Category: Europe

Norwegian buyer declares whaling moratorium after IWC ban holds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

OSLO, ST. KITTS, TOKYO– The Norwegian fish wholesaling
firm Norges Rafisklag on July 7, 2006 asked whalers to stop killing
whales because there is insufficient market for whale meat to warrant
more whaling this year.
“We don’t have buyers for more whales than those already
shot. Therefore we are sending out a message to halt the hunt,”
Norges Rafisklag spokesperson Hermod Larsen told NRK, the Norwegian
national broadcasting company.
Larsen is the Norges Rafisklag regional director for Lofoten,
the hub of the Norwegian whaling industry. Norges Rafisklag is the
only major buyer of whale carcasses.
“It’s not possible now, for those who don’t have their own
[storage] facilities, to shoot more whales for the time being,”
Larsen added.

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Poll shows loss on testing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

LONDON–“The proportion of people approving of animal testing
in medical research is at an all-time high. More than three quarters
believe that the more extreme elements among animal rights activists
deserve to be called terrorists,” wrote Anthony King of The Daily
Telegraph on May 29, 2006.
Agreed Daily Telegraph home affairs editor Philip Johnston,
“Campaigns such as intimidating scientists and threatening
shareholders in pharmaceutical companies appear to have backfired
badly.”
King and Johnston based their analysis on a May 2006 YouGov
poll of 2,102 British adults, sponsored by The Daily Telegraph.

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Turkish serum lab is caught killing horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

ANKARA–Undercover video aired in Turkey and parts of Europe
in March 2006, posted by PETA in April, showed workers at the
government-run Refik Saydam Hygiene Center in Ankara slashing the
throats of terrified horses and slowly bleeding them to death to take
blood for use in serum products.
A spokesperson for Refik Saydam told ANIMAL PEOPLE on June 6,
2006 that the video was made in 2005, and that as of October 29,
2005 the company had switched to drawing horse blood just as blood is
drawn from humans. Several litres of blood may be taken from each
horse.
The spokesperson said that the nine horses from whom blood
was drawn on October 29, 2005 are still at the center, “in natural
and proper life conditions, with regular care and feeding.” If the
horses are properly looked after, they can give blood weekly for
decades.

Canned hunts for rare imported “trophy” species are booming in Spain

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Only U.S. hunters visit South Africa more
than Spaniards, who make up about 8.5% of the
South Africa hunting traffic–and Spanish hunting
ranch proprietors are trying to keep them home,
even if it requires stocking rare species in
violation of the law.
“In January 2006, 12 Indian blackbuck
antelope were confiscated from a farm near
Cáceres, Extremadura,” recently wrote Sunday
Telegraph correspondent David Harrison. “Guardia
Civil officers said they had found evidence that
exotic beasts had been hunted illegally on at
least six reserves. During the first half of
last year the Guardia Civil game protection unit
confiscated 678 illegally imported live animals
across Spain.”

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St. Petersburg G8 Summit meet brings war against street dogs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

ST. PETERSBURG–Tight security
precautions for the G8 Summit to be held in St.
Petersburg, Russia, July 15-17, include
“exterminating street animals with utmost
cruelty,” Baltic Care of Animals members Elena
Bobrova, Marina Ermakova, Svetlana Los, and
Tatiana Goritcheva alleged in a June 2 joint
statement relayed to western media by North Kent
Animal Welfare founder Mark Johnson, of Britain.
The BCA members’ joint statement echoed
and amplified exposés by St. Petersburg
journalists Yelena Andreyeva and Galina
Stolyarova, published on December 2, 2005 by
the St. Petersburg Times and on May 5, 2006 by
PetersburgCity.

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Risk of cats giving H5N1 to humans is small, says Euro Centre for Disease Prevention & Control

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

ROTTERDAM, STOCKHOLM, LONDON– “Cats could fuel bird flu
pandemic,” headlined the April 5 edition of The Times of London,
sparking similar headlines worldwide–but the risk is small,
responded the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in
Stockholm, Sweden, after reviewing the evidence.
“A distinction needs to be made,” reminded the European
Centre, “between species which can occasionally be infected by a
particular influenza, but who rarely transmit it,” such as cats,
“and those species in which it seems that the viruses are better
adapted and transmitted,” such as birds.
Cats were first known to be vulnerable to H5N1, the European
Centre response continued, in December 2003, “when a few leopards
and tigers died in a zoo in Thailand after being fed infected
poultry.” Later came “a much larger H5N1 outbreak in zoo tigers,
also in Thailand, who had been fed chicken carcasses. Over 140
tigers died or were euthanised. There was convincing evidence of
tiger to tiger transmission.

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“Sylvester & Tweety” go global

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Robben Island Museum, responsible for managing Robben
Island, South Africa, is again trying to eradicate feral cats.
Sharpshooters killed cats on the island in 1999 and 2005, when 58
cats were shot, but as many as 70 cats remain, environmental
coordinator Shaun Davis recently told Cape Argus reporter John Yeld.
The shooting was suspended for a time to allow animal advocacy groups
including Beauty Without Cruelty/South Africa to trap the surviving
cats and take them to mainland sanctuaries. BWC/ South Africa
spokesperson Beryl Scott told Yeld that the initial effort was “not
that successful,” partly through lack of official cooperation, but
on April 24 Davis announced that the number of traps set for cats
would be expanded from 10 to 50, and that no cats would be shot
before June. The cats are blamed by University of Cape Town avian
demographer Les Underhill for killing all but three of the fledgling
population of about 60 endangered African black oystercatchers during
the past breeding season. Allan Perrins, chief executive officer of
Cape of Good Hope branch of the South African National SPCA,
suggested that the actual culprits might have been some of the feral
rabbits on the island, who might have turned carnivorous and become
nest predators. Seals are also blamed by some observers. Seals have
been kept from re-establishing haulouts on Robben Island in recent
years to protect seabird colonies, but on April 21, 2006 “Both
Robben Island and the department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
agreed to allow the return of Cape fur seals,” e-mailed Seal
Alert/South Africa founder Francois Hugo. Robben Island, designated
a World Heritage site by the United Nations Environmental Program,
provides habitat to 132 bird species in all.

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Spain may introduce law to protect great apes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

MADRID–The Socialist Workers Party of Spain, leading the
ruling parliamentary coalition since 2004, on April 24 announced
that it intends to introduce legislation to protect great apes.
Responding to news stories that linked the proposal to the
Great Ape Project goal of extending human rights to great apes,
Pamplona archbishop Fernando Sebastian reportedly called it
“ridiculous,” while Amnesty International representative Delia Padron
told the Indo-Asian News Service that she was “Surprised” that apes’
rights might be protected when some basic human rights still are not.
“We are not talking about granting human rights to great
apes, but about protecting their habitat, avoiding ill-treatment
and preventing their use in circuses,” clarified environment minister
Cristina Narbona.

Ukraine gets humane law at last

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

“In Ukraine a law on animal protection was passed,” Ellen
Slusarchik of the Kharkov organization CETA-Life e-mailed to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on March 27, 2006. CETA-Life had long promoted the bill.
Slusarchik did not mention what was included in the final draft of
the law, which had gone through many revisions.

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