Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust takes over in Sri Lanka

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Colombo, Sri Lanka–The Tsunami People/Animal Welfare
Coalition on July 26, 2005 wrapped up emergency relief operations
begun after the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, rolling all
remaining assets over into the Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust.
Coalition and Trust cofounder Robert Blumberg arranged that
ANIMAL PEOPLE officially sponsored the last of a six-month series of
vaccination missions by Pets V Care mobile clinics into refugee camps
and tsunami-stricken coastal villages.
“ANIMAL People recognized almost immediately after the
tsunami that something of major consequence had taken place regarding
animal welfare,” Blumberg wrote in the last Coalition update.
“Within days after the tsunami hit, Animal People sent financial
assistance to start the Tsunami People/Animal Welfare Coalition.
This allowed us to get on the road, assessing, treating and
vaccinating. So far the Coalition itself has vaccinated more than
14,000 animals in the tsunami zones,” Blumberg said. “Animal People
sponsored our first trips and now our last vaccinating trip, and is
now supporting the Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust as it
sterilizes and vaccinates in the tsunami zones and refugee camps.”

Pound electrocutions stopped in Manila

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

MANILA–Seeking a cheaper, faster way to kill dogs than
either lethal injection or use of an antiquated carbon monoxide
chamber, Manila Veterinary Inspection Board members Manuel Socorro
and Condenio Panogan reportedly electrocuted approximately 100 dogs
from mid-May 2005 to mid-July before word of their work leaked out.
“Socorro “said they were given a one-year permit by the
Bureau of Animal Industry to conduct a study of electrocution as a
tool to put down dogs,” wrote Evelyn Macairan of The Philippine Star.
“This involved conducting a series of tests wherein the voltage would
be set starting at 100 volts and be slowly raised to 500 volts.”
Four days after Philippine Animal Welfare Society volunteer
and veterinary student Emil Reban witnessed some of the
electrocutions and described what he saw, the Bureau of Animal
Industries’ Committee on Animal Welfare revoked the permit
“immediately and indefinitely upon hearing PAWS president Nita
Lichauco’s petition to cancel it,” e-mailed PAWS member Ramona
Eliza T. Consunji on July 11.

82% of caged broilers are burned by urine

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

LONDON–Examining the carcasses of 384 broiler hens raised
according to the British Farm Standard and offered for sale on
supermarket shelves, an investigation commissioned by the Royal SPCA
and directed by Cambridge University professor Donald Broom reported
in July 2005 that 82% had been burned on their legs or bodies by
prolonged contact with ammonia from feces.
“Lack of space and fast-growing bodies that can become too
heavy to be supported by their legs increases the likelihood of birds
receiving painful burns, as the birds spend more time in contact
with floor litter,” said RSPCA scientific officer Marc Cooper.
Among 25 organically raised free range chickens whose
carcasses were inspected, 42% had burns, the researchers found.
The RSPCA findings were released five weeks after the BBC
Programme Com-plaints Unit upheld a British Poultry Council complaint
that the BBC “Food Police Programme” showed bias against the poultry
industry in a 2004 expose of ammonia burns.
“The use of surreptitiously filmed material and reference to
Compassion In World Farming campaign efforts did not of themselves
give rise to bias” the Complaints Unit said, “but, together with
other features of the item, they implied criticisms of the
poultry-rearing industry which there should have been an opportunity
to address.

Obituaries

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Ed Piukowsky, 52, died of a heart attack on July 9, 2005,
at home in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The son of a police dog
handler, Piukowsky and his wife Bonnie Lanzen-dorfer Piukowsky
founded the Jollyman Animal Sanctuary in 2002. Blairsville Dispatch
reporter Jeff Himler in April 2005 listed the residents as “16 dogs,
50 cats, six chickens, three goats, a dozen each of geese and
ducks, two peafowl, a rabbit and a parrot.” Recalled Dogs Deserve
Better anti-chaining group founder Tammy Grimes, “Ed was very
supportive of me and my work, and had me speak at their fundraisers
each of the past three years. The first time was my first time ever
speaking, and I was so nervous I thought I’d die. I spoke for a
whole 30 seconds, but it was enough to get me past the point of
trying. He told me each year, ‘See, I knew you were going to go
far, didn’t I tell you that?’ He was so proud of me and the
progress we have made.”

