Category: Medicine

PROGRESS IN ISRAEL

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Nina Natelson of Concern for
Helping Animals in Israel saw “a lot of
improvement” in animal care and control
arrangements this winter compared with
last winter, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
An experienced shelter manager,
South African emigre Glenda Ford, now
heads the Beresheva shelter, Natelson
said, and has cut the number of resident
dogs from 500 to 100, “which is still too
many for the facilities,” Natelson contin-
ued, “but it’s going in the right direction.”
Earlier the shelter fended off a takeover
bid from Benny Schesinger of Let The
Animals Live (see Court Calendar).

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Horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Washington governor Mike
Lowry intervened with an emergency order on
January 24 while the state legislature rushed
through special legislation to allow animal res-
cuer Carlene Whitesell and sons Israel, 12,
and Benjamin, 8, of Paterson, to keep a pony
named Blaze. After postmaster Beth Allen
found the pony wandering along a railroad
track on December 30, she and the Whitesells
captured him, searched unsuccessfully for the
owner, then called the state brand inspector––
who moved to seize and auction the pony in
compliance with a state law governing the
roundup of unclaimed cattle. Authorities now
believe the pony was abandoned deliberately.

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AGRICULTURE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Livestock show judge Lynn
Holley, 42, of Bowling Green, Ohio, was
indicted December 22 along with Dallas
Miller, 42, also of Bowling Green, and
Gregory Garmyn, 41, of Hicksville, for
allegedly trafficking in clenbuterol, a banned
steroid. The drug is illegally used as a growth
stimulant for veal calves and a performance
booster for both human and equine athletes.
Residues in meat can cause illness and even
death. Holley was caught when Ohio
Department of Agriculture investigators dis-
covered at slaughter that vegetable oil had
been injected into the rump of his son Mike’s
steer, named grand champion at last year’s
Wood County Fair. The oil enhanced the
steer’s appearance but violated pure food laws
and the rules of fair exhibition. Looking far-
ther, the ODA found that eight award-win-
ning animals in the junior livestock division
at the Ohio State Fair had been tampered
with––three by injections of vegetable oil,
two with clenbuterol treatments, and three
with both substances.

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ZOONOSIS UPDATE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

A technical advisory committee set
up by the Indian government announced
February 7 that data review had confirmed
that a major disease outbreak in the city of
Surat last September was indeed pneumonic
plague, as first diagnosed, even though it did
not spread as fast or kill as many people as past
outbreaks have. A slightly earlier outbreak of a
disease reported as bubonic plague in
Maharashtra state is still under study. Both
forms of plague may be spread by rodent infes-
tation.
Yevgeny Belyaev, head of Russia’s
Epidemics and Sanitary Control State
Committee, told media February 8 that stray
dogs had become a serious threat to public
health in the Chechnyan war zone. He said the
chance that the dogs might spread cholera was
the greatest concern.

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Animals in laboratories

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

The USDA hopes to soon replace the present system of
classifying animal dealers, Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service officer Steve Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 3.
All commercial animal breeders other than farmers now receive Class
A permits; those who sell animals they do not breed themselves are
issued Class B permits. A common misperception is that “Class B
dealer” is synonymous with shadowy characters who sell stolen pets to
laboratories, but in fact about three-fourths of the 1,280 current Class
B permit holders are in the pet trade; no more than 75, according to
Smith, sell dogs and cats to labs, and of those, fewer still sell “ran-
dom source” animals. Under the anticipated regulatory amendment,
there will be nine different permit categories, each of which is specific
to the nature of the permit-holder’s business.

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Predator control guised as rabies protection: EPA rejects Texas bid to bring back Compound 1080

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

AUSTIN––The Texas Department of Agriculture thought
it might sneak reauthorized Compound 1080 predator poisoning past
the Environmental Protection Agency and an unaware public in the
guise of rabies control. It nearly succeeded.
One of the deadliest chemicals ever deployed against
wildlife, with no known antidote, 1080 is actually a trade name for
sodium fluoroacetate, developed by the Nazis as a nerve gas during
World War II. It came to the attention of the U.S Animal Damage
Control program in 1946, after the now defunct American Journal of
Public Health published the results of LD50 testing done on human
prisoners. Impressed with the lethality and ease of use of 1080, the
ADC quickly adapted it for use against coyotes, killing
millions––along with greater millions of nontarget species, accord-
ing to ADC records, and an average of about one human being per
year. High-profile cases of misuse brought the deaths of three small
children and a firefighter, in separate incidents. Finally, in February
1972, then-U.S. president Richard Nixon banned 1080 by executive
order from both federal use and any application on federal land.

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DIET & HEALTH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

From the December 5 Newsweek
cover feature: “The saturated fats in meat,
butter, and whole milk have long been demon-
ized, and for the most part rightly so. Recent
research on heart disease and several can-
cers––including colon, prostate, and
ovary––points to one overwhelming message:
eating a lot of red meat is really a bad idea.”
The article coincided with a White House
press conference at which First Lady Hillary
Clinton and former U.S. Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop announced “Shape Up
America,” a campaign against obesity, which
kills an estimated 300,000 Americans a year.
The campaign is modeled after Koop’s anti-
smoking drive. Consumption of animal-based
foods wasn’t mentioned in most news releases
about it, but Koop is known for seeming to
target one thing while hitting another, e.g.
becoming an outspoken defender of animal
experimentation in 1990 while investing much
of his own fortune in developing the “Adam”
computerized alternative to the use of animals
and human cadavers in practice surgery.

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AGRICULTURE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Responding to a year-long cam-
paign against face-branding, led by the
Coalition for Nonviolent Food, the USDA on
December 22 proposed new rules to identify
Mexican cattle imported into the U.S., to take
effect January 23. The new rules require tail-
head branding, by either the hot-iron or freeze
method. Freeze branding must be done at
least 18 days before import, to give the mark
time to become visible. The Coalition, led by
Henry Spira, now seeks to halt the use of
face-branding to identify cattle with tuberculo-
sis and brucellosis. (See ad, page 10.)
The scandal over the use of the
banned synthetic steroid clenbuterol in veal
feed, revealed in December by the Humane
Farming Association and ANIMAL
PEOPLE, continues to spread, as the USDA
in early December confirmed finding traces in
feed seized from five Wisconsin dealers.

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ZOONOSIS UPDATE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Rabies roundup

Because continued funding for an
experimental raccoon rabies oral vaccina-
tion program begun last spring hasn’t been
approved on schedule by the Massachusetts
legislature, the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine may be obliged to lay off
project coordinator Allyson Robbins on
December 31, dean Franklin Loew told ANI-
MAL PEOPLE on December 23. It also
won’t be able to order the vaccination baits in
time to be sure of having them on hand at the
optimum time to use them, when mothers
come out of their dens with newly ambulatory
babies. The initial oral vaccination budget
came from a dormant Food and Agriculture
Department fund set up to fight equine
encephalitis. However, while the vaccination
work was underway, trying to keep raccoon
rabies off Cape Cod as a demonstration of its
effectiveness, equine encephalitis reappeared
in Massachusetts, and the Food and

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