Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:04:27 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Smart investigation should have looked at histories of animal abuse
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To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Smart investigation should have looked at histories of animal abuse

	SALT LAKE CITY--Karen Dawn of Pacific Palisades,  California,
was not surprised to read in the March 24 edition of Newsweek that
accused kidnapper and rapist David Brian Mitchell had a history of
cruelty to animals.  As an active distributor of online action
alerts,  via <www.dawnwatch.com>,  Dawn long since became familiar
with the frequent association of violence toward animals with
violence toward humans--especially women and children.
	Dawn was surprised,  however,  that the linkage involving
Mitchell seemed to be so little remarked by news media--and
unrecognized by the Salt Lake City police.
	Mitchell,  49,  and his wife,  Wanda E. Barzee,  57,  are
charged with kidnapping Elizabeth Smart,  14,  from her Salt Lake
City bedroom on June 5,  2002,  raping her,  holding her prisoner
until their capture on March 12,  2003,  and attempting to kidnap
Smart's 18-year-old cousin.
Newsweek quoted Mitchell's stepson,  Mark Thompson,  who had
suspected Mitchell for some time and helped to bring him to justice.
	"He shot our dog in front of us.  He killed our bunny and
made us eat it,"  Mitchell recalled.
	Doing an electronic search of 650 articles published in major
news media about the Mitchell arrest,  Dawn found that the March 31
edition of People reported that Mitchell killed his step-daughter
LouRee Gayler's pet rabbit Peaches and served it to her for dinner.
	"He said it was chicken.  The next day I realized my rabbit
was gone,"  Gayler said.  Mitchell allegedly molested Gayler from age
8 to age 12,  when her mother finally left him.
	"I found that the animal cruelty incidents were first
mentioned by KSTU-TV reporter Scott McKane on March 13,"  Dawn told
her <DawnWatch> audience.  	"Gayler was on ABC's Prime Time Live
the same night and mentioned the rabbit.  Gayler brought up both
incidents on CBS News,  as did Thompson on Larry King Live,  each on
March 14.
	"However,"  Dawn continued,  "only four other news media
mentioned the animal cruelty:  The Washington Times,  The Guardian of
London,   the Saskatoon Star Phoenix,  and Long Island Newsday.
	"If consciousness of the link between cruelty to animals and
cruelty to humans was more entrenched in our culture, things might
have turned out quite differently for Elizabeth Smart,"  Dawn opined.
"Animal cruelty would be a felony in every state. The killing of two
family companion animals would not have gone unreported.  David Brian
Mitchell would have had a felony record.  Police would have known,
upon the disappearance of a child,  not to just wade through the long
list of transients who had worked in the Smart household, but to
search first for any with a record of cruelty to animals.
	"In a better informed world,"  Dawn said,  "Richard Albert
Ricci,  the longtime primary police chief suspect,  who had a history
of burglary and theft,  would have seemed a much less likely
kidnapper than David Brian Mitchell,"  whose record of intimidating
and coercive behavior seemed in hindsight so obvious that it should
have given him away from the beginning.

Rural norms

	The catch in Dawn's scenario is that the cruel acts toward
animals that Mitchell allegedly committed were so close to rural
norms that they are not even recognized yet as cruelty in many
states,  by many police,  and by much of the public.  Thousands of
people still believe that it is appropriate to shoot a dog who
misbehaves;  thousands still raise and kill rabbits for their tables;
tens of thousands still encourage their children to make pets of
animals raised as part of 4-H Club activities,  the culminating
lesson of which is the heartbreak of being compelled by 4-H rules to
sell the beloved animals for slaughter.  The entire exercise is
designed to teach would-be farmers to avoid developing an emotional
attachment to their livestock.
	Even where police and news media have begun to recognize
criminal cruelty to animals as a frequent precursor to rape,  murder,
and other violent crimes against humans,  there is a prevailing
cultural reluctance to recognize legal violence done to animals as
having essentially the same predictive relationship to violent abuse
of humans.
	Hard data demonstrating the likelihood that legal violence
toward animals is associated with violent crimes against humans began
to surface in 1977 when Yale University researcher Stephen Kellert
identified a "dominionistic" attitude toward animals held to a
significantly greater degree by hunters,  trappers,  and rodeo and
bullfight fans,  the characteristics of which,  Kellert wrote--but
later denied--are that the individual's "primary satisfactions [are]
derived from mastery and control over animals."
	The desire for mastery and control were already
well-recognized leading characteristics of sadists and pedophiles.
As a hunter,  however,  Kellert has argued ever since that the
dominionism he found among fellow hunters and others who harm animals
or watch harm to animals for amusement has no relationship to the
behavior of criminals.
	Even major humane groups with nationally prominent campaigns
publicizing the associations of illegal animal abuse with violent
crimes against humans have tiptoed around the 1994-1995 ANIMAL PEOPLE
finding that rates of convicted pedophilia and child abuse closely
parallel the rates of hunting participation at the county level in
the states of New York,  Ohio,  and Michigan.
 	Yet cases illustrating the linkage of hunting with
dominionistic crimes against humans occur almost every day.
Typically an avid hunter kills a wife or girlfriend who is attempting
to end an abusive relationship.
Such a hunter was Barry Tkachik of Otis,  Indiana,  who on February
18 fatally shot his wife,  Michelle Tkachik,  39,  and her sister,
Jean Dakin,  38,  then committed suicide during a standoff with the
LaPorte County Sheriff's Department.
	"I never expected this,"  said neighbor Denver Gabbard.  "I
thought he was a family man who liked to fish and hunt."
	But Sandy Peters,  another neighbor,  was aware of "The
Link,"  as it is commonly called among animal advocates,  and had
seen it in Tkachik.
	"A puppy was shot there last week,"  Peters told Laporte
Herald-Argus staff writer Colleen Mair.  "He was a volatile man who
liked to shoot things.  He once shot the dog I gave him with a BB gun
and then a bow-and-arrow.  I took the dog back."
	LaPorte County Sheriff Jim Arnold confirmed that deputies had
paid repeated calls to Tkachik in response to domestic disturbances
and animal-related complaints.
	"The last incident was on January 3 when Tkachik was arrested
for domestic violence,"  Mair wrote.

Treating women like pigs

	Instances of farmers treating humans like livestock evoke
even more intensive denial--as PETA learned in November 2002 after
attempting to place advertisements pointing out the relationship
between what accused serial killer Robert William Pickton did for fun
and what he did for a living.  Pickton,  52,  of Port Coquitlam,
British Columbia,  was a pig farmer,  in partnership with his brother
David.  Pickton also owned and operated a local nightclub called
Piggy's Palace.
	The Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province both refused the
PETA ad because they believed it might offend meat-eating readers and
the families of Pickton's victims.
	Pickton was arrested in February 2002 in connection with the
disappearance of as many as 63 Vancouver-area women since 1983,
after Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigating a report that he
possessed an unlicensed shotgun stumbled across identification cards
belonging to some of the missing women.  Vancouver police had
informed the RCMP in 1998 that Pickton might be a suspect,  a year
after he was charged with attempted murder when a woman named Wendy
Lynn Eistetter escaped from him.  Pickton beat the rap by claiming
she had tried to rob him.
	Three private investigators also fingered Pickton in 1998,
but the RCMP decided that among 200 potential suspects,  a pig farmer
did not seem to them likely to be a serial killer.  More women
disappeared.  Fragmentary remains of 18 victims have been identified,
primarily by DNA traces.  Pickton has been charged with killing 15 of
them.
	The remains are so few because,  the investigators now
believe,  Pickton handled the women exactly as pig farmers often
handle dead pigs:  he ran their remains through a wood chipper,  then
mixed the pieces into the live pigs' feed.
	While the Pickton investigators sifted tons of
manure-saturated soil to find bone splinters,  a 1955
serial-killing-by-farmer resurfaced in Cook County,  Illinois.
Former horse breeder and stable owner Kenneth Hansen,  69,  drew 200
to 300 years in prison after his second conviction for the
kidnap/murders of three adolescent boys,  at least one of whom he
allegedly raped.  Hansen was not charged with the crimes until 1994,
when he was also identified by police as a suspect or possible
material witness in the murders of four young women and a sheriff's
deputy--and possibly the 1967 beating death of a stablehand.  The
evidence against Hansen emerged from an investigation of an
associate,  Richard Bailey,  who was eventually convicted of the 1977
murder of heiress Helen Vorhees Brach. Hansen and Bailey were also
key figures in a long string of horse killings to collect insurance
money.  Twenty-five horse owners were convicted of participating.
	Another agrarian,  of sorts,  drew 20 years in prison on
December 5 for for trying to fly £22 million worth of cocaine into
Britain.  Christopher Barrett-Jolly,  54,  and his co-pilot and
brother-in-law Peter Carine,  50,   were sentenced at the Basildon
Crown court in Essex.
	Barrett-Jolly "achieved notoriety in 1994 as director of
Phoenix Aviation,  which specialized in the export of live calves for
veal,"  London Independent crime correspondent Jason Bennetto
recalled. Barrett-Jolly's activities attracted demonstrations by
animal rights activists.  "At the height of the protests,"  Bennetto
continued,  "activist Jill Phipps was run over and killed by a lorry
delivering calves to the airport.  In 1996,  Phoenix Aviation went
into liquidation."
	But Barrett-Jolly apparently developed his disregard for the
lives and well-being of other creatures well before his involvement
in the veal industry.
	'In 1974,"  continued Bennetto,  "he admitted being involved
in arms dealing for 20 years."

"Normal" link killers

	In recent "Link" cases involving illegal animal abuse:
	*  Michael Allen West,  33,  was convicted on February 2 in
Bend,  Oregon,  of six counts of attempted murder,  56 counts of
illegal use of a weapon,  42 counts of illegal manufacture of a
destructive device,  one count of possession of a concealed weapon,
and one count of animal abuse,  for shooting a neighbor's dog in
March 2002 and then preparing to stand off sheriff's deputies who
sought to confiscate the weapon.  West had outfitted three bunkers
inside his house with an arsenal of 56 loaded weapons,  including
several assault rifles and a machine gun.
	*  Bill P. Marquardt,   27,  was convicted on February 3 in
Eau Claire,  Wisconsin,  of seven felony counts of cruelty to
animals,  two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm,
and one count of burglary,  for shooting dogs and rabbits at his own
home and breaking into a neighbor's home,  where he shot a dog.
Marquardt is now awaiting trial in Chippewa County for allegedly
shooting and stabbing his mother to death in March 2000.
	*  Jonathon Lee Stephens,  18,  is awaiting trial in San
Bernardino County,  California,  for allegedly beating to death
Christy McKendall,  16,  raping her corpse,  and throwing her remains
into a well.  Alleged accomplice Joshua Curnette,  15,  is also
awaiting trial,  while a second alleged accomplice,  Luke Miller,
14,  is serving a three-year sentence as an accessory after the fact.
Police say Curnette and Miller introduced Stephens to the victim.
Stephens was known around their neighborhood for killing squirrels,
cats,  and dogs,  beating up children and a homeless man,  attacking
his sister with a knife at age 13,  and sexually assaulting a
12-year-old girl.  Police reportedly videotaped Stephens and his
alleged accomplices as they re-enacted the McKendall murder during
interrogation.
	*  Pablo Francisco Hernandez,  19,  is awaiting trial in San
Jose,  California,  for allegedly cutting the heads off a bird and a
dog,  then decapitating his mother,  38,  and calling 911 to confess.


