U.S. Supreme Court raps ranchers & other big farm cases

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Ruling 9-0 against the wise-use orie n t e d Public Lands Council, t h e A m e r i c a n Farm Bureau Federation, t h e A m e r i c a n Sheep Industry Association, the Association of National Grasslands, and the N a t i o n a l Cattlemen’s Beef Association, t h e U . S . Supreme Court on May 15 upheld the authority of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act to impose grazing reform rules governing the use of 170 million acres of leased federal property in 13 states. The Supreme Court ruling finalizes changes Babbitt ordered in 1995 which ended quasi-automatic grazing permit renewal for approximately 20,000 tenured leaseholders; allowed non-ranchers to bid on grazing permits, including for the purpose of holding land as wildlife habitat; and stipulated that fences, wells, and other improvements made on federal land by leaseholders become property of the federal government. A further effect of the ruling is that banks may no longer feel confident in making business loans to ranchers, accepting their grazing leases as collateral in lieu of owned real estate. The net outcome is expected to be more wildlife and fewer cattle and sheep on western rangeland.

Golf: Facing nature with a club

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

SEAL BEACH, AUBURN, SANTA BARBARA, California; LAKEWOOD, Colorado––Already poisoning cottontail rabbits at the Leisure World golf course in Seal Beach, the exterminating firm California Agri-Control in early May asked the Seal Beach Police Department for permission to shoot rabbits as well. Seal Beach police chief Mike Sellers on May 9 refused to waive the city policy against firing guns within city limits––which meant that the poisoning would continue.

In Defense of Animals offered to relocate the rabbits to a privately owned 40-acre site near Lake Elsinore, without much hope that the offer would be accepted.

“In 1992, an offer to relocate rabbits” from Leisure World “was rejected by the California Department of Fish and Game,” IDA representative Bill Dyer said. “Yet for $40,000, the cost of building one green” claimed by Leisure World, “all of the rabbits could be trapped, sterilized, and released.”

Prakash Shah–– martyr for cattle

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

RAJPUR, Gujarat, India– – Prakash Amrutlal Shah, 28, an anti-cattle slaughter activist for eight years, was fatally bludgeoned on April 2, allegedly by three butchers who ambushed Shah with staves as he walked from his home in Rajpur, Gujarat, to the p i n j a r a p o l e (cow shelter) in nearby Disa. Found by a passer-by, Shah reportedly identified his attackers to local police, who arrested two suspects but told the newspaper G u j a r a t Samachar that they had lost Shah’s statement.

”Prakash Shah died on April 10 at Shrye Hospital in Ahmendabad,” said Gujarat Samachar. “Thousands of people attended his cremation,” including representatives of the Viniyog Parivar Trust. The Trust sponsors many individuals who like Shah fight illegal cattle slaughter and export with little more than copies of the Indian Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and hope for reincarnation.

PETA in the US and abroad

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

NORFOLK, Va.; NEW DELHI–– Sacred cows really have little in common with real cows.

Real cows give milk, are increasingly often factory-farmed in the U.S., frequently wander the roads in India without enough to eat, and in either nation follow most of their own offspring to slaughter as soon as they are economically unproductive––although in India the slaughtering tends to be illegal.

Sacred cows stand between real cows and public perception. They occupy billboards, pushing an image of health and contentment, between depictions of children and celebrities wearing white “mustaches.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk and People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi during spring 2000 each tried to erase the “mustaches,” on behalf of suffering real cows––and were each promptly accused of atrocity.

DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE PETITIONS FOR PROBE OF THE FARM BUREAU

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C. – – Defenders of Wildlife and 179 other organizations on April 10 petitioned Congress for an “investigation into charges that the American Farm Bureau Federation national leadership has harmed the American farmer and their own members by posing as an organization representing farmer interests.”

The petitioners suggested that the Farm Bureau has a conflict of interest in operating “businesses that sell to the farmer and buy from the farmer.” They also sought “an investigation into charges that the Farm Bureau misrepresents its motivations to Congress and the American taxpayer, exploiting the farmer image to win nonprofit privileges that shield them from $61.75 million annually in federal income tax.”

Defenders circulated the petition by e-mail for a month preceding an April 9 expose of the Farm Bureau broadcast by CBS 60 Minutes. The expose paralleled a series of critical reports published in the Defenders membership magazine since 1998, as Defenders and the Farm Bureau clashed over the 1995 wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho. In December 1997 the Farm Bureau won a lower court ruling, since reversed, which would have required that all the wolves and their descendants be removed from the wild.

Not ostriches with heads in the sand

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

PYONGYANG, N. Korea– – Get-rich-quick speculation on ostriches isn’t done yet, the North Korean news agency KCNA disclosed on March 27.

“In recent years the state has taken a series of measures to breed ostriches on a large scale,” KCNA said, touting ostrich-farming in terms now familiar to bankrupted participants in the boom-and-bust industry worldwide.

North Korea, one of the most insular and repressive nations in the world, is desperate to find a quick, easy way to recover from chronic food scarcity and a collapsed economy.

“Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have died of hunger since the mid-1990s,” said the South African Press Association. “North Korea is now relying on outside aid to stave off further starvation among its 22 million people.”

Starving the hens is “standard”

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

SEATTLE––Rescuing more than 1,000 starving hens from Amberson’s Egg Farm near Lake Stevens, Washington, during the last two days in March, Pasado’s Safe Haven sanctuary cofounders Susan Michaels and Mark Steinway hope farmer Keith Amberson won’t walk this time.

Just 13 months earlier, in February 1999, Michaels and Steinway rescued 250 starving hens from the same facility, where Amberson reportedly was later to gas 20,000 hens with carbon monoxide in order to get manure discharges below legal limits.

Amberson had just been fined $21,000 by the Washington State Department of ecology, and was under orders from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to stop polluting tributaries to Lake Stevens within 10 days.

“But prosecutors refused to bring animal cruelty charges against Amberson,” the Pasado’s Safe Haven web site recounted, “when he claimed that the dead and dying hens” rescued by Michaels and volunteers on that occasion “were a result of forced molting, a standard egg production practice in which chickens are starved for up to 21 days to force them to begin laying eggs again.”

New South Wales to set world precedent by vaccinating instead of killing farm disease hosts

April 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

LONDON, U.K.; SYDNEY, Australia––Marksmen with silencer-equipped rifles on March 3 killed the entire 215-member rhesus macaque colony at the Wobern Safari Park in central England.

The massacre came at management request and expense, after health officials found that the macaques carried simian herpes B virus––harmless to the colony, but potentially lethal to humans.

It was business as usual to veterinary and agricultural public health specialists.

Kindness: where east meets west

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

HONG KONG, BEIJING– – Beijing TV electrified China as the millennium changed with a rare western-style investigative expose of pet theft for the dog-andcat meat markets.

Foreign correspondents swiftly amplified the revealed atrocities. Yet, in a nation where man biting dog is scarcely news to anyone, most missed the breaking edge of the story.

“By fair means and foul, predatory traders are getting their hands on Russian dogs and packing them off by the busload across the border to China to supply a booming demand there,” wrote Baltimore Sun foreign staff reporter Will Englund from Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

“Thousands of animals have been taken out of Siberia,” Englund continued, “in a business that is ruthless, dishonest, and violent––and is breaking the hearts of Russia’s dog lovers. Local gangs buy some dogs and steal others.”

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