A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
SAN DIEGO–Petco Animal Supplies Inc. on June 2, 2010 agreed
to pay $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit alleging a persistent
pattern of animal neglect and overcharging customers, brought by the
city of San Diego and the counties of San Mateo, Marin, San Diego,
Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
Petco is a 1,000-store national chain, but all of the
plaintiffs are on California.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
NEW YORK CITY–Less than 24 hours before British Petroleum
began burning oil recovered from the Deepwater Horizon leakage
capture pipe at sea, BP president Tony Hayward announced that BP had
created a wildlife fund that would receive any profits made from
selling the recovered oil.
“BP is committed to protecting the ecosystems and wildlife on
the Gulf Coast. We believe these funds will have a significant
positive impact on the environment,” Hayward told New York Daily
News staff writer Meena Hartenstein on June 8, 2010.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
MADISON–Dane County Circuit Court Judge Amy Smith on June 2,
2010 found probable cause to believe that nine University of
Wisconsin at Madison researchers and faculty members have for more
than 20 years violated state law by killing sheep in a hyperbaric
chamber, also known as a decompression chamber.
Judge Smith appointed attorney David A. Geier to serve as
special prosecutor in determining whether the scientists and their
supervisors should face criminal charges.
Of 303 sheep exposed to decompression since 2000 in
experiments performed at the university’s diving physiology
laboratory, funded by the U.S. Navy, three sheep have died while
still in the hyperbaric chamber. Another 23 sheep have died within
24 hours of being removed from the chamber.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
TEHRAN–Acknowledging that the Koran does not explicitly
prohibit contact with dogs, the Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem
Shirazi, 86, nonetheless decreed in a June 19, 2010 fatwa
published by the Iranian newspaper Javan Daily that dogs are
“unclean” and should not be kept as pets.
“We have lots of narrations in Islam that say dogs are
unclean,” Shirazi said in his fatwa, or religious opinion,
disregarding that most mentions of dogs attributed to the Prophet
Mohammed himself are favorable and that some of his inner circle kept
dogs.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
LOS ANGELES–A three-judge panel of the California Second
District Court of Appeal ruled on June 3, 2010 that warrantless
entry of private property and seizure of an animal may be permitted
if necessary to save the animal’s life. The verdict was among the
first to recognize “exigent circumstances” in an animal-related case
reaching an appellate court.
Wrote the court, “Where an officer [of law enforcement]
reasonably believes an animal is in immediate need of aid due to
injury or mistreatment, the exigent circumstances exception to the
warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment may be invoked.”
William Heyman, attorney for defendant Keith Chung, pledged
to further appeal the verdict.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
NEW ORLEANS–Rumors flew for weeks that British Petroleum
clean-up crews were secretly incinerating the remains of wildlife
oiled by the April 20, 2010 wreck of the Deepwater Horizon drilling
rig. Often obstructed by BP personnel, despite an order from U.S.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen that media were to be allowed access
to all areas normally open to the public, reporters wondered just
what they were not being allowed to see–especially since many gained
access to heavily oiled habitat despite the BP interference.
But some of the first claims that oiled remains were being
burned on beaches turned out to have been recycled from the aftermath
of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. A similar rumor traced to Salt
Lake City, where a 500-barrel spill into Red Butte Creek and the
Jordan River on June 11 oiled about 280 ducks and geese. About 10
birds were killed. The Hogle Zoo saved the rest.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
BOULDER, URBANA–Ignoring 20 years of
warnings by leading U.S. agribusiness educators
and pundits has begun to cost the livestock
industry serious money and– perhaps–consumer
confidence.
Increasingly frequent and effective
undercover exposés are acquainting ever more of
the public with meat, egg, and dairy production
practices, including with the ineffecacy of
agribusiness at improving animal welfare despite
frequent promises.
More than a hundred activists have now
worked undercover at many hundreds of factory
farms and slaughterhouses, documenting
procedures with thousands of hours of video.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Two members of the ANIMAL PEOPLE team had recent occasion to
deliver an injured rabbit to a world-renowned wildlife rescue center.
The drive should have taken less than an hour, including a 20-minute
ferry boat crossing. Unfortunately, no one at ANIMAL PEOPLE had
ever been there before. There was neither a map nor a physical
address on the center’s web site. Instructions received from center
staff before beginning the journey proved to be incomplete.
Directions downloaded from Google maps proved to be wrong. Also,
the center is located on a dead-end street whose name we were given,
but there are two dead-end streets of the same name within about half
a mile of each other, probably once connected but no longer.
Altogether, finding the wildlife rescue center took four
hours, eight telephone calls, and half a tank of gasoline. Along
the way, the ANIMAL PEOPLE expedition met another carload of people
with another injured animal who also could not find the center. Each
call to the center brought a different set of directions.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Using credit cards in adoption screening
Thank you for publishing “Rethink-ing
adoption screening in the computer age” in your
May 2010 edition.
Many of the points addressed in this
editorial are valid, but as a consumer who is
concerned about identity theft and financial
privacy, I would be very leery of an
organization that required presentation of a
credit card if I had planned to pay via cash or
check. Further, if it were not revealed to me
ahead of time that my credit would be checked
when I was not applying for credit, employment
or a security clearance, adverse publicity for
the organization could result.
While I understand the reasons for
requiring a credit card for non-credit purposes,
applicable shelters should make these
requirements known in publicity materials.
–Cecily Westermann
St. Louis, Missouri
<cwestermann@sbcglobal.net>
Read more