Sweeping pro-animal bill in Turkey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ANKARA, Turkey–The Parliamentary Domestic Affairs
Commission on January 15, 2003, adopted a draft national animal
protection bill which would provide prison terms for animal torture,
allowing animals to starve, and bestiality; would prohibit all
forms of animal fighting; would prohibit killing animals by
electrocution, cervical dislocation, drowning, burning, and
boiling; would forbid training animals by methods that cause
avoidable injury or distress; and would prohibit killing animals for
population control unless necessary to halt the spread of an epidemic.
The draft bill would require drivers to make every reasonable
effort to avoid injuring animals on the road, and to take any
animals they hit to a veterinarian and pay for the necessary
treatment.
Only licensed veterinarians would be permitted to perform euthanasia.
Vets would be directed to use the least painful method available of
killing an animal.
The draft bill would form a national animal protection
foundation, and would create animal protection boards in each
province, under the deputy governors.
As drafted, the bill would be perhaps the most comprehensive and
progressive animal protection statute on the books of any nation.
Whether it can gain enough support to pass into law without
substantial amendment remains to be seen.

“Animal rights” vs. “wise-users”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

DENVER–Colorado state representative
Mark Cloer (R-Colorado Springs) on Valentine’s
Day 2002 withdrew a bill which would have
redefined pets as companion animals rather than
property, by way of enabling petkeepers to seek
punitive damages rather than just the replacement
value of an animal in cases of abuse and
veterinary malpractice.
The intent of the Cloer bill was to
extend the definition of veterinary malpractice
to include unnecessarily frequent vaccination.
Although modern anti-rabies vaccines provide
protection for three years or more, many vets
still “remind” petkeepers to get annual
vaccinations as a way to get the pets into their
clinics for the general examinations that often
discover health conditions in need of treatment.
The redefinition of pets as companion
animals coincided with the goal of In Defense of
Animals’ effort to get legislative bodies to
replace the term “owners” in pet-related
statutes with “guardian.”

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Farm Sanctuary fined $50,000 in Florida

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida–The Florida Elections Commission has
fined Farm Sanctuary $50,000 for 210 alleged willful violations of
campaign fundraising laws in connection with the passage of Amendment
10, a November 2002 initiative which banned the use of farrowing
crates to raise pigs in a state which had only two working pig farms.
One of those farms was already going out of business, and
state and federal water quality regulations virtually ensure that no
others can be started in Florida.
“Farm Sanctuary raised nearly half a million dollars from
people coast to coast for the Florida ballot measure, in large part,
I assert by falsely promising tax deductions” for campaign
contributions, attorney Allan D. Teplinsky of Northridge,
California, told the Florida Elections Commission in requesting the
strictest possible penalty.
Teplinsky, who filed the complaint that initiated the
prosecution, has not responded to an ANIMAL PEOPLE inquiry as to why
he pursued the case. He has no known prior history involving animal
issues.

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Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary animals seized in Thai crackdown

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand–Thai forestry officials trying to
halt illegal wildlife farming on November 27, 2002 raided the
Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary, where on May 10 cofounder William
Emeral Deters, 69, housekeeper Ratchanee Sonkhamleu, 26, her
three-year-old daughter, Hmong worker Laeng sae Yang, and a Thai
worker known only as Subin were massacred during a botched robbery.
The forestry department on November 28 seized 126 sambar elk
from an alleged illegal antler farm in Kanchanburi province, and may
have been confused by the use of the word “farm” in the name of the
Highland Farm sanctuary.

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McDonald’s settlement challenged by 6 of 7 original plaintiffs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2003:

CHICAGO–“We are not being besieged by thousands of angry
vegetarians,”  Houston attorney Cory S. Fein  told Cook County Judge
Richard Siebel on January 13.
But Fein may have invited such a response.  Fein was in court
to defend the list of 26 proposed grant recipients offered by
McDonald’s Restaurants in settlement of class action lawsuits brought
by Hindus and vegetarians who unwittingly ate French fries seasoned
in a mist of beef broth.   McDonald’s advertised that its fries were
cooked in pure vegetable oil from 1990 until after Seattle attorney
Harish Bharti filed the first of a series of related cases in May
2001.

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Greece considers new national animal control law in anticipation of 2004 Olympic furor

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2003:

ATHENS-Greek deputy agriculture minister Fotis Hadzimichalis
on December 19,  2002 introduced a proposed national animal control
bill which according to Agence France-Press “would discourage Greeks
from abandoning their animals,  while allowing local authorities to
collect,  sterilize,  and in certain cases kill stray dogs.”
Hadzimichalis told Agence France-Presse that,  “This is the
practical answer to those who malignly accused our country of
creating crematoria for strays ahead of the 2004 Olympic Games.”
The proposed law reportedly stipulates that dogs found at
large will be vaccinated,  sterilized,  held for a reclaim period,
and then be returned to the capture point if deemed healthy and not
dangerous.  Those suffering from incurable illness or infirmity and
those considered dangerous will be killed.

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WPIX settles libel claim over dog meat expose

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

NEW YORK, N.Y.–The Tribune Co., owner of both WPIX-TV
Channel 11 in New York city and the Long Island Newsday newspaper,
announced in Newsday on January 11 that it had “reached a settlement
over a series of controversial stories that examined if dog meat was
popular in New York,” aired by Channel 11 reporter Polly Kreisman on
November 19-20, 2001.
“The agreement said that WPIX-TV aired the stories in 2001
along with footage of Ju Ho Kim and his wife Roslyn Kim, selling
what a WPIX-TV spokesman said was a mix of canine and coyote meat to
a Humane Society of the U.S. investigator,” Newsday continued. “The
Kims said in a civil lawsuit that the stories by reporter Polly
Kreisman hurt their business and harmed the Korean American
community. ”

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Ivory dealer vanishes after CITES eases ban

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

SANTIAGO, Chile; Lilongwe, Malawi–Peter Wang, also known
as Peter Onn, Y.S. Wong, and Wang Yong Shi, recently eluded a
police cordon around his home in Lilongwe, Malawi, and disappeared
just as he was about to be arrested, revealed correspondent Rory
Carroll of The Guardian on December 27, 2002.
“Investigators have told The Guardian,” Carroll wrote,
“that an apparent breakthrough in June against a vast smuggling
network has evaporated. Six metric tons of ivory bound for Japan,”
representing the deaths of about 600 elephants, “was intercepted in
Singapore, but the ringleaders escaped and the trafficking
continues, leaving game parks littered with mutilated carcasses.”
Wang, Carroll said, “is accused of being the lynchpin in a
network of African poachers and Asian buyers who flouted the global
ivory trade ban introduced in 1989.”

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“Well-meaning” wildlife traffic? CITES weighs Taiping gorilla case

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

TAIPING, Malaysia; SANTIAGO, Chile–Few points on earth
are farther apart, with more open sea and sky between them, than
Taiping, Malaysia, home of the struggling Taiping Zoo, and
Santiago, Chile, the host city for the 12th Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species Conference of the Parties,
called CITES-COP 2002 for short.
Yet the Taiping Zoo and CITES-COP 2002 had an awkward issue
to deal with in mid-November, having to do with the zoo illegally
buying baby gorillas in the name of conservation. The facts were
less in dispute than the intentions behind the January 2002
transaction–and the closest resemblance to common ground between the
positions of Taiping and the CITES Secretariat, across 6,000 miles
of Pacific Ocean, might have been the rolling deck of a Japanese
whaling ship.

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