Mercy For Animals

September 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

DES MOINES–The Iowa egg production giant
Hy-Line North America admitted on September 8,
2009 that an independent audit found “animal
welfare policy violations” at a hatchery in
Spencer, Iowa, where a Mercy for Animals
undercover operative videotaped unwanted male
chicks being killed for two weeks in May and June
2009.
“But West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North
America said that it won’t release further
details,” Associated Press reported.
Summarized Associated Press writers
Frederic J. Frommer and Melanie S. Welte, “The
video shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a
conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some
of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips
cards. These chicks, which a narrator says are
males, are then shown being dropped alive into a
grinding machine.

Film spotlights Taiji dolphin killing

September 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

TAIJI, Japan–The Cove has not stopped the annual Taiji
dolphin massacres– not yet, anyhow. But the award-winning film did
appear to slow down the killing at the start of the 2009 “drive
fishery” season, and–even before release in Japan–is bringing the
massacres to the attention of the often shocked Japanese public as
nothing before ever has.
“Moviegoers who have seen The Cove, directed by Louie
Psihoyos, said they were stunned by the cruelty of the killings,
captured by concealed cameras. Many newspapers have blasted the
traditional coastal whaling practice in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture,
which is not subject to the International Whaling Commission’s ban on
commercial whaling,” summarized Toshihiro Yamanaka for Asahi
Shimbun. The second largest newspaper in Japan, Asahi Shimbun
reaches about 8.2 million readers daily.
“When I found out, I cried,” Osaka resident Keiko Hirao
told John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times.
Director Louis Psihoyos, a former National Geographic
photographer, has pledged to keep the spotlight on Taiji by making
The Cove available in Japan as a free download, if he fails to
secure a commercial distributor. The Cove has won more than a dozen
awards, including the audience award at the 25th annual Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and has aired widely in other
parts of the world, but despite much media notice in Japan, has not
yet been screened there.

U.S. Marines may follow Army in banning pit bulls from all bases

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:
CHERRY POINT, N.C.–A draft order excluding pit bulls,
Rottweilers, canid/wolf hybrids and mixes of those dogs from being on
“any Marine Corps installation, at any time” may be added to the U.S.
Marine Corps Housing Management Manual as early as September, Marine
Corps Times writer Trista Talton reported on August 2, 2009.
“The rise in ownership of large dog breeds with a
predisposition toward aggressive or dangerous behavior, coupled with
the increased risk of tragic incidents involving these dogs,
necessitates a uniform policy to provide for the health, safety and
tranquility of all residents of family housing areas,” stated the
draft order, posted on a web site operated by Marine Corps Air
Station Cherry Point in North Carolina, Talton said.

BOOKS: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs:
An inside look at the modern poultry industry by Karen Davis, Ph.D.
Order c/o United Poultry Concerns (P.O. Box 150, Machipongo, VA
23405; 757-678-7875; www.upc-online.org), 2009.
224 pages, paperback. $14.95.

“The mechanized environment, mutilations, starvation
procedures and methodologies of mass murdering birds,
euphemistically referred to as ‘food’ production raise many profound
questions about our society and our species,” says Karen Davis in
this second edition of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, an
eye-opening book into a major worldwide industry originally published
in 1996.
Davis takes us from family-owned farms with free roaming
chickens who clucked families awake at dawn to the sprawling factory
farms that now dominate the poultry industry.

Animal obituaries

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:
Sam the koala, rescued by firefighter David Tree during
bushfires that killed more than 170 people in northern Victoria
state, Australia, in February 2009, was euthanized on August 6,
2009 due to incurably painful cysts caused by urogenital clamydiosis.
The disease afflicts as much as half of the koala population.

Dunham, a dolphin rescued from stranding shortly before
Christmas 2008 and rehabilitated by Gulf World, was euthanized on
July 21, 2009 due to injuries suffered when he was mauled by a tiger
shark soon after his release. Harbor Branch Oceanographic
Institution director Stephen McCullogh saw the attack but was unable
to prevent it.

Obituaries

BOOKS: The Inner World of Farm Animals

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

The Inner World of Farm Animals: Their amazing social, emotional
and intellectual capacities
by Amy Hatkoff
Stewart, Tabori and Chang (New York), 2009.
(c/o Abrams Books, 115 W. 18th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY
10011), 2009. 176 pages, $19.95.

“Chickens are very social and form strong friendships. They
prefer the company of familiar chickens and avoid chickens they don’t
know,” says Inner World of Farm Animals author Amy Hatkoff. This
sounds like my cousin who loves company but shies away from
strangers. Is it possible that farm animals, such as chickens,
cows, and sheep experience social memory, show preferences, and
interact with one another? According to the author, the answer is a
resounding yes.

Decade of adoption focus fails to reduce shelter killing

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:
A decade that began with giddy hope that the U.S. might soon
become a no-kill nation is ending with the numbers of dogs and cats
killed in animal shelters still stubbornly hovering at 4.2 million,
right where it was in 2002, with the average for the decade at 4.5
million, where it was in 1999.
The numbers repudiate the emphasis of campaigns that seek to
reduce shelter killing chiefly by increasing adoptions, instead of
preventing the births of the cats and dogs who are most likely to
enter shelters and be killed.
In fact, dog acquisition “market share” has barely changed
in almost 30 years, when shelter adoptions are combined with
adoptions of found strays.

Obituaries [July/Aug 2009]

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:
Kitty Langdon, 94, died July 28, 2009 in Aurora,
Colorado. “Kitty was one of Denver’s original organized
rescuers–feisty as hell to the end,” recalled former Rocky Mountain
Alley Cat Allies director Audrey Boag, for whom Langdon was longtime
mentor. Born in Britain, where she became known for feeding strays,
Langdon came to the U.S. as a war bride in 1944 aboard the Queen
Mary, then in service as a troop ship. She and her husband Sam
lived briefly in Boston and then in Walla Walla, Washington, before
settling in the Denver area in 1956. They began rescuing dogs in
Walla Walla circa 1949 “as soon as we had a fenced yard,” Langdon
told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1993. They formed the Sunrise Foundation in
1972, initially to promote dog adoptions and sterilization. After
Sam Langdon died in 1980, Kitty Langdon refocused on helping cats.
She was among the very early U.S. practitioners and advocates of
neuter/return feral cat control, and was an early and enthusiastic
ANIMAL PEOPLE donor. Late in life she also became an outspoken
advocate for the rights of long-term care patients, profiled in 2006
by Denver Post columnist Diane Carman.

Obituaries

The effect of breed-specific bylaws on city pit bull terrier killing rates

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

This table shows pit bull killing as a share of shelter killing in 11 major U.S. cities–only one of which kills more pit bulls than the national average rate per 1,000 humans.
Cities with legislation either prohibiting pit bulls or requiring pit bulls to be sterilized are shown in boldface.
The first data column shows how many pit bulls were killed either in one recent year or as an average of recent years, depending on what information was available.
The second column shows the numbers of pit bulls killed per 1,000 human residents of each city per year.
The third column shows the contribution that killing pit bulls made to the total city rate of shelter killing of dogs and cats per 1,000 people.
The bottom line states national totals projected from the sum of data gathered for our 2009 shelter killing survey.

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