EU adopts transport limit

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

BRUSSELS–The European Parliament on March 30, 2004 endorsed
a nine-hour limit on how long animals may be trucked en route to
slaughter.
“It is now up to the Agriculture Council,” now headed by
Ireland, “to finalize the regulation,” said the Eurogroup for
Animal Welfare in a prepared statement.
The nine-hour recommendation was introduced in July 2003 with
the backing of Eurogroup, a consortium representing numerous leading
animal welfare organizations.
“Compassion in World Farming welcomes today’s vote,”
commented CIWF president Joyce D’Silva. “However CIWF still has
grave concerns about the exclusion of animals destined for further
fattening from this limit and the lack of provision for these animals
to rest off the vehicle.”
The nine-hour limit was approved three weeks after the
European Parliament on March 9 voted 287-194 to include animal
welfare considerations in proposed improvements to the European Union
food safety standards.

Animal Fighting, 1997-2003

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Dogfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 11 24 54 66 75 48 48
Related drugs/homicide 3 9 13 12 16 12 5
People involved 76 136 237 297 282 306 426
Dogs seized 95 365 791 896 869 428 549
Felony convictions 1 2 7 25 18 14 35

Cockfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 10 15 18 19 35 32 32
Related drugs/homicide 0 6 6 3 5 6 5
People involved 350 498 389 874 1508 497 458
Birds seized 725 763 1023 876 7995 3390 4113
Felony convictions 0 0 3 9 0 1 8

Data collected by ANIMAL PEOPLE on dogfighting and
cockfighting arrests during the past seven years offers hope that the
boom in animal fighting of the past two decades may have crested–but
only just barely, and only in response to increasingly effective law
enforcement. The trends indicate a leveling off at somewhat less
than the peak volume of activity, yet still a very high volume
compared to the pre-peak years.

REVIEWS: Prosecuting Animal Cruelty & Illegal Animal Fighting

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Prosecuting Animal Cruelty & Illegal Animal Fighting
AIM Reality Training video
featuring Captain Ken “Beau” Beauregard & Dena Mangiamele, DVM.
(POB 26593, Los Angeles, CA 90026; 213-413-6428;
<help@realitytraining.com>; <www.realitytraining.com>), 2004.
Two hours. Available on DVD disk or in VHS format. Free to law
enforcement agencies and bona fide humane organizations.

The Sheriff’s Department in Newton County, Alabama, during
the last week of January 2004 apprehended 120 suspects in connection
with a dogfight in Covington. This one raid resulted in more arrests
than all dogfighting raids around the U.S. combined did as recently
as 1997.
The Sheriff’s Department in Indian River County, Florida,
during the last week of February 2004 seized 1,500 gamecocks: more
than the total number seized nationally in any year for which
statistics are available prior to 2001.
In the first week of March 2004, Sporting Dog Journal
publisher James Fricchione, 34, was convicted in Goshen, New York,
of six felonies and five misdemeanors for allegedly promoting
dogfights.

Activist “trespassers” fined $1.00 each

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

MUNCIE, Indiana–Apologizing to Ball State University
professor Abel Alves and artist Carol Blakney, his wife, Judge
Wayne Lennington of the Delaware Circuit Court in Muncie, Indiana on
February 24, 2004 fined them each $1.00 for trespassing and released
them without further conditions.
A jury earlier convicted Alves and Blakney of trespassing,
for briefly viewing the Seldom Rest hog farm from a roadside in
October 2002.
“Lennington said he couldn’t call the jury’s decision to
convict ‘despicable.’ But he indicated that is how he felt,” wrote
Seth Stabaugh of the Muncie Star Press.
“Several months before being accused of trespassing,”
Stabaugh explained, “Blakney filed a complaint against Seldom Rest
with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. IDEM accused
[owner] Kaye Whitehead of housing pigs in an unpermitted structure,”
and of allowing manure to pollute a creek. Whitehead corrected the
alleged violations, but is believed to have pursued the trespassing
charges in retaliation.
Whitehead chairs the Delaware County Farm Bureau and the
Delaware County Republican Party. Prosecutor Judy Calhoun is
daughter of a Randolph County farmer and cousin of a Randolph County
Farm Bureau official, Stabaugh wrote.

Court Calendar

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

First Amendment

Officials of the Granite School District in Taylorsville,
Utah agreed on February 3 to pay $82,000 to Utah Legal Clinic
attorneys Brian Bernard and James Harris Jr., in settlement of a
January 2004 ruling by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Salt Lake
City that the school district violated the civil rights of PETA
members by calling police to break up a 1999 demonstration in front
of Eisenhower Junior High School. The PETA members organized the
demonstration after the school hung a banner promoting the McDonald’s
restaurant chain from a flagpole.

Boston Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders on February 20
dismissed 39 charges filed against 12 activists, ages 18-26, who
protested in August 2002 outside the home of a Marsh USA insurance
executive because Marsh at the time held policies with Huntingdon
Life Sciences. The activists were charged with extortion,
threatening, stalking, and conspiracy. Most of the alleged acts,
Sanders ruled, consisted of constitutionally protected acts of free
speech.

