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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:

Editorial: Learning from the Glendale Creek beaver disaster

ANIMAL PEOPLE is headquartered at the top of a steep hill rising above Glendale Creek. Formed from 5,000 to 9,000 years ago by runoff from a melting glacier, Glendale Creek cut a deep ravine through which it flows for about three miles before draining into Puget Sound at the 10-house village of Glendale.
Glendale a century ago was the chief link between South Whidbey Island and the mainland. Steam-powered ferries stopped there. The first car dealership on the island perched precariously beside Glendale Creek. A narrow gauge railway, built in 1900, ran from the water's edge at low tide into the interior of the island. Eventually about 10 miles long, it hauled huge cedar logs down to the Sound, where they were floated off of flat cars and tied into rafts to be tugged to Seattle.
The logging predictably created soil erosion. Loss of topsoil led to loss of ground covering vegetation and flash floods, but the loggers, the farmers who followed them to work the land, and the hunters and fishers who came from the mainland for holidays of recreational mayhem were all preoccupied with killing most of the wildlife who survived the tree-cutting.
Circa 1910 a wall of water from a sudden storm roared down the creek, destroyed the railway trestle, leaving just one cement pier, and started Glendale toward economic oblivion. The railway never ran again. The tracks were removed in a 1942 scrap iron drive. The ferry landing shifted four miles north to Clinton in 1926.
Beavers either survived or were reintroduced at some point along Maxwelton Creek, a similar stream about five miles west. When Maxwelton residents complained about beavers flooding fields and blocking culverts, the Washington state wildlife department in the mid-1990s proposed moving some of them to Glendale Creek to help restore the salmon run. Amid the ensuing debate over the possible impact on property values, both the beavers and the salmon restored themselves to Glendale Creek, along with river otters. The salmon spawned below a road culvert about 50 yards south of the old railway route. The beavers built dams in a spring-fed marsh about two miles northwest, where the creek rises. The otters roamed the length of the creek and rivaled raccoons in exploiting neighbors' goldfish ponds.
Coyotes apparently kept the beaver population from becoming fully self-sustaining. At times the marsh was without beavers for a year or more, before dispersing young from Maxwelton Creek recolonized it. Last summer just one lone bachelor beaver found his way there, according to the keenest local observers. First he built a dam 50 yards long to try to attract a female, impounding an estimated 3.5 million gallons of water. Then he apparently journeyed back to Maxwelton to try to get a female to follow him home. He appeared to be returning from Maxwelton, still alone, when roadkilled about half a mile west of his dam.
With no beaver to maintain the dam, it broke after heavy rainfall in the first days of April 2009. The surge washed debris into the culvert below the old railway route, causing water to saturate the road embankment. As water backed up the ravine, a county maintenance crew tried desperately to use pumps to ease the pressure on the embankment. At 3:00 a.m. on April 2, firefighters warned Glendale residents to evacuate. Between three and four hours later a wave hurled broken asphalt and fallen trees through the wall of the former Ford dealership, half a mile below, and inundated the remnants of the village beneath three feet of mud.
The damage was spectacular enough to make the national CNN television news that day, occasioning concerned calls from as far away as Montreal and South Carolina.
A sixty-foot-wide, 30-foot-deep gap now interrupts the road between ANIMAL PEOPLE and our post office box, adding time and distance to the daily round trip. Yet despite the inconvenience and the mess, much of the local response centers on the hope that the culvert will be replaced with a structure that better accommodates the needs of the salmon, beaver, and otter. Some neighbors who have suffered major property damage are mourning the loss of the beaver.
Despite the amount of attention the Glendale Creek washout attracted, it was by no means unique. Culvert washouts and flooding associated with beaver dams are among the most publicized sources of conflict between humans and wildlife throughout the U.S. and Canada. Controversies over trapping beavers and destroying dams to prevent washouts and flooding occur in about 30 states per year.
Ironically, in many cases, including the Glendale Creek washout, more beavers are better than fewer. In most cases of beavers impounding too much water in a problematic location, the issue can be quickly resolved by deploying a leveler or a "beaver baffler."
A leveler is a long piece of perforated plastic pipe, thrust through a dam at whatever height would be safe for rising water to level off. Beavers instinctively respond to the sound of rushing water by plugging the hole it is rushing through, but the number of holes in a long pipe tends to thwart them. As rapidly as one hole is stopped up, another re-opens.
A "beaver baffler" is most often a rolled piece of wire fence attached to the mouth of a culvert. It uses the same strategy to keep beavers from damming culverts.
The most frequent issue associated with beaver dams these days is that state wildlife agencies use the purported threat of beaver damage as a pretext for promoting fur trapping--from which the agencies collect license fees and, in some states, pelt royalties.
The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife is especially notorious for citing beaver problems in seeking to repeal or evade the intent of a 1996 voter-passed initiative banning leghold traps and a 2001 law that transferred the authority to issue licenses for "emergency" trapping to the state health board.
In January 2009, for instance, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife Northeast district manager Patricia Huckery asserted to Boston Globe correspondent Connie Paige that "we don't really have predators that control beaver any more, such as wolves, so they're not being killed naturally." This distortion overlooked that coyotes, not wolves, are the most prolific beaver predators, and are abundant in Massachusetts, following the recovery of the beaver population from just a handful of animals 50 years ago to more than 70,000 today. Oregon State University ecologists William Ripple and Robert Beschta meanwhile found that within three years of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, the Yellowstone coyote population plummeted by half, while the beaver population soared by 900%.

