U.K. vegan infant death case

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

SHEFFIELD, U.K.– – David
Low, 37, of Wortley, England, was
acquitted of cruelty to a child on February
6 when Sheffield Crown Court Judge
Michael Walker ruled that Low “is a gentle
and caring man,” and directed the jury
to declare him not guilty of causing the
October 1995 death of his son Ki Beau,
age four months, by placing the child on a
diet of soy milk and black currant juice.
Walker noted that Ki Beau suffered
from a virus often associated with
crib death. Prosecutor Jeremy Baker
brought the cruelty charge rather than a
manslaughter charge, he told the court,
because he could not actually establish
that the vegan diet caused the death.

Murder by dog

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

JUNCTION CITY, Kansas––A
jury in Geary County, Kansas, on January
23 convicted Sabine Davidson, 27, of
unintentional second degree murder and
endangering the life of a child for allowing
three Rottweilers to run loose. The dogs on
April 24, 1997, killed Christopher Wilson,
age 11, as he awaited a school bus with his
brother Trammell, age 9, who escaped.
Testimony by Davidson’s daughter
Victoria, age 8, established that
Davidson claimed the dogs were harmless
even after they killed Wilson. Well before
that attack, another witness testified,
Victoria complained that the dogs were
mean and that one had attacked her sister.

COURT CALENDAR

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

Shot dead on January 24 at an
illegal cockfight in Sunnyside, Washington,
Jesus Brambila, 29, of Yakima,
was apparently one of about a dozen armed
robbers, including his three brothers, who
tied up and beat around 20 other attendees,
Yakima County sheriff’s investigators said
on January 30. Brambila was killed, theorized
detective Robert Weedin, when
another robber’s shotgun discharged accidentally.
Several similar robberies had
occurred locally during the preceding 60
days, Weedin said, giving no further
details. The probe of Brambila’s death
apparently was not linked to the January 31
arrest of 39 people, mostly Philippine
Canadians, and confiscation of 72 cocks
plus cockfighting gear at Burnaby, British
Columbia, four hours north by car.

PETA faction loses NEAVS custody verdict

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

BOSTON––Margaret Hinkle,
Justice of the Superior Court for Suffolk
County, Massachusetts, ruled on January
22 that People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals cofounders Alex Pacheco and
Ingrid Newkirk, Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine founder and president
Neal Barnard, Bosack & Kruger
Foundation executive director Scott Van
Valkenburg, and fellow New England
Anti-Vivisection Society trustees Merry
Caplan and Tina Brackenbush all “breached
their fiduciary duties” to NEAVS in 1996
by “failing to allow Theo Capaldo to stand
for election as the duly nominated sole candidate
for president” of NEAVS at the 1996
annual meeting; removing Fund for
Animals president Cleveland Amory from
his dual role as NEAVS president “without
cause”; and “delegating to the executive
committee,” which they created, “excessive
powers and authority.”

In America cruelty is “culture.” Kindness may be “crime.”

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––Hidden cameras have
caught live animal vendors at Asian-style markets
countless times in atrocities––not just in San Francisco,
where the markets are a heated public issue, but in virtually
every U.S. and Canadian city with a Chinatown.
The alleged offenses only begin with selling
the animals alive to assure buyers that the meat is fresh.
Reported the San Francisco SPCA to the California Fish
and Game Commission on January 23, 1998, “Frogs
are typically piled in large containers or confined in
wire cages without food or water. We have seen containers
we estimated held over 100 frogs, piled several
layers deep. Injured, bloodied, and dead frogs, some
with their sides split open, were plainly visible. We
have also witnessed turtles having their shells sliced
from their bodies while fully alive and being hacked and
pounded repeatedly with dull knives before being
decapitated. At one market, our investigator found a
turtle still moving with its carapace cut open and its
internal organs displayed in full view of shoppers.”

TROUBLE AT HSUS-SPONSORED SANCTUARY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI– –ANIMAL PEOPLE learned at press time
that the scheduled January 2 hearing of a legal action seeking to
remove Deanna Krantz of Global Communications for Conservation
from the management of the Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society was
delayed to February.
NAWS, a 52-acre facility in the Nilgiri Hills region of
southern India, a popular vacation area, was founded in 1954 by
Dorothy Dean, an English immigrant, and run after her death for
some years by an Australian couple. After they retired, Krantz,
wife of Humane Society of the U.S. vice president Michael Fox,
assumed direction of NAWS in 1996. She apparently received
funding from the Dean estate, the GCC-India Project for Nature,
and Humane Society International, an HSUS subsidiary. Warmly
welcomed by Indian animal rights activists and prominent Jains,
Krantz issued glowing reports about her improvements of facilities
and animal rescues, and her work was profiled–– from afar––by at
least two U.S. animal protection publications. When she ran into
trouble with local people, including a March 1997 physical altercation
with a female neighbor, she claimed it was over her opposition
to cruelty. When major Indian humane societies investigated,

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.

COURT CALENDAR

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Huntingdon drops PETA suit
Huntingdon Laboratories in mid-December dropped a
federal suit against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
and undercover investigator Michele Rokke, 31, who after four
years of undercover work has reportedly left PETA and returned
home to Minnesota. In early July 1997, PETA disclosed videotape
Rokke took of alleged abuse of monkeys during tests performed at
a Huntingdon facility in New Jersey under contract to Procter &
G a m b l e. P&G immediately suspended and later discontinued all
dealings with Huntingdon. The videotape came from about 50
hours of clandestine taping that Rokke did while working as a
Huntingdon animal care technician. Rokke had also taken copies
of as many as 8,000 pages of documents. Huntingdon charged
about two weeks after the PETA disclosed the alleged abuses that
Rokke had violated a confidentiality clause she signed when she
was hired, suing under a law that would have allowed the firm to
collect triple damages if successful in prosecuting the case.

THE SIERRA CLUB SUES AND IS SUED

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Suing under the National Wildlife Refuge
Improvement Act, signed into law by President Bill
Clinton in October 1997, the National Audubon
Society and Sierra Club head a coalition asking a
federal judge in Sacramento, California, to restrict
irrigation, row cropping, and pesticide use on farms
located within the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake
refuges south of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The refuges
host millions of birds each spring and fall, midway on
their migrations from Mexico to Canada and back.
Bluebird Systems, a computer software
company based in Carlsbad, California, has sued the
Sierra Club, alleging negligence, fraud, conspiracy,
and breach of contract. The suit claims former
Bluebird employee Dan Anderson, also sued, ran
the Sierra Club official web site from Bluebird computers
for more than two years without authorization.

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