American Humane, fighting losses, drops Farm Animal Services; FAS to go Independent

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Washington, D.C.–The fiscally troubled American Humane
Association on February 20 cut loose Farm Animal Services, which had
been the first major new program started under AHA auspices since it
began supervising the screen industry in 1940.
While Farm Animal Services may continue to certify products
from animals raised according to standards it has developed for
dairy, poultry, and egg producers, FAS vice president Gini Barrett
said, it is discontinuing the Free Farmed logo program that it
started in partnership with the AHA.
FAS has required that farm animals be able perform natural
behaviors, do not have antibiotics and hormones added to their diets
to enhance growth, receive nutritious food, and are humanely
transported and slaughtered.
“When the Free Farmed program was started, the commitment
from AHA was to fund it from startup in 2000 to projected
self-sufficiency in 2006,” Barrett explained in a press release.
“Unfortunately, after two and a half years, American Humane
decided that it could no longer make a binding long-term financial
commitment. The FAS board felt it would be unethical to continue to
promote the program and add producers with this uncertain financial
future.”

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Kharkov bioethics course makes a difference

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

KHARKOV, Ukraine–Humane educators have been wondering ever
since Massachusetts SPCA founder George Angell introduced the first
humane curriculum more than 100 years ago whether the results of
their teaching can be effectively measured.
Olga Ivanova Tolstova, founding chair of the Bioethics
Centre at the Kharkov Zoological & Veterinary Academy in the Ukraine,
believes she and her fellow faculty members have developed evidence
that encouraging students to think about the ethics of animal use
makes a profound difference.
Like a growing number of universities in the U.S. and Europe,
Kharkov Zoological & Veterinary Academy requires students to take a
bioethics course.
At the start of the course the instructors ask students to
rate on a scale of one to five whether 16 common human uses of
animals are cruel, and whether they are acceptable. The uses
include whaling, biomedical research and testing, purebred dog
breeding, keeping hens to lay eggs, fishing, fur farming, keeping
a pet dog, cosmetics testing, factory farming, hunting, trapping,
keeping a pet parrot, operating a pet shop, bullfighting,
zoological exhibition, and keeping a sick or injured deer in a
sanctuary.

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Orangutans in Kalimantan coal smoke & heated dispute

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

DENVER–Underground coal fires beneath Kalimantan province,
Indonesia, could exterminate the island’s orangutans and sun bears,
Indonesian Ministry of Energy coalfield fire project chief Alfred
Whitehouse and East Georgia College professor Glenn Stracher told the
American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference
in Denver on February 15, 2003.
Of the 20,000 remaining wild orangutans, about 15,000 live
in Kalimantan, Wbitehouse and Stracher said. Already imperiled by
habitat loss due to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture,
orangutans have now lost about half of Kutain National Park due to
underground fires and lethal smoke, according to Whitehouse and
Stracher.
The Kalimantan coal reserves apparently ignited after
slash-and-burn fires raced out of control during the drought years of
1997 and 1998. razing an area the size of Costa Rica. Since then,
at least 159 separate underground fires and perhaps as many as 3,000
have evaporated groundwater and dried surface vegetation, allowing
more fires to start and burn uncontrolled on the surface. The fires
emit as much carbon dioxide per year as all the motor vehicles in the
U.S. combined, Whitehouse and Stracher said.

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Thai government to buy surplus elephants for forest patrol

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

BANGKOK–Two hundred out-of-work domesticated elephants are
to be purchased by the Thai government and be re-employed patrolling
37 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, natural resources and
environment minister Prabhat Panyachartak announced on February 12.
Prabat Panyachartak expected to obtain cabinet approval for
the purchases as a Valentine for Queen Sirikit, who apparently
suggested using the elephants for patrol work after the national
police reported promising early results in training 50 street dogs
for investigative duties, as King Bhumibol Aduladej recommended in
his November 2002 birthday speech.
The King, 75, and Queen, 72, have no formal political
authority, but are viewed as the moral guardians of Thailand.
Always fond of animals, both have become outspoken about animal
welfare since adopting a street dog in 1998.
“Elephants would be well-suited to the job. Using elephants
is better than using four-wheel-drive vehicles, in terms of
pollution reduction and energy savings,” World wildlife Fund
Thailand secretary general Surapon Duangkhae told Ranjana Wangvipula
and Kultida Samabuddhi of the Bangkok Post.

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Jordan hero dog dies for love and freedom

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ZARGA, Jordan–A teaching of strict fundamentalist Islam is
that it is the duty of brothers to keep their sisters “pure” by
isolating them from contact with unrelated men prior to arranged
marriage. A three-year-old German shepherd named Big Joe recently
defeated that custom by carrying secret correspondence several blocks
back and forth between a man identified only as “Thamer” and a woman
whose identity news media concealed. Big Joe on January 11 carried
the man’s marriage proposal to the woman and fought off her brother
when he tried to intercept it, but the brother fatally beat him with
a large stone. The father of both the woman and her brother approved
of the marriage, perhaps in appreciation of what the loyalty,
bravery, and resourcefulness of Big Joe implied about him.

