FOOD FIGHTS

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

British activists David
Morris and Helen Steel on July 27
appealed the “McLibel” verdict won
against them by McDonald’s
Restaurants in June 1997, at huge public
relations cost, especially after the
trial judge ruled that even though Morris
and Steel made some inaccurate charges
about other McDonald’s practices, the
firm does pay low wages and is “culpably
responsible” for causing animal suffering
by purchasing meat and eggs from
animals raised in close confinement.
Buckeye Egg Farm Inc., formerly
known as AgriGeneral, in early
July quietly dropped a lawsuit it filed last
year against the Ohio Public Interest
Research Group under a so-called
“food libel” statute, but did not explain
why. The “food libel” case was brought
after Ohio PIRG sued Buckeye for
allegedly selling old eggs as fresh.

MURDER & MURDERING MOST FOWL

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

“Kids need to be careful that they don’t
shoot anything but a starling, pigeon, or English
sparrow,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent
Doug Goessman recently told the Billings Gazette.
Goessman was asked to comment on the
July arrest of Terry McMinn, 25, of Bozeman,
Montana, who allegedly shot a federally protected
magpie with a BB gun in a Pizza Hut parking lot.
“People need to be aware that they can be
fined for this,” added Bozeman animal control
officer Kathy Ham.
If either Goessman or Ham mentioned
that the apparent gratuitious cruelty of the shooting
might be the most serious aspect of it, the observation
wasn’t reported––although Ham was considering
filing cruelty charges.

ALF & fur

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

British junior agriculture minister
Elliot Morley told the House of
Commons in July that he intended to introduce
legislation to close the 15 remaining
mink farms in Britain, but remembering the
Labor government’s failure to promptly pass
a ban on fox hunting, promised during the
1997 election campaign, Animal Liberation
Front members released as many as 6,000
mink from the Crow Hill Fur Farm i n
Hampshire on August 8, touching off mayhem.
About 500 were soon caught, still on
the premises, and others reportedly returned
within a few days, seeking food, but others
invaded the nearby New Forest Preserve,
devastating native wildlife and also killing a
caged owl and kestrel at the New Forest Owl
Sanctuary. Another 2,000 mink were shot or
trapped by a 20-member Ministry of
Agriculture hit squad during the next few
days, but as of August 13 at least 2,000 more

Could Steve Hindi be Zorro?

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

CHICAGO––Chicago Animal
Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi, 43,
“pioneers a new brand of brass-knuckled
activism,” Jonathan Eig warned hunters and
fishers in the August edition of Outside magazine.
Under the headline “Put that Bunny
Down, or I’ll Kick Your Butt,” Eig described
Hindi’s recent public challenge to Mexican
matadors to meet him in the ring for a Zorrostyle
sword-and-cape fight with someone
who’ll fight back with a chance of success.
While awaiting a response (and not
holding his breath in expectation of getting
one), Hindi called a boycott of Pepsi Cola
over Pepsi subsidies to bullfighting via prominent
advertising in Mexican bull rings.
Replied Pepsi group manager for
customer relations Christine Jones, “Although
some arenas in Mexico may carry Pepsi signage
because our soft drinks are sold there,
this should not be construed as an endorsement
of bullfighting. We do not contribute funding
nor do we sponsor bullfighting events.” The
Pepsi banners appearing in the background of
many of Hindi’s photos and videos of bullfights,
Jones said, “remain in place for all
activities held at these venues.”

ENFORCEMENT FOR THE BIRDS

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

CARROLLTON, Texas;
HENDERSON HARBOR, N.Y.––
Responding to citizen complaints
about noise, stench, and filth, city
officials in Carrollton, Texas said,
they revved up a bulldozer before
dawn on July 23 and flattened an
egret rookery in mid-nesting season.
Neighbors wakened by the
machinery and falling trees discovered
the damage was mostly done.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of
cattle egret chicks were crushed,
along with mothers who didn’t leave
their nests. Rescuers saved an estimated
300 chicks.
Egrets are protected undernder
the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty
Act. Carrollton was supposed to
have a permit from the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service before touching the
site. It did not. Neither did
“Operation Remove Excrement,” as
Carrollton officials called it, make
the neighborhood more sanitary.
Instead, warned Dallas County
Health and Humane Services
Department medical director Karine
Lancaster, the bulldozers might
have spread the fungal spores that
cause histoplasmosis.

