Animal Liberation author Peter Singer stirs the pot with essay on bestiality

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

AUGUSTA, Maine.; PITTSBURGH, Pa.; PRINCETON, N.J.; SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.–Philosopher Peter Singer, always provocative, did it again on March 12 with an essay for the online magazine <www.nerve.com> entitled “Heavy Petting.” Asking why people think what they think and take the positions they do on human/animal sexual relations, Singer at e-mail speed sparked perhaps as much quick uproar as he did when the first reviews of his 1974 book Animal Liberation appeared.

Then too, Singer was accused of trying to upset the natural order.Now chairing the Princeton Univer-sity Center for Human Values, Singer cofounded the Australian advocacy group Animal Liberation, and succeeded Henry Spira, who died in September 1998, as president of Animal Rights International. Singer’s main career, however, is making people think about many of the hottest topics in public discourse: euthanasia, for example, and whether or not society should try to save newborns with birth defects so severe that they seem to have little chance of enjoying their existence. Though Singer himself is Jewish, and most of his family died in the Nazi holocaust, he is frequently picketed as an alleged advocate of eugenics and worse.

Though he gives generously to anti-hunger projects, especially Oxfam, he is often accused of being anti-human.
Comparably paradoxical denunciations of “Heavy Petting” flew thick and fast. “Once an Ivy League professor is known to be a proponent of infanticide, perhaps nothing he says or writes should raise eyebrows,” began Kathryn Jean Lopez, the associate editor of National Review.

Her real target, however, appeared to be Princeton president Harold Shapiro, chair of the National Bioethics Advisory
Commission ever since it was formed eight years ago by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. “The commission’s charter expires in October, and its very existence should be reconsidered,” Lopez wrote.

At a glance, Shapiro’s advisory role on biotech would seem to have little to do with Singer’s views on psychology, sociology, and animal welfare. However, while Shapiro ponders the issues raised by transferring genes across species barriers, Singer dared question whether interspecies biological activity associated with genetic transference is inherently more “unnatural” than inserting a glow-in-the-dark gene from a jellyfish into a rhesus macacque, as
was done in January 2001 by Oregon Health Science University staff working at the Oregon Regional Primate Center.

Lopez seemed to be offended by Singer explaining that “a human male who has sex with hens ultimately kills the hen,” yet asking if that is “worse than what egg producers do to their hens all the time.” Lopez did not, however, attempt to form an answer on either side of the question.

Other rips at Singer and “Heavy Petting” were distributed by New Republic contributing editor and George Mason University Law School teacher Peter Berko-witz; syndicated columnist Debra J. Saunders; and Rutgers University animal rights law professor Gary Francione, whose perspective is generally as far left as Lopez is to the right.

Fumed Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, “When FoA questioned Singer’s views, he replied, ‘If sexual contact between a human and an animal was not contrary to the desires of either, gave pleasure to both, and caused no harm, present or future, to either, would it be bad? If so, why?’ Obviously, the animal rights movement needs to distance itself from Singer.” Standing close to a lightning rod could be deadly–but Feral did not try to answer the question Singer asked, either.

Tennessee Network for Animals director Don Elroy, who has pursued passage of an anti-bestiality law in a state which now has none, disregarded the conditions built into Singer’s question of Feral; equated all bestiality with imposing the human will upon an animal, although the example Singer gave in his essay of a dog rubbing himself against a human leg would not seem to fit that definition; and concluded that, “While Singer may be thought of as the ‘father of the animal rights movement,’ the views he has expressed are farther from what the movement stands for than most of
the attacks from detractors.”

Singer was prominently defended within the animal rights movement only by PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk. “Heavy Petting,” said Newkirk, is “daring, honest, and does not do what some people read into it, which is condone any violent acts involving an animal, sexual or otherwise.” Singer’s bottom line: “We are animals…great apes. This does not make sex across the species barrier normal, or natural, but it does imply that it ceases to be an offense to our status and
dignity as human beings.”

Current court cases

But Singer wrote with three bizarre criminal cases involving suspected use of animals for sexual gratification in the headlines:

* A San Francisco grand jury on March 27 indicted attorneys Robert Noel, 59, and Marjorie Knoller, 45, who are husband and wife, for involuntary manslaughter and failure to control an animal. Knoller was also indicted for second degee murder. Noel and Knoller were charged in connection with how they allegedly trained two Presa Canario dogs, whom they were keeping for prison lifers Dale Bretches, 44, and Paul Schneider, 38. Bretches and Schneider are
reputed leaders of the white supremacist Aryan Nations gang. On January 26 the dogs broke away from Knoller and killed Diane Whipple, 33. Three days after the attack, Noel and Knoller legally adopted Schneider–who reportedly had a collection of “X-rated” photos of Knoller in his cell. The warrant authorizing the search sought, among other things, “any materials or correspondence describing sexual acts by Noel or Knoller that involve dogs.” Whether any were
found, however, and what bearing they may have on the case, has not been disclosed.

* The indictments came the same day that Phillip Buble, 44, of Parkman, Maine, testified to the Maine legislature’s criminal justice committee in opposition to a bill to create a felony penalty for bestiality. Buble stated that he and his dog, Lady Buble, “live together as a married couple, in the eyes of God.” Phillip Buble’s father, Frank Buble, 71, was on February 27 sentenced to nine months in jail for beating Phillip Buble with a crowbar on September 13, 1999. Frank Buble told police that he was trying to kill his son because he was sick of the son’s behavior. Phillip Buble told the legislative committee that the dog saved him from the attack.
* In Butler County, Pennsylvania, Tammy L. Felbaum, 42, born Tommy Wyda, has been held since February 25 on multiple counts of cruelty to animals allegedly involving both violence and neglect. She was also charged with homicide on March 13. Her sixth husband, James John Felbaum, 40, was on February 25 found dead from a castration that Tammy Felbaum says J.J. Felbaum did himself. Tammy Felbaum is believed to have castrated herself in 1980 in order to force her doctor to consent to her having a surgical change of gender. A previous husband, Tim Charles Barner, 51, is missing and may also have been castrated by Felbaum, police said. Both J.J. Felbaum and Tammy Felbaum had prior arrests for drug-related offenses.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has received documentation since 1992 of only 22 bestiality cases within the U.S., involving 20 perpetrators, who allegedly committed acts with 17 horses, 10 dogs, five cats, four cows, three sheep, and a pig. This makes bestiality the rarest of all animal-related offenses. The most common is mass neglect, with cases on file involving more than 1,000 perpetrators and more than 50,000 animal victims. One nation, South Africa, records more than 80% of all known bestiality cases, with 284 convictions in 1997-2000 alone.

The transgenic dilemma: Body or soul?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

Are you eating pork when you eat a tomato? Would having fish genes qualify a pig as “not pork”? Is a cow with human genes either more or less holy than a cow without?

In the brave new world of biotech, such questions make careers for lawyers and philosophers–and terrify the faithful. Even as biotech makes food more resistant to viruses, bacteria, mold, and fungi, vegans often find that trans-species
hybridization complicates their effort to avoid all traces of animal products and byproducts. Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Jains, and Muslims may even feel that biotech puts their souls at risk.

The appeal of absolute belief tends to be that it establishes easily understood rules of conduct. The more basic the belief, the simpler the rules: Thou Shalt. Thou Shalt Not. One God. Ten Commandments: no more than can be counted on fingers.

But simple rules require simple definitions. And in transgenic and xenographic science, there are none. That makes the traditional Jewish and Islamic prohibitions on consuming pork and the Hindu proscription against eating beef a series of religious, philosophical, and political battlegrounds. The Jain prohibition on ingesting any living being in any form,  always hard to obey because of the dfficulty of seeing small insects, already became impossible for strict literalists with the discovery of microbes, but the injunctions against pork and beef have endured centuries, withstanding translation into every language and transplantation into every human culture–until now.

Now they are confounded by medical and agricultural practices which have become routine in some parts of the world while still unknown in others. Pigs’ heart valves have been implanted in humans for more than 25 years, for instance, and skin grafts from pigs have been used to help burn patients. Until recently, such techniques often took decades to
perfect. But biotech advances seem now to be accelerating to warp speed the research, development, and testing phases of transgenic and xenographic procedures.

When pigs fly

Just over three years ago, in March 1998, 38-year-old James MacDonald, of West Lafayette, Indiana, received the first
transplant into a human of small intestinal submucosa from a pig, as part of a surgical knee reconstruction. In February 2000 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of pig small intestinal submucosa as a patching material for almost any sort of soft-tissue wound–even eye injuries and some types of stomach ulcer. Now SIS, as it is called, has been used to treat more than 25,000 human patients, and is well on the way toward even more common use.

A similar product made from a matrix of collagens taken from the livers, stomachs, and urinary bladders of pigs has been used to make replacement larynxes, intestines, and other organs for about 30 dogs whose original organs were removed as part of the study, Purdue University Department of Biomedical Engineering senior researcher Stephen Badlylak disclosed on March 22. This product too is believed to be on the fast track to FDA approval and general use.

In 1998, doctors disclosed experimental use of pig livers to keep human liver transplant candidates alive pending receipt of livers from human donors; transfusions of pig blood into humans; transplants of cells from genetically modified pigs to treat human spinal cord and brain injuries; and injections of fetal pig brain cells into the brains of Parkinson’s Disease patients.

Experimental use of fetal pig tissue to treat diabetes began in mid-2000, under direction of Diacrin Inc. researcher Jonathan Dinsmore. If that treatment works, it could improve the quality of life for 1.5 million Americans, plus millions more people abroad. At about the same time in mid-2000, researchers in Japan, Scotland, Virginia, and Wisconsin separately announced the births of cloned pigs, a first step toward mass production of pigs genetically modified to supply replacement organs for people. Reports indicate that any or all of these procedures could soon follow SIS into frequent application.

The market for human use of genetically modified pig parts is believed to be so potentially lucrative that the Hormel and Smithfield pork-packing empires have invested millions of dollars in related research, with partners including the Mayo Clinic, Baxter Healthcare, and ProLinia Inc. The pork barons are hoping to catch up to the Imutran, Infigen, and Geron Bio-Med research empires, whose scientists are believed to be the leaders in research and development.

People who eat pork are not expected to have ethical qualms about accepting transplants from pigs–and that includes most of the population in the most affluent parts of the world. For those who object to pig parts, alternatives may eventually be developed, grown in other species. Researchers, ethicists, and investors tend to believe that anyone who eats meat will readily accept transplants and other products modified through the use of animal genes, as soon
as they are proven safe.

PERV throws curve

Animal welfare concerns are not considered to be much of an impediment to transgenic biotech either–because most of the source genetic material can be taken from animals who were raised to be butchered anyway; because animals raised specifically to provide organs for transplant must be kept in healthier conditions than meat production facilities afford; and because the advent of genetic modification enables researchers to use far fewer animals in each new
product safety test. The effect of procedures or substances on human organs may now be studied by inserting human genes into the bodies of test animals to give their organs human properties.

Conventional wisdom in the biotech field is that genetic research is far more compatible with animal welfare than the search for drugs and surgical treatments. In August 2000, however, concern about the liabilities associated with pig endogenous retroviruses (PERV) caused the Roslin Institute of Scotland and Geron Bio-Med of California to drop out of the race to produce replacement human organ in pigs.

Although PERV does no harm to pigs, and so far does not appear to infect people, British virologist Robin A. Weiss proved in 1997 that cross-species infection can occur via test tube. Since PERV invades cells in much the same manner as HIV, integrating itself into the genetic program of the host, there are scary implications should people ever become vulnerable to a PERV strain.The PERV problem seemed to be solved in December 1999, when Bio-Transplant Inc. researcher Clive Patience announced that his team had bred a genetically modified pig which does not carry PERV.

The London Sunday Times reported in August 2000 that, “The use of pig organs for transplant to humans is poised to win governmental approval.” But the BioTransplant claim has apparently not yet been independently confirmed. And even as Sunday Times reporters Jonathan Leake and Lois Rogers wrote, the British Natural Environment Research Council revealed that Imperial College researchers Michael Tristem and Joanne Martin had found evidence that some pig retroviruses jump species barriers in the wild.

“When viruses jump species, they usually acquire pathogenic properties,” Tristem told London Observer science editor Robin McKie.The Boston-based Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation reinforced the British findings with a warning about PERV in December 2000. In February 2001 the third annual report of the United Kingdom Xenotransplant-ation Interim Regulatory Authority cautioned that due to PERV and unsolved tissue rejection problems, “The likelihood of whole-organ xenotransplantation being available within a worthwhile time frame may recede.”

Commented Interim Regulatory Authority member and heart transplant surgeon John Dark, of Newcastle, “Xenotrans-plantation is the future of transplants–and it always will be.” But even if people never receive replacement organs
cultivated in pigs, surgical use of other pig parts is likely to keep growing.

Hybrid cowboys?
Applications of biotech involving cattle to human health care were relatively slow to emerge. The emphasis of genetic research with cattle has mainly been on producing more lucrative dairy and beef breeds. Ethical discussion remained subdued until October 1998, when Vandana Shiva of the New Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology warned India that the Roslin Institute had applied for a patent on the genetic properties of the vechur cow. The vechur is a rare Indian breed, found mainly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala states.

