Category: Farm Animals

Dairies win two cases

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Ruling that government agencies are exempt from the
prohibitions on false advertising that apply to private citizens,
San Francisco Superior Court Judge David Garcia on March 25 dismissed
a lawsuit by PETA against a “Happy cows” ad campaign sponsored by the
California Milk Advisory Board. Arguing that scenes of cows in green
pastures used in the ads misrepresent the reality of how California
dairy cattle are kept, PETA previously complained to the Federal
Trade Commission. The FTC declined to take action in October 2002.

The Pennsylvania State Superior Court on April 8 upheld a
$96,000 verdict against the Fayette County SPCA for alleged invasion
of privacy in April 1993 while investigating the purported theft of a
dog and cruelty to a heifer reported by dairy farmer John Tabaj’s
former son-in-law during a messy divorce case. Tabaj was charged
with five counts of cruelty, but the charges were later dropped.
The incident caused the Pennsyl-vania legislature to mandate in
December 1994 that humane officers must be appointed by a judge. A
Fayette County jury in January 1992 ordered the $96,000 penalty
against the Fayette County SPCA, and ordered Tri-County Humane
Protection Inc., also involved in the raid, to pay Tabaj $105,000.
Tri-County Humane Protection is now defunct. The Fayette County SPCA
has indicated that the size of the award will force it to close,
too, leaving the county without an animal shelter.

Hong Kong & WHO seek SARS host

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

HONG KONG–Severe Acute Respirat-ory
Syndrome, the latest flu-like disease among many
to cross from animals to humans in southern
China, had been diagnosed in 3,947 people in
five months as the May edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
went to press, killing 229 while 1,935 were
fully recovered, according to the latest daily
data summary from the World Health Organization.
As epidemics go, SARS was not especially
serious. The global toll from all forms of flu
ranges from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths per year.
Dengue fever afflicts 50 million people per year.
AIDS is diagnosed at the rate of five million new
cases per year, killing 3.1 million people in
2002.
But few diseases have ever terrified a
city as SARS has terrified Hong Kong–and as
cases turned up in other nations, almost
entirely among recent visitors to Hong Kong, the
panic spread.

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A video that never mentions Heifer Project International shows why their premise is wrong

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Saving Baby Ubuntu
Video from Compassion In World Farming (South Africa)
c/o Humane Education Trust
P.O. Box 825, Somerset West, 7129, South Africa; <avoice@yebo.co.za>
15 minutes. Free on request; donation recommended.

Saving Baby Ubuntu is the gently narrated story of how
several African animal advocates rescued just one newborn calf from
the traffic in calves between the factory dairy farms of South Africa
and the shantytowns where poor people struggle mostly unsuccessfully
to raise livestock of their own, on inadequate land and improper
diets. Most of the animals die miserably.
Among all the illusions afflicting poor people around the
world, among the most insidious is the notion that anyone can build
wealth by trading upon the fecundity of animals. Surplus dairy
calves, “spent” hens, and other cast-off factory farmed livestock
are indeed dirt-cheap, because to the factory farms these animals
are merely waste products, whose continued life is an
inconvenience–and healthier animals can sometimes be obtained free,
or almost free, from do-gooder organizations like Heifer Project
International.

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Blind “justice” can’t tell chickens from dead wood

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

SAN DIEGO, California–Ward Poultry Farm owners Arie and
Bill Wilgen-burg, of Escondido, California, will not be charged
with cruelty for having employees toss more than 60,000 live hens
into wood chippers, the San Diego County district attorney’s office
announced on April 10, because the Wilgenburgs were told to chip the
chickens alive by a USDA-accredited veterinarian.
The veterinarian was neither working for the USDA nor
representing it, but was advising the Wilgenbergs about killing
their flocks, at two sites, to help halt the spread of the worst
outbreak of Newcastle disease since 12 million chickens and other
domestic birds were killed to control an outbreak in 1971.

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Dairies win two cases

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Ruling that government agencies are exempt from the
prohibitions on false advertising that apply to private citizens,
San Francisco Superior Court Judge David Garcia on March 25 dismissed
a lawsuit by PETA against a “Happy cows” ad campaign sponsored by the
California Milk Advisory Board. Arguing that scenes of cows in green
pastures used in the ads misrepresent the reality of how California
dairy cattle are kept, PETA previously complained to the Federal
Trade Commission. The FTC declined to take action in October 2002.

The Pennsylvania State Superior Court on April 8 upheld a
$96,000 verdict against the Fayette County SPCA for alleged invasion
of privacy in April 1993 while investigating the purported theft of a
dog and cruelty to a heifer reported by dairy farmer John Tabaj’s
former son-in-law during a messy divorce case. Tabaj was charged
with five counts of cruelty, but the charges were later dropped.
The incident caused the Pennsyl-vania legislature to mandate in
December 1994 that humane officers must be appointed by a judge. A
Fayette County jury in January 1992 ordered the $96,000 penalty
against the Fayette County SPCA, and ordered Tri-County Humane
Protection Inc., also involved in the raid, to pay Tabaj $105,000.
Tri-County Humane Protection is now defunct. The Fayette County SPCA
has indicated that the size of the award will force it to close,
too, leaving the county without an animal shelter.

A video that never mentions Heifer Project International shows why their premise is wrong

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Saving Baby Ubuntu
Video from Compassion In World Farming (South Africa)
c/o Humane Education Trust
P.O. Box 825, Somerset West, 7129, South Africa; <avoice@yebo.co.za>
15 minutes. Free on request; donation recommended.

Saving Baby Ubuntu is the gently narrated story of how
several African animal advocates rescued just one newborn calf from
the traffic in calves between the factory dairy farms of South Africa
and the shantytowns where poor people struggle mostly unsuccessfully
to raise livestock of their own, on inadequate land and improper
diets. Most of the animals die miserably.

Read more

Supreme Court affirms HFA Rosebud win

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. Supreme Court on February 24 handed
the Humane Farming Association a hard-won victory over factory hog
farming on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, declining
to review an April 2002 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals verdict
that Bell Farms and Sun Prairie Inc. had no legal standing to seek a
1999 injunction that allowed them to build and run the first two of
13 planned hog facilities.
“We can now plan an orderly shutdown,” attorney Jim
Dougherty told Associated Press. Dougherty represents HFA, the
Concerned Rosebud Area Citizens, and other hog farm opponents.

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Civil disobedience comes to farm country

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

ITHACA, TOLEDO, SALT LAKE CITY, TEXAS
CITY, TWIN FALLS–Purported anti-terrorism bills
pushed in recent legislative sessions by
lawmakers in Texas, Oregon, Utah, and
Pennsylvania, among other states, have sought
to criminalize almost any unauthorized exposure
of anything done in the name of agriculture.
Factory farmers are finding that even
when they win convictions of activists who enter
their property to rescue animals and document
suffering, they lose in the court of public
opinion. Prosecuting rescuers, moreover,
appears to increase the public perception that
the farmers are cruel–even when the farms are
traditional family operations.

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Meat avoidance and what it means

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

“In terms of nonreligious literature handed out to
pedestrians, Why Vegan? may be the most widely distributed brochure
in recent years. Hundreds of people and organizations distribute
hundreds of thousands of copies annually–more than 500,000 in 2002,”
Vegan Outreach cofounder Jack Norris recently wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Norris listed ways in which the most recent updated edition
of Why Vegan? differs from previous versions, including the addition
of “a spread depicting real experiences on factory farms, described
by people who have been there.”
Yet the new Why Vegan? includes less descriptive text about
animal suffering, overall, than in the recent past, and is
actually quite different from the original edition issued in 1999.

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