Choosing who to live with

The lesson, from Glendale Creek to Cape Cod and all points north and south, is that living with nature is much easier than trying to fight nature. Most often, nature provides the solution to problems resulting from natural events--if humans take the time to examine and understand what is really happening.
Human conflict with wildlife typically results from killing one animal, either by intent or accident, without regard to the consequences for other species. Among the best known examples, intensive fox trapping in the mid-20th century helped coyotes to triple their range. Intensive raccoon trapping in the 1970s and 1980s enabled non-migratory Canada geese to proliferate into nuisances, because raccoons are voracious nest predators.
Intolerance of any species whom a habitat supports in abundance tends to have unhappy consequences. Purging street dogs usually enables feral cats to take over their former food sources, at a ratio of about three cats replacing each dog. In some habitats, feral pigs or monkeys replace the dogs instead. If cats, pigs, and monkeys cannot fill the void, rat population explosions follow, and disease carried by rat parasites, such as the outbreak of bubonic plague that followed a campaign to poison street dogs in Surat, India in 1994.
Pontificating about the virtue and necessity of learning to live with wildlife, including street animals, is of course much easier than introducing the insights and tactical skills that prevent conflicts. Practically speaking, most people will only tolerate animal behavior until it begins to cause them frequent irritation. Expecting people to accept significant inconvenience, property damage, or any risk to personal health and security is unrealistic. Our own evolution as an animal species has always been in the direction of increasing our ability to manipulate the environment to suit our interests. The issue, for animal advocates, is to encourage habitat adjustments that provide what people want, while accommodating animal needs.
Sometimes the way to do this is relatively obvious. For example, if people in developing nations wish to reduce their populations of street dogs--and not have to contend with feral pigs, monkeys, or feral cats either--the solution is to introduce refrigeration and improve sanitation, so as to reduce the volume of food waste that sustains street animals.
Sometimes the issue is multi-faceted. Neuter/return caught on in the U.S. nearly 20 years ago as an effective approach to feral cat population control, bringing declines of about 75% in the numbers of feral cats at large and the numbers of cats brought to animal shelters.
Birders should have welcomed the resultant reduction in cat predation on birds. But reducing the numbers of cats at large enabled wild bird predators to recover and exploit the same prey base. At the same time, bird populations were hit by climate change; bird collisions with newly built microwave transmission towers, wind turbines, and ever more tall lighted buildings; and loss of forest understory nesting habitat due to fast-growing deer populations. Until these new challenges were recognized, cats took the blame, and are still blamed by many birders.
The American Bird Conservancy and Humane Society of the U.S. responded with their "Cats Indoors" campaign. Already, before this campaign ever started, about half of all cat-keepers kept their cats indoors. Because indoor cats live so much longer, the indoor cat-keepers kept about two-thirds of all pet cats. Since the "Cats Indoors" campaign debuted, the indoor pet cat population appears to have risen from about 50 million to more than 60 million. But the total pet cat population has grown from about 75 million to nearly 90 million. Most people who have just begun to keep cats in recent years appear to be accepting the "Cats Indoors" message as a part of basic cat care, but not all of them. People who let their cats roam mostly have not amended their behavior.
The net effect of neuter/return plus "Cats Indoors," in combination with the overall increase in the number of pet cats, is that the sum of cats outdoors, pets and ferals combined, appears to have remained in the range of 30 to 40 million ever since John Marbanks did his comprehensive population studies in 1947-1950.
Not all people who allow their cats to roam are doing it just out of habit, or negligence, or perceived irresponsibility. Countering "Cats Indoors" is a growing "Cats Outdoors" faction, who argue that outdoor cats fill an ecological and cultural role in urban and suburban habitat, and that keeping cats indoors is unnatural and cruel.
Among the most prominent "Cats Outdoors" advocates is Redemption author and 2009 No-Kill Conference organizer Nathan Winograd, who has spent almost his whole life in humane work and animal rights campaigning. Winograd appears to accept that a cat living a "natural" life outdoors must learn to evade natural predators, but "Cats Outdoors" advocate Judith Webster, of Vancouver, argues in essence that urban coyotes should be exterminated to keep the sidewalks "safe" for cats.
Since coyotes are at large in Vancouver, Webster has built a fenced outdoor play area for her cats, and keeps an eye on them with costly remote cameras.
Establishing public policy that balances the conflicting perceptions and interests of birders, neuter/return practicioners. and urban wildlife enthusiasts was difficult enough before "Cats Outdoors" people began organizing to counter the goals of "Cats Indoors." Demographics suggest that "Cats Outdoors" will never represent more than a small minority of cat-keepers, but having articulate, affluent, and politically savvy leadership suggests that this faction cannot be casually dismissed.
The common issue in discussing either problematic wildlife, street animals, or outdoor cats is ultimately the human choice of which animals to live with.

Living next door to a pit bull

INDIANAPOLIS--An online poll conducted by WTHR-TV found 69% community support for Indianapolis council member Mike Speedy's proposed At Risk Dogs ordinance, against 26% opposition and 5% undecided.
The ordinance would require sterilizing pit bull terriers.
"1,988 people participated. With all of the critical comments on the stories from pit bull fans, I'm surprised so many voted in favor. Keep in mind our poll is not scientific, meaning it would be easy to skew with coordinated effort," said Sara Galer of WTHR.
ANIMAL PEOPLE findings suggest that the WTHR results are actually close to residual public opinion nationwide, and are unique chiefly in attracting enough input to overcome attempts to skew it.
Uncontrolled online surveys similar to the WTHR poll often follow local reportage of dog attack fatalities and disfigurements, about 75% of which are inflicted by pit bulls and Rottweilers. Monitoring such surveys, ANIMAL PEOPLE has observed that the initial response usually skews heavily in favor of breed-specific legislation, but after the first few dozen votes are recorded, input tips abruptly the other way-- unless the poll is quickly closed. Organized response tends to come chiefly from opponents of breed-specific legislation, but dog attack victims and their families sometimes try to rally counter-response.
ANIMAL PEOPLE wondered if the usual early poll tilt in favor of breed-specific legislation reflected residual opinion, likely to be found in any survey at any time, or just reaction to local incidents. Finding a definitive answer might require polling thousands. But a tightly controlled small survey of people from places where there have not been recent pit bull attacks or legislative debate might provide clues.
ANIMAL PEOPLE surveyed several dozen volunteers from among the membership of two professional societies having no direct involvement with animal issues. The volunteers were not told in advance what they would be asked about. They were asked only three basic questions, but membership directory information permitted tracking many biographical variables.
Except for having more formal education than most Americans, the respondents in composite mirrored U.S. demographic norms, including in urban/rural balance, geographic distribution, income range, and response from visible minorities. More men responded than women, reflective of the membership of the societies, so proportional weighting was used to achieve gender balance.
68%, including 71% of the men and 62% of the women, agreed that they would prefer not to live next door to a pit bull. 28%--29% of the men but only 21% of the women--did not object to living next door to a pit bull.
Four percent of the respondents had a pit bull, about equal to the rate of keeping pit bulls in the general population. 76% of respondents had pets, far above the U.S. norm of 57%; 24% had children, all of whom also had pets; 24% had neither pets nor children.
No men were undecided about living next to a pit bull, but 18% of the women were undecided, all of whom had pets but no children living at home.
Among all respondents with pets, 69% would prefer not to live next door to a pit bull. Among all respondents with children at home, 80% would prefer not to live next door to a pit bull. Among all respondents who had ever had children, 86% would prefer not to live next door to a pit bull.

Obituaries

Victoria Wellens, 58, died of cancer on March 28, 2009. Executive director of the Wisconsin Humane Society since 2004, Wellens arrived with no background in animal work, but had worked in child welfare. She inherited dilapidated premises, a factionalized and demoralized staff, a high rate of shelter killing, animal control contracts with 19 cities, and adversarial relationships with other humane organizations and local media. Her first action was to make the Wisconsin Humane premises child-friendly. Eliminating sharp-edged furniture, harsh language, and any activity or posters that would easily upset a child tended to produce a more comfortable environment for staff and volunteers. Dropping the animal control contracts, which Wellens saw as the source of most of the stress within Wisconsin Humane, Wellens helped the cities to form the Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission. Both MADACC and Wisconsin Humane built new shelters, opened in 1999. Designed to resemble a shopping mall, the new Wisconsin Humane shelter sparked a revolution in shelter design, with influence evident from Portland, Oregon, to Richmond, Virginia. Wellens meanwhile stepped up the Wisconsin Humane sterilization program, and began helping feral cat rescuers. This helped to cut the numbers of animals killed in greater Milwaukee area shelters from 20.0 per 1,000 human residents in 1995 to 10.5 in 1999, and only 4.1 a year later, in the initial year of a five-year contract that gave Wisconsin Humane the first right of refusal on any animal deemed adoptable by the MADACC staff. During the five-year contract, Wisconsin Humane accepted about half of the animals offered by MADACC, keeping the Milwaukee area rate of shelter killing between 4.7 in 2001 and the low of 4.1, reached again in 2003. However, after Wellens briefly experimented with adopting out pit bull terriers and Rottweilers who passed behavioral screening, dangerous incidents involving some of the dogs persuaded her to suspend pit bull and Rottweiler adoptions. Because 74% of the dogs coming to MADACC in recent years are pit bulls and Rottweilers, MADACC executive director Len Selkurt chose not to renew the exclusive agreement in 2005. The shelter killing rate rose to a six-year high of 4.8 per 1,000 humans. The Wisconsin Humane wildlife rehabilitation program, begun in 1983 by Wellens' predecessor Leon Nelson, under Wellens became one of the largest in the U.S., handling almost as many animals as the dog and cat facilities. Rehabilitating the most birds of any Wisconsin agency gave Wellens unique authority in speaking against a proposal to allow hunters to shoot feral cats, ratified in April 2005 by the annual state-wide caucuses of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress. Governor Jim Doyle responded by stating that he would veto any bill to authorize cat hunting. Elected founding president of the National Federation of Humane Societies in 2006, Wellens later in 2006 received the American Humane Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kullan, 55, a tribal wildlife watcher employed by the Forest Department of Kerala state, India, was trampled by an elephant on April 20, 2009 at Anappanthi, near his home in Bhoodanam.
Simon Chaitowitz, 56, died of leukemia on April 19, 2009 in Washington D.C., 11 days after posting to her blog that she might have pneumonia. "It's a long story but the leukemia originated with my breast cancer treatment in '03," she added. A longtime activist in various causes, Chaitowitz spent much of her life in Seattle. As an account executive for the public relations firm McKnight & Co., Chaitowitz first became visibly involved in animal issues circa 1986 as spokesperson for the Alaska Factory Trawlers Association, but changed direction following her 1987 marriage to John Thomas. "Years ago I worked with her on a member initiative for Puget Consumer's Co-op to petition the board to remove all animal tested products," recalled longtime friend Diane Venberg of Seattle. "Then Simon started Citizens for Cruelty Free Entertainment with Claudine Erlandson and I joined them to help make Seattle animal circus-free. We were not successful, but certainly enlightened many people." Co-authoring op-ed columns with Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine founder Neal Barnard, M.D. beginning in 1998, Chaitowitz eventually relocated with Thomas to serve for a decade as a PCRM spokesperson and prolific promoter of veganism. Blogging throughout her terminal illness, Chaitowitz on March 4, 2009 contributed to the Huffington Post a last essay entitled "Why I Take Animal-Tested Drugs." Wrote Chaitowitz, "Throughout the past six years, I have felt terribly guilty about the drugs and procedures I've undergone because I know that so many animals have suffered in their developmentŠBut as someone who recently signed up for hospice, I have another major problem with animal research. I wonder if science would have found a cure for my leukemia by now if they weren't sidetracked by misleading animal tests. I wonder if the chemo that I took for breast cancer would have been safer it hadn't been tested in species that are so unlike our ownŠ If the chemo drugs I'm trying now don't work, I do have one last option," she concluded. "I could try a Phase One trial. That's when a drug looks promising in animals and is first tested in humans. My doctor started to tell me why so many participants die in Phase One trials--but it turned out I already knew the answer. Drugs that work in animals, he explained, usually don't work in humans."