--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:04:52 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Recent dog attack cases continue trend toward stiffer charges &
 sentencing
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Recent dog attack cases continue trend toward stiffer charges & sentencing

	Benjamin Moore,  28,  of Richmond,  California,  who left neighbor Shawn Jones,  10,  for dead after Moore's three pit bull terriers mauled Jones beyond recognition in June 2001,  was sentenced on March 14 to serve six years plus eight months in federal prison on a plea bargain for possession of cocaine with intent to sell.  Moore will not be prosecuted for Jones' mauling because no applicable charge would carry a stiffer sentence than he received on the drug conviction.

	Michael L. Petry,  21,  of Canton,   Ohio,  could get five years in prison after pleading guilty on March 17 to felony child endangerment for leaving three adult pit bulls and six puppies unrestrained in the house he shared with the mother of a 13-month-old child.  The child was severely mauled.  His mother faces the same charges as Petry.

	Also in Canton,  Ruth A. Garaux,  38,  pleaded guilty earlier in March to felonious endangerment for allowing her four dogs, including a pit bull mix,  to run free.  The dogs mauled a 47-year-old man.

	Another Canton defendant,  Kelli L. Rhynes,  26,  drew 58 days on house arrest for failing to restrain his pit bull.  The dog escaped from a pen and mauled an 11-year-old boy.

	Wayne Hardy,  24,  of Elroy,  Wis-consin,  is to go to trial on April 28 for being a party to homicide resulting from a vicious animal and felony reckless endangerment,  for the fatal mauling of Alicia Lynn Clark,  10,  on Valentine's Day 2002.  Six Rottweilers tore Clark apart in a 15-minute attack.  Hardy and codefendant Shanda McCracken,  32,  not yet scheduled for trial on the same charges, were not home.  McCracken's 11-year-old daughter Melissa was unable to save Clark.  Hardy,  who has prior felony convictions,  could get up to 72 years in prison.  McCracken could get a maximum of 38 years.

	Penny Whipple Kelly,  mother of dog attack victim Diane Whipple,  and Whipple's companion,  Sharon Smith,  in December 2002 accepted an undisclosed cash settlement from Marina Green Properties Inc. and Rudolph and Annette Koppl,  managers and owners of the San Francisco apartment house where Whipple was killed in January 2001. Smith donated her portion of the settlement to charities favored by Whipple.  Kelly and Smith have suits pending against attorneys Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller,  who were convicted of manslaugfhter after their two Presa Canarios attacked Whipple.

	Michael Dean Caldwell,  40,  of Las Vegas,  in November 2002 drew five years on supervised felony probation from Superior Court Judge James Dorr of Barstow,  California,  for owning a dog who was trained to attack.   Caldwell and Gilbert Garcia,  still facing charges,  were co-owners of a pair of pit bull terriers who fatally mauled Cash Carson, 10,  in April 2000.  The dogs were left with James Chiavetta,  54,  who started a four-year prison term for manslaughter in May 2001,  but died in May 2002.


-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:05:26 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Cockfighters spread worst U.S. outbreak of Newcastle since 1971: 3
 million birds killed
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Cockfighters spread worst U.S. outbreak of Newcastle since 1971:  3 million birds killed

	SAN DIEGO--Cockfighters are blamed for the worst outbreak of Newcastle disease to hit the U.S. in 30 years.  Agriculture officials had ordered the killing of more than three million chickens on 20 California ranches through March 19,  in futile efforts to contain the spread of Newcastle.  Other cases were reported on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Arizona,  and were suspected in a backyard flock near Goodyear,  Arizona.
	More than 12 million chickens and other poultry were killed to control the worst-ever U.S. Newcastle outbreak,  discovered in California in 1971 but eventually afflicting most states with significant poultry industries.  That outbreak,  costing poulry producers and taxpayers $56 million,  arrived with wild-caught parrots.
	The international traffic in wild-caught birds was at that time virtually without legal restraint.  The Newcastle outbreak was instrumental in convincing animal use industries to accept the longtime recommendation of animal welfare groups that the wild-caught bird traffic should be controlled or eliminated.
	Animal advocates including the late Animal Welfare Institute founder Christine Stevens had warned that poorly monitored bird imports could trigger such an epidemic since 1950,  when the first known U.S. Newcastle outbreak came from Asia with exotic pheasants who were bred for shooting preserves.
	Experts suspect that the present Newcastle outbreak may become the hardest yet to contain.  The cost of the outbreak exceeded $35 million by the end of February,  with no end clearly in sight. More than six million laying hens are kept in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in California,  in proximity to the majority of the detected cases.
The first cases known to agricultural health officials appeared among backyard flocks of chickens around Los Angeles in September 2002. Because the flocks were widely separated,  included free-roaming birds,  and had apparently already been afflicted for some time, investigators realized almost immediately that this round of Newcastle might already have spread far beyond anywhere that anyone might have recognized it.
	"We have seized sick birds at several cockfights," Merced County Sheriff's Department detective Frank Swiggart noted-- but how many birds had what disease,  from where,  was largely guesswork.
	"Fighting birds are moved around without regard to quarantines.  They don't go to veterinarians.  They are not vaccinated,"  California Poultry Federation president Bill Mattos told the Modesto Bee.
	In a February 11 posting to the ProMed online bulletin board maintained by the International Society for Infectious Diseases, Texas Department of Health regional zoonosis veterinarian James Alexander,  DVM,  warned from past experience that trying to eradicate Newcastle among gamecocks would be especially difficult.
	"Certain segments of the population,  especially those engaged in an industry that is dependent on an illegal activity such as cockfighting,  will not comply with disease reporting because the people do not perceive it to be in their self-interest,"  Alexander explained.
	Alexander recalled that when he was with the Texas Animal Health Commission in the mid-1980s,  "A game bird owner/fighter sent some birds to our poultry lab due to illness and death.  When infectious laryngotracheitis was diagnosed,  TAHC destroyed the remaining birds,  eliminating the man's line of game bird genetics and an important source of income.  The gist of his final comment was that he would not make that mistake again."
	California Department of Food and Agriculture veterinarian Richard Breitmeyer predicted that Newcastle would become endemic among gamecocks and yard fowl.
	Julia Allen,  DVM,  of Seattle, suggested from her observation of the cockfighting subculture in Saipan,  the Philippines,  that "continuing to pursue a traditional program of detection and slaughter" to contain Newcastle among gamecocks "would seem to be ignoring reality.  I am opposed to cockfighting and do think it should be eliminated,"  Allen stipulated,  but for the purposes of disease control she urged "quarantine,  limited depletion,  and intensified vaccination,"  as also recommended by Breitmeyer,  to try to win at least some cooperation from illegal cockbreeders.
	Members of the California Exotic Newcastle Disease Task Force swept southern California neighborhoods killing backyard poultry in February and March,  trying to stay ahead of scam artists,  including suspected cockfighters,  who seized and removed live birds in some cases,  and in other cases charged residents to demolish chicken coops and "sanitize" yards.  The California Exotic Newcastle Disease Task Force does not charge birdkeepers or property owners.
	Bird fanciers protested against the massacres,  to no avail. Most animal shelters in the region quit accepting or keeping birds.
	The killing exposed some of the daily realities of factory farming to public view in mid-February,  after Lieutenant Mary Kay Gagliardo of the San Diego County Department of Animal Services told the San Diego Union-Tribune that workers at Ward Egg Ranch facilities in Valley Center and Potrero allegedly threw as many as 100,000 live hens into wood chippers.
	"We're trying to find out who is behind this.  It's clearly animal cruelty,"  Gagliardo said.
	Ward Egg Ranch owner Bill Wilgen-burg admitted using chippers to kill "about 15,000" chickens because quarantine rules did not allow him to remove the birds for slaughter.  Workers said that the use of the chippers was approved by USDA veterinarians.
	Mulching newly hatched chicks alive is in fact standard procedure at egg factory farms throughout the U.S.,  and mulching "spent hens" alive is not uncommon.
	Animal control and humane officials throughout California escalated efforts to suppress illegal cockbreeding,  with mixed results.
Mendocino County district attorney Norman Vroman on February 26 refused to prosecute Crio Ruiz,  67,  of Redwood Valley,  because Vroman said county major crimes task force commander Bob Nishiyama raided Ruiz with an illegal warrant.  Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Richard Henderson had authorized the immediate killing of all 58 birds seized in the February 12 raid,  but Vroman said California law required keeping the birds alive pending conviction of their owner.
	Authorities in Napa seized 1,546 alleged gamecocks and an unknown number of hens and younger cocks in a February 22 raid.  The flock turned out to be free of Newcastle.  The birds were to be held for a time pending identification of their owner,  and were to be killed if no owner could be found.
	In Montebello,  the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority on February 22 found about 50 people and 150 gamecocks who had allegedly been prepared for fighting,  but were unable to remove the evidence because of the Newcastle quarantine requirements.  Therefore the alleged cockfight participants could only be charged with quarantine violations,  SEACA Captain Aaron Reyes told Michael Del Muro of the Whittier Daily News.
	The March 4 seizure of 90 gamecocks and hens from Jesus Dimas Leon,  69,  and Gonzalos Pena,  57,  in Santa Ana,  was comparatively small,  but was described by police as the largest in local memory.
	Bills addressing cockfighting were meanwhile before the legislatures of 13 states.
	In Oklahoma,  where a November 2002 ballot initiative outlawed cockfighting by a margin of 124,000 votes,  the state senate on March 10 passed a bill proposing a statewide referendum on whether to lower the penalty for cockfighting from a felony to a misdemeanor. The state house passed a similar bill on February 24.
	The West Virginia senate on March 6 approved an amendment to a state house bill that would keep cockfighting a misdemeanor.  The West Virginia House of Delegates had approved making arranging fights among dogs,  cats,  cows,  horses,  and pigs a felony,  but had entirely exempted cockfighting from the anti-animal fighting legislation.
	The Oregon house on March 13 passed a bill to criminalize raising gamecocks and make cockfighting a felony,  46-9,  but the Oregon senate killed a similar bill in 2001 and was expected to kill this one.  Opponents of the bill argue that the illegality of cockfighting is causing the spread of Newcastle,  and that breeders would comply with disease control regulations if they could not be prosecuted.
	The New Mexico house passed a similar anti-cockfighting bill, 45-21,  but the New Mexico senate killed a parallel bill earlier in the spring legislative session.
	The Maryland house unanimously passed a bill to criminalize possession of cockfighting paraphernalia,  use of premises for cockfighting,  and attending a cockfight.

-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:05:41 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: International animal control & shelter news
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


International animal control & shelter news

	Barcelona,  Spain,  instituted high-volume sterilization of
dogs and cats in January as cornerstone of a no-kill animal control
policy.  Since 2000 the Barcelona city shelters have reduced their
killing of stray dogs from 72% of intake to 36%,  and have reduced
their killing of stray cats from 89% to 27%,  Agence France-Press
reported.

	A 2002 deficit of £3.2 million in meeting operating costs of
£8.9 million is expected to oblige the Scottish SPCA to close nine of
its 13 shelters and lay off 60 of 229 staff,  Lee MacKay of the
Edinburgh Evening Express reported on March 22.  Plans to build a
£650,000 shelter in Aberdeen may be cancelled.  "The decisions are
blamed on the collapse of the stock market,"  and on insurance costs
which have increased by £100,000 since September 11,  2001,  MacKay
said.

