Changing of the animal guard at Fort Mason, San Francisco

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

SAN FRANCISCO–A July 31 grand opening marked the transfer of
the former Fund for Animals office in San Francisco to Animal
Switchboard, still under direction of Virginia Handley and her
assistant Elizabeth Keller.
The office was closed on May 1, after the Fund merged into
the Humane Society of the U.S. at the beginning of 2005, but was
retained by Animal Switchboard with the encouragement of PawPAC,
Action for Animals, Vigil for Animals, and the Animal Welfare
Association.
Animal Switchboard was begun in 1970 by Handley’s mother,
Grace Handley, assisted by Virginia and longtime Animal Welfare
Association volunteer Gloria Chavarria. Together they shared advice
about animal-related problems and referred callers to appropriate
veterinary and humane services. While Virginia Handley went on to
work for the Fund, Grace Handley continued Animal Switchboard for
more than 20 years. Chavarria kept it going after she died.
Contact: Animal Switchboard, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA
94123; 415-474-4021; <www.animalswitchboard.org>.

North America

AVMA refuses to condemn foie gras, amends sow crate policy, excludes critics from hall

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

MINNEAPOLIS–The American Veterinary Medical Association
House of Delegates on July 16, 2005 unanimously defeated a
resolution asking the AVMA to formally find inhumane the practice of
force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras.
The resolution was rejected, AVMA publicist Sharon Granskog
said, “because limited peer-reviewed scientific information dealing
with the animal welfare concerns associated with foie gras is
available, and because the observations and practical experience of
members indicate a minimum of adverse effects on the birds involved.”
Charged Farm Sanctuary in a membership alert, “The AVMA
House of Delegates rejected the 1998 Report of the Scientific
Committee on Welfare Aspects of the Production of Foie Gras in Ducks
and Geese as being out-dated.”
The resolution was squelched, Farm Sanctuary alleged, “due
to opposition by the American Association of Avian Veterinarians,
the American Association of Avian Pathologists, and the New York
State Veterinary Medical Association. These organizations claimed
that their recent visits to foie gras farms in New York revealed
proper care of birds. However, in previous unannounced visits to
the same farm, ducks were videotaped in diseased and filthy
conditions.”

New state legislation

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

The North Carolina legislature on August 17, 2005
incorporated into the state budget a set of standards for animal
shelters, to take effect on October 1, which will require that
euthanasia technicians be properly trained and forbid use of any
methods to kill animals other than lethal injection and carbon
monoxide. “The majority of counties in the Carolinas and in the
Charlotte region use gas to kill most animals, even though the
method is banned by at least two states,” wrote Michelle Crouch of
the Charlotte Observer. “Most use lethal injection to put down sick
and young animals, but say they can’t afford to use it every time.”
Earlier, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley signed a bill
requiring petting zoos to be licensed and inspected. The bill was
introduced after 108 children suffered e- coli infections after
visiting petting zoos at the North Carolina State Fair in 2004.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on August 12, 2005 vetoed
a bill which would have allowed fur trappers to use cable snares,
banned in the state for more than 50 years. Blagojevich on August
22 endorsed into law a bill establishing a fund for subsidized dog
and cat sterilization, supported by a surcharge of $3.00 on rabies
vaccinations. American SPCA senior director of legal training and
legislation Ledy VanKavage predicted that the surcharge would
“generate around $2.5 million a year.”

Haunted by hidden past, humane law enforcement legend Dave Garcia retires

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DALLAS–Dave Garcia, 55, vice president of operations for
the SPCA of Texas in Dallas since 2001, on August 6, 2005 announced
his retirement from humane work.
“His resignation comes days after Smith County District
Attorney Matt Bingham dismissed three animal cruelty charges against
Julia McMurrey, the former operator of Paws Around the Planet ranch
in Tyler,” reported Kim Horner of the Dallas Morning News.
“Bingham received anonymous information, which was
confirmed, that Garcia has a criminal background including arrests
for driving while intoxicated in Texas, Missouri, and Arizona,
plus a rape and kidnapping conviction in Arizona in 1973. Garcia was
paroled in the rape and kidnapping case in 1976. Bingham said he
dismissed the charges against McMurrey because of ethical concerns
about using Mr. Garcia as a witness. He said Garcia told a
prosecutor that he had no criminal history,” Horner added.
Cockfighting proponents, including commentators for Game
Fowl News, have long circulated reports similar to those Bingham
received. Longtime acquaintances of Garcia within the humane
community were mostly aware that he had a troubled past, which had
helped him to successfully infiltrate animal fighting rings and bring
the perpetrators to justice.

