Category: North America

Jackson County stops selling pound animals to labs

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

JACKSON, Michigan–Two less Michigan county animal shelters
are selling animals to laboratory suppliers, as result of mid-August
2006 policy change.
Gladwin County became involved in the practice only three
weeks before the Jackson County commissioners voted 10-1 on June 18
to stop selling animals to longtime purchaser Fred Hodgins of Hodgins
Kennels in Howell. Anticipating the Jackson vote, Hodgins
approached Gladwin County Animal Shelter director Ron Taylor. Taylor
reportedly favored selling dogs to Hodgins if they would otherwise be
killed at the shelter.
On June 27 the Gladwin County commissioners voted 6-1 to
authorize Taylor to sell dogs to Hodgins. Hodgins bought two dogs on
August 1, just as local activist Cindy Krycian and Humane Education
And Legislation PAC founder Eileen Liska disclosed the arrangement to
the public through telephone calls and e-mails. Their efforts were
amplified internationally by Marietta Nealey Sprott of Heart of
Michigan Rescue.

Read more

Editorial: Culture, coonhunting, & child hunters

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Americans who express broad disgust toward Asian cultures
over the many cruelties of dog-eating and cat-eating might usefully
compare the persistence of those behaviors in South Korea and China
to the persistence of American participation in sport hunting.
About three million (6%) of the 50 million South Koreans eat
dogs, consuming about 2.6 million dogs per year at present. If the
same ratio of consumption applies to the estimated annual production
of about 10 million dogs for slaughter in China, about 11.4 million
Chinese eat dogs–or less than 1% of the human population of 1.4
billion. Cat-eating in both China and South Korea continues at a
much lower level.
Among about 300 million Americans, the U.S. now has slightly more
than 13 million active hunters: 4.3%. Another five million people
identify themselves as hunters but no longer hunt, chiefly due to
advancing age.
A traditional if often elusive goal of deer hunting is to effect a
quick kill, but causing prolonged animal suffering is built into the
method of many other forms of hunting.

Read more

Court kills Massachusetts “Dog Protection Act” fall 2006 ballot initiative

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

BOSTON–The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts on July
13, 2006 barred a proposed ballot initiative called the Dog
Protection Act from the November 2006 Massachusetts ballot. If
approved by the voters, the Dog Protection Act would have prohibited
greyhound racing, and would have provided stiffer sentences for
dogfighting and assaulting police dogs.
The court upheld the contention of Raynham-Taunton Greyhound
Park owner George Carney that the initiative improperly combined
unrelated issues.
Massachusetts secretary of state William Galvin Jr. in
December 2005 certified that Dog Protection Act backers had gathered
83,431 bona fide signatures from voters in support of the initiative,
about 18,000 more than were needed in the first step of the two-step
petitioning process, but after the Massachusetts legislature failed
to enact the Dog Protection Act itself, the act supporters were
required to gather at least 10,971 new signatures to put the
initiative before the voters.
Grey 2K cofounder Christine Dorchak told ANIMAL PEOPLE that
the goal was reached on June 16, five days ahead of the deadline.

Lab dog dealer C.C. Baird is sentenced

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

LITTLE ROCK–Former laboratory dog and cat suppliers Chester
Clinton “C.C.” Baird Jr. and his wife Patsy Baird, both 59, were on
July 14 sentenced for multiple violations of the federal Animal
Welfare Act. U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes gave C.C. Baird three
years on probation including six months of home detention, and fined
him $7,500. Holmes gave Patsy Baird two years on probation, and
fined her $2,000.
The Bairds and two of their five daughters in August 2005
paid $262,700 in fines to settle civil charges against them,
forfeited $ 200,000 cash from “ill-gotten gains,” paid more than
$40,000 in restitution to animal welfare groups that rehabilitated
and placed 215 dogs and 145 cats seized from the Bairds in 2003 and
2005 USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service raids, and turned
over their home, land, and kennel, worth about $1.3 million, to
the USDA.

