Category: Europe

ALF RAIDS KILL ANIMALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Animal Liberation Front actions
reportedly caused the deaths at least 3,000
animals in the first half of 1996, including
2,000 pregnant mink who were roadkilled
or starved about six months before they
would have been pelted, after 3,000 were
released from the L.W. Bennett & Sons fur
farm near East Bloomfield, New York, on
April 4. Late snow cut their already slim
chances of finding adequate wild prey.
According to the Memphis-based
Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, which
claims to speak for the ALF, “more than
11,000 animals have been freed during the
past 10 months,” but except for the New
York action, most––almost all mink––were
recaptured on or near the fur farms.

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ORGANIZATIONS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Overseas
Royal SPCA members on June 22 voted 432-2 according to the London
T i m e s and 459-2 according to the Daily Telegraph to require members to pledge
that they will not “participate in any activity which is considered by the society to
involve avoidable suffering to animals.” The requirement is subject to the approval
of the Charities Commission, however, which in May obliged the RSPCA to drop
a 19-year-old antivivisection policy on grounds that a charitable organization may
not oppose activities undertaken “for the good of man.” An estimated 3,000 members
of the 88,000-member British Field Sports Society recently joined the 28,000-
member RSPCA in an attempt to reverse the RSPCA position against hunting, but
were not yet eligible to vote. The Irish Masters of Foxhounds Association i s
attempting a similar hostile infiltration and takeover of the Irish SPCA, The Irish
Times reported on June 27. Already five local affiliates have amended their policies
to endorse fox hunting. The ISPCA hopes to thwart the effort by adopting a membership
requirement similar to that adopted by the RSPCA.

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Reptiles

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Herp traffic
The 72 Malagasy ploughshare tortoises
stolen from a captive breeding project at
the Amphijoroa Forest Park in Madagascar in
May have turned up “for sale in Prague,”
reports Allen Salzberg of the New York Turtle
and Tortoise Society. But due to corrupt
authorities, herpetologists “have little hope of
getting them or the people selling them,”
Salzberg adds. The Austrian Chelonical
Society warned in June that any members who
buy any of the stolen tortoises will be expelled.
German customs officials on July
8 announced the arrest of a 32-year-old man
caught at Augsburg with 328 tortoises
“stacked up like plates” in his luggage. The
man, who may get up to five years in prison,
reportedly “admitted selling around 3,000 rare
and protected tortoises since 1991,” either
caught or bought cheaply in Serbia.

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Makah don’t get quota: SEA SHEPHERDS FIND REPUBLICAN FRIENDS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – Striking
another surprise blow for whales, this time
through Congressional politics, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society on June 26
sunk Japanese and Norwegian hopes for
expanded legal whaling––at least for this year.
Eighteen years after Captain Paul
Watson established the Sea Shepherds’ reputation
as what he calls “good pirates” by ramming
the outlaw Portuguese whaler Sierra, 14
years after the International Whaling
Commission declared a global moratorium on
commercial whaling, the ban held at the 48th
annual meeting of the IWC, as under pressure
from the House Resources Committee the U.S.
delegation on June 26 withdrew an application
to allow members of the Makah tribe, of Neah
Bay, Washington, to kill five grey whales.

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Crimes against wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

June 12, 1996 was a day to
remember in the international fight against
wildlife traffickers:
• In Chicago, bird smuggler
Tony Silva, 36, was jailed pending sentencing,
after prosecutors Sergio Acosta a n d
Jay Tharp argued that he was likely to jump
bail. Silva, who ran a wild-caught bird
smuggling ring while posing as an outspoken
foe of the wild-caught bird traffic, in January
pleaded guilty to reduced charges of conspiracy
and tax evasion, but on May 17 sought
unsuccessfully to withdraw the plea, after
former Playboy Mansion animal keeper
Theodora Swanson, 36, in April drew a
lighter sentence for conviction on contested
charges than her confederates got after copping
pleas.

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The faithful do sheep

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Traditional celebrations of the Islamic version of the
Feast of Sacrifice were held in more U.S. and European communities
than ever before this year––and apparently provoked
more protest, too.
More as a matter of custom than of religious teaching,
the feast is marked by male heads of households slashing
the throats of sheep, reprising Abraham’s slaughter of a ram
instead of his son Isaac, who is said to have been sire of both
the Hebrew and Arab people. Extra meat is supposed to be
given to the poor, but so many sheep are killed at pilgrimage
sites that most of the meat reportedly goes to waste.
In France, Islamic leaders called Brigitte Bardot
“racist” for her annual criticism of the practice. Responded
Bardot, “If tomorrow Muslims stop slitting sheeps’ throats, I
will find them the most wonderful people in the world.”

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Thirty British species near extinction

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

LONDON––The South West
Regional Biodiversity Audit, the first
attempt to monitor the status of wildlife over
an entire region of England, reports after
four years of research that at least 30 species
are near extinction and as many as 7,000 are
“of conservation concern.”
At most risk, the audit found, are
the white-clawed crayfish, the harbor porpoise,
aquatic warblers, and southern damselflies,
followed by river otters and large
blue butterflies. Both have been subject of
recent reintroductions, the large blue butterflies
after having once been believed to be
extinct. The most controversial recommended
protection measures may involve
closing five Devon river basins to crayfish
farming, to protect the white-clawed crayfish
from introduced competitors.

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BSE link to humans

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

PARIS––French government neurologists
Corinne Lasmezas and Jean-Philippe
Deslys on June 13 announced they had discovered
the first experimental evidence of a
link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), also known as Mad Cow Disease,
and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a similar
brain-destroying ailment that until recently
was considered a rare condition of age. Ten
cases of a new form of BSE occurring in
younger people caused researchers to warn
the European Union and British Parliament in
March that BSE might be the cause of CJD,
touching off a global boycott of British beef.
The French team in 1991 injected
material from the crushed brains of cattle who
died from BSE into the brains of two adult
macaques and a newborn macaque, all of
whom developed identical brain lesions in
1994 and later died.

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Contrary rulings

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Enforcing a 1993 European
Union demand for improved operating
conditions, the Irish Department
of Agriculture on May 13 cancelled
the operating permit of Western
Meat Producers, of Dromad,
Ireland. However, in a parallel case
involving other nations, the
European Court of Justice ruled on
May 23 that Britain may not unilaterally
enforce EU animal welfare
standards. Britain had barred shipments
of sheep to a Spanish slaughterhouse
which does not stun animals
before slaughter.

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