Category: Europe

Feral exterminations

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Scottish Natural Heritage, trying to extirpate feral
hedgehogs from the Uist Islands off the west coast of Scotland since
2003, announced in March 2005 that it would augment trapping and
killing them by lethal injection and gas with training dogs to flush
them out to be shotgunned. Scottish Natural Heritage had killed
about 500 hedgehogs, going into the fall 2005 campaign, while Uist
Hedgehog Rescue has live-captured and relocated to the mainland circa
600. Scottish Nature Heritage withdrew the dogs-and-shotguns scheme
on September 20. “These healthy animals simply do not need to be
killed,” responded Uist Hedgehog Rescue. “Hedgehogs on the mainland
are actually in decline.”

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Panic drives avian flu response– dogs blamed, but never had disease

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

BUCHAREST, ISTANBUL– Fears that the H5N1 avian flu virus
had spread to Romania “may be wrong,” the London Daily Mail reported
on October 10.
A suspected outbreak in Turkey was likewise unconfirmed.
Amid rising public panic, the veterinary authorities of both
Turkey and Romania nonetheless ordered the immediate slaughter of
tens of thousands of domestic fowl to keep the presumed outbreak from
spreading.
“In western Turkey, military police set up roadblocks at the
entrance to a village near Balikesir,” reported C. Onur Ant of
Associated Press. “A two-mile radius was quarantined as
veterinarians and other officials began destroying poultry at two
turkey farms. Other fowl–including pigeons–and stray dogs in the
village would also be killed as a precaution, said Nihat Pakdil,
undersecretary of Turkey’s Agriculture Ministry.”
Pakdil did not explain why dogs would be targeted, since
there is no record of dogs ever contracting or carrying H5N1, but a
new national humane law making neuter/return rather than killing dogs
the official prescribed method of animal control has been widely
defied on the pretext of disease control. The most recent of many
dog massacres reported since the new law took effect in mid-2005 was
discovered in Aliaga, Izmir, on October 6, where 24 dead dogs were
found in a wooded public park.

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82% of caged broilers are burned by urine

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

LONDON–Examining the carcasses of 384 broiler hens raised
according to the British Farm Standard and offered for sale on
supermarket shelves, an investigation commissioned by the Royal SPCA
and directed by Cambridge University professor Donald Broom reported
in July 2005 that 82% had been burned on their legs or bodies by
prolonged contact with ammonia from feces.
“Lack of space and fast-growing bodies that can become too
heavy to be supported by their legs increases the likelihood of birds
receiving painful burns, as the birds spend more time in contact
with floor litter,” said RSPCA scientific officer Marc Cooper.
Among 25 organically raised free range chickens whose
carcasses were inspected, 42% had burns, the researchers found.
The RSPCA findings were released five weeks after the BBC
Programme Com-plaints Unit upheld a British Poultry Council complaint
that the BBC “Food Police Programme” showed bias against the poultry
industry in a 2004 expose of ammonia burns.
“The use of surreptitiously filmed material and reference to
Compassion In World Farming campaign efforts did not of themselves
give rise to bias” the Complaints Unit said, “but, together with
other features of the item, they implied criticisms of the
poultry-rearing industry which there should have been an opportunity
to address.

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British lab review findings

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

LONDON–A two-year review of British animal experiments by
the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, released on May 25, 2005,
concluded that proprietary concerns and anxiety about physical
security inhibit the exchange of findings which could reduce animal
use.
British labs used 2.8 million animals in 2004, up from recent
years, but half the numbers used in the 1970s, according to Home
Office figures.
The Nuffield Council criticized the Home Office for
insufficiently determining how many animals are killed, how many die
in care, and how much suffering they endure.
The Nuffield report was compiled by a panel of 18 animal
advocates, ethicists, and scientists from both academia and private
industry. It followed a 2002 House of Lords select committee report
and a 2003 report by the Animal Procedures Committee, an advisory
body created by the Scientific Procedures Act of 1986.

