Letters [Nov 2003]

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

PetSmart & live animal sales

Regarding PetSmart’s Luv-A-Pet Adoption Centers, described
in your September 2005 edition, and the October 2005 letter from
PetSmart Charities vice president Susana M. Della Maddalena, I
sincerely appreciate all that PetSmart Charities does for dogs and
cats, but implore PetSmart to reconsider selling other animals as
merchandise.
Birds, reptiles, fish and small mammals deserve the same
respect as dogs and cats. Petco, pressured by PETA and other animal
rights groups, in April 2005 agreed to stop selling large parrots.
Should we now campaign against PetSmart?
–Tami Myers
The Angry Parrot, Inc
P.O. Box 442
Thorndike, MA 01079
Phone: 413-283-5039
<Tami@thebeakretreat.com>
<www.theangryparrot.org>

Letters

Forced Labor on the Factory Farm

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Forced Labor on the Factory Farm
by Karen Davis, PhD, founder & president, United Poultry Concerns

“Unless they were productive, their lives were worthless to their masters.”
–Anne Applebaum, Gulag, A History

A primary difference between a factory
farm and a concentration camp would appear to be
the role of forced labor.
“Work was the central function of most
Soviet camps,” according to Anne Applebaum in
Gulag: A History. In Nazi Germany, Hitler built
camps to terrorize the population into
compliance, and, after war broke out, to
provide German industry with cheap, expendable
labor. “The entire existence of Nazi
concentration camps was marked by a constant
tension between work and extermination,” says
Enzo Traverso in The Origins of Nazi Violence.
Compared to our usual concept of “work”
as “physical and/or mental effort exerted to do
or make something,” the notion that chickens on
a factory farm “work” may seem strange. Granted,
egg-laying hens are caged in horrible conditions,
but while they are there, are they not just
laying eggs the way apples fall from a tree?

Farm Animals

Humane reps can’t get to H5N1 sites in Croatia

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

DUBROVNIK–Concern that the potentially human-killing avian
flu H5N1 might hit Croatia during the October 18-19, 2005
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference in Dubrovnik proved
premature.
Though the spread of H5N1 from nearby parts of Romania,
Russia, and Turkey was considered inevitable, the first cases were
not actually detected until October 21, when six swans were found
dead at a fish farm near Zdenci National Park.
Tissue samples from the dead swans were rushed to Britain for
further testing, but Croatian officials did not wait for the
results before killing all 10,000 chickens and other domestic fowl
kept within three kilometers of where the swans were discovered.
Poultry product sales fell by hal

Animal welfare on the Dalmatian coast

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

DUBROVNIK–The Austrian-based Vier Pfoten mobile veterinary
teams often seemingly drive back into time in formerly Communist
central Europe, but usually just decades, not centuries.
In Dubrovnik to sterilize dogs and cats for two weeks
overlapping the October 2005 International Companion Animal Welfare
Conference, Vier Pfoten international project manager Amir Khalil,
DVM, and surgical team headed by Katica Kovacev, DVM set up outside
the building that was the city quarantine station during the Black
Death in the 14th century.
The marble walled central city just beyond, little changed
since the 13th century, reputedly inspired the Minas Tirith “white
city” scenes in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Among the oldest
ports on the Dalmatian coast, Dubrovnik has had a breakwater since
pre-Roman times.

Europe

Africans defending national wildlife parks turn from guns to courts

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

NAIROBI, HARARE, GABORONE, JOHANNESBURG–Amboseli,
Kalahari, Hwange, Kruger: the names alone evoke images of
wide-open wild places on a sparsely inhabited continent–at least to
non-Africans. But to many Africans whose tribal lands they
historically were, these and other globally renowned wildlife parks
are symbols of conquest, occupation, and deprivation.
To those who till land or keep livestock, the parks are the
source of marauding wildlife, and appear to hoard disproportionate
shares of the green grass and water.
To those who have nothing, the parks symbolize inaccessible
opportunity.
To politicians, the great African wildlife parks often
represent potential largess, expendible to build a power base.
Preserving the parks as unpeopled as European and American
ecotourists and wildlife conservation donors imagine the “real”
Africa to be is a multi-million-dollar industry, but there is also
big money in opening them to more hunting and other commercial
exploitation, while returning the parks to tribal control is an
oft-expressed rhetorical ideal often most strongly favored by whoever
anticipates gaining easy access to resources in exchange for giving
tribal partners a few more dusty acres in which to graze goats.