Shiva urged the Indian government to assert a claim to the genetic properties of all native Indian animals and plants.
Other commentators soon linked the scientific, legal, and economic issues that Shiva raised to ethical concerns involving the treatment of the “Mothers of India.” Especially offensive to many Hindus would be the use of genes
from Indian cattle to make cow slaughter more profitable.

On the far side of the world, Advanced Cell Technology chief executive Michael West, of Boston, was successfully melding human DNA with a cow’s ova to produce a hybrid cell of potential utility in growing organs in cows which will be compatible with human bodies. Concern that the procedure might produce a hybrid fetus or lead to cloning humans was so prominent in news coverage during November 1998 that then-U.S. Presi-dent Bill Clinton sought the advice of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. A hearing was held in Miami, a non-committal report was issued, and the work proceeded.
Unmollified, prominent voices from the Christian right have persistently demanded that the National Bioethics Advisory Commission be dismantled–which would actually diminish public oversight of genetic research.

Low average

Michael West, meanwhile, claimed in April 2000 that while sheep cloned by the Roslin Institute have shown symptoms of premature aging, his cloned cattle seem to be free of the problem. That might make them better candidates than pigs for use in growing replacement organs. But West had produced a calf fetus in only one of 271 attempts. The major anticipated application of biotech to cattle for human medical benefit would be the use of cows as living bioreactors,
who would be genetically modified to secrete human proteins used in drugs.

As this essentially involves only making medicines from milk, a classic Vedic procedure, there is no Hindu resistance to it in concept. Nor is there evident opposition in principle within the U.S. except from opponents of any genetic modification. Neighbors concerned mainly about manure and traffic and only secondarily anxious about biotech have put up the only visible resistance so far to plans by the Dutch pharmaceutical firm Pharming Group N.V. to build $37 million worth of facilities to produce drugs from genetically modified cow’s milk at Craig, Virginia, and at Virginia Tech University.

The Pharming Group project was first announced in early 1999. In August 1999, Agresearch Inc. outlined a similar project that it wanted to start near Wellington, New Zealand, on land leased from the Maori tribe. The Agresearch proposal met heavy resistance. Two members of the Ngati Wairere subtribal council delegation supported Agresearch;
five were opposed.

“It’s a mixing of whakapapa between species which is culturally inappropriate,” explained Agresearch foe Jacqui Amohanga. But the Agresearch project went ahead, under former Roslin Institute researcher David Wells. The goal is to use milk to produce human myelin basic protein, used to treat multiple sclerosis.

Use of actual parts from cattle in human medicine has distantly paralleled the use of pig parts. The first use in the U.S.
of a bovine valve in a human heart, for example, occurred in May 1999, following a procedure previously used in Europe. A valve from a bovine neck was used instead of a pig’s heart valve because a pig’s heart value would have been too large for the patient, a 13-month-old boy who was born with a severe congenital heart defect. He will have to receive the larger valve later, at about age 10.

The biggest subsequent development in cow-to-human xenography, announced on February 22, 2001 by PPL Therapeutics, was a technique for altering so-called stem cells from cow’s skin to produce heart muscle. Commented Donald Bruce, director of the Church of Scotland’s Society, Religion, and Technology Project, “This is an encouraging
breakthrough in the search for replacement cells to treat serious diseases without the need to use human embryos. It is obviously still too early to say that this is the solution we have been looking for, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.”

Tossing tomatoes

Researchers and the medical products industry would mostly prefer that the public continue to believe that pigs are pigs if they look like pigs; cows are cows if they moo and give milk; pig and cattle products are taboo for Jews, Muslims, and Hindus only if ingested as food; and people can otherwise do as they wish with livestock.

Fundamentalists are not so certain. Few fundamentalist leaders, of any religion, have ever fully trusted science. The
scientific method requires questioning certainties of the faith, while the findings of science tend to push the realm of God–the unknown–ever farther from daily human existence. Science shrinks the authority and prestige of priests. Science upsets the social order.

Science means trouble, in short, and when it comes coupled with putting parts or genetic information from one species into another, it also takes the form of an ancient dirty trick: causing thr religious to transgress a taboo unawares. It is said that the Buddha, who ate no meat, died when someone slipped pork into his begging bowl–a story which may least concern Buddhists, many of whom eat pork.

Some of the bloodiest riots in the history of India resulted from rumors that British troops had given Moslem and Hindu recruits weapons greased with lard and beef tallow. As recently as January 23, 1999, alleged Hanuman worshippers burned to death Australian missionary Graham Staines, 58, and his sons, ages 6 and 10, over evidently completely unproven rumors that they had tricked Hindus into eating beef, thereby “forcing” conversion to Christianity.

So what happens when a Jew, Moslem, or Hindu receives a transgenic or xenographic medical treatment? Or eats a genetically modified vegetable? Is such an act sinful? The question may have arisen first in Israel, where surgeons
began implanting pig heart valves in humans about 20 years ago, soon after the procedure was introduced in the U.S. and Britain. It came up again in April 1998, in discussion of a proposed pig-to-human heart transplant which would not have been done in Britain, at the time, because of concern about PERV.

“We as Jews are not supposed to eat the meat of a pig, but there is no reason not to use it to save a human life,” said Shear Yashu Cohen, chief rabbi of Haifa and of the Ariel Institute, a rabbinical training center. Universiti Sains Malaysia theologian Wan Salim Wan Mohd Nor, Ph.D., and associate professor of medicine Mohd Nizam Isa, M.D., likewise argued for tolerance at an April 2000 symposium. “When there is no other option, it should be all right to use pig organs,” Nor said, putting the obligation to protect human life ahead of dietary law.

Added Isa, “We cannot afford to close an eye to technology. To debate the issue in relation to moral, ethical, religious, and economic implications, we must first understand what the technology is all about.” But in June 2000, Muslim genetic engineering opponent Chamnong Buanien, of Thailand, invoked the alleged use of a gene from pigs to keep tomatoes fresh as a hoped-for ultimate weapon against the introduction of genetically modified crops in the
southern provinces of Satun and Songkhla, where most Thai Muslims live.

Epidemic of faith

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

LONDON–A combination of misplaced faiths brought the world the widest outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease ever– and the most virulent known strain:

* Millions of Islamic faithful mistakenly believe that the Koran commands them to kill a hooved animal at the yearly Feast of Atonement, and give two-thirds of the meat to the poor.

* Millions of British residents mistakenly believed–until late February 2001–that the English Channel, having protected them against Napoleon, Hitler, and canine rabies, protects them as well against other invaders and diseases.

* Millions of Europeans mistakenly believed back in 1992 that abandoning livestock vaccination against hoof-and-mouth disease would reduce meat prices. Therefore, under the Single Europe Act, the European Union forced eight member nations to repeal as purported artificial trade barriers their national laws requiring that hooved
animals be vaccinated.

Instead, the entire EU adopted the British, American, and Japanese requirement that infected and exposed herds must be killed, on the theory that the highly contagious and easily transported hoof-and-mouth virus could be totally eradicated. Vaccinated animals are considered “exposed,” because the vaccination causes them to produce false positive results in standard testing, and– whether infected or not–vaccinated animals can still be immune carriers.

Now struggling to meet the EU standard, English and Scots officials had by March 28 condemned 719,000 animals–far more than the 480,000 who were killed in the 1967-68 hoof-and-mouth episode that had been Britain’s worst. Incomplete species totals included 420,519 sheep, 118,627 cattle, 46,021 pigs, and 261 goats.Just 728 animals were found to be infected within the first month of the outbreak arriving in Britain, but 441,640 animals had already been killed.

Epidemiologists commissioned by the British government forecast on March 23 that more than 4,400 animals would eventually be infected, twice as many as in 1967-68, without the “immediate slaughter of all susceptible species around infected farms.” British authorities are still traumatized by the ongoing global blame-throwing over their failure to contain bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Better known as “mad cow disease,” BSE emerged circa 1980, and in 1996 was found to have jumped into humans as the brain-destroying new-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Ensuing trade bans devastated the British livestock export industry, once Europe’s largest.

Politicians and public officials who took a decade to respond decisively to BSE lost no time implementing whole-herd slaughters in response to hoof-and-mouth. Indeed, some initiated killing animals so enthusiastically that they created a whole new health problem.

Napalm

Concerned that decomposition in the soil might cause water pollution, British government veterinarians initially tried to burn the fast-accumulating corpses. Rehearsing for just such a disaster, government purchasing agents solicited bids on firewood and coal to stoke bonfires of dead livestock shortly before Christmas. But burning the animals proved too slow, at three days per pyre, while a 10-day backlog of bodies festered, and merely piling the remains up with fuel gave badgers, foxes, feral pigs, birds, insects, and other carrion-eaters ample time to spread the hoof-and-mouth virus farther.

Agriculture minister Jim Scudamore delayed action on National Pig Association and British Wild Boar Association recommendations that the feral pigs and boars be killed–perhaps because no one, anywhere, has ever succeeded in eradicating feral swine from a land mass larger than the Catalina Islands, off southern California. Several advisors reportedly told Scudamore that it probably could not be done with the resources available.

Soldiers finally excavated pits to hold up to half a million dead animals at the abandoned Great Orton military airfield in northern England, and Scotland called out the Highlanders 1st Battalion to dig holes for a quarter million more at Brickshaw Forest, near Locherbie. Almost 100,000 bodies remained unburied as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, and the Agriculture Ministry was considering a suggestion from Nevada Department of Agriculture expert Ron Anderson that they should incinerate them with napalm. Anderson said napalm had served him well against an August 2000 outbreak of anthrax.

The London Zoo and the 61-member Federation of Zoos unsuccessfully petitioned the Ministry of Agriculture for exemptions from mandatory slaughter of hooved animals, and asked to be allowed to vaccinate their rare and endangered species instead. At risk were elephants, bison, rhinos, hippos, okapi, antelope, camels, deer, and 48 of the last 59 Northumber-land cattle, whose herd has lived within the same 300-acre walled enclosure at Chillingham since
approximately 1300. Doomed were the almost equally rare Herdwick sheep of Lake District National Park, after the hoof-and-mouth virus was apparently carried 20 miles on the wind to infect cattle pastured nearby.

Misconceived

“There are grounds for arguing that the slaughter policy is misconceived,” opined BBC News environment correspondent Alex Kirby as early as February 25. “It is not strictly necessary, as the disease poses no real risk to human health. At most, it can lead to a mild infection, and it is not invariably fatal to the animals. In adult cattle only a small minority succumbs, though the death rate can be much higher in younger animals and pigs.” The major effect of hoof-and-mouth, Kirby explained, is that afflicted animals suffer weight loss, producing less meat and milk.

“But whether that would leave farmers worse off than they are already is debatable,” Kirby said. “The last hoof-and-mouth outbreak in the U.K. was in 1981, which leads the government to argue that slaughtering has worked. But it is at least as logical to say that the U.K. has for 20 years been lucky. The uncomfortable truth is that the day the U.K. is declared free of hoof-and-mouth again, the risk of another outbreak will remain just as high.”

“Once the virus is here,” Kirby continued, “modern farming as good as rolls out the red carpet to greet it. Animals kept in close confinement, reared in close quarters, will inevitably infect one another very quickly.”

Commented virologist Fred Brown, of the USDA Plum Island Animal Disease Center, located in Long Island Sound, “It’s quite clear that if you stop vaccinating, you’re vulnerable.” Brown explained to Los Angeles Times staff writer Emily Green that since 1997 a new test has been developed, but not widely deployed, which can distinguish the false positive result caused by vaccination from the actual disease. Britain and other nations, as well as consumers’ groups, opposed mandatory vaccination because of the anticipated cost: more than $900 million per year in Britain alone, estimated British agriculture minister Nick Brown.

But insuring British farmers against losses comparable to those resulting from the hoof-and-mouth outbreak would cost $800 million. Currently, only 10% have insurance against disease outbreaks, in part because the cull of 4.7 million cattle in the thus-far futile effort to eradicate “mad cow disease” sent the premiums soaring. $900 million is, coincidentally, approximately the same amount as has been budgeted by the European Union to combat BSE. About 300 million animals within the EU might be potentially vulnerable to hoof-and-mouth.

Rethink?

“In light of the questions now being asked in Britain and the rest of Europe about whether non-vaccination strategies are really worth the occasional massive slip-up,” commented New Scientist European correspondent Debora MacKenzie in a comparison of notes with ANIMAL PEOPLE, “I am trying to re-examine such policies. While I
understand the reasons for them, I wonder if both the risks and the technology have not moved on, and made it time for a re-think.

“The whole system rests on the possibility of keeping pathogens out of an area post-eradication and post-vaccination. But it seems to me the risk of introducing pathogens has increased substantially recently with increased global trade and travel, while the impact of introduction has also increased along with livestock density. Has the cost-benefit ratio favouring the maintenance of large numbers of un-immunised animals perhaps shifted against non-vaccination as a result of this?

“Marker vaccines,” which can be distinguished from the actual illness, “and molecular surveillance,” permitting early
discovery of hoof-and-mouth, “may allow vaccinating and detecting the pathogen well enough,” MacKenzie suggested, “to prevent infection without risking an epidemic.”

