Category: North America

Battery cage opponents emboldened by success

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
WASHINGTON D.C., LONDON–Years used to
pass between Humane Society of the U.S.
announcements of progress on behalf of
battery-caged egg-laying hens. In mid-October
2006 two such announcements came just 24 hours
apart.
Nineteen years after HSUS upset consumers
and donors with a short-lived “breakfast of
cruelty” campaign against bacon and eggs, a
younger generation of consumers and donors is
responding enthusiastically to a similar message.
About 95% of total U.S. egg production
comes from battery caged hens, but that could
change fast.
Under comparable campaign pressure,
British caged egg producers have already lost 40%
of the market, the research firm Mintel reported
in August 2006 to the Department of the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Demand for
cage-free eggs has increased 31% since 2002,
Mintel found.

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One-legged Sweet Nothing stays ahead of killer buyers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Sweet Nothing, right, kept by Cindy Wasney & Dick Jackson
of Victoria, British Columbia, is an emissary for Premarin foals,
Big Julie’s Rescue Ranch in Fort McLeod, Alberta, and horses who
learn to live with prosthetic legs.
“I bought her at a feed lot auction,” Big Julie’s Rescue
Ranch founder Roger Brinker told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “She was a $200
horse,” going for little more than the minimum bid.
Conventional belief is that horses who suffer severe leg
injuries must be euthanized, but some especially valuable stud
horses have been saved with prosthetic limbs, typically costing
$6,000 to $8,000.

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Rocky Mountain Wildlife sanctuary struggles on–for now

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
KEENESBURG, Colorado–The Rocky Mountain Wildlife
Conservation Center “has received donations and pledges that will
help to keep it operating for now,” the sanctuary management
announced in a September 2, 2006 web posting, but closed to public
visits “for an undetermined period of time,” the web page said,
“so that the board of directors will have time to evaluate the entire
situation.
“The animals are in no danger,” the posting added. “It is
the desire of the board that the animals remain at their current
location…If no solution to keeping the sanctuary operating is
found, the board will proceed with closure and the placement of as
many animals as possible.”

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N.J. Consumer Affairs prosecutes another coin-can fundraiser

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
HACKENSACK, N.J.–Exiting New Jersey Office of Consumer
Affairs director Kimberly Ricketts on August 2, 2006, her last day
with the agency, appealed for public help to locate and impound an
estimated 1,400 to 1,500 coin collection canisters believed to have
been placed by an entity calling itself Lovers of Animals.
The Office of Consumer Affairs has filed suit, reported
Newark Star-Ledger staff writer Brian T. Murray, alleging improper
accounting for about $7,500 raised and spent in 2005.
The case followed the state shutdown of coin can fundraiser
Patrick Jemas in June 2006. Jemas did business as the National
Animal Welfare Foundation.
“Lovers of Animals was incorporated when Russell Frontera,
49, of Beachwood was furloughed from state prison in late 2004 after
serving two years of a seven-year sentence for loan sharking,” wrote
Murray. “His name appears on documents filed with the Internal
Revenue Service and the state that year, when he also opened a post
office box for the charity.

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Case against Primarily Primates tossed out, but president Wally Swett resigns under fire

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

 

SAN ANTONIO–Bexar County Civil District Court Judge Andy
Mireles on September 8, 2006 ruled that former Ohio State University
chimp caretakers Klaree Boose and Stephany Harris, along with
California veterinarian Mel Richardson, lacked standing to pursue a
PETA-backed lawsuit against the Primarily Primates sanctuary.
Named as co-plaintiffs and also denied standing were seven surviving
chimpanzees and two capuchin monkeys from the research colony
formerly kept by OSU psychology professor Sally Boysen. OSU retired
the colony to Primarily Primates in February 2006, with an endowment
of $324,000 for their quarters and upkeep, over the objections of
Boysen and PETA.

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HSUS absorbs Doris Day Animal League

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
WASHINGTON D.C.–The Humane Society of the U.S. on August 31,
2006 announced that it has absorbed the Doris Day Animal League by
merger, affirming nearly three months of speculation.
Founded in 1987 by actress Doris Day’s son Terry Melcher,
who died of cancer in November 2004, DDAL in 20 years never spent
less than half of its revenues on fundraising and administration,
cumulatively spent more than two-thirds of all the money it ever
raised on direct mail, and in the most recent fiscal year reported
on IRS Form 990 operated at a loss of more than $400,000, with
revenues of just over $2.5 million, raised from approximately
180,000 donors.
HSUS claims 9.5 million donors, with a 2006 budget of $103
million and 2005 revenues of $145 million.

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Comparing costs of carbon monoxide v.s. sodium pentobarbital

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
After claims that gassing is safer for employees, the most
persistent argument for killing animals by carbon monoxide instead of
sodium pentobarbital is that carbon monoxide is less expensive–if
only because most of the gas chambers now in use were installed and
paid for decades ago.
“Switching to lethal injection would mean investing in drugs
and training staff,” reported Raleigh News & Observer staff writer
Marti Maguire in February 2006. “That could strap counties that now
spend as little as $20 per animal. The Orange County shelter spends
$150 per animal,” using lethal injection, Maguire wrote.

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Injectible female chemosterilant goes to field trials

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
PORTLAND, Oregon–Among the last actions of the Doris Day
Animal League before it was absorbed on August 31, 2006 by the
Humane Society of the U.S. was funding a grant issued on July 26 by
the Alliance for Contraception for Cats and Dogs to help underwrite
tests of a chemosterilant for female animals called ChemSpay, now
underway on the Navajo Nation.
Headquartered in Windowrock, Arizona, near the junction of
Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, the Navajo Nation presently
has the highest rate of animal control killing of any incorporated
entity in the U.S., at 135 dogs and cats killed per 1,000 humans per
year, nearly 10 times the U.S. average of 14.5.

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How gassing came & went

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Gassing pound animals with carbon monoxide gained acceptance
across the U.S. after the American SPCA took over the New York City
animal control contract in 1895 and introduced carbide gassing in
lieu of drowning mass-caged strays in the Hudson River.
Carbon monoxide gassing prevailed over many attempts to
introduce other killing methods partly because it was inexpensive and
easily done, but perhaps mostly because it was perceived as painless.
The most successful challenge to carbon monoxide came from
the introduction of decompression chambers to kill animals, after
World War II, when the San Francisco SPCA developed a side business
in purchasing and adapting to shelter use Navy surplus decompression
chambers originally used to help divers who developed “the bends.”

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