On Screen: Betty Denny Smith to retire

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

HOLLYWOOD–– Betty Denny Smith, 63,
heading the Hollywood office of the American Humane
Association since 1988, has announced she will retire at
the end of 1996, after 27 years in humane work, to
form her own animal protection foundation.
Smith, as director of the Los Angeles County
Department of Animal Care and Control in the 1970s,
was among the first animal control chiefs to abolish
killing by decompression. She later headed the Pet
Assistance Foundation.
The AHA Hollywood office, founded in
1940, monitors the use of animals in films. In 1987,
the year before Smith took over, the office had three
representatives, who monitored 44 movies, 106 TV
productions, and read 147 scripts. In 1995, said
spokesperson Jim Moore, 25 representatives with a
support staff of seven monitored 429 movie and TV productions,
reading nearly 1,000 scripts. “Smith hired a
training officer,” Moore explained, “instituted a field
training curriculum, developed a program for upward
career mobility for representatives, and began an affiliate
program with other humane societies around the
world. She also established an anti-cruelty hotline to
report any abuses of animals used in film.”

AGRICULTURE, DIET, & HEALTH

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The steakhouse chain Sizzler
International on June 3 filed for
bankruptcy and announced plans
to close 136 of its 451 restaurants
as part of reorganization. Thirtytwo
restaurants will be shut in
northern and central California,
along with 25 restaurants in the
Baltimore/Washington D.C. area––
the two regions where the national
trend toward vegetarianism is most
apparent. Ironically, hoping to
appeal more to women, who are
becoming vegetarian at a faster
pace, Sizzler was among the first
steakhouse chains to offer an extensive
salad bar. Unable to break the
steakhouse image, “We’re trying
to get back to the essence of
Sizzler,” said CEO Kevin Perkins.

Salmonella, anyone?

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

NEW ORLEANS––Peter Holt of
the USDA research service station in
Athens, Georgia, on May 20 told the
American Society of Microbiologists
that the standard technique of starving
hens for a week to 10 days to make
them molt and lay more eggs also
drastically increases their susceptibility
to salmonella.
“A normally fed bird required
something around 50,000 salmonella
bacteria to cause an infection,” Holt
said of his findings. “With the molted
birds it was less than 10.” Of the 46.8
billion eggs produced per year on U.S.
farms, the USDA estimates, about 14
million carry salmonella.

Contrary rulings

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Enforcing a 1993 European
Union demand for improved operating
conditions, the Irish Department
of Agriculture on May 13 cancelled
the operating permit of Western
Meat Producers, of Dromad,
Ireland. However, in a parallel case
involving other nations, the
European Court of Justice ruled on
May 23 that Britain may not unilaterally
enforce EU animal welfare
standards. Britain had barred shipments
of sheep to a Spanish slaughterhouse
which does not stun animals
before slaughter.

Chicken king banned––again

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

OLDENBURG, Germany––
Judge Hugo Sponer on June 11 permanently
barred Anton Pohlmann
from owning poultry for keeping
seven million battery-caged hens in
“permanent agony” through use of
nicotine sulphate to disinfect cages.
The illegal chemical treatment
also contaminated the hens’ eggs.
Sponer fined Pohlmann $1.4 million,
and sentenced him to two years in
jail, suspended.
Pohlmann, the biggest egg producer
in Europe, was previously
banned from the poultry business
“for life” in September 1994 by
Lower Saxony food and agriculture
minister Karl-Heinz Funke, after he
killed 60,000 hens who were infected
with salmonella galinarium by
having workers shut off their air
conditioning and their food and
water supply lines.

First veal case drug conviction

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

MILWAUKEE––A Milwaukee
jury on June 10 convicted veal calf
feed dealer Jannes “James”
Doppenberg and his company, Vitek
Supply Corporation, on 12 counts
each of smuggling and illegally distributing
the banned drug Clenbuterol
and other illicit chemicals
intended to expedite calf growth
between 1988 and 1994, at possible
risk to the health of human vealeaters.

LETTERS [July 1996]

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Reward Juliette
As you reported in your
June cover story, “Wishing for an
end to bear hunting,” a seven-yearold
New Mexico child recently
chose to receive seven painful rabies
shots rather than have a bear cub
who nipped her be killed and tested
for rabies. Juliette Harris was quoted
as saying, “I just didn’t want that
cute baby bear to die.”
Nice, eh? Especially after
the brouhaha about the Make-AWish
Foundation sending 17-yearold
Erik Ness to hunt a bear.

Letters

Editorial: Westward ho!

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

You may have noticed that this edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE is dated simply
“July.” Traditionally we’ve published a combined July/August edition, but we’ve varied the
routine this year to facilitate our forthcoming relocation, from a 160-year-old rambling
farmhouse almost on top of the New York/Vermont border to a compact home/office in
Clinton, Washington. Because our new location won’t be ready until we’d normally be
starting in on our September edition, and because moving 22 cats, three dogs, and a whole
newspaper cross-country and setting up again will of necessity take several weeks, we’ll be
issuing an August/September combined edition from here, to be mailed in late July, just
before we hit the road. While the post office delivers it, we’ll roll west in a convoy of rented
trucks, the traveling menagerie in an air-conditioned van with double doors to prevent
escapes, and the office in a separate van because cats, dogs, files, and computers barely
get along even without the stress of travel. (It’s not the animals who object––it’s the equipment.)
By the time you’ve received the August/September edition, we hope, we’ll be
unpacking and able to answer your calls, faxes, and e-mailed information requests.

“They poop––kill them.” NEW TWIST TO SILENT SPRING

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

CHATHAM, Massachusetts– –
Three stories simultaneously moving on the
newswires at the beginning of June called to
mind the late Rachel Carson, author of Silent
Spring, the expose of chemical poisons and
their effect on birds that 35 years ago marked
the start of environmental militancy.
Carson would have applauded an
eight-state program of cooperation with state
government and private industry that the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service credited with cutting
the number of major illegal bird poisoning
cases in the central and northern Rockies
last year to just three, down from nine in
1994. As in Carson’s time, eagles who
allegedly prey on lambs remain the primary
targets, but the victims can now be counted
in the dozens, not the hundreds, and bald
eagles, then apparently headed toward
extinction, are now off the Endangered
Species List––which was created as part of
the Endangered Species Act, a measure
Carson advanced but which was not passed
until nine years after her 1964 death.

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