Will Pennsylvania humane officers lose their badges?

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania––

Five bills before the Pennsylvania state legis-

lature, a court case pending in Ohio, and a

political fracas in Wisconsin together signal

that humane enforcement is no longer a

backwater of police work, easily left to ama-

teurs and the bottom of the court calendar.

It is almost certain that before 1994

is over, the structure of humane enforcement

in Pennsylvania will either be reinforced or

demolished, depending upon which mea-

sures from the competing bills best survive

the process of committee review and amend-

ment––and how one interprets the results. It

is possible that the Ohio court decision,

expected this summer (separate story, page

15), could spark a similar burst of legisla-

tive activity. In Wisconsin, rules governing

search warrants could be amended. In all

three states the humane community is wor-

ried because opponents are all but salivating

at the prospect of forcing “activist” anti-cru-

elty officers off the beat. Some of the pro-

posed Pennsylvania legislation would

exempt farmers from humane enforcement;

NEW YORK STATE STATISTICS SHOW LINK: Hunters and molesters

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

ALBANY, New York–-As a team of 165 volun-

teers shoved snow from the frozen forest floor near

Raquette Lake, where hunter Lewis Lent Jr. said he’d killed

and buried 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood last summer,

ANIMAL PEOPLEconfirmed through a county-by-county

comparative analysis of 1992 New York state hunting, trap-

ping, and crime statistics that children in upstate New York

counties with more than the average number of hunters per

capita are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted

than children in the notoriously crime-ridden Bronx district

of New York City. (Statistics begin on page 6.)

Lent, 43, of North Adams, Massachusetts, was

arrested January 7 after attempting to kidnap 12-year-old

Rebecca Savarese as she walked to school in nearby

Pittsfield. Within hours Lent became the primary suspect in

a string of at least eight kidnap/rape/murders of children in

Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and in an

attempted kidnapping in Bennington, Vermont, only days

before his capture.

OSTRICH AND EMU SPECULATORS: Will they get rich quick or just get the bird?

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

DALLAS, Texas––More than 115,000 giant flightless

birds––ratites––roam North American pastures, including 80,000

ostrichs, 35,000 emus, and the occasional rhea. Ratite numbers

have doubled since last year and quadrupled since 1991. At the

present rate of breeding, stoked by speculation, the ratite popula-

tion could double again this year, and perhaps next year, too.

But many of those “pastures” are little more than back yards.

There is as yet no significant market for ratites other than specula-

tion in breeding stock. When no one else wants to cash in insur-

ance policies, mortgage property, and drain life savings to buy

ratites at spectacularly inflated prices, the pyramid of breeders,

dealers, franchisers, and support service vendors will col-

lapse––maybe not this year, but almost certainly soon.

Zoos

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

announced December 20 that it has indefi-

nitely ended consideration of requests to

import giant pandas. The verdict came six

months after Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt

vetoed the San Diego Zoo’s attempt to import

two pandas in exchange for a grant of $1 mil-

lion to loosely monitored “panda conservation”

projects in China, which in the past have

included such activities as building a hydro-

electric dam.

Horses

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

New York City entered 1994

with no regulations protecting carriage

horses, after outgoing mayor David

Dinkins vetoed a bill on December 29 that

would have amended the 1989 Carriage

Horse Protection Act to allow horsedrawn

carriages to operate in city traffic except

during the rush hours, when they will be

restricted to Central Park, and to extend

the workday for carriage horses from eight

hours to nine. Carriages had been restrict-

ed to Central Park all day and barred from

operating during rush hours. Introduced

by councillor Noach Dear, the bill was

approved by the New York City Council on

December 21, 29-17, which was consid-

ered a close vote. The Carriage Horse

Action Committee had sought reauthoriza-

tion of the 1989 act, supported by the the-

atre industry and other groups concerned

that the carriages discourage business by

slowing down traffic, plus a faction that

claims the carriage horse trade is a “green

card factory” for Irish immigrants, who

dominate the workforce of drivers and

grooms. There are now 396 licensed car-

riage drivers, up from 266 in 1991, but

there are only 140 horses and 68 carriages

actually out on the job. The CHAC, head-

ed by Peggy Parker, may now seek a total

ban on horsedrawn vehicles in Manhattan.

FUR

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Encouraged by the reopening of

Bloomingdale’s Maximilian fur salon in

New York on November 29, the fur trade

still claims sales are up after a five-year

slump, projecting 1993 retail receipts of

$1.2 billion––but once again hard numbers

tell a different story. As of Christmas,

advertised retail fur prices were still plung-

ing to new lows in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Mink coats, furs priced at $5,000 or more,

and the overall average fur price were all

down 25% from the previous record lows

reached in 1992, The total volume of fur

advertising was down 17%, despite promi-

nent early fall cooperative promotional

efforts. Further indications of falling

demand include the 1993 mink and fox pro-

duction figures published in Fur Age

Biomedical research

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Despite a warning from senior radi-

ation biologist Dr. Joseph Hamilton that the

experiments had “a little of the Buchenwald

touch, “ the Atomic Energy Commission con-

ducted extensive radiation research on unwitting

human subjects from the mid-1940s into the

early 1970s, according to newly declassified

documents released in December by Energy

Secretary Hazel O’Leary, who battled her own

bureaucracy for nearly a year to obtain them. In

one experiment, 19 mentally retarded teenaged

boys at a state school in Fernald, Mass-

achusetts, were given radioactive milk with

their breakfast cereal from 1946 until 1956. In

Diet & Health

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Three new health studies rein-

force the arguments for vegetarianism

––especially for men who hope to remain

sexually active after the age of 40. A study

of Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry whose diet

consists mainly of tofu and rice, published in

the November edition of the British medical

journal The Lancet, suggested that tofu may

contain an ingredient that combats prostate

cancer. The study confirmed the findings of

an earlier study of U.S. Seventh Day

Adventists (more than half of whom are ethi-

cal vegetarians), which found that men who

eat a lot of legumes and fruits have a conspic-

uously low death rate from prostate cancer.

Prostate trouble is a leading cause of sexual

impotence––and the January 1994 issue of

The Journal of Urology includes the results of

the largest study of impotence ever. High

cholesterol consumption, heart disease, and

high blood pressure were confirmed as factors

frequently correlating with impotence; all are

closely associated with meat-eating.

PERFORMING WILDLIFE

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Elephant trainers Robert

“Smokey” Jones, Scott Riddle, and Heidi

Riddle raised eyebrows on December 22 by

announcing “A hands-on course in the humane

training and handling of captive elephants,” to

be taught at Riddle’s Elephant Breeding Farm

and Wildlife Sanctuary near Greenbriar,

Arkansas. A string of unusual elephant deaths

under Scott Riddle’s supervision over the past

15 years have brought repeated allegations of

mishandling, including two deaths resulting

from conflicts between elephants at the Los

Angeles Zoo in the early 1980s and one

ascribed to a stress-induced heart attack in

1986 at the Garden City Zoo in Garden City,

Kansas. Zoo officials in the latter case asked

the Kansas state police and the USDA to inves-

tigate the possibility that the heart attack was

brought on by an overdose of electric shock, as

at age 23 the elephant was still young, and had

been believed to be healthy. Riddle was

attempting to buy her for transport to a breed-

ing colony he wanted to start in Florida.

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