	Perihan Agnelli,  founder of Fethiye Friends of Animals in
Fethiye,  Turkey,  and Robert Smith,  founder of both the Society for
the Protection of Stray Animals in Istanbul and the Foundation for
the Protection of Community Dogs in Campina,  Romania,  are joint
recipients of the 2002 Marchig Animal Welfare Trust Award.
Nominations for the 2003 award are due at <www.marchigawt.org> by
Sept.  30.

	The city of Johor Baru,  Malaysia,  has since January 1,
2003 required residents whose neighbors are Islamic to obtain their
neighbors' permission before renewing or applying for a dog license.
Mohammed taught kindness toward both dogs and cats,  but anti-dog
prejudice is common among Muslims as an apparent legacy of fear of
rabies,  a longtime scourge in central and southern Asia.

--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:05:55 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Atlanta Humane gives up animal control
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Atlanta Humane gives up animal control

	ATLANTA--The Atlanta Humane Society,  managing the Fulton County Animal Control shelter as well as its own facilities since 1974,  on March 20 returned animal control duties to the county.
	After rejecting bids on the animal control contract from the Southern Hope Humane Society of Cobb County and a newly formed for-profit company called Synergy Management Services,  deputy county manager Terry Todd reached an 11-day temporary agreement with Southern Hope at 5:40 p.m. on March 20, and agreed to buy $350,000 worth of animal control equipment from Atlanta Humane.
	"A panel of county staff recommended Synergy Management" as the preferred new longterm animal control provider,  wrote Ty Tagami of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Synergy Management "promis-ed a smooth transition by hiring the Atlanta Humane pound director," Tagami said.
	According to Tagami,  the longtime partnership of Atlanta Humane and Fulton county fell apart because "Atlanta Humane was killing 80% of the animals that came in the door,  and county officials,  bothered by complaints from animal advocates,  decided last year to write new animal protection requirements into the contract,"  which had been unchanged since 1982.
	"Fulton County declined to negotiate with Atlanta Humane," Tagami elaborated,  "after Atlanta Humane executive director Bill Garrett and board chair Bill Summerlin on December 4 requested a $500,000 increase to their $2,005,000 base budget.  Combined with income from licensure and impoundment fees,  that would have boosted the animal control budget to nearly $3 million a year.  Fulton county responded on December 17 that it planned to look for new management."
	Responded Atlanta Humane in a written statement,  "For more than several years,  the county has been furnished information that the Fulton County facilities are aging badly,  breaking down and in desperate need of replacement.  Fulton County has been notified that there would come a time when the Atlanta Humane Society could no longer accept substandard facilities.
	"Atlanta Humane has also notified the county,"  the statement said,  "that reimbursements for animal control expense would have to be sufficient to cover expenditures,  as the Society could no longer subsidize a government function.  Several years ago the Society wrote off a loss of more than a quarter million dollars in uncollected reimbursements,"  and in 2000-2001 reimbursements of "more than $65,000" had not been paid.
	Since 1974,  when Garrett's tenure began,  animal control killing in Atlanta has fallen from more than 30,000/year to about 11,000/year,  while the human population of Fulton County has more than doubled.



-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:06:08 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Wolves may be left with nowhere to run
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Wolves may be left with nowhere to run

	WASHINGTON D.C.--The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on March 18 began the process of downlisting grey wolves in the Lower 48 mainland states from "endangered" to "threatened" status,  except for Mexican grey wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and the reintroduced population in and around Yellowstone National Park.
	USFWS said there are now about 664 wolves in the Yellowstone ecosystem,  2,445 wolves in Minnesota,  where they were downlisted in 1978,  and 600 in Wisconsin and Michigan.
	The status reduction will enable ranchers to kill wolves they catch in the act of attacking livestock--and may end the hopes of wolf enthusiasts that reintroduction might be attempted in Maine, New Hampshire,  Vermont,  or upstate New York.  The northeastern habitat sector will instead be considered an extension of the Great Lakes sector.
	Downlisting the Yellowstone ecosystem wolves could also occur soon,  if Montana,  Idaho,  and Wyoming adopt management plans satisfying USFWS conservation requirements.
	Wyoming Governor Dave Freuden-thal on March 4 signed into law a management plan which may not win USFWS approval,  since it classifies wolves as "predators" subject to being shot on sight except within Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks,  if there are more than 15 active packs in the state.  Freudenthal also signed a bill asserting state control over wildlife.
	Wolves from the Yellowstone region have occasionally entered Utah and Oregon.  The Utah senate on March 3 killed a bill to create a compensation fund for ranchers who lose stock to wolves,  on the theory that it might indicate that wolves are welcome.  Oregon state senator Roger Beyer (R-Molalla) on March 4 introduced a bill to take wolves off the state endangered species list.  Keeping state endangered status would give wolves more protection in Oregon than they will have in the rest of the U.S. after downlisting.
	In Alaska,  where wolves have never been federally protected, Governor Frank Murkowski is expected to approve a wolf-culling plan unanimously recommended on March 12 by the Alaska Board of Game. Elected in November 2002,  in part on a promise to reinstitute wolf-culling after an eight-year suspension,  to make elk and caribou more abundant for human hunters,  Murkowski recently appointed six of the seven current Board of Game members.
	State senator Ralph Seekins (R-Fairbanks) on March 20 introduced a bill to liberalize the rules pertaining to wolf-culling, including to allow pre-emptive culling,  before a prey population declines.
	The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on March 21 announced that it will fly wolf-spotting missions over the McGrath game management area,  where culling is to begin,  to help hunters and trappers find wolves to kill.
	The British Columbia government is reportedly soon to declare an open season on wolves in the northern part of the province,  also to boost the numbers of hooved animals available to human hunters.


-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:06:26 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Coin-can scandal & alleged penny-pinching end an era at Associated
 Humane
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Coin-can scandal & alleged penny-pinching end an era at Associated Humane

	NEWARK--Lee Bernstein,  72,  resigned on March 5,  2003,
after 34 years as executive director of the Associated Humane
Societies of New Jersey.
Few heads of humane societies anywhere have served longer.
	Bernstein was succeeded by Roseann Trezza,  58,  the
Associated Humane Societies' assistant director since 1968.
	Joining Associated Humane as a volunteer after a much more
glamorous stint selling Alfa Romeo sports cars,  Trezza served
without pay for two years before accepting $125/month in 1970.  Her
2001 pay was $88,464--slightly more than Bernstein paid himself,  and
significantly less than the salaries of people in comparable
positions with other humane societies of comparable size in the
greater New York City metropolitan area.
	Bernstein,  wrote Brian T. Murray and Tom Feeney of the
Newark Star-Ledger,  "was credited with ending the use of gas
chambers for animal euthanasia in New Jersey.  He also led a
legislative effort to ban selling impounded animals for scientific
experiments.    He made national headlines in 1994,  when he
(unsuccessfully) pressed cruelty charges against a man who  killed a
rat in his garden."

Made enemies

	Bernstein led Associated Humane in a long fight to raise New
Jersey animal control standards.  During his tenure Associated Humane
put numerous substandard private animal control providers out of
business by taking their business away through competitive bidding on
municipal contracts. Associated Humane now holds about 70 local
animal control  contracts,  three county animal control contracts,
and provides animal rescue service to the New Jersey Highway
Authority.
	Under Bernstein, Associated Humane also aggressively
publicized deficiencies within many of the 18 chartered New Jersey
SPCAs.
	Many of the Associated Humane criticisms of the SPCAs were
affirmed in May 2001 by the State Commission of Investi-gation.  On
February 7,  2003,  New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey appointed
a 30-member Animal Welfare Task Force whose job during the next year
is to recommend reforms in the antiquated New Jersey humane law
enforcement and animal control system.  Prominent appointees include
Nina Austenberg of the Humane Society of the U.S.,  Lisa Weisberg of
the American SPCA,  Terry Fritzges of the New Jersey Animal Rights
Alliance,  Stu Goldman of the Monmouth County SPCA,  and Linda
Ditmars of the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting.
	But after hitting the SPCAs,  the State Commission of
Investigation produced a follow-up report accusing Bernstein of
holding too much money in reserve and spending too little on the care
and comfort of the 15,000 animals admitted each year to the
Associated Humane shelters.
	Bernstein resigned within hours of the report reaching New
Jersey news media.
	The allegations against Bernstein had been amplified since
1995 by a coalition of ex-staff and former volunteers.  In the
interim,  AHS built a new cat shelter and renovated other facilities.

Trusted ex-convicts

	In the end,  fallout from Bernstein's very first controversy
at Associated Humane appeared to have the most to do with bringing
about his departure.
	Bernstein joined the AHS board in 1967,  while also serving
as a member of the Newark city council,  and was hired in 1969 as the
first executive director of AHS,  which then had just one shelter and
few other assets.
	"Bernstein lost his council seat before he took the executive
director's job,"  Murray and Feeney said,  "but he was accused of
steering a favorable animal control contract to the AHS when still in
office,  and served four months in jail for conflict of interest."
	While in jail Bernstein met Al Bergamo,  who according to
Asbury Park Press staff writer Tom Troncone "was serving time for
running a gambling operation in Essex County.  Upon his release from
jail,"  Troncone continued,  "Bergamo and another convict,  Seymour
Medwin,  went to work for Bernstein,"  managing a coin cannister
fundraising program.
	"Bergamo said the canisters yielded 'about $5,000 to $6,000 a
week,'  but admits to giving Associated Humane only $1,000 per week
until 1999,  and $1,200 per week thereafter,"  Troncone continued.
"According to contract,  he should have been handing over between
$1,650 and $2,000 per week,  based on how much was contributed.
Illeana Saros,  who headed the Commission of Investigation probe,
said there was no formal accounting,  and no way of knowing how much
money Bergamo made,  either with Medwin or through the front
companies he founded when a new state law in 1994 made him ineligible
as a convicted felon to register to do charitable fundraising.
Medwin left the business in 1995,  and died" on July 19, 1999,
according to Social Security Administration records.
	Bergamo continued to run afoul of the law while representing
Associated Humane,  receiving a contempt of court citation in 1993
for violating a restraining order,  and plea-bargaining a May 2002
charge of cocaine possession down to conviction for disorderly
conduct,  according to Andrew Johnson of The Press of Atlantic County.
	Bernstein fired Bergamo after the latter incident.

Dead man talking

	Medwin,  meanwhile,  set up a parallel coin cannister
fundraising scheme with another former Associated Humane fundraiser,
Patrick Jemas,  doing business as the National Animal Welfare
Foundation.
	ANIMAL PEOPLE and John-Henry Doucette of the Times
Herald-Record in Middletown,  New York,  recently published exposŽs
of that operation after receiving complaints about it from Associated
Humane and Sara Whelan,  founder of the Pets Alive shelter in
Middletown.  Neither ANIMAL PEOPLE nor Doucette found any verifiable
record of National Animal Welfare Foundation program activity--but on
February 20 Doucette,  unaware that Medwin was dead,  interviewed a
NAWF representative by telephone who identified himself as Medwin.
"Medwin said questions must be written and mailed to the charity.  We
will publish any responses as soon as we receive them,"  said
Doucette.
	The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation also rapped
Associated Humane for a deal with Bagger the Better,  "a West Long
Branch company which telemarketed shirts bearing the AHS logo and
plain garbage bags,"  according to Troncone.  Associated Humane
received only $220,062 of the $1.8 million that the scheme reportedly
generated between 1996 and 2001.
	At that,  Associated Humane was more successful in
telemarketing than the Humane Society of the U.S.,  whose
telemarketing contractor in 1998-2001 was a firm called Share Group.
Following up on a report by New York state attorney general Eliot
Spitzer,  New York Post reporter Susan Edelman disclosed in November
2002 that HSUS paid $3.1 million to raise $2.7 million.
	"While none of those donations went to help animals,  the
telemarketers signed on 19,000 supporters willing to give an average
of $10 per month,"  wrote Edelman.
	"The payoff is down the road,"  Edelman said HSUS chief
financial officer Tom Waite told her.
	Established in 1906,  beginning shelter operations in 1923,
Associated Humane now operates dog and cat shelters in Newark,
Union,  Tinton Falls,  and Forked River,  plus the Popcorn Park Zoo
in Forked River to house abandoned or abused exotic animals and the
Animal Haven Farm to keep domestic livestock.  Two of the Associated
Humane shelters include low-cost sterilization clinics.
	The Associated Humane "Vested Interest Fund" was the first of
the many humane society efforts to outfit police dogs with
bulletproof vests,  and is still the biggest.
	Associated Humane is also among the few mainstream humane
organizations to endorse vegetarianism on the home page of their web
site.


