Animals in laboratories

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

The USDA hopes to soon replace the present system of

classifying animal dealers, Animal and Plant Health Inspection

Service officer Steve Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 3.

All commercial animal breeders other than farmers now receive Class

A permits; those who sell animals they do not breed themselves are

issued Class B permits. A common misperception is that “Class B

dealer” is synonymous with shadowy characters who sell stolen pets to

laboratories, but in fact about three-fourths of the 1,280 current Class

B permit holders are in the pet trade; no more than 75, according to

Smith, sell dogs and cats to labs, and of those, fewer still sell “ran-

dom source” animals. Under the anticipated regulatory amendment,

there will be nine different permit categories, each of which is specific

to the nature of the permit-holder’s business.

MARINE LIFE

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Biologist Macarena Green of Quito, Ecuador, on January 12

issued an Internet SOS for marine life in the Galapagos islands. On

October 15, 1994, she said, the Ecuadoran government opened the region

to sea cucumber collection for the first time, setting a quota of 550,000 to

be picked over the next three months. “However, in two months the take

exceeded seven million,” Green stated. “Fishermen were not only collect-

ing sea cucumbers, but also sea horses, snails, sea urchins, and black

coral. Also, one fisherman admitted he had already sent to Japan sea lion

penises as a try-out for a new aphrodisiac. The Japanese buyer paid $50 for

each penis.” The sea cucumber season was closed due to the abuse on

December 15, but, “The people involved during the lucrative yet devastat-

ing enterprise were not about to accept that. During the first days of

January they took over installations of the Park Service and Darwin Station.

They kept all the people inside as hostages, including the wives of many of

the workers and children. They threatened to kill all the tortoises in captivi-

ty at the station, and they threatened to start fires on little islands,” which

would also kill endangered tortoises. Green begged that letters on behalf of

keeping the sea cucumber season closed, permanently, be sent to Arq.

Sixto Duran Ballen, Presidente Constitucional de la Republica de Ecuador,

Palacia de Gobierna, Quito, Ecuador.

Fish

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Chemical weapons scuttled by the

British after World Wars I and II are blamed by

local residents for the recent deaths of hundreds of

birds and some seals along the coasts of Donegal

and Antrim, Ireland. At least 120,000 tons of

nerve gases and mustard gas were sunk in the area

between 1945 and 1957, where 18 ships full of

similar materials were sunk about 25 years earlier.

A panel of 26 researchers who volun-

teer their efforts on behalf of the Monterey Bay

National Marine Sanctuary is expected to recom-

mend a ban on “chumming” in the area, to take

effect in early 1995. Chumming––dumping blood

and offal into the water to attract sharks––is used

by entrepreneur Jon Cappella to draw rare great

white sharks toward submerged cages of thrill-

seeking divers, anchored near Point Ano Nuevo.

Ano Nuevo is home of one of the world’s biggest

elephant seal and sea lion breeding colonies and is

just a mile from a popular surfing beach.

DIET & HEALTH

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

From the December 5 Newsweek

cover feature: “The saturated fats in meat,

butter, and whole milk have long been demon-

ized, and for the most part rightly so. Recent

research on heart disease and several can-

cers––including colon, prostate, and

ovary––points to one overwhelming message:

eating a lot of red meat is really a bad idea.”

The article coincided with a White House

press conference at which First Lady Hillary

Clinton and former U.S. Surgeon General C.

Everett Koop announced “Shape Up

America,” a campaign against obesity, which

kills an estimated 300,000 Americans a year.

The campaign is modeled after Koop’s anti-

smoking drive. Consumption of animal-based

foods wasn’t mentioned in most news releases

about it, but Koop is known for seeming to

target one thing while hitting another, e.g.

becoming an outspoken defender of animal

experimentation in 1990 while investing much

of his own fortune in developing the “Adam”

computerized alternative to the use of animals

and human cadavers in practice surgery.

