G.I. pets banned as “biosecurity risk”

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

BOSTON–Dogs and cats who help U.S. military personnel endure
the stress of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are the latest urgent
biosecurity risk to the United States, according to some
bureaucrats, who are now trying to keep the troops from bringing
their companions home.
Comparisons are in order. Published accounts indicate that
U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past two
years have brought home fewer than 100 dogs and cats in total. None
are known to have carried any serious disease.
Just a handful of dogs and cats are believed to have been
imported from Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. None of them
carried any serious disease, either.
Illegal imports of wildlife and wildlife parts into U.S.,
worth about $1 billion in 1991, are now worth $3 billion, estimates
the U.S. Department of Justice. Federal and state agencies have yet
to even visibly slow the clandestine wildlife traffic, every item of
which is an uninspected, untested potential biosecurity hazard.

Cockfighting notes

March 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

Louisiana District Judge Charles Scott on February 3 ruled
that Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator may not enforce a local
ordinance to halt cockfights at the ArkLaTex Game Club near Ida and
the Piney Woods Game Club near Vivian because cockfighting is legal
in Louisiana, one of only two states that allow it, and a local
ordinance may not supersede state law.

Alleged cockfighter Efrain Aguilar and a land owner not named
by police were arrested on February 2 after a brawl at an illegal
cockpit in Tepeyac, Mexico. One man was beaten to death and six
were shot dead, including three men from one family and three
brothers from another.

Animal Obituaries

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Rusty, 35, a 308-pound orangutan born at the Chaffee Zoo in
Fresno in 1967 and donated to the San Francisco Zoo in 1968 by the
late Carroll Soo Hoo, died on January 8. Rusty sired a daughter
named Violet, after Mrs. Carroll Soo-Hoo, with his former companion
Josephine. Rusty is survived and mourned by his companion of the
past several years, Lipz, 20.

Shuzee, 53, the oldest chimpanzee in Japan, born at the
Hamburg Zoo in Germany but brought to the Tennoji Zoo in Osaka in
1951, died on January 6. The oldest chimp on record was Jimmy, 55,
of the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York, who died in 1985.

Charlie Brown, 11, a dog whose annual birthday parties
raised about $4,000 for the Animal Refuge Center of North Fort Myers,
Florida, was euthanized due to incurable cancer on January 6. He
was the pet of Danielle Weiner, owner of three local ice cream
stores.

Obituaries

“The company doing the ‘mail-outs’ gets most of the money”

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

“The company doing the ‘mail-outs’ gets most of the money”
–another ex-Eberle client

McLEAN, Va.-Fundraiser Bruce Eberle, representing many of
the animal protection charities with the highest ratios of
fundraising to program expense of all those whose IRS Form 990
filings ANIMAL PEOPLE monitors, has apparently both gained and lost
animal protection clients since ANIMAL PEOPLE last listed those known
to be associated with him.
Discontinuing a relationship with Eberle is the Dream Catcher
Farm, Sanctuary, of Rocky Mount, Virginia.
“We are no longer using any type of fundraising company,”
founder Catherine Sutphin wrote in an open letter to donors. “We
tried using one for a couple of ‘mail-outs,’ but not all the money
went to the sanctuary for the horses. We would net about 8%-10%…
The company doing the ‘mail-outs’ gets most of the money for mailing
list rentals, bank statements, designing, printing, [and] stuffing and mailing letters.

Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary animals seized in Thai crackdown

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand–Thai forestry officials trying to
halt illegal wildlife farming on November 27, 2002 raided the
Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary, where on May 10 cofounder William
Emeral Deters, 69, housekeeper Ratchanee Sonkhamleu, 26, her
three-year-old daughter, Hmong worker Laeng sae Yang, and a Thai
worker known only as Subin were massacred during a botched robbery.
The forestry department on November 28 seized 126 sambar elk
from an alleged illegal antler farm in Kanchanburi province, and may
have been confused by the use of the word “farm” in the name of the
Highland Farm sanctuary.

Bonus for failure?

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

LOS ANGELES-The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association kept $7.3
million over the past five years that should have been given to the
city-operated zoo, Los Angeles city controller Laura Chick reported
in December 2002 after completing an audit. GLAZA is the independent
nonprofit entity that conducts fundraising activities for the zoo.
“Chick is seeking a legal opinion from the City Attorney as
to whether the city should try to recover the funds,” Los Angeles
Daily News staff writer Harrison Sheppard reported.
Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
brought a nationwide collapse of nonprofit fundraising, GLAZA
“missed its fundraising goals twice since 1998 and a third time this
year,” Sheppard wrote.
The 2001-2002 fundraising goal was $7.5 million, but GLAZA
raised just $2.2 million, falling 71% short.
However, Chick revealed, ex-GLAZA president Don Youpa was
given a performance bonus of $20,000 on top of his $175,000 salary.

SHARK bites Nature Conservancy

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

CHICAGO-“We are going to expose The Nature Conservancy for
allowing hunting, especially canned hunting, on its land,” SHARK
founder Steve Hindi declared as his 2003 New Year’s resolution.
Hindi followed up by deploying the SHARK video truck against
TNC activities at Wilder Farms, near Lewistown, Illinois.
TNC bought the 7,500-acre site from Maurice Wilder in 2000,
but leased 200 acres used to keep about 400 elk back to Wilder under
a contract expiring in 2009. Wilder in November 2001 sold the elk to
Kevin Williams of Breeds, Illinois.
Unable to move live elk due to state restrictions meant to
prevent the spread of chronic wasting syndrome, Williams has
reportedly allowed paying customers to shoot them in their pens and
butcher them on site.

Protesting is good for you!

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

LONDON-“People should get more involved in campaigns,
struggles, and social movements, for their own personal good,”
University of Sussex psychologist Dr. John Drury recently told
Reuters Health. Interviewing nearly 40 activists on issues including
fox hunting, the environment, and labor relations, Drury found
that protesting helped them overcome feelings of personal stress,
pain, anxiety, and depression.

McDonald’s settlement challenged by 6 of 7 original plaintiffs

January 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

CHICAGO–“We are not being besieged by thousands of angry
vegetarians,” Houston attorney Cory S. Fein told Cook County Judge
Richard Siebel on January 13.
But Fein may have invited such a response. Fein was in court
to defend the list of 26 proposed grant recipients offered by
McDonald’s Restaurants in settlement of class action lawsuits brought
by Hindus and vegetarians who unwittingly ate French fries seasoned
in a mist of beef broth. McDonald’s advertised that its fries were
cooked in pure vegetable oil from 1990 until after Seattle attorney
Harish Bharti filed the first of a series of related cases in May
2001.

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