France, Scotland, Canada weigh new legislation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

French Justice Minister Domin-ique Perben in early May 2005
recommended that the national civil code, drafted by Napoleon
Bonaparte in 1804, be updated to recognize animals as “living and
sentient beings,” Agence France-Presse reported. Animals have long
been protected from abuse under the French criminal code, but only
by extension of their property status.
The Scottish Executive on May 16 introduced a bill to
prohibit awarding live animals as prizes, and to raise the minimum
age for buying a pet from 12 to 16. “The bill also contains
provisions to help protect against diseases such as hoof-and-mouth,”
and “incorporates tough measures to combat animal cruelty,” wrote
Alan McEwen of The Scotsman.
Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler in mid-May introduced
the fifth attempt, by a series of governments, to update the
federal anti-cruelty code. The new draft bill reportedly includes
broad exemptions for traditional hunting and fishing practices,
including seal-clubbing.

Demolition, eviction, & good deeds that save animal shelters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

DELHI, CANCUN, BUCHAR-EST, MONROE
(Ct.)–Two kinds of good deeds are the life and
death of animal shelters: good deeds for animals,
and good title deeds to the land they occupy.
Rescuers who try to do good deeds without
good title deeds may find their hopes and dreams
crashing down around them, as Friendicoes SECA
shelter manager Geeta Seshamani of Delhi, India
did on March 16, 2005.
Acclaimed worldwide for tsunami relief
work in Tamil Nadu state and the Andaman Islands,
Friendicoes SECA “just had a large chunk of its
shelter ripped down by a demolition squad,”
Seshamani e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
In addition to her regular workload,
Seshamani for the first six weeks of 2005
supervised operations at the Wildlife SOS
sanctuary for rescued dancing bears near Agra,
while Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satnarayan
directed the three Wildlife SOS/Friendicoes SECA
tsunami relief teams. The field work left both
institutions shorthanded.

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Norwegian effort to push “trophy sealing” flops

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

OSLO–The Norwegian government opened the
2005 Norwegian sealing season to foreigners,
anticipating a trophy hunting bonanza, but “Only
17-18 foreign hunters signed on,” reported
Aftenposten on March 14, while protests against
the hunt were held outside 22 Norwegian embassies.
Pitching the hunt to tourists was not
popular with Norwegian tour promoters.
“It is completely unnecessary to provoke
world opinion with something as marginal as
tourist seal hunts,” Destination Ålesund &
Sunnmøre head of travel Terje Devol told
Aftenposten.
“If the media focus remains on the seal
hunt, we will see it in our tourist statistics,”
Norwegian Hospitality Association director Knut
Almquist told the rival newspaper Dagsavisen.

Fox hunters vow to “keep buggering on”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

LONDON–A reported 300,000 people rode to hounds on February
20, a record number for one day of fox hunting in Britain, on the
first hunting date after traditional fox hunting was ostensibly
banned.
But the most publicized estimates of hunter numbers may have
been much too high. Twenty-four hours after Daniel Foggo, Karyn
Miller and Tony Freinberg of the pro-hunting Daily Telegraph put the
number of hunts in the field at 184, the most widely cited estimate
was 270. The discrepancy might have resulted from small hunting
clubs holding combined hunts, so as to boost the turnout.
The Scotsman political correspondent Jamie Lyons observed
“little discernible difference” between traditional hounding and
“flushing foxes out of a wood [with not more than two dogs] and
shooting them, before their scent is left as a trail for the
hounds,” as those who ride to hounds now must do in order to hunt
legally.
“The Countryside Alliance said 91 foxes were killed,” Lyons
continued, “most shot within the law. But there were four
‘accidents,’ and one stag was killed in the West Country,” Lyons
added.

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Animal advocates get Order of British Empire

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Wildlife veterinarian Bill Jordan is to receive the Order of
the British Empire on April 27, Buckingham Palace announced on
January 1. Jordan debuted in wildlife medicine as consulting vet for
the Chester Zoo, then extended his skills in Iran 1964-1970, and in
South Africa for three years after that.
Jordan went on to found the wildlife department at the Royal
SPCA, authored the wildlife care manual Care For The Wild (1982),
and in 1982 founded the international animal aid charity Care For The
Wild. Also author of an influential critique of zoos, The Last Great
Wild Beast Show (1990), Jordan was a founding member of the British
Zoological Veterinary Society, and a longtime director of the
Captive Animals Protection Society. Jordan left CAPS in 2000 and
left Care For The Wild in 2001, going on to found the Bill Jordan
Wildlife Defence Fund.
Jordan is at least the third prominent animal advocate to
receive Buckingham Palace recognition in recent years. Animals Asia
Foundation founder Jill Robinson received the Order of the British
Empire in 1998, while Dogs Trust chair Clarissa Baldwin received it
in 2003.

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