Guman Mal Lodha, 83, chair of the Animal Welfare Board of India 1998-2004, died on March 22, 2009 in Ahmedabad, India, after a five-year struggle with cancer. Involved as a teenager in the Indian independence movement, Lodha was imprisoned in 1942. He served for five years in the Rajasthan legislature, 1972-1977, spent 10 years as a Rajasthan High Court judge, and was for one year chief justice of the Guwahati High Court, before serving three terms in the Lok Sabha, the Indian parliament. Chiefly associated with the Hindu nationalist Bharatijya Janata Party, Lodha emphasized cow protection during his AWBI tenure, often clashing with People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi, minister of state for animal welfare 1998-2002, whose first priority was establishing the national Animal Birth Control program.
Ernst Paul Eckhoff, 72, a cofounder of the Best Friends Animal Society, was killed in a single-car accident on the morning of March 24, 2009. Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Cameron Roden told Mark Havnes of the Salt Lake Tribune that Eckhoff's Land Rover apparently drifted off the left side of the two-lane road and Eckhoff overcorrected, causing the vehicle to roll. "It is quite possible that Paul swerved to avoid an animal," cofounder Gregory Castle told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "A dog was seen later straying near the scene of the accident. The dog, a young neutered English pointer, was somewhat shy, but was picked up and is now at the sanctuary." Wrote longtime Best Friends reception center director Anne Mejia, "Paul will be remembered by those who knew him for his gentle and generous manner, his humor and his British wit. His lasting legacy to the animals will be the central role that he played in creating the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. As the architect of all the existing animal care facilities at the sanctuary, his building designs set a new standard in animal welfare. The designs have been shared, free of charge, with hundreds of individuals and organizations all over the world." Recalled Michael Mountain, another cofounder, "Paul would always be on the site [of a building job] with the volunteers, simply sweeping up and tidying up to make sure they had a clean and comfortable work place. He was honest and plain-spoken, and loved Bassets. When he couldn't do much else, in recent years, he would host Basset tea parties at his home for staff people and other locals who had Bassets."

Jayme Harrison, 14, a cat rescuer in Graham, Washington, was shot by her father James Harrison, 34, on the night of April 3, 2009, along with her siblings Maxine, 16; Samantha, 12; Heather, 8; and brother James Jr., 7. Harrison killed the children after his wife Angela, 30, left him and refused to return. He then shot himself.
   Dewa Gede Sigit Purnomo, 24, was killed on March 29, 2009, 18 days before his 25th birthday, when he fell off his motorcycle in front of his home in Denpasar, Bali. A two-year employee of the Bali Animal Welfare Association, Sigit came to BAWA from the Yudisthira Foundation. "We called Sigit our 'dog whisperer'," as he alone had the ability to hypnotize the most frightened or sick animal into a lovely calm state. We were planning to send him to Australia for an internship," BAWA founder Janice Girardi told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Judith Price, DVM, 63, died on July 16, 2008 in Spokane from complications of lung cancer. Becoming a veterinarian at age 36, after her eight children were in school, Price "traveled weekends providing low cost vaccinations and medical assistance around the Northwest," recalled Companion Animal Aid & Placement Society/SPCA president Yvonne Herman. Price was the CAAPS/SPCA medical advisor and a board member. "It was inspirational to witness her determination in treating life-threatening diseases," recalled Herman. "Dr. Price had a clinic full of diabetic cats, medically compromised dogs, and blind and deaf animals whom she selflessly took on as her own." Agreed Spokane animal rescuer Carmel Travis, "She was a kind woman with a compassionate heart."

Animal obituaries

Qannik, 8, a beluga whale, died from a bacterial blood infection on March 27, 2009 at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, his home since 2007. Qannik was the eighth beluga to live at Point Defiance, where belugas have been exhibited for about 25 years, and was the fourth to die there. His mother, Mayauk, had two stillbirths at Point Defiance before she was transferred to the John Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. There she successfully birthed Qannik and a sibling. Qannik at Point Defiance replaced Turner, 13, who died in 2006. Beethoven, 16, companion to both Turner and Qannik, is to be returned to Sea World San Antonio, his birthplace, where he will join the Sea World captive breeding program. As none of the 34 other belugas now in captivity in the U.S. need a new home, Point Defiance "has applied for three California sea lions as part of the government effort to trap and remove dozens of the animals, who are feeding on endangered salmon on the Columbia River, reported the Tacoma News Tribune.

Alysheba, 25, winner of the 1987 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but only fourth in his Triple Crown bid at the Belmont Stakes, was euthanized on March 27, 2009 after suffering a severe right hind femur injury from falling in his stall at the Kentucky Horse Park Hall of Champions. The fall was due to a chronic degenerative spinal condition, said Kentucky Horse Park director of equine operations Kathy Hopkins. Second by a nose in the 1986 Breeders' Cup Classic, Alysheba won the Classic in 1988 and retired to stud in Saudia Arabia in 1989 as the top winning horse of all time, having earned $6.6 million from 11 wins in 26 starts. That record was later broken by Cigar, briefly Alysheba's stable mate after the Kentucky Horse Park acquired Aysheba in 2008.

Kaylee, 15, a dolphin who lived all her life at the Brookfield Zoo's Seven Seas pavilion, was euthanized on April 3, 2009 due to multiple health issues. Her death came eight days after the death of Alpha, 48, a female lowland gorilla brought from Africa to the Brookfield Zoo in 1966.

