Category: Europe

International wildlife news

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Africa
Members of 840 Masai
families during the second week in
March opened Kimana Tikondo
Group Ranch, a 15-square-mile forprofit
wildlife sanctuary in southern
Kenya, under the shadow of Mount
Kilimanjaro. Just 17 visitors paid
the $10 entrance fee the first week,
most of them members of a delegation
from the Wildlife Conservation
Society, formerly the New York
Zoological Society. Start-up funding
came from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Kenya
Wildlife Services director David
Western hopes Kimana Tikando and
similar parks can make enough
money to persuade the Masai that
keeping wildlife is more profitable
than killing it to graze more cattle.

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Marine life

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

As expected, U.S. President Bill
Clinton announced February 9 that the U.S.
would “vigorously pursue high-level efforts to
persuade Japan to reduce the number of whales
killed in its research program,” but stopped
short of imposing trade sanctions, as he is
authorized to do in response to a Commerce
Department advisory issued in December that
Japan is violating the intent of the International
Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling by setting “research” quotas for
minke whales so high––now more than
400––that the “research” amounts to commercial
whaling.

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Animal health

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Amid the mad cow disease panic, Britain barely
noticed the death of an 11-year-old Moslem girl from anthrax
after a two-day stay at the Poitier’s University Hospital in
London. Anthrax, a disease of known epidemic potential, hits
about 100,000 people a year. It can be treated with antibiotics, if
recognized early, but otherwise kills through the combination of
high fever, pneumonia, and internal hemorrages. Sixteen days
before falling ill, the girl helped her father kill an infected sheep
at an unlicensed slaughterhouse during the Ramadan religious
holiday. She then ate a lightly cooked piece of the liver. The rest
of her family, fasting according to the rules of Ramadan, waited
until the end of the holidays before boiling and eating the rest of
the meat. None of them became ill.

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WOOFS & GROWLS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Adopt-A-Pet, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, quiet for several
years, recently issued a bulletin “introducing our statewide
service,” a purported mobile adoption-and-rescue program,
and soliciting donations. Adopt-A-Pet in 1986-1992 raised
$6,840,756 via the Watson and Hughey direct mailing empire,
which renamed itself Direct Response Consulting Services after
paying $2.4 million in 1991 in out-of-court settlement of
charges pertaining to alleged use of misleading sweepstakes
appeals. Adopt-A-Pet was among the W&H/DRCS codefendants
in a series of cases brought by 22 states. In 1987-1989,
Adopt-A-Pet reportedly spent 97% of revenues on further
fundraising. Overall, according to incomplete IRS Form 990
filings obtained and abstracted by The Chronicle of
P h i l a n t h r o p y in September 1993, Adopt-A-Pet spent at least
55% of revenues on fundraising, with 6% spent on other documented
activities and 39% apparently unaccounted for.
W&H/DRCS also represented the Cancer Fund of America,
which sought donations by claiming it didn’t fund animal-based
research. It apparently funded––and funds––little or no
research of any kind.
German freelance TV producer Michael Born
faces up to 10 years in prison for allegedly defrauding customers
of more than $203,000 by faking at least 22 documentaries
between 1991 and December 1994. In one episode he
purportedly paid an actor to pose as a hunter shooting a housecat.
Born defends his creations as “docu-drama,” in which
players act out real events.
National Audubon Society president John Flicker
says he cancelled publication of an article for the A u d u b o n
magazine by former New York Times columnist Tom Wicker as
part of “a relatively minor adjustment we’re making” to policy.
Wicker had charged that the Clinton administration has not
demonstrated a clear commitment to environmental protection.
The British Advertising Standards Authority censured
the International Fund for Animal Welfare o n
Valentine’s Day for the fourth time in a year, holding that ads
urging Tesco supermarket chain chair Sir Ian MacLaurin to
cease selling Canadian canned salmon “unfairly discredited
Tesco by its false implication about the supermarket’s involvement
in seal killing.” IFAW was previously rapped for likening
hunters to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (who serially torturekilled
wildlife before turning to human victims); using a photo
allegedly depicting John Wayne Bobbitt’s severed penis in an
anti-sealing ad, which pointed out that the major profitable
market for seal products is Asian aphrodisiac demand for dried
penises; and suggesting that South Koreans kill 400,000 cats a
year for use in soup. Cat-eating is technically banned in South
Korea, but is reportedly still commonplace.

Parody
Students United to Protest Research on
Sentient Subjects, now doing business as The Nature of
Wellness, startled Washington Post readers on February 25
with a parody of Americans for Medical Progress a d s
attacking antivivisectionists. Surrounding a photo of a bonneted
baby was the headline, “Most people see a beautiful,
healthy child…We see a cure for Feline Leukemia.”
Continued the text below, “Outrageous, isn’t it? How can
anyone possibly believe that a cat disease can be cured by
conducting research on healthy human beings? Ridiculous.
But, unfortunately, millions of Americans have been led to
believe that it is possible to cure human diseases by conducting
research on healthy animals.”

