Category: Editorials

E.U. fails to cut livestock hauling time

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

BRUSSELS–British animal health and welfare minister Ben
Bradshaw called new European Union regulations on livestock transport
adopted on November 22 “an important step in improving the welfare of
animals in transit,” and proclaimed his government “particularly
pleased that [new rules] meet the strong concerns in the U.K. about
the live transport of horses.”
Slamming Bradshaw and the other members of the EU Council of
Agriculture Ministers for “cowardice,” Compassion In World Farming
responded that the new rules do no such thing.
Summarized Geoff Meade of The Scotsman, “Animal welfare
improvements include limited travel for ‘unbroken’ horses and a new
requirement that horses on long journeys must be carried in
individual stalls. A range of other measures, for all animals,
include improved training and certification of transporters, tighter
rules on the fitness of animals to travel, a review next year of
current rules on transporter temperature and ventilation, and
increased cooperation between EU governments to enforce the rules.”
However, Meade noted, “The permitted traveling hours remain
unchanged. Pigs can be transported for 24 hours without a break,
with access to water; horses can travel up to 24 hours if watered
every eight hours; and cattle, sheep, and goats can be in transit
for 29 hours with just a one-hour break.”

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Editorial feature: Fundraisers and pro-animal strategy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Editorial feature: Fundraisers and pro-animal strategy

Before responding to any of the
fundraising appeals you receive from animal
charities this holiday season, take several
steps to ensure that your donations do the most
they can:

1) Prioritize the issues and projects you wish to support.
2) Avoid splitting your donation budget
so many ways that all you do is give the
organizations back the money they spent during
the year to solicit you. Focus on the few
charities you know best and for which you have
the highest regard.
3) Do not donate to any charity you only know from mailings.
4) Look up each charity in the 2004
ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on 121 Animal
Protection Charities, to be sure that you are
fully informed about policies that it may have
but not advertise. For example, none of the
major environmental groups oppose hunting, and
many actively promote it. PETA actively opposes
no-kill sheltering and neuter/return of feral
cats and street dogs. Many other groups may not
take the positions that you expect. [The
Watchdog Report, a handbook published each
spring, is still available from us at $25/copy.
We include all of the biggest animal and habitat
charities, all of those we are often asked
about, selected leaders in specialized areas of
particular concern, and worthwhile foreign
charities whose programs ANIMAL PEOPLE
representatives have personally verified.]

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Editorial feature: Humane work is a collateral casualty of the “War on Terror”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

ANIMAL PEOPLE in a September 2004 cover feature extensively
examined the personal and political history concerning animals of
U.S. President George Bush and his November 2 election opponent,
Democratic nominee John Kerry.
Both Bush and Kerry strive to present an animal-friendly
image at the same time they tout being hunters.
Kerry, however, has reinforced the animal-friendly image
and earned the endorsement of the Humane USA political action
committee with a distinguished legislative record on behalf of
animals.
Bush has administratively attacked endangered and threatened
species habitat protection throughout his tenure in public office.
Bush has signed only one pro-animal bill of note, the Captive
Wildlife Protection Act of 2003, which was introduced and sponsored
in Congress by prominent Republicans. Previously, as Texas
governor, Bush vetoed a similar bill.
The Bush record has not improved. On September 21, 2004
assistant Interior secretary Craig Manson, a Bush appointee,
recommended a 90% cut in the designated critical habitat for bull
trout, a threatened species. Eight days later the Bush
administration issued a “temporary rule” allowing the U.S. Forest
Service to ignore a 1982 mandate to maintain “viable populations” of
fish and wildlife. Instead, the Forest Service is to base forest
plans on “the best available science.”

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Editorial feature: The Fund, HSUS, & merging packs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

Rumors that the Fund for Animals and the
Humane Society of the U.S. are holding merger
talks reached ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 26.
Confirmation came a few days later.
In the interim, on July 30, five closely
spaced shotgun blasts followed by frantic yelping
disturbed the woods about half a mile from our
remote rural office. Someone apparently dumped
two black Labrador retriever mixes, a mother and
nearly grown son, and fired the shots to keep
the dogs from following his truck.
Ignoring rabbits who boldly ran right in
front of them, the dogs survived by scavenging
for several days before stumbling upon the
feeding station we set up for them.
For almost a month, we fed and watered
them at the same spot–waiting more than a week
for box traps to arrive, and then waiting for
the dogs to get used to the traps enough to begin
eating inside them. Finally the dogs were
caught, first the mother and then the pup.
Now comes the even more difficult process
of integrating the two new dogs into our pack of
three older dogs.