B O O K S --

Most Good, Least Harm by Zoe Weil

Simon & Schuster (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2009. 192-page download; $14.00. 224-page paperback; $15.00.

Institute for Humane Education cofounder Zoe Weil's latest book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and a Meaningful Life prescribes seven MOGO principles --MOGO is short for "Most Good"--to build a viable future for our children and our planet.
The MOGO principles begin with:
1) Live your epitaph, as how you would like to be remembered. For example, Weil's friend Khalif Williams "gave all he had, took only what he needed, and would have loved you with all his heart." Khalif and his wife built a house from salvaged material. They lived without running water and grew their own vegetables. Electricity came from solar panels. Khalif Williams and his family would be remembered as simple, decent people. Not everyone wants to be remembered that way. Some want a legacy as infamous killers or ruthless leaders. What would Idi Amin's self-written epitaph say?
2) Pursue joy through service. Weil suggests volunteer work at a homeless shelter, senior center or a school. Monetary donations are helpful for those who can afford to make them. Service can be as basic as holding doors open or a smile. But people who define "Most good" as just what is most good for them will not find joy through service, and MOGO principles will not make them into nice people.
3) Make connections and build self-respect. Weil uses T-shirts made in overseas factories as an example. Were they sewn by child labor? Did the workers earn a decent wage? Is it better to work in a sweatshop than to be unemployed? To follow MOGO principles, be active in the world around you. Write to the manufacturer and demand that fair labor standards be observed.
To do this, one must be motivated to exercise conscience. Others are unlikely to try to follow Weil's prescription.
4) Model your message and work for change. Weil uses anger as an example. Animal and child abuse enrage her. "I try to understand how I might use my anger to propel me toward efforts that do good," she says. Weil offers alternatives to expressing anger in trying situations such as "counting to ten" and "taking deep breaths."
These strategies have been incorporated into sermons, classroom lessons, and anger management classes for well over 150 years. Yet the same exercises are often preludes to violence. Comic actor Jackie Gleason burlesqued such advice in The Honey-mooners, one of the first hit TV situation comedies. His oft-irate character Ralph Kramden never followed through on fist-shaking threats to send his wife Alice "Bam, to the moon!"--but only because neighbor Ed Norton always arrived in mid-countdown.
Not every troubled household has an intervenor on cue, and counting to ten and breathing deeply, like Kramden, have not erased the need for domestic violence shelters.
5) Find and create community, Weil says. She offers a variety of ways to become involved in a MOGO community. Weil suggests posting notes in your local library or food co-op to encourage people interested in MOGO living to meet. But if I saw an ad in my library asking people interested in MOGO living to meet, and had not read Most Good, Least Harm to write this review, I'd wonder if MOGOs were a cult.
6) Take responsibility. Says Weil, "We may not be able to single-handedly create a peaceful world, but we can strive to live without causing avoidable violence and destruction." Weil says that we choose our actions. Only we determine how we will act.
This is true --but when the result is unfavorable we often blame someone else, and often in a way that enables us to believe we are taking responsibility when actually we are passing blame.
For example, some parents "take responsibility" for their children's education by suing the school when their children fail.
7) Strive for balance. Weil offers no simple guideline here. Lots of people make huge efforts to improve the world, and have for a long time. But others don't care what happens around them. Some are so beaten down by unrelenting poverty, nagging hunger, and overall despair that striving for balance is far beyond their capacity.
Weil talks about food. A vegetarian diet will spare animals, cut down on heart disease, and reduce obesity. Buying in bulk, as Weil recomends, can make natural foods affordable for those on a budget.
Unfortunately, Weil is not looking at reality. Nearly 63% of the American public are overweight by medical definition. They might feel better if they followed Weil's advice, but Weil needs to consider why so many people eat fast food, which may be bought and eaten while driving, instead of shopping and cooking.
"Take stock of your job or career," Weil advises. "Is your work doing more than paying the bills?" In today's weak economy, most people cling to their jobs, if they still have jobs. With unemployment at a 30-year peak, this is not the time for people to leave jobs to seek more meaningful work. Advice about how to find more meaning in the work that readers have might be more appropriate.
Weil seems to be a thoughtful, giving person who has high standards of herself, family and friends. But expecting people to live the rugged lifestyle of her friend Khalif Williams is unreasonable. Weil dreams of a kinder, more humane world where all people are treated fairly. In her world, animal suffering ends. There is nothing wrong with those dreams, but the fight for social justice is as old as recorded history. Animal rights activism is nothing new and neither is recycling. Volunteerism has been around for centuries.
We live in a challenging world. Foreclosures leave people homeless. Corporate giants like General Motors and Citibank are on the verge of collapse. Middle class people scrape by on food stamps. Thousands of pets are surrendered to shelters because their owners can't care for them.
The turnaround we need requires a combination of wit, skill, cooperation among nations, and perhaps even a bit of luck. The path to inner peace will have to wait until the world is a bit more stable.

Saved: Rescued Animals & the Lives They Transformed by Karin Winegar. Photos by Judy Olausen.
  Da Capo Press (11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142), 2008. 240 pages, hardcover. $25.95.

"I'm only one person working for animals," says Stray Rescue of St. Louis founder Randy Grim. "I'm no hero; this is not a job; it's what I am."
Grim, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randi Golub from Oregon are among the many dedicated, brave and caring people featured in Saved: Rescued Animals & the Lives They Transformed.
Other books about animal rescue such as Puppy Miracles, Angel Cats, and Dogs Who Found Me compete with Saved for readers, but Saved is unique. There are stories of incredible survival about dogs left to die, a cat who was only seconds from euthanasia, and abandoned horses who not only survived but thrived. Rescuers dig through trash in search of stray cats, shrug off threats from drug dealers as they feed homeless dogs, and work on budgets so slim that they squeeze a dollar until George Washington chokes.
Grim drives through the mean streets of East St. Louis, a community picked apart by poverty, gangs, and crime. More homes are boarded up or damaged by arson than are inhabited by families. Garbage litters the streets and sidewalks. Jobs are few. Amid this urban nightmare, Grim searches for cast aside canines, some too terrified to leave hiding places beneath abandoned cars or inside gutted tenements.
"More than half the dogs we rescue have gunshot wounds," says Grim, who nearly took a bullet several times himself while picking up dogs. Pit bull breeders post crude signs on corners announcing "puppies for sale." Many pits are trained to fight or guard illicit narcotics. East St. Louis is a community that urban planners and government officials would rather forget than transform. Grim, however, cannot forget the homeless dogs who scratch out a living there, usually regarded as at best a nuisance, and at worst, as a menace to the remaining human residents. Grim has now rescued and rehomed more than 5,000 dogs. He is likely to remain busy for years to come.
The MASH Unit at the Maricopa County jail offers safe haven for abused and abandoned animals in the Phoenix area. Started by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2001 after a string of animal cruelty cases, the MASH unit is now a full service operation that has recently rescued starving horses from a failed sanctuary, pit bulls abused by the famous rap artist DMX, who is now serving jail time for neglect, and cats from several major hoarding cases. Female inmates tend to the dogs, cats and other small animals. Men care for horses, mules, donkeys and other large animals at Arpaio's infamous tent city where inmates sleep outside, even in triple digit temperatures that usually last from May to September.
Animals are kept until eligible for adoption. Some are surrendered in connection with plea bargains; some are seized by the court after people are convicted of neglecting or mistreating them. Animals are euthanized only if they are severely injured or sick.
The inmate animal care program is competitive. No one with a violent background is chosen. Inmates who disobey the rules are expelled. Grooming and basic veterinary skills are taught by outside professionals. Many former inmates go on to work in animal care after completing their sentences.
MASH also provides "courtesy holds" of animals for women escaping from domestic violence. "Women may retrieve their pets when they find a safe, stable home," the book explains.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio may be the toughest cop in America, as he dubbed himself in a 1996 autobiography, but he has a soft spot for abused, unwanted and roughed up animals.
Chance and Hope are Great Pyrenees dogs who work as canine caretakers at a small suburban hospice that also provides adult foster care in Minnesota. Founders Don and Darlene Ahlstrom first saw Chance and Hope on television, after the Wright County Humane Society plucked them from a ditch where they were found starving and injured. Both dogs' injuries required amputations. At least $17,000 in donations poured in from the sympathetic public in response to their story. Hundreds of people wanted to adopt them. Darlene and Don applied last, but won custody. Despite the dogs' own disabilities, they spend their days cheering up patients with cerebral palsy, Alzheimer's disease, and other serious and sometimes life threatening disorders. The dogs also entertain the staff.
"Every day at 12:38 p.m. they howl at the Bold and the Beautiful theme," says Darlene. "We don't know why. It's the only time they do that."
A .22 caliber bullet shattered Cassidy the cream colored cat's hind leg. A second bullet lay dangerously close to his spine. But there was something special about this cat that said "save me." And that's exactly what veterinary technician Randi Golub did.
Golub, who works in Eugene, Oregon, does in-home nursing for cats in addition to hospice and boarding. Cassidy joined her house full of tattered and worn cats while he recovered from amputation surgery. Cassidy had such a pleasing personality that in 2007 he passed the Delta Society's rigorous behavior test and became a therapy cat, one of only a handful who are registered with Delta. Golub and her feline companion visit assisted living facilities where he "brings out the best in human beings," Golub says.
"I can tell he's grateful for everything I've done for him," Golub assesses, "but I'm the one who is immensely grateful."