The EU on March 24 authorized the Netherlands to make limited use of vaccination, if the Dutch government cannot kill animals fast enough to halt the spread of hoof-and-mouth. But disposing of remains is expected to be the biggest problem for the Dutch, whose low land and high water table make burial out of the question. Also lacking safe places to maintain long-burning bonfires, the Nether-lands may just have to use napalm.

BSE confusion

The cost of the epidemic was evident even in the U.S., where suspected hoof-and-mouth outbreaks have recently occurred only in Idaho. Hoof-and-mouth was officially eradicated from the U.S. in 1929 and from all of North America by 1952, Associated Press farm writer Philip Brasher reported. The U.S. has prohibited imports of hooved animals from any nation with hoof-and-mouth or which vaccinates hooved animals against hoof-and-mouth since 1930.

But Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman complained to Brasher on March 27 that the meat industry is suffering nonetheless, in part because American consumers, she said, are confusing hoof-and-mouth with BSE. BSE, in the mutated form of nv-CJD, has killed at least 86 people–but has never been found within U.S. cattle. Veneman spoke, however, less than a week after a new report by the Food and Drug Administ-ration found that nearly 700 of the
2,500-odd U.S. rendering plants and animal feed meals have inadequate controls to keep mammalian meat and bone meal out of food meant for cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and elk –the species believed vulnerable to getting BSE as result of eating the remains of sheep infected by scrapie. Maybe Americans were not so confused after all.

Renewed BSE scares in Europe combined with concern about hoof-and-mouth to bring a 10% sales decline at European franchises of McDonald’s restaurants –“no small amount,” reported Daryl Lindsey of Salon.com/news, “considering that the company derives as much as 36% of its operating income from the continent.”Lindsey said that McDonald’s was being forced to “fast-track the mainstreaming” of vegetarian products test-marketed in New York,
Amsterdam, and India.

Pan-Asia

The role of faith in bringing on the animal massacres might have come to fore when 5,000 sheep and cattle belonging to farmer John Fisher were burned over a week’s time at Arthuret Knowes. On March 16, Matthew Engel of The Guardian watched the pyre from a sign commemorating the Battle of Aedderyd in 573. “On this spot,” Engel wrote, “the pagans of Strathclyde were slaughtered by the Christians of Cumbria. Though the pagan king Gwenddolau had Merlin [of Arthurian legend] to encourage him, 80,000 humans were killed.” Their remains too were burned.

But religions and ancient beliefs other than Christianity and nature-worship were most involved in spreading hoof-and-mouth. The pan-Asia hoof-and-mouth strain responsible for the current global epidemic already afflicted hooved animals in at least 25 nations before it hit Britain. Following the same trade routes that the world’s major religions did long ago, the pan-Asia strain may have come south at some point from Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia, but was first identified in northern India in 1990, according to epidemiologist Nick J. Knowles, of the Institute for Animal Health at Pirbright Laboratory in England.

In succession the pan-Asia strain infected the Hindu world, the Buddhist world, and now the Judeo-Christian/Islamic world. “From India the pan-Asia strain spread east and west: to Nepal in 1993-1994, Bhutan in 1998, and Tibet and Hainan province, China, by 1999,” reported London Times health editor Nigel Hawkes on the morning after the Feast of Atone-ment. “It reached Kinmen Island, between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Before anyone realized it was there,” Hawkes continued, “cattle had been moved to Taiwan, carrying the infection with them. The strain has also
hit Mongolia, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thai-land, Malaysia, Laos, the Philip-pines, Korea,” which had been free of
hoof-and-mouth since 1934, “and Japan,” free of hoof-and-mouth since 1908.

Seventeen outbreaks afflicted 2,152 pigs in Hong Kong, killing 464, during the last four months of 2000, acknowledged
Leslie Sims, assistant director of the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department. Waste from an Asian freighter, fed to pigs on a farm near Durban, South Africa, took the pan-Asian strain of hoof-and-mouth on to other African nations. Durban is a major port of call for freighters in the live animal export trade–and an alleged hub of accidental hoof-and-mouth exports. A shipment of 24 giraffes and three rhinos sent from Durban to Spanish exhibition facilities on October 5, 2000, was refused and returned to Durban after 40 days at sea from fear that they might
have hoof-and-mouth. Two of the giraffes died during the journey.

National SPCA of South Africa senior inspector Morgane James warned again of the disease risk inherent in shipping live animals as recently as February 27, after discovering 34 sick animals among a cargo of 1,500 goats and 10,000 sheep who were en route via Durban from Namibia to Saudi Arabia aboard the livestock carrier Holstein Express. About 15 animals had already died, James said; 10 were euthanized aboard the ship, and two dozen were treated.
Namibian environment and tourism minister Tangeni Erkana on March 16 banned live exports of native wildlife, as a conservation measure, but the livestock traffic was not affected.

Mecca

Meanwhile, Hawkes of the London Times explained, based on Knowles’ findings, hoof-and-mouth “spread to Saudi Arabia, probably through the trade in live sheep and goats, and then into Turkey, Greece, and Bulgaria” by 1996. It went on to afflict Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and the kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula–possibly carried by Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca, who might have transported the hardy virus unaware of having ever
encountered it.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif formed a special commission to fight hoof-and-mouth in mid-March 2001, amid new
outbreaks in and around the cities of Jeddah, Yanbu, and Kamis Mush-yat, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Other outbreaks appearing within 10 days of the Feast of Atonement hit Iran and Sri Lanka. By then, the disease could have come from almost any direction.

On February 22, 11 days before the Feast of Atonement, hoof-and-mouth apparently entered the Netherlands with 230 calves brought from Ireland by way of Mayenne, France. In Mayenne they were in proximity to the sheep who suffered the first French outbreak of pan-Asian hoof-and-mouth. The strain then broke out on all three Dutch farms which received some of the infected calves. More than 20,000 animals including 662 farmed deer were killed to try to stop the Dutch outbreak. Year-round, the Netherlands imports about 25% of all the livestock shipped from Britain, then re-exports most of them.

At least some of the animals imported in late February are believed to have been imported for resale to the Halal butchers serving the sizeable Dutch Muslim minority. The Netherlands ruled much of largely Muslim Indonesia for nearly 300 years, and did not surrender its last holding, the island of Irian Jawa, until 1962. Sheep imported from Britain during the same time frame are believed to have taken hoof-and-mouth to Germany, where Islamic immigrants from Turkey form the largest ethnic minority. The exact means by which the pan-Asian strain travels are still unknown. Saudi experts, frustrated by repeated failures of quarantine, think it might be carried by dirty shoes. Pigs were the
suspected major carriers in southeast Asia and Britain, but are rarely kept in the Islamic world because Muslims do not eat pork.

Abraham

Islamic health authorities anticipated that the public animal massacres held on March 5 to mark the annual Feast of Atonement might bring epidemics. Like the feast itself, marking the end of the Islamic equivalent of Lent and the reputed day on which Abraham sacrificed a ram allegedly sent by God instead of his son Isaac, disease outbreaks linked to the killing are an annual event.

A thousand years ago Islamic physicians were the world leaders in medical knowledge and research. They knew even then that epidemics can be spread by pilgrimages, mass movements of stressed animal herds, and the rotting remains of animals left in streets. For centuries, Islamic medical experts have tried with limited success to temper the zeal of the faithful for killing which is not demanded anywhere in the Koran, yet is almost universally believed to be a religious duty.
“My grandfather and grandmother always used to say it was important to let blood flow inside the house at least once a year,” Damascus housewife Ilham Abdi, 41, explained to New York Times correspondent Neil Mac-Farquhar. “It’s a blessing for the family. It keeps away sickness and the evil eye,” Abdi insisted. But if anything associated with the killing protected her household, it was the vigorous post-slaughter clean-up. MacFarquhar also noted fly infestations following the disposal of offal in the streets, and the incidence of self-inflicted accidental knife wounds among men attempting to do their own Halal slaughtering. In 2001, as always in recent years, Islamic health experts struggled to head off disaster.

Responding to apparently false reports of “mad cow disease” appearing in Thailand, Malaysia on February 14 banned the import of Thai cattle. Fighting anthrax outbreaks since January, agriculture officials in West Java, Indonesia, distributed 130,000 free vaccinations to owners of cattle and goats. In Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey, news media urged the faithful to heed governmental pleas to do their slaughtering at officially approved sites, where hygienic conditions could be monitored.

In Britain, Halal Food Authority president Masood Khawaja urged Muslims to “send equivalent money that would be spent on the sacrifice to underprivileged countries.”

Not “sacrifice”

The term “sacrifice” is actually a misnomer. Animal sacrifice is no more a part of Islam than it is of Judaism or
Christianity. The Feast of Atonement is a meal held in conjunction with a religious occasion, like the Seder at Passover and Easter Sunday dinners, but it is not a religious rite in itself. Further, although the killing is customarily done as a
public display of appreciation for good fortune, it is not actually an event that many people choose to watch.

Public officials in Tereng-ganu, Indonesia, this year misunderstood the reason for the killing being done in public, and
tried to promote the Halal-style massacre of 1,000 cattle as a tourist attraction, using the motto “Tour Kuala Terengganu and perform your religious obligation.” They cancelled the event on March 1, after selling just 70 tickets.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban mullah Mohammed Omar, 40, on March 16 ordered a second round of slaughter, reportedly to atone for the slowness with which Taliban troops destroyed two gigantic statues of Buddha carved into cliffs in the Bamiyan Pass during the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D. Taliban spokesperson Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, 24, told
Barbara Crossette of The New York Times that the statues were destroyed as false idols because a delegation from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cul-tural Organization offered funds to protect and maintain the statues, but refused to lift economic sanctions imposed against the Taliban because it has sheltered international terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban had asked for food aid, amid winter famine. The 100 cattle who were killed in the Bamiyan atonement exercise were butchered and distributed to hungry Afghanis, but did not go far. Muslims are asked to help the poor as a central feature of the Feast of Atonement. As the poor rarely could afford meat in ancient times, and winter feed stocks often ran thin before spring, herding peoples came to mark the occasion by culling their camels, sheep, goats, or cattle, and giving the remains to the starving.

Long after the ancient practices lost their original meaning, they continue. And, though Masood Khawaja only asked Muslims to do exactly what Mohammed originally wanted–to help the poor, not kill animals per se–a shortage of Halal-slaughtered meat in British stores and a shortage of animals to buy for custom slaughter is suspected of contributing to the illicit traffic in uninspected livestock which is believed to have had a major role in distributing the pan-Asia strain of hoof-and-mouth, as the current epidemic is called, around the world.

Reservoirs

There are three semi-permanent reservoirs of hoof-and-mouth disease, all in areas associated with clandestine cattle
trafficking: South America, eastern Africa, and India. University of Manchester veterinarian and historian Abigail Wood traces the first British outbreak to cattle brought from Argentina in 1839.  British troops may then have taken hoof-and-mouth to Kenya and India.

“Reluctant to undermine a renaissance of Argentine steak on world markets, the Argentine government hid an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth for months,” Washing-on Post correspondent Anthony Faiola disclosed on March 17. Rancher Enrique Klein told Faoila that the outbreak appeared in the Santa Fe region, 170 miles northwest of
Buenos Aires, in early January. Klein said he had 300 cases in his own herd alone. He reported the outbreak promptly, he said, and the National Sanitary and Agricultural Quality Control Service responded with aggressive vaccination, but did not disclose the outbreak to world health monitors.

By March 22, Argentina was fighting as many as 53 hoof-and-mouth outbreaks in four provinces. Relying on vaccination, and knowing that beef export markets had been lost for years to come, Argentine officials said they would not resort to mass slaughter. But if slaughter brokers couldn’t ship Argentine cattle to Europe, they speculated, perhaps they could ship horses. Coinciding with slumping beef sales, European buyers nearly doubled the price paid for Canadian horseflesh between mid-January and mid-March, Claude Bouvry of Bouvry Exports told Vancouver-based
author Nich-olas Read. Reputedly selling mainly foals born to mares used on pregnant mare’s urine production lines, in connection with making the Wyeth-Ayerst estrogen supplement Pre-marin, Bouvry owns three slaughterhouses in Quebec and Alberta.

The high prices apparently inspired one Argentinian broker to batch 700 horses in Buenos Aires and 200 more in Uruguay, obtained on the pretext of needing carriage horses and riding horses in Italy. They were to be shipped aboard the Holstein Express (the same transporter that carried sick animals from Namibia en route to Saudi Arabia but was intercepted by the National SPCA of South Africa), and were to be landed at La Spezzia, near a horse slaughtering plant which is reputedly among the major sources in the world for ponyskin.

Martha Gutierrez of the Buenos Aires-based Asociacion para la Defensa de los Derechos del Animal was at deadline trying to stop the shipment, but found that international animal protection charities including Compassion In World Farming and the World Society for the Protection of Animals were not very helpful. “The export of the horses is legal, as the buyer says they are going for riding and not for slaughter,” WSPA representative John Walsh told Gutierrez. “Therefore, all we can do is prove in Italy that they will actually be slaughtered.”

Masai

The Masai, of Kenya, herd a rugged breed of cattle with strong resistance to hoof-and-mouth –which the Masai call by the same word they use for the common cold, according to Associated Press correspondent Alexandra Zavis. The Masai, whose herds have been diminished by drought over the past year, are “deeply disturbed by the news that hundreds of thousands of livestock have been killed in Britain to stamp out hoof-and-mouth,” Zavis wrote in a March 23
feature.

