How EU pays “full regard to the welfare requirements of animals”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

LONDON, BRUSSELS––A year after the 15
European Union member nations on June 18, 1997 signed a
binding protocol requiring them to recognize animals as “sentient
beings,” and to “pay full regard to the welfare requirements
of animals,” the practical value of it remains unclear.
No aspect of the protocol has been backed, as yet,
by tough new international animal care and handling standards.
But neither has the protocol been shoved into a file
drawer and forgotten. Diplomats are dickering daily over a proposed
phase-out of battery caging for laying hens. Negotiations
also continue over livestock transportation requirements.
The outcome on each topic may be much less than
animal advocates seek, and perhaps even expect.

Read more

Abroad

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

A long dispute over custody of the
Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society sanctuary in the
Nilgiri Hills region of southern India has reportedly
been settled out of court. Local trustees kept control
of the 52-acre NAWS property, three bulls, three
ponies, and a cow, Deanna Krantz of the New Yorkbased
umbrella organization Global Communications
for Conservation told friends. Krantz, who
tried to assume management of NAWS in 1996-1997,
said she had taken a number of dogs and donkeys to a
new sanctuary in the same area, set up on a farm
owned by her project manager. Krantz returned to
the U.S. in March, but said she would go back to
India “soon.” Refusing to answer direct questions

Read more

Talking to our ancestors

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., WOODSIDE,
Calif.––Eight thousand America
OnLine members on April 28 flooded Koko
the “talking” gorilla with more than 13,000
questions, in the first-ever public interview
of an animal of another species.
Actually “speaking” through a special
computer with a symbolic keyboard,
Koko answered about a dozen inquiries in 45
minutes. Monitored by reporters, who
packed the kitchen of the Gorilla Foundation
headquarters in Woodside, California,
Koko’s longtime teacher/translator Penny
Patterson converted typed text into sign language,
then summarized Koko’s responses
and e-mailed them out.
Koko talked about apple juice, her
favorite foods, her pet cats, her dreams, and
her personal aspirations. Nobody asked how
she’d like to become “bush meat,” the
African euphemism for poached primate.

Read more

Abroad

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

In Germany, “animals kept in shelters are
never killed as a result of pet overpopulation,” federal
animal shelter overseer Jorg Styrie recently
wrote to Diana Nolen, president of the STOP antipet-overpopulation
project in Mansfield, Ohio.
According to Styrie, unless an animal “is incurably ill
and suffers pain, it is forbidden to put animals to
sleep.” Adoption, surrender, vaccination, and neutering
fees at German shelters are all comparable to
those in the U.S., but pet abandonment brings a fine
of about $1,500, Styrie told Nolen.

Read more

British rural leaders of (criminal) conviction

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

George Lyon, 41, of Kildavannan
Farm, Rothesay, Isle of Bute, newly
elected president of the National Farmers’
Union of Scotland, was fined £250 on
March 30 for allowing seven ewes to be
transported while sick and unfit, and £150
more for allowing a ewe with a damaged
knee joint to suffer pain and distress.
David Watkiss, 58, owner of the
unincorporated Rare Breed Animal
Conservation Trust in Prestwood, Buckinghamshire,
was jailed for three months
and banned from keeping animals for life on
March 26, after conviction on 36 counts of
cruelty for starving a herd of pigs. Watkiss’
business partners, Jeremy Smith a n d
James Cozens were fined £1,200 and
£1,450, respectively, for allowing the suffering
to continue.

FATHERS AND SONS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

CHICAGO––Part of the basis for
suspecting U.S. gun lobby involvement in
orchestrating the massive Countryside March
was the American background of march organizer
Eric Bettelheim, 46, whose Countryside
Business Group and the Countryside
Movement Ltd., formed by Lord Steel of
Aikwood, joined the British Field Sports
Society to create the Countryside Alliance.
Born in Chicago, raised in nearby
Hyde Park, Bettelheim took his first degree
at the University of Rochester, attended law
school at Oxford during the Vietnam War
years, earned a second law degree at the
University of Chicago in 1976, practiced law
in San Francisco for three years, and has
practiced in London ever since.

Read more

International briefs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

McDonald’s restaurants, stung by
the 1997 High Court “McLibel trail” verdict
that the chain is “culpably resonsible” for cruelty
to factory-farmed animals, reportedly
held talks with the Royal SPCA in London
during February about the possibility of winning
the endorsement of the RSPCA’s
“Freedom Food” campaign. Previous talks
along similar lines, held in 1994, apparently
brought no agreement. Now, however, vegetarian
opposition to a deal may be muted by a
warning from the RSPCA counsel that the
organization may jeopardize its charitable status
if it actively promotes a meatless diet.

Read more

Body Shop skeletons rattle

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

LONDON––London Greenpeace,
whose pamphleteers David Morris and Helen
Steel were vindicated in 1997 after an eightyear
battle with McDonald’s restaurants when
a British court found McDonald’s “culpably
responsible” for animal abuse by patronizing
factory farms, on February 27 attacked a new
target: The Body Shop cosmetics empire,
already fighting lawsuits from franchisees and
suppliers alleging fraud in Brazil, Canada,
France, Spain, Great Britain, and the U.S.
“The Body Shop has manufactured
an image of being a caring company that is
helping to protect the environment and indigenous
peoples, and preventing the suffering of
animals,” London Greenpeace said. “They do
not help the plight of animals or indigenous
peoples, and their products are far from what
they’re cracked up to be.”

Read more

Hunters on the march––but is it a bluff?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

LONDON, U.K.––The Countryside Alliance,
mobilized by the British Field Sports Society,
claimed 284,500 fox hunting supporters marched past
750 volunteer stewards who counted them by ranks at
the start of the March 2 Countryside March.
The departures alone took five hours.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare,
relying on Napier University scientists who used electronic
recorders, put the crowd count at less than half as
many: 142,000. Scotland Yard guesstimated 250,000,
still more than the estimated 215,000 British fox hunting
participants, and more than two-thirds of the total
BFSS membership––though not all attendees claimed to
be either fox hunters or BFSS members.
Representatives of about 60 Irish hunting
clubs weren’t even British citizens, but demonstrated
solidarity in support of recreational bloodbath anyway.

Read more

1 38 39 40 41 42 69