“Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting city”

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

BARCELONA–Ernest Hemingway, in Death In The Afternoon
(1932), mentioned Barcelona as perhaps the only city where
bullfights could be watched all year round. Barcelona then supported
three of the world’s largest bullfighting stadiums –and tourists had
just barely begun to attend.
On April 5, 2004, the Barcelona city council voted by
secret ballot, 21-15 with two abstentions, in favor of a
non-binding resolution stating “Barcelona is an anti-bullfighting
city.” The vote affirmed a petition circulated by the Asociacion
Defensa Derechos Animal, signed by 250,000 Barcelona citizens.
Opinion polls showed that 63% of Barcelonians now disapprove
of bullfighting; 55% favored banning it.
The Barcelona resolution will not close La Monumental, the
last functioning bull ring in the city. About 100 bulls per year are
killed at La Monumental, chiefly to thrill tourists, in a season that
now runs from March through September. More bulls are killed only in
Madrid and Sevilla.
Bullfighting in Barcelona can actually be banned only by the Catalan
regional parliament. The Catalan parliament in mid-2003 barred
children under age 14 from attending bullfights, 18 months after
Mexico City restricted bullfight and cockfight attendance to persons
over 18 years of age.

Gopher derby halted

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Canada –The Ken Turcot Memorial
Gopher Derby was not held in 2004, after participants reportedly
killed as many as 100,000 Richardson’s ground squirrels and prairie
dogs in 2002 and 2003. The first edition of the killing contest
attracted 211 hunters. The 2003 edition drew just 120.
Saskatoon Wildlife Federation business manager Len Jabush
indicated to Sean Pratt of the Western Producer that the gopher derby
might be revived in 2005, “just to annoy” protesters and critics.
Sponsored by the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation, an affiliate
of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation and Canadian Wildlife
Federation, the gopher derby was opposed by the U.S.-based National
Wildlife Federation. The NWF has no authority over the Canadian
groups, but they distribute NWF publications and sponsor classroom
use of the NWF’s Project Wild lesson plans.
NWF membership recruitment mailings have for at least eight
years emphasized NWF efforts to list prairie dogs as a threatened
species in the U.S.
“I can tell you that NWF was clear and unequivocal in
opposition to such killing sprees as this gopher derby,” former NWF
vice chair Edward Clark told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “but that position was
expressed behind the scenes. I would have preferred a stronger
public position,” Clark said.

Cock & bull stories

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Oklahoma cockfighting ban upheld

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on March 30, 2004 upheld the
constitutionality of the initiative ban on cockfighting that was
approved by state voters in 2002. Chief Justice Joseph M. Watt and
six other justices ratified the verdict, while two abstained.
The ban passed by a margin of 125,000 votes, but local
judges in 27 counties then ruled that the initiative was
“unconstitutionally vague” and “unjustly deprived cockfighters of
their property.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected both
contentions.
“Next it will be hunting, fishing and rodeos,” complained
state senator Frank Shurden. Shurden for the past two years has
pushed a bill to reduce the penalties for cockfighting from felonies
to misdemeanors.

Bullfight protesters beaten by cops

Members of Corporacion RAYA, also known as Red de Ayuda los
Animales, of Medallin, Colombia, were on February 28 beaten by
police during a protest against bullfighting for the second time in a
month.
“As happened on February 7, the anti-riot squad took
advantage of their jobs and hit the marchers,” an activist calling
herself “Girl From Mars” e-mailed to
<www.hsi-animalia@lists.hsus.org>, an electronic bulletin board
maintained by the Humane Society of the U.S.
“A 15-year-old boy was seriously injured in his eye and was
kept prisoner for about five hours, and so was a 17-year-old girl,”
the report added.

Bullfighting arena built in Beijing

South China Morning Post correspondent David Fang on March 13
reported that “A 3,000-seat bull ring, Asia’s biggest, is nearing
completion in the Daxing district of Beijing, next to the Beijing
Wildlife Park.”
Jiao Shenhai of the Daxing tourist bureau told Fang that the
ring was to host both Spanish-style bullfights and U.S.-style rodeo,
but outbreaks of mad cow disease in Spain had blocked the import of
Spanish fighting bulls.
“Communist China is quick to adopt any vice from any
culture,” commented Chinese animal advocate Peter Li, now teaching
at the Universiy of Houston.
Disagreed Peking University School of Journal-ism &
Communication professor Guan Sijie, “Chinese see the bull as
industrious, honest, and good friends. I don’t think Chinese
people will accept bullfighting.”

