American Humane regroups as Humane Farm Animal Care takes lead on farm care

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ENGLEWOOD, Colorado– American Humane on
February 10, 2004 announced the hiring of former
American Red Cross interim chief executive
officer Marie Belew Wheatley as president and CEO.
“At the Red Cross, Wheatley served as a
national disaster response officer,” wrote
American Humane public information manager Anna
Gonce. “Wheatley worked with many volunteer
organizations, including American Humane, to
care for animals affected by disasters.”
Ten days after introducing Wheatley,
American Humane announced receipt of a grant of
$50,000 from the U.S. Department of Education
Fund for the Improvement of Education. Secured
by Colorado U.S. Senators Wayne Allard and Ben
Nighthorse Campbell, the money will be used “to
expand existing educational programs that help
students and communities learn to prepare for and
care for animals during disasters,” Gonce said.
The Wheatley hiring followed extensive
restructuring at American Humane that included
the separate resignations in June 2003 of former
president and CEO Tim O’Brien and former Film &
TV Unit chief Karen Goschen, after the earlier
departure of Free Farmed program founder Adele
Douglass.

New Jersey gets stiffer cruelty law; veal crate ban to be reintroduced

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

TRENTON, N.J.–New Jersey Governor James McGreevey on
January 10, 2004 signed into law a bill raising the maximum penalty
for cruelty to animals to five years in prison and a fine of $15,000
for a criminal conviction, and increasing the civil penalties that
may be collected by state-chartered SPCAs to a maximum of $5,000.
The bill was introduced by state assembly members Doug
Fisher, John Burizichelli, and Robert Smith.
McGreevey signed it one day after activist Barbara Shuts
heckled him at a meeting with about 500 members of the American
Association of Retired Persons. Shuts reminded McGreevey that he
pledged to oppose bear hunting when running for governor, but then
authorized the first bear hunt in New Jersey since 1970. The six-day
hunt last November killed 328 bears.
New Jersey assembly majority leader Joe Roberts meanwhile
killed a bill to ban veal crating by refusing to put it to a vote
during the final days of the 210th legislature.
“The measure, which already passed in the New Jersey senate,
had enough votes to pass in the assembly,” Farm Sanctuary claimed.
The bill was immediately reintroduced in both the assembly
and the senate when the 211th legislature convened.

BOOKS: The Pig Who Sang To The Moon

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

The Pig Who Sang To The Moon
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Ballantine Books (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2003. 304
pages, hardcover. $25.95.

A former psychoanalyst best known for investigative work on
the history of psychiatry, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has written
chiefly about the psychology of animals and human/animal interactions
in recent years. In The Pig Who Sang To The Moon Masson explores the
emotional world of farm animals.
Each chapter relates the habits and sentient behavior of a
different species, and compares the corrupted activity of pigs,
chickens, sheep, goats, cows, ducks, and geese on modern farms
to the habits of their wild ancestors.
Masson argues that the difference between the behavior of
such animals outside of domestication and their radically altered and
shortened lives in capitivity is so great that we can infer from this
alone that they must be unhappy, even if they are not subjected to
specific abuse or maltreatment.

New killer diseases: nature strikes back against factory farming

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

GUANGZHOU, Guang-dong province, China–
Representing the unholy marriage of wildlife
consumption with factory farming, an estimated
10,000 masked palm civets, tanukis, (also
called raccoon dogs), and hog badgers were
sacrificed in the first 10 days of January 2004
for the sins of the meat industry.
Mostly cage-reared from wild-caught
ancestors, the civets, tanukis, and hog
badgers were either drowned in disinfectant or
electrocuted, still in their cages, as China
tried to prevent a recurrence of the Sudden Acute
Respiratory Syndrome outbreak that killed 774
people worldwide in 2003, after killing 142
people in 2002. The animals’ remains were burned.
More than three million chickens, ducks,
geese, and quail were killed elsewhere in
Southeast Asia to try to contain outbreaks of
H5N1, an avian flu virus that can spread
directly to humans. The first known
identification of the outbreak came after the
Taiwan Coast Guard intercepted six ducks after
they were thrown from a mainland Chinese fishing
boat into the water off Kinmen island. The crew
may have been disposing of sick ducks who were
taken to sea as food, but rumors have identified
the incident with everything from exotic animal
smuggling to germ warfare.