Saved affirms that rescued animals are not throwaways. --Debra J. White

"Extreme makeover" contest wins give shelter and sanctuary founders extreme headaches

ST. LOUIS, Mo.; PHELAN, Calif.--Hoping to win a shelter renovation through a makeover contest?
Stray Rescue of St. Louis, Rocky Ridge Refuge of Gassville, Arkansas, and the Forever Wild Tiger Sanctuary of Phelan, California all did. Each found that the outcome was not really what was expected.
"I'm just glad it's over and glad to be back on the streets where I am most comfortable," Stray Rescue founder Randy Grim told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "One day we will have our shelter. The dog gods will help."
In June 2008 Stray Rescue won a $1 million shelter makeover offered by the zootoo.com social networking web site. The makeover contest required supporters of as many as 1,000 shelters competing for the prize to go to zootoo.com, register, and vote, thereby boosting zootoo participation.
On April 13, 2009 Stray Rescue and zootoo.com founder Richard Thompson reached a legal settlement of misunderstandings developing out of the contest victory.
"They refused to provide any details of the settlement," reported Susan Weich of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Grim had claimed that he was misled by zootoo to believe Stray Rescue had won a $1 million cash prize. But according to zootoo's contest rules, the makeover could comprise in-kind services and donations. In the wake of news coverage about the makeover prize, Grim said, donations fell off sharply because people believed the shelter was awash in money."
Reported Associated Press writer Cheryl Wittenauer, shortly before the settlement conference, "Stray Rescue founder Randy Grim said his group wired zootoo $170,000 of its own money--which it had budgeted for animal care--and that Thompson pressured him into begging subcontractors, suppliers, and labor unions to donate their goods and services for the shelter makeover. Grim said he understood the $170,000, which helped pay for some preliminary work, would be reimbursed."
"We've yet to see one penny," Grim told Wittenauer.
Thompson told Wittenauer that zootoo had provided $400,000 to the makeover, to that point. Stray Rescue countered, Wittenauer wrote, that "most of that is in donated goods and services, or its own $170,000 that it wired to zootoo."
Thompson, formerly chief executive of the cat food maker Meow Mix, "said Stray Rescue's vision for a shelter exceeds what can be done for $1 million," reported Wittenauer. But general contractor Dan Green, a builder for 30 years, told Wittenauer that Thompson "agreed to a $2 million budget and then solicited donated goods and services. When they didn't come through, he scaled back the project to $1.7 million. Green dropped out," Wittenauer continued, "after Thompson said $600,000 worth of electrical, plumbing and other work had to be donated."
"I'm not their donation solicitor," Green told Wittenauer. "I'm not calling these guys and twisting their arms harder."
Rocky Ridge Refuge founder Janice Wolf told Wittenauer that "Thompson promised her on the Ellen Degeneres show to build a barn and keep her in critter food for a year. She got the barn and some of the food," but under awkward circumstances in her small community.
"He pressured local businesses to donate everything," Wolf recalled. "He made a lot of enemies."

$1 million road

Joel and Chemaine Almquist founded the Forever Wild Tiger Sanctuary in 2002, "Joel Almquist works a second job to support the shelter and Chemaine works to raise funds from the community," reported Hesperia Star staff writer Beau Yarbrough in January 2009. "The family lives in a double-wide trailer without heat or air-conditioning, partially held together with duct tape."
The ABC program Extreme Make-over--Home Edition soon thereafter sent the Almquists to Costa Rica for a brief vacation and built them a new home, improved animal housing, and a visitor center. The job was featured on the March 29, 2009 Extreme Makeover--Home Edition broadcast.
However, reader Cheri Edwards e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE, "When the compound was ready to open the County of San Bernardino posted staff at the gate to turn people away," including Edwards, she said, "because they required the 1.5 mile road to the compound to be completely paved. Even though the Extreme Makeover people graveled and graded the road, making it accessible, the county felt it wasn't enough.
"We have a regulation that you pave to the nearest paved road if you have people coming in," San Bernardino County director of land use services Julie Rynerson Rock told Yarbrough. "It's not just a matter of them getting in; it's also a matter of getting safety personnel in and out. Obviously if you have children there, it's a priority."
Rock estimated that paving the road would cost about $1 million.
ANIMAL PEOPLE confirmed the county position with several different county officials, and confirmed the cost of paving the road with an independent contractor.
"Pave to the nearest paved road" rules usually apply to developers of housing tracts, shopping malls, and industrial parks that may attract more traffic than dirt roads normally handle. They are rarely applied to small businesses and nonprofit organizations.
The Almquists did not respond to an ANIMAL PEOPLE inquiry as to when exactly they first learned of the paving requirement. None of the San Bernardino county officials with whom ANIMAL PEOPLE communicated could recall informing the Almquists about it on any specific date--but ANIMAL PEOPLE was told that the whole project proceeded so rapidly that word of it barely had time to circulate among all the relevant offices before it was finished. --Merritt Clifton