--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:06:39 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Puddicome v.s. National Park Service
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Puddicome v.s. National Park Service

	SANTA BARBARA,  Calif.-- To the National Park Service,  Santa Barbara bus driver and Channel Islands Animal Protection Association founder Rob Puddicombe,  52,  is an eco-terrorist.  Puddicome is expected to go to trial soon for allegedly illegally feeding wildlife and interfering with the functions of a federal agency.  If convicted,  he faces up to one year in prison.
	Puddicome,  according to the Park Service,  sailed an 11-foot inflatable boat to Anacapa Island in October 2001 with Robert Crawford,  40,  of Goleta,  and distributed at least five pounds of Vitamin K pellets as an intended antidote to the poison the Park Service dumped from helicopters repeatedly during 2002 to kill black rats.
	Crawford pleaded guilty,  paid a fine of $200,  and was placed on probation for two years.
	Puddicome wants his day in court--and one of the points he hopes to make in court is that the National Park Service action,  not his own,  is the act of eco-terrorism.
	His view is endorsed by the Santa Barbara Surfrider Foundation and the Fund for Animals.
	Puddicome has credentials as an environmentalist going back to his days as an Eagle Scout.  His appreciation of nature increased while working as a diver on offshore oil platforms in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.  He arrived in Santa Barbara to become an abalone diver,  but found a different avocation as a seabird rehabilitator and advocate for the designation of a proposed "Gaviota Coast National Seashore."
	He is also known as a keen observer of the regional ecology. Just a few weeks after Puddicombe was charged for trying to save the rats of Anacapa Island,  he and fellow activist Scarlet Newton were first to recognize a seabird kill in progress for which the California Department of Fish and Game had no explanation.  Puddicome and Newton found a pelican,  two grebes,  two cormorants,  and a western gull in the same area where a fish kill two weeks earlier was attributed to oxygen depletion of the water caused by rotting kelp.
	The Park Service rat poisoning was only one of many exterminations undertaken in the Channel Islands during a effort of more than 30 years so far to restore the habitat to pre-Columbian conditions.  Horses,  pigs,  goats,  sheep,  and even golden eagles have previously been killed or otherwise removed.
	Rescuing some of the animals slated for massacre was among the first activities of the Fund for Animals,  and led to the acquisition of the Fund's Black Beauty Ranch in Texas,  as a new habitat for the rescuees.  More recently,  In Defense of Animals removed goats from one of the islands to keep the Park Service from shooting them.
	But for every animal taken off the islands alive,  dozens have been poisoned or shot.  Pig-shooting,  still underway on Santa Catalina and Santa Cruz Islands,  is expected to continue for another five to seven years.
	"How far do they want to go back?  To the Chumash?  The pre-Chumash?  The Cretaceous era?" Puddicome rhetorically asked David Kelly of the Los Angeles Times in December 2002,  pointing out that the ecology of the Channel Islands has been in flux for as long as they have existed,  with many changes over the years as result of new species drifting over from the mainland.
"I want to save them all"
	"I want to save the rats,  and I want to save the Xantus murrelet and the Anacapa deer mouse too.  I want to save them all," Puddicome later explained to Washington Post staff writer William Booth,  citing the species that the rats are accused of harming through egg theft and predation.  Xantus murrelets only started to breed on Anacapa after the rats were poisoned,  but the poisoning also killed deer mice.
	The golden eagles,  however,  perhaps best exemplify how the effort to "restore" the Channel Islands ecology is upsetting the ecological balance.  When the massacres of "non-native" wildlife began,  the regional population of native bald eagles and turkey vultures was markedly down due to the effects of DDT.  	Golden eagles meanwhile found and scavenged the remains of the animals killed and left to rot by the Park Service gunners.  The "native" Channel Island foxes also thrived on the carrion.  When the carrion ran out, however,  the fox population crashed--and the golden eagles turned to hunting foxes.
	Therefore,  since 1999 the Park Service has been trapping and removing golden eagles,  while trying to increase the numbers of foxes through captive breeding.



-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:06:53 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: What "Holocaust" really means
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--

What "Holocaust" really means

	SAN DIEGO,  RENO,  PHOENIX-- "Abusive treatment of animals
should be opposed,  but cannot and must not be compared to the
Holocaust,"  Nazi death camp survivor and Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai B'rith national director Abraham Foxman told Michelle Morgante
of Associated Press,  as People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals
hit the road in the U.S. southwest with a mobile exhibition called
"The Holocaust on Your Plate."
	Using photographs to compare the slaughter of poultry and
pigs to the Nazi massacre of Jews during World War II,  the
eight-panel PETA exhibit is scheduled to tour the whole U.S.
	Tour coordinator Matt Prescott responded at early stops by
pointing out that he is himself Jewish,  and had relatives who were
killed in the Nazi death camps.
	But he ought to be telling the world what "holocaust" really
means,  says Humane Religion founder Regina Hyland.
"The word holocaust is taken from the Biblical term used to describe
the total immolation of sacrificed animals.  They were known as
whole-burnt offerings,"  Hyland told ANIMAL PEOPLE and electronic
media.  Confirmation appears in most dictionaries.
	"The Greek word for such sacrifices is hol—kaustos,"  Hyland
continued,  "and was used in the translation of Hebrew scrolls as far
back as 250 B.C.  That translation,  called the Septuagint,  was
completed for the Jews who lived in Alexandria,  Egypt,  who could no
longer read or speak Hebrew.  So referring to the death of millions
of animals as a holocaust was done more than 2,000 years before
people applied the term to the torture and slaughter of human beings.
It was not animal rights people who linked the death of animals and
the death of people,"  Hyland emphasized.  "It was those who were
appalled at the human carnage of Nazi Germany."
	Traveling in country-western music territory,  PETA nearly
upstaged their own controversy a few days later by confirming to
Ashley Pearson of MSNBC that the Dixie Chicks singing group "posed
for one of those 'I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' ads,  but the ad
was never released."
	Pearson quoted an anonymous source as saying,  "Their
management got worried that some of their fans were rifle-toting,
Bambi-shooting types who would take offense at an anti-fur,
pro-animal message.  They forbade release of the ad because they were
worried about backlash or boycott,"  as experienced by Canadian
country-western singer K.D. Lang after she acknowledged in 1990 that
she has been a vegetarian since 1981,  and said "Meat stinks!" in a
statement for PETA.
	"They even tried to pay PETA $10,000 to say it never
happened,"  the source told Pearson,  while a Dixie Chicks
spokesperson would not comment.
PETA also prominently clashed with the March of Dimes in Billings,
Montana,  where Lamar Outdoor Advertising refused to rent billboard
space for placards targeting animal experiments funded by the
biomedical research charity,  and in Charlotte,  North Carolina,
where PETA general counsel Jeffrey Kerr threatened to sue the Bank of
America for participating in March of Dimes fundraising while telling
customers that it does not donate to national health charities.

--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:07:06 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Toys for pigs?
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--

Toys for pigs?

	BRUSSELS--British agricultural officials and information
media are significantly misrepresenting an October 2001 European
Union directive on pig welfare,  says European Commission
spokesperson Beate Gminder.
	"Britain's farmers have three months to place a toy in every
pigsty or face up to 90 days in prison or a £1,000 fine,"  BBC
declared on January 29,  2003.
	"We mean footballs and basketballs.  Farmers may need to
change the balls so that the pigs don't get tired of them,"  a U.K.
Department for Environment,  Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson told
The Times.
 	"Britain's three million pigs are guaranteed a playful
future,"  added The Guardian,  reviewing the appeal to pigs of rubber
boots,  footballs,  radios,  toy fire engines,  dolls,  cricket bats,
and Scrabble sets.
	"The day of the toy inspector has arrived.  The dictators of
Europe have dreamed this up,"  Warminister hog farmer Neville Meeker
complained to Farmers' Weekly.
	Corrected Gminder,  "To make this very,  very clear,  our
directive does not talk about toys."  Instead,  Gminder told Agence
France-Presse,  the directive specifies that "Pigs should have
permanent access to a sufficient quantity of material to enable
proper investigation and manipulation activities,  such as straw,
hay,  wood,  sawdust,  mushroom compost,  or a mixture of such.
These are all naturally available on a farm,"  Gminder said,  "and no
farmer should need to buy extra toys to keep his pigs happy."
	Commented Joyce DeSilva,  chief executive of the British
group Compassion In World Farming,  "It is quite clear that there are
people in the Department for Environment,  Food and Rural Affairs
with little knowledge of pigs,  apart perhaps from those they see in
toy shops.  They are trivializing the serious issue of outlawing the
keeping of pigs in stalls with barren concrete floors."
	The impending EU deadline for improving pig welfare received
serious attention,  however,  in Canada,  Australia,  and New Zealand.
Urging a pro-active response,  Can-adian Pork Council representative
Catherine Scovil told Karen Morrison of The Western Producer that a
voluntary code of practice for hog producers developed by the CPC,
Agriculture Canada,  and the Canadian Agri-Food Research Council
should be incorporated into the Quality Assurance program now in
effect nationwide to promote food safety.
	The CPC recommendation is endorsed by Alberta Pork and
Saskatchewan Pork.  Governmental reviews of pig welfare standards are
underway in both Australia and New Zealand,  where there is both
industry and activist support for the idea that new codes of practice
should meet the EU requirements.


