Category: North America

Vegan ex-NHL hockey star is named deputy director of Canadian Greens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
MONTREAL–Recently retired vegan hockey star Georges Laraque,
33, was on August 1, 2010 named one of the two deputy directors of
the Green Party of Canada.
Laraque, born in Montreal of Haitian parents, said on his
web site that he gave up meat and later joined the Greens due to “my
deep concern for animal welfare.” Laraque has also raised funds for
relief work in Haiti.
Named “Best Fighter” by Hockey News in 2003 and “#1 enforcer”
by Sports Illustrated in 2008, Laraque played 13 years in the
National Hockey League for Edmonton, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and the
Montreal Canadiens.

Faulty warrants kill Ontario SPCA case against Toronto Humane Society

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
TORONTO–All pending charges against
former Toronto Humane Society president Tim Trow
and seven other former Toronto Humane Society
personnel were dropped on August 16, 2010 after
Ontario crown attorney Christine McGoey told the
court that deficiencies in the search warrant and
procedures used by the Ontario SPCA in a November
2009 raid on the Toronto Humane Society involved
“several serious breaches” of the Canadian
Charter of Rights & Freedoms, sufficient to
render inadmissible all evidence collected.

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Bear kept by wrestling promoter kills worker

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
Pressure on Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to issue a promised
executive order to ban private possession of exotic and dangerous
animals intensified on August 20, 2010 when one of nine bears kept
by bear wrestling promoter Sam Mazzola killed Brent Kandra, 24, a
six-year employee at Mazzola’s 17-acre compound in Lorain County.
The bear was reportedly not one used in the wrestling shows.
Begun circa 1986, Mazzola’s traveling barroom bear wrestling
act briefly disappeared after Mazzola was sent to Ohio state prison
in 1990 for alleged cocaine trafficking. The act was closed or
prohibited by authorities in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Ontario,
and Manitoba between 1994 and 1998. In 2008 the USDA took away
Mazzola’s exhibiton license and fined him $14,000 for allegedly not
permitting inspections and threatening officials.
In September 2009 Mazzola “pleaded guilty in U.S. District
Court to two federal criminal charges of exhibiting and selling
exotic animals without a license. He was sentenced to three years
probation and ordered to do community service,” reported Amanda
Garrett of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Bear-baying in S.C.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

COLUMBIA, S.C.–Bear-baying, legal in
the U.S. only in South Carolina, exploded into
national visibility on August 23, 2010 through
the near-simultaneous publication of an exposé by
Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard and the
release of undercover video by the Humane Society
of the U.S.
Descended from medieval bear-baiting,
bear-baying consists of releasing hounds to rush
a caged or tethered bear. The dogs, who are
purportedly being trained to hunt bears, are
called off when the bear rises on hind legs,
which would permit a hunter to shoot the bear.

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Salmonella egg recalls began with DeCoster

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
More than half a billion eggs laid between April and August
2010 were recalled in mid-August from stores in 14 states due to
salmonella enteritidis outbreaks that afflicted more than 2,000
people. Wright County Eggs, of Galt, Iowa, recalled 380 million
eggs. Another Iowa producer, Hillandale Farms, recalled more than
170 million eggs several days later.
Salmonella typically infects laying hens via rodent droppings
contaminating feed. Not immediately clear was whether the Wright
County and Hillandale outbreaks began from a common source.
Wright County Eggs owner Austin “Jack” DeCoster “earlier this
year pleaded guilty to 10 counts of animal cruelty over his company’s
treatment of chickens,” recalled Emily Friedman of ABC News. “In
June, DeCoster was ordered to pay more than $100,000 in fines and
restitution,” as result of an undercover investigation by Mercy For
Animals.

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American Humane Association deal with egg producer may undercut California standards

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

 

SACRAMENTO–Humane Society of the U.S. factory farming
campaign senior director Paul Shapiro rejoiced on July 7, 2010 when
California Governor Arnold Schwarz-enegger signed AB 1437, to
require that all eggs sold in California be produced under conditions
meeting the welfare standards for laying hens kept in California that
were established by the passage of Proposition Two in November 2008.
Shapiro called AB 1437 “a bill that will require all whole
eggs sold in California by 2015 to come from hens who can stand up,
lie down, turn around, and fully extend their limbs. In other
words: cage-free.”
Shapiro was scarcely alone in his understanding.
Editorialized The New York Times, “Since California does not produce
all the eggs it eats, this new law will have a wider effect on the
industry; every producer who hopes to sell eggs in the state must
meet its regulations. There is no justification, economic or
otherwise,” The New York Times added. “Industrial confinement is
cruel and senseless,” the editorialists wrote, “and will turn out
to be, we hope, a relatively short-lived anomaly in modern farming.”

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Defenders of Wildlife stops paying ranchers for livestock lost to wolves

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Defenders of Wildlife on August 20, 2010
announced that it will end paying compensation for verified livestock
losses to wolves in most states on September 10.
The 23-year-old Wolf Compensation Trust managed by Defenders
is widely credited with opening the way to wolf reintroduction in the
Rocky Mountains. Defenders has paid $1.4 million since 1987 to
ranchers in six states, for the deaths of 1,301 cattle, 2,431
sheep, and 108 other animals. “Our goal is to shift economic
responsibility for wolf recovery away from the individual rancher,”
said the Wolf Compensation Trust mission statement, “and toward the
millions of people who want to see wolf populations restored. When
ranchers alone are forced to bear the cost of wolf recovery, it
creates animosity and ill will toward the wolf,” which can “result
in illegal killing.”

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Rodeos try cultural defense, denial, & erasing cruelty law

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

CALGARY, CHEYENNE, BRAZILIA–Exempted from prosecution
for 52 animal deaths in 24 years, including the deaths of six horses
in 2010, Calgary Stampede promoters defend rodeo as culture.
Not prosecuted yet, despite repeated attempts by Showing
Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK), Cheyenne Frontier Days promoters
contend that animal injuries repeatedly videotaped and aired tens of
thousands of times on YouTube never happened.
Brazilian rodeo promoters just keep trying to repeal all
legal protection of domesticated animals from cruelty.
The two-week Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo ended in August
without documented fatalities, unlike in 2009 when SHARK founder
Steve Hindi videotaped at close range the fatal injuries suffered by
a horse named Strawberry Fudge during the bucking competition.

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