COURT CALENDAR

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Activism

Forty-two activists who were

arrested at the 1992 Hegins Labor Day

pigeon shoot on July 15 sued 16 employ-

ees and officials of Schuykill County,

Pennsylvania, who allegedly subjected

them to illegal strip-searches. The plain-

tiffs include PETA cofounders Alex

Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk, who claims

male guards were able to see her nude

through an open door. The suit parallels

one filed by nine female activists who won

a similar case after the 1991 Hegins shoot.

U.S. judge Franklin S, Van Antwerpen

ruled last September in that case that the

Schuykill county strip-searching policy

was unconstitutional.

Killing for the hell of it

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

A federal anti-hunter harassment statute

tucked into the Crime Bill is likely to stay there––and

pass––as the Clinton administration strives to get

around National Rifle Association opposition to the

Crime Bill as a whole, which would ban 19 types of

assault rifle. The NRA on August 10 claimed credit

for temporarily defeating the Crime Bill on a proce-

dural vote in the House of Representatives.

The Senate version of the California

Desert Protection Act, passed in April, would cre-

ate an East Mojave National Park between the Joshua

Tree and Death Valley National Monuments, which

are to be upgraded to National Park status––meaning

a ban on hunting. However, in a move of symbolic

import to the NRA, the House version passed on July

27 downgrades East Mojave to the status of a

National Preserve, to allow hunting. National Park

Service director Roger Kennedy pointed out that

because preserves require more staff than parks, the

House version will cost $500,000 more per year to

run. Since hunters kill an average of only 26 deer and

five bighorn sheep per year in East Mojave, Kennedy

said, this amounts to “a subsidy of $20,000 per deer.”

A House/Senate conference committee must reconcile

the conflicting versions before the bill goes back to

both the Senate and House for final passage.

Woofs and growls

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy (not!)

U.S. Surgical Corporation chairman Leon Hirsch, 67, was

sued on June 16 by his former housekeeper, Gizella Biro, 40, for alleged-

ly keeping her in virtual sexual slavery from November 1989 until May of

this year. Hirsch is noted in animal protection circles for funding pro-vivi-

section groups and for having purportedly set up an alleged assassination

attempt on himself in 1988 to discredit antivivisectionists. Biro’s husband

of 20 years, former U.S. Surgical groundskeeper Denis Sebastian, made

similar allegations to acquaintances during his divorce from Biro in 1990,

while Biro formally charged Sebastian with sexual abuse. According to

Biro, a Romanian immigrant who lived next door to Hirsch in a million-

dollar mansion that Hirsch provided, and drove cars furnished by Hirsch,

she was forced abouty once a week to have non-consensual sex with Hirsch

and sometimes his wife, U.S. Surgical executive vice president Turi

Josefson, as well as with other women. Biro further alleged that Hirsch

sexually asaulted her two daughters, whose education Hirsch paid for,

along with her friend and fellow former housekeeper, Eva Kale, whom

Biro invited to join the staff. Kale is reportedly preparing a similar suit.

Biro is asking $21 million to drop her charges, all of which Hirsch denies.

What “humane trap” standards share with military intelligence

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The International Standards

Organization technical panel appointed to

define the “humane” trapping standards that

must be met by nations exporting furs into the

European Community met in Ottawa in mid-

February to ratify proposals that World

Society for the Protection of Animals cam-

paigns director Wim de Kok fears “will possi-

bly circumvent the hardfought regulation that

prohibits the use of the leghold trap in the EC

and the import of fur from countries that do

not have such a ban. Under the new General

Agreement on Trade and Tariffs,” de Kok

continued, “the ISO is the regulating body on

standardization. Many countries may be

forced to accept low animal welfare standards

or to allow the import of fur from countries

that do not ban leghold traps. Under the ISO

standards, traps which drown their victims

would be considered humane,” although no

major veterinary organization or humane

group considers drowning a humane method

of either euthanizing or slaughtering animals.

Killing wildlife for fun & profit

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Austrian scientist Dr. Martin

Balluch, now at Cambridge University,

reportedly may be deported from Britain

because he opposes fox hunting. Letters of

protest may be sent to the Right Honorable

Michael Howard, Home Secretary, Home

Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London

SW1H 9AT, United Kingdom.

The winter of 1993-1994 was

among the harshest on record, forcing deer

to yard up sooner and stay yarded longer––but

early field reports indicate that few deer

starved despite hunters’ claims of deer over-

population. Wild turkeys were hard-hit, how-

eve––and may decline, warns National Wild

Turkey Federation representative Tom Baptie

of Castleton, Vermont, because undigested

grain from cow manure is a staple of their

winter diet, but anti-pollution laws now

restrict where and when manure can be spread.

Fur

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The Animal Welfare Institute, the World Society

for the Protection of Animals, and the Nordic Animal

Welfare Council won an upset victory on February 11 at the

International Standards Organization Technical Committee 191

meeting held in Ottawa when the committee voted to delete the

word “humane” from the description of the standards the com-

mittee is developing for submission to the European

Community. If the word “humane” had been used, the effect

might have been to circumvent the EC ban on the import of furs

trapped by inhumane methods, including the leghold trap. The

committee also agreed to admit representatives from the

American SPCA and Humane Society of the U.S.; AWI had

been the only animal protection group included in the trapper-

dominated U.S. delegation. ANIMAL PEOPLE regrets that

this information was inexplicably received nearly two months

after our March issue went to press.

Fur

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Canadian environment minister Sheila Copps,

whose gracelessness earned her the nickname “Leader of

the rat pack” during her years as a Parliamentary back-

bencher, disrupted a meeting of top environmental offi-

cials from the seven major Western industrialized nations

on March 12 by denouncing the European Community ban

on seal pelt imports, the pending EC ban on imports of

pelts trapped by cruel methods, and opposition to the cur-

rent Canadian seal hunt. Copps claimed an alleged popula-

tion explosion of seals is causing the collapse of the

Atlantic Canada fishing industry, despite strong biological

evidence that seals do not eat many fish of the most com-

mercially valued species.

Klein quits fur

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Designer Calvin Klein announced

February 11 that his firm had not renewed a

labeling agreement with Alixandre Furs of

New York City, which expired at the end of

January, and would no longer be involved in

the fur trade. Klein followed the examples of

other top designers including Georgio

Armani, Bill Blass, and Carolyn Herrera.

He said a PETA protest at his office on

January 25 had nothing to do with his deci-

sion, which was reached in November 1993,

“Unfortunately,” he stated, “PETA was not

aware of our previous decision,” although it

was widely rumored in the garment trade.

PETA nonetheless claimed a victory, seek-

ing to offset the embarrassment suffered in

New York gossip columns after model

Christy Turlington proclaimed that she’d

rather wear nothing than fur––just a month

after she appeared in a fur ad in the

November issue of the Paris edition of

Vogue. Memories linger of actress Kathleen

Turner admitting at the PETA inaugural ball

in January 1993 that she wears fur, but not of

endangered species (which would be illegal

to buy in the first place).

Fur

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

While the ISO moved to accept

padded leghold traps as “humane,” a

Massachusetts judge ruled they are not on

December 27, 1993, overturning a 1989 rul-

ing by the state Division of Fisheries and

Wildlife that padded traps were not banned by

the state law that banned steel-jawed leghold

traps in 1974. “It is apparent from the opera-

tion of the Woodstream ‘soft-catch’ trap,”

Suffolk Superior Court judge Patrick King

wrote, “that it will cause injury to many ani-

mals.”

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