Another L.A. Animal Services chief quits

LOS ANGELES--Ed Boks, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services since December 2005, on April 24 2009 advised Los Angeles mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa that he will resign, effective on June 30.
Boks was ousted from his previous position as executive director of the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control after entertaining an offer from Los Angeles.
"I have an offer I'm considering and a couple of options I'm thinking about," Boks told ANIMAL PEOPLE on April 27, "but for the next week or two I just want to free myself from Los Angeles' relentless irrational oppressive nonsense."
Boks, 57, was the fourth Los Angeles Department of Animal Services chief to leave since 2003. The late Dan Knapp resigned after a prolonged sick leave he attributed to job stress. His successor, Jerry Greenwalt, retired after enduring months of intense online criticism and demonstrations outside his home. Boks' immediate predecessor, Guerdon Stuckey, was fired by Villaraigosa after just 13 tumultuous months on the job, only days after Villaraigosa took office. Villaraigosa had promised to replace Stuckey during the mayoral election campaign, and had reportedly hired Boks even before terminating Stuckey.
"Boks will be off through the end of May on vacation and medical leave as he recovers from a recent heart procedure," reported Los Angeles Daily News staff writer Rick Orlov. "He will work beginning June 1 to assist in the transition" to an as yet unchosen successor. "In the meantime," wrote Orlov, "he designated assistant director Katy Davis as interim director. Aides to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said there was no buyout deal offered to Boks, who became the center of a political firestorm in recent months."
Los Angeles city council members Dennis Zine and Richard Alarcon pushed for Boks' resignation after Boks in March 2009 responded to a two-year series of budget cuts totaling $714,000 by suspending distribution of coupons redeemable for low-cost pet sterilization. This was among Animal Services' most popular programs, especially since the 2008 passage of a bylaw requiring city residents to sterilize dogs and cats by four months of age, or buy costly intact pet permit.
"From 1972 to 2008, 479,269 cost-assisted pet sterilizations were performed under various Los Angeles programs," recalled Animal Issues Movement founder Phyllis Daugherty. "This reduced animal impounds from 83,500 to 25,478," and cut shelter killing from 110,000 animals to 18,000.
After furor erupted over the suspension of the coupon program, Los Angeles city councillor Tony Cardenas introduced a motion to restore the sterilization budget, seconded by Dennis Zine. The coupon program resumed within days, but much of the council was furious at having been manipulated by Boks' appeal to the court of public opinion. The council passed a resolution of "no confidence" in Boks in late March, and followed with a resolution asking mayor Villaraigosa to request Boks' resignation.
The council action came a year after the leaders of two labor unions representing Animal Services staff in March 2008 delivered to Villaigarosa a petition seeking Boks' dismissal and the dismissal of Animal Services assistant general manager Linda Barth. More than half of the Animal Services staff--149 people--had in 2005 signed a petition opposing Stuckey's dismissal and Boks' appointment. The new petition "was signed by 30 of 32 animal care supervisors and 105 of 216 animal control officers and animal care technicians," reported Los Angeles Times staff writer Carla Hall. "The unions do not represent shelter clerical workers or registered veterinary technicians, though some of those workers provided additional signatures."
Failing to get results from Villairarosa, who had the sole authority to hire and fire Boks, the unions took the petition to the city council in September 2008.
Boks upon arrival in Los Angeles built high expectations that he would move the city to no-kill animal control, much as he built expectations earlier in New York City and in his previous post as director of Maricopa County Animal Control in Phoenix. In all three positions Boks reduced animal population control killing and increased adoptions. The rate of shelter killing in Maricopa County fell from 20.3 to 16.0 dogs and cats per 1,000 residents during Boks' tenure , and five years after he left has dropped only slightly more, to 15.5. The New York City rate fell from about 4.0 to 2.6. The Los Angeles city rate edged down from 3.9 to 3.7. But Maricopa County, though achieving a slightly lower than average killing rate for the region, is still killing substantially more dogs and cats than the U.S. average of 13.8. New York City and Los Angeles already had two of the lowest killing rates in the U.S., and achieving steeper reductions than Boks' predecessors had, while coping with shelter intake consisting largely of pit bull terriers and feral cats on the one hand, and steep budget cuts on the other, may have been an unrealistic goal.
At departure, Boks seemed to be best remembered by local media for ambitious fiascos. Boks scheduled a "Hooters for Neuters" promotion in July 2006, for example, modeled after others that have been hugely successful in more conservative regions-- but the Los Angeles edition was axed as allegedly sexist, under pressure from city hall.
In July 2007, noting that his agency had killed 2,442 pit bull terriers in the preceding fiscal year, Boks announced a proposal to turn the South Los Angeles Animal Care Center Annex into a "pit bull academy," headed by Villalobos Rescue Center founder Tia Marie Torres. Like the Villalobos Rescue Center, the "pit bull academy" was to employ paroled convicts. First the Animal Services unions objected that hiring parolees would bypass the civil service employment protocol. Then Torres told a reporter that she bought a defunct Nevada brothel in hopes of reopening it. Again Boks' idea came to nothing.
Boks also ran afoul of at least two wrongful dismissal lawsuits, both aggressively publicized on the web by his critics. The older case, brought by former CACC operations director Wesley Artope, followed Boks from New York City. Boks dismissed Artope, a 10-year CACC employee, in January 2004. Artope was the highest ranking African-American at the CACC. He now heads the J. Tyler Animal Foundation. The other case was brought by Los Angeles wildlife rehabilitator Mary Cummins, a former Los Angeles Animal Services staff member. Both cases were still unsettled as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, but the Los Angeles city council was reportedly close to finalizing a settlement of the Cummins case. Boks said the Arthope and Cummins cases were not involved in his decision to leave Los Angeles.
Boks' biggest tangible achievement in Los Angeles may have been opening six new shelters. But his most influential accomplishment, now emulated by counterparts in other cities, was making extensive use of electronic media to become one of the most accessible and communicative animal control directors anywhere.
"Unlike a long string of embattled predecessors, Ed Boks came out swinging," recalled Dana Bartholomew of the Los Angeles Daily News. "He fired up a blog, hit the radio, locked horns with critics, and waded deep into mud slung at him and his department."
"If you don't blow your own horn, someone's going to use it as a spittoon," Boks said. --Merritt Clifton

Rapid progress against Dutch vealers

AMSTERDAM--The Dutch animal advocacy organization Wakker Dier--"Awake Animal"--appears to be quietly making unprecedented gains against the crated veal industry in the nation where it originated.
"Within six months of Wakker Dier launching a peaceful company-targetted campaign against 'pale veal'--produced by keeping male calves penned up, fed on low-iron milk diets--nearly all Dutch supermarkets have stopped selling it," reported Adriana Stuijt for Digital Journal on March 15, 2009.
Recently retired after covering public health for the Johannesburg Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, now living in Dokkum, The Netherlands, Stuijt found that 14 leading Dutch supermarkets chains "have all undertaken to stop selling the pale veal within the next few months, because the Wakker Dier publicity campaign created a high level of consumer awareness, and people stopped buying it."
The Dutch veal firms Van Drie and Alpuro raise more than 1.5 million calves per year, Stuijt reported. Most are surplus from Dutch dairy production--cows must give birth to give milk--but about 600,000 per year are imported at one week of age from dairy farms in Poland and Lithuania. British farmers were allowed to resume selling veal calves to the Nether-lands in 2006, after a 10-year suspension meant to inhibit the spread of mad cow disease, but Britain remains a minor supplier.
"A fifth of all the veal sold in Europe comes from Van Drie," Stuijt wrote. "Now this company has quit producing anaemic calves. The other company will be forced to switch to pink veal as the consumer demand for pink veal now grows dramatically."
Founded in 1998 to oppose factory farming, Wakker Dier was headed from 2004 to 2006 by Marianne Thieme, who in 2002 formed the Dutch Party for the Animals, billed as the first pro-animal political party in Europe. Wakker Dier previously waged successful campaigns to persuade supermarkets to stop selling eggs from battery-caged hens, and to stop selling meat from pigs who were castrated without the use of anesthetic.
Dutch farmers began raising crated veal soon after World War II. Dutch immigrant Aat Groenvelt in 1962 introduced veal crating to North America, and also developed the market for "milk-fed spring lamb," a euphemism for lambs raised like veal calves. The company Groenvelt founded, Provimi Veal, is now diversified under the name Provimi Foods.
Belgian and Dutch police investigating the 1995 murder of Belgian veterinary inspector Karel Van Noppen learned that Van Noppen was shot because of his investigation of illegal traffic in clenbuterol, a banned steroid often used to promote the growth of crated calves and lambs. Four men were convicted of the Van Noppen murder in 2002.
The investigation linked the Belgian and Dutch clenbuterol traffic to illegal use of clenbuterol in Ireland and the U.S.--where raids on vealers and feed distributors allegedly using clenbuterol had been underway since 1994. Pressured to prosecute by the Humane Farming Association, the U.S. Justice Department won at least five convictions of U.S. veal industry leaders in connection with misuse of clenbuterol. All were close associates of Groenvelt.