Read more

New mobile S/N record

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

GREAT FALLS– Thirteen veterinarians and nearly 300 volunteers
tried from June 15 through 19, 2006 to break the Montana Spay/Neuter
Task Force record for most dogs and cats sterilized in five days by a
mobile surgical team, but fell barely short.
The final total of 370 dogs and 866 cats sterilized, for a
total of 1,236, was third best for the task force, whose top figure
was 1,354 achieved during Lewis & Clark Count Pet Care Week in 2004.
That broke the 1998 record of 1,336 sterilizations done in six days
during Salish & Kootenai Love Your Pet Week.
The Great Falls City Council and Cascade County Commission
pledged to fund a follow-up task force visit to sterilize 800 animals
who were left on a waiting list, said Montana Spay/Neuter Task Force
founder Jean Atthowe.
Great Falls was the last Montana city of at least 5,000
people to receive a task force visit. On the road since 1996, the
team has noted results including a 76% drop in intake at the Wolf
Point Dog Pound on the Fork Peck Reservation, after four visits,
and a 26% drop in intake plus a 42% drop in killing at the Billings
Animal Shelter, after just a single two-day visit.

Gains against shelter killing come hard in the Gulf states, West, & Midwest

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

Animals killed YEAR 1,000s Animals
per 1,000 people of people killed
—————————————————
CONNECTICUT 0.8 2003 3,483 2,647
Ithaca, NY 2.2 2003 97 214
New York City 2.6 2005 8,086 21,171
Onandaga County, NY 4.2 2003 311 1,300
Oswego, NY 7.5 2003 18 135
Madison County, NY 7.8 2003 70 548
—————————————————
NORTHEAST (36%) 2.2 33,495 72,322

Read more

First regions with low-cost dog & cat sterilization are still making the most progress

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

The U.S. regions where the first low-cost and free dog and
cat sterilization programs started, between 30 and 50 years ago,
still are making the fastest progress in reducing the numbers of dogs
and cats killed in animal shelters.
The 13th annual ANIMAL PEOPLE projection of the U.S. shelter
killing toll shows that the rate of killing per thousand humans
appears to have fallen back to the low of 14.8 that was achieved in
2000-2001, after a steep rise in 2001-2002. Because the U.S. human
population and the numbers of dogs and cats kept by humans have all
increased, the current annual toll of about 4.38 million dogs and
cats killed in shelters is still about 180,000 higher than the toll
of five years ago.

Read more

Post-Hurricane Katrina pet custody cases challenge adoptions

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

BATON ROUGE–Pet custody cases arising out of the
post-Hurricane Katrina animal rescue effort are presenting a
nationwide challenge to some animal advocates who have worked for
decades to promote recognition of pets as family members, and to
strengthen anti-pet theft laws.
“People who first considered themselves foster caregivers now
say some Katrina pet lovers don’t deserve their animals back,”
summarized Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Kathy Boccella in a
mid-July profile of four cases that are expected to soon go to court.
“They cite failure to have animals spayed or neutered and not getting
rabies and heartworm prevention as evidence of unfit care.”
Also often mentioned by defendants in Katrina-related custody
disputes is that many people who were displaced by Katrina were
allegedly slow to begin searching for their animals. Most apparently
waited until they returned to their homes and found no trace of
missing pets before going to the Internet, many as first-time
Internet users.

Read more

Executive changes at major regional humane societies

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

Longtime Massachusetts SPCA vice president Carter Luke has
been promoted to president, succeeding Larry Hawk. Luke has served
the MSPCA in various capacities under every MSPCA president since
Eric H. Hansen, the fourth president of the 138-year-old
organization, who was hired in 1942. Recruited from the American
SPCA in 2003, Hawk resigned in March 2006.
“Hawk increased revenue and took a more businesslike approach
to running the organization,” laying off 20 employees and
eliminating 32 vacant jobs, reported Sacha Pfeiffer of the Boston
Globe. Among Hawk’s first major actions was killing the
award-winning but money-losing Animals magazine, begun as Our Dumb
Animals by MSPCA founder George Angell.
However, Pfeiffer wrote, “several former MSPCA employees
said Hawk left after persistent concerns that his brusque management
style damaged morale without doing enough to improve the MSPCA
finances. Hawk also hired his wife and two children to do paid
consulting,” at total cost of $37,000, about 10.5% of Hawk’s own
salary, “and outsourced fundraising activities that resulted in
donations not being acknowledged. The MSPCA endowment has lost
nearly a third of its value since the late 1990s,” although Hawk
doubled direct mail expense, “and for years,” Pfeiffer wrote, “the
MSPCA has been violating its own spending policy by bypassing limits
on the percentage of endowment gains that may be used to pay
operating costs.”

1 … 77 78 79 80 81 … 321