AGRICULTURE

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Responding to a year-long cam-

paign against face-branding, led by the

Coalition for Nonviolent Food, the USDA on

December 22 proposed new rules to identify

Mexican cattle imported into the U.S., to take

effect January 23. The new rules require tail-

head branding, by either the hot-iron or freeze

method. Freeze branding must be done at

least 18 days before import, to give the mark

time to become visible. The Coalition, led by

Henry Spira, now seeks to halt the use of

face-branding to identify cattle with tuberculo-

sis and brucellosis. (See ad, page 10.)

The scandal over the use of the

banned synthetic steroid clenbuterol in veal

feed, revealed in December by the Humane

Farming Association and ANIMAL

PEOPLE, continues to spread, as the USDA

in early December confirmed finding traces in

feed seized from five Wisconsin dealers.

ZOONOSIS UPDATE

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Rabies roundup

Because continued funding for an

experimental raccoon rabies oral vaccina-

tion program begun last spring hasn’t been

approved on schedule by the Massachusetts

legislature, the Tufts University School of

Veterinary Medicine may be obliged to lay off

project coordinator Allyson Robbins on

December 31, dean Franklin Loew told ANI-

MAL PEOPLE on December 23. It also

won’t be able to order the vaccination baits in

time to be sure of having them on hand at the

optimum time to use them, when mothers

come out of their dens with newly ambulatory

babies. The initial oral vaccination budget

came from a dormant Food and Agriculture

Department fund set up to fight equine

encephalitis. However, while the vaccination

work was underway, trying to keep raccoon

rabies off Cape Cod as a demonstration of its

effectiveness, equine encephalitis reappeared

in Massachusetts, and the Food and

ANIMAL HEALTH

December 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

India on November 4 declared itself free of

plague, two months after a bubonic plague outbreak hit the

Beed district of Maharashtra state while pneumonic plague

broke out in the city of Surat. The last Beed case was

reported on October 2; the last Surat case was diagnosed

three weeks later. A bubonic plague outbreak possibly

related to the one in Beed raged on in Matabeleland

province, Zimbabwe, killing 21 people and afflicting more

than 200 by November 10. Dr. Lalit Dar and staff at the

India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi meanwhile

questioned whether the diseases in question really were

plague in a letter to The Lancet, a prestigious British med-

ical journal. They noted that while most of the victims had

plague-like symptoms, only 272 out of 6,000 reported cases

were unequivocally identified, and the death toll was unex-

pectedly low. “Even within families more than one case

was uncommon,” they wrote. “The diagnosis of plague

should definitely be confirmed by culture. Conditions that

need to be excluded are viral infections such as hantavirus

pulmonary syndrome, meliodisis and leptospirosis.” The

latter three diseases, like plague, are often spread by infect-

ed rodents and tend to follow flooding, which hit western

India just before the first plague cases occurred.

LABORATORY ANIMAL NUMBERS: GOOD NEWS OR BAD? by Andrew Rowan

December 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

In March of this year, I reported that the number of

laboratory animals used annually had declined by up to 50%

in many European countries and also probably in the United

States. I based this conclusion on a variety of sources. In

Europe, Great Britain and the Netherlands have collected

data on laboratory animal numbers with reasonable diligence,

and their records are usually regarded as being reliable. In

both cases, laboratory animal use has fallen by approximate-

ly 50% since the mid-1970s. Switzerland also reports a 50%

decline between 1980 and 1990; the sources for this claim

are news reports in the scientific literature. Similarly,

France, Italy, Sweden, and Germany all report declining

use, although their records are incomplete and cover only a

few years in the 1980s and 1990s. Canada, via the Canadian

Council on Animal Care, also reports significant declines in

the use of the common laboratory mammals.

Animals in laboratories

December 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

A Call for Public Forums on the

Use of Animals in Research and Education,

issued by Jane Goodall and the Green World

Center, asks university students and faculty to

“learn about and discuss animal experimenta-

tion and its actual practice in your own com-

munity,” emphasizing exchange of perspec-

tives over confrontation. “One of the greatest

barriers to social change is the confrontational

approach,” Goodall concluded. “Many areas

of discussion do not resolve neatly into black

and white. Learning from and reasoning with

those who do not share our views is one way

we grow as people.” Mailed to university

newspapers across the U.S. circa November 1,

the call was ratified in a follow-up mailing by

the American Anti-Vivisection Society.

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