Stegman strikes out at Tony LaRussa’s ARF

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

CONTRA COSTA, Calif.– David Stegman, executive director of
Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation since May 1997, resigned for
undisclosed reasons on January 17, 2003.
Stegman ended a six-year career as a major league outfielder
playing for LaRussa with the Chicago White Sox in 1983-1984. His
successor at ARF has not yet been named.
LaRussa and Stegman in 1999 contracted with Maddie’s Fund,
of Alameda, California, for ARF to become the lead agency in
administering a planned five-year program to take Contra Costa County
to no-kill animal control. It was to have been the first of many
such programs sponsored by Maddie’s Fund–but ARF withdrew after
failing to meet some of the first-year goals.
Under Stegman, 36% of the 1999 ARF program budget and 15% of
the 2000 program budget went to operate a driving school headed by
Art Lee-Drews, who formerly worked with Stegman at the San Ramon
Valley Community Services Group.
ANIMAL PEOPLE consulted two leading nonprofit attorneys who
confirmed that this project should not have been construed as a
charitable program of an animal shelter. Stegman and LaRussa claimed
it was intended to make money to support animal rescue, but since it
was originally independently incorporated on a nonprofit basis, it
should not have been operated as an unrelated for-profit business
activity either.

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ESPN drops weekly rodeo broadcasts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

CHICAGO–“Ever heard of the Outdoor Life Network? I
haven’t,” SHARK founder and longtime anti-rodeo campaigner Steve
Hindi e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE at deadline. “Nevertheless, that is
where most of the televised rodeos for the 2003 Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association season will be aired. The love affair between
the ESPN and the PRCA seems to be over.
“We don’t know the sordid details of the apparent breakup,”
Hindi added, “but we have some clues. A few weeks ago, I was
called by a producer for an ESPN show called ‘Outside the Lines.’
This program, I was told, delves behind hype and headlines in
examining sports issues. Incredibly, ‘Outside the Lines’ was
interested in looking at rodeo. I told the producer that if ‘Outside
the Lines’ did a story on rodeos, ESPN would never be able to air
another rodeo, as the truth would be known and admitted to by the
network. The producer said he wanted to go forward nonetheless.
“After that, I didn’t hear from the producer again. I left
messages, but got no response. Now perhaps we know why.
“I told the producer that the PRCA would hit the roof when
they found out that they were going to be investigated,” Hindi said.
“I strongly suspect that the PRCA not only hit the roof but left the
building.
“There are still a few rodeos scheduled to air on the major
networks this year,” Hindi concluded. “But the weekly coverage on
ESPN is at least for now over.”

Coin-can conflicts in New Jersey: who is collecting all that spare change?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

TRENTON, New Jersey– The Associated Humane Societies of New
Jersey in early February 2003 updated a “phony organizations” alert
originally issued in September 2002 about coin-can fund-raising by an
entity calling itself “The National Animal Welfare Foundation.”
The alert was soon amplified with more information by other
animal welfare organizations in the Hudson River region.
A “National Animal Welfare Foundation” was incorporated as an
IRS 501(c)(3) charity in 1998 by Patrick G. Jemas and Gus C. Jemas of
Metchuchen, New Jersey, and William E. Helwig of Holmdel, New
Jersey. The one IRS Form 990 it filed, in January 1999, was mostly
blank, with the identification data supplied in hard-to-read Old
English or German “black letter” type.
Investigations by Associated Humane assistant director Rosann
Trezza, Sara Whelan of Pets Alive in Middletown, New York, and
ANIMAL PEOPLE have found little trace of NAWF program activity. A
NAWF web site active on February 18, 2002 could no longer be found
on February 18, 2003. Addresses in Union, New Jersey, and
Washington D.C. turned out to be mail drops.
The Union address “does not have any name on the door except
‘Intelligence, Inc.'” Trezza said.

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WWF splits over links to corporations

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

GENEVA, Switzerland–World Wildlife Fund U.S. president
Kathryn Fuller has reportedly refused to resign at request of WWF
International president Claude Martin.
Martin asked Fuller to quit after she abstained from voting
in her capacity as a board member of Alcoa, rather than oppose a
company plan to build a dam complex that will flood 22 square miles
near Karahnjukar, Iceland, submerging nesting and feeding areas for
barnacle and greylag geese who migrate from Greenland to Britain.
The dam project is opposed by the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, as well as by WWF
International.
Fuller joined the Alcoa board after Alcoa donated $1 million
to WWF-U.S., wrote Severin Carrell of the London Independent.
Martin and WWF International were meanwhile ripped in an open
letter from Kevin Dunion, former director of the Friends of the
Earth chapter in Scotland, for failing to oppose a plan by the
French mining, quarrying, and cement-making firm Lafarge to open a
“super quarry” on Harris Island in the Hebrides. Lafarge and WWF
also have a “very close” relationship, Dunion said.
WWF-Britain came under criticism at the same time for its
ties to the HSBC banking empire, a major financier of rainforest
logging in Indonesia and dam-building in fragile areas including the
Three Gorges region of China.

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