BOOKS: Pet Food Politics

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

Pet Food Politics by Marion Nestle
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley,
CA 94704), 2008. 219 pages, hardcover. $18.95.

The China Health Ministry at this writing has just announced
that the number of infants and young children known to have been
poisoned by melamine mixed into powdered milk or baby formula has
increased tenfold in 48 hours, to more than 54,000.
Four children have died, 13,000 are hospitalized, and
40,000 children plus two orangutans and a lion cub at the Hangzhou
Safari Park near Shanghai have required outpatient medical treatment
for kidney stones caused by ingesting melamine, a coal derivative of
no nutritional value.

BOOKS: Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds
About Animals & Food by Gene Baur
Touchstone Books (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 2008. Hardcover, 286 pages. $25.00.

“Gene Baur grew up in Hollywood, California, where he
worked as an extra in television, films, and commercials,
including several spots for McDonald’s and other fast food chains,”
opens his brief back-page biography in Farm Sanctuary: Changing
Hearts & Minds . Baur might have pursued a screen career. Instead,
as a teenager Baur heard from his grandmother about veal calf crating
and briefly became a vegatarian. Baur became a committed vegetarian
in 1985 after meeting his future wife Lorri during a summer stint
working for Greenpeace in Chicago.
They began their careers in animal advocacy together in
Washington D.C. about six months later. Working initially for other
organizations, they incorporated Farm Sanctuary in April 1986. By
1996 Farm Sanctuary operated sanctuaries in both upstate New York and
northern California, and had long since become the second largest
farm animal advocacy group in the world, trailing only Compassion In
World Farming, of Britain.

Monsoons bring floods from Himalayas to the Bengal coast

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
KOLKATA, VISAKHAPATAM–Increasingly violent monsoons
battered India yet again in August and September 2008, afflicting
millions of humans and animals in regions below the Himalayas from
northern Bihar to central Arunchal Pradesh, and as far south as
Srikakulum, halfway down the Bengal coast.
The Visakha SPCA in Visakhapatnam sent animal relief missions
from northern Andhra Pradesh, as it did after previous monsoon
floods and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
“We are in touch with our people at Srikakulum,” founder
Pradeep Kumar Nath e-mailed. “We are doing rescues wherever possible
and shifting [animals to safety] wherever necessary.”
The Visakha SPCA has itself been hit several times by
cyclones in recent years.

Tigers scarce, poachers zero in on leopards, warns Indian conservationist

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
NEW DELHI–Poachers who cannot find tigers to kill and
traffickers who have increasing difficulty moving tiger parts from
India to customers in Nepal and China are turning their notice to
leopards, warns Wildlife Protection Society of India program manager
Tito Joseph.
“Tiger parts fetch a price 20 times higher than those of
leopards,” Joseph told The Times of India on September 7, 2008 “but
their bones are considered on par.”
Compounding the situation, leopards are coming into
increasingly frequent and deadly conflict with humans–partly because
more desperately poor people are taking the risk of moving into their
habitat, partly too because more hungry leopards are coming into
villages to hunt livestock.

Shelter manager sold cadavers for lab use

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
VISALIA, Calif.–After an eight-day trial and two days of
deliberation, a Tulare County Superior Court jury on September 24,
2008 convicted former Tulare County Animal Control Shelter manager
William Harmon of two felony counts of accepting bribes, a felony
count of embezzlement and a misdemeanor charge of accepting an
unlawful gratuity.
“The jury found him not guilty of falsifying public
documents,” reported Brett Wilkison of the Visalia Times-Delta.
“The jury found Harmon accepted and requested restaurant gift
certificates from Michael Sargeant,” allegedly in exchange for
providing Sargeant with the remains of dogs killed at the shelter.
Sargeant’s business, Wholesale Biologicals of Bakersfield, sells
animal carcasses to laboratories. The transactions allegedly
occurred from 2002 through 2006.

What became of the puppies after cloning client didn’t pay?

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
The bizarre backstory to the reported first-ever commercial
dog cloning, reported in the July/August 2008 edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE, gained another chapter on September 24, 2008 when Joyce
Bernann McKinney, 58, repeatedly called Friends of Animals
president Priscilla Feral at her home and then spent nearly two hours
on the telephone to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
McKinney sought help in a last-minute effort to win
possession of the five pit bull terrier puppies whom RNL Bio of
Seoul, South Korea claimed in August 2008 to have cloned from the
frozen ear of McKinney’s deceased pet Booger.

Murder-by-dog Conviction reinstated & other dog attack case

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
SAN FRANCISCO– San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte
Woolard on September 22, 2008 sentenced former attorney Marjorie
Knoller, 53, to serve 15 years to life in prison for causing the
January 2001 dog attack death of lacrosse coach Diane Whipple, 33,
in the hallway of the apartment house where both dwelled.
“Knoller, who has served three years in prison, will have
to serve 12 more years before she can apply for parole,” reported
Associated Press writer Paul Elias.
Whipple bled to death from at least 77 wounds inflicted by
one and possibly both of two Presa Canarios kept by Knoller and
Robert Noel, her husband and law partner, for white supremacist
Paul “Cornfed” Schneider. Serving a life sentence in the California
penitentiary system, Schneider was legally adopted by Knoller and
Noel as an adult inmate.

RSPCA asks EC to publish new lab regs

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
LONDON, BRUSSELS–Royal SPCA of Britain
chief executive Mark Watts on September 11, 2008
asked European Commission president José Manuel
Barroso to expedite publication of proposed
changes to the European Union rules governing
animal experimentation, now long overdue.
“We are repeatedly told that publication
of the proposals is imminent, only to find it
has been put back–and put back again,” said
RSPCA senior European campaign manager Peter
Craske. “Legislation needs to be debated fully,
but this debate seems to have gone on forever.”
EU nations use about 12 million animals
per year in experiments; Britain uses about
three million of the total.

Austrian activists freed after 104 days, still face charges

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
VIENNA–Association Against Animal
Factories founder Martin Balluch, Vier Pfoten
campaign director Jürgen Faulmann, and eight
other Austrian animal advocates were released
from jail on September 2, 2008, 104 days after
they were arrested in a series of dawn raids on
May 21.
Three other activists who were arrested
at the same time were released earlier.
The ten who were released on September 2
were arraigned in July for alleged involvement in
a variety of “direct action” offenses between
2002 and 2007. All have pleaded innocent.

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