Ruthless meat trade flogs hormones east and west

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

SEOUL, BRUSSELS, LONDON,
WASHINGTON D.C.––An estimated
50 members of the Korean Animal
Protection Society rallied against dog-eating
and cat-eating on August 16 in front of
Myoungdong Cathedral in central Seoul.
Sympathy rallies occurred in many
other cities around the world, attracting
media coverage in the U.S., Canada, Great
Britain, and South Africa as well as Korea.
But the protests did not deter Grand
National Party legislator Kim Hong Shin and
20 cosponsors from introducing a bill into the
Korean Parliament that same day to repeal six
unenforced prohibitions on dog-eating issued
since 1978 by adding dogs to the list of livestock
species regulated by the Korean
Agriculture Department.

Australians want to sell fruit bats

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

KUALA LUMPUR––Nipah virus
antibodies have been found in fruit bats in
Perak, Malaysia, confirming suspicion that
the deadly disease spread from bats to pigs
and then to people.
Nipah virus killed at least 108
Malaysians in the first six months of 1999,
all of whom lived or worked on pig farms.
More than a million pigs were slaughtered to
contain the disease, causing economic hardship
to about 300,000 people.
It is still premature to name fruit
bats as the natural hosts of the Nipah disease,
cautioned Australian Animal Research
Institute veterinary epidemiologist Hume
Field, who announced the discovery of the
antibodies in fruit bats on July 21.

MALAYSIA SHIFTS FOCUS FROM PIGS

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

SARIKEI, Malaysia––Pigs are
still killed almost daily as mop-up work
against the deadly Nipah virus continues, but
by the hundreds now instead of the thousands.
Few pigs remain in Malaysia.
More than a million were massacred from
mid-March to mid-May, putting about 1,800
farms out of production, impoverishing an
estimated 300,000 Malaysians whose income
came from the export-oriented pork industry.

EQUINES

June 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1999:

PMU mares & foals

Touring western Canada during 1998-1999 to assess recent changes in the pregnant mares’ urine industry, Enzo Giobe and Staci Wilson of the International Generic Horse Association/HorseAid reported on May 22 that the number of active accredited PMU farms has dropped from 553 to 439, and that the number of foals they sell to slaughter each year has fallen from 75,000 to between 37,000 and 43,000, depending on how many foals are used for other purposes.

PMU is the source stock for the Wyeth-Ayrst estrogen drug Premarin. As world demand for estrogen supplements is up, Giobe and Wilson link the decline of PMU production partly to the advent of rival products made from soy, yams, and other non-animal estrogen sources, and partly to growing awareness of how PMU-producing mares and their foals are treated. Premarin has been made since 1942, but the industry was first extensively exposed by A N I M A L PEOPLE in early 1993, based on research by Tom Hughes of the Canadian Farm Animal Concerns Trust in 1991-1992.

Fixing the problem in Connecticut

May 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

WESTBROOK, Ct.––If the
Guinness Book of Records had a line for
most animals fixed in a year by a mobile clinic,
the Vernon A. Tait All-Animal Adoption,
Preservation & Rescue Fund’s TEAM
Mobile Feline Unit would be in it––twice.
Put into service on March 1, 1997,
the TEAM unit had by March 1, 1998 fixed
8,000 cats, at $35 each including all standard
vaccinations. That shattered the old mark of
just over 6,000 animals fixed set by Jeff
Young of the Denver-based Planned Pethood
Plus mobile clinic back in 1992.
Then, from March 1, 1998 to
March 1, 1999, the TEAM unit fixed another
10,000 cats, for a two-year total of 18,200:
more low-cost neutering operations than the
six Connecticut Humane Society facilities
appear to have done in the past five years,
and more than all but a handful of the biggest
and busiest fixed-site clinics anywhere.

Rabies update

May 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

The World Health Organization
in April credited Switzerland with becoming
the first non-island nation to eradicate rabies.
Explained Swiss Rabies Center
director Reto Zanoni, “The European fox
rabies epizootic reached Switzerland in March
1967. Rabies spread over large parts of the
country until 1977, when it caused three
human deaths. In 1978 Switzerland conducted
the first field trial worldwide of oral immunization
of foxes” with the vaccine now
known as Raboral. “Expanding the vaccination
area led to a rapid reduction in rabies
cases,” Zanoni continued. “After 1984, all
neighboring countries adopted the method of
orally immunizing foxes successfully. The
last endemic case of rabies in Switzerland was
diagnosed in 1997. Rabies-free status will
likely be reached by the neighboring countries
in the near future.”

SHOWDOWN AT THE HORSE BUTTE CORRAL

May 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

WEST YELLOWSTONE––A month after
U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell refused to reimpose
the 1997-1998 limit of 100 on the number of
Yellowstone bison the Montana Department of
Livestock may kill without specific reauthorization,
the 1998-1999 toll zoomed from 17 to 94, with no
end in sight.
Lovell held that the limit and reauthorization
requirement did not seem necessary because the
bison toll was likely to be insignificant.
The Montana Department of Livestock evidently
took that to mean Lovell had declared an open
season, building a bison trap at Horse Butte over
ongoing protest and herding bison into it with snowmobiles.

Malaysian pig crisis waning

May 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

KUALA LUMPUR––The previously
unidentified Hendra-like virus
ravaging the Malaysian pig industry for
the past six months was on April 10,
1999 formally named the Nipah virus,
after the village of Baru Sungai Nipah in
Negri Sembilan, the district where it was
first isolated by virologist Chan Kaw
Bing, MD.
The Hendra virus was named
after Hendra, Australia, where a similar
disease killed 15 horses and three humans
who worked with horses in 1994.

Chocolate bunnies menace Down Under biosecurity

May 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1999:

WELLINGTON, CANBERRA––Announcing on
April 1 that he had distributed at eight sites 50 rabbits who were
genetically modified to resist rabbit calicivirus disease (RCD),
Auckland entrepreneur Graham Milne made four-day suckers
of New Zealand officials and media.
The intent of the releases, Milne said, was “to
obtain field data on the transfer and spread of RCD immunity in
the feral population.”
In other words, Milne might have insured recovery
of the animal RCD was to eliminate.
Milne had actually just distributed chocolate Easter
bunnies. But no one figured that out until April 5––even as he
shared chocolate bunnies with reporters, bearing labels
explaining that they were RCD-proof.

« 1 … 26 27 28 29 30 … 55 »