Mink farm raids

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Midnight raiders on October 14, 2006 released 11,000 mink
from a farm in Oza does Rios, Spain, and released as many as 5,000
from two other sites in Galicia. Galician
farmers produced about 80% of the 400,000 mink who are pelted each
year in Spain, the Barcelona-based animal rights group Fundacion
Altarriba told Associated Press.
About 6,500 mink got past the farm perimeter fences,
Galician authorities said. About 4,550 were recovered within 48
hours, 70% of them dead.
Having fast metabolisms and no hunting experience, ranched
mink rarely thrive after release, but mink who survived in Britain
are blamed for hunting water voles to the verge of extinction.
Efforts to extirpate the mink have not succeeded, but reintroducing
otters is working, reported Laura Benesi of the Oxford University
Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in September 2006.
Bonesi and team released 17 otters into the upper Thames.
“When the otters arrived there were 60 or more mink in this small
area,” Bonesi told Sunday Times environment editor Jonathan Leake.
“The mink did not disappear completely, but within a few months they
were doing much less damage.”

The 28-Hour Law & timely influence

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Among the most encouraging regulatory developments for farmed
animals ever was the USDA disclosure on September 28, 2006, in a
letter to the Humane Society of the U.S., that since 2003 it has
recognized that Congress meant the Twenty-Eight Hour Law of 1873 to
limit the time that any hooved animals could be kept aboard any kind
of vehicle.
Less encouraging was that the USDA for three years avoided
having to enforce the reinterpretation of the Twenty-Eight Hour Act,
and 1906 and 1994 amendments, by keeping knowledge that it had been
reinterpreted to themselves.
“The USDA clarified its position in a 2003 internal memo
distributed to government veterinarians,” explained Cristal Cody of
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “The policy change came to light in
response to a legal petition that HSUS filed in October 2005 to
extend the law to trucks.”
Said USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service
spokesperson Jim Rogers, “We never considered the 1906 law as being
applicable to the transport of animals by truck,” Rogers said. “Now
we see that the meaning of the statutory term ‘vehicles’ means
vehicle.”

Battery cage opponents emboldened by success

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
WASHINGTON D.C., LONDON–Years used to
pass between Humane Society of the U.S.
announcements of progress on behalf of
battery-caged egg-laying hens. In mid-October
2006 two such announcements came just 24 hours
apart.
Nineteen years after HSUS upset consumers
and donors with a short-lived “breakfast of
cruelty” campaign against bacon and eggs, a
younger generation of consumers and donors is
responding enthusiastically to a similar message.
About 95% of total U.S. egg production
comes from battery caged hens, but that could
change fast.
Under comparable campaign pressure,
British caged egg producers have already lost 40%
of the market, the research firm Mintel reported
in August 2006 to the Department of the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Demand for
cage-free eggs has increased 31% since 2002,
Mintel found.

One-legged Sweet Nothing stays ahead of killer buyers

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Sweet Nothing, right, kept by Cindy Wasney & Dick Jackson
of Victoria, British Columbia, is an emissary for Premarin foals,
Big Julie’s Rescue Ranch in Fort McLeod, Alberta, and horses who
learn to live with prosthetic legs.
“I bought her at a feed lot auction,” Big Julie’s Rescue
Ranch founder Roger Brinker told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “She was a $200
horse,” going for little more than the minimum bid.
Conventional belief is that horses who suffer severe leg
injuries must be euthanized, but some especially valuable stud
horses have been saved with prosthetic limbs, typically costing
$6,000 to $8,000.

Wildlife rehab center, zoos, farms try to survive under fire

September 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

BEIRUT, HAIFA–As vulnerable as dogs and cats were during
the July and August 2006 fighting along the border of Israel and
Lebanon, captive wildlife and livestock were in even in greater
danger, having little or no opportunity to even try to survive on
their own.
The nonprofit Animal Encounter Educational Center for
Wildlife Conservation in southern Lebanon, directed by Mounir and
Diana Abi-Said, had animals of more than 35 species to look after,
most of them rehabilitation cases, the Saids e-mailed to ANIMAL
PEOPLE. Among the animals, they said, were “brown bear, wolf,
hyena, fox, deer, ostrich, pelican, white stork, imperial
eagle, jungle cat, wild boar, and jackal.”

California animal transport exemption leaves livestock to cook

September 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

SACRAMENTO–The California legislature on August 14, 2006
sent to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to criminalize leaving
pets unattended in weather that puts the animals’ health at risk–but
specifically exempted “horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry or
other agricultural animals in motor vehicles designed to transport
such animals,” a clause excluding from protection more than 99.9% of
all the animals who die in transit from either excessive heat or cold.
Violators of the California bill could be punished by fines
of up to $500 and up to six months in jail. The bill specifically
empowers animal control officers to break into cars to rescue animals
in distress.
But Virginia Handley of Animal Switchboard, the senior
animal advocacy lobbyist in California, did not join other humane
leaders in claiming an apparent victory. She pointed out that many
California agencies have already successfully prosecuted people who
left pets in hot cars under the state anti-cruelty statute–which
permits stiffer penalties.

Livestock disasters show limits of humane response

September 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:
ADDIS ABABA, FRESNO, SURAT, VISAKHAPATNAM–Summer 2006
disasters on three continents demonstrated both the vulnerability of
livestock to fast-changing global weather patterns and the limited
capacity of the humane community to help animals in agricultural
numbers.
Dairy cattle were most visibly hurt.
In Ethiopia the crisis involved drought-weakened desert
cattle suddenly having to cope with fast-rushing high water.
Along both the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea coasts of India,
cattle well-adapted to the drought-and-monsoon cycle were imperiled
in part because they are now kept in unnaturally dense numbers in
floodplains surrounding fast-growing cities.

Israeli foie gras ban now is in force

July 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

JERUSALEM–“Foie gras production has ended in Israel,”
Israeli activist Adela Gertner affirmed on July 13, 2006.
“Suspected delinquents are being investigated. Otherwise, producers
are obeying the law.”
ANIMAL PEOPLE had asked Gertner to find out if Israeli foie
gras producers were at last complying with court rulings against
force-feeding. Most recently, the Israeli High Court of Justice
ruled on February 22, 2006 that force-feeding geese was to end by
April 15, 2006, “while expressing harsh criticism against the
state for not enforcing” an earlier ruling that force-feeding was to
have ended in March 2005, attorney Keren Klar told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Klar represented Let the Animals Live and Anonymous for Animal Rights.

Roaster ducks go without water

July 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

LONDON–Cruel as the foie gras industry
is, ducks on French foie gras farms live under
more natural conditions than most ducks raised
for meat.
“Farmed ducks endure worse conditions
than battery hens,” bannered The Independent,
of London, above a July 6 exposé of the roaster
duck industry by Sanjida O’Connell.
Both wild and domestic ducks who are
given their choice of habitat spend about 80% of
their time in water, but “Most of the 18 million
ducks reared for meat in Britain have no access
to water,” O’Connell reported. The same is true
of most of the 26 million ducks raised for
slaughter in the U.S., and actually of most
ducks raised for slaughter almost everywhere
except southern Asia-where governments are trying
to abolish rice paddy duck-rearing to stop the
spread of avian flus.

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