Editorial: ANIMAL PEOPLE & the role of humane reporting

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“We still haven’t found an executive director. Guess no one
wants to come down to the sunny south and dodge all the hurricanes,”
Suncoast Humane Society interim director Warren Cox wrote on
Halloween from Englewood, Florida.
Sending Cox to Florida was clearly easier than ushering him
into retirement. Now in his 53rd year of humane work, Cox reduced
his possessions before taking his 22nd leadership position by
donating to ANIMAL PEOPLE a complete set of the National Humane
Review, from the years 1933 through 1976.
Published by the American Humane Association, the National
Humane Review for much of that time was a mainstream slick magazine,
sold on train station newsstands, with separate regional editions
serving all parts of the U.S. Even without carrying paid
advertising, and without soliciting donations with particular vigor,
the National Humane Review generated enough revenue at peak, through
sales and subscriptions, to subsidize the AHA itself. At the height
of her popularity, in June 1935 and January 1936, actress Shirley
Temple was twice the cover girl.

Tactics

Editorial: Mainstream no longer accepts meat at humane events

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“With friends like theseŠ” was the first
thing that came to mind after reading the Carbon
County Friends of Animals raffle ticket I’d just
bought,” wrote Michael J. Frendak of Lansford,
Pennsylvania, in the August 2005 edition of
Reader’s Digest.
“I could win one of the following, it
said: a 10-pound box of chicken legs, one
smoked ham, four T-bone steaks, five pounds of
fresh sausage or hot dogs, or a box of pork
chops.”

How Irish dog racers muzzle humane critics

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

SALLINS, County Kildare–Greyhound
racing issues in Ireland converge on the People’s
Animal Welfare Society, halfway between Dublin
and the Newbridge Greyhound Racing Track, just a
few miles beyond at Naas. Greyhound breeding,
training, and boarding are big business right in
the neighborhood.
PAWS founder Deirdre Hetherington, 73, is among
the most prominent critics of the Irish greyhound
industry.
Yet PAWS is also increasingly reliant on
funding from both the Irish government and the
Irish Greyhound Board, reputedly made available
as part of a co-optive strategy to distract
opposition by rehoming a relative handful of the
greyhounds who are bred to race.
Many of the PAWS dogs are boarded with a
prominent local greyhound racer.
Hetherington operates PAWS from her home,
Sallins Castle, built to withstand armed foes.

Remoteness of deadly Pakistan earthquake thwarts aid

November 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

KARACHI–An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale
killed more than 30,000 people and countless animals on October 5,
2005 in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
The remoteness of the region, lack of established animal
welfare infrastructure anywhere in Pakistan, and lack of official
interest in helping animals thwarted prompt response by international
organizations.
“I just got back to Karachi after spending two weeks filming
in Balakot.” e-mailed Pakistan Animal Welfare Society representative
and Geo TV assistant producer Mahera Omar on November 11.
Omar, more than a month after the earthquake, was nonetheless among
the first pro-animal representatives to bring back first-hand
testimony about what is needed.
“Balakot is a small town in the North West Frontier Province,
about 60 miles north of Islamabad,” Omar explained. “Located near
the quake’s epicenter, it is said to be among the worst devastated.
“We visited a few small villages up in the mountains around
Balakot,” Omar recounted. “The people in these areas depend on
subsistence farming and their livestock. Many of the livestock have
been killed. The rest are without any sort of shelter. Many people
are still without tents. Some have provided makeshift shelters for
their animals, using cloth or plastic sheets. Without shelter,
their livestock will not survive the harsh winter. The animals also
require veterinary care.

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