Chimp Retirement Act runs afoul of NIH monkey-business

December 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Alleged
monkey-business involving the Florida vote
count in the November 7 U.S. presidential
election may have thwarted monkey-business
by amendment in the House of
Representatives to the Chimpanzee Health
Improvement, Maintenance and Protection
Act of 2000.
Called the “Chimp Retirement Act”
for short, the amended bill cleared the House
on October 24, but was deemed unlikely to
get Senate attention when it didn’t reach the
floor before the election recess.

Rats, mice, birds, Bush and Gore

December 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Rats, mice, and birds were
not a U.S. federal election issue, yet the fate of millions may
hang on the outcome of the lawsuits and ballot recounts underway
in Florida.
If U.S. Vice President Albert Gore gains the lead in
electoral votes to go with the popular vote lead that he won on
November 7, Gore will succeed President Bill Clinton in January.
Senator Joseph Lieberman would become Vice President.
Gore led the White House defense of the Endangered
Species Act after wise-use Republicans gained majorities in both
the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1994.
Lieberman, who as Vice President would break tie
votes in the Senate, could be depended upon to vigorously protect
both the ESA and the Animal Welfare Act. According to the legislative
scorecards kept by the Fund for Animals, Friends of
Animals, and Humane Society of the U.S., Lieberman in two
terms as U.S. Senator from Connecticut had one of the best
records on animal issues of any member of Congress.

AND A WORD FOR DUCKS

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

ATLANTA––Actress Hayley Mills, in person, and rock-and-roll star Paul McCartney, via videotape from London, on September 14 helped the British group Viva!––International Voice for Animals to bring their antiduck meat campaign to America with a press conference in Atlanta and simultaneous protests at shopping centers in 20 other cities.

In Britain, according to Viva! representative Lauren Ornelas, the Viva! campaign against duck meat caused every major supermarket chain to stop selling duck meat, and, she said, “The industry has promised to undertake a major review of duck farming conditions.”

“In the U.S.,” Ornelas stated, “almost 24 million ducks were slaughtered in 1999, up from almost 22 million in 1997.”

PEOPLE

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

Joe Arpaio, sheriff of
Maricopa County, Arizona, on
September 18 received United Animal
Nations’ Animals’ Choice Award for
forming a Pet Posse to investigate and
ensure prosecution of animal abuse
cases, and for converting an obsolete
jail into a shelter for abused animals,
staffed by female inmate volunteers.
The Alternatives Research
& Development Foundation, a subsidiary
of the American Anti-Vivisection
Society, on October 1 presented its
$5,000 William A. Cave Award t o
MatTek Corporation president John
Sheasgreen for his success in marketing
to major corporations a line of project
safety tests which do not require animal
testing. Cave headed American AV
from 1978 until his death in 1990.

Editorial: When Noah has to sail or sink

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

Superior Court Judge Floyd V. Baxter on September 21 appointed American
Humane Association western regional office director Gini Barrett special master to supervise
the ongoing strained relationship between Wildlife Waystation, one of the biggest, oldest,
and best-respected sanctuaries for captive wild animals in the U.S., and a cluster of hostile
regulatory agencies––particularly the California Department of Fish and Game.
A special master is a person of expertise designated by a court to insure that an institution
meets conditions of law. A special master may be likened to a parole officer, a social
worker, or in this case an ombudsman, whose most important job may be finding her way
around deep mutual mistrust and failures of communication.
According to the regulators, especially the California DFG, Wildlife Waystation is
a perennial scofflaw. But Waystation defenders, including the founders and directors of many
of the other best-known and best regarded sanctuaries of similar kind, praise Waystation
founder Martine Colette for daring to innovate on behalf of the many special-needs animals in
her care, for standing up against senseless and capricious applications of rules written to govern
very different kinds of institutions, and for withstanding a DFG publicity offensive that
included an April 7 raid by personnel wearing quasi-space suits from fear that purportedly
HIV-infected chimpanzees might fling feces.

Million hens killed in Ohio–– twister hits like forced molt

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000

COLUMBUS, Ohio––An estimated
one million battery-caged laying hens died
slowly from thirst, exposure, and starvation
or were reportedly crushed by bulldozers on
October 2 and 3 after two weeks of suffering,
following a September 20 tornado which
destroyed the water-and-feed systems serving
twelve 85,000-hen barns at the Buckeye Egg
Farm complex in Croton, Ohio.
The Croton complex is the biggest
of four owned by Buckeye, the fourth largest
egg producer in the U.S., formerly known as
AgriGeneral LP.
Ohio Department of Agriculture
spokesperson Mark Anthony told Mike
Lafferty of the Columbus Dispatch o n
September 21 that the trapped hens would
have to be killed and buried, burned, or rendered
as promptly as possible.
“And the process has to be done
humanely, too,” Anthony insisted. “These
chickens are not going to die of thirst.”

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.

Dogfight on the western front

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000

BRUSSELS––Germany, France, Italy, and
Britain are battling again in Belgium, and invading
bloody Americans are again ensnarled in the thick of it.
That’s American pit bull terriers this time.
Like the doughboys of World War I and the G.I.s of
World War II, they are said to be over-large, overdosed
on testosterone, and over here, looking for a fight.
This time they are seen as allies of neo-Nazis
and Huns––Attila’s Huns, who ravaged Europe from
434 to 453, when the notoriously reactive Attila’s brain
burst as he celebrated his honeymoon.
The Justice and Home Affairs Council of the
European Union on September 29 heard a German proposal
to ban throughout Europe the breeding or import of
any kind of “fighting dog,” defined as any member of
14 breeds with American pit bull traits. As well as the
American pit bull and Japanese tosa, who have been
banned in Britain and The Netherlands since 1991, the
German proposal would ban Rhodesian ridgebacks,
Neopolitan bulldogs, Staffordshire terriers, English bull
terriers, and bull mastiffs.

VIGILANTE ACTIONS AGAINST DOGS WHO BITE CHILDREN

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

LIMA––One of the first public
animal rights demonstrations in Peru featured
an estimated 200 people marching
with dogs on leashes through the affluent
Lima suburb of Miraflores on July 21 to
protest the shooting of a 10-month-old
Staffordshire terrier named Venancio.
Venancio, the pet of march organizer
Hector Rospigliosi, on the evening
of July 1 reportedly rushed up to an 11-
year-old boy who was playing with a ball
in a public park. Barking loudly,
Venancio scared the boy, who according
to his father was bitten on the hand while
trying to keep possession of the ball. The
boy fled to his grandfather. The grandfather
fetched a handgun from his car.
Rospigliosi immediately leashed
Venancio, he told Associated Press correspondent
Rick Vecchio, and walked away,
calling the police as he did so on a cellular
telephone. The grandfather meanwhile
called the boy’s father on a cellular telephone
of his own. The father raced to the
scene, allegedly stopped Rospigliosi at
gunpoint, and shot Venancio just before
the police arrived.

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