A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July-August 2013:
Raising millions of animals per year in close confinement for decades longer than most other nations, The Netherlands has correspondingly had much more experience than almost anywhere else with how contagious diseases spread among large herds and flocks in close quarters. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July-August 2013:
PORTLAND, Oregon––“I think we will get a single-injection contraceptive product for dogs and cats, but when, and at what cost?” rhetorically asked Linda Rhodes, DVM from the plenary podium at the June 20-23, 2013 Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs conference in Portland, Oregon.
That was what most of the audience of about 150 researchers, animal advocates, and news media had come to find out. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July-August 2013:
Dutch state secretary of economic affairs Sharon Dijksma did not directly address intercontinental live animal transport in introducing her “Vaccination for Life” initiative to the Dutch Parliament. But Dijksma noted that “Vaccination for Life” has already been endorsed in principle by the Animal Health Quadrilateral Group, a biosecurity advisory body including governmental representatives from the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
By Merritt Clifton & Kim Bartlett
The American Veterinary Medical Association, 150 years old this year, has from the beginning pitched a broad tent. The AVMA is at once a trade association representing the economic concerns of veterinarians; a professional body setting veterinary standards; an umbrella for ongoing efforts to advance veterinary science; a provider of continuing professional education to vets; a disaster relief agency; a provider of public education about animal issues; and an entity which seeks to influence public policy. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
BALTIMORE, RALEIGH––Hunter, trapper, and fisher William Edward Small, 20, who died of an undiagnosed rabies infection in September 2011, transmitted rabies as an organ donor to a Maryland man who died of rabies in early March 2013––the first human rabies death in Maryland since 1976, and one of just a very few cases on record in which rabies was transmitted from human to human. There is only one other known case of rabies being transmitted in the U.S. via organ transplants. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
Your January/February 2013 editorial “Pi, Dorothy, and the qualities of humane leadership” gave me stuff to ponder that I hadn’t seriously considered before, such as the emphasis on adopting one’s way out of shelter euthanasias versus the likely better bang for the buck approach of focusing even more than currently on spaying and castrating. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
LONDON––Though culling predators has come to be recognized as one of the larger ecological mistakes of the Romans, the Normans, the Georgians in the 18th century, and 20th century British governments, British environment secretary Owen Paterson on February 27, 2013 announced that badgers will be culled this summer in Gloucestershire and Somerset. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
PARIS––At least 28 companies in 13 European nations plus
Hong Kong have been involved in marketing horsemeat as beef, French
government investigators assessed in mid-February 2013, predicting that
more alleged perpetrators would be exposed by ongoing investigations.
Entrepreneurs seeking to resume horse slaughter in the U.S. have
argued that they would market to an upscale clientele in nations
including Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan, who would
demand that horses were transported and killed humanely. But the
horsemeat-as-beef scandal has revealed just the opposite: by far the
greater portion of the European horsemeat trade involves the lowest
priced meat products, in which the ingredients are most easily
disguised, and about which consumers and regulators tend to ask the
fewest questions.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
Zoobiquity: What animals can teach us about health and the science of healing by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D. & Kathryn Bowers Knopf (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2012. 308 pages, hardcover. $26.95.
Animals have long been involved in human health care, as sources of purported medicines, subjects of experiments, and as witches’ familiars. “The idea that animals have healing powers reaches back to the dawn of human civilization,” explains Creighton University medical historian Carrie E. Muffett, M.D., on the Creighton pet-assisted therapy web site. “The Mayans, for example, believed that each of us is given a ‘soul animal’ to serve as a protective guide in earthly life. The Egyptian deity Anubis, physician of the gods, bore a canine head. Read more