LIVE MARKET CRUELTY LEGAL, SAYS JUDGE; JUST DUCKY, SAY POLITICIANS

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––In effect
endorsing cruelty to animals as perceived by
much of the rest of America, albeit not by
blind justice, the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors on August 3 adopted a series of
resolutions commending Chinatown live markets
for their July 20 courtroom victory over
the Coalition for Healthy and Humane
Business Practices, organized by attorney
Baron Miller.
Miller had sued Never Ending
Quails and 11 other live markets in an attempt
to oblige city and state agencies to enforce a
variety of anti-cruelty and public health
statutes, which he held should have forbidden
the methods the live markets commonly use to
keep and slaughter a variety of birds, reptiles,
and amphibians.
He argued that if the live markets
can’t meet humane standards, they should not
be allowed to operate at all.”

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Twenty years ago the Yoplait division of General Mills began selling yoghurt in conical
cups which foraging animals, especially skunks, sometimes got stuck on their heads.
After wildlife rehabilitators identified 14 such cases in 1997, General Mills redesigned the
cups. Modified to enable animals to extricate themselves, the new cups are now in stores.
That didn’t satify Animal Protection Institute staffer Camilla Fox, who according to
Los Angeles Times staff writer Susan Abram, recently ripped General Mills “for testing the
new container on a simulated model of a skunk-sized animal,” instead of on real skunks.
“You can’t test this on a real animal because that would be cruel,” responded
General Mills spokesperson Jack Sheeham, apparently better getting the point of decades of
humanitarian protest against animal use in product testing.
We have praised Fox for her handling of several previous campaigns, but this time
her ethical inconsistency and inability to say thanks won her and API the ANIMAL PEOPLE
“Head-In-A-Jar Award” for self-defeating tactics.

Primarily Primates gets 30 space chimps

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

SAN ANTONIO––In the end,
nothing could stop the U.S. Air Force––
except Primarily Primates.
On August 6, two months after the
initial deadline for deciding the fate of the
former National Aeronautics and Space
Administration chimpanzee colony, who
have been kept at Holloman Air Force Base
in southern New Mexico for more than 40
years, Air Force associate deputy assistant
for science, technology, and engineering
Colonel Jack Blackhurst announced at a
Washington D.C. press conference that of the
141 survivors, 111 will go to the Coulston
Foundation, of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Headed by Frederick Coulston, 84,
the Coulston Foundation has managed the
colony under contract since 1993. It is also
the world’s largest supplier of chimps to labs.
Primarily Primates, the only other
applicant to meet the Air Force criteria to
receive the chimpanzees, will be given 30.

Fixing for a fight of Leviathans

September 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

NEAH BAY, Wash.; NEWPORT,
Ore.––If the media drama underway in the
Pacific Northwest was a professional wrestling
match, it would be billed as the Makah
Harpooners vs. Willy the Whale, alias Killer
Keiko, orca star of the hit films Free Willy!,
Free Willy II, and Free Willy III.
Scrapping for air time, they might
make a show of enmity, and their partisans
might fall for it, but more cynical viewers
would suspect they were working for the same
syndicate.
But who might own the syndicate––
Hollywood, or Japan?
Whoever wrote the “Keiko-vs.-
Makah” script, literal or figurative, seems to
have worked for four years to bring about an
autumn battle of Leviathans. Captain Paul “The
Pirate” Watson and fellow voyagers of the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society will try to put
themselves between the Makah whalers and
migrating gray whales. The Free Willy/Keiko
Foundation, led by David Phillips, also head of
Earth Island Institute, will meanwhile prepare
Keiko to become the first of his species ever
returned to the ocean after prolonged captivity.
The real struggle will come through
your TV and mailbox, as their causes vie for
public interest and donations.

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