The hunting lobby at work

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

British Field Sports Society deputy chair Lord
Mancroft and the Duchess of Devonshire in early March
asked the reputed 80,000 BFSS members to join the 28,000-
member Royal SPCA so as to influence policy away from
opposition to fox hunting and other blood sports. The RSPCA
has formally opposed hunting since 1976. New members had
to join the RSPCA by March 22 to be eligible to vote at the
organization’s June annual meeting––and as many as 1,500
hunters reportedly did, as RSPCA board members and staff
scrambled to find a way to legally bar them.
“The biennial conference of the parties to the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
is due to be held in Zimbabwe in 1997,” reminds Shirley
McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.
“Problems are developing, as the government of Zimbabwe
wants to hold the meeting in Victoria Falls. Hotel rooms for
government officials are available in the town, which has a
total of 900 beds, but usually 1,500 or more people attend
CITES conferences. Because of the room shortage, representatives
of non-governmental organizations would be lodged far
away, in Zambia and Botswana, out of the action.” This
would give Zimbabwe more opportunity to lobby officials in
favor of abolishing the international ban on ivory trafficking.

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Can cloned sheep, Select-A-Bull save the Empire?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

LONDON––Uncertainty over the future of the British
cattle herd erupted just six days after the Holstein Friesian
Society of Great Britain and Ireland introduced Select-A-Bull,
billed as the most advanced system in the British Isles for managing
herd reproduction. About five million of the 11 million
cattle in Britain are Holstein Friesians. If the British herd is
slaughtered and rebuilt from breeding stock, the Select-A-Bull
genetic repository could be invaluable.
Meanwhile, many farmers are likely to postpone
decisions to breed.
The BSE scare stole the farm press spotlight from a
series of scientific breakthroughs in livestock breeding, beginning
last December when a Colorado State University research
team announced it had invented a way to preselect the sex of
calves. Likely to be commercially available in three to four
years, the method requires the use of only 200,000 sperm per
insemination, instead of the 20 million typically used now,
which in turn multiplies the reproductive capabilities of top
bulls. It also permits farmers to preselect for males, who gain
weight faster, if breeding for meat; daughters, if breeding to
replace milking cattle.
In February, a team in Kyodo, Japan, reported conceiving
hogs from frozen fertilized eggs, a potential quantum
leap in further standardizing hog breeding.
On March 6, embryologist Ian Wilmut of the Roslin
Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, reported that he and colleagues
had cloned five female Welsh mountain lambs, of
whom two survived––the first-ever success at cloning a mammal.
Wilmut said he started with 250 embryos, of which 34
were transplanted into Scotts mothers. However, he predicted,
“It may be up to 20 years before this could be used to produce
large numbers of identical animals.”

Mad cow disease panic hits beef-eaters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

LONDON––British health secretary
Stephen Dorrell touched off global panic on
March 20, telling the House of Commons that
an advisory scientific committee had advised
him that consumption of cattle afflicted with
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) a
decade or more ago was “the most likely
explanation” of the origin of a seemingly new
variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Both
diseases cause the formation of sponge-like
holes in the brain.
Within days British government officials
seriously discussed the possible costs and
consequences of slaughtering the entire national
herd of 11 million cattle, in a gamble that
this would facilitate the recovery of the British
beef industry rather than its demise.
BSE, also known as “mad cow disease,”
has killed more than 160,000 cattle in
Britain since 1985––some directly, most in
government-ordered slaughters intended to
keep BSE from spreading. Over the same
time, British beef sales have fallen 12%; 40%
of Britons say they have cut down on meat
consumption; 11% say they don’t eat red
meat; and 4.3% are now vegans.

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STANDARDS OF CARE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

The European Commission on
January 24 proposed a veal crate ban with a
12-year phase-in. Starting from January 1,
1998, minimum space allowances would apply
to all new or renovated veal barns, sufficient
that each calf “should be able to groom itself
properly, turn around, stand up, lie down normally,
and lie with its legs stretched out,” as a
European Commission advisory committee
recommended last December. All veal operations
would have to be in compliance with the
EC standards by 2008. The EC member
nations currently raise about 5.8 million veal
calves per year. Per capita consumption has
fallen from about 2.8 kilograms per capita i n
1987, two years before the first of two previous
attempts to ban veal crating failed, to 2.3
kilograms per capita now––still twice the U.S.
per capita consumption.

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Poultry

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

U.S. frozen chicken
exports to Russia soared from
marginal significance in 1992 to
$500 million worth last year, making
Russia the biggest export market
for the American chicken
industry, and infuriating Russian
poultry producers, who are contending
with soaring grain prices in
the wake of the worst harvest in
1995 since 1965. On February 7,
Russia warned the U.S. that the
traffic might be halted on March
16. Said Russian Agriculture
Department chief veterinarian
Vyacheslav Avilov, “We need
guarantees that these birds are disease-free––that
there is no salmonella,
no bad chemical additives,
or the like.” Reported Lynnley
Browning for Reuter, “The U.S.
birds are on the same market as
Russian ones, which are scrawny,
grey, and unappealing. Chickens
from both countries are often sold
from barely refrigerated containers
or on the street in cardboard
boxes.” Browning described a
salesgirl separating frozen chicken
parts by stomping on them. The
Clinton administration, with reputed
close ties to the Tyson chicken
empire, applied diplomatic muscle,
and on March 6 announced that
Russia would not interfere with the
chicken sales. Related negotiations
began March 22.

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