Butchers, pig poop, & truth in advertising

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Confederation Francaise de la
Boucherie, a Paris-based 22,000-member
union of butchers, objects to “massacres,
shootings, and throat-cuttings which crop up
in the news described as butchery,” such as
the Ramadan killings of more than 400
women and children in Algeria. A butcher’s
role, the butchers claimed, “evokes peace
and fraternity. He is not an executioner or a
torturer. He is an artisan, in love with his
trade.” Alleged Islamic militants used almost
the same killing methods on the Ramadan victims––and
thousands of others since 1992––as
are used to kill sheep at Ramadan, an Islamic
festival, for fast-ending meals.

Zoos

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

St. Louis Zoo director Charlie
Hoessle on January 1 told Tom Uhlenbrock
of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that in 1997 visits
to the Galapagos, Alaska, New Guinea,
and Australia, he saw more ecological change,
including coral dying near the equator, the
Arctic ice fields shrinking, and rainforests
drying into tinder, than he’d previously seen
in 20 years of study. “I’m not alarmed,”
Hoessle said, “but I am concerned. This is an
international conservation issue of enormous
magnitude, that can affect all of us.”

Bombings in Quebec, a grand jury in Pennsylvania, convictions in U.K., Utah

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Le Journal de Quebec, of Quebec
City, received an anonymous call on
November 26 from a man claiming to represent
the previously unknown Quebec City cell
of the Animal Liberation Front, who said he
was calling on behalf of the also previously
unknown Montreal ALF to claim responsibility
for two bombs that earlier in the day damaged
both the Laval head office of BioChem
Pharma Inc. and a third bomb that damaged a
BioChem diagnostic lab in Montreal. Quebec
activists told ANIMAL PEOPLE it was a
“bad rap” against the cause, while animal
rights groups that often receive ALF communiques
said they had not received any about
the Quebec cases. Most denounced the bombings,
which came in mid-morning when both
buildings were fully occupied. BioChem,
spun off from the Institute Armand Frappier
at Laval University, uses mice and rats in
pharmaceutical product testing. The Institute
Armand Frappier primate research compound
is next door to the BioChem offices. BioChem
got warnings that the bombs had been
placed at 9:52 a.m., just in time to evacuate
200 people in Laval and 55 in Montreal.

ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, AND SHELTERING

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Arizona Humane Society h a s
become the first U.S. shelter to try out injection
sterilization of male dogs. Already used
since 1994 in Mexico and Costa Rica, the sterilization
chemical, Neutersol, was developed
by the University of Missouri at Columbia
medical school. The active ingredient is zinc
gluconate, combined with arginine. “Within
24 hours of injection, the sperm count begins
to go down, and within 100 days there’s a
100% reduction,” AHS director Ken White
told Linda Helser of the Arizona Republic.
The one-shot procedure costs about $10.
City animal control advisory panels
in Los Angeles, California, and Austin,
Texas, in December 1997 began formal study
of no-kill animal control, following the San
Francisco model.

SEALERS TO KILL 275,000

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland– –
Canadian fisheries minister David Anderson on
December 30 set the 1998 Atlantic Canada sealing
quota at 275,000, the same as in 1997, but
increased the number who may be hooded seals to
10,000, 2,000 more than last year.
The Seal Industry Advisory Council
requested a 1998 quota of 300,000 seals, but
Anderson said the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans would do a harp seal census this year
before making any further quota changes.
Anticipating continued high quotas,
Caboto Seafoods Ltd. of Newfoundland earlier in
December advanced plans to remodel a fish processing
plant into a sealing plant, to extract oil
from carcasses and tan pelts.
DFO scientists have leaked data publicized
by the International Fund for Animal
Welfare indicating that sealers actually kill two
seals for each carcass landed, keeping just males
because penises are by far the most lucrative part.

White House kills EU fur ban

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BRUSSELS––Hope that the European Union would finally enforce
a ban promised since 1991 on imports of furs possibly taken by leghold trapping
died on December 1, 1997, when 12 hours after the EU threatened to
impose the ban against U.S. wild-caught furs within a week, it accepted a
non-binding deal that allows continued imports of leghold-trapped furs for at
least six more years while individual states set their own schedules for phasing
out or modifying leghold traps to meet so-called international standards developed
by the trapping industry.
The USDA is meanwhile spending $350,000 this year in experiments
to develop alternative trapping methods. Largely replicative of work
done in Canada for nearly 40 years without finding anything acceptable to
both trappers and humanitarians, the experiments call for trapping at least 186
foxes, 186 coyotes, and 1,080 raccoons.

“Reform vet med board,” says I.G.

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Ohio Inspector General Richard
Ward on December 10 recommended that the
Ohio Veterinary Medical Board should
develop written policies and procedures to
expedite handling of public complaints.
During an investigation of delayed response,
Ward said, “We found repeated instances
where the board could have acted but did not.”
His findings paralleled those of the Arizona
Office of the Auditor General in a probe of
the similarly constituted Arizona Board of
Veterinary Medical Examiners, published in
April 1997, and reflect growing concern
nationally that veterinarians may be insufficiently
accountable for their work. Vets, like
medical doctors and dentists, are largely
peer-regulated, but unlike medical doctors
and dentists have little vulnerability to malpractice
suits, since the court-recognized
value of most animals is less than the cost of
filing fees. Ward looked into the Ohio
Veterinary Medical Board due to claims that it
failed to promptly address charges against
Alexia Wilde, DVM, of Columbus.

Money, influence, and wildlife

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Nation newspaper, of Bangkok,
Thailand, on December 18 reported that
Pavillon Massage Parlor manager Somchai
Rojjanaburapha contributed $111 of the
$222 price of a 14-month-old sun bear to save
him from sale to a Korean restaurant,
and––though the Thai economy is in freefall
collapse, the massage business with it––forty
masseuses chipped in the rest. The bear was
sent to the Khao Khieow Open Zoo, 50
miles southeast of Bangkok.

Fish & Wildlife resignations

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.––U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service supervisor of Everglades
ecosystems Craig Johnson resigned in midDecember,
“after almost three years battling
for manatees, panthers, seaside sparrows,
and Key deer against higher-ups in his own
agency and other agencies supposed to be
protecting the environment,” Miami Herald
staff writer Cyril T. Zaneski reported on
December 23.
Johnson, 42, returned to a post
with the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Born in Harlem, Johnson was
among the few identifiable members of racial
and ethnic minorities at high levels in the Fish
and Wildlife Service. Former Fish and
Wildlife Service special investigator Carroll
Cox charges in a pending lawsuit that racial
discrimination was involved in his 1994 dismissal,
after years of conflict with other Fish
and Wildlife Service staff over his efforts to
enforce the Endangered Species Act against
longline fishers, Chevron Oil, and Bishop
Estate, a major Hawaii landowner.

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