--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:07:27 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Letters
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Welfare Ranching

	Although I am highly biased towards the merits and strengths of the arguments put forth in Welfare Ranching: The Sub-sidized Destruction of the American West,  edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson,  the ANIMAL PEOPLE review of the book was among the best I have read (80-plus reviews so far).  Congratulations to reviewer Andrea Lococo!
	Hopefully you may publish other articles and editorials about this issue.  Nowhere in all of North America are there as many acres affected as in this issue of domestic livestock on public lands (nearly 300 million acres!)  	Few people understand this and it is important to get out the word.
--Doug Tompkins
President
Foundation for Deep Ecology
Building 1062
Fort Cronkhite
Sausalito,  CA 94965
Phone:  415.229.9339
Fax:  415.229.9340
<info@deepecology.org>
<www.deepecology.org>


Seeks vet in Turkey

	Thank you for mentioning us in the November 2002 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.  We are very grateful to three ladies who were interested in our situation.
	We do not have any veterinarian at our facility.  However, we need a veterinarian to sterilize the animals.  Can you help us with this matter?
--F. Sunay Birsen
Doga ve Hayvan Sevenler Dernegi
(Nature & Animal Lovers Assn.),
Ataturk Bulvari Guven Evler,  H Blok D3
Zemin Kat Bilano
Kutahya,  Turkey
Phone:   90-274-2165-737
Fax:  274-2320-823


Crate training

	Tammy Sneath Grimes,  founder of Dogs Deserve Better Inc., stated in your March 2003 edition that her organization has "bought crates to help housetrain dogs,  and will continue to do so."
	I consider crate training to be pathological cruelty to animals.  Locking dogs in small cages and kennels is a punishment, especially used by American women,  it seems.
	I asked the Association of Veterinarians for animal Rights what they think about crate training.  They did not answer.
	Please delete my subscription immediately.
--Michael Horan
Moffat,  Colorado



Enkosini case

	Thank you for your review of our book For the Love of Wildlife and for your suggestions.  Your comments are always valuable, being based upon a long and global experience of animal welfare.
 	May I offer clarification on that section of your review which gives the impression that I as Enkosini's legal representative am making statements on Enkosini's behalf.  The statements made are those of the Enkosini Trustees and are indeed contained in sworn affidavits in High Court proceedings, making them a matter of public record.  They should not be attributed to me.
 	I am not Enkosini's attorney, nor am I a South African lawyer.  I am a retired Zimbabwe advocate (barrister, trial lawyer) with qualifications and many years of practical experience in England, Botswana and Zimbabwe.  Because of my legal experience I am often asked by members of the S.A. animal welfare community to assist them in their battles against a delinquent nature conservation regime which we have inherited from the apartheid era.  This is how I came to assist Enkosini.  I also act as a spokesman for the community on some issues.   However my time, effort and cost in helping wildlife sanctuaries like Enkosini to fight for their rights is given on a purely voluntary basis, without charge.
 	If I have misled you in any correspondence to assume that my relationship with Enkosini was professional, I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
--Chris Mercer
Kalahari Raptor Centre
P.O. Box 1386,  Kathu,
Northern Cape  ZA 8446
South Africa
<krc@spg.co.za>
<http://www.raptor.co.za>



Revenue Canada censors favor fur

	Excellent January/Feb-ruary editorial on the fur issue!
	The fur industry here is enjoying free sailing in Canada, and delights in claiming that there is very little protest about fur. They are right:  Revenue Canada's threat of canceling any group's charitable status if they criticize the fur industry has effectively silenced all of the big groups in eastern Canada.  They are now afraid to speak out on this issue.  Very few fur coats are worn in the west,  and it is most difficult to influence easterners from here.  Few eastern media even know we exist,  though we are trying to change this.
	CBC did a half hour TV show two weeks ago with the heading that "fur is flying."  It was the most biased program we have seen them do.  There was almost no "other side" presented.  Despite our protests and a sentence-by-sentence rebuttal,  we have not been successful in persuading them to do another program.  They "might" do another story exploring why there is so little opposition to fur in Canada,  as result of our explanation that the voice of fur-bearing animals has been silenced.
	Enclosed are the latest Canadian fur statistics.  There were 868,206 animals trapped in Canada in 2001,  the lowest total since 1993,  whose pelts sold for $19.9 million in Canadian dollars.  There were 1,147,060 animals killed on fur farms,  the most since 1989, whose pelts sold for $50 million.  The recorded peak of fur trapping was in 1980,  when 5.5 million animals were killed,  whose pelts sold for $85 million.  The recorded peak of fur ranching was in 1983, when 1.5 million animals were killed,  but the highest prices were paid in 1986,  when Canadian ranched pelts sold for $78.6 million.
--George V. Clements
Director
The Fur-Bearers
3727 Renfrew Street
Vancouver,  B.C.
Canada  V5M 3L7
Phone:  604-435-1850
Fax:  604-435-1840

	The Fur-Bearers,  formally known as the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing animals,  founded in 1952,  gave up their charitable status rather than be silenced by Revenue Canada.


The ignorance of fur-buyers

	After reading your Jan-uary/February editorial on fur.  I must add a few of my own thoughts.  People wearing fur definitely bring out the worst in me.  I just flip when I see someone wearing it. At my veterinarian's clinic I see a lot of people come and go and in the waiting room,  pet owners  wearing fur trimmed parkas.  These same people buy fur toys for their cats,  and fur-covered figurines. The fur is often from dogs and cats who were killed for meat in Asia. Don't they get the connection?
	And then there are animal advocacy organizations that charge activists for their literature,  stickers,  posters,  and so forth, when we are the ones out there doing the work.  Why haven't these organizations been educating people about fur,  even if it wasn't in fashion?  Now look!  Just as everybody thought the bloody seal hunt was gone,  again look!
	I have some friends who just came back from visiting the rainforest.  They told me about the beautiful animals that the villagers brought out to the boat for them to see,  and they bought a necklace with a claw of the very animal that they went to see.  No one gave this any thought,  and I explained to them that they were wiping out the very animal they went to see,  because that claw was probably from the mother of this cute animal that the villagers brought out to them,  because in most cases to get them as babies they have to kill the mother.  They were shocked.
	So,  if there was some education, maybe so much of this stuff wouldn't be sold.
	When the buying stops,  the killing will stop too.
--Judy Watson
Vancouver East Side Animal Awareness Society
1831 East 8th Ave.
Vancouver,  B.C.
Canada  V5N 1T7
Phone:  604-255-2457
<iaam@telus.net>


Bioethics Centre

	Thank you for your  March article about the Bioethics Centre at the Kharkov Zoological & Veterinary Academy.  The article will definitely be an additional stimulus for the staff,  and for other educational institutions which do not teach bioethics.
	We also must thank the rector of the academy,  V.A. Golovko, who has made the Bioethics Centre possible.
--Igor Parfenov,  President
Center for the Ethical
 Treatment of Animals,
 Leo Tolstoy Chapter
Stepnaya str. 23
Malaya Danilovka
Kharkovskaya Oblast 62341
Ukraine
Phone:  380-576-358321
Fax:  380-576-331-825
<cry@3s.kharkov.ua>


Zoos breaking up bonded pairs

	Your March edition publication of my letter "San Francisco Zoo orangutans" raises the subject of the treatment of animals in captivity.  Having spent a large part of 30 years at San Francisco Zoo,  I was aware of much going on there,  and also of much about the zoo world as a whole.  While the separation of the orangutans Denny and Josephine after a 20-year companionship may have been an extreme case,  reports of similar cases involving other zoos have also showed a lack of consideration for the welfare of the animals involved.
	Being shipped is in itself a hardship for the animals, compounded by leaving a familiar home and companions.  In the case of a female gorilla I knew about,  the third move in a matter of months resulted in her death.
	Those of us who care about animals and who are aware of their character and intelligence despise the practice of separating bonded animals.
	Some years ago,  Jane Goodall spoke on this subject in a videotape called "Forgotten Apes."  She stated that there are those who are not even aware of their cruelty,  but she said "They are cruel," nonetheless.  She spoke specifically of two four-year-old chimps who were being parted forever.
	I say if those who do this cruelty are not aware of their cruelty,  we need to tell them.
	-Violet Soo-Hoo
San Francisco,  California

	Soo-Hoo wrote several days before controversy erupted over the planned transfer of Ruby,  a 42-year-old African elephant,  from the Los Angeles Zoo to the Knoxville Zoo,  which will unite her with five other female African elephants,  but will separate her from Gita,  45,  the Asian elephant who has been her companion since 1987. The transfer is opposed by In Defense of Animals.


Correction

	A photograph of a horse published on page 16 of our January/February 2003 edition was misidentified as having been taken by Shiranee Pereira of People for Animals "at a sanctuary operated by the Blue Cross of India,"  near Chennai.  Pereira actually took the photo at the PfA shelter in the Red Hills,  also near Chennai.



-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:07:42 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Hard times and hostile politics threaten street dogs and ABC
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Hard times and hostile politics threaten street dogs and ABC

	GOA,  MUMBAI,  BANGALORE,  PUNE,  CHENNAI,  NEW DELHI, VISAKHAPATNAM--Corruption,  caste politics,  ancient anti-dog prejudice,  and lack of funding for escalated street dog sterilization and vaccination threaten to reverse seven years of remarkable gains in India toward achieving world leadership in the humane population control of street dogs.
	Whether India will maintain pursuit of the official national goal declared in December 1997 of trying to accomplish no-kill animal control nationwide is now up to the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.
	Goa bench of the Bombay High Court Justices D.G. Deshpande and P.V. Hardas in January 2003 ruled that the grossly underfunded dog sterilization and vaccination efforts of nonprofit organizations have failed to reduce the dog population enough to protect public health,  and that the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act could allow high-volume dog-killing to resume.
	The 30-page Deshpande/Hardas verdict endorsed the position of plaintiff Rosario Menezes,  an organization called People for the Elimination of Stray Troubles,  and 38 local governments.
	But Deshpande and Hardas left the final decision as to whether or not dog-killing should resume up to the Chief Justice, who is expected to appoint a special panel to take the matter under advisement.
	With the verdict of the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court pending,  Justice N. Venkatachala of Bangalore also favored dog extermination in a 70-page ruling favoring Citizens for a Stray Dog Free Bangalore.
	Venkatachala,  said The Hindu,  wrote that World Health Organization rabies division chief F.X. Meslin has called the Indian street dog sterilization efforts a failure. What Meslin actually said was that they have not yet reached enough dogs to be completely successful.  Venkatachala reportedly also attributed to Meslin a claim that the World Society for the Protection of Animals does not oppose shooting or otherwise killing street dogs.  WSPA representative Joy Leney has outspokenly favored killing street dogs by lethal injection,  but not by cruder methods.
	Venkatachala characterized "the so-called stray dog-lovers" of India as a limousine-riding elite who are "unleashing terror by promoting Animal Birth Control,"  The Hindu stated.  Venkatachala went on to accuse Bangalore officials of "doling out public money to their favorite organizations in the guise of implementing animal birth control,"  even though the ABC programs in Bangalore,  as elsewhere,  are chiefly supported by private contributions and volunteer labor.
	"Street dogs under the ABC program receive modern vaccine (at public cost),"  Venkatachala wrote,  "whereas dog-bitten human victims receive outdated sheep brain vaccine.  This is against any tenets of philosophy,  reason,  and virtue,  and must not happen in any civilized society."
	A parallel controversy over the scarcity of modern post-rabies exposure vaccines erupted in Thiruvanathapuram.  The planned start of an ABC program there was delayed in March by opposition to the proposed clinic site.
	In fact,  the use of modern post-exposure anti-rabies vaccines in place of the vaccines cultivated in sheep brains has been vigorously urged and pursued for many years by the Animal Welfare Board of India,  the Blue Cross of India,  and People for Animals, which are respectively the Indian federal animal welfare agency,  the originator of the  ABC strategy,  and the organization administrating the most ABC programs nationwide.
Compassion Unlimited Plus Action,  conducting the largest ABC program in Bangalore,  also strongly endorses the use of modern post-exposure anti-rabies vaccines.
	So does Beauty Without Cruelty/ India,  the leading activist group in Pune,  where one Meghna Uniyal has mounted an aggressive campaign against ABC.
Commented People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi after Uniyal posted some of her anti-ABC remarks to the <HSI.Animalia> online discussion board maintained by the Humane Society of the U.S., "Uniyal and her husband Sujoy are involved in a battle over land with her relatives who run the Blue Cross in Pune,  which does the ABC for dogs.  First Uniyal said she wanted to do the ABC work if she were given the land used by the Blue Cross.  When the land was handed over to her,  she refused to accept it,  as the colleagues and doctors she had said were prepared to work with her were nonexistent."