European seal pelt import ban will hit fur trade already in decline

STRASBOURG--The European Parliament is likely to approve a ban on the import of seal pelts at a May 5, 2009 plenary session, but is expected to allow Canada and Norway to continue exporting seal pelts through the European Union member nations to reach markets in China and Russia.
The ban will also exempt seal products made "for cultural, educational or ceremonial purposes" by the Inuit people of northern Canada.
Information leaked to ANIMAL PEOPLE at deadline indicates that the draft ban approved on March 2, 2009 by the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee was amended before presentation to the plenary session to mitigate concerns that Canada and Norway will appeal the legislation to the World Trade Organization.
Norway on April 22, 2009 joined Canada in threatening to go to the WTO. If the WTO upheld the Norwegian and Canadian complaint, the 27 EU member nations could be exposed to trade penalties.
"If the EU decides to introduce a broad ban on the trade of products derived from seals, that will affect our liberty to decide how we manage our own marine resources," declared Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and fisheries minister Helga Pedersen. "In order to defend Norwegian interests, we have therefore informed the EU that Norway will begin consultations with the WTO if it adopts this ban," Stoere and Pedersen said.
Canadian sealers have a quota of 338,000 landed pelts in 2009, up 55,000 from 2008. Namibia has the second highest sealing quota, at 85,000. The Norwegian quota is 47,000. Russian sealers had a 2008 quota of 35,000, but Russian minister of natural resources Yury Trutnyev on March 11, 2009 announced that Russia has halted hunting seals under one year old.
The Russian state newspaper Rossisskaya Gazeta reported that Putin on February 26, 2009 told a cabinet meeting that he personally considers seal hunting a "bloody industry" that "clearly should have been banned long ago."
U.S. President Barack Obama has not recently mentioned the seal hunt. In an April 13, 2006 letter to a PETA member who contacted him in his former role as a U.S. Senator from Illinois, however, Obama stated, "I share your concerns about the Canadian seal hunt. The United States and European Union have been unified in their opposition to the slaughter of seals," Obama wrote, "by passing legislation decades ago to restrict the sale of seal-based products within their borders. I certainly believe in the spirit of these acts; the U.S. should not condone this recent Canadian action," expanding the seal hunt and repressing protest.
Obama pledged "to ensure that we take all the necessary steps to express our outrage" to the Canadian government.
Atlantic Canadian seal pelt sales peaked at $27 million U.S. in 2006, fell to $10 million in 2007, fell again to $6 million in 2008, and are expected to fall by half in 2009 if the European import ban is enforced, according to a Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans department analysis.
Other fur sales figures show a similar trend. The International Fur Trade Federation reported on March 27, 2009 that global retail fur sales figures fell from $15 billion in 2006-2007 to $13 billion in 2007-2008. U.S. retail fur sales dropped by $2 billion over the same same. Both global and U.S. sales are expected to be far lower in 2008-2009, due to the depressed world economy.
An unusually warm winter reportedly helped to reduce Moscow fur sales to the lowest valume in at least 15 years.
The Humane Society of the U.S. estimated that the fur sales decline has prevented the suffering and death of approximately 10 million fur-bearing animals.

Ontario pit bull ban appealed to Supreme Court

TORONTO--Civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby on April 16, 2009 petitioned the Supreme Count of Canada to appeal an October 2006 Ontario Court of Appeal verdict which upheld the breed-specific Dog Owners Liability Act.
The 2005 act forbids breeding, selling, or keeping a pit bull within Ontario, except for pit bulls who were already licensed in Ontario when the act took effect. Those dogs must be sterilized, and must be kept leashed and muzzled when in public. A lower court weakened the act in March 2007, holding the term "pit bull terrier" to be too imprecise, but the Ontario Court of Appeal restored the act as written.
Ruby's client, Catherine Cochrane, has a dog she terms a Staffordshire terrier mix, whom she reportedly had intended to breed.
"She wasn't obeying the law for a while, in terms of muzzling and neutering," Ruby said of his client. "I don't know if she is now," he added, to Toronto Star reporter Paoloa Loriggio.
Noted for representing the surviving Dionne quintuplets, the wrongfully convicted Micmac murder suspect Donald Marshall Jr., and the Church of Scientology in prominent cases during the 1960s and 1970s, Ruby in recent years has served on the board of the Greenpeace Charitable Foundation, and has defended seal hunt protesters.

New Mexico ends gassing just ahead of big gamecock bust

SANTA FE--New Mexico Gov-ernor Bill Richardson on April 7, 2009 signed a bill making New Mexico the 18th U.S. state to ban gassing dogs and cats.
The bill allocates $100,000 to help the last four shelters in the state that use gas chambers convert to using lethal injection.
Richardson also endorsed a bill that will permit state-licensed euthanasia technicians to buy and use euthanasia drugs. The technicians need not be veterinarians and need not work in the presence of a vet.
Richardson signed both bills on the same day that Doña Ana County animal control supervisor Curtis Childress disclosed that his staff had killed 618 chicks, hens, and roosters who were seized from seven sites in a series of raids on suspected cockfighters.
Four men were arrested. The suspects surrendered the birds to the county.
Albuquerque animal advocate Marcy Britton questioned the killing. Britton contended in a handwritten letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE, accompanied by supporting documents, that efforts to enforce the 2007 New Mexico ban on cockfighting are taking resources away from other humane law enforcement priorities, including bringing shelter management up to par.
Many of the birds seized in cockfighting raids are believed to have been dosed with drugs which under U.S. law may not be given to animals meant for human consumption. Childress told Diane Alba of the Las Cruces Sun-News that the USDA would not allow such birds to be adopted out, lest some might eventually be eaten.

Macon shelter ends gassing

Gassing ended in Macon, Georgia in early April 2009. Central Georgia CARES funded dismantling the city gas chamber and building a euthanasia room, and is covering other conversion costs through 2009. Georgia law prohibited installing new gas chambers after 1990, but allowed shelters that already had them to continue using them.

