From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Editorially favoring hunting, trapping,
fishing, ranching, logging, rodeo, and animal
use in biomedical research, the Spokane
Spokesman-Review has probably never in recent
decades been mistaken for an exponent of animal
rights.
Yet on September 15, 1952 the
Spokesman-Review became perhaps the first and
only daily newspaper in the U.S. to editorially
endorse “A Charter of Rights for Animals,”
drafted by the World Federation for the
Protection of Animals.
The oldest of the three organizations
whose mergers eventually produced today’s World
Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA),
the Dutch-based World Federation then represented
“humane societies in 25 countries,” the
Spokesman-Review editors noted.
“Most civilized countries already have
laws to cover most of the protection for animals
that the federation asks,” the Spokesman-Review
continued. “Beating animals, forcing them to do
work beyond their strength, transporting them in
a manner to cause pain or without adequate food,
all are punishable now in the U.S., for example.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CINCINNATI–Fifteen founders and senior
staff of the Best Friends Animal Society on
October 22 talked shop with three Procter &
Gamble senior scientists and two senior
representatives of pet food maker Iams Inc., a
P&G subsidiary.
Convened by ANIMAL PEOPLE, preceding the
October 22-24 “No More Homeless Pets” conference
in Cincinnati, the meeting introduced key
personnel from one of the fastest-growing and
most increasingly influential animal charities in
the world to counterparts at one of the most
controversial companies engaged in animal
research.
Procter & Gamble since 1984 has invested
more than $190 million in developing alternatives
to animal testing, including $152 million since
1994. Yet P&G has also been continuously under
boycott by PETA and allied animal rights groups.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

NEW YORK CITY, TRENTON, PHILADELPHIA, ST. LOUIS,
MIAMI–“The black hats have increased adoptions 99.6%, reduced
euthanasia 14%, and fewer animals died in New York City during the
last 12 months than in any other one-year period in city history,
just 25,000,” Animal Care & Control of New York City director Ed
Boks e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on October 17, 2004.
In Boks’ first fiscal year since coming to New York, after
achieving similar results as head of Phoenix/Maricopa County Animal
Control in Arizona, the city killed 28,980 animals, then an
all-time 12-month low, but already broken.
Boks’ secret of success, he proclaims often, is integrating
the no-kill mission and philosophy into animal control–and then
finding the resources to make it happen.
Just across the Hudson River, a New Jersey state Animal
Welfare Task Force appointed in February 2003 by former Governor
James E. McGreevey–endowed with a $200,000 working budget–wants to
emulate Boks’ approach.
The task force recommendations include escalating
sterilization funding, adopting neuter/return as the officially
favored method of controlling feral cats, adding a trained cruelty
investigator to every police department, requiring every county to
operate an animal shelter, and removing the troubled New Jersey SPCA
network from the constabulary role in humane law enforcemnt that it
has had for more than 100 years.

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