Obituaries

Compromise & the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Editorially favoring hunting, trapping,
fishing, ranching, logging, rodeo, and animal
use in biomedical research, the Spokane
Spokesman-Review has probably never in recent
decades been mistaken for an exponent of animal
rights.
Yet on September 15, 1952 the
Spokesman-Review became perhaps the first and
only daily newspaper in the U.S. to editorially
endorse “A Charter of Rights for Animals,”
drafted by the World Federation for the
Protection of Animals.
The oldest of the three organizations
whose mergers eventually produced today’s World
Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA),
the Dutch-based World Federation then represented
“humane societies in 25 countries,” the
Spokesman-Review editors noted.
“Most civilized countries already have
laws to cover most of the protection for animals
that the federation asks,” the Spokesman-Review
continued. “Beating animals, forcing them to do
work beyond their strength, transporting them in
a manner to cause pain or without adequate food,
all are punishable now in the U.S., for example.”

PETA staffers face 62 felony cruelty counts in North Carolina

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

WINTON, N.C.–The scheduled first court appearance of PETA
staffers Adria Joy Hinkle and Andrew Benjamin Cook on multiple
cruelty charges was on July 19, 2005 postponed until August 16.
Hinkle, 27, and Cook, 24, are charged with a combined 62
counts of felony cruelty to animals and 16 counts of illegal disposal
of animal remains.
Police sources have indicated that other persons associated
with PETA may be charged as result of ongoing investigation.
The court date was delayed, reported Darren Freeman of the
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, because the prosecution was “waiting for
lab results on chemicals found in a van the two suspects were using
when they were arrested, and the results to determine the cause of
death of one of the animals.”
Ahoskie, North Carolina police detective Jeremy Roberts told Freeman
that the van was registered to PETA.
Roberts announced the next day that the tests had confirmed
that the chemicals were ketamine and pentobarbital. Ketamine is
commonly used to immobilize animals before surgical procedures or
lethal injection. Pentobarbital is the standard drug used for lethal
injection. Both drugs are regulated by the federal Drug Enforcement
Agency, and in North Carolina may only be purchased and used by a
licensed veterinarian.

White tigers, green polar bears, & maintaining a world-class zoo

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

SINGAPORE–When the tigers are white and the polar bears are
a blotchy dark green, a zoo has problems.
Opened in June 1973, the Singapore Zoo and adjacent Night
Safari are together reputedly the best zoo complex within half a
global orbit, together setting the Asian zoo design and management
standard.
More than 1.2 million visitors per year view about 3,200
animals of 330 mostly tropical species at the Singapore Zoo and Night
Safari.
The animals are chiefly housed in semi-natural surroundings.
The equatorial Singapore climate is good for reptiles year-round,
including some of the largest tortoises, most active monitors, and
largest gharials and salt water crocodiles on exhibit anywhere.
Pygmy hippos thrive. Both Old World and New World monkeys
and big cats are uncommonly lively.
But there are jarring notes.
The Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore banned
traveling wild animal shows in 2002, yet the Singapore Zoo and Night
Safari still feature circus-like orangutan and marine mammal acts,
opportunities to hold and be photographed with young animals, and
elephant rides.

Asia

Study confirms chicken cognition

July 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

SILSOE, U.K.–Hens pecking buttons to
earn food rewards may have a better awareness of
passing time and be better able to assess the
prospects of future gain than human slot machine
gamblers, a new British study suggests.
Silsoe Research Institute Bio-physics
Group animal welfare scientist Siobhan
Abeyesinghe varied the “payout” for pecking so
that her hens would get only a small amount of
food if they pecked quickly, but would receive a
large amount if they delayed their pecks for 22
seconds, long enough to demonstrate the ability
to mentally clock their own behavior and show
deliberate self-restraint.
Researching poultry welfare since 1996,
Abeyesinghe emphasized the welfare implications
of her findings in describing them for the
journal Animal Behavior.

Land reform threatens Hato Piñero

June 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

Owners of private wildlife conservancies
worldwide told themselves after the destruction
of the SAVE Valley Conservancy that the
Zimbabwean land invasions were a phenomenon
unique to Zimbabwean socio-political
circumstances.
That belief was shaken when the
Venezuelan National Land Institute ruled on March
12, 2005 that the 80,000-hectare Hato Piñero
ecotourism refuge and beef ranch is eligible for
seizure under a 2001 law allowing redistribution
of private land which is either under-utilized or
held under dubious title. Hato Piñero may be
expropriated even though the Branger family,
operating Hato Piñero since 1951, claims to hold
deeds to a title established in 1794.
Like Robert Mugabe, Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez rose to power on the promise of land
reform. Like Mugabe, Chavez is bitterly opposed
by large private landowners. But unlike Mugabe,
Chavez is disfavored by the George W. Bush
administration, which backed a failed 2002 coup.

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