Australia pays Eritrea to take sheep–and has a new live transport incident

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

PORTLAND, Australia– The Australian live sheep export trade
had just begun to regroup after the three-month Cormo Express debacle
when economic disaster hit again– induced this time by Animal
Liberation South Australia campaigner Ralph Hahneuser.
The Cormo Express sailed Fremantle with 57,937 sheep on
August 5, bound for Kuwait, where they were to be unloaded and
trucked to Saudi Arabia. Arriving on August 22, the sheep were
refused entry to Kuwait, however, because some had developed scabby
mouth disease en route.
After no other nation would accept the sheep, the Australian
government repurchased the consignment from the Saudi buyer for $4.5
million U.S., halted all further sales of livestock to Saudi Arabia,
and investigated means of slaughtering and disposing of the sheep
short of returning them all to Australia, where the sheep industry
no more wanted them than the Saudis did.

Actress-turned-politician sends 100 working elephants to camp

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

CHENNAI, TRIVANDRUM– Credit Jayalalithaa, the actress
turned Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu state, India, with at least
offering a different sort of animal-related sideshow from the usual
in Indian politics.
Instead of either killing dogs or railing against alleged
Muslim cow slaughter, Jayalalithaa and the Department of Hindu
Religious and Charitable Endowments from November 15 to December 15
hosted a rest-and-recreation camp for working elephants at the
Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary in Thepakkadu, near Coimbatore.
Held against the opposition of federal environment minister
T.R. Baalu, a liquor merchant who like Jayalalithaa comes from
Chennai, the elephant camp attracted 45 elephants from the Forest
Department, 37 from Tamil Nadu temples, and 18 belonging to private
individuals.
It also attracted 10,000 tourists.

Killing animals in the name of charity

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

The Harbor Association of Volunteers for Animals in Willapa,
Washington, apparently cancelled a mid-December 2003 benefit pig
raffle after it attracted notice from PETA and the Farmed Animal Net
electronic newsgroup.
HAVA reportedly advertised, “You could keep this pig as a pet…But
Patriotic Packing has also donated processing and wrapping.”
Wrote Farmed Animal Net founder Mary Finelli, “This is
problematically similar to the common practice of animal shelters
serving meat at their social events,” which violates ANIMAL PEOPLE
ethical standard for charities #4b: ANIMAL PEOPLE recommends that
all food served for human consumption by or on behalf of animal
charities should be vegetarian or, better, vegan.

Cat-eaters may get, spread SARS

November 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

GUANGZHOU–Laboratory studies of Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome directed by virologist Albert D.M.E. Osterhaus of the
Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, published in the October 30
edition of the British journal Nature, demonstrate that cats and
ferrets could potentially carry the disease from filthy live markets
to humans.
Osterhaus said his experimental goal was simply to find out
if either cats or ferrets could be used as a laboratory model for
SARS. His findings imply, however, that cats raised for human
consumption may become a SARS vector–especially if the cats are
caged at live markets near whatever as yet unidentified wildlife
species is the primary SARS vector.

Badger culls spread bovine tuberculosis

November 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

LONDON–Ben Bradshaw, Parliamentary under secretary for the
British Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on
November 4 halted five years of reactively killing badgers near
bovine tuberculosis outbreaks because culls at 20 locations produced
a consistent 27% rise in the number of bovine TB cases compared to
the numbers detected at outbreak sites where badgers are not culled.
The $40 million trial cost the lives of 8,000 badgers. Known
to become infected by bovine TB, badgers are blamed by farmers for
spreading it, but the data shows that they spread it less if they
are not hunted.
Two parallel tests continue. One, the control experiment,
involves taking no action against badgers. The other is “proactive
culling,” in which the badger population is eradicated as completely
as possible before bovine TB appears.
Beginning in 1998, each test method was applied uniformly
within a 38-square-mile area. The experiment was not due to end
until 2006, but trial steering group leader John Bourne told news
media that the results from reactive culling were so bad that
continuing to do it was no longer appropriate.

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