Category: Campaigns

Mercy For Animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

DES MOINES–The Iowa egg production giant
Hy-Line North America admitted on September 8,
2009 that an independent audit found “animal
welfare policy violations” at a hatchery in
Spencer, Iowa, where a Mercy for Animals
undercover operative videotaped unwanted male
chicks being killed for two weeks in May and June
2009.
“But West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North
America said that it won’t release further
details,” Associated Press reported.
Summarized Associated Press writers
Frederic J. Frommer and Melanie S. Welte, “The
video shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a
conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some
of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips
cards. These chicks, which a narrator says are
males, are then shown being dropped alive into a
grinding machine.

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Film spotlights Taiji dolphin killing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

 

TAIJI, Japan–The Cove has not stopped the annual Taiji
dolphin massacres– not yet, anyhow. But the award-winning film did
appear to slow down the killing at the start of the 2009 “drive
fishery” season, and–even before release in Japan–is bringing the
massacres to the attention of the often shocked Japanese public as
nothing before ever has.
“Moviegoers who have seen The Cove, directed by Louie
Psihoyos, said they were stunned by the cruelty of the killings,
captured by concealed cameras. Many newspapers have blasted the
traditional coastal whaling practice in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture,
which is not subject to the International Whaling Commission’s ban on
commercial whaling,” summarized Toshihiro Yamanaka for Asahi
Shimbun. The second largest newspaper in Japan, Asahi Shimbun
reaches about 8.2 million readers daily.
“When I found out, I cried,” Osaka resident Keiko Hirao
told John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times.
Director Louis Psihoyos, a former National Geographic
photographer, has pledged to keep the spotlight on Taiji by making
The Cove available in Japan as a free download, if he fails to
secure a commercial distributor. The Cove has won more than a dozen
awards, including the audience award at the 25th annual Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and has aired widely in other
parts of the world, but despite much media notice in Japan, has not
yet been screened there.

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Rapid progress against Dutch vealers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:
AMSTERDAM–The Dutch animal advocacy organization Wakker
Dier–“Awake Animal”–appears to be quietly making unprecedented
gains against the crated veal industry in the nation where it
originated.
“Within six months of Wakker Dier launching a peaceful
company-targetted campaign against ‘pale veal’–produced by keeping
male calves penned up, fed on low-iron milk diets–nearly all Dutch
supermarkets have stopped selling it,” reported Adriana Stuijt for
Digital Journal on March 15, 2009.
Recently retired after covering public health for the
Johannesburg Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa,
now living in Dokkum, The Netherlands, Stuijt found that 14 leading
Dutch supermarkets chains “have all undertaken to stop selling the
pale veal within the next few months, because the Wakker Dier
publicity campaign created a high level of consumer awareness, and
people stopped buying it.”

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Impeachment of Illinois governor did not surprise SHARK

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois–When the Illinois Senate impeached
governor Rod Blagojevich for abuse of power on January 29, 2009, by
a vote of 59-0, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve
Hindi could say “I told you so.” Hindi had accused the Blagojevich
administration of corruption via the SHARK web site since July 2006.
Hindi fingered Blagojevich himself and senior officials at
the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the Illinois State Police,
and the office of the Illinois State’s Attorney after they refused to
prosecute cruelty to animals captured on videotape by SHARK
investigators at the 2006 Illinois High School Rodeo Association
finals in Springfield, the Illinoi state capital.

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Whale wars in Washington D.C. & the Southern Oceans

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:
WASHINGTON D.C.–“The American people
care deeply about protecting whales and do not
want the U.S. to be the broker who capitulated to
those who still want to kill whales for
commercial gain,” declared U.S. House of
Representatives Natural Resources Committee chair
Nick Rahall in a February 4, 2009 letter asking
the acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce to replace
William Hogarth as U.S. representative on the
International Whaling Commission. Hogarth is
also the current IWC chair.
The Rahall letter reinforced a February
2, 2009 appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama by
the Whales Need Us coalition, representing 13
prominent anti-whaling organizations, headed by
Animal Welfare Institute wildlife biologist D.J.
Schubert.

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Cowboys lose copyright case

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:
CHICAGO–The Electronic Frontiers Foundation on February 12,
2009 announced that the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association has
agreed to pay $25,000 and accept restraints on making claims of
copyright violation against the animal advocacy group Showing Animals
Respect & Kindness.
Asserting that SHARK had violated the federal Digital
Millennium Act, the PRCA in December 2007 pressured YouTube into
removing from the web several videos of rodeo violence posted by
SHARK. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation then sued the PRCA on
SHARK’s behalf.
“The money goes to EFF, not us,” SHARK founder Steve Hindi
told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “That’s only fair, as they put a lot of time
into the case, and we could never have won it without them. The
exciting part for us is that the PRCA has agreed not to enforce a ‘no
videotaping’ provision in its ticket contracts against us, unless it
enforces the same provision against others. This means the PRCA may
no longer selectively enforce the provision against critics.”

Did Christmas bring the end of the Strausstown club pigeon shoots?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2009:

STRAUSTOWN, Pennsylvania–“Christmas came a day late, but
our present was well worth the wait,” said SHARK founder Steve
Hindi, calling ANIMAL PEOPLE on December 29, 2008 to announce the
apparent end of pigeon shoots at the Strausstown Rod and Gun
Club–perhaps the most openly defiant among the last several places
in the U.S. where legal pigeon shoots were held.
“Neither a heavy thunderstorm nor the activities of an animal
rights group silenced the gunfire Saturday at the Strausstown Rod &
Gun Club’s weekend pigeon shoot,” wrote Steven Henshaw of the
Reading Eagle back in August 2008, when representatives of the
Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society of Berks County spent
eight hours trying to document prosecutable cruelty at a shoot.

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Rodeo without mayhem?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2009:
DENVER–If rodeo doesn’t kill, injure,
and torture animals, will people still pay to
watch it?
With rodeo attendance, TV audiences,
and sponsorship in freefall, and activist
opposition to violent events intensifying, major
rodeos throughout the west are making gestures
toward trying to reduce the mayhem.
For example, “New policies in place at
the 2009 National Western Rodeo will focus on
much restricted use of electric prods and
stronger fines for jerk downs in the tie down
roping,” announced National Western Stock Show
president Patrick A. Grant on the eve of the
stock show, held from January 7 to January 25,
2009.
The Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and
Greeley Stampede announced similar policy changes
earlier. The Chicago-based animal rights group
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) has
repeatedly videotaped electroshocking and jerk
downs in roping competition at all three events
in recent years.

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SHARK wins a round in court re use rodeo videos

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:
CHEYENNE–U.S. District Judge William Downes on July 29, 2008
dismissed a lawsuit filed by Romeo Entertainment Group Inc. against
Show-ing Animals Respect & Kindness, better known as SHARK.
The case alleged that SHARK used “false and misleading
information” and “threats of negative publicity” to influence singer
Carrie Underwood and the band Matchbox 20 to cancel shows at the
Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo in 2006 and 2008.
Downes ruled that while the case could not be pursued in
Wyoming, due to lack of jurisdiction, it could be refiled in either
Illinois or Oklahoma. Romeo Entertainment attorney J. Kent Rutledge
told Associated Press writer Bob Moen that either the ruling would be
appealed or the case would be refiled in another state.

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