“Tribal tradition holds that these herders are the true custodians of all the world’s cows,” Zavis continued, “and the notion of a mass slaughter of otherwise healthy animals is not only horrifying in theory; they take it very personally. ‘If the European people were here in Africa, we could have raided them for this,’ Nicholas Tanyai said angrily,” at a cattle sale in Susua, 50 miles northwest of Nairobi. “‘Just bring those animals that you are killing, and we will buy them.'” Masai cattle enter global commerce mainly when rustled by Somalian militias. That brings the cattle–or their meat–into
proximity with smugglers and arms traders, just a short sail from much of the Middle East.

Toll booths

Masai cattle are only a minor part of the livestock traffic associated with the Feast of Atonement. Indian cattle, on the other hand, often laundered through Bangladesh, are probably the largest illegally trafficked portion. “Under the Cattle Preservation Act, it is illegal to transport cattle across state borders for slaughter,” explained Indian minister for social justice and empowerment Maneka Gandhi. in a recent guest essay for The Times of India. “Cow transportation is
permissible only for draft use or for milking. Since Kerala and West Bengal are the only states where cow slaughter is not banned, it is intriguing that 100% of the cattle transported by train from Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan are taken toward West Bengal. Does West Bengal alone have a scarcity of milk cows? Clearly, the movement of cattle toward West Bengal is not for the ostensible purpose of milking, but is rather to feed the smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh,” just across a long open border.

“Statistics clearly indicate that Bangladesh’s leather and beef trade cannot be supported by the nation’s official cattle
population. So where do the cows come from? The railways,” which do most of the long-distance hauling, “are loathe to prohibit transportation of cattle,” Mrs. Gandhi charged. “When the cattle are unloaded at Howrah,” the even poorer
and more chaotic across-the-river twin city to Calcutta, “the dead cows are sold to the leather traders,” Mrs. Gandhi added. “The live ones, if they can walk, are taken to Bangladesh. The West Bengal government refuses to recognize this smuggling. The Bangladesh government taxes it. There are toll booths where every cow smuggler has to pay.”

Railway Traffic board member Shanti Narain professed shock at Mrs. Gandhi’s interference with the timely and profitable running of the trains. “This is giving a bad name to the entire government,” Narain said.

“The world-famous Hari-har Kshetra cattle fair at Sonepur has turned into a mammoth market for smugglers along the Indo-Bangladesh border,” Times of India correspondent Rajesh K. Thakur charged on November 15, 2000. Thakur claimed that of 667 buffaloes sold during the first five days of the fair, 300 “have allegedly been smuggled to 14 different slaughterhouses situated along the border,” among 65 slaughterhouses in the region.

As Thakur’s accusations reverberated, representatives of the Visakha SPCA and the Department of Animal Husbandry and Transport on December 4 seized 122 cattle from six trucks which were allegedly taking them from Srikakulam village, north of Viskhapatnam, to Kerala for slaughter, by way of Hyderabad. Although Kerala is diametrically opposite West Bengal, on the far side of India, the meat from the cattle would probably also have been exported to the
Middle East– in this case, over the Arabian Sea.

The case was significant to documenting the spread of hoof-and-mouth because the seized animals had it. They had either become infected at Srikakulam or aboard the smuggling vehicles. Either way, the vehicles were held just long enough for the drivers to be fined the equivalent of $2.17 apiece. More cattle could have been loaded–and inflected–within hours. And if the smugglers didn’t care to take the same route twice, instead of heading south to Kerala they could as easily put the cattle aboard a northbound train to Howrah. The journeys would be of about equal distance.

Members of People for Animals, founded by Mrs. Gandhi in 1984, intercepted three trains en route to Howrah with cattle during the last 10 days of 2000–two at Ghaziabad and one at Agra. The Agra train was finally stopped after pulling away from five previous stations when a growing mob, chasing the train from station to station, surged across the track at Yamuna bridge station and, led by Agra SPCA founder Krishana Balla, sat on the rails to keep the engineer from leaving. Agra police arrested 128 members of the train crew.

Together, the raids apprehended nearly 3,000 cattle, wrote Manjari Mishra of the Times of India. They routinely found as many as 40 cows and calves packed into cars meant to carry no more than 12. Both Agra and Ghaziabad are much closer to Haryana and Punjab, the region where the pan-Asian strain of hoof-and-mouth was first detected a decade ago, than they are to Howrah. Moreover, hoof-and-mouth is still there, occurring “almost every year,” Punjab Agriculture University pro-vice chancellor K.S. Aulakh told the Press Trust of India.

Trying to contain the most recent outbreak, nine mobile veterinary teams on March 23 began vaccinating cattle in parts of Rajasthan state adjoining Haryana.

Pointing fingers

“Illegal sales of livestock are a worldwide problem,” commented Colorado State University microbiologist Charles H.
Calisher on ProMED, the online bulletin board of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. “Hypocritical functionaries who look the other way when cattle are slaughtered [illegally] or are moved from their country to another country by train, in broad daylight, are known to operate with impunity in the name of national sovereignty. So, disgusting traditions continue without hope for abatement, and maintenance of ‘markets’ are the sine qua non of the industry and of politics.”

The pan-Asia strain is now spreading as rapidly through the Christian world as it did through the Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic worlds, with greater velocity but often through the same combination of bureaucratic ineptitude, criminality, and finger-pointing in the wrong direction as facilitates the illegal cattle traffic in India. Hoof-and-mouth was officially recognized in Ireland, for example, on March 21, a full month after Irish calves inflected France and the Netherlands.
Irish authorities blamed cattle smugglers, practitioners of an ancient pastime which reputedly supports some units of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

About 40,000 animals were to be killed on the Cooley Peninsula, in an effort to keep the illness from spreading, but
scarcely anyone seemed optimistic that the killing would succeed. The Dublin stock exchange dropped 5% within one day of the first confirmation that hoof-and-mouth had hit.

French prime minister Lionel Jospin meanwhile blamed an alleged sheep smuggler–by name– in commenting on the discovery of hoof-and-mouth in the Mayenne region of northeastern France. Jospin was then embarrassed when Mayenne prosecutor Philippe Warin told media that there were no grounds for accusing the man, a longtime successful importer of sheep from Britain.

IRS probes alleged self-dealing by Humane Society of U.S. lawyers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:
WASHINGTON D.C.– Humane Society of the U.S. general counsel and vice president Roger A. Kindler, 51, and HSUS senior counsel Murdaugh Stuart Madden, 79, did not respond before the April 2001 ANIMAL PEOPLE deadline to a March 21 invitation to comment on a formal allegation by former HSUS employee Nancy E. Dayton, of Lodi, New York, that Kindler and Madden “engage in undocumented and unaccounted excess benefit transactions, and have done so since at least 1993.”

The IRS advised Dayton on March 16, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE, that her complaint has been assigned to an investigator. Identifying herself as “former Legal-Executive Secretary/ Office Manager, Office of the General Counsel, HSUS,” Dayton complained to the IRS on January 28, 2001. “On August 22, 2000,” Dayton wrote in her complaint, “I met with Paul G. Irwin, President/ CEO of HSUS. I told Mr. Irwin my concerns. I further informed Mr. Irwin of my concern that HSUS had filed false reports to the IRS in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999, when it attested that the Society did not engage in Section 4958 excess benefit transactions, and claimed that no taxes were owed.

“On September 11, 2000,” Dayton continued, “Paul Irwin summoned me to his office, proclaimed no excess benefit wrong-doing, and fired me. I was given a severance agreement that belied Irwin’s proclamation of no wrong-doing.” Dayton told ANIMAL PEOPLE that she refused to sign the severance agreement.

“One attorney reviewed the severance agreement and offered me a contingency retainer for settlement negotiations based on wrongful discharge,” Dayton said. “After several months of legal fooldarah, I ended settlement negotiations in favor of exercising my freedom of speech and ensuring that this information reaches the IRS and donors. They have a right to know; I have an obligation to inform.”

Stated Dayton in her complaint to the IRS, “I have witnessed Roger Kindler’s use of the following HSUS resources for private profit and personal gain: office space and meeting room with a prestigious business address; support staff time and services including receptionist, secretarial, accounting, runner/messenger, legal publications filing; computers, printers, copier, facsimile machine; computer software programs; office supplies; storage facilities; mailroom staff time and services; internet access. Murdaugh Madden enjoys the same benefits.” Doing business as the firm of “Murdaugh Stuart Madden and Roger A. Kindler,” Madden and Kindler advertise at the Martindale-Hubbell electronic legal reference site, <www.lawyers.com>, that they handle “tax-exempt law, trusts, estates, wills, wealth preservation, immigration law, [and] international law.”

The law firm address at 2100 L St. NW in Washington D.C. and the listed telephone and fax number are the same as for the HSUS executive offices. But HSUS is not mentioned on the Madden-Kindler front page, and indeed appears to be mentioned at the site only once each in Madden and Kindler’s professional resumes. Madden is identified, among many other credentials, as HSUS general counsel 1958-1990, and senior counsel subsequently. Kindler is identified as HSUS associate general counsel, 1981-1990, and general counsel subsequently.

The most recent HSUS filing of IRS Form 990, dated June 28, 2000, indicates that HSUS received real estate rental income of $607,231 during the preceding fiscal year, but does not name the tenant(s).

ANIMAL PEOPLE ask-ed Kindler and Madden via fax to, “Please explain why your for-profit business is using facilities and access portals provided by your nonprofit employer”; explain why their for-profit business is not more clearly differentiated from HSUS; and explain whether their law firm pays rent for the use of HSUS facilities. Dayton avered to the IRS that use of the HSUS premises, personnel, and equipment by the for-profit law firm is extensive and financially significant.
“Roger Kindler assigned work on the following projects unrelated to the Humane Society of the United States’ charitable mission,” Dayton wrote to the IRS, “and on behalf of individuals with no relationship to the HSUS charitable mission: immigration cases and filings; estate probate proceedings; wills, estate planning documents, powers of attorney, death declarations, etc., and rewrites of same; witnessing and signing individuals’ legal documents; accounting clients’ expenses, typing and sending clients’ bills; typing personal income tax forms and business
profit/loss statements for him and his wife; typing tax, estate, and insurance documents and forms for his aunt, mother, and friends; picking up forms from Immigration and Naturalization Service offices; post office errands; ordering publications, typing moonlighting insurance forms; fighting parking tickets; lodging complaints on taxi cab and bus companies; personal correspondence; and the issue that ultimately drove me to research charitable regulations and to report my concerns: eliciting Federal Trade Commission [Division of Enforcement] intervention to get his friend out of paying her Columbia House Music Club debt of $87 and then getting her debt removed from collection agency action.”

ANIMAL PEOPLE asked Kindler and Madden to provide their own version, if they wished, of why Dayton was discharged. They did not. ANIMAL PEOPLE also asked Kindler and Madden how they would compare the allegations raised by Dayton with the use of HSUS funds and resources in connection with private property transactions in
1986-1988, in which HSUS bought the former home of HSUS President Emeritus John L. Hoyt, but allowed him to live there rent-free for some time afterward, and provided financing to enable Irwin to purchase beachfront property in Maine.

In addition, ANIMAL PEOPLE asked, “Is the substance of these allegations not also closely parallel to the criminal and civil allegations of misuse of HSUS office, property, expense accounts, staff time, and other resources formally brought against former HSUS vice president of investigations David Wills in October 1995, following Wills’ discharge upon your own advice as general counsel and senior counsel of HSUS?”

Charged with sexual harrassment and embezzling at least $93,000 from HSUS, mostly through allegedly falsified expense accounts, Wills on June 16, 1999 pleaded guilty to one count of embezzling $18,900 from HSUS between 1990 and 1995; agreed to pay HSUS restitution of $67,800; and accepted a sentence to serve six months in a halfway house. Kindler received salary and benefits from HSUS totalling $136,049 in the most recent fiscal year. Madden has not been listed on an HSUS filing of Form 990 in several years, but in 1995 received salary and benefits of $116,116.

Chumming

Longtime HSUS donor Dita White, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Valentine’s Day asked HSUS vice president for wildlife John Grandy to explain why HSUS has aligned itself with a group of spearfishers and other consumptive users of wildlife calling themselves the Marine Safety Group.

According to White, the Marine Safety Group wants to ban feeding sharks in the vicinity of shark observation cages, not for safety reasons but because in her view, “They are worried that some feeding sites could be turned into marine sanctuaries.” The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission twice rejected the Marine Safety Group’s position, White said, since there have been no fatalities involving shark observation cages in 30 years of use, and since shark experts are generally agreed that feeding the sharks to lure them into observation range does not impair the sharks’ ability to forage.

The Marine Safety Group then turned to Grandy and HSUS marine biologist Naomi Rose. Rose and HSUS director of media relations Howard White wrote a joint letter endorsing the Marine Safety Group position on February 7. Calling to demand explanations, Dita White learned, she said, that neither Rose nor Howard White had any prior awareness of
their allies’ backgrounds.

Among other recent examples of eyebrow-raising HSUS alliances and weak research:

* The June 2000 edition of the HSUS e-mail newsletter Humane Lines denounced the use of shock collars in an experimental attempt to condition wolves to avoid livestock–but HSUS actually endorses the PetSafe “Radio Fence” shock collar-for a royalty, dog trainer Pat Miller recently revealed in The Whole Dog Journal.

