Foie gras is banned by Chicago council, but subsidized by New York governor

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

ALBANY, N.Y.–While other jurisdictions are moving to end
the foie gras industry, the tax-supported Empire State Development
Corporation in late May 2006 authorized a grant of $420,000 to help
Hudson Valley Foie Gras increase production by about 10% per year
over the next three years.
Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which accounts for about half of
all U.S. foie gras production, would be raising about 325,000 birds
per year at the end of the planned $1 million expansion. The
expansion would add 10 jobs to the present staff of 150.
The Empire State Development Corporation is “a public
authority that answers to Governor George Pataki, but not the
Legislature,” explained Syracuse Post-Standard staff writer Michelle
Breidenbach. The corporation “will borrow $140,000 for the project
and use cash from the state’s general fund for the remaining
$280,000.”

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China tries to rewrite the prescription for tigers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

HONG KONG–Trying to reshape world opinion about tiger
conservation, in hopes of reopening legal commerce in tiger parts,
the State Forestry Administration of China during the second week of
June 2006 hosted visits to two major tiger farms by four outside
“experts.”
Three of them soon extensively praised Chinese tiger programs
in published statements.
Free market economic advocate Baron Mitra, who directs the
Liberty Institute in Delhi, India, in a guest column for India
Today unfavorably compared tbe faltering Indian effort to conserve
wild tigers with the Chinese proliferation of tigers in captivity.

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Foie gras vector for H5N1?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

WASHINGTON D.C.– The U.S. Department of Agriculture on June
29, 2006 released a draft summary of a $91 million battle plan to
combat any U.S. outbreaks of a “highly pathogenic avian influenza,”
such as the H5N1 strain that has killed more than 130 people
worldwide since 1996.
The plan discusses migratory bird surveillance, the
bird-breeding industry, poultry dealers, live-bird markets,
auctions and slaughterhouses, but appears to make no specific
reference to foie gras farming, a $25 million a year branch of
poultry production with just three major U.S. producers, whose farms
are concentrated in upstate New York and northern California.
The odds that H5N1 or any other deadly influenza might hit
the U.S. through foie gras farming may be incalculably low–but if
H5N1 begins killing human poultry workers in Europe, as it has since
2003 in Southeast Asia, experts suspect the lethal crossover might
begin on the sprawling foie gras farms of southwestern France and
parts of Hungary.

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Books: One Day With a Goat Herd

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

One Day With
A Goat Herd
by C.J. Stevens
John Wade, Publisher (P.O. Box 303, Phillips, ME 04966), 2005.
100 pages, hard cover. $15.00.

This concise little book offers an hour-by-hour description
of a day in the life of a herd of domestic milk goats in California.
It will encourage people, especially children, to look at goats in
a different light.
Of most interest to me is the history included about how
goats became domesticated and began to interact with humans.
I would prefer to have become better acquainted with the
goats as individual personalities. –Bev
Pervan

Turkish serum lab is caught killing horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

ANKARA–Undercover video aired in Turkey and parts of Europe
in March 2006, posted by PETA in April, showed workers at the
government-run Refik Saydam Hygiene Center in Ankara slashing the
throats of terrified horses and slowly bleeding them to death to take
blood for use in serum products.
A spokesperson for Refik Saydam told ANIMAL PEOPLE on June 6,
2006 that the video was made in 2005, and that as of October 29,
2005 the company had switched to drawing horse blood just as blood is
drawn from humans. Several litres of blood may be taken from each
horse.
The spokesperson said that the nine horses from whom blood
was drawn on October 29, 2005 are still at the center, “in natural
and proper life conditions, with regular care and feeding.” If the
horses are properly looked after, they can give blood weekly for
decades.

India tries, but cannot find a humane way to kill poultry to stamp out H5N1

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

JALGAON, India–Veterinarian Abdul Kalim Khan died of
jaundice, not the H5N1 avian influenza, Maharashtra state animal
husbandry commissioner Bijay Kumar told media on April 24, 2006.
Khan fell ill soon after helping to kill nearly 200,000 chickens in
the Jalgaon area to contain an H5N1 outbreak, Kumar explained, but
his illness had a different origin.
Through May 2, 2006, India had not yet had any of the 113
reported human H5N1 fatalities worldwide, but at least seven poultry
farmers committed suicide after losing their flocks and/or customers.
Indian poultry sales were reportedly down 40% to 60%, after
averaging 17% growth in recent years. India has the world’s sixth
largest poultry industry, with about 500 million birds on farms at
any given time.

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Hong Kong seeks to end live markets & pig farming

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

Hong Kong–Citing H5N1 prevention as an urgent pretext, the
Hong Kong Health, Welfare, & Food Bureau in February 2006 asked the
Legislative Council to ban live poultry sales by 2009, a goal the
bureau has pursued since 1997.
Under a permit buy-back plan introduced in 2004, 272 of 814
live chicken vendors and 30 of 200 Hong Kong chicken growers have
gone out of business, the bureau said.
The Hong Kong government is also trying to buy out and close
all 265 local pig farms, which raise 330,000 pigs per year,
producing 520 metric tons of waste per day. Pigs have in the past
been an intermediary host for avian flus that spread to humans.
However, the Legislative Council panel on Food Safety and
Environmental hygiene on April 11 rejected the Health, Welfare, and
Food Bureau’s plan to require all poultry sold in Hong Kong to be
slaughtered at a central plant to be built in the New Territories,
the semi-rural district between the mainland and the cities of
Kowloon and Hong Kong. The plan was also voted down by the North
District Council–because incoming poultry might bring in H5N1.

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Stock shows keep kids away from drugs?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

DENVER–Eleven years after scandals over use of the banned
growth-enhancing synthetic steroid clenbuterol embarrassed livestock
shows from coast to coast, the issue is back bigtime.
Eighteen of the top 35 exhibitors at the January 2006
National Western Stock Show Junior Market Lamb competition in Denver
were disqualified, National Western Stock Show spokesperson Kati
Anderson announced on April 5, after Colorado State University at
Fort Collins pathologists “concluded that the lambs had been injected
with a substance that caused inflammation and swelling of tissue,
making the animals appear more muscular,” said Denver Post staff
writer Jim Kirksey. The symptoms describe the most readily evident
effects of clenbuterol.
The 18 exhibitors “will get neither prize money nor the
proceeds from the sale of their lambs,” and may be banned from
future National Western competitions, Kirksey reported. They may
also face charges of cruelty to animals, tampering with livestock,
attempted theft, and conspiracy, deputy district attorney Diane
Balkin told Kirksey.

Three strikes against major poultry producers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2006:

April 1, 2006 was the deadline by which
United Egg Producers was to complete a six-month
phase-out of egg cartons labeled “Animal Care
Certified,” by agreement with the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission in settlement of a complaint by
Compassion Over Killing that the logo was
misleading. “Consumers should now find a logo
reading “United Egg Producers Certified,”
reminds COK. “If you find egg cartons bearing
the “Animal Care Certified” logo still in stores
or see the logo advertised, please contact COK at
<info@-cok.net>, or call 301-891-2458.”

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