Logging & grazing

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––The 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals just before Christmas lifted injunction
it imposed in July aganst logging on 13 National
Forest tracts in northern Arizona and three in New
Mexico, and allowed grazing to resume on 715 leaseholds
that Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity alleged were illegally administrated.
Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity argued that the logging and grazing
could harm endangered, threatened, and otherwise
protected species, including the Mexican spotted owl
and northern goshawk. The July injunction had temporarily
voided 177 of the 202 grazing leases in the
Coronado National Forest. But it didn’t end the issue:
as the 9th Circuit verdict was imminent, Forest
Guardians on December 12 filed another suit, seeking
to remove about 10,000 cattle from National Forests
alongside four rivers in Arizona and three rivers in
New Mexico, on grounds they may harm 18 endangered
species.

Butchers, pig poop, & truth in advertising

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Confederation Francaise de la
Boucherie, a Paris-based 22,000-member
union of butchers, objects to “massacres,
shootings, and throat-cuttings which crop up
in the news described as butchery,” such as
the Ramadan killings of more than 400
women and children in Algeria. A butcher’s
role, the butchers claimed, “evokes peace
and fraternity. He is not an executioner or a
torturer. He is an artisan, in love with his
trade.” Alleged Islamic militants used almost
the same killing methods on the Ramadan victims––and
thousands of others since 1992––as
are used to kill sheep at Ramadan, an Islamic
festival, for fast-ending meals.

Avian flu panic has Hong Kong bureaucrats choking chickens

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

HONG KONG––The Hong Kong
Directorate of Education on January 6 advised
teachers and principals at more than 2,000
kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary
schools to watch for signs of emotional distress
in children who witnessed the panic-stricken
first-days-of-the-year massacre of more than 1.5
million chickens and other domestic fowl, and
to refer traumatized youngsters to counsellors.
“Try to help them express their feelings
and listen with empathy,” the bulletin said.
Explained senior Hong Kong education
officer Tony Fat-yuen to Shirley Kwok of
the South China Morning Post, “They have
been taught to love animals and birds, but now
the government slaughters all the chickens,
some their pets.”

Ahimsa won’t be cowed

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BOMBAY, JAIPUR, DELHI, JALGAON,
AGRA––We missed the fleeting chance to snap a photo, as
our driver sped through an intersection almost in the shadow of
the Taj Mahal, but won’t forget the sight of a huge Brahma
bull placidly chewing his cud amid the blaring horns of heavy
traffic, dodging around him.
We took the November edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
to India with us. An article in it described how Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi has repeatedly
captured on video the use of electroshocking devices by rodeo
stock contractors to make Brahma bulls buck.
We expected the revelation of bull abuse in rodeo to
shock our Indian hosts, but we didn’t expect to meet the difficulty
we did in even explaining what rodeo is. The idea that
adults of normal intelligence and sensibility might try to ride a
bull was foreign enough; the idea that others might pay to
watch the effort, over and over, stretched credulity.

It’s not tar that North Carolina factory farm heels are tracking

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

HENDERSONVILLE,
N.C.––Dumping manure into Mud
Creek for more than seven years and
ignoring a September 1996 clean-up
order, dairy farmers James Sexton
Jr. and Charles E. Sexton on
November 11 drew 30 days in jail
each for contempt.
Superior Court Judge
James Downs said they would be
released as soon as a new manurehandling
system is in place and certified
by the North Carolina Soil and
Water Conservation District.
That meant the Sextons
would actually serve about two
weeks, James Sexton said, alleging
unfair treatment. Just before their
sentencing, the Sextons had temporarily
removed their cattle from
the property, dug a two-acre cess
lagoon, and ordered $32,000 worth
of sewage separation equipment.

Biotech head-trips

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

LONDON––British journals and
news media in late October and early
November 1997 disclosed either the promises
of eternal life and meat without suffering,
or the separation of soul from body by latterday
Dr. Frankensteins––or maybe all three at
once, some commentators ventured.
But as Halloween came and went,
announcements of successful headless
cloning experiments and behavior-changing
brain tissue transplants generated surprisingly
little of the excitement that accompanied the
February 23 announcement of the first successful
cloning of a mammal from adult cells,
a ewe named Dolly, born at the Roslin
Institute in Scotland.

COURT CALENDAR

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

Activism
Defended by attorney Richard Halpern, Mike
Durschmidt of Chicago on October 16 became one of the
few animal rights protesters ever to win aquittal with a
“necessity” defense, in which the defendant contends it was
necessary to break a law to prevent a greater harm from
occurring. A Lake County Circuit Court jury agreed that
Durschmidt was justified in lying down in the ring at the
1996 Wauconda Rodeo to prevent children from racing on
the backs of sheep, and was therefore not guilty of trespass,
but did convict Durschmidt of resisting arrest for not leaving
at police direction. Sentencing was deferred.
Acquitted by a lower court, Brigitte Bardot
was convicted on appeal on October 9 of inciting racial
hatred in a 1996 newspaper column for complaining of
alleged “foreign overpopulation” in France at the same time
she denounced lamb slaughter in connection with the E i d
a l – A d h a Islamic religious holidays as “torture” and “most
atrocious pagan sacrifice.” Bardot was fined $1,600 and
was ordered to pay a symbolic 20¢ to the Movement
Against Racism and for the Friendship of People, which
pursued her prosecution.

But chickens can’t “chicken out”

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

OTTAWA––Video artist Rob
Thompson, 40, on October 8 chose Eric
Wolf, 24, and Pamela Meldrum, 27, from
Aylmer, Quebec, from among 80 applicants
to spend the week of October 26-November 1
in a refrigerator-sized cage under conditions
replicating those of factory-farmed chickens.
Meldrum and Wolf will each be paid
$2,500. They will be allowed to eat only a
vegetarian mash, drink only from a hose, and
wear only long underwear, socks, shoes, and
a knit cap. They will have no amusements,
and no bathing facilities, but will enjoy a
chemical toilet and solid floor instead of having
to defecate through a wire floor.

Ranchers want taxpayers to keep them in clover

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt has asked President
Bill Clinton to veto a “grazing reform” bill that
House Agriculture Committee chair Bob Smith
(R-Oregon) sent to the House on September
24––if it clears Congress.
Wilderness Society lobbyist Fran
Hunt said the Smith bill “would lock in a new
subsidized grazing fee for livestock operators
on public lands, “ at about a third the federal
cost of land maintenance; “enact new hurdles
that would make it even more difficult for the
Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management
to protect and restore public rangeland”;
“limit public participation in federal decisionmaking”;
“hamper the ability of concerned
groups and individuals to appeal unsound federal
grazing decisions”; and “undercut the
multiple use management and conservation of
the National Grasslands by removing them
from the National Forest system.”

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