Catalan bans bullfighting Lawmakers reject cultural defense

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

 

BARCELONA–Voting 68-55 to ban
bullfighting after January 1, 2012, the Catalan
parliament on July 28, 2010 resoundingly and
deliberately rejected defenses of bullfighting as
central to Catalonian culture.
“Let us create a more humane, more
responsible society. This could be our
contribution to the next generation,” urged
Catalan separatist party leader Joan Puigcercos
in a speech to the assembly members just before
the vote.
The bullfighting ban took the form of a
motion removing from the Catalan animal
protection law an exemption for bullfighting and
similar “cultural” exhibitions.

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Defenders of Wildlife stops paying ranchers for livestock lost to wolves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Defenders of Wildlife on August 20, 2010
announced that it will end paying compensation for verified livestock
losses to wolves in most states on September 10.
The 23-year-old Wolf Compensation Trust managed by Defenders
is widely credited with opening the way to wolf reintroduction in the
Rocky Mountains. Defenders has paid $1.4 million since 1987 to
ranchers in six states, for the deaths of 1,301 cattle, 2,431
sheep, and 108 other animals. “Our goal is to shift economic
responsibility for wolf recovery away from the individual rancher,”
said the Wolf Compensation Trust mission statement, “and toward the
millions of people who want to see wolf populations restored. When
ranchers alone are forced to bear the cost of wolf recovery, it
creates animosity and ill will toward the wolf,” which can “result
in illegal killing.”

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Rodeos try cultural defense, denial, & erasing cruelty law

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

CALGARY, CHEYENNE, BRAZILIA–Exempted from prosecution
for 52 animal deaths in 24 years, including the deaths of six horses
in 2010, Calgary Stampede promoters defend rodeo as culture.
Not prosecuted yet, despite repeated attempts by Showing
Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK), Cheyenne Frontier Days promoters
contend that animal injuries repeatedly videotaped and aired tens of
thousands of times on YouTube never happened.
Brazilian rodeo promoters just keep trying to repeal all
legal protection of domesticated animals from cruelty.
The two-week Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo ended in August
without documented fatalities, unlike in 2009 when SHARK founder
Steve Hindi videotaped at close range the fatal injuries suffered by
a horse named Strawberry Fudge during the bucking competition.

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Editorial: How expanding animal agriculture swamped Pakistan

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Is the world close to reaching finite ecological limits on
the production capacity of animal agriculture?
Flooding inundating more than a fifth of Pakistan in recent
weeks may demonstrate that the limits have already been exceeded,
doing catastrophic harm to more than 20 million displaced people and
30 million livestock, plus untold millions of dogs, cats, and
wildlife.
Critics of industrial agriculture and diets centered on
animal products have been predicting such an impending crisis for
more than 40 years. Among the most influential were Paul Ehrlich in
The Population Bomb (1968), Frances Moore Lappe in Diet for A Small
Planet (1971), and E.F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful (1973).
Their insights and dire prophecies helped to build the environmental
movement–but, focused on the collision course of human population
growth and food security, Ehrlich, Moore Lappe, and Schumacher each
hugely underestimated the human capacities for invention,
adaptation, and denial.

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Letters

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Helping in China

Your April 2010 editorial “How to introduce neuter/return &
make it work” is really informative and useful. I have learnt a lot
from it. Therefore I had it translated into Chinese and have sent it
out to all the Chinese animal groups through the Alliance for Animals
in China, which is nurtured and supported by ACTAsia. Your article
was also distributed to our veterinary practical training program on
companion animal welfare and neutering techniques at the end of July
2010.
This is our second year of operating the vet training
program, to help more vets do better and more humane operations in
supporting the neuter/return projects for cats in Shenzhen and
Beijing. This year the Beijing Husbandry & Veterinary Station, under
the Agriculture Bureau of Beijing, was a joint organiser with us.
Besides the vet training, we also ran a session for animal
groups and neuter/return caretakers. I distributed your article to
them.

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Showdown expected in Ohio over farm standards evolves into a deal

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
COLUMBUS–Instead of shaking hands and
coming out fighting on the November 2010 Ohio
state ballot, representatives of the Ohioans for
Humane Farms coalition and the Ohio Farm Bureau
Federation on June 30, 2010 shook hands with
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland over a truce that
leaves the proposed ballot issues to be arbited
by the newly formed Ohio Livestock Care Standards
Board.
That the industry-controlled Ohio
Livestock Care Standards Board rather than voters
should control farm animal conditions was a goal
sought by agribusiness for more than two years.

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BOOKS: Animals As Persons: Essays on the abolition of animal exploitation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

Animals As Persons: Essays on the abolition
of animal exploitation by Gary L. Francione
Columbia University Press, (61 West 62nd St., New York, NY 10023), 2008.
235 pages, paperback.

Animals As Persons anthologizes seven of legal scholar Gary
Francione’s best known examinations of the intersection of law and
animal rights philosophy.
Francione rarely directly addresses the legal and
philosophical rationales for animal exploitation. He does, however,
speak toward them through extensive critiques of the arguments of
Peter Singer and Tom Regan, whose Animal Liberation (1976) and The
Case for Animal Rights (1983) introduced animal rights theory to
mainstream academic discourse; Josephine Donovan, who as co-editor
of Beyond Animal Rights (1996) made the most ambitious of many
attempts to meld animal rights philosophy with feminism; and Cass
Sunstein, who co-edited the 2004 textbook anthology Animal Rights:
Current Debates & New Directions, before becoming director of the
Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs for U.S. President Barack
Obama.

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BOOKS: The Link Between Animal Abuse & Human Violence

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

The Link Between Animal Abuse
& Human Violence
Edited by Andrew Linzey
Sussex Academic Press (P.O. Box 139, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN24
9BP, U.K.), 2009. 300 pages, hardcover. $84.95.

Thirty-six professionals, mostly well known in the field,
contribute to The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of references offer theories about
animal abuse.
Why do some five-year-old boys who stomp kittens to death
grow up to be ax murderers while others lead constructive lives? No
one really knows, but there is a lot of speculation. Marie Louise
Peterson and David P. Farrington in chapter two suggest that children
who are cruel to animals lack empathy. Why they lack empathy is open
to speculation. Is it biological, environmental, or both?

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BOOKS: Forbidden Creatures

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

Forbidden creatures
by Peter Laufer, Ph.D.
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2010.
272 pages, hardcover. $19.95.

“The chimp killed my friend,” screamed Sandra Herold into
the telephone on February 16, 2009 as her pet chimp Travis mauled
her friend Charla Nash. Nash had come to help corral the
out-of-control animal, who had previously behaved well for her,
but Travis pulled her from her car, bit and clawed off most of her
face, and tore her hands off. Cornered upon arrival in his patrol
car, police officer Frank Chiafri shot Travis dead after Travis
pulled the driver’s side door open.

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