SPECTACLES

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Bill Petersen, county commission

chair in Glades County, Florida, is leading

an effort to ban “hog dog rodeos,” in which

dogs are set upon semi-feral pigs in enclosed

arenas. The winner is the owner whose dog

brings down a pig the fastest. Held in Glades,

Highlands, and Hardee counties, “hog dog

rodeos” are popular with hunters, says pro-

moter Roger Vickery.

The World Society for the

Protection of Animals seeks letters protest-

ing the Jaripeo rodeo, held each February 23

in San Matias, El Salvador, in which a clown

bites a calf’s tongue and pulls it back as far as

he can stretch it. Address Lic. Carlos

Hilermann, Presidente, Inst. Salvadoreno de

Turismo, Calle Ruben Dario 619, San

Salvador, El Salvador.

Diet & Health

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The Council for Agricultural

Science and Technology reported March 21

that advances in farming methods and the

growing popularity of vegetarianism could

mean a 30% decrease in the amount of land

used for food crops during the next 50 years

even as the global human population doubles.

The 64-page CAST study, commissioned by

the Program for the Human Environment at

Rockefeller University, was authored by

Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station

agronomist Paul Waggoner, who explained

that the calories and protein produced on pre-

sent cropland are already sufficient to feed 10

billion vegetarians, rather than the five to six

billion people who now eat a diet including

varying amounts of meat.

AGRICULTURE

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The General Agreement on Trade

and Tariffs will increase the amount of pork

the U.S. can export to Europe to 624,000 met-

ric tons by 1999, six times the 1991 volume.

Drawn by relatively weak U.S. pollution

laws, European hog producers are rushing to

set up U.S. branches, including the Pig

Improvement Co., of Great Britain, the

world’s largest hog breeder, which hopes to

raise 100,000 hogs per year at a site near

Hennessy, Oklahoma. The facility will gen-

erate as much sewage as a town of 170,000

people. A Danish firm is reportedly planning

an even bigger operation: a 600,000-hog con-

finement farm to be sited in Alaska, where

there are virtually no laws pertaining to farm-

related pollution because farming ventures

there have historically failed.

ZOO NOTES

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Willie B., a silverback gorilla

kept in isolation at the Atlanta Zoo from his

capture in the wild in 1962 until 1988,

became a father on February 9, at the age of

35. The mother of the newborn is Choomba,

age 30, making the couple the oldest to breed

successfully in captivity. The zoo built bigger

gorilla quarters in 1988 to house a 17-member

colony borrowed from the Yerkes Primate

Research Center, also in Atlanta. Hoping to

add Willie B.’s genes to the limited captive

breeding pool, the zoo initially paired him

with much younger females, in the belief they

would heighten his sexual appetite, but he

failed to impregnate any of them, and was

suspected of sterility. He and Choomba were

paired only after they signaled their interest in

each other from separate cages for months.

Endangered ocean species

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Russian whaling commissioner

Alexei Yablokov on February 21 confirmed

that Soviet whalers for decades killed far

more whales than they reported to the

International Whaling Commission. For

instance, he said, in the 1960s one ship reported

killing 152 humpbacked whales and 156 blue

whales, but actually killed 7,207 humpbacks,

1,433 blue whales, and 717 right whales, a

species protected by the IWC since 1946.

Another ship killed 1,568 humpbacks and 1,200

right whales during the winter of 1961-1962,

but reported none of the right whales while the

USSR said its entire fleet killed only 270 hump-

backs all year. Two years later the same ship

killed 530 blue whales; the USSR said the fleet

total was just 74. The revelations mean IWC

estimates of whale numbers may be far too high.

Sealing and child sex trade

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

TORONTO, Ontario––The International Fund for Animal Welfare drew

headlines across Canada on March 7 with graphic newspaper ads depicting the penis

bone of a seal and decrying Canadian support of the slaughter of at least 50,000 seals

off the Atlantic coast, allegedly to supply penis bones to the Asian aphrodisiac trade.

As IFAW pointed out, that trade is closely associated with the forced recruitment of

children to staff brothels in Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan, and elsewhere, which

cater to the belief that sex with a virgin can rejuvenate an aging man’s potency. More

than 400,000 children are currently victimized, The New York Times Magazine of

January 16 reported, many of whom contract AIDS and other serious diseases.

As many as 150,000 seals may be killed to get 50,000 penis bones, since

much of the hunting is done from small boats by men with rifles, the sexes of seals are

not obvious, and as even seal hunt defender George Wenzel has acknowledged, as

many as two out of each three shot seals who get off of ice floes into water sink before

they can be gaffed aboard a power boat. Canada contends that the penis bones are a

byproduct of hunting for meat, pelts, and seal oil, which sell for about $20 per seal;

the penis bones go for $130 apiece.

McDonald’s agrees to adopt humane code: PRECEDENT RAISES CARE STANDARDS FOR INDUSTRY

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

OAK BROOK, Illinois––McDonald’s, the world’s biggest beef purchaser,

pledged February 16 to issue a statement of humane principles to all the meat and poultry

slaughterhouses that supply the 14,000 U.S. McDonald’s restaurants, with a request that it be

forwarded to all the farmers who supply them. An abbreviated edition of the statement is also

to appear in the 1993 McDonald’s annual report to shareholders.

McDonald’s general counsel and senior vice president Shelby Yastrow agreed to

ratify and distribute the statement in exchange for the withdrawal of a stronger and more spe-

cific statement advanced as a shareholder resolution by Henry Spira of Animal Rights

International and Nanette Coco of the Franklin Research and Development Corporation, rep-

Horses

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Wild Horse Annie (right), the first

wild horse to be protected by the Bureau of

Land Management, died on January 27 at the

International Society for the Protection of

Mustangs and Burros sactuary near Scottsdale,

Arizona. Named after Velma “Wild Horse

Annie” Johnston, the Nevada secretary who

worked for more than 20 years to secure feder-

al wild horse protection (and inspired the last

film of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, The

Misfits), the horse was tattooed U.S. #1 after

she was rescued as a starving foal on

September 4, 1970, in the Pryor Mountains

––a year before the Free Ranging Wild Horses

and Burros Act took effect.

Fur

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Canadian environment minister Sheila Copps,

whose gracelessness earned her the nickname “Leader of

the rat pack” during her years as a Parliamentary back-

bencher, disrupted a meeting of top environmental offi-

cials from the seven major Western industrialized nations

on March 12 by denouncing the European Community ban

on seal pelt imports, the pending EC ban on imports of

pelts trapped by cruel methods, and opposition to the cur-

rent Canadian seal hunt. Copps claimed an alleged popula-

tion explosion of seals is causing the collapse of the

Atlantic Canada fishing industry, despite strong biological

evidence that seals do not eat many fish of the most com-

mercially valued species.

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