Chicken king banned––again

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

OLDENBURG, Germany––
Judge Hugo Sponer on June 11 permanently
barred Anton Pohlmann
from owning poultry for keeping
seven million battery-caged hens in
“permanent agony” through use of
nicotine sulphate to disinfect cages.
The illegal chemical treatment
also contaminated the hens’ eggs.
Sponer fined Pohlmann $1.4 million,
and sentenced him to two years in
jail, suspended.
Pohlmann, the biggest egg producer
in Europe, was previously
banned from the poultry business
“for life” in September 1994 by
Lower Saxony food and agriculture
minister Karl-Heinz Funke, after he
killed 60,000 hens who were infected
with salmonella galinarium by
having workers shut off their air
conditioning and their food and
water supply lines.

Foreign zoos fight the budget crunch

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

MONTE CARLO, Monaco––
TV star Joanna Lumley led a May 8 protest
against conditions at the Animal Garden,
the private menagerie kept by Prince
Rainier of Monaco, which Born Free
Foundation president Virginia McKenna
describes as “a slum zoo stuck in the cliff
below the palace.”
According to John Gripper,
DVM, in a recent report to BFF, “tormented
and distressed” animals are kept in cages
far too small for their species. “The animals
are listless and showing stereotypical
behavior,” he wrote. “One monkey
chewed its own tail out of boredom,” and
at the time of Gripper’s visit, “had not been
treated. This suggests to me,” he continued,
“that vets are not regularly monitoring
the animals.”

Mad cow disease

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

British domestic
beef sales on May 14 were
back to 94% of their premad
cow disease scare
level, and prices were at
92%, said the British Meat
and Livestock Commission.
The scare began on
March 27, when scientists
told Commons that bovine
encephalopathy (BSE) may
be related to a new strain of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,
notable for afflicting young
victims; CJD had been
viewed as a disease of age.
In the interim, fish sales
rose 25%, while pork and
lamb sales were up 9%.
Beef consumption fell 28%
and prices fell 43%.

News from abroad

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

A ferocious spring battered central Asia into May––and got
worse when Mongolia officials seeded clouds to produce unseasonable snow,
hoping would help quell at least 288 simultaneous grassfires that killed 17
people, injured 62, burned 31,000 square miles of forest and pasture, forcing
the immediate relocation of more than 1,600 families and 436,000 cattle,
with the evacuation of another 1,600 people and 588,000 cattle anticipated.
The snow––almost the first to hit Mongolia in more than a year––put out only
a few of the fires, but froze or drowned at least 4,900 cattle, along with two
shepherd boys and their 150 sheep. Just to the south, in China, 700,000 cattle
and yaks reportedly froze to death in February during a natural cold snap.
Cyprus SPCA president Toula Poyiadjis on May 18 led 100
CSPCA members and their dogs, donkeys, and a chicken to the palace of
Glafcos Clerides, president of Cyprus, demanding enforcement of humane
laws. “Cyprus lags behind other countries in its treatment of animals,”
Poyiadjis explained. “There is prejudice, fear, and an inexplicable mania for
killing animals.”

Ghosties, goblins, and bumping off whales in the night

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – The
June 24-28 annual meeting of the
International Whaling Commission might
appropriately open with the ancient Scots
prayer, “God keep us from ghosties and goblins
and things that go ‘bump’ in the night.”
Resurrecting the ghost of whaling
from longboats last done more than 70 years
ago, the Makah tribe of the outermost tip of
the Olympic peninsula in Washington will bid
to claim a subsistance quota on grey whales
and become the first legal whalers along the
Pacific coast of the U.S. mainland since the
whaling station at Point Richmond,
California closed more than 20 years ago.
The Makah will be supported, for reasons
pertaining to political correctness, by Greenpeace
and the U.S. government––and Japan,
whose whaling industry has cultivated a close
relationship with Makah minister of fisheries
Daniel Green.

COURT CALENDAR

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Money
Allen G. Schwartz, U.S. District Judge for Washington
D . C ., on April 4 issued a default judgement against former H u m a n e
Society of the U.S. board member Irwin H. (Sonny) Bloch, 58, his wife
Hilda, and six of his companies, ordering them to repay $3.9 million they
collected under allegedly fraudulent pretext via the radio talk show Bloch
hosted from 1980 to 1995. Bloch is also charged in Newark federal court
with defrauding investors of $21 million, and in Manhattan with tax fraud
and perjury. HSUS executives have refused to say to what extent HSUS
might have been influenced by Bloch’s financial advice. He was associated
with HSUS for at least a decade, was elected to the board in January
1991, and left coincidental with his indictment early last year.

International wildlife news

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Africa
Rangers at Garamba
National Park in Zaire on March
28 reported the poaching kill of a
10-year-old pregnant female northern
white rhino, one of under 30 in
existence and the second to be
poached in 12 days. “This is a tragic
loss,” said World Wildlife Fund
director-general Claude Martin from
Geneva. As of February 14, when
WWF announced the vulnerability
of the rhinos to media, no endangered
animals of any kind had been
poached at Garamba since 1984,
despite heavy poaching of elephants
and hooved stock, blamed on
Sudanese rebels and refugees,
whose camps flank the park.

Religion & animals

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

A Sarajevan mob for reasons
unknown assaulted a Hare Krishna street
procession on April 20, injuring two members
from Britain, one from Australia, and a
young Bosnian recruit. “The clash was unexpected,”
reported Reuter. “The Hare Krishna
movement was very active in Sarajevo
throughout the war, performing their dance
and songs in the city streets even during the
worst of the shelling and winning sympathy
for their courage from the beseiged residents.”
In Sarajevo, Grozny, and other
wartorn cities behind the former Iron Curtain,
Hare Krishnas are also known for their bakeries
and vegetarian soup kitchens. “There
may be places in the world where simply seeing
a bunch of Hare Krishna members would
make people turn tail and run. But Grozny
isn’t one of them,” New York Times correspondent
Michael Specter recently reported.

News from abroad

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

The Royal SPCA is “reviewing our
opposition to experiments on primates,”
according to a spokesperson, after receiving a
warning from Richard Fries, Chief Charity
Commissioner for Great Britain, that it
would be acting in a manner “inconsistent with
its charitable status” if it argues that, as
Andrew Pierce of the London Times p a r aphrased
Fries’ argument, “the infliction of
pain on animals could not be justified if it was
for the good of man.” Fries’ warning, Pierce
said, apparently also enables fox hunters to
challenge RSPCA opposition to fox hunting,
since the hunters claim killing foxes is for the
good of farmers. The warning comes as the
28,000-member RSPCA is fighting an attempted
hostile takeover by the British Field
Sports Society, which in March asked its
80,000 members to join the RSPCA in time to
vote at the June annual meeting.

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