* Less than a month after an HSUS subsidiary calling itself the Humane Society of Hong Kong hit Hong Kong animal lovers with a direct mail fundraising package about how dogs are tortured and killed for meat in some parts of China, as described in the March 2001 ANIMAL PEOPLE Watch-dog section, HSUS spokesperson Rachel Querry reportedly told Brad Honywill and Michael Clement of the Toronto Sun that she had never heard of the common practice among
dog-eaters of inflicting as much pain and stress on the doomed dogs as possible in their final hours, to saturate their flesh with adrenalin.

* Located only blocks from the Mexican Embassy and Library of Congress, the Humane Society International subsidiary of HSUS on March 23 resorted to asking on the <hsi-animalia> electronic bulletin board, “Does anyone know if Mexico has laws against dogfighting, and if so, what the laws entail and how they are enforced?”

More HSUS

HSUS on February 20 announced the Seattle opening of a new Pacific Northwest regional office, headed by Lisa Wathne, HSUS legislative field representative for Washington state. A King County (Seattle area) animal control officer for four-plus years, Wathne later worked for seven years in the animal advocacy department of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, located in Lynnwood, Washington.

LETTERS [April 2001]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

Letters

Pit bulls

I’m a supporter of Animal People and have just read the article on the Presa Canario pit bull attacks. Such pit bull crosses are becoming a major problem:
* The number of attacks on people is increasing rapidly.
* Shelters are forced to take in more pit bulls than any other breed, taking up valuable space that could be given to gentle breeds.
* Attacks by pit bulls are causing cities to adopt bylaws restricting free run of all dogs, thus creating a hardship for owners of well-behaved dogs.
Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany have already banned the breed and I feel that we need a similar ban in this country– starting here in California!
Thank you for the wonderful work you do in bringing awareness to the public on all fronts of animal issues!

–Karin Hiller
Mill Valley, California
<karinhiller@webtv.net>

The Editor replies:

Among the unique risk factors associated with pit bulls are that most of those who kill or maim are highly reactive, not ill-tempered, and are so powerful that their first-ever bite can be lethal. Thus standard behavioral screening often fails to detect those who may become dangerous. However, within the U.S., attempts to ban pit bulls have had little history of legal success, and not much history of seeming to prevent deadly attacks.

 

Bighorns

Thank you for the very important and interesting information about the care of animals. We receive ANIMAL PEOPLE at the Biosphere Reserve El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar in Sonora state, México. Sometimes we post specific articles on our Visitors Center bulletin board. My personal interest is wildlife, but cats, rodents and birds I love too. I am hoping ANIMAL PEOPLE readers can help us to protect our endangered bighorn sheep (Borrego Cimarrón). Some “important” people, possibly including government officials, want to begin hunting the sheep. The law says hunting the
bighorn sheep “is possible,” but the reality is different, and the bighorn sheep population is very low.
Maybe your help can stop this non-sustainable idea.

–José A. Dávila Paulín
Subdirector
El Pinacate Biosphere Reserve
<pepepaulin@hotmail.com>
Speedy vegan

I am an American pro-elite inline speed skater, a sport poised to make its Olympic debut in 2004 in Athens, Greece, and have raced throughout North America and also in Europe. I will be racing in Europe for the Swiss Salomon team this year from May through August. I will then race the U.S. marathon season, September/November.

As a long-time vegan and conservationist, it is my mission to prove that one can not only survive but thrive on a plant-based diet. However, I believe that this message is best conveyed by example. I have won first place overall in the 2000 Colorado Mountain Marathon Hillclimb, first place finishes in the 1998 and 1999 Colorado In-line Marathons, and first overall in the 1998 Evan’s Front Range Salsa Classic 10-K.

I am committed to representing companies whose devotion to sustainable agriculture, providing non-genetically modified source food products, and general social consciousness is consistent with my own. One of my sponsors,
Clif Bar, makes sports nutrition bars that are vegan and GMO-free. Another, Sine Qua Non, makes an organic sprouted meal complex for use as a highly nutritious supplement.

I am seeking further sponsorship. As roller speed skating is not yet a big enough money sport to afford me a living, I welcome any assistance, financial or product, that might be available.

–Antonio Marxuach
2707 Valmont Street #101-B
Boulder, CO 80304
Phone: 303-448-9215
<antoine2ixtlan@qwest.net>
Indonesia

The Indonesian Vegan Society is badly in need of vegan magazines and other educational materials. We gladly receive used books and magazines. These items are distributed to schools and libraries in Indonesia, and are used
at public events.

Due to strict taxation and import duties in Indonesia, please put this important information on the label of any packet sent: THIS IS A CHARITABLE GIFT TO INDONESIAN NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS AND SCHOOLS. PLEASE DO NOT IMPOSE ANY TAXES.

Please also put this, in Indonesian: HADIAH, MOHON UNTUK TIDAK DIKENAKAN PAJAK.

–Vandayani Dewi Soewondo
(KTP #110577/10350)
Gg. Delima V/21
Tanjung Duren Selatan
Jakarta Barat 11470
<goveganind@yahoo.com>
<http://www.i-v-s.org/>

 

HSI promised $$

Your March article “HSUS/HSI sets up ‘Chinese laundry’ in Hong Kong’ stated that “Jill Robinson of the Animals Asia Foundation told [Kevin] Sinclair [of the South China Morning Post] that their projects in Hong Kong and southern China were mentioned in Australian mailings by the same organization as if it had something to do with them, when it does not.”

In fact, the connection with Animals Asia Foundation is that someone in Hong Kong gave Sinclair an HSI Australia fundraising mailing which went into great detail about the rescue of farmed bears in western China, with no mention
of the people working on the rescue itself: AAF. They have since pledged about $6,500 U.S.

I am writing from Cheng-du, where we cut ex-bile farm bear #52 out of her cage this week. Our elation turned to deep shock when we found that she had actually been welded inside by someone who never anticipated her freedom. She’ll soon be on grass with the rest.

–Jill Robinson
Animals Asia Foundation
P.O. Box 82, Sai Kung Post Office
Kowloon, Hong Kong
Phone: 852-2225
Fax 852-2791-2320
<info@animals-asia.org>
<www.animalsasia.org>
Saved dik-dik

Our latest week-long desnaring operation in Tsavo National Park yielded 142 illegal snares and a live dik-dik, whom we freed, bringing the number of snares we have removed to 2,540, and to three the number of live animals we have
rescued. This project was sponsored by IFAW East Africa.

–Josphat Nyongo
Youth for Conservation
P.O. Box 27689
Nairobi, Kenya
<y4c@alphanet.co.ke>
Manilla

The phone and fax numbers you were given as contact information for the Asia for Animals symposium, to be held May 14-17 in Manila, were obsolete. My correct contact details are:

Phone: 61-29288-4944
Fax: 61-29288-4901
E-Mail: <swilson@ifaw.org>
<www.news.china.com>

The idea of the symposium came from a China Bear team meeting at IFAW some years ago. I have always been in great admiration of people working on animal welfare issues in Asia. They work in such difficult conditions and are often shunned by everyone around them. I feel sure this symposium will be a great opportunity for these wonderful people to share information. I hope it will give them a great morale boost too. I work closely with the Philippine Animal Welfare Society, so that is why the symposium will be held there.

We are trying very hard to get as many paying attendees from Western countries as possible. The more paid registrations we receive, the more Asian groups we can sponsor to attend. All profits will go towards sponsorship,
and we also have some money set aside in the budget to sponsor groups. I am sure you are pleased that big groups’ money is being put to good use in this case!

–Sally Wilson
IFAW Australia
Compassionate Animal Control International

G’day. I mentioned Com-passionate Animal Control Inter-national in a letter published in your January/February 2001 edition, and would like to tell you more about how CACI was formed and what we hope to achieve.

In 1998, I took a leave of absence from the Western Australia Rangers Association to travel with my wife Maureen to expand and develop our appreciation and experience regarding animal control.

After a brief visit to Singapore we arrived in the United Kingdom, where National Dog Wardens Association president Sue Bell put us in contact with other people who could assist us. Through National Canine Defence League chief executive Clarissa Baldwin, I became aware of the animal control problems afflicting Eastern Europe.

What could we do to help? The answer was simply nothing, as individuals. But what could a group of international friends do? Prob-ably quite a lot! A global association of animal control agencies seemed to be a possible solution. I raised the idea first in a presentation to the NDWA Inter-national Conference at Hartpury College in Gloucester that Sept-ember. There I met Pam Burney, animal control director for North Richland, Texas, and Karen Medi-cus,
executive director of the Austin SPCA. They asked me to go to Indianapolis in 1999 to do a presentation to the National Animal Control Association.

NACA responded favorably. Our first organizational meeting was held in Indianapolis at the June 2000 NACA conference.It was agreed that a web site would be the best way to share information with animal care and control officers arond the world.  Betsy Saul of <www.Pet-finder.com> immediately offered a site address and online support.
We began to discuss a name for this new organisation, with many suggestions crossing the table. After a lengthy discussion, Nigel Cardwell of NDWA came up with Compassionate Animal Control International. Perfect!

The founding member organizations include NDWA, NACA, and the Western Australia Rangers Association. As we progress and improve, we hope to provide as much information as possible to people involved in animal care and control around the world.

We recognise the rights of animals to a decent life, to live in peace, and to be protected from cruelty and neglect.

–Steve Elvidge
Vice President
Western Australia
Rangers Assn.
P.O. Box 334
North Beach 6920
Western Australia
Phone: 08-9448-7565
Fax: 08-9203-7565
<stevee@warangers.asn.au>
<www.petfinder.org/~wara>

Correction

The January/February 2001 ANIMAL PEOPLE article “Kenya update: anti-poaching gains and a shocking dispute” misidentified Care For The Wild founder Bill Jordan as a director of the Captive Animals Protection Society; Jordan had
resigned from that post in May 2000. In the same article CAPS executive director Diane Westwood was misidentified as speaking for the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust; she in fact spoke for CAPS.

NWF, hunting, tax breaks, and foot fetish

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

The National Wildlife Federation is the largest of 51 Virginia-based nonprofit organizations to gain a permanent reduction in local taxes under special legislation passed by the Virginia senate on February 15 and by the general assembly on March 2. The exemption, previously approved by Fairfield County, applies to a $17.4 million new NWF headquarters opened in Reston on February 13. Built on seven acres of former woodlot, the new headquarters “is as environmentally friendly a building as you can develop within a reasonable budget,” says NWF president Mark Van Putten, but Washington Post staff writer Peter Whoriskey opined on March 21 that it “looks a lot like sprawl.” NWF, a national umbrella for 49 state hunting clubs, has an annual budget and assets each totaling just over $100 million. The assets include $88 million in cash and securities.

NWF in January stepped into a less lucrative but kinkier partnership with the California art studio Willitts Designs–a
promotion called “Just The Right Shoe,” offering 111 styles of miniature porcelain women’s shoes, all for the right foot only.

After pardoning convicted poacher Alfred Whitney Brown III, 46, to enable Brown to resume professionally teaching hunting skills, as ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in January/February 2001, former U.S. President Bill Clinton also pardoned Howard Winfield Riddle, who served 10 months in jail and was fined $30,000 after he was changed in 1988 with masterminding a conspiracy to smuggle the hides of endangered pangolin anteaters from Thailand to Texas. The pangolins’ hides were to be used in costly custom-made cowboy boots.

How sonar kills whales: new theory

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2001:

Washington,  D.C.;  FRIDAY HARBOR,  Washington–Five years of rising controversy over U.S. Navy deployment of low-frequency active sonar moved toward head-on collision when Center for Whale Research founder Ken Balcomb on February 23 published details of his contention that LFA kills whales with harmonic resonance that destroys their inner ears,  while on March 19 the National Marine Fisheries Service served notice in the Federal Register  that it is almost ready to give the Navy a five-year Incidental Take permit which would allow full deployment to proceed.

The Federal Register notice opened a 45-day public comment period,  to close on May 3,  on a proposed rule to govern “Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Navy Operations of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active Sonar,”  called SURTASS-LFA for short.

The Federal Register notice explained that the U.S. Navy wants “a small take exemption under section 101(a)(5)(A) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,  for the taking of marine mammals incidental to operation of the SURTASS-LFA sonar for a period of time not to exceed five years…There would be a maximum of four SURTASS-LFA sonar systems with a nominal maximum of two systems at sea at any one time.

“The purpose of SURTASS-LFA sonar is to provide the Navy with a reliable and dependable system for long-range detection of quieter, harder-to-find submarines,”  the often highly technical notice continued.  “Low-frequency sound travels in seawater more effectively and for greater distances,”  than the high-frequency sound used by most other sonar.

“The SURTASS-LFA sonar system would meet the Navy’s need for improved detection and tracking of new-generation submarines at a longer range,”  NMFS said.  The idea behind it would be to detect and intercept enemy submarines before they could get close enough to the U.S. to launch nuclear weapons.

“Because of the offshore nature of SURTASS-LFA sonar operations,”  NMFS said,  “the Navy does not believe that there is a potential for SURTASS-LFA sonar to result in marine mammal stranding incidents.”

