From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
Peter Roberts, 82, died on Novem-ber 15, 2006. “His
concern for animals started when after World War II service, he
settled down with his wife Anna to dairy farming in Hampshire,”
recalled Compassion In World Farming ambassador and former chief
executive Joyce D’Silva. “Peter began to take his old, barren cows
to the slaughterhouse and stayed with them to the end. The couple
refused to send their surplus calves to market, fearing they might
be bought for the live export trade and end up in veal crates in
France or Holland.” Appalled by the introduction of factory farming,
first with poultry, later with other species, “Peter wrote a strong
letter to the press and it generated a huge response,” D’Silva
continued. “Realizing that there was a groundswell of feeling
against intensive farming, he approached the major animal welfare
societies, urging them to campaign against battery cages. They
declined. Peter despaired to a solicitor friend, who said: “Peter,
you’ll just have to do it yourself. Come to my office and we’ll set
up a trust. Compassion in World Farming was born,” initially called
the Athene Trust. At first, the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries
and Food treated Peter with what he charitably referred to as ‘benign
amusement.’ But Peter had touched a chord with the public, whose
awareness had been raised by the publication of Ruth Harrison’s
seminal book Animal Machines in 1964. Now Peter provided an
organised outlet for people’s horror at keeping hens in cages and
confining calves and breeding sows in narrow crates, unable to turn
around. Peter stopped farming, and in 1978, he opened the Bran Tub
in Petersfield,” an independent health food shop. “He also set up
Direct Foods,” Silva recalled, “marketing textured vegetable
protein. He himself had become a vegetarian. For all the years that
Peter put in as director of CIWF,” D’Silva added, “he managed never
to draw a salary.” CIWF won a British ban on veal crates in 1990,
and a ban on sow gestation crates in 1999. “However, to Peter’s
regret,” D’Silva said, “he never managed to achieve a permanent ban
on the export of live animals. In 2001, Peter, by then retired due
to the onset of Parkinson’s disease, received the first ever BBC TV
award for his outstanding contribution to animal welfare.” In 2002
he was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2006:
Flip, 5, a Belgian Malinois police dog who once found 40
pounds of cocaine, was shot on November 18, 2006 in Jackson
Township, Ohio by a man “who apparently felt threatened” when Flip
wandered into his property on the dog’s day off, wrote Findlay
Courier staff writer J. Steven Dillon. Flip was partner of Findlay
Police Patrolman Bryon Deeter.

Dewey Readmore Books, 19, found as a kitten in the book
drop at the Spencer Public Library in Sioux City, Iowa, in January
1988, died on November 29, 2006 in the arms of librarian Vicki
Myron, who adopted him, held a contest to name him, and saw him
become one of the most famous library cats in the world, featured on
postcards and his own section at <www.spencerlibrary.com>.

Lakshmi, 43, resident elephant since 1966 at the Thekutheru
Krishnan Temple in Madurai, India, died suddenly on November 9
during one of her frequent visits to the nearby Sourashtra Higher
Secondary School. “She had been the centre of attraction at the
annual temple festival, and had attended the rejuvenation camp,
conducted by the Tamil Nadu state government at Mudumalai for the
past three years,” recalled The Hindu.

Ginny the donkey, protector of 26 goats kept by George and
Patty Coe of Spencer, West Virginia, was fatally wounded on
November 20, the first day of firearm buck hunting season.