot more geese
than rabbits,” reported the New Zealand Press Association.
“Eight teams bagged fewer than 100 each.”
That left organizer Martin McPherson to pick among
ending the event, opposing RCD use, or targeting captive animals,
like the Labor Day pigeon shoot at Hegins,
Pennsylvania. Any of the options would belie the purported
higher purpose, in combatting the depredations of feral rabbits.

Abroad

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

In Germany, “animals kept in shelters are
never killed as a result of pet overpopulation,” federal
animal shelter overseer Jorg Styrie recently
wrote to Diana Nolen, president of the STOP antipet-overpopulation
project in Mansfield, Ohio.
According to Styrie, unless an animal “is incurably ill
and suffers pain, it is forbidden to put animals to
sleep.” Adoption, surrender, vaccination, and neutering
fees at German shelters are all comparable to
those in the U.S., but pet abandonment brings a fine
of about $1,500, Styrie told Nolen.

International briefs

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

McDonald’s restaurants, stung by
the 1997 High Court “McLibel trail” verdict
that the chain is “culpably resonsible” for cruelty
to factory-farmed animals, reportedly
held talks with the Royal SPCA in London
during February about the possibility of winning
the endorsement of the RSPCA’s
“Freedom Food” campaign. Previous talks
along similar lines, held in 1994, apparently
brought no agreement. Now, however, vegetarian
opposition to a deal may be muted by a
warning from the RSPCA counsel that the
organization may jeopardize its charitable status
if it actively promotes a meatless diet.

Whale research is booming

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

KAILUA KONA, Hawaii– – Ocean
Mammal Institute volunteers tried apparently unsuccessfully
to amplify last-minute opposition to
Surveillance Towed Array Sonar System Low
Frequency Sound testing northwest of Hawaii,
begun by the U.S. Navy in February, scheduled to
continue through March.
The area is “immediately adjacent to the
Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National
Marine Sanctuary,” explains a newly leaked August
1997 memo from Hawaii Division of Aquatic
Resources staffer Emily Gardner to state Board of
Land and Natural Resources chair Michael D.
Wilson. ANIMAL PEOPLE obtained the memo
from Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch, who said he
received it from an anonymous source.

Jaded humpmasters turn to women

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

SYDNEY––Australian Camel Racing
Association president Kevin Handley on February
5 reportedly failed to win an exemption from the
Equal Opportunity Act which would have allowed
ACRA to recruit “young attractive female riders”
to race camels in the United Arab Emirates––at
invitation, Handley said, of the UAE ambassador.
According to Manika Naidoo of the
Sydney Morning Herald, UAE embassy officials
had “hand-picked” 20 Australian women, most
with no previous camel-riding experience, and
hope to recruit up to 40 more within two years.
“Handley told the Anti-Discrimination
Tribunal that applicants had to be attractive and
female because the idea behind the scheme was to
promote women jockeys and counter camel racing’s
male-dominated image,” Naidoo wrote. “He
said if spectators saw pretty young females riding
camels, it would destroy the popular view of the
animals as ‘untrustworthy, stinking, and arrogant,’
and of riders being ‘bearded and backward
beer-drinking boozers.’”

Honoring American values

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

HAWAII––George Peabody,
publisher of the Molokai Advertiser-News
since 1984, charged on November 19 that
“Molokai Ranch Ltd., which owns a third of
this island, has suddenly banned my paper
from all Ranch properties, has gagged staff,
and has excluded all advertising, because of
my editorial about the abuse of animals in
rodeo, calling for a boycott of the Molokoi
Ranch Rodeo on Thanksgiving weekend. I
suggested that their facilities be used instead
for human sports events, like mountain bike
racing and traditional Hawaiian wrestling.”

Sending out the dove

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

LOS ANGELES––Thirty circling
vultures are excellent news for the often
embattled Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego
Wild Animal Park. That’s because the vultures––California
condors, to be exact––are
now using their 10-foot wingspan to soar on
mountain air currents over southern California,
northern Arizona, and southern Utah.
Just 27 California condors remained
alive in 1987, when the last wild member of
the species was lured into captivity despite
militant protest from Earth First! and lawsuits
from the Sierra Club and National Audubon
Society––and the 1987 count was up slightly
from the low of 22, recorded in 1982. By
1985, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
decided to capture the whole population for
protected breeding, just nine wild condors
remained, along with 14 in captivity. There
are now 134 of the giant birds, some of whom
are fanning out more than 200 miles from
release sites, reclaiming habitat they haven’t
occupied in thousands of years.

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