LAND O’ THE FIRST GREENS

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

DUBLIN––Legend has it that the
only animals ever feared and hated in Ireland
were snakes and wolves. St. Patrick so thoroughly
rousted the snakes, between 440 and
450 A.D., that not even fossils remain to
show they were ever there. Wolves were
extirpated––officially––in the 19th century,
but occasional sightings, probably of escaped
wolf hybrids, are still reported.
Legend also has it, though ANIMAL
PEOPLE hasn’t found confirmation,
that an ancient Gaelic law ordained that farmers
must feed their beasts or release them,
perhaps the earliest humane law, if it really
existed, in any part of Europe.

RELIGION & ANIMALS

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Brigitte Bardot, 62, renowned as a film
star but working fulltime for more than twice as long
in animal protection, went to trial on December 18
for allegedly inciting ethnic bias by attacking amateur
sheep slaughter by Moslem immigrants to France in
commemoration of Eid al-Adha, the holiday marking
the end of the month in which pilgrimages are made
to Mecca. Chief defense witness is expected to be
Leila El Fourgi, president of the Tunisia SPA.
“Perhaps the spirit of God that breathed
forth life into the Earth was a lower animal,”
Cardinal John O’Connor told the devout in a
November 24 sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in
New York City, following up on Pope John Paul II’s
October declaration that the theory of evolution is
“more than just a hypothesis.” Both the Pope and the
Cardinal stopped short, however, of suggesting that
animals share with humans the dimensions of a soul.

Egg farms fined

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

PORTLAND––A team of prominent
Maine business executives on November
7 abandoned efforts to fix employee living and
working conditions at DeCoster Egg Farms,
near Portland, complaining of noncooperation
by owner Austin “Jack” DeCoster, who faces
Labor Department fines of up to $3.6 million
for violations of housing, safety, and sanitation
standards. The Labor Department separately
sued DeCoster on October 20, seeking
unpaid back wages owed to approximately
100 workers. Five days later, Iowa Labor
Commissioner Byron Orton announced fines
of $489,950 against DeCoster for safety violations
at a satellite egg facility. DeCoster is the
world’s top brown eggs producer.

Feds indict veal kingpins for banned drug

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

MILWAUKEE––More than seven
years after the Food and Drug Administration
was first tipped that major U.S. veal producers
were illegally importing and using the banned
synthetic steroid clenbuterol to make calves
gain weight faster, federal indictments and
extradition papers were issued on November
22 against Gerard Hoogendijk, owner of the
Dutch agricultural pharmaceuticals firm Pricor
BV; Gerald L. Travis of Withee, Wisconsin,
owner of Travis Calf Milk Inc. in Neillsville,
Wisconsin; and Jan and Hennie Van Den
Hengel, owners of VIV Inc., a veal farm in
Springville, Pennsyvlania.
The indictments came four days
before John Doppenberg, president of Vitek
Inc., a Pricor subsidiary, was to be sentenced
on a June conviction for conspiracy, smuggling,
and selling unapproved animal drugs.

North Carolina maintains lead in pig poop

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

RALEIGH–Babe star James
Cromwell on November 12 asked to North
Carolina governor Jim Hunt to halt the construction
of yet another mega-hog farm in the
state, already the national leader in both pork
production and pollution from hog waste.
“No one has to be a vegetarian like
me to be repulsed by the suffering these animals
will endure, packed tightly indoors,
never seeing sunlight or feeling cool mud
beneath their feet,” Cromwell wrote.
Eight days earlier, the Hunt administration
relaxed pollution rules to let hog
farmers plagued by overflowing manure storage
tanks and rain-saturated fields pump more
slurry out onto the land, despite the likelihood
the slurry will contaminate waterways.

Did USDA inspector take bribe?

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

In Defense of Animals on
October 21 published on the Internet an
alleged October 17 USDA internal
memo from Patrick Collins, acting
director for legislative and public
affairs, stating that, “An Animal Care
Inspector is currently under investigation
by the FBI for allegedly soliciting a
bribe. A licensed Class A animal dealer
in Missouri reported to the FBI that
she’d been approached by an Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service
employee regarding inspection. The
FBI arranged for agents to videotape the
transaction.”

Live food fight

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

SAN FRANCSICO––The San
Francisco Animal Control and Welfare
Commission on October 17 again
delayed action on a proposal to ban the
sale of live animals as food. The proposal,
bitterly fought by Chinatown vendors,
will come up again November 14.
“St. Francis must be whirling
in his grave,” commented Action for
Animals founder Eric Mills. “In recent
weeks I have visited the live food markets
and have seen turtles gutted while
fully conscious; fish scaled alive; chickens,
ducks, and doves crammed in stifling
crates; and turtles and frogs piled
three and five deep, often with no water
whatever. Most of these markets are illegal
now. The Retail Food Facilities Law
states, ‘No live animal, bird, or fowl
shall be kept or allowed in any food
facility.’ Why is this not enforced?

Animal health

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Illegal use of farm pesticides on farmland
south of the Salton Sea, 120 miles east of San Diego,
brought a major fish kill in late August. Botulism from
the rotting fish soon contaminated the shallow lake,
which was created by a 1905 engineering accident during
an attempted irrigation diversion from the Colorado
River, and as of October 24 had killed more than
13,000 migratory birds––including more than 1,000
endangered brown pelicans. At that, the bird losses
were less than 10% as great as the toll in 1992, when an
estimated 150,000 grebes were poisoned by a build-up
of selenium and salt. Formerly attracting 500,000 visitors
a year, the Salton Sea now draws just half as many.

BSE bought and sold

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

DUBLIN––While the British cattle industry
as a whole is in economic distress due to the loss of
markets caused by the BSE scare, Irish Times agricultural
correspondent Sean MacConnell reported on
October 14 that, “A gang of con men from Northern
Ireland is offering farmers in the Irish Republic a substance
which the men claim will induce BSE in cattle
for sums of over £5,000. Some farmers in financial
difficulty seek diseased animals to claim the very generous
BSE compensation paid by the state,”
McConnell explained.
A week later, McConnell published an official
denial by the Irish Department of Agriculture of a
report in another paper about a similar scheme, then
added, “The emphatic denial conceals a number of
concerns its staff have about levels of compensation
paid to farmers who produce diseased animals. Unlike
in the U.K., where only the infected animal is
destroyed, in the Republic all animals in a herd where
a case has been detected are destroyed. The farmer is
paid the market value of all the animals in the herd.”

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