Hydrophobia

	The use of the sheep brain post exposure vaccine persists largely because this type of vaccine is locally produced around India with the help of government subsidies,  Mrs. Gandhi told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 2001,  noting that the makers tend to be politically better connected than the animal advocates who urge their replacement--not only to help suppress rabies,  but also because the production method is cruel to sheep.
	Much of the opposition to the Indian ABC programs originates from fear of rabies,  endemic in India for centuries.  As recently as a decade ago rabies was still believed to be killing more than 20,000 Indians per year,  but that estimate has been discredited by the increasing recognition of outside experts that it was based on poorly coordinated data collection,  much speculative projection,  and a widespread tendency in India for people unfamiliar with rabies to describe any disease producing a high fever as being "rabies,"  if preceded by a dog bite.  Accordingly,  while actual rabies is inevitably fatal,  it is not unheard of in India for alleged rabies victims and rabid dogs to make miraculous recoveries.
	Dog-killing in response to fear of rabies was for decades a convenient means for corrupt politicians to keep local goondas on municipal payrolls,  whose real job was intimidating opponents. Selling dog leather became a lucrative side industry to animal control--and awarding contracts to process dead dogs also proved to be a politically handy way for politicians to dispense patronage among the lower caste illiterates who make up more than half of the Indian electorate.
	As opposition to dog-killing comes mainly from the Brahmins, other high-ranking vegetarian castes,  and Jains,  who also tend to be educated and of high socio-economic status,  humane concern for dogs is easily characterized by demagogues seeking the illiterate vote as a demonstration of the alleged disregard of the rich for the suffering of the poor.
	Yet this markedly misrepresents who the humane workers of India actually are.  Far from riding in limousines,  many do not even have automobiles.  Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath came to India as an almost penniless teenaged refugee from Bangladesh,  and still owns virtually nothing,  having put most of his personal income into the VSPCA work.  Many other Indian humane workers have sold their homes and property to help fund animal aid projects,  like Animal Welfare & Protection Trust cofounders C. Padmavathi and C. Narasimhamoorthy,  of Santhoshapuram,  who took up ABC work in retirement,  after witnessing illiterate and untrained municipal rabies control workers catching dogs with chains,  breaking the dogs' bones to inhibit escape,  and then drowning them in a garbage cart full of acidified water.
	Even the few humane workers like Blue Cross of India cofounder Chinny Krishna and Mrs. Gandhi who were born to relative privilege have earned more status than they inherited--Krishna as designer and builder of the radio telescopes used in the Indian space program,  and Mrs. Gandhi as a journalist and long-serving member of the Indian parliament.  Her support base among lower income women reflects an outstanding voting record on behalf of human rights, education, social justice,  and public health--and a reputation as the most incorruptible figure in Indian politics.

After Mrs. Gandhi

	Federal support for the 1997 national mandate to achieve no-kill animal control gained economic backing when in mid-1998 the Congress Party coalition that had ruled India for all but one year since 1949 collapsed and was succeeded by a coalition led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.  The coalition enlisted Mrs. Gandhi,  elected as an independent,  as minister for social justice and empowerment.  In that capacity,  and later as minister for culture and minister for statistics,  Mrs. Gandhi arranged federal funding for ABC programs,  but her influence waned as the BJP coalition gained strength in more recent elections.  Mrs. Gandhi lost her position in the BJP cabinet as result of mid-2002 clashes with the Indian pharmaceutical industry,  including the producers of sheep brain-based anti-rabies vaccines,  and with practitioners of animal sacrifice.  Although animal sacrifice has not been part of mainstream Hinduism since Vedic times,  and is technically illegal in India, animal sacrifice cults have considerable strength in some regions, and are politically aligned with fundamentalist Hindu nationalism,  a major branch of BJP support.
	Mrs. Gandhi was replaced as minister for animal welfare by T.R. Baalu,  a Chennai parlimentarian whose background was in the liquor industry.  Under Baalu,  federal funding for the ABC programs stopped.   With weeks the In Defense of Animals ABC hospital at Deonar,  a Mumbai suburb,  was forced to do sterilizations without electricity.  The Delhi Municipal Corporation ABC program acknowledged operating at 25% of the pace it had projected for the year,  while reported dog bites in Delhi jumped 20%.
	"The only good thing to come out of all this is that for the first time everyone realizes how much Maneka did to get a moribund government department to move and respond,"  Chinny Krishna told ANIMAL PEOPLE,  after the federal Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals was reconstructed to the liking of the pharmaceutical industry.  "It is imperative," he continued,  "that we seriously look for alternative sources of funding for the ABC initiatives,  so that there is no let-up.  Once any of the municipalities with ABC programs go back to killing,  it will be virtually impossible to stop it."  Krishna warned.
	Introducing ABC has been for Krishna almost a lifelong avocation.
"In 1964,"  he recalled,  "appalled by the horrific way that Madras was killing street dogs, the Blue Cross began to study this issue. We were surprised to learn that Madras (now called Chennai) started its catch-and-kill program in 1860.  From an average of less than one dog per day in 1860,  the number of dogs killed by the city rose to 135 dogs per day in 1995.  The Blue Cross was convinced that if a procedure designed to control or eliminate street dogs had not showed positive results after implementing it for over 100 years, something was wrong.  Starting in 1964,  the Blue Cross proposed ABC.  The municipal response was to reject our proposal outright.  It was not until 1995 that we were finally able to get the Corporation of Madras (Chennai) to agree to try out ABC as an alternative to killing dogs in part of South Madras."
	Although Mumbai halted animal control killing and started an ABC program in early 1994,  "Chennai and Jaipur were the first cities to begin sustained ABC,"  Krishna continued.  "Within six months, the results in the areas we covered were promising enough to prompt the city government to extend the program to the whole of South Madras.  People for Animals agreed to take up ABC in North Madras and the city converted its electrocution chamber into an ABC center.
	"We find a steady decrease in human rabies cases wherever an ABC program is carried out,"  Krishna stipulated.  "In Jaipur, the cases of rabies from the walled city where Help In Suffering is carrying out the ABC program is zero for the third year running.  In Kalimpong where the program has been carried out by an HIS associate, there has been no reported case for the last 15 months."
Data kept by municipal health departments confirms Krishna's claims:

City         Rabies deaths in      Rabies deaths
             year before ABC         in 2002
Bangalore          19 (2000)             4
Chennai           120 (1996)            16
Jaipur             10 (1996)             0
Kalimpong          10 (2000)             0

	"Several other cities have taken up ABC,  but in many cases it has not been a sustained,"  Krishna lamented.  "In many places where ABC was implemented, local officials suddenly ordered the destruction of dogs on a massive scale,  in a knee-jerk reaction to complaints,  and the dogs destroyed were usually those who had been spayed and vaccinated at great expense and effort,"  coming to trust humans as result of receiving humane care.
Hell on wheels
	Pradeep Kumar Nath ran into that problem in Visakhapatnam but eventually won over most of his critics by achieving the sterilization of up to 85% of the free-roaming dogs in the city within under four years of the start of the Visakha SPCA's ABC program.
	That,  however,  was just the start of his ambition.  The Visakha SPCA dog sterilization campaign is now moving out into the Visakhapatnam Circle of approximately 2,600 villages,  beyond the municipal limits.  Outreach to the first 92 villages is already underway--a considerable reach for an organization raising barely $50,000 a year,  but urgent,  Nath believes,  because of outbursts of anti-dog violence in December 2002.
	"Bheemunipatnam,  the second oldest incorporated municipality in India,  30 kilometres from Visakhapatnam,  resorted to killing stray dogs by beating them with sticks,"  Nath told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "Most of them ran around for some time in total chaos,  attacking anything in the way before falling down.  A small girl was severely bitten on the forehead.  This also happened at Gajuvaka municipality. As soon as the incidents were brought to our attention by representatives of Vikasa,  an organization working to help the fisher folk,  we began intervention.  The killings have stopped for now at Bhimli,  Gajuwaka,  the Visakha Steel Plant,  Anakapalle,  and the entire village area on the promise that we will extend the ABC program to them,  but we are having to operate in dual locations," due to the distance between the villages and the Visakha SPCA hospital.
	Photos that Nath e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on March 24 showed in unflinching detail exactly what Nath and his niece,  VSPCA hospital manager Swathi Buddhiraju,  are confronting.
	Dog control in Madhurvada,  another local village,  was until their arrival the job of collectors who packed as many dogs as they could into an iron cage on two wheels,  drawn behind a truck.  Dogs who did not suffocate from being piled on top of each other were bludgeoned.
	On the day the photos were taken,  Nath and Buddhiraju confronted the dogcatchers with a copy of the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.  The dogcatchers fled,  leaving the trailer behind.  Buddhiraju opened the cage while Nath documented the scene. Seventy-two dogs escaped,  leaving the remains of 23 others behind.
	Even a photo of dogs leaping to freedom,  over the corpses, was too horrific to publish in ANIMAL PEOPLE,  but the sequence can be forwarded electronically on request to those with a serious need to understand the context of Indian ABC work.
	"We are filing criminal charges against the persons responsible,"  Nath said.  "We would like to conduct ABC programs in all of the villages.  I would like to be a millionaire so that we would have the money."


ABC programs mentioned:

	Animal Welfare & Protection Trust,  788 Kalaignar Karunanidhi St.,  Santhoshapuram,  Chennai,  India 601 302;  telephone 91-44-227-5224.
	Blue Cross of India,  1-A Eldams Rd.,  Chennai 600 018, India;  91-44-234-1399;  fax 91-44-234-9801;  <aspick@kmr.net>.
	Compassion Unlimited Plus Action,  257 1st Cross,  Hall II Stage,  Indira Nagar,  Bangalore 560038,  India;  91-80-525-8429; fax 91-80-558-7172;  < "Suparna Baksi Ganguly" <suparnaganguly@hotmail.com>.
	People for Animals,  14 Ashoka Road,  New Delhi 110001, India;  91-11-335-5883;  fax 91-11-335-4321;    e-mail <gandhim@alpha.nic.in>.]
	Visakha SPCA,  26-15-200 Main Rd.,  Visakhapatnam,  India 530 001;  telephone 91-891-564-759;  fax 91-891-528-662; <vspcanath@satyam.net.in>



-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:08:04 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Hedgehog rescuers face a prickly situation off the Scottish coast
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Hedgehog rescuers face a prickly situation off the Scottish coast

