Life on the farm isn’t very laid back

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:

Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, marks the 13th observance
of World Day for Farm Animals, declared in 1982 by the
Farm Animal Reform Movement. Unfortunately, despite steadily
increasing humane concern for farm animals, not much has
happened in the past 13 years to actually improve farm animals’
lives. There have been some victories, for example the abolition
of face-branding of imported cattle won in late 1994 by the
Coalition for Non-Violent Food, but factory farming has only
become more dominant in poultry and hog production.
Slaughtered in the U.S. each year are 7.2 billion chickens,
277 million turkeys, 88.5 million hogs, and 1.5 million
veal calves, more than 99% of whom never see the outdoors
except through slats in the sides of the truck that takes them to
their doom. The annual toll also includes 33 million cattle and
5.8 million sheep and lambs. Increasing numbers of dairy cattle
and so-called “milk-fed spring lamb,” raised in the equivalent of
veal crates, also never go outside.

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Aquariums

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

An autopsy on a five-year-old dolphin w h o
died of lead poisoning on July 23 at the Luna Park tank
in Tel Aviv found she had ingested about 100 air rifle
bullets. X-rays found that her companion, Fiadora, 12
had also ingested several dozen bullets, and could die
soon without surgery. A third dolphin, Max, died of
unknown causes earlier in the year. All three were
imported from Russia about two and a half years ago.
Ric O’Barry, who staged an eight-day hunger strike to
get such imports stopped in early 1993, told ANIMAL
PEOPLE on August 7 that, “We will have Fiadora con-
fiscated soon, I feel. I will return to Tel Aviv to transfer
her to a sea pen at Elat, on the Red Sea. Then, when
the Sugarloaf Key project is over (page one), I will
rehab and release Fiadora back into the Black Sea off
Turkey. She will be the first Russian Navy dolphin to be
set free,” at least officially; another dolphin believed to
have been trained by the Russian Navy spent the early
summer begging for fish in the harbor at Bakar, Croatia.

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ANIMAL HEALTH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

RABIES NOTES
Post-exposure shots for 665 people
who came into contact with a rabid kitten in a pet
store in Concord, New Hampshire, last October,
together with other essential follow-up, cost $1.5
million, says the CDCP.
The Pet Savers Foundation has pro-
posed establishing a National Rabies Awareness
D a y. “Letters to Congress supporting Rabies
Awareness Day would be very helpful,” Charlie
McGinley of Pet Savers told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Get details c/o 14 Vanderventer Ave., Port
Washington, NY 11050; 516-944-5025.
Two residents of San Rafael,
California, were bitten by rabid bats in June,
including a 5-year-old boy playing near a backyard
pool and a woman who was swimming. The bats
in each case were apparently attracted by insects
hovering over the water.
A laborer from Anhui province,
China, bit four people including a pregnant
woman on July 19 in the city of Suzhou, a month
after he was bitten by two rabid dogs.

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Chase pens spread rabies

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

ATLANTA––Hunters illegally translocating coyotes from Texas could cause rabies out-
breaks “the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s,” warns
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rabies section chief Dr. Charles Rupprecht.
“This is a hot bug for dogs,” Rupprecht explained on August 10. “Dogs are the biggest
indicator of this outbreak, and we do not want it to get out of south Texas.”
Transmission occurs when coyotes or foxes in the latent phase of rabies––when they are
often easiest to catch––are trapped for use in chase pens, where hunters “train” hounds by setting
them on the captive animals, a growing pastime in much of the country. The coyotes or foxes may
either bite the hounds or escape from the pens to spread rabies elsewhere. At one Florida chase pen,
eight dogs were infected late last year, obliging 26 people to get post-rabies exposure shots, while
a 20-square-mile area was put under quarantine.