But NMFS said that “the Navy plans to coordinate with worldwide marine mammal stranding networks and report any correlations between SURTASS-LFA and strandings.”

 

Brainstorms

 

Strandings,  indicated Balcomb,  are relevant to how SURTASS-LFA harms whales only as a source of physical evidence confirming killings which he believes may occur wherever the sonar system is used.  Most of the remains of whales killed by SURTASS-LFA, Balcomb believes,  will not drift ashore.

Details of the SURTASS-LFA system have leaked out to the marine mammal protection community in bits and pieces for more than 10 years.  The scraps of information began to rouse opposition in mid-1996.

“Between August 1988 and July 1994,  the U.S. Navy conducted 22 LFA field exercises,”  Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Joel Reynolds disclosed via MARMAM,  an electronic bulletin for marine mamologists,  in September 1996.  “The Navy states that they were conducted ‘without known adverse impact on marine mammals.’ Other exercises have been conducted since then,”  Reynolds continued, citing times and places.  The Navy has concluded that no ‘takes’ by harassment or otherwise would occur from operation of LFA.  Therefore no permits have been obtained either under the Marine Mammal Protection Act or the Endangered Species Act.  Any comments?”

As previously unexplained observations of apparent relevance to the various LFA tests surfaced from all over the world, opposition to SURTASS-LFA developed.  Freedom of Information Act requests have confirmed that by mid-1997 government agencies were already receiving warnings from their senior scientists that SURTASS-LFA might be a disaster-in-the-making for whales, though no one could quite explain why the whales were harmed.

Responding to the accumulating evidence,  NMFS began requiring the Navy to seek incidental take permits for further tests.

Lawsuits and public protest greeted the Navy when tests were held off Hawaii in early 1998,  and have dogged SURTASS-LFA ever since–especially after NMFS-commissioned whale acoustics expert Darlene Ketten reported in June 2000 that Navy anti-submarine sonar tests off the northern Bahamas on March 15,  2000 may have caused 16 whales of four different species to beach themselves on the islands of Abaco,  Grand Bahamas,  and North Eleuthera during the next 48 hours.

Seven of the whales died,  including four Cuvier beaked whales and a Blainville’s dense beaked whale,  all of whom are considered extremely rare.

“I’m not ready to say the Navy did it,”  Ketten said,  but added that “The coincidence of the timing and the pattern of the stranding with the presence of Navy sonars raises a red flag.”

After the strandings,  the Navy suspended sonar tests which had been scheduled for May 2000 off the New Jersey coast.

Most of the remains of whales allegedly killed by the Bahamian testing decomposed too soon to provide definitive answers, but the Center for Whale Research, begun at Friday Harbor, Washington,  in 1976,  now has a Bahamian headquarters as well,  and founder Ken Balcomb was present when several stranded beaked whales came up nearby.  Balcomb saw fresh blood in their eyes,  inner ears, lungs,  and brain tissue.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson amplified attention to the strandings from aboard the Ocean Warrior, which was already in the vicinity en route to campaign against whaling in the Faroe Islands of the North Atlantic.

 

Bodies of evidence

 

Balcomb had already stated opposition to SURTASS-LFA in comments sent to NMFS during November 1999.  He took almost a year to study the Bahamian strandings before formally commenting again.  His February 23 statement came as an open letter to SURTASS-LFA environmental impact surveillance program manager Joseph S. Johnson, amplified via posting to MARMAM.

The Bahamian strandings,  Balcolm said,  “unequivocally demonstrated the lethality of high-powered sonars,  and provided the opportunity to understand how sonar has been inadvertently killing whales in vast expanses of ocean around the world,”  as had been suspected without anyone being able to verifiably explain the cause-and-effect links.

“The killing is largely due to resonance phenomena in the whales’ cranial airspaces that are tearing apart delicate tissues around the brains and ears,”  Balcolm argued.  “This is an entirely separate issue from [the alleged] auditory thresholds and traumas that the Navy has fixated upon.  In my earlier comments,”  Balcolm said,  “I questioned whether there might be a problem with injurious resonance,  but now I have seen the problem and can attest to the fact that there is massive injury to whales caused by sonar.”

In other words,  Balcolm contends now that the sound volume generated by SURTASS-LSA is not the problem,  contrary to most previous discussion,  which has always been confounded by awareness that many other oceanic activities–both natural and human-created–put out more loud sound.

Instead,  according to Balcolm,  the threat to whales results from the regular,  repetitive emission of sounds at a particular frequency and volume which rarely occurs in nature,  and to which whales seem to be extremely sensitive–perhaps in part because some species use modulated low-frequency sound for communication.

The problem might be compared to what happens when an opera singer uses her voice to shatter a crystal glass,  although it occurs in the opposite sound range.

“Resonance,”  Balcolm explained, “can contribute to shear forces that can be quite damaging–wings tear off airplanes,”  as occurred to several experimental aircraft in the early days of jet-powered flight,  “bridges gallop,”  like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge which fell in 1938,   “and buildings collapse,”  as in some long-tremoring but otherwise mild earthquakes,  “due to unanticipated resonance phenomena which can afterward be explained by simple physics and mechanics.

“The scientific and medical literature contains numerous examples,”  Balcolm continued,  “of hemorrhagic injuries and death occurring in humans when they are inadvertently exposed to loud sound,  particularly at their lung airspace resonance frequency. Undoubtedly such damage could also be demonstrated as occurring to whales,  if they could be tested and did not sink to the bottom of the ocean when they die.

In the whales stranded after SURTASS-LFA testing in the Bahamas,  however,  “It is the volume of air in the individual pterygoid sacs and the laryngeal airspace,  not the lungs,  for which resonance should be calculated,”  Balcolm said.

 

Football

 

“Below about 100 meters,”  Balcolm explained,  “virtually all of the air that was in the whales’ lungs at the surface is forced into laryngeal and cranial airspaces.  It has a total volume less than that of a football.  The two largest of the remaining airspaces are bilaterally adjacent to the earbones and the base of the brain. Their diminishing volume at depth is compensated for by retia mirabilia,  a vascular network extending to the middle ear.

“Envision the football-sized airspace further squeezed to the size of a ping-pong ball,”  Balcolm offered,  “with 1,500 pounds per square inch of air pressure [50 times the pressure that keeps a car tire rolling],  now tucked between the ear bulla and the skull on each side of the head,  thinly separated from a bag of blood next to it on the soft side.

“The frequencies of LFA,  and other powerful mid-frequency sonars,  match the cranial airspace resonance frequencies in these whales at the depths where they normally forage,”  Balcolm asserted.

“Now envision rapidly compressing and decompressing the ping-pong ball many times per second,  until ultimately the amplitude is exaggerated by resonance. The result is both astonishing and bloody.  Many whales died due to this sonar resonance,”  both in the Bahamas and in earlier LFA testing off Greece,  Balcolm said. “Unfortunately,   the Greek incident passed into relative obscurity,” because investigators “missed the crucial point of matching resonance in critical airspaces,  and because suitable specimens were not collected for discovering the problem.”

Balcolm necropsied four of the whales who came ashore in the Bahamas.

“All of them evidenced hemorrhage in the acoustic regions of the cranium and mandible and in tissues adjacent to airspaces around the earbones,”  Balcolm reported.

“One fresh specimen evidenced a brain hemorrhage with a direct path to the ear hemorrhage.  This same specimen [also] evidenced lung hemorrhage and laryngeal hemorrhage upon dissection. These hemorrhages are of the type reported in laboratory animals exposed to LFA at lung resonance frequency,  and they strongly corroborate the theoretical explanation of such injuries in these whales.

“I have been told,”  Balcolm added,  “that the Bahamian situation may have been complicated by oceanographic conditions and other factors that could have resulted in a surface sound duct in which most of the acoustic energy was trapped;  but I also documented that the whales stranded over an area 200 kilometers across!

“The Navy cannot reasonably mitigate the problem using visual,  active acoustic,  or passive acoustic monitoring,”  Balcolm concluded,  “nor can the Navy redesign the whales.  At best,  it can only reconsider and perhaps redesign the SURTASS-LFA system.”

Receiving Balcolm’s comments,  SURTASS-LFA environmental impact study chief Joseph A. Johnson told Bremerton Sun reporter Christopher Dunagan that he did not see how resonance could be the problem that Balcolm says it is.

Claimed Johnson,  “The frequency changes and sound levels used in LFA are not great enough to cause injury in whales,  although they may cause behavioral changes,”  and opined that LFA cannot be harming whales because blue whales and humpbacks emit sounds at similar volume and frequency.

“The Navy can throw up all kinds of theoretical reasons why it didn’t happen,”  responded Balcolm,  who was a Navy pilot for eight years before beginning his whale studies in 1976.  “But it happened.  There has to be something wrong with the theory.  I’m trying to get them to look.”

Editorial: Cheap pieces put fur back on the streets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2001:

If you thought you saw more people wearing fur this past winter,  you probably did.  There were more fur coats on the street–and more fur used for trim,  ruffs,  liners,  and hoods.

Paradoxically,  U.S. retail fur sales were apparently flat, by dollar volume.  Much of the fur seen was actually purchased during the winter of 1999-2000,  when sales hit their highest level since crashing in 1988-1989.

Other furs may have come out of closets,  long after purchase–and some fur on the street was passed out to the indigent by PETA,  as part of an ongoing publicity gimmick with high backfire potential,  using garments donated by people who have given up fur.

But who spent the money,  when,  is beside the point.  The point is that no one should take pride in wearing garments produced by crushing animals’ legs in traps,  slowly choking them in snares, or confining them within cramped,  dark,  stinking cages throughout their lives,  prior to gassing,  poisoning,  or electrocution.

Thus the reappearance of fur deserves concern,  especially with former radio fur tout Lynne Cheney now in frequent public view as wife of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Furriers are trying hard to bring fur garments back to social acceptability,  one scrap at a time.  Mass media for which furriers are prominent advertisers are boosting the effort.  Between the editorial copy and the ads,  for instance,  the New York Times supplement Fashions Of The Times displayed twice as much fur in fall 2000 as in fall 1998.  Fur ads also returned to prominence in New York Times daily editions,  after nearly fading from view.

The fur trade has begun to collect dividends,  as well,  from a decade of using direct subsidies to encourage young designers to return fur to fashion show runways.  Most of the fur garments appearing recently are apparently not meant to appeal to typical customers–but outlandishly dyed furs and novel uses of fur have been taken up by some rockers and rappers who affect fur as part of a “rebel” demeanor.

It is a measure of the success of the antifur movement that wearing fur today can pass for an anti-Establishment gesture–but as the rise of Lynne Cheney attests,  history has not yet retired the Old Money fur fiend Cruella DeVil to the wax museums,  alongside the blood-sucking Count Dracula.  Cruella still appears wherever people wishing to cultivate a ruthlessly privileged image gather,  and ghoulish men still trade furs for bites of her neck.

Despite all the fur on the streets,  new and old,  the fur trade is not actually doing well in economic terms.  Yet anti-fur campaigns are not doing well either,  as ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed out in April 2000,  or there would no longer be any fur on the street,  and the U.S. fur industry would not still be capable of making even the appearance of recovery.

The U.S. retail fur trade must induce new growth soon,  or go down for the count.

Like horse racing,  dog racing,  and purchasing circus tickets,  fur-wearing is a vice which by and large has not attracted the generation of Americans now in the 35-to-55 age range.  Thus far, fur has not appealed to most of the next generation,  either.

Losing appeal to the young did not matter to the fur industry during the 1970s and 1980s.  Most of the Baby Boom generation were then still well short of their peak earning years,  when fur-wearers typically buy their first fur garment.

As the Boomers entered economic independence,  meanwhile, their parents–the World War II generation–found themselves more affluent in their later earning years than any generation before them.  Raised in the deprivation and misery of the “Dirty Thirties,” they bought fur and other luxury items “as if they were going out of style.”

Hunting and trapping,  horse racing,  and greyhound racing also boomed–and,  because members of the World War II generation who had just become grandparents bought circus tickets in growing numbers,  circus attendance declined less rapidly than it had during the first decades after the advent of television.

Then,  as the World War II generation entered retirement, encountered rising medical costs,  and realized the limits of their often fixed incomes,  they bought less fur.   Hunting,  recreational trapping,  horse racing,  greyhound racing,  and circus-going also fell off.

Each was an early casualty of a generational transition in attitudes toward animals.  Each was and is vulnerable as a “non-essential” use,  i.e. not directly necessary to human well-being.  Each,  unlike pet-keeping and zoos,  involved obvious and deliberate harsh treatment of animals,  represented by whips and muzzles even if the worst abuse could be kept out of sight.

As Boomers reached peak affluence,  they bought far less fur than their parents.  They hunted and trapped less,  stopped betting on animal races,  and quit going to circuses. Today,  with the World War II generation passing on,  along with the utilitarian views of animals and nature that predominated in the long gone mostly rural America,  the fur trade has the same two possible strategies for survival as hunting,  animal racing,  and circuses.

One strategy would be to persuade the Boomers to begin to adopt pursuits they have thus far shunned:  to begin hunting in the age range when previous generations have begun to give it up,  and to begin wearing furs,  especially to animal races and the circus.

The other strategy would be to convince Generation X that the pro-animal attitudes strong among the Boomers are quaint artifacts of the Xers’ parents’ era.