	EDINBURGH--Operation Tiggywinkle was to commence at dawn on
March 27,  2003 in the Western Isles off Scotland.
	Ross Minott,  campaign director for the Scots group Advocates
for Animals,  was to lead a 20-member volunteer team ashore to try to
rescue an estimated 5,000 hedgehogs from the islands of North Uist,
Benbecula,  and South Uist,  ahead of death squads to be sent in
April by Scottish National Heritage.
The hedgehogs were introduced to the Western Isles in 1974 as an
attempted biological control for garden slugs and snails who annoyed
the 6,000 human residents of the islands.  Eventually the hedgehogs
came to be considered pests themselves.
	In December 2002 a six-year study commissioned by Scottish
National Heritage blamed the hedgehogs for declines of up to 60%
during the study period in the populations of dunlin,  lapwing,
redshank,  ringed plover,  oystercatchers,  and snipe.  The hedgehogs
have purportedly been killing off the wading birds by raiding their
nests to eat their eggs.
	The birds are protected by international treaty.  Hedgehogs,
whose mainland population is estimated at 1.5 million,  are not.
	Likened by Paul Kelbie,  Scotland correspondent for The
Independent,  to the "pillaging Vikings and English redcoat soldiers
hunting Bonnie Prince Charlie" who invaded the Western Isles in past
centuries,  the hedgehogs were condemned to death.
	Scottish Natural Heritage chair John Markland argued that
humane capture and repatriation to the mainland could not be done.
Fiona Stewart,  Fay Vass,  and Ann Salmond of the Hedgehog
Preservation Society,  Les Stocker of St. Tiggywinkle's wildlife
hospital in Aylesbury,  Buckinghamshire,  and Advocates for Animals
directors Minott and Les Ward were all unconvinced.
	All knew,  for example,  that hedgehogs have been captured
from the wild and relocated all over the world as exotic pets,  and
have proved surprisingly adaptable to many new environments.  Their
success in the Western Isles was itself an example of their
adaptability.
	When the hedgehog defenders failed to persuade the Scottish
Parliament to intervene,  they organized the attempted Dunkirk-like
evacuation,  using private aircraft to swiftly move as many hedgehogs
as can be captured.  The hedgehogs are to be relocated to suitable
habitat including the estates of Sir Paul McCartney and the Duchess
of Hamilton.
	The Mammal Trust volunteered to help,  but withdrew when the
organizers refused to allow biologists to put radio collars on the
relocated hedgehogs to trace their fate.  The scheme was opposed
because of growing indications that radio-collared animals of all
sorts have higher mortality than non-collared animals,  possibly
because the sounds the collars emit are audible to some predators,
and possibly because the collars inhibit evasive maneuvers.
	The rescue effort was bitterly attacked by Alasdair Morrison,
the Western Isles member of the Scottish Parliament.
	"Those who want to transfer the hedgehogs elsewhere are
willing to risk extreme trauma and leave them prey to more savage
predators,"  he said.  "These hedgehogs have adapted to life foraging
on seashores,  not in lush forests.  They are unequipped for mainland
Britain,"  Morrsion told Kelbie of The Independent,  "and will face
vicious deaths from foxes,  badgers,  and every other roving predator
because of do-gooders who cannot face practical,  common-sense
solutions that are best for all."
	But if the hedgehogs themselves had a say,  they would
undoubtedly prefer taking their chances against the four-legged
predators over dealing with the human kind.
	The massacre by Scottish Natural Heritage awaiting any
hedgehogs who evade rescue is only one of many planned for the
British Isles in 2003.
	The European Union has already helped to fund a £1.65 million
effort to eradicate mink from the Uists and Benbecula.  The mink are
descended from hundreds who either escaped from fur farms during the
past few decades,  or were released by saboteurs.  Fur farming is now
banned,  and feral nutria,  another species introduced accidentally
by the fur trade,  have already been extirpated,  but mink have
proved more elusive.  The Western Isles mink extermination effort
last fall included the use of nine mink hounds,  and became an
campaign exhibit for opponents of the Scots ban on hounding wildlife
and the long debated proposed ban on hounding in Britain.
	The British Environment Agency and Suffolk Wildlife Trust are
currently planning a national putsch against mink,  to try to save
the water vole.  Mink are blamed for reducing the water vole
population from about nine million in 1980 to circa 800,000 today.


Ruddy ducks

	Responding to demands from the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds,  the Wildlife Trust,  and the Wildfowl and
Wetlands Trusts,  British wildlife minister Elliott Morley on March 2
ordered the extermination of the entire resident population of 6,000
ruddy ducks,  introduced from North America after World War II by Sir
Peter Scott.
	Scott,  an avid duck hunter,  founded both the Wildfowl and
Wetlands Trusts and the World Wildlife Fund.  He imported the ruddy
ducks to become a huntable population.  But he apparently did not
realize that though officially classified as a separate species from
the white-headed duck,  an annual migrant between Britain and Spain,
they are biologically just a color morph of the same species--and
when the colors mingle,  the ruddy tones prevail.
	Spain has since 1977 been attempting to preserve a "pure"
race of white-headed ducks.  The initial population of 22 has slowly
increased to 2,500--about the same number as the volume of ruddy
ducks shot in test culls during the past three years to perfect
methods of killing the rest.
	The final impetus to the extermination of the British ruddy
ducks was the war in Iraq,  which Birdlife Inter-national warned
might harm the only white-headed ducks who winter outside of Spain.
That flock winters near Basra.
	Animal Aid director Andrew Tyler called the ruddy duck
killing "grotesque and hypocritical,  an attempt to impose a kind of
genetic uniformity on nature,"  and suggested that the RSPB "should
be called the Royal Society for the Protection of Some Birds."
	Tyler also pointed out that for the projected cost of the
killing,  all 6,000 ruddy ducks could be flown back to North America
at business class fares.
	The RSPB is also poisoning the black rats of Lundy Island in
the Bristol Channel this spring,  to protect puffins and manx
shearwaters.  The puffin population of the island has reportedly
fallen from 3,500 pairs in 1939 to fewer than 10 pairs in 2000,  when
they were most recently counted.
	Animal Aid campaigns director Becky Lilly suggested to BBC
News that overfishing,  cutting into the birds' food supplies,  might
be harming them more than the rats.
	British red squirrel advocates are pushing for massacres of
feral North American gray squirrels,  who have become the dominant
squirrel species in much of England and Scotland.
	Sterling University researcher Dan Tomkins reported in late
March that the major factor favoring gray squirrels over reds may be
the paropox virus,  carried by gray squirrels but more harmful to
reds.  Human-planted woodland corridors intended to help red
squirrels by linking habitats,  Tomkins said,  are actually just
bringing the greys and reds into closer contact.  Changing the tree
varieties chosen for planting could help to keep the species
separate,  while thinning the gray squirrel population might just
encourage infected survivors to roam farther and socialize more with
red squirrels in search of mates.


--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:10:45 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: British ad media "chicken out"
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


British ad media "chicken out"

          LONDON--London Underground,  responsible for London subway operations,  according to the BBC in February 2003 refused as "offensive" a Compassion In World Farming ad that "featured scantily-clad models huddled together on one side of a poster and chickens on a farm on the other."  The ad was reportedly captioned "Thousands of big-breasted birds packed together for your pleasure."
              The CIWF ad was at least the second critical message about poultry husbandry to be banned in Britain.  In November 2001 the Broadcasting Advert-ising Clearance Centre banned a 30-second Royal SPCA ad contrasting the growth rate of layer hens to the hormone-stimulated growth rate of broiler hens,  "on the basis,"  the RSPCA said,  "that it was controversial and seemed to attack the industry."


-- 
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 16:11:10 -0700
From: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Subject: Civil disobedience comes to farm country
X-Sender: anmlpepl@mail.whidbey.com
To: gsa@optonline.net
Original-recipient: rfc822;gsa@optonline.net

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  April 2003--


Civil disobedience comes to farm country

	ITHACA,  TOLEDO,  SALT LAKE CITY,  TEXAS CITY,  TWIN
FALLS--Purported anti-terrorism bills pushed in recent legislative
sessions by lawmakers in Texas,  Oregon,  Utah,  and Pennsylvania,
among other states,  have sought to criminalize almost any
unauthorized exposure of anything done in the name of agriculture.
	Factory farmers are finding that even when they win
convictions of activists who enter their property to rescue animals
and document suffering,  they lose in the court of public opinion.
Prosecuting rescuers,  moreover,  appears to increase the public
perception that the farmers are cruel--even when the farms are
traditional family operations.
	Consider the case of Susan E. Costen.
	Costen,  38,  a farm manager for the Ithaca,  New York branch
of Farm Sanctuary,  on November 22,  2002 responded to a call about
an injured lamb by visiting the property of sheep farmer Rory Miller,
in the nearby village of Tyrone.  Finding that Miller was not home,
Costen entered the barn,  found the lamb,  and took him to the
Cornell University veterinary teaching hospital,  where he was
euthanized.
	On December 3 Costen was charged with third degree felony
burglary.  The charge was reduced to misdemeanor criminal trespass on
January 27,  because Costen had no prior criminal record.
	After Farm Sanctuary cofounder Gene Bauston publicized the
case in an e-mail alert,  Schuyler County district attorney Joseph
Fazzary received more than 1,500 messages urging him to drop all
charges.
	Instead Fazzary pressed the case.
	Costen on March 17 plea-bargained a sentence of 100 hours of
community service,  and was ordered to write Miller a letter of
apology,  to accompany restitution of $200 to Miller for the lost
value of the lamb.
	But Miller won little if any sympathy from nationally
syndicated news coverage of the case.  Costen,  conversely,  was
widely praised as a Good Samaritan
	Bauston may have anticipated that public opinion would favor
Costen from his own experience in 2000,  after he rescued two
chickens from a trash can on the property of the New Jersey egg
producer ISE America.  Bauston won a rare cruelty conviction against
ISE America,  which was fined $250 plus court costs.
	The ISE America defense attorney sought  immunity from
prosecution under the New Jersey Right-to-Farm Act,  whch pertains to
waste disposal.
	Asked Central Warren Municipal Court Judge Joseph Steinhardt,
"Isn't there a big distinction between manure and live animals?"
	Responded the ISE defense,  "No,  your honor."
	Even had ISE been acquitted,  those three words made for
Bauston the very point that he had hoped to make:  factory farmers
treat their animals like refuse.

A hen named Hope

	As the Costen case was resolved, prosecutor Richard Howell of
Darke County,  Ohio,  was still reviewing competing complaints
brought to him weeks earlier by Weaver Brothers Egg Farm president
Tim Weaver and teenagers Nathan Runkle and Derek Koons,  cofounders
of the local activist group Mercy for Animals.
	After videotaping conditions at the Buckeye and Delay egg
farms in 2001,  Runkle and Koons in December 2002 conducted an
unauthorized videotaped inspection of Weaver Brothers.
	"We documented really callous acts of egregious cruelty,
neglect,  and abuse to the hens,"  Runkle told Columbus Blade
regional bureau chief James Drew.
	Runkle and Koons also rescued a hen they named Hope.  For
that,  Weaver reportedly asked that Runkle and Koons be charged with
trespassing and theft.  The Ohio Department of Agriculture called
their work a "biosecurity hazard."  United Egg Producers,  Inc.,
indirectly accused Runkle and Koons of "bioterrorism."
	But the heated rhetoric did not seem to convince the public,
especially when Hope the hen joined the innocuous-appearing Runkle
and Koons for TV interviews.

Courting arrest

	Compassion Over Killing founder Paul Shapiro,  23,  and
director Myun Park,  32,  of Washington D.C.,  "court arrest by
entering chicken sheds at night and filming the rows of hens crammed
10 to a cage the size of a file-drawer cabinet,"  Elizabeth Becker of
The New York Times reported in December 2002,  after the COK team
made at least their third visit to Red Bird Egg Farms,  of
Millington,  Maryland.
	"They get close-ups of swollen eyes,  infected skin,  and
shattered wings entangled in cage wire,"  Becker continued.
	Yet despite "courting arrest,"  Shapiro and Park do not
actually seem to be getting arrested for their work,  even after
rescuing 10 hens from Red Bird Egg Farms on November 20,  2002.  This
may be because agribusiness in the media-savvy Washington D.C. area
is aware that prosecuting them could become a public relations fiasco.
	The hens taken in November "were in dire need of immediate
care,"  claimed a COK account of the action.  "These hens will live
out the rest of their lives free from the misery of factory farming,"
COK pledged.
	Altogether,  says the COK web site,  "Five investigations at
commercial egg farms in the U.S. have been conducted in just two
years.  Documentation of extreme cruelty at facilities in Minnesota,
Maryland,  and Ohio demonstrates that animal abuse is the norm, not
the exception, in commercial egg production.  The six major egg
producers exposed in the five investigations since January 2001 are
not the 'bad apples,' of the egg industry,  but rather reflect the
inherent problems of keeping hens in battery cages."

