Feds indict veal kingpins for banned drug

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

MILWAUKEE––More than seven
years after the Food and Drug Administration
was first tipped that major U.S. veal producers
were illegally importing and using the banned
synthetic steroid clenbuterol to make calves
gain weight faster, federal indictments and
extradition papers were issued on November
22 against Gerard Hoogendijk, owner of the
Dutch agricultural pharmaceuticals firm Pricor
BV; Gerald L. Travis of Withee, Wisconsin,
owner of Travis Calf Milk Inc. in Neillsville,
Wisconsin; and Jan and Hennie Van Den
Hengel, owners of VIV Inc., a veal farm in
Springville, Pennsyvlania.
The indictments came four days
before John Doppenberg, president of Vitek
Inc., a Pricor subsidiary, was to be sentenced
on a June conviction for conspiracy, smuggling,
and selling unapproved animal drugs.

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DIET & HEALTH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

Health research
Fears that drinking cow’s milk
can trigger juvenile diabetes in genetically
susceptible children rekindled in October after
Dr. Paul Pozzilli of the Department of
Diabetes and Metabolism at St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital in London and colleagues at
the University of Rome explained in The
Lancet , the journal of the British Medical
Association, how certain proteins in cow’s
milk can stimulate an immature human
immune system to produce antibodies that
then attack similar proteins in the victim’s
own pancreatic cells. European Commissionsponsored
research showed in June that bottlefed
babies are twice as likely as breast-fed
babies to get diabetes. Jill Norris of the
University of Colorado Health Science Center
in Denver, argued in the August 27 edition of
the Journal of the American Medical
Association that the previous research was
weak––but Hans-Michael Dosch, M.D., of
the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto,
who drew attention to a possible link between
cow’s milk and diabetes in 1992, argues that
the association is now “as strong as the association
between cigarette smoking and cancer.”

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BOOKS: The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats:
over 1,000 solutions to your pet’s problems
by the editors of Prevention Magazine Health Books. Rodale Press Inc.
(18 Minor St., Emmaus, PA 18098), 404 pages, $27.95, hardback.

The best part of this handy how-to
is that the panel of advisors responsible for
the advice under each heading are identified
by name and either institutional affiliation or
place of business. The advisors are diverse,
as are their recommendations, and as many
experts may have contributed (I didn’t
count) as there are tips offered. Both the
table of contents and the index are comprehensive;

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Attack of the gene splicers wins hearts and minds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.––With 80
Britons a day dying from lack of human hearts,
lungs, livers, and kidneys suitable for transplant,
Imutran Ltd. had no trouble finding 25
seriously ill volunteers in September to participate
in the first trial of organs grown in genetically
engineered pigs specifically for transplant
into humans. Subject to approval by
seven different governmental bureaus, the
experimental xenographs will be conducted at
the earliest opportunity.
Immunologist David White and
transplant surgeon John Wallwork told media
that the Imutran approach is, as London
Sunday Times medical correspondent Lois
Rogers put it, “to trick the human immune
system into tolerating animal organs. The system
is naturally programmed to mount a massive
attack to kill implanted foreign tissue
within minutes. Organs from the pigs specially
bred by the company have the same protective
proteins on their surfaces as tissue within
the human body––a mechanism designed to
stop the body from attacking itself.”

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Animal health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Illegal use of farm pesticides on farmland
south of the Salton Sea, 120 miles east of San Diego,
brought a major fish kill in late August. Botulism from
the rotting fish soon contaminated the shallow lake,
which was created by a 1905 engineering accident during
an attempted irrigation diversion from the Colorado
River, and as of October 24 had killed more than
13,000 migratory birds––including more than 1,000
endangered brown pelicans. At that, the bird losses
were less than 10% as great as the toll in 1992, when an
estimated 150,000 grebes were poisoned by a build-up
of selenium and salt. Formerly attracting 500,000 visitors
a year, the Salton Sea now draws just half as many.

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BSE bought and sold

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

DUBLIN––While the British cattle industry
as a whole is in economic distress due to the loss of
markets caused by the BSE scare, Irish Times agricultural
correspondent Sean MacConnell reported on
October 14 that, “A gang of con men from Northern
Ireland is offering farmers in the Irish Republic a substance
which the men claim will induce BSE in cattle
for sums of over £5,000. Some farmers in financial
difficulty seek diseased animals to claim the very generous
BSE compensation paid by the state,”
McConnell explained.
A week later, McConnell published an official
denial by the Irish Department of Agriculture of a
report in another paper about a similar scheme, then
added, “The emphatic denial conceals a number of
concerns its staff have about levels of compensation
paid to farmers who produce diseased animals. Unlike
in the U.K., where only the infected animal is
destroyed, in the Republic all animals in a herd where
a case has been detected are destroyed. The farmer is
paid the market value of all the animals in the herd.”

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Sickness in Australia

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

SYDNEY, LONDON– – Intro-
ducing a pest to control a pest, against
much scientific and humane advice,
Australian agriculture and wildlife authorities
in mid-October released millions of calicivirus-carrying
Spanish rabbit fleas at 280
sites, expecting to kill up to 120 million of
the nation’s estimated 170 million rabbits.
The rabbits are accused of outcompeting
endangered native marsupial species
for habitat––though they also draw predation
by feral foxes and cats away from marsupials––and
of costing farmers $23 million
to $60 million a year, chiefly by eating fodder
that would otherwise go to sheep.
Calicivirus induces internal hemorrhage,
killing about 90% of the rabbits
who contract it within 30 to 40 hours. It
spreads at about 25 miles per day.

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BOOKS: Animal Hospital

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Animal Hospital
by Stephen Sawicki
Chicago Review Press (814 North
Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610)
1996, 234 pages, $22 hardcover.

Veteran investigative reporter
Stephen Sawicki apparently became interested
in the Massachusetts SPCA’s Angell Memorial
Animal Hospital while authoring Teach Me To
Kill, his best-selling account of the Pam Smart
case, in which a New Hampshire schoolmarm
allegedly seduced a 16-year-old into murdering
her husband––after she put his beloved dog
in the basement, so that the dog wouldn’t have
to witness the killing. Smart, now doing life
in prison, was among Angell Memorial’s
many famous and infamous clients, along
with Elvis Presley and Stephen King.

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Bad day in the Rockies

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

DENVER––Colorado state veterinarians had a bad
day on August 20, as in El Paso County district judge Thomas
Kane thwarted a bid by Keith Roehr, DVM, to permanently
close the Colorado Animal Refuge, while in Boulder, Rocky
Mountain Animal Defense filed a cruelty complaint against
John Maulsby, DVM, chief of the state Department of
Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Protection.
After five days of testimony, Kane ruled that
Colorado Animal Refuge founder Mary Port and staff have
made a good faith effort to comply with state laws, giving
them until January 1 to finish construction of 20 to 25 more
pens, in addition to the 45 already built; provide shade to the
pens; improve the refuge plumbing; provide heated winter
accommodations; and build a perimeter fence––mostly stipulations
that she earlier failed to meet at the former refuge site in
Elbert County. Port moved to El Paso County in January after
almost a year of battling fix-or-vacate orders in Elbert County.

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