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Editorial: Treating people like animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

A photograph of U.S. Army Private First Class Lynndie
England, 21, dragging a naked Iraqi military prisoner on a dog
leash emerged early during the investigation of abuses to prisoners
by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The photo, part
of a sequence featuring England mistreating naked Iraqi men, could
scarcely have been more illustrative of how the standard treatment of
dogs in a society tends to set the floor for the treatment of humans.
While the standard for the treatment of dogs in the U.S. is
still low, it does exist. The legal definitions of abuse in many
states remain weak, and the definitions of neglect are often weaker,
but the federal Animal Welfare Act and the anti-cruelty laws of all
50 states specifically set some limits on what may be done to a dog.
For the most part, the U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib who have
been disciplined for mistreating prisoners were accused of doing
things that they could have done to dogs with impunity. Only seven
guards who allegedly went beyond what could be done to dogs were
criminally charged during the preliminary investigation.
Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek of the U.S. Army Office of
the Inspector General on July 23 disclosed 94 additional cases of
abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 39 deaths of
which 20 were homicides. Criminal charges are anticipated in
connection with these cases.

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How Muslims can wage jihad against “Islamic” cruelty

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

How Muslims can wage jihad against “Islamic” cruelty
by Kristen Stilt

The stories have become sadly familiar: a Society for the
Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt volunteer encounters a young boy
on a Cairo street throwing stones at a dog. She restrains the boy
and asks him: “Why are you harming this dog, who is one of God’s
creatures?”
The boy replies: “Because the Imam in the mosque said that
dogs are impure.”
Or SPARE president Amina Abaza sees a group of children
trying to drown a puppy in a canal on the outskirts of Cairo. She
rushes to the edge of the canal and seizes the animal, telling the
offenders that God will punish them for committing a wrong. “We are
doing no wrong,” they reply, “because we heard in the mosque that
dogs are dirty.”
In Egypt such incidents and comments are both common and
tragic. Because of mistaken understandings of Islamic teachings,
some Muslims in Egypt-and beyond-commit cruelty in the name of their
religion. Arguments that call upon religion, even incorrectly, can
only be defeated with proper religious citations. A careful look at
the Islamic texts clearly shows that the behavior of these children
and many others acting like them is completely wrong. But
reprimanding the children by telling them that their actions are
unkind, cruel, or unjust does not counter the underlying motivation
for their behavior.

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Editorial: The Prime Directive for handling feral cats & street dogs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Puppy-and-kitten season has again arrived, and again we are
hearing familiar cries of dismay.
From communities lacking TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return) programs to control
the reproduction of street dogs and feral cats, we are hearing of
overcrowded shelters and exhausted, demoralized animal control
staff, to whom it is no comfort that shelter killing rates have
plummeted over the past several decades when they themselves, right
this minute, may feel obliged to kill an animal for whom there is no
adoptive home and no cage space.
From communities that do have TNR, we are hearing far too often of
increasingly militant organized resistance.
An election campaign underway in India, for instance, has
encouraged demagogues in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Sringar, and
Cochin to blame street dogs for disease and filth, and to pledge
that if elected, they shall hire the unemployed to purge the dogs.
Many of the dogs who might be killed are sterilized and vaccinated,
and all of them are vital parts of the front line of Indian national
defense against the consequences of poor sanitation.
Similar political ploys recently victimized street dogs in several
parts of central and eastern Europe, including Athens, site of the
2004 Olympic Games.

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Why You Should Vote in November

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Why You Should Vote in November
by Julie E. Lewin
President, National Institute for Animal Advocacy
President and Lobbyist, Animal Advocacy Connecticut

How painful the presidential campaign is! Again our noses
are publicly rubbed in our political irrelevance. John Kerry, now
the Democratic nominee, found time in his frantic primary campaign
schedule to “hunt,” for all of five minutes, posturing to win votes
from hunters.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief Supreme Court Justice
Antony Scalia soon afterward participated in a bird-killing spree.
News media questioned not their thrill-killing, but rather the
impropriety of such ex parte contact between a judge and a litigant
in a pending case.
As in other election years, some animal advocates angrily
contemplate sitting out the presidential election as a mute form of
protest. That would be self-indulgent. Of course we should vote.

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Editorial: Factory farming toll rises in Asia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

“We are preparing to campaign against burying birds with
influenza alive,” Voice-4-Animals founder Changkil Park e-mailed
from Seoul, South Korea, as the winter avian flu pandemic peaked,
and frantic officials and poultry workers struggled to contain it by
killing all the birds believed to be at risk. “I hope animal people
will have some ideas for us about how animal advocates should view
the massive inhumane treatment of birds,” Changkil Park added,
seeming to speak for thousands whose feelings ranged from shock to
despair.
Finding any good in the often unspeakably cruel culling of
more than 100 million chickens and other birds is admittedly
difficult.
The World Bank has pledged to finance rebuilding the
Southeast Asian poultry industry, moreover, which will probably
mean even more intensive promotion of factory farm methods in the
very near future. If Southeast Asian egg producers adopt the routine
live maceration or burial of “spent” hens that has become standard in
U.S. agribusiness, described elsewhere in this edition, the World
Bank involvement may help to institutionalize some of the cruelty
that is now horrifying television news viewers throughout the world.

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