Hog/dog rodeo like porn, says prosecutor

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

COFFEYVILLE, Alabama–The legality of so-called “hog/dog
rodeo” in Alabama will be tested soon as result of arrests made on
February 21, 2004 by Clarke County Sheriff Jack Day.
Hog/dog rodeo, practiced chiefly in the rural South,
consists of setting pit bull terriers against purportedly feral pigs
in an enclosed arena. The dog who corners and holds a pig fastest is
the winner.
Hog/dog rodeo was openly promoted in both Alabama and Florida
until May 1994, when then-Florida attorney general Mike Butterworth
ruled in response to videos of dogs mauling pigs at a site in Hardee
County that the practice violates the state anti-cruelty law.
That left Alabama, where the most prominent hog/dog venue
of several openly operating is reputedly that of H&H Kennels owner
Johnny Hayes, near Coffeyville.
Coffeyville police chief Frankie Crawford and Clarke County
Democrat editor Jim Cox had both repeatedly denounced hog/dog rodeo
and drunken parking lot violence that often went with it, but to no
avail until a February 12, 2004 investigative report by Mike Rush of
NBC-12 in Mobile.
Shown video similar to the footage that ended open hog/dog
rodeo in Florida, Clarke County District Attorney Bobby Keahey told
Rush that he had never prosecuted Hayes and others involved because
Sheriff Day had never arrested them.

Maine lab bootlegged avian flu virus; ex-execs charged

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

BANGOR–The avian flu virus involved was H9N2, not the H5N1
strain now rampaging through Southeast Asia, nor one of the other
deadly H5 or H7 strains.
Still, an avian flu virus smuggling scheme recently exposed
in connection with the multi-count prosecution of three former Maine
Biological Laboratories executives has scared biological security
experts worldwide.
Former MBL chief financial officer Dennis H. Guerrette, 40,
of Brunswick, and former MBL vice president for production Thomas C.
Swieczkowski, 47, of Pittston, pleaded innocent on January 5 to
conspiracy, serving as accessories after the fact to biological
smuggling, and three counts each of mail fraud. Each mail fraud
count carries a penalty of as much as 20 years in prison and a fine
of up to $50,000.
The third ex-MBL executive, Marjorie Evans (whose age was
not stated) was charged with making false statements to investigators
and violating the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act.
Former MBL lab technicians Walter Gogan, 63, and Peggy
Lancaster, 47, in November 2003 pleaded guilty to related charges.
Gogan admitted being an accessory after the fact, which could carry
a sentence of up to 30 months in prison. Lancaster admitted to
ordering staff to falsely label vaccines, carrying a possible
penalty of one year in prison.

Euro Commission refuses Euro Parliament order to ban dog & cat fur

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

BRUSSELS–Claiming lack of jurisdiction, the European
Commission has refused to draft a ban on dog and cat fur imports into
the European Union that was overwhelmingly approved in principle by
the European Parliament in mid-December 2003.
To take effect, the ban would have to be presented by the EC
to the Council of Ministers, and would then have to receive the
ministers’ ratification.
Introduced by Struan Stevenson, a Conservative member from
Edinburgh, Scotland, with four cosponsors, the dog and cat fur
import ban was endorsed by 346 members of the European Parliament in
all, with only 314 needed for a majority. Stevenson also claims to
have the support of Council of Ministers members representing France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark,
Sweden, and Britain.
Denmark on October 1, 2003 independently enacted a law
banning traffic in dog and cat fur. Violators may be jailed for up
to four months.
The EU dog and cat fur ban was demanded by the European
Parliament in only the sixth order that the Parliament has ever given
to the EC to draft legislation, a procedure bypassing the usual
legislative process.

Europe
Law

More death-by-dog cases charged

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

DENVER–The Elbert County (Colorado) Sheriff’s Department on
January 14, 2004 recommended charges of criminally negligent
homicide and unlawful ownership of dangerous dogs against Jacqueline
McCuen, 32, and William Gladney, 46. Their three pit bull
terriers on November 30, 2003 killed horse trainer Jennifer Brooke,
40, as she walked to her barn at about 7:00 a.m.
Her partner, Bjorn Osmunsen, 24, noticed at about 10:00
a.m. that she had not returned. He and another person, not named by
media, went to look for her. Osmunsen and the unidentified person
were chased back indoors. Seeing that the dogs were covered with
blood, Osmunsen called 911, then tried again to find Brooke, and
was also mauled.
Soon afterward neighbor Lynn Baker stepped outside.
“The next thing I know,” Baker told Denver Post staff
writers George Merritt and Jim Kirksey, “I’m being attacked by three
pit bulls. One was leaping for my throat as one was dragging me down
by my hand.”
Kicking the dogs back, Baker climbed into the back of his
pickup truck and yelled for help. While another family member placed
the second of many calls to 911, Baker’s son Cody, 16, attempted a
rescue with a 12-gauge shotgun. He wounded two of the dogs with bird
shot, enabling Baker to get into the cab of the pickup truck, drive
to Cody, and take the shotgun. Baker then shot the third dog, who
continued to attack.

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