Fur shorts (& folks who might wear them)

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

FAVORING RABIES
Interviewed in July 1998 b y
Paul Overeiner of the Jackson (Michigan)
Citizen-Patriot, Michigan State
University chief wildlife biologist J o e
Johnson called a proposal to use the oral
anti-rabies vaccine Raboral to keep rabies
out of the Ohio raccoon population
“Obscene,” because “what you’d get is a
raccoon immune from rabies. I assume
rabies is a natural population control for
them,” Johnson added.
The mid-Atlantic raccoon rabies
pandemic, now threatening eastern Ohio,
began in 1976, when a West Virginia
coonhunting club tried to rebuild the local
population by releasing 3,500 raccoons
who were live-trapped in a part of Florida
where rabies had been endemic for 40
years. Hunters and trappers killed more
than 500,000 raccoons a year during the
next 10 years without slowing the spread
of rabies northward––but Raboral has contained
it wherever used.

Fur & Skin

Editorial: How to help animals in China

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

ANIMAL PEOPLE has received many heartfelt appeals for a boycott of all goods
from China and/or all tourism to China, in response to the recent Humane Society of the U.S.
disclosures pertaining to the use of dog and cat fur by some Chinese garment makers, whose
customers include U.S. retailers.
The dog and cat fur traffic was overdue for exposure, HSUS is to be commended
for doing it, and expressions of outrage are also in order.
But a broad boycott of China would be unfair, ineffective, and self-defeating. The
dog and cat fur traffic is not uniquely Chinese; neither is China the largest supplier. The
largest supplier, our files indicate, is Russia, along with other nations formerly belonging to
the USSR, where animals killed by city pounds have been pelted and the pelts sold since
Czarist times. As ANIMAL PEOPLE has reported, the killing and pelting is often done by
prisoners. The proceeds underwrite both the animal control agencies, such as they are, and
the prisons. Neither have ever approached internationally accepted humane standards.

Even scavengers reject pelts

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

NORTH BAY, Ontario; WASHINGTON
D.C.––Fur industry bravado about
making a comeback was cut short on December
14 at the North Bay Fur Harvesters auction in
North Bay, Ontario. The first major North
American pelt sale of the year offered the pelts
of 167,107 wild animals––but sold just 23%, a
record poor showing.
A day preceding public disclosure
that the Humane Society of the U.S. had caught
the Burlington Coat Factory chain selling garments
trimmed with dog fur, none of the
world’s major fur buyers felt confident enough
about the longterm prospects of the industry to
scoop up pelts that almost couldn’t be given
away, and warehouse them in speculation.
Even when fur sales were in free fall
during the late 1980s and early 1990s, North
Bay auctions usually sold 95%-100% of often
much larger consignments.

Fur farm raids, indictments, conviction

October 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

MADISON, Wisconsin ––Peter D. Young, 20, of Mercer Island, Washington, and Justin C. Samuel, 19, of Snohomish, Washington, were on September 22 indicted on six counts of engaging in anti-animal enter- prise terrorism and extortion, for allegedly releasing mink from four Wisconsin fur farms between October 24 and October 27, 1997, and allegedly attempting to use the threat of further releases to coerce fur farmers into quit- ting the business.

The indictment charges that Young and Samuel, both at large, caused a $200,000 loss to the Smieja Fur Farm of Independence, Wisconson, forcing it to cease operations.

ALF & fur

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

British junior agriculture minister
Elliot Morley told the House of
Commons in July that he intended to introduce
legislation to close the 15 remaining
mink farms in Britain, but remembering the
Labor government’s failure to promptly pass
a ban on fox hunting, promised during the
1997 election campaign, Animal Liberation
Front members released as many as 6,000
mink from the Crow Hill Fur Farm i n
Hampshire on August 8, touching off mayhem.
About 500 were soon caught, still on
the premises, and others reportedly returned
within a few days, seeking food, but others
invaded the nearby New Forest Preserve,
devastating native wildlife and also killing a
caged owl and kestrel at the New Forest Owl
Sanctuary. Another 2,000 mink were shot or
trapped by a 20-member Ministry of
Agriculture hit squad during the next few
days, but as of August 13 at least 2,000 more

White House kills EU fur ban

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BRUSSELS––Hope that the European Union would finally enforce
a ban promised since 1991 on imports of furs possibly taken by leghold trapping
died on December 1, 1997, when 12 hours after the EU threatened to
impose the ban against U.S. wild-caught furs within a week, it accepted a
non-binding deal that allows continued imports of leghold-trapped furs for at
least six more years while individual states set their own schedules for phasing
out or modifying leghold traps to meet so-called international standards developed
by the trapping industry.
The USDA is meanwhile spending $350,000 this year in experiments
to develop alternative trapping methods. Largely replicative of work
done in Canada for nearly 40 years without finding anything acceptable to
both trappers and humanitarians, the experiments call for trapping at least 186
foxes, 186 coyotes, and 1,080 raccoons.

Fur

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

While the U.S. retail fur trade again ballyhoos an alleged comeback,
just four fur garments appeared in the 120 pages of ads and editorial matter making
up the fall 1997 edition of Fashions of the Times, a supplement to The New York
Times. Leather wasn’t very evident, either: leather shoes appeared only six times,
along with 13 depictions of other leather items, mostly handbags.
Marion Stark, New York representative for the Fund for Animals,
asks New York residents to address Governor George Pataki by mid-December to
thank him for helping to create proposed regulations banning trap placement within
100 feet of a path in a public recreation area; state strongly that traps should be
banned for public safety reasons in all parts of public recreation areas, including
aquatic portions; emphasize that so-called nuisance trapping often exascerbates
wildlife/human conflict by encouraging “nuisance” species to raise bigger litters;

EUROPEAN UNION RESCINDS TRAPPED FUR IMPORT BAN

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

BRUSSELS––The European Union General
Affairs Council on July 22 approved agreements with
Canada and Russia on “humane” trapping standards
which as Associated Press put it, “will insure use of the
cruel leghold trap for an indefinite period of time.”
The EU council also asked the European
Commission to strike a similar deal with the U.S., which
holds that it cannot federally supersede state trapping regulations,
and that any international regulation of trapping
violates the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs.
The July 22 deal allows Canada and Russia to
continue the use of steel-jawed leghold traps for another
two to four years, and allows the use of padded leghold
traps for either eight more years or indefinitely, if they
meet as yet unformalized international standards.
For Canada and Russia, the deal nullifies an
EU ban on the import of fur from animals usually caught
by leghold trapping, initially approved in 1991 to take
effect in 1995, but repeatedly postponed by all member
nations but The Netherlands.
Letters opposing further EU concessions to
reach agreement with the U.S. may be sent to the
European Commission, 200 Rue de la Loi, B1049,
Brussels, Belgium; fax 011-322-299-4686.

BOMBING BUSTS FOLLOW BOTCHED MINK FARM RAID

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

VANCOUVER, B.C., SALT
LAKE CITY, Utah––A turning point in
the evolution of animal rights-related direct
action may have come when within days of
the airing of graphic media coverage of the
May 31 botched release of up to 9,600 mink
from a fur farm at Mount Angel, Oregon,
authorities in Vancouver and Salt Lake City
identified suspects in two apparently unrelated
strings of purportedly animal rightsrelated
violence.
Released were as many as 1,600
adult females and 6,000-8,000 kits. An estimated
400 adults and 2,000 kits either died
of exposure, killed each other in fierce territorial
fighting, were apparently trampled
underfoot by the raiders, or were missing
with little chance of survival in habitat
unlikely to sustain their metabolic needs.

« 1 … 6 7 8 9 10 … 15 »