Dog-shooting passé in S.A.

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

KRUGER NATL. PARK;
CAPE TOWN––Word that immunocontraception
seems to work with
female elephants at Kruger National
Park, South Africa, appeared to touch
off a furor over dog exterminations
which continue in lieu of effective animal
birth control in the Cape Town
region, at the far end of the nation.
Perhaps it was only coincidence,
but the engineer of the Kruger
project, South African-born University
of Georgia researcher Richard FayrerHosken,
is also working on immunocontraceptive
methods for use with dogs
and cats, as he explained at the June
2000 Spay/USA conference in
Waltham, Massachusetts.

What RU-486 means for animals

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000

WASHINGTON D.C.––The pharmacological
race to be first to market a safe,
affordable, easily administered contraceptive
drug for dogs, cats, and nuisance wildlife may
have heated up with the September 28, 2000
decision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
to allow Danco Laboratories, of New
York City, to market the RU-486 abortion pill.
The Danco formulation, called
Mifeprex, includes five separate tablets, to be
taken in a two-step sequence. The first three
tablets, taken at once, contain mifepristone.
Better known by the chemical index number
RU-486, mifepristone is an androgen steroid
which blocks the production of progesterone, a
hormone required to sustain pregnancy. Two
days after taking the mifepristone tablets, the
user takes two more tablets containing misoprostol,
another hormonal drug which causes
her body to expell the aborted fetal tissue.

BOOKS: Veterinary Ethics: An Introduction

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

Veterinary Ethics: An Introduction
Edited by Giles Legood
Contiuum (370 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017), 2000.
192 pages, paperback. $23.95

“The Reverend Giles Legood,” editor
of Veterinary Ethics, “is Chaplain and
Honorary Lecturer in Veterinary Ethics at the
Royal Veterinary College, University of
London,” the back cover warns––an example
of why one should not judge a book by the
cover, because Veterinary Ethics is neither a
sermon nor mere academic philosophizing.
The worst one might fairly say of
Legood and his contributing authors is that
they are not as entertaining as Bernard Rollin,
whose lectures at Colorado State University
and elsewhere over the past 20 years have virtually
created the field of veterinary ethics.

Editorial: Introducing a different needle

September 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2000:

A gathering of moment to the future of humane activism on behalf of dogs, cats,
and wildlife occurred on stage at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, on July 8,
brought together by Esther Mechler of Spay/USA.
Meeting for the first time––with animal advocates and with each other––were
immunosterilant researchers Richard Fayrer-Hoskins, Ph.D., of the University of Georgia;
Terry Nett, Ph.D., of Colorado State University; and Stephen Boyle, Ph.D., of the VirginiaMaryland
Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.
University of Florida at Gainesville researcher Julie Levy, DVM, founder of
Operation Catnip, made the introductions. Operation Catnip surgically sterilized 1,575 feral
cats in its first year, Levy explained, and then picked up the pace. It is an all-volunteer project,
depending like thousands of others on donated resources. It can do more than most
because Levy herself is a veterinarian. But like everyone else, she must earn a living. There
are limits to the number of cats she can fix, even when others catch the cats, return them to
their habitat after surgery, and monitor their well-being for the rest of their lives.
As a vet, Levy continued, she soon realized surgical sterilzation is an awkward and
expensive stopgap. Surgery works, having hugely reduced unwanted animal births and animal
control killing wherever it has been made affordable. But surgery still takes more veterinary
time, training, and equipment than many places have to offer.

Seeking the quick fix––cheap

April 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

Honolulu––Proponents of a Hawaii Department of Health Vector Control Division plan to ban feeding feral cats claimed at January public hearings that neuter/return practitioners who rely on feeding to lure cats into cage traps couldn’t possibly raise funds enough to fix all the half million cats whom state wildlife biologist Fern Duvall estimates are at large on Maui alone.

Veterinarian Sabina M. Wenner, founder and president of the Animal CARE Foundation (Hawaii), fixed that objection on February 23. Calling a press conference at Kakaako Beach State Park, where the ongoing dispute between kill-the-cats and fix-thecats factions has been most intense, Wenner announced receipt of a $10 million grant from an anonymous out-of-state donor.

“Wenner said it has not yet been decided how much money will be allocated to other Animal CARE Foundation (Hawaii) programs,” reported Pat Gee of the Honolulu S t a r – B u l l e t i n, “but said the focus will be to prevent cat deaths, by trapping them, neutering them, and returning them to an appropriate environment. Some of the funds would be used to set up facilities” to do neutering, and to provide care for cats who cannot be returned to the sites where they were caught.

New South Wales to set world precedent by vaccinating instead of killing farm disease hosts

April 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

LONDON, U.K.; SYDNEY, Australia––Marksmen with silencer-equipped rifles on March 3 killed the entire 215-member rhesus macaque colony at the Wobern Safari Park in central England.

The massacre came at management request and expense, after health officials found that the macaques carried simian herpes B virus––harmless to the colony, but potentially lethal to humans.

It was business as usual to veterinary and agricultural public health specialists.

Wins against dissection, pound seizure

April 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

CHICAGO, HOUSTON, SAN DIEGO––University of Illinois veterinary students need no longer participate in killing and dissecting healthy dogs.

At urging of Class of 2002 member Linnea Stull and allies, the faculty of the UI College of Veterinary Medicine on February 8 affirmed a January 17 promise to adopt a new animal use policy which officially allows for students to opt out of “demonstrations or invasive procedures performed solely for instructional purposes which conclude with the death or euthanasia of the animal.”

Alternative learning procedures are to be offered to students who opt out of the dog labs. UI also discontinued using any random source animals, i.e. dogs and cats from pounds and/or Class B dealers.

FAIR WAS FOUL IN UPSTATE N.Y.

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

GREENWICH (N.Y.)– – Animal
manure polluting a well is blamed for cultivating
the verotoxin-producing e-coli bacteria
strain (VTEC) that killed two visitors to the
Washington County Fair in upstate New York
in early September. Another 611 fell ill.
Fifty-eight people were hospitalized
––nine on dialysis––due to potentially fatal
hemolytic uremic syndrome caused by VTEC.
The week-long fair closed on
August 29, 1999. Rachel Aldrich, age three,
died on September 4. Her two-year-old sister
Kaylea survived on dialysis. Most victims
were reportedly between ages three and 14,
but the second to die, on September 10, was
Ernest Wester, 79, of Albany.

Angst over beta-agonists in meat

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

BANGKOK, KUALA LUM-PUR,
HONG KONG––A Thai FDA crackdown on
the use of beta-agonist stimulants in pork production
sounded like late response to old news
when announced in June 1999.
It wasn’t. Hong Kong is a key market
for Thai pork, and six Hong Kong residents
were ill from ingesting beta-agonist
residues with pork offal.
In 1998 Hong Kong banned the sale
of pig offal for four months after 17 people
suffered beta-agonist poisoning.
Beta-agonist traces were found then
in nine out of 14 pigs’ lungs originating from
four farms in Hong Kong and two farms in
Guangdong, on the Chinese mainland. Thai
pork was apparently free of beta-agonists––
and that’s how Bangkok wants to keep it.

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