Letters [March 2008]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

 
First cruelty conviction in Cairo

In November 2007 some people here in Cairo complained that a
bad smell was coming from a neighbouring flat. The police were
called, and when the flat was opened, it was found to contain many
dead and dying animals.
The Egyptian Society of Animal Friends rescued several birds
and dogs, plus a female monkey and her baby, but the baby died
that evening. A male monkey had already died.
ESAF filed a complaint accusing the flat owner of neglect and
willful cruelty. The case was presented to the court by the district
attorney under the agriculture law as neglecting to report sick
animals. Read more

Pew Charitable Trust symposium favors coastal whaling

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
TOKYO–Chairing a “Whale Symposium” sponsored by the
environmentally oriented Pew Charitable Trusts, former Samoan
ambassador to the United Nations and International Criminal Court
judge Tuiloma Neroni Slade on February 20, 2008 said, according to
the Pew web site, that “the most promising compromise” to resolve
conflict with Japan over the 22-year-old International Whaling
Commission moratorium on commercial whaling “would be a combination
of actions which would recognize potentially legitimate claims by
coastal whaling communities; suspend scientific whaling in its
current form and respect sanctuaries; and define a finite number of
whales that can be taken by all of the world’s nations.”

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Atlantic Canada sealing starts off Nova Scotia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
The 2008 Atlantic Canadian sealing season started with a
mid-February cull on Hay Island, off Nova Scotia, demanded by
fishers who blame seals for the failure of cod to recover despite 16
years of fishing limits.
“Nova Scotia already has a yearly quota of 12,000 grey seals,
but in recent years hunters have rarely taken more than a few hundred
annually,” reported John Lewandowski of Canadian Press.
Acknowledging that the primary purpose of the Hay Island cull
was to try to stimulate commercial sealing, Nova Scotia fisheries
minister Ron Chisholm authorized participants to kill up to 2,500
seals. They actually killed about half that many.

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Slaughterhouse cruelty leads to biggest beef recall in U.S. ever

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
CHINO, Calif.; WASHINGTON D.C.–Animal advocates are hoping
that the biggest meat recall in U.S. history will finally bring
enforcement of federal slaughter standards, 50 years after Congress
passed the Humane Slaughter Act, 30 years after making compliance
“mandatory”–on paper.
Responding to videotape produced by an undercover
investigator for the Humane Society of the U.S., the USDA on
February 3, 2008 withdrew inspection of the Hallmark/ Westland Meat
Company in Chino, Calif-ornia, forcing the slaughterhouse to close.
The video showed downed cows being forced to their feet to
walk to slaughter by means including electroshock, tail-yanking,
kicking, lifting them with a forklift, and ramming them with the
forklift tines.

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Editorial: The late Tom Lantos: a Wilburforce for our time

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

 

Outspokenly critical of the policies of U.S. President George
W. Bush, the late House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Lantos
was nonetheless praised by Bush after his February 11, 2008 death
from esophageal cancer as “a man of character and a champion of human
rights. As the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress,” Bush
added, “Tom was a living reminder that we must never turn a blind
eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men.”
Bush, like most other Washington D.C. eulogists and
obituarists for national news media, omitted that the “suffering of
the innocent” of deep concern to Lantos included the suffering of
animals, and that Lantos championed animal rights as well as human
rights for most of the 27 years he served in the House of
Representatives.

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Animal advocates work to bring peace to Kenya

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

NAIROBI–“The situation in Kenya is calm, Youth for
Conservation president Steve Itela told ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 28,
2008, “especially in areas where violence was high such as Kibera
and Mathare, but tension continues with ethnic groups still fighting
in Nakuru, Naivasha, and Nyahururu. We are hopeful that violence
will not spread to other areas. I have not heard gun shots for two
weeks now.”
The worst of the post-election mayhem was over, but the
struggle for the Kenyan animal protection community was just
beginning. From trying to stay alive themselves, Kenyan animal
advocates transitioned rapidly to trying to help keep lost,
abandoned, injured, and frightened animals from suffering further
as result of the national plunge into chaos after the disputed
outcome of the December 27, 2007 voting.

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Baseball greats caught at cockfight

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
SANTO DOMINGO, D.R.–Pedro Martinez, a
three-time Cy Young Award winner as the best
pitcher in his league, and Juan Marichal, the
first Latin American player elected to the
National Baseball Hall of Fame, are at the
center of a controversy bringing cockfighting in
the Dominican Republic under probably more
scrutiny and criticism than at any point since it
was introduced by Spanish sailors nearly 500
years ago.
“Martinez and Marichal were shown in a
video posted this week on YouTube releasing
roosters just before they engaged in a fight at
the Coliseo Gallistico de Santo Domingo, in the
country’s capital,” summarized Jorge L. Ortiz of
USA Today on February 7, 2008.
Organized animal advocacy has little
presence in the Dominican Republic, but
Ameri-can denunciations of Martinez and Marichal
were soon quoted by Dominican media that closely
follow the deeds of 99 current Dominican major
leaguers–more than 10% of the major league work
force.

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U.S. to phase out animal testing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

BETHESDA, Maryland–Animal testing to meet U.S. federal
regulatory requirements is officially on the way out at last.
“The Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology
Program and the National Institutes of Health have signed a
memorandum of understanding to begin developing the new methods,”
reported Elizabeth Weise of USA Today on February 14, 2008,
scooping most other media by about 24 hours. “The collaboration is
described in a paper in the February 15 edition of the journal
Science.”
“We propose a shift from primarily in vivo animal studies to
in vitro assays, in vivo assays with lower organisms, and
computational modeling for toxicity assessments,” wrote National
Humane Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins, EPA
research and development director George M. Gray, and National
Toxicology Program associate director John R. Bucher.

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Whalers spend winter hiding

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
HOBART, TOKYO–Sea Shepherd Conservation Society captain
Paul Watson on March 2, 2008 reported that the crew of the Sea
Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin had pitched two dozen bottles of rancid
butter onto deck of the Japanese whaling factory ship Nisshiin Maru
in Porpoise Bay, off Antarctica.
The stink bomb attack came toward the end of a winter-long
campaign that saw Sea Shepherds, joined at times by Greenpeace and
the Australian coast guard, stalking the Nisshin Maru since the
Steve Irwin sailed from Melbourne on December 5, 2007. The Nisshin
Maru, four whale-catching vessels, and the supply ship Oriental
Bluebird spent most of the winter trying to elude observation,
rather than killing whales. The Japanese coast guard vessel
Fukuyoshi Maru #68 had shadowed the Steve Irwin since January 15,
but was ultimately not able to keep the Sea Shepherds away from the
Nisshin Maru.

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