Horses

November 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1993:

Days End Farm Horse Rescue is

offering a cash reward for “any information

leading to the arrest and conviction of the

person responsible for the recent assault and

mutilation of horses in Maryland.” The

reward fund is named for Star, a mare who

was sexually assaulted and subjected to muti-

lation resembling an internal episiotomy in

Urbana on October 5. Similar attacks

occurred in the area on August 26 and

September 4; in Great Falls, Virginia, last

year; and have been baffling police in

England for a decade. The attacks may be

linked, as they seem to be done by someone

skilled at horse-handling, and there is con-

siderable traffic between the horse communi-

ties of England and the greater Washington

D.C. area. Days End Farm Horse Rescue

also seeks information about similar attacks

anywhere, at any time, by anyone, in an

effort to build a psychological profile of the

perpetrator. Send material to P.O. Box 157,

West Friendship, MD 21794.

Marine Mammals

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

The hit film Free Willy gave new

impetus to the ongoing campaign to persuade

Sea World in San Diego to return an orca named

Corky to her native habitat off British Columbia.

Her mother and several siblings remain with the

pod from which she was captured 24 years ago.

Sea World contends Corky could no longer sur-

vive in the wild. Free Willy has also started a

campaign on behalf of Keiko, the star of the

film, who resides at the El Nuevo Reino

Aventura amusement park in Mexico City. Free

Willy producers Lauren Shuler-Donner and

Richard Donner are reportedly ready to buy

Keiko and move him to a better facility, perhaps

even a fenced inlet off Cape Cod, using

$200,000 contributed by Warner Brothers, the

film’s distributor. Captured off Iceland in 1982,

and kept at Marineland in Niagara Falls before

being sold to his present keepers, Keiko hasn’t

drawn interest from major aquariums because of

a purportedly debilitating skin condition.

Agriculture

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on August 9

announced plans to hike grazing fees on 280 million acres

of public lands, from the present $1.86 per animal unit per

day to $4.28––still below market value, and half the $8.70

fee the House passed in July 1991, later killed by the

Senate. An earlier attempt by Babbitt to up grazing fees

was delayed by President Clinton until his budget cleared

Congress.

The European Commission on July 13 proposed

that horses in transport should be watered and fed every six

hours; calves under four weeks old, every eight hours; and

adult cattle every 16 hours. Horses and pigs would get 10

hours of rest after traveling 12 hours. If adopted, the new

rules will protect all animals traveling between member

nations.

Animal Spectacles

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, pledged to end mule-diving exhibitions

on its famed Steel Pier on August 15. Models in bathing suits rode full-sized horses through 40-foot jumps into a tank of sea water at the Steel Pier from 1929 until 1978, when the pier was closed. Reopened this year, the Steel Pier featured Tim Rivers’ World’s Only Diving Mules, a riderless touring act from Citra, Florida, but met heavy protest when Rivers’ mule, two miniature horses, and a dog all appeared reluctant to jump from a 30-foot height.

COURT CALENDAR

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Activism

A federal grand jury in Grand

Rapids, Michigan, on July 16 indicted fugi-

tive activist Rodney Allen Coronado, 27, on

five felony counts including arson, pertaining

to a 1992 firebombing that gutted the

Michigan State University mink ranching labo-

ratory. The fire also destroyed the files of an

MSU staffer who was developing alternatives

to the use of animals in biomedical research.

Coronado, who has acknowledged involve-

ment in other direct actions including scuttling

two Icelandic whaling vessels, was reportedly

last seen in Oregon in early November 1992.

He is also sought for questioning by grand

juries probing arsons at animal research facili-

ties in Oregon, Washington, and Louisiana,

and by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in

connection with laboratory vandalism at the

University of Edmonton, in Alberta.

Animal Control & Rescue

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Animal shelters, public or private, must hold

animals at least five days including a Saturday before

releasing them to Class B dealers or researchers, under an

amendment to Animal Welfare Act enforcement regulations

that took effect August 23. Written certification that the

holding period has been met must accompany each animal.

The Bronx SPCA, recently incorporated by

American SPCA officers Stephen Zawistowski, Eugene

Underwood, and Harold Finkelstein, exists “to make sure

we would have consistent law enforcement authority” with-

in the whole of New York City, Zawistowski told ANI-

MAL PEOPLE. The ASPCA was incorporated before the

Bronx was, and therefore the charter granted to the ASPCA

by the state of New York does not specifically authorize it

as the sole animal protection law enforcement agency for

the Bronx, as it does for the other New York City boroughs.

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Validation of non-animal tests gains momentum

Significant progress in validating non-animal toxicity tests was announced

during the summer by both the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to

Animal Testing and the Scandinavian Society of Cell Toxicology’s four-year-old

Multicenter Evaluation of In Vitro Cytotoxicity Tests program, headquartered in

Sweden. Validation is the process of establishing how test results relate to human health.

The Johns Hopkins team published a “Framework for the Validation and Implementation

of In Vitro Toxicity Tests” simultaneously in four leading scientific journals, hoping to

speed researcher interest, while the Swedish team, somewhat ahead of Johns Hopkins,

now has 90 European in vitro toxicologists working on a variety of tests of their own

design, measuring the toxicity of 50 chemicals with well-known effects on humans.

“Relevance remains the key problem,” John Frazier of the Johns Hopkins team

said. “It was clear from the beginning that the ill-defined nature of the ‘gold standard’ we

are trying to measure with an in vitro test––human toxicity––was going to be difficult.

It’s a moving target. Nobody has come up with a definitive solution.”

Diet & Health

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Thirty of 90 beef slaughterhouses inspected by

the USDA during last winter’s outbreak of E. coli bacterial

poisoning of hamburger were temporarily closed for clean-

up, Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy announced May 27.

Twelve plants were put in a special enforcement program,

with which they must comply or lose USDA certification.

The last of 143 people who were hospitalized during the E.

coli outbreak, 10-year-old Brianne Kiner, was released as

an outpatient from Children’s Hospital in Seattle on June 29.

Stricken after eating a Jack-in-the-Box hamburger on

January 13, Kiner spent 41 days in a coma and lost her

large intestine. Four children died––three in the Seattle area

and one in San Diego.

Horse Tips

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Prairie Bayou, the pre-race favorite in the

June 5 Belmont Stakes, suffered a shattered foreleg

while running 11th in the backstretch among a field of

13––an indication of exhaustion or injury––and was eutha-

nized half an hour later. Prairie Bayou placed second in

the Kentucky Derby five weeks earlier, and won the

Preakness Stakes two weeks earlier as another top-ranked

horse, Union City, collapsed and was destroyed due to

similar fractures. The loss of the horses drew attention to

the theories of several experts about horse racing injuries.

Veterinarian James Rooney of the Maxwell H. Gluck

Equine Center in Lexington, Kentucky, argued that the

back-to-back collapses of Prairie Bayou and Union City

were, “Pure bloody coincidence,” claiming that only 2%

of North American races result in fatal breakdowns––but

that would still mean the deaths of 1,600 horses a year.

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