New Legislation: Austria, New Jersey, Ohio

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Austria no longer allows biomedical research on chimpanzees,
gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and gibbons, effective on January
1, 2006, unless the studies are in the animals’ own interest. The
last apes actually used in experiments in Austria were retired by
Baxter Laboratories in 2002.

Less popular with animal advocates is a new Viennese
ordinance requiring that dogs born after January 1, 2006 must be
insured to a minimum liability of $864,000.

DNR seeks to keep wildlife rehab out of West Virginia

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

CHARLESTON, W.V.– West Virginia is the only U.S. state that
does not issue wildlife rehabilitation permits, and the state
Depart-ment of Natural Resources means to keep it that way, says
wildlife section chief Curtis Taylor.
The West Virginia 2006 legislative session convened on
January 11. Humane Society of the U.S. director of urban wildlife
programs John Hadidian and urban wildlife field director Laura Simon
have indicated that obtaining wildlife rehab authorization will be a
state HSUS priority.
The issue surfaced in October 2005 when a state police
officer investigating a complaint about shots fired on posted land
found about 60 caged raccoons on land belonging to rehabilitator
Patricia Hoffman-Butler, 47. The raccoons were seized, killed,
and examined for disease by DNR officials. Hoffman pleaded no
contest to illegal possession of wildlife on December 13, 2005, and
paid $173.50 in penalties.
West Virginia banned keeping raccoons after a coonhunting
club trucked as many as 2,000 raccoons north from a rabies-endemic
part of Florida in 1976, and released most of them before realizing
that some were rabid.

U.S. Supreme Court may step into factory-farmed chicken poop

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

The U.S. Supreme Court, recently reconstituted with two new
members including a new chief justice, may hear arguments on the
right of states to regulate agricultural pollution.
Arkansas attorney general Mike Beebe in November 2005 asked
the Supreme Court to throw out a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in
June 2005 by Oklahoma attorney general Drew Edmondson against eight
poultry firms with Arkansas operations that allegedly pollute the
Illinois River, upstream from Oklahoma. The eight, among them many
poultry industry leaders, include Cargill, Cobb-Vantress, Simmons
Foods, Peterson Farms, Tyson Foods, Willow Brook Foods, George’s,
and Cal-Maine Foods.

BOOKS: Bear & The Grizzly Maze

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Bear by Robert E. Bieder
Reaktion Books Ltd. (79 Farringdon Rd., London, EC1M 3JU, U.K.),
2005. 192 pages, paperback. $19.95.

The Grizzly Maze by Nick Jans
Dutton (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2005.
275 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

Robert Bieder and Nick Jans explore the mythology of bears
from opposite angles but to common purpose in Bear, a global
overview, and The Grizzly Maze, an examination of the fatal
maulings of bear advocate Timothy Treadwell, 46, and his friend
Amie Huguenard, 37, by a brown bear on October 6, 2003, in Katmai
National Park, Alaska.
Bieder, a career scholar, starts with the evolution and
diversification of bears. Bear ancestors emerged in Europe and Asia
as long as 25 million years ago, but the forebears of today’s bears
appeared at about the same time that great apes evolved in Africa.
Conflict emerged between modern bears and early humans as
soon as population expansion brought them into overlapping habitat.
Bears, as carnivores who had developed the ability to eat
vegetation, and humans, as ancestral vegetarians who had learned to
scavenge and hunt, were direct competitors. Each killed and ate the
other, if able.

Animal Defense League & L.A. clash over right to protest vs. right to privacy

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

LOS ANGELES–Animal Defense League attorney John J. Uribe and
City of Los Angeles prosecutor Spencer Hart clashed in municipal
court on January 12 in the first 2006 round of a multi-year struggle
between the ADL and the city over the rights of privacy and the right
to protest.
ADL activists Pamela Ferdin and Jerry Vlasak, M.D., both
longtime opponents of the leadership of the Los Angeles Depart-ment
of Animal Regulation, are charged with criminal trespass for
allegedly violating a Los Angeles ordinance in June 2004 that
requires demonstrators to stay 100 feet from the doors of protest
targets’ homes.
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo on December 16,
2005 reinforced those charges by filing another 14 misdemeanor counts
against the ADL and individual members, resulting from 62 alleged
criminal acts. The case alleges that members of the ADL chanted “We
know where you sleep at night” outside Los Angeles animal control
director of field operations David Diliberto’s home, placed the
names of his four children on the ADL web site, left a message on
his home answering machine saying “Resign or we go after your wife,”
typed a “666” text message purportedly symbolic of the devil on his
cell telephone, and posed as mortuary workers in a 3 a.m. visit to
his home, claiming they had come to collect a corpse.

Gretchen Wyler to retire

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Gretchen Wyler, 73, on December 20, 2005 announced that
she will retire after hosting the 20th annual Genesis Awards ceremony
in June 2006. The awards honor film and TV recognition of animal
issues. Involved in animal causes since 1966, Wyler founded the
Genesis Awards in 1986 as a program of the Fund for Animals,
continued the program through her own organization, the Ark Trust,
1990-2002, and then merged the Ark Trust into the Humane Society of
the U.S.

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Marsden wins OBE

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Stella Brewer Marsden, who founded the Chimpanzee
Rehabilitation Association in Gambia in 1969, was on New Year’s Day
2006 awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
The CRA now looks after 78 formerly captive chimps in Gambia National
Park. Brewer Marsden’s sister Heather Armstrong founded the Horse &
Donkey Association of Gambia in 2002. Their father, conservationist
Edward Brewer, also was awarded the OBE.

United Egg Producers’ logo is a loser

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

PHILADELPHIA–Cruelty charges brought against Esbenshade
Farms in January 2006 “are part of campaigns by Compassion Over
Killing and HSUS against the egg industry practice of confining hens
in wire cages without nests or room to stretch their wings,”
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Harold Brubaker noted.
“Under pressure from Compassion Over Killing, the Better
Business Bureau, and the Federal Trade Commission,” Brubaker
recalled, “United Egg Producers agreed last fall to change the name
of its animal husbandry guidelines–along with the label that goes on
certified egg cartons–from “Animal-Care Certified” to “United Egg
Producers Certified.”
United Egg Producers was allowed six months to phase in the change.
Said Compassion Over Killing, “According to the FTC, by March 31,
2006, the ‘Animal Care Certified’ logo will be gone from grocery
store shelves.”
Compassion Over Killing challenged the logo in June 2003, pointing
out to the Better Business Bureau and the FTC that “under the ‘Animal
Care Certified’ guidelines, egg producers are permitted to
intensively confine hens in battery cages so small they can’t even
spread their wings, among other abuses.

Industry rejects poultry killing by gas

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Industry arguments against extending Humane Methods of
Slaughter Act coverage to poultry tend to center on a claimed lack of
acceptable alternatives to the present system of shackling birds
upside down, then dragging them headlong through an electrified
“stunning bath.”
An alternative, controlled atmosphere stunning, is already
widely used in Europe. Slaughterhouses using controlled atmosphere
stunning gas newly arrived birds in their transportation cages,
using either carbon dioxide or a mixture of nitrogen and argon.
McDonald’s Corporation in November 2004 agreed to study the
feasibility of requiring suppliers to shift to controlled atmosphere
stunning, in exchange for PETA withdrawing a shareholder resolution
that sought to require McDonald’s to do the study.
In June 2005 McDonalds concluded that “current standards for
animal welfare are appropriate for the company’s global supply chain
at this time.”
PETA pursued a similar resolution at the May 2005 Applebee’s
International Inc. shareholders meeting, but it drew less than 6%
support.

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