From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Investigating business satisfaction with
the outcome of joint projects involving environmental
advocacy groups, the August edition of
The Green Business Letter found the Nature
Conservancy scoring 4.33 on a scale of five; the
World Wildlife Fund 4.07; the National
Wildlife Federation 3.96; the National Audubon
Society 3.90; the Council on Economic
Priorities 3.74; the Environmental Defense
Fund 3.73; the Natural Resources Defense
Council 3.25; the Rainforest Action Network
3.25; the Sierra Club 2.88; and Greenpeace just
1.85.
The Internal Revenue Service has proposed
raising the financial threshhold at which
nonprofit organizations must file IRS Form 990 to
$40,000 in annual receipts. The current threshhold
is $25,000. IRS Form 990, which by law must be
available to the public, is the primary nonprofit
accountability document.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Farmers For Fairness, a front for
factory hog farmers, “has begun to achieve
its purpose” in North Carolina, Raleigh News
& Observer staff writer James Eli Shiffer
warned on July 13. “For several months, the
industry has mounted a broad-based campaign
to clean up the image of the hog business,”
Shiffer explained. “The push has
included the state’s top lobbyists, rallies in
front of the General Assembly, and a
$300,000 advertising blitz,” including as
many as 400 TV commercials and 200 radio
commercials a week. It paid off when “a hog
control bill in the state House was broadened
to become the ‘Clean Water Responsibility
Act’ in the Senate, with a focus on sewage
plants and golf courses.” According to
Shiffer, Farmers for Fairness principals
include president Nick Weaver, “an executive
in the Goldsboro Milling hog company,”
secretary/treasurer Lu-Ann Coe, who is also
publicity director for the hog farm building
firm Hog Slat Inc., and political consultants
Carter Wrenn and Paul Shumaker, who
are respectively director of the Conservative
Club and chief political advisor to state
House speaker Harold Brubaker.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Paul Obis, who founded Vegetarian
Times in 1975 and sold it to Cowles Media,
also publisher of Bow Hunter, in 1991, has
resumed eating meat, the July 21 edition of
Newsweek reported, because “22 years of eating
tofu is a long time.”
Irene Cruickshank resigned as
managing director of the New England AntiVivisection
Society, effective July 15.
Cruickshank had served through more than a
year of still unresolved conflict over control of
the NEAVS board between factions aligned
respectively with the Fund for Animals and
PETA. The outcome of the dispute may be
settled by a pending Superior Court judicial
ruling. Formerly allied, the Fund and PETA
jointly took charge of NEAVS in the 1988
board election, in a move seen at the time as
helping to unite and empower the most militant
arms of the animal rights movement.
Bernard Rollin, author of The
Unheeded Cry, lost 28 years of archives on
July 27 when a flash flood that killed five people,
injured 48, displaced 300 households and
wrecked 1,800 cars also tore through his basement
office. Rollin asks anyone who can
replace lost correspondence, articles, clippings,
etc. to send copies c/o Department of
Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort
Collins, CO 80523. Humane livestock handling
consultant Temple Grandin is also on
the CSU faculty, but Rollin said her office,
several floors above the water, was unharmed.
Vegetarian Marie-Louise Meilleur,
117, of Corbeil, Ontario, was confirmed on
August 14 by the Guinness Book of Records as
the oldest living person whose birth is clearly
documented. Born on August 29, 1880, in
Kamouraska, Quebec, Corbeil has 300
descendants, including an 81-year-old son.