Neglect cases fuel drive to restart horse slaughter

HELENA--Montana governor Brian Schweitzer on April 3, 2009 vetoed two parts of a bill passed by the state legislature to encourage entrepreneurs to start a horse slaughterhouse, but on April 16 both houses of the legislature returned the same bill to him without amendment.
The provisions of the bill that Schweitzer vetoed would require anyone filing a lawsuit seeking to stop construction of a horse slaughterhouse to post a bond worth 20% percent of the estimated construction costs, would hold plaintiffs liable for damages incurred by the defendants due to legal action, and would prevent state courts from halting construction after a horse slaughterhouse site and design have received the requisite permits.
Schweitzer must now either veto the bill as a whole or sign it into law. There was no indication, as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, which he would do.
The last three slaughterhouses in the U.S. that killed horses for human consumption closed in mid-2007. Renderers who kill and butcher horses for animal consumption remain in business, but pay little or nothing for carcasses, and in some areas charge to haul them away. Exporting horses to Canada or Mexico to be slaughtered for human consumption is markedly less lucrative for horse sellers than selling the horses for slaughter in the U.S. used to be.
Horse breeders and high-volume horse users have accordingly pushed for nearly two years to reopen the slaughterhouses, or get new ones built in more favorable locations than the old sites near Chicago, Dallas, and Fort Worth.
Slaughter proponents argue that the combination of a weak economy and a lack of ways to dispose of horses without financial loss are driving a national horse neglect and abandonment crisis. ANIMAL PEOPLE file data shows that horse impoundments due to neglect or abandonment have ranged from 2,375 in 1996 to fewer than 1,350 in both 2005 and 2006, rose to 1,890 in 2007, and then dropped to 1,604 in 2008.
But numbers are often less influential than anecdotes. In St. Anthony, Idaho, for instance, Fremont country commissioner Paul Romwell in April 2009 asked fellow commissioners to "think about whether the county wants to permit horse owners to haul live horses to the county landfill, shoot them, and then unload the carcasses into the dead animal pit," reported Joyce Edlefsen of the Rexburg Standard Journal.
"Romrell said that actually happened," Edlefsen continued, "and it brought tears to the eyes of the landfill attendant, who saw the horse standing in the back of a trailer as the owner brought him in."
Late winter and early spring usually bring the biggest neglect and abandonment cases of the year involving hooved stock to light, as hay runs out, pastures have not yet regrown, and snowmelt reveals remains.
But alleged inaccessibility of slaughter was not an issue in the most publicized horse neglect case of spring 2009. The case broke after rescuer Lisa Leogrande of Fulton, New York, found four lice-infested and badly underweight thoroughbred mares in a killer-buyer's pen awaiting transportation to slaughter. They were among a group of 20 whom the killer-buyer had acquired for $680.
"Two of the mares had won races for prominent New York thoroughbred breeder and owner Ernie Paragallo's family-owned Paraneck Stable," wrote Joe Drape of The New York Times. "Theonlyword, who had a puncture wound in her leg, won more than $50,000. Coconut Martini, who had a swollen leg, won nearly $35,000. The 17-year-old mare Finely Decorated, who was possibly in foal, was purchased for $80,000 as a two-year-old. She was the dam of Interior Designer, who won more than $174,000."
Investigating, New York State Horse Council representative Colleen Segarra visited Paragallo's Center Brook Farm in Climax, New York, and filed a complaint with state police about what she saw. Following a police raid, the Hudson Greene Humane Society took over care of 177 horses who were found in similar condition.
"Paragallo, who said he hadn't been to the farm in nine months, agreed to give away 67 horses he didn't want after he was arrested on April 10 on 22 counts of animal cruelty," reported Mary Esch of Associated Press.
The New York Racing Association the next day revoked Paragallo's permit to race.
"Paragallo has run a busy operation, starting 4,686 runners and earning $20.6 million in purses," wrote Drape. "His principal trainer, John P. Campo Jr., is the brother of New York Racing Association racing secretary Paul J. Campo."
In Oregon, Bend Bulletin reporter Nicole Santa Cruz checked out the claims about a horse abandonment crisis after the Crook County Sheriff's Office on March 28 removed 13 of 80 starving horses from a ranch in Powell Butte, and charged four hired caretakers with neglecting them. Sheriff's deputies and volunteers fed the other 67 horses on site.
Santa Cruz found that two local horse rescue organizations, Equine Outreach and Blissful Acres Rescue Reserve, were both over capacity, and that Crook County had handled more horse abandonments this year than usual, even before the Powell Butte case.
"But Deschutes and Jefferson counties aren't seeing any more horse seizures than usual, if any," Santa Cruz noted. "Lieutenant Gary Decker of the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office said he hasn't seized a horse since January 2008. But the sheriff's office is receiving more calls from residents who are concerned about horses they see, he said."
Inability to sell horses to slaughter did not appear to have anything to do with the plight of 175 horses at the 3-Strikes Mustang Ranch, near Alliance, Nebraska. Founder Jason Charles Meduna, 42, was on April 17 charged with felony neglect,
"According to his web site, Meduna adopts wild horses and burros from the Bureau of Land Management and also cares for horses for rescue organizations and private individuals," wrote Scottsbluff Star-Herald staff reporter Maunette Loeks. "The ranch has been featured on Denver news programs, according to Meduna's web site. BLM officials reported that 175 horses were boarded at the ranch and were not receiving enough feed, according to the arrest affidavit."
"Meduna pushed all his volunteers away in December 2008," reported Tom McGhee of the Denver Post. "Later Meduna claimed some of his horses were poisoned."
Jerry Finch of Habitat for Horses hired a plane to fly over the ranch, Loeks said. "We discovered two large pits filled with carcasses. I estimate that there are 60 dead horses in those pits," Finch told Loeks.
Said Meduna on the 3-Strikes web site, "A true cowboy will feed his horse before he feeds himself."
Desperate to reduce an inventory of 33,000 horses and burros who have been removed from the western range in recent years, whose care cost $28 million in 2008, and eager to avoid more such fiascos, the BLM in May 2009 will begin offering stipends of $500 to adopters of wild horses who are at least four years of age, if the horses are kept for at least one year. "The program is being launched in the BLM region that includes New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas," reported Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan.

21 polo ponies die of overdose

OCALA, Florida--Franck's Pharmacy chief operations officer Jennifer Becket on April 23, 2009 admitted in a prepared statement that the custom drug-mixing firm had erred in preparing a vitamin mixture that was given to the polo ponies on the Lechuza Caracas team just before the start of the U.S. Open polo tournament on April 20 at the Inter-national Polo Club Palm Beach. The mixture was apparently significantly stronger than it was supposed to have been.
Twenty-one horses died from lung hemorraging after receiving the overdose. The vitamin mixture was reportedly similar to Biodyl, a supplement not approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
Humane Society of the U.S. director of equine protection Keith Dane called on the U.S. Polo Association to introduce a policy restricting the use of drugs in polo ponies.

Ontario pit bull ban appealed to Supreme Court

TORONTO--Civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby on April 16, 2009 petitioned the Supreme Count of Canada to appeal an October 2006 Ontario Court of Appeal verdict which upheld the breed-specific Dog Owners Liability Act.
The 2005 act forbids breeding, selling, or keeping a pit bull within Ontario, except for pit bulls who were already licensed in Ontario when the act took effect. Those dogs must be sterilized, and must be kept leashed and muzzled when in public. A lower court weakened the act in March 2007, holding the term "pit bull terrier" to be too imprecise, but the Ontario Court of Appeal restored the act as written.
Ruby's client, Catherine Cochrane, has a dog she terms a Staffordshire terrier mix, whom she reportedly had intended to breed.
"She wasn't obeying the law for a while, in terms of muzzling and neutering," Ruby said of his client. "I don't know if she is now," he added, to Toronto Star reporter Paoloa Loriggio.
Noted for representing the surviving Dionne quintuplets, the wrongfully convicted Micmac murder suspect Donald Marshall Jr., and the Church of Scientology in prominent cases during the 1960s and 1970s, Ruby in recent years has served on the board of the Greenpeace Charitable Foundation, and has defended seal hunt protesters.

U.S. Supreme Court to review "crush video" ruling

WASHINGTON D.C.--The U.S. Supreme Court on April 20, 2009 agreed to hear an appeal by the U.S. Solicitor General of a Third Circuit Court of Appeal ruling that in July 2008 overturned the 1999 federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty law and reversed the conviction of "crush video" and dogfighting video dealer Robert Stevens, of Pittville, Virginia.

Kerala capital to obey Indian dog law?

THIRUVANATHAPURAM--Three years of defiance of the Indian national dog policy may be at an end in Thiruvanathapuram, the capital city of Kerala state.
Both The Hindu and the Indian Express on April 25, 2009 reported that mayor C. Jayan Babu on April 3 reluctantly suspended killing street dogs after receiving notice from the Animal Welfare Board of India that the program violates a December 2008 ruling by