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CLENBUTEROL: Wisconsin moves to bust Vitek; Monfort will buy no show cattle

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Acting on the findings of an
18-month federal investigation, the
Wisconsin Department of Agriculture,

Trade, and Consumer Protection on
July 31 sued to dissolve the Vitek
Supply Corp., a subsidiary of the
Dutch veterinary pharmaceutical firm
Pricor. Pricor vice president Aat
Groenvelt founded the Provimi Veal
empire in 1962 and brought the prac-
tice of crating veal calves and milk-
fed lambs to North America.
The FDA received evidence
in 1989 implicating Vitek, Provimi,
and Pricor in smuggling and selling
the banned growth stimulant clen-
buterol, a synthetic steroid, but the
probe didn’t start until February 1994,
when U.S. Customs intercepted clen-
buterol and other illegal drugs e n
route to Vitek and alerted the USDA.

Agriculture

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

The National Cattlemen’s
Association, National Live Stock and
Meat Board, parts of the Beef Board, and
the U.S. Meat Export Federation a r e
reportedly uniting under one umbrella as the
Beef Industry Organization. Member groups
claim to have already trained 1,600 volun-
teers to help promote beef.
Pork King of Illinois on July 25
applied for a permit to reopen the defunct
Kenosha Beef slaughterhouse in Hebron,
Illinois––and nine days later withdrew the
application amid a storm of opposition from
residents, who said they no longer want a
slaughterhouse in their community.

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LABORATORY ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

NYU sells LEMSIP chimps to Coulston
STERLING FOREST, N.Y.––The New York University
Medical Center on August 9 transferred ownership of the Laboratory
for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates to the Coulston
Foundation, headed by Frederick Coulston, 81.
A primate researcher since 1936, Coulston is accused of
multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act in pending cases,
which allegedly caused the deaths of five chimps from thirst and heat
stress in two separate incidents at other primate facilities he runs in
New Mexico. Coulston claims three of those deaths were due to
malfunctioning equipment inherited when he took over one of the
facilities from the University of New Mexico two months earlier.
Activist groups are meanwhile demanding reinvestigation of eight
other recent chimp deaths at Coulston facilities, which also may
have involved alleged negligence.

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A sensible alternative to xenotransplants by Alan H. Berger

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Transplanting vital organs has become a rela-
tively common medical procedure, readily accepted by
the public, with about 12,000 such operations performed
each year in the United States. Patients who need organ
transplants can sign on to the waiting list of the United
Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond, Virginia, non-
profit group that under a federal contract allocates organs
nationally. But being listed does not guarantee receiving
an organ.
In 1993, of 50,169 patients who registered with
UNOS, 2,887 died while waiting to receive donor
organs. Of 7,039 candidates for liver transplants, 558
died waiting for a suitable liver. Nationally, mortality on
transplant lists is 8% for liver, 12.2% for heart, and 3.8%
for kidney.
These deaths occur because only about one per-
son in five has consented to donate organs at death. Thus
a chronic shortage of healthy human organs has led many
transplant centers to consider using substitute organs from
sheep, pigs, and nonhuman primates.

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Indo-Canadian low-cost vets accuse British Columbia Vet Med Association of discrimination

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

VANCOUVER––Alleging that they have been targeted for doing
low-cost dog and cat sterilizations, 18 Indo-Canadian veterinarians, 16 of
them members of the British Columbia Veterinary Medical Association, are
pursuing discrimination claims against BCVMA registrar Valerie Osborne.
Led by Atlas Animal Hospital owner Hakam Bhullar, the vets
have registered a lawsuit with the British Columbia Supreme Court, seek-
ing to remove Osborne from office, and have petitioned the British
Columbia Human Rights Tribunal requesting that an unusually strict lan-
guage proficiency test required by the BCVMA be repealed.
Osborne and other BCVMA representatives have said little on the
record about the Indo-Canadian veterinarians’ complaints, except to deny
that the intent of the language proficiency test is discriminatory.
Under Osborne, Bhullar told Richard Chu of the Vancouver Sun,
the BCVMA requires vets to score 92% on a standard test of spoken
English. Lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, nurses, and firefighters are
required to score only 83%, Bhullar said.

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