Animal Fighting, 1997-2003

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Dogfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 11 24 54 66 75 48 48
Related drugs/homicide 3 9 13 12 16 12 5
People involved 76 136 237 297 282 306 426
Dogs seized 95 365 791 896 869 428 549
Felony convictions 1 2 7 25 18 14 35

Cockfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 10 15 18 19 35 32 32
Related drugs/homicide 0 6 6 3 5 6 5
People involved 350 498 389 874 1508 497 458
Birds seized 725 763 1023 876 7995 3390 4113
Felony convictions 0 0 3 9 0 1 8

Data collected by ANIMAL PEOPLE on dogfighting and
cockfighting arrests during the past seven years offers hope that the
boom in animal fighting of the past two decades may have crested–but
only just barely, and only in response to increasingly effective law
enforcement. The trends indicate a leveling off at somewhat less
than the peak volume of activity, yet still a very high volume
compared to the pre-peak years.

REVIEWS: Prosecuting Animal Cruelty & Illegal Animal Fighting

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Prosecuting Animal Cruelty & Illegal Animal Fighting
AIM Reality Training video
featuring Captain Ken “Beau” Beauregard & Dena Mangiamele, DVM.
(POB 26593, Los Angeles, CA 90026; 213-413-6428;
<help@realitytraining.com>; <www.realitytraining.com>), 2004.
Two hours. Available on DVD disk or in VHS format. Free to law
enforcement agencies and bona fide humane organizations.

The Sheriff’s Department in Newton County, Alabama, during
the last week of January 2004 apprehended 120 suspects in connection
with a dogfight in Covington. This one raid resulted in more arrests
than all dogfighting raids around the U.S. combined did as recently
as 1997.
The Sheriff’s Department in Indian River County, Florida,
during the last week of February 2004 seized 1,500 gamecocks: more
than the total number seized nationally in any year for which
statistics are available prior to 2001.
In the first week of March 2004, Sporting Dog Journal
publisher James Fricchione, 34, was convicted in Goshen, New York,
of six felonies and five misdemeanors for allegedly promoting
dogfights.

Hog/dog rodeo like porn, says prosecutor

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

COFFEYVILLE, Alabama–The legality of so-called “hog/dog
rodeo” in Alabama will be tested soon as result of arrests made on
February 21, 2004 by Clarke County Sheriff Jack Day.
Hog/dog rodeo, practiced chiefly in the rural South,
consists of setting pit bull terriers against purportedly feral pigs
in an enclosed arena. The dog who corners and holds a pig fastest is
the winner.
Hog/dog rodeo was openly promoted in both Alabama and Florida
until May 1994, when then-Florida attorney general Mike Butterworth
ruled in response to videos of dogs mauling pigs at a site in Hardee
County that the practice violates the state anti-cruelty law.
That left Alabama, where the most prominent hog/dog venue
of several openly operating is reputedly that of H&H Kennels owner
Johnny Hayes, near Coffeyville.
Coffeyville police chief Frankie Crawford and Clarke County
Democrat editor Jim Cox had both repeatedly denounced hog/dog rodeo
and drunken parking lot violence that often went with it, but to no
avail until a February 12, 2004 investigative report by Mike Rush of
NBC-12 in Mobile.
Shown video similar to the footage that ended open hog/dog
rodeo in Florida, Clarke County District Attorney Bobby Keahey told
Rush that he had never prosecuted Hayes and others involved because
Sheriff Day had never arrested them.

Legislative Calendar

July 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2003:

Reviewing proposed amendments to the Fiscal Year 2004
Agriculture Appropriations Act, the House of Representatives on July
14 added $800,000 to the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection
Service budget to support enforcement of legislation banning the
interstate transport of gamecocks and fighting dogs, by a vote of
222-179, but voted 202-199 against an amendment by Representatives
Gary Ackerman (D-NY) and Steve Latourette (R-Ohio) that would have
forbidden processing non-ambulatory livestock for human consumption.
This was the closest that Ackerman has come yet in many attempts to
pass “anti-downer” legislation.

Cockfighters cleaned up on Newcastle clean-up

July 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2003:

SACRAMENTO–Cockfighters who spread Exotic Newcastle Disease
throughout Southern California and into Arizona between November 2002
and May 2003 by illegally transporting gamecocks between fighting
pits appear to have created a financial windfall for themselves,
according to documents obtained by Associated Press under the federal
Freedom of Information Act.
The USDA paid compensation of $22.3 million to poultry owners
whose infected or exposed flocks were killed as part of the
eradication effort. Most of the 3.7 million birds who were destroyed
were egg-laying hens, for whom the USDA paid $2.89 apiece,
according to Associated Press: $10.7 million.

Reviews: One Last Fight

June 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

One Last Fight: Exposing the Shame
Directed & filmed by Erik Friedl. Written by John Caruso.
Produced by the Anti-Cruelty Society (157 W. Grand Ave., Chicago,
IL 60610), 2002.
15-minute video. $20.00.

The history of video exposes of dogfighting is less sordid
than dogfighting itself–but nothing is more sordid than dogfighting.
Commonly associated with dogfighting, according to the
ANIMAL PEOPLE case files, are pet theft; stealing dogs, drugs,
and money from humane societies; child abuse and neglect; pimping
and prostitution; drug trafficking; extortion; arson; rape; and
criminal mayhem, legalese for “torture.”

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