A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
LUXEMBOURG–The European General Court on September 14, 2011 ruled that the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, representing Canadian indigenous sealers, lacks standing to challenge the 2010 European Union ban on imports of seal products. The Fur Institute of Canada is reportedly pursuing a similar case, targeting the seal import ban enforcement regulations, while the Canadian government is appealing the ban to the World Trade Organization. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2011:
Editorial feature:
Animal husbandry & the Horn of Africa famine
“In central and western Kenya, farmers have had a bumper crop of plump ears of corn and earthy potatoes. Yet in the north, skeletal children wait for food aid amid a growing emergency,” recounted Katharine Houreld of Associated Press on September 1, 2011.
Altogether, Houreld wrote, 3.75 million Kenyans are at risk of starvation. Another eight million people are at risk in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
BOZEMAN–U.S. District Court Judge Charles Lovell on February
13, 2011 appeared to have doomed 525 bison who were to have been
trucked to slaughter after wandering outside Yellowstone National
Park, rejecting a Buffalo Field Campaign application for an
emergency injunction against the killing. A day later, however,
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer issued an executive order
prohibiting the transport of wild bison through Montana for 90 days.
The order means the bison and any others captured by the
National Park Service after leaving Yellowstone will have to be held
in corrals at Stephens Creek, northwest of Gardiner, until spring.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:
LEXINGTON, Ky.–Plaintiffs including the parents of five
unnamed boys who were allegedly enslaved in Dubai as camel jockeys
filed a class action lawsuit during the second week of September 2007
against Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, brother of the ruler of
Dubai.
The ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bid Rashid al Maktoum, was in
Lexington, Kentucky, to attend the annual Keeneland September
Yearling Sale, where the family has reportedly paid as much as $3
million for highly regarded thoroughbred horses.
The lawsuit alleges that Sheikh Hamdan was complicit in
enslaving as many as 30,000 children during the past 30 years for use
as camel jockeys–a misnomer, since the children, sometimes as
young as four years of age, are tied to the backs of the racing
camels, and have no ability to control them. Many are thrown and
injured, or even killed.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
CAPE TOWN–“We are putting an end, once
and for all, to the reprehensible practice of
canned hunting,” insisted South African
environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk at a
February 20, 2007 press conference in Cape Town.
“South Africa has a long standing
reputation as a global leader on conservation
issues. We cannot allow our achievements to be
undermined by rogue practices such as canned lion
hunting,” van Schalkwyk continued.
Effective on June 1, 2007, van Schalwyk
said, the new regulations will prohibit “hunting
large predators and rhinoceros who are ‘put and
take’ animals–in other words, a captive-bred
animal who is released on a property for the
purpose of hunting within twenty-four months.
Hunting should be about fair chase,” van
Schalkwyk said. “Over the years that got eroded
and now we are trying to re-establish that
principal.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
BOISE–Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on October 25, 2006
joined Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal in asking Idaho Governor Jim
Risch to pursue a legislative ban on hunting captive-bred elk.
“In Montana, we said it’s a bad idea to pen up elk, feed
them oats, and have fat bankers from New York City shoot them with
their heads in a grain bucket,” Schweitzer told Associated Press
writer Christopher Smith.
Risch, whose term will end in January 2007, has said he would
support the legislation that Schweitzer and Freudenthal requested.
Wrote Smith, “The two major party candidates running for Idaho
governor, Republican Representative C.L. “Butch” Otter and Democrat
Jerry Brady, have said they would sign legislation prohibiting
domestic elk businesses.”
Risch on September 7 signed an executive order decreeing the
“immediate destruction” of about 160 captive-bred elk who escaped in
August from a private hunting ranch operated by Rex Rammel, DVM, of
Ashton.
“While special hunts by state agents and the public killed 33
of the escaped elk,” along with seven wild elk found among them,
“Idaho Fish and Game biologists believe the domesticated animals have
already crossbred with wild herds,” wrote Smith. “Elk farming and
‘shooter bull’ hunting are banned in Wyoming and Montana.” The
Wyoming ban was adopted in the 1970s. The Montana voters approved a
ban in 2000. Idaho, however, has 78 elk farms and 14 penned
hunting camps, according to Associated Press.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
Utah Animal Rights Coalition members Aaron Lee and Peter
Tucker in early February 2005 received from Salt Lake County $500
each, $500 for UARC, and $10,000 in legal fees and court costs, in
settlement of a lawsuit alleging that their civil rights were
violated when sheriff’s deputy Sherida Holgate told them on December
7 that they could not protest within a block of a public concert
hall. The settlement allowed UARC to amend the case to challenge an
ordinance requiring a permit and 30-day notice to demonstrate on
public property.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:
A photograph of U.S. Army Private First Class Lynndie
England, 21, dragging a naked Iraqi military prisoner on a dog
leash emerged early during the investigation of abuses to prisoners
by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The photo, part
of a sequence featuring England mistreating naked Iraqi men, could
scarcely have been more illustrative of how the standard treatment of
dogs in a society tends to set the floor for the treatment of humans.
While the standard for the treatment of dogs in the U.S. is
still low, it does exist. The legal definitions of abuse in many
states remain weak, and the definitions of neglect are often weaker,
but the federal Animal Welfare Act and the anti-cruelty laws of all
50 states specifically set some limits on what may be done to a dog.
For the most part, the U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib who have
been disciplined for mistreating prisoners were accused of doing
things that they could have done to dogs with impunity. Only seven
guards who allegedly went beyond what could be done to dogs were
criminally charged during the preliminary investigation.
Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek of the U.S. Army Office of
the Inspector General on July 23 disclosed 94 additional cases of
abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including 39 deaths of
which 20 were homicides. Criminal charges are anticipated in
connection with these cases.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:
The 350,000 baby harp seals who were clubbed or shot and
often skinned alive on the ice floes off eastern Canada this spring
had more in common with the thousands of bull calves who were
abandoned at temples in India during the same weeks than just being
days-old mammals subjected to unconscionable mistreatment.
Unlike the much smaller numbers of seals who were killed off
Russia, Norway, and Finland, and unlike the somewhat smaller
numbers of bull calves who were shoved into veal crates here in the
U.S., Canadian harp seal pups and Indian surplus bull calves are
victims not only of human economic exploitation, but also of their
roles as icons and idols.
The words “icon” and “idol” have a common origin in the
ancient Greek word that means “image.” Yet they mean such different
things–and have for so long–that two of the Judaic Ten
Commandments, about setting no other God before the One God and not
worshipping graven images, sternly address the difference.
An icon is a physical image representative of a holy concept,
usually but not always depicting a person who is believed to have
exemplified the concept in the conduct of his or her life. Icons may
also depict animals, abstract symbols, supernatural beings, or
deities. A icon may be venerated for being symbolic of the holy
concept, but to venerate it for its own sake is considered idolatry,
and therefore wrong in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths,
as well as in some branches of other major religions.