North America

No justice for horses in court or Congress

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., FORT WORTH, RENO–U.S. District Judge
Terry Means on August 25 ruled that the Beltex and Dallas Crown horse
slaughterhouses in Fort Worth and Kaufman may continue killing horses
despite a 1949 Texas law against selling horsemeat for human
consumption. Beltex and Dallas Crown are the two oldest and largest
horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.
Means found that federal law permitting horse slaughter supersedes
the state law, which has apparently never been enforced.
While the verdict was pending, the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice sold 53 horses to Dallas Crown, despite a 2002
opinion by former state attorney general John Cornyn that such
transactions would be illegal.
Cornyn, now a Republican U.S. Senator, has not been visibly
involved in Congressional efforts to save wild horses from slaughter.
Under an amendment to the 1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse
and Burro Protection Act slipped through Congress as a last-minute
rider to the November 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the
Bureau of Land Management is now mandated to sell “without
limitation” any “excess” horse or burro who is more than 10 years of
age, or who has been offered for adoption three times without a
taker. “Excess” means any wild horse or burro who has been removed
from the range. The Bureau of Land Management has taken about 10,000
horses and burros from the range in nine western states in each of
the past three years, and plans to take 10,000 this year in 57
roundups.

What has no-kill accomplished?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

ANAHEIM–Another way to describe the “no-kill movement” might
be “the democratization of animal sheltering.”
The no-kill concept had already won the battle for public
opinion decades before no-kill sheltering existed on any significant
scale. Dogcatchers were a familiar film villain even before animated
cartoons and “talking pictures” were invented.
Fritz Frelang and rival Walt Disney merely revitalized the
stereotype in Dog-Pounded (1954), starring Sylvester the Cat, and
Lady & The Tramp (1955). More than half a century later,
bird-catching feral cats are still at imminent risk of landing in a
pound full of ferocious dogs, licensing is still advanced from many
directions as essential to end shelter killing, the public still
does not like dogcatchers, and animal control officers still don’t
like their image.
Winning over animal shelter management is a battle still
underway–but increasingly irrelevant to tens of thousands of
volunteer rescuers, donors, and upstart shelter founders, who have
taken the work of saving animals into their own hands.
After decades of railing at “irresponsible” pet-keepers,
animal control agencies and humane societies are facing activists who
are claiming responsible roles, whether or not they can fulfill them.

Disasters driven by global warming hit animals from India to Alaska

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DELHI, AHMEDABAD–Six months to the day
after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the
Indian east coast, monsoon flash floods on July
26, 2005 roared through Mumbai, western
Maharashtra state, and parts of Karnataka state.
Surging water, mud slides, broken power
lines, and collapsing houses killed more than
1,000 people and countless animals in Mumbai and
surrounding villages.
As after of the December 26, 2004
tsunami and the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake,
Wildlife SOS of Delhi and the Animal Help
Foundation of Ahmedabad were among the first
responders. They worked their way toward Mumbai
while People for Animals/ Mumbai pushed out to
meet them.
“We distributed fodder to poor villagers
to feed their cattle, wherever required, and
fed biscuits to all the stray dogs we found. We
also distributed free medicine to needy farmers,”
PFA/Mumbai managing trustee Dharmesh Solanki
reported.

Confusion of names befuddles bequests

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Hunter Vernon D. Lybolt Jr., 57, of
Forest, Virginia, born and raised in New York,
unmarried with no children, siblings, or living
parents, died in July 2004, leaving his
$600,000 estate to the “Bedford County ASPCA
Animal Shelter.” The estate is now claimed by
the Bedford Humane Society, the county-managed
Bedford Animal Shelter, the New York City-based
American SPCA, and a coalition of 13 relatives.
As result of a similar case, in which
the Royal SPCA of Great Britain received £250,000
from a Scots estate, the Scottish SPCA recently
surveyed 10,000 donors and found that 87% had
mistakenly donated to the RSPCA. Founded in
1839, one year before the former London Humane
Society became the RSPCA, the SSPCA endured a
cash flow crisis in 2002 that had the trustees
threatening to lay off staff and close seven of
13 regional rescue centers.
Hoping to clear up the confusion, the
SSPCA on August 1, 2005 introduced new colors
and a new logo.

Shelter killing drops after upward spike

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

The numbers of dogs and cats killed in U.S. animal shelters
appears to have resumed a 35-year decline after a brief spike upward,
according to the 12th annual ANIMAL PEOPLE review of shelter exit
data. The overall rate of shelter killing per 1,000 Americans now
stands at 15.5.
Shelter killing is coming down in all parts of the U.S., but
progress remains most apparent where low-cost and early-age dog and
cat sterilization programs started first, decades ago, followed by
aggressive neuter/return feral cat sterilization, introduced on a
large scale during the early 1990s.
Regions with harsh winters that inhibit the survival of stray
and feral kittens were usually killing more than 100 dogs and cats
per 1,000 humans circa 1970. The U.S. average was 115, and the
Southern toll (where known) soared above 250.
Current regional norms vary from 3.6 in the Northeast to 27.5
along the Gulf Coast and 29.2 in Appalachia.
The Northeast toll is as low as it is partly because most
animal control agencies in Connecticut still do not actively pick up
cats, although they were authorized to do so in 1991–but even if
Connecticut agencies collected two or three times as many cats as
dogs, the overall Northeast rate of shelter killing would be less
than 4.5 dogs and cats per 1,000 humans.

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