Circle Four

	United Animal Rights Coalition founder Sean Diener,  of Salt
Lake City,  Utah, meanwhile spent the winter of 2002-2003 daring
Circle Four Farms and Beaver County Sheriff Ken Yardley to prosecute
UARC members who in September and December 2002 entered some of the
Circle Four hog barns at Milford,  Utah,  without permission to
photograph and videotape the conditions.
	As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press,  no charges had been filed.
	On December 20,  Diener told news media,  the UARC intruders
removed two small sickly piglets,  restored them to health,  and
eventually placed them at a sanctuary.
	Circle Four,  the 15th largest hog producer in the U.S.,
sends a million pigs per year to slaughter.  Management had not even
noticed that any piglets were missing.  After Diener disclosed the
incident,  however,  Circle Four asked Yardley to prosecute,  setting
a value of $30 apiece on the piglets.
	"In Utah,  farmers are not subject to animal cruelty laws,
but stealing one of their animals is considered a felony,"  pointed
out Brent Israelsen of the Salt Lake City Tribune.
	Circle Four Farms operations manager Erik Jacobsen,  like
United Egg Producers in Ohio,  tried to play on fears of terrorism.
	"It concerns us greatly that someone would break into our
farms,  especially in light of national concern about bioterrorism,"
Jacobsen declared.  "These people put our herd at risk because they
didn't follow our biosecurity protocol."
	But Diener said his team did wear the kinds of protective
clothing that Circle Four employees are required to wear.
	The concern professed by Circle Four sounded hollow,  in any
event,  beside the documented history of the facility as a biological
safety hazard.
	Starting to raise hogs in 1995,  Circle Four was fined $6,800
for contaminating groundwater with an estimated 80,000 gallons of
liquefied manure in mid-1996.  Circle Four was fined again in 1998
after nine workers were overcome by hog manure fumes in two separate
incidents.  Other manure leakage incidents occurred in 1999,  2000,
and 2001,  bringing another $35,000 in fines.
	The Utah Bureau of Epidemiology disclosed in January 2000
that residents of Milford had suffered elevated rates of
diarrhea-causing illnesses and respiratory illnesses,  1992-1998,
with 409 diarrheal illnesses and 517 respiratory illnesses per 10,000
residents in 1997.  The statewide rate of diarrheal illness was
20/10,000,  and the statewide rate of respiratory illness was
73/10,000.
	Because the data showed a rising trend even before Circle
Four opened,  the relationship of the symptoms to alleged air and
water contamination was unclear,  but the problems surged after
Circle Four expanded up to full-scale operation.
	A faulty ventilation system contributed to the deaths of
12,000 pigs in a July 2001 fire at Circle Four.  Another ventilation
problem killed 45 sows in November 2002.
	After years of obtaining legislative concessions to fend off
complaining neighbors,  Circle Four in February 2003 announced that
it will invest $20 million in building a refinery which is intended
to prevent pollution by converting hog slurry into diesel fuel.
	The controversy ignited by the UARC activity escalated in
late January 2003 when former Circle Four employees Wayne and Krysta
Jenson,  of Cedar City,  Utah,  described to news media the abuses of
pigs they had witnessed.
	Starting work at Circle Four on November 28,  2001,  the
Jensons quit just 16 days later,  they said,  after seeing piglets
who failed to grow to five pounds in weight within a week being
beaten to death and seeing castrations awkwardly performed with dull
tools and no anesthetic.  Raised on a sheep ranch where castration of
young rams without anesthetic was also a routine chore,  Wayne Jenson
said he saw piglets disembowled by the ineptitude of some workers at
Circle Four.
	Wayne Jenson also described severe beatings of sows who
resisted being moved.
	Krysta Jenson described the frantic behavior of sows whose
piglets had just been taken away to be fattened for slaughter.
	Responded National Pork Board assistant vice president for
veterinary issues Paul Sundberg,  "I'm not so sure I would subscribe
to the theory that this is a traumatic experience to the mother."
	This may not have reassured many human mothers,  and
contradicted the standard training of hog handlers,  who are
typically warned that sows can become quite dangerous if they sense
that their piglets are in jeopardy.
Open rescue
	"Open rescue,"  as Australian animal advocate Patty Mark
terms the tactic of removing sick and injured animals from factory
farms and then publicizing the cases,  has been practiced for at
least a decade Down Under.
	"We began our open rescue work in 1993,"  Mark told ANIMAL
PEOPLE.  Mark at the time had already been campaigning on behalf of
farm animals,  especially battery-caged hens,  for a dozen years,
but like other farm animal advocates had enjoyed little success.
Among farm animal causes,  only the suffering of sheep in live export
attracted much media attention Down Under,  and even within the
animal rights movement the most prominent concerns involved dogs,
cats,  wildlife,  and animals used in laboratories.
	Mark and friends turned to open rescue more-or-less as a
desperation tactic--but it proved to be perhaps the most effective
form of civil disobedience yet undertaken in connection with any
animal issue.
	"If there is no damage done,  only rescue of animals,  and if
the TV footage shows these very ill and crippled little birds being
lovingly held and given aid,  then all the sympathy is with the
rescuers,"  Mark told ANIMAL PEOPLE.  "This has been born out time
and time again,  every time we are in the courts.  At this point in
time it is almost impossible for our rescue team to get arrested.
The industry wants nothing to do with this and never presses charges
any more.  We can virtually break-and-enter at any factory farm we
choose.  I think the industry has realized,"  Mark continued,   "that
us taking the sick and injured and dead birds out of the cages does
them far less damage than when there is a big court case.  But this
only developed after we had a ten-year run of really good media
against the industry,  while our rescue team had never encountered
any adverse response from the public."
	Following the rescue of 20 broiler chickens in January 2003,
Mark said,  "I even  wrote to the Chief Commissioner of Police
stating that we had broken the door down to get in,"  and giving
further details of allegedly illegal acts committed to retrieve the
birds.  "This letter was totally ignored.  I also rang the local
police station near the factory farm,"  Mark added,  "and they too
totally ignored me.  I was convicted of burglary and theft in
connection with a rescue in Tasmania last year,"  Mark acknowledged.
"The magistrate then let myself and co-defendant Pam Clarke walk free
from the courtroom after the verdict,  even though we said we would
not pay the fine he gave us,  and each owe thousands of dollars in
unpaid previous fines."
	Mark recently founded the web site <www.openrescue.org> to
encourage and document the spread of open rescue to the U.S.,
Europe,  and elsewhere.
	According to a detailed account posted to the site,  the
Austrian organization Verein Gegen Tierfabriken (Association Against
Animal Factories) "conducted the first known European open rescue of
battery hens" on March 14,  2003.
	The Austrian activists and several reporters "entered a
battery farm owned by Florian Zichtl in Lower Austria,"  the web
account states,  documenting "poisonous air,"  cages with 17% less
space than European Union regulations require,  "15 dead hens inside
cages,  and seriously injured and weak and dying birds everywhere.
We took seven birds with us,"  the rescuers said,  "and drove
straight to an emergency vet in Vienna.  We reported the rescue to
the authorities,  and detailed nine charges of broken animal
husbandry laws.  We submitted photographs and video footage of the
conditions inside the shed.  The rescue received good media
coverage,"  they continued,  "and whether a case will be brought
against the rescuers is still open."

Opposition

	The U.S. state-level legislative efforts of agribusiness to
squelch public discomfort about animal care on factory farms by
preventing exposure parallels earlier pursuit of similar legislation
by the biomedical research industry.  It may likewise misjudge the
level of mainstream revulsion against cruelty that the public can
easily recognize.
	Eleven years after PETA stopped experiments by primate
researcher Edward Taub and seven years after PETA and 1	Trans-Species
Unlimited ended primate skull-crushing at the University of
Pennsylvania,  each through the use of clandestinely obtained photos
and videotape,  biomedical research lobbyists backed by agribusiness
and the fur trade at last won passage of the 1992 federal Animal
Enterprise Protection Act.
	Yet if the10-year lobbying effort accomplished anything
substantive to ease public mistrust of biomedical research,  the
evidence is not visible.  Rarely used,  the Animal Enterprise
Protection Act has helped to put some alleged Animal Liberation Front
members in prison for bombings and arsons,  but these activities were
already illegal,  and crossing state lines to commit them already
brought the crimes under federal jurisdiction.
	The Animal Enterprise Protection Act does not appear to have
stifled the flow of clandestinely obtained information about either
laboratory activities or agribusiness to activist groups and news
media--not least because much of the most damaging material has come
all along from biomedical researchers and agribusiness insiders,  who
share the objections of activists to avoidable animal suffering.
	A long series of insider leaks to In Defense of Animals and
other activist groups,  for instance,  brought the Coulston
Foundation to economic collapse in early 2002,  followed by the
mid-year transfer of the Coulston chimpanzee colony to the custody of
the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care in Florida.
	Opinion research continues to show,  as in the 1980s,  that
the public has an adverse response to arsons and vandalism committed
in the name of animal rights,  but generally sees as justified any
nonviolent clandestine activity that rescues a suffering animal.
	Still more culturally indicative,  however,  may be the
changing response of agricultural communities to disclosures about
routine cruelties that as recently as a decade ago were mainly
ignored,  and were denied when pointed out by activists.
	In Texas City,  Texas,  for example,  the Texas City Sun in
January 2003 gave prominent attention to the allegation of Runge Park
livestock auction neighbor Amanda Bradshaw that a dying cow was
improperly left to freeze outdoors,  and was roughly chained and
dragged after she called local police and the Galveston County
sheriff.
	In Twin Falls,  Idaho,  the Twin Falls Times-News even more
heavily covered similar allegations against Dutch Touch Dairy owners
and prominent local philanthropists Jack and Tillie Tuls--but the
Tuls case involved many animals,  over many months.
	Claims that Jack Tuls mistreated "downers" first surfaced in
August 2002 after contractor Michael Cody Prestin sued the Dutch
Touch Dairy for nonpayment of debts,  and former Dutch Touch office
secretary Jo Anderson resigned.
	On December 27,  2002,  the Times-News filed a public records
request with the Idaho Department of Agriculture to obtain inspection
reports on the alleged incidents produced by state dairy inspector
Tami Frank.
	A month later Times-News reporter Jennifer Sandmann revealed
that criminal charges would not be pursued,  "although state
investigators say they found evidence of animal cruelty,  including
burial of a live cow and inhumane treatment of sick and dying cows."
	Jack and Tillie Tuls did,  however,  pay a fine of $5,000 for
improper disposal of dead animals.
	The Sandmann exposŽ of the evidence against them was among
the longest articles produced by the Times-News staff in the first
quarter of 2003.
A decade ago such detailed accounts --and such vigorous
follow-up--were provided only by a few animal rights groups.
Discussion of the treatment of "downers" in farm country periodicals,
reflecting the attitudes of their audience, mostly railed against
"city people" and "do-gooders" who purportedly did not know where
their food came from.
	Maintaining denial that farm animals suffer  is getting
harder--even in farm country.
--M.C.


--
Merritt Clifton
Editor,  ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton,  WA  98236

Telephone:  360-579-2505
Fax:  360-579-2575
E-mail:  anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web:  www.animalpeoplenews.org

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing
original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992.  Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the
decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.
We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]