FIGHTING FOR FACTORY-FARMED HENS AND HOGS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

The German Supreme Court in
Karlsruhe ruled on July 6 that laws already on the
books require poultry farmers to give egg-laying
hens much more space than either the minimum set
by regulation in 1987 or the enlarged
minimum––about twice as big––which is to be phased
into effect by 2003 under a June directive from the
European Union. The EU directive would also end
battery caging entirely by 2012; the German verdict
says, in effect, “Do it now.” Wrote the judges, “It is
generally the case that no one may inflict pain, suffering,
or damage on an animal without good reason”––and,
by implication, they held the mere maintenance
of profitability to be not good reason.

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MALAYSIA SHIFTS FOCUS FROM PIGS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

SARIKEI, Malaysia––Pigs are
still killed almost daily as mop-up work
against the deadly Nipah virus continues, but
by the hundreds now instead of the thousands.
Few pigs remain in Malaysia.
More than a million were massacred from
mid-March to mid-May, putting about 1,800
farms out of production, impoverishing an
estimated 300,000 Malaysians whose income
came from the export-oriented pork industry.

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Making bucks out of bison

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

MILWAUKEE, WASHINGTON
D.C.––Former bison rancher and promoter
James O’Hearn, 60, drew a six-year
sentence on May 11 for fraud, illegally acting
as a stockbroker, forging client signatures,
and converting assets to personal use.
Claiming investments in bison
meat, hides, manure, and embryo transplants
would bring riches, O’Hearn allegedly
bilked 40 people of about $2.5 million.
“If I had the option of imposing a
longer sentence, I would,” said U.S. District
Judge Charles N. Clevert, likening O’Hearn
to bank robbers and drug dealers.
The USDA meanwhile outlined a
safer way to make money from bison.
Reported Associated Press, “Bison
ranching is growing so fast that there is no
longer a market for all the meat, processors
say. As a result, the USDA will buy $6 million
in surplus ground bison this year, one
quarter of the industry’s ground meat production.
The biggest beneficiary of the purchases
likely would be billionaire Ted Turner,
the industry’s largest producer and most
prominent proponent.”
Turner owns about 17,000 of the
estimated 250,000 bison in the U.S.

Chicken stuff

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1999:

Joseph Kia, 44, and his son Josiah
Kia Jr., 23, both of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii,
were charged on May 13 with allegedly kidnapping,
threatening, robbing, and beating at gunpoint
two other men in a dispute over a cockfight.
Four alleged accomplices were at large.
The Louisiana Senate Agriculture
Committee on May 18 killed a bill by state senator
Paulette Irons (D-New Orleans) which would
have banned the use of sharpened gaffs tied to
cocks’ feet in cockfighting. Cockfighters testified
that the gaffs are humane because they allow the
birds to kill each other faster.

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Malaysian pig crisis waning

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

KUALA LUMPUR––The previously
unidentified Hendra-like virus
ravaging the Malaysian pig industry for
the past six months was on April 10,
1999 formally named the Nipah virus,
after the village of Baru Sungai Nipah in
Negri Sembilan, the district where it was
first isolated by virologist Chan Kaw
Bing, MD.
The Hendra virus was named
after Hendra, Australia, where a similar
disease killed 15 horses and three humans
who worked with horses in 1994.

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Pigs blamed for Malaysian crisis

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

KUALA LUMPUR––The ongoing
Asian fiscal crisis, global pork price collapse,
and panic in Malaysia over lethal disease outbreaks
might matter least to the pigs taking
the brunt of the human terror. Come good
times or bad for humans, pigs get killed.
As March ended, nearly 3,000
Malaysian troops shot or gassed pigs in ditches,
in districts where as many as 900 farmers
allegedly left the animals to starve or roam.
Eleven thousand villagers were
evacuated before the shooting began.
One million pigs were to be killed
by April 1, but the massacre reportedly
progessed at a fraction of the intended speed
due to pigs putting up frantic resistance.

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USDA considers calling birds “animals”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The USDA
on January 28 announced that it will take
comments until March 29, 1999 on a petition
from United Poultry Concerns to amend the
definition of “animal” in the Animal Welfare
Act enforcement regulations to remove the
current exclusion of birds, rats, and mice.
“A short letter is fine,” commented
UPC founder and president Karen Davis,
“but the important thing is that the USDA
hears from the public that we want birds,
rats, and mice to be included in the AWA
regulations.”
The opening of the comment period
marks the farthest advance yet toward removing
the exclusion, made initially because
animal experimenters claimed the cost of
complying with AWA regulations in handling
birds, rats, and mice would be prohibitive.

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REVIEWS: A Cow At My Table

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

A Cow At My Table
Directed and edited by Jennifer Abbott
Flying Eye Productions
(Denman Place Postal Outlet, POB 47053
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6G 3E1), 1998. 90 minutes. $35/Canadian, $30/U.S

 

Billed as “a feature documentary
about culture, meat and animals,” A Cow At
My Table is an idiosyncratic and often refreshingly
unpredictable mix of interviews,
excerpts from agriculture industry teachingand-training
films, early 20th century silent
comedies, and undercover videos of abusive
practices mostly made by director/editor
Jennifer Abbott herself.

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Dogs, chickens, monkeys, and China

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

FUZHOU, China––“An old
Chinese saying, ‘Killing the chicken to scare
the monkey,” may explain the crackdown”
on dissent now underway in China, Melinda
Liu and Russell Watson offered in the
January 11 edition of Newsweek.
“This year brings some anniversaries
that may stir unrest,” they added, citing
the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen
Square massacre, the 40th anniversary of an
unsuccessful Tibetan revolt against Communist
rule, and the 50th anniversary of the
Communist takeover of China itself.
“Killing the chicken to scare the
monkey” may also explain the dog purges
threatened in December in Fuzhou City,
Fujian province, and actually carried out in
Wuhu, Anhui province.

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