Neither will be an easy sell.  Boomers are now of an age where attitudes,  values,  and patterns of behavior rarely change direction.  Xers,  now in the 15-to-35 age range,  have thus far accepted pro-animal values to a far greater extent than Boomers ever did.

Boomers eat less meat than their parents;  Xers are more than twice as likely to become fully vegetarian,  or even vegan.  Boomers hunt at only half the level of their parents;  Xers barely hunt at all.  Boomers bought circus tickets once,  on average,  during their children’s childhood;  Xers attended only when their grandparents–or parents  once–took them.  Boomers may have been to a horse  or greyhound race.  Xers have rarely bothered with either.

Most important as regards fur,  five states with strong concentrations of Boomers and Xers have passed anti-leghold trapping initiatives within the past eight years:  Arizona,  California, Massachusetts,  Oregon,  and Washington.

Demographics indicate that a frontal assault on the attitudes of the two largest generations of American consumers will probably not succeed–unless animal protection organizations completely fail to respond in an effective manner.  Lynne Cheney and other prominent fur-wearers may encourage the relatively few Boomers and Xers who are not put off by fur to buy and wear more of it,  but the Cheney influence can be countered and contained if animal defenders resume reminding the public just what is wrong with fur in the first place.

In April 2000,  ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed toward the soaring fur sales of 1999-2000 and reminded the animal protection community for the umpteenth time that the Humane Society of the U.S. had dismantled its hugely successful “Shame of Fur” campaign of 1988-1991 almost as if intending to allow fur to make a comeback.  ANIMAL PEOPLE also noted that Friends of Animals’ anti-fur themes had drifted from the hard-hitting “Get a feel for fur–slam your hand in a car door” slogan of the late 1980s to near complete obscurity.

Later in 2000,  Coalition Against the Fur Trade founder J.P. Goodwin noted that PETA campaigns,  on fur and other topics,  have recently also veered far off message.

“It’s time to say no to pie throwing,  manure dumping,  and naked models,”  Goodwin opined,  “and get back to talking about animals.”

FoA earlier this year dusted off “Get a feel for fur–slam your hand in a car door.”  HSUS brought back the “Shame of Fur,” and introduced a parallel campaign about the violence inherent in killing karakul sheep so that furriers can use the pelts of their aborted fetuses to make so-called “broadtail.”

Burned repeatedly by models who first attacked fur and then endorsed it,  after the fur trade offered more money,  PETA got burned again in February 2001 by rapper/designer Sean “Puffy” Combs. Renouncing fur upon learning that PETA planned to protest against the debut of his collection,  Combs prominently exhibited fur when the protesters stayed home.

To the extent that fur is back,  it is mostly back by stealth,  reappearing in bits and pieces,  in places where furriers hope no one will say much to those who wear the odd scrap,  until ubiquity overcomes inhibition and–in theory–complete fur coats return to vogue.

This strategy wouldn’t work,  and couldn’t begin to work,  if fur was still expensive,  as it would be if the supply side of the trade had collapsed in step with demand.

Instead,  global ranched mink production fell from 41.7 million pelts in 1988 to 25 million in 1993,  then edged back up to 28.5 million by 1998,  as breeders anticipated new markets developing in Asia and eastern Europe.

Economic and political turmoil thwarted that notion.  Mink coats have since glutted the U.S. market.  Prices tell the story. From 1979 through 1988,  the average list price of a mink coat in New York City was close to $7,250.   It fell to $6,290 in 1993–and was $4,737 last winter.  Actual sale prices averaged $2,902 in 1993, $2,041 in 1995-1996,  and just $1,558 in 2000-2001.  The glut depressed the price of wild-trapped furs,  too,  which listed at an average of $5,499 on Thanksgiving 2000,  but by Valentine’s Day fell to $1,428.

Steep discounting has always been standard in the fur trade, especially toward the end of winter,  but the recent discounts have run half again deeper than usual.

 

Put a “Tiger” in New York

 

Fur is everywhere because fur is cheap.  Fur is cheap because fur is in oversupply.  Fur is going to get cheaper still during the next year or two,  as the oversupply grows,  along with economic pressure on brokers and auction houses to dump the glut before it decomposes.

Mink breeders may be cutting back,  but Louisiana, emphasizing “greenspeak” about invasive species,  is still trying to revive nutria trapping.  New Zealand,  encouraged by the World Wildlife Fund,  wants to kill an estimated 60 to 90 million feral brush possums and dump their pelts on the world market.

Placating out-of-work fishers,  who seek someone else to blame for fished-out seas,  Russia in March authorized the massacre of 76,000 baby harp seals on the ice of the White Sea.  The Namibian sealing quota is reportedly to be sharply increased,  from 40,000 last year,  and the quota in Atlantic Canada remains at 275,000, near an all-time high–even though the Canadian government cannot document the sale of 49% of the 1.9 million seal pelts taken since 1982,  according to International Marine Mammal Associaton scientistJanice Hannah.

The IMMA is a subsidiary of the International Fund for Animal Welfare,  whose Canadian office chief,  Rick Smith,  suspects the surplus may have been dumped in landfills.

Canadian seal pelts rarely enter the U.S.,  but their global availability,  in competition with other kinds of fur,  helps to hold all fur prices down.

That will mean more use of fur wherever it can be used without adding enough to the price of a garment ($25) that labeling laws require it to be identified–unless consumers are induced to balk with further reminders that animals suffered horribly for cuffs and ruffs,  too.

J.P. Goodwin is right that effective antifur campaigns need to focus on animals:  even if people who might be induced to wear fur by low prices do not themselves care about animal suffering,  they mostly will care what others think about them for doing it.

Along the way,  ubiquitous cheap fur requires more effective and efficient campaign tactics.  Masing demonstrators eats time and energy,  to uncertain effect;  Boomers in midlife and Xers with increasing career and family duties don’t have time for that.  Civil disobedience,  effective against bad public policy,  rarely

influences consumer choice.  Vandalism backfires.  Picketing and tabling are effective where public access is a right,  not a conditional privilege,  and where most of the traffic walks,  but do not work well at malls accessed mainly by car.

In this edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE,  SHARK founder Steve Hindi’s introduces his “Put a Tiger in New York” campaign,  hoping to raise the funds to replicate his “Tiger” TV van and station one in each major U.S. metropolitan area–beginning with New York City.

More than 80% of the furs sold in the U.S. are sold in the greater New York region.  The “Tiger” is made-to-order for antifur campaigning there.  It is a spectacular rolling demonstration, requiring just one driver to turn thousands of heads.  It is as effective inching along in   Fifth Avenue or Long Island Expressway traffic as anywhere else.

What it can do is display stark wall-sized real-life video of trapped animals and animals being killed on fur farms directly to the public,  with illuminated digital captions.  Screens facing in all four directions mean the images cannot be missed.  As SHARK owns the first truck,  and the technology to build more,  it is not competing with commercial advertisers and station owners’ mercantile considerations:  it broadcasts the message at will.

Contributing to putting a “Tiger” in New York is the most promising investment that animal protection donors can make this year to counter cheap fur–and it will be just as effective in advancing any other campaign which must be taken to the public.

The address is c/o SHARK,  P.O. Box 28,  Geneva,  IL  60134.

Seeking the bear truth about World Society work in India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2001:

LONDON, NEW DELHI–“A major story should come out on the World Society for the Protection of Animals, especially the campaign on behalf of dancing bears,” wrote Maneka Gandhi on March 4 to ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett.

The WSPA web site was full of pages describing relief work in India after the January 26 earthquake that shattered the Kutch region of Gujarat–but Mrs. Gandhi, the Indian federal minister for social justice and empowerment, did not have praise in mind. “Ask WSPA president Andrew Dickson how much money they have collected from the bear campaign,” suggested Mrs. Gandhi.

To build and operate a 30-acre bear sanctuary in India, Mrs. Gandhi said, “WSPA finally coughed up, after four years of
haranguing them, the miniscule sum of $24,000. This was after they had collected more than a million pounds for the [promised] bear centers of Pakistan and India. Even this money came only when I wrote an official letter of complaint to the Charities Commissioner in Britain and he instituted an inquiry.

“However,” Mrs. Gandhi added, “they got away scot-free. The Charities Commission said that while WSPA had collected $1.6 million or thereabouts,” from mailings about dancing bears in India and elsewhere, “according to their charter they could spend it on anything, not just the bear sanctuaries. So that is all we got. They, in turn, got to come to India and stay in fine hotels at least three times a year, have cocktail parties, travel all over, and lament the corruption of India and the impossibility of doing anything here. They told me that they could not set up anything here because Indians are dishonest! This, from people who are getting huge salaries on our bear account! Anyway, the bear shelter is coming up,” Mrs. Gandhi acknowledged, “but very slowly, because WSPA has washed its hands of providing further funding and disappeared.”

Mrs. Gandhi charged that the Indian experience reflects a global pattern. “WSPA collected a large amount for the bears in Ecuador,” Mrs. Gandhi said. “Then they sent an Australian expert and another person to Ecuador several times. They traveled all over South America. Ultimately they did not build a rescue center, or give money to any local groups to build one, as they found everyone was too corrupt. The same thing happened in Pakistan. They have sent
photographers over the years to take pathetic pictures to use in collecting money–but no rescue center. They claim to have rescued some bears in Turkey,” Mrs. Gandhi continued, “but I found that it was a government-funded effort. They also claim to have a few bears in a sanctuary in Thailand. This needs to be checked out. Our ambassador there has never heard of it.”

Long delay

The ANIMAL PEOPLE files affirm that WSPA mailings and press releases have repeatedly promised since 1993 that rescue centers would be built in Pakistan and India, as well as Greece, Hungary, Turkey, and Thailand, to house bears confiscated from abusive traveling shows.

The 1993 WSPA materials refer to a directive Mrs. Gandhi issued in 1990, when she was federal minister for environment and forests, ordering that in compliance with the Wildlife Act of 1972, all bears and other large carnivores should be confiscated from traveling shows and placed in sanctuaries. Like much of the Wildlife Act itself, the 1990 directive went ignored until late 1999, as Mrs. Gandhi lost her office in 1991, and was ousted from the then-ruling Congress Party for forcefully denouncing corruption.

Re-elected to the Indian Parliament as an independent, Mrs. Gandhi was not able to compel enforcement until after the Hindu nationalist Bharitiya Janata party toppled 51 years of Congress rule in 1998 and invited her to join the ruling coalition.WSPA mailings and press releases during those years asserted that bears were not being confiscated and sent to sanctuaries because no sanctuaries existed.

There are still no bear sanctuaries funded by WSPA up and running in India. In the interim, however, many other organizations have started sanctuaries in India, and while at least one attempts by a U.S. citizen to start a sanctuary collapsed due to alleged corruption involving Indian trustees, projects begun and directed from within India, by Indians, have been much more successful.

The Compassionate Crusaders Trust, of Calcutta, for instance, had barely formed when WSPA first promised to build a bear sanctuary in India. The Compassionate Crusaders now have two sanctuaries up and running, described by ANIMAL PEOPLE in January/February 2001, and also manage a variety of other animal welfare projects.

“WSPA needs to be asked what they have spent on the bear campaigns in travel, staff hired, and advertising,” Mrs. Gandhi opined, “as well as asking about the number of shelters built, the number of bears rescued, and where they are.” ANIMAL PEOPLE detailed Mrs. Gandhi’s allegations to WSPA president Andrew Dickson on March 5, asking by e-mail, “Can you furnish a financial accounting for the WSPA ‘Libearty’ campaign, detailing expenditures and receipts, so as to document that the funds raised in the name of various projects are in fact being spent to advance those projects?”

Responded Dickson, “Any responsible person in animal welfare knows these allegations are complete rubbish and can easily be proved to be rubbish.” But he provided no data. ANIMAL PEOPLE asked Dickson two more times for the “Libearty” cumulative balance sheet. None was ever forthcoming. However, WSPA operations director Trevor Wheeler responded for Dickson on March 12. “Mrs. Gandhi made the same allegations to the Charity Commission here in London,” Wheeler confirmed, “and as a result, WSPA had a formal visit from the Charities Commission. WSPA was
completely exonerated. The construction of the sanctuary and first year running costs will amount to approximately $120,000. In addition to this, we have costs associated with WSPA personnel travelling to the sanctuary, bear confiscation costs, transportation of the bears within India, and veterinary costs. The statement that these costs only amount to 1.5% of funds raised by WSPA on this issue,” as Mrs. Gandhi’s math suggested, “would indicate that WSPA would have raised over $10 million” for bear projects, “which is quite ridiculous,” Wheeler asserted, “given
that our total income from all sources last year was $12 million.” “If you should wish to see our audited accounts,” Wheeler concluded, “you can apply for a copy to our office in Boston.”

In fact, ANIMAL PEOPLE already had copies of the most recent WSPA accountability documents filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the British Charities Commission. They actually show combined U.S. and British income of $15.7 million, with about two-thirds coming from the U.S. The U.S. filings do not show any separate accounting for the bear projects. The British documents show the availability in 1997 and 1998 of about $283,000 in restricted funds raised for the bear projects. Bear projects spending by the British branch in 1997 totalled $286,400, falling to $174,400 in 1998.

The numbers do not distinguish between “project support and directly attributable fundraising costs,” says a footnote. Neither is there any indication of the volume of non-dedicated funds received in response to bear-oriented appeals.
Said Mrs. Gandhi of Wheeler’s reply, “This is rubbish. For instance, the money spent on the bears is only $24,000. But they have claimed that they have paid for the first year’s running costs as well. The money from WSPA is not enough to even cover the building of the moat, much less the running costs when the whole sanctuary is built.”

Further, Mrs. Gandhi said, “Not one rupee has been spent on confiscating, transporting, and veterinary costs–because in six years not a single animal has been confiscated, transported, or medically treated. “If you look at each country’s achievement,” Mrs. Gandhi reiterated, “you will see what they have done–absolutely nothing, and it is always the country’s fault. You will get the same report from animal groups in Pakistan, Ecuador, Thailand, and Turkey,” Mrs. Gandhi said.

Pakistan intrigue

ANIMAL PEOPLE had already asked WSPA about the bear projects it claims to be sponsoring in other nations. “The sanctuary in Pakistan has been ready for months to receive bears,” Wheeler said. “Due to a lack of co-operation from
local government offices within Pakistan, the [planned] confiscations were unable to go ahead.” However, Wheeler added, “We are confident that the completed sanctuary will soon be home to a number of confiscated bears who have been used in bear-baiting. On March 8,” Wheeler went on, “a WSPA team was dispatched to liase with the government of Pakistan to commence the confiscation program.”

More about that surfaced in the March 26 edition of the London Independent. Wrote news correspondent Meriel Beattie, from Kund, Pakistan, “WSPA fieldworkers said a team of journalists from the [London] Daily Mail arrived in Pakistan two weeks ago, to follow WSPA’s ongoing campaign to save fighting bears [baited by dogs in public spectacles] and suitable cubs, and transfer them to the WSPA sanctuary. However, when it seemed as if no official rescue would take place before their deadline, the Mail journalists inquired about buying a bear from gypsies near Islamabad.

Said John Joseph, WSPA regional manager for Asia, “If people just come into the country and start brandishing a checkbook and buying animals illegally and then try to pass them to us, and we accept those animals, it will blow any credibility we have with the Pakistani authorities. We’ve always been against any sort of purchasing. It sets a precedent that animals have a value. All it will do is increase the amount of illegal trade in these animals in
the long run.”

Added Beattie, “The bear the Mail chose to ‘rescue’ was a dancing bear, which did not fit the charity’s criteria,” for the
sanctuary of only accepting baited bears–although dancing bears are the focus of the WSPA bear campaign elsewhere. When WSPA fieldworkers refused to cooperate,” Beattie charged, “the charity was warned by its head office that the Mail would criticize it in print for refusing to cooperate in a rescue.” Beattie said the Mail, the arch-rival of The Independent, did not return her calls. The alleged bear purchase apparently did not take place–but Pakistani forest officials finally brought WSPA their first bear, a two-year-old reportedly confiscated in Kashmir. She was not a
fighting bear either, Beattie said.

Turkey, Ecuador

Of the WSPA bear project in Turkey, Wheeler explained, “Following a meeting with the Director General from the Ministry of Forestry in Ankara, it was agreed that the Turkish government would adopt full financial and management responsibility of the sanctuary from January 1, 2001. So it would be true to say that since that date, the major support for that project comes from the Turkish government. Previously, the majority of funding was provided by WSPA. In 1993 WSPA funded the construction of a veterinary rescue center for Turkish bears,” Wheeler said. “WSPA then funded construction of the bear sanctuary, opened in 1995. Since 1995,” Wheeler claimed, “WSPA has funded veterinary costs, feeding costs, staff salaries, development and improvement costs, and further construction.

“As with all of the WSPA-supported bear sanctuaries,” Wheeler continued, WSPA agreed to cover the construction of the sanctuary and first-year running costs, after which “the government would accept the ongoing financial and managerial responsibilities. In the case of Turkey, due to budgetary constraints of the government, WSPA financed the sanctuary for a further five years.

“The project in Ecuador commenced in 1994,” Wheeling explained further. “WSPA funded the confiscation of a number of illegally owned spectacled bear cubs and their veterinary treatment. Four years ago, WSPA funded the transfer of three bears into a reserve in Ecuador and last year a further three bears were taken to another reserve in the country. We had intended to build a full-scale sanctuary in Ecuador some years ago, and received a donation from The Body Shop in New Zealand of around $50,000 for this purpose,” Wheeler said. “After months of negotiation, the Ecuadoran government failed to provide a suitable site. With the full endorsement of The Body Shop, this money was used to construct a sanctuary in Hungary to re-home abused ex circus, zoo, and film bears,” opened in 1998.

Southeast Asia

At Banglamung, Thailand, Wheeler said, “WSPA funded the first bear sanctuary in the nation, to house 40-plus confiscated Asiatic black bears, which were held in very poor condition in a government compound. During 1999, WSPA funded the construction of two further sanctuaries,” one at Banlamung, which “is now home to a number of sun bears,” and the other, “for a small number of Asiatic black bears, at a separate location in northern Thailand called Salween.”

Wheeler’s account of the work in Thailand paralleled a description of Free the Bears Fund work in Cambodia that ANIMAL PEOPLE had just received from Free the Bears representative Karon Church. “Despite the fact that keeping or poaching bears is illegal in Cambodia,” Church wrote, “Free the Bears Fund was quick to realize that national wildlife legislation could not be enforced if no facility to house confiscated bears exists.”

Therefore, working with the Cambodian Wildlife Protection Office, Free the Bears Fund overseas project direct David Ware in 1997 built the first of three bear enclosures at the Phnom Tamao Zoological Gardens and Wildlife Rescue Center. “The following year saw the construction of a sun bear nursery to house cubs who had either been orphaned or were abandoned by their mothers,” Church wrote.

“Until 2000,” Church continued, “confiscated Asiatic black bears were housed with the sun bears. However, their growing numbers and tendency to strip the vegetation necessitated building their own enclosure. Designed by Fund volunteer Matt Jeffrey, this enclosure adjoins and is interconnected to the other pair of sun bear enclosures. Like the others, it is equipped with native vegetation, pools, night dens, and play equipment to provide much needed mental stimulation.”

ANIMAL PEOPLE wondered whether there was any relationship between the WSPA project in Thailand and the Free the Bears Fund work in Cambodia. Responded Free the Bears Fund founder Mary Hutton, “We have also established a sanctuary for bears within the grounds of the Lopburi Zoo in Thailand. This sanctuary was designed, built, and
financed entirely with Free the Bears Fund money. It was built during 1997 and opened in 1998. WSPA had absolutely no involvement with this project.”

But David Ware of Free the Bears Fund affirmed that WSPA had funded a “large Asiatic bear enclosure at Banlamung” and a sanctuary “in the north” known to him as Om Goi, “through a local nonprofit organization called the Thai Society for the Conservation of Wild Animals.”

Cows and character

“It is interesting,” fumed WSPA president Andrew Dickson, while refusing to provide the cumulative balance sheet on the bear projects which ANIMAL PEOPLE three times requested, “that Mrs. Gandhi has made no comment about the fact that WSPA has had a team of three staff in the earthquake zone in India for the last four weeks, bringing food and medicines to nearly 20,000 cattle in affected farming communities. Without our help these animals would have starved to death, with disastrous effect on these poor people.”

An internal “Summary of Green Fodder Distribution” shared by Wheeler indicated that WSPA from February 10 through March 18 actually fed 5,935 cattle at eight gaushalas. The 167 truckloads of fodder supplied, the WSPA internal document stated, were enough “to feed approximately 2,250 animals on a daily basis.”Thus WSPA provided just under half of the animals’ recommended diet, at cost of about $36,740 total.

That was considerable–but at least five India-based animal protection organizations known to ANIMAL PEOPLE reportedly sent more, including Mrs. Gandhi’s own organization, People For Animals. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandhi faxed to ANIMAL PEOPLE a copy of a February 8 letter from Andrew Dickson to Kartick Sayanarayan and Geeta Sheshamani of Wildlife S.O.S.–“the very organisation,” acknowledged Wheeler, “that is managing the WSPA-funded construction
of the bear sanctuary in India.”

Wrote Dickson, “I am appalled by what appears to be an attempt by you to collect money from both the Brooke Animal Hospital and WSPA for the same activities. These are: 1) Your initial trip to the disaster area at a cost of nearly $5,000. You attempted to get this money paid by WSPA despite the fact that Brooke had already agreed to fund you for this to the sum of $5,000. 2) Your proposal for a second visit, including the expenses of two veterinarians and animal food at a total of nearly $10,000. WSPA agreed to pay this without knowing that Brooke had also agreed to fund a similar project plus your air travel and expenses during the same period. It was only due to a telephone conversation among Rick Butson of Brooke, Trevor Wheeler, and myself, that we realized you had approached both societies for basically the same activities.

“Since neither society was told from the outset of the involvement of the other,” Dickson said, “I can only assume that
the additional $15,000 you would have received would not have been utilized for the intended purpose of helping stricken animals in the wake of this national tragedy. “We expect you to honor agreements to complete the bear
sanctuary,” Dickson finished, “but in light of this saga, any future collaboration between us is highly unlikely.”

Despite that letter, WSPA press officer Jonathan Owen just one day later announced to ANIMAL PEOPLE by e-mail that, “WSPA has established a mobile wildlife rescue unit to deal with injured or trapped animals. The mobile unit is run by Wildlife S.O.S.,” whose application for WSPA funding had actually just been denied. Away working in the earthquake zone, Sayanarayan and Sheshamani did not learn that Dickson had axed their funding until February 26.

“We have now worked with WSPA on various projects for five or six years, and WSPA has never found reason to accuse us of dishonesty or a lack of commitment and integrity,” Sayanarayan responded. “For relief work in Gujarat, Trevor Wheeler had already informed us that WSPA would be working through the Animal Help Foundation in Ahmedabad,” as was done; however, Sayanarayan continued, it was unclear whether WSPA might also fund work by
Wildlife S.O.S.

In any event, Sayanarayan explained, “From the very start, Rick Butson of the Brooke Hospital was aware that we would be requesting WSPA to help in the earthquake relief work, and he was happy to coordinate with WSPA. For the record, at the time of our requesting funding from you, neither organization had actually funded us. We had indeed borrowed the money,” in order to get started, in hopes that both the Brooke and WSPA might contribute something.

“In view of the distrust between our organizations and in view of the fact that the supervision and construction of the bear rescue facility, including the liaison work to obtain permits and a site were all done by us on our own time without seeking a consultancy fee from WSPA,” Satyanarayan concluded, “the belated recognition from WSPA of my hard work in the form of a consultancy fee of $2,000 sent to my account” at some recent date “is neither acceptable nor necessary. I shall be donating this amount into the bear facility fund of Wildlife S.O.S., and the contract with WSPA
stands null and void. However, we will complete the construction of the bear rescue facility as per our agreement. Contrary to your strong and malicious accusation of greed, we are dedicated to doing something about the Indian sloth bear problems. We can and will achieve what we have set out to do, with or without WSPA.”

[Wildlife S.O.S. is located at D-210, Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India; telephone 91-11-462-1939; fax 91-11-464-4231; <wsos@del3.vsnl.net.in>.] More about Free the Bears Fund

It was with great interest that I read the article “Tapping the wells of kindness in China and southern Asia” in the January/ February 2001 edition of Animal People. It is encouraging to note that cultural beliefs ingrained over many generations are slowly bending to the concept that animals are no longer simply a food source devoid of feelings, but are sentient creatures worthy of respect.

To this end I wish to share the success of the Western Australian-based charity Free the Bears Fund, founded by Mary Hutton in 1995. We have campaigned extensively for the protection of bears worldwide, but our success within Cambodia is especially noteworthy. Cambodia has endured enormous political strife over the years and yet, despite extreme poverty, has from the beginning been enthusiastic and cooperative toward us.

Both bears native to Cambodia, the sun bear and the Asiatic black bear, are endangered, as victims of habitat destruction, poaching, and illegal trade. They have been the focus of widespread attention since Free the Bears Fund alerted the world to their plight in the restaurants and markets of Phnom Penh.

We have placed many bears in the rescue facilities we have created within the Phnom Tamao Zoological Gardens, and we have relocated six Cambodian sun bears, confiscated from restaurants, to Australian zoos. But we acknowledge that these habitats are only an intermediate solution to the problem of illegal wildlife trade. Native habitat must also be secured.

Free the Bears Fund aims to assist indigenous communities to seek alternative, sustainable relationships with bears, and puts emphasis on improving human as well as animal welfare. We are aware that the people of Cambodia need financially sustainable alternatives to poaching, and that unless this is provided, poaching will not decrease.
Emulating projects already undertaken throughout the game parks of southern and eastern Africa, Thailand and Russia, Free the Bears Fund hopes to develop a Protected Areas Ranger program in Cambodia. We aim to integrate daily initiatives such as anti-poaching patrols, medium-term objectives including education and financial sustainability for indigenous communities, and our long term goal of preserving bio-diversity and facilitating the repopulation of endangered species.
We shall be happy to provide further particulars to ANIMAL PEOPLE readers.

–Karon Church
Free the Bears Fund
5 Laga Court
Stirling, W.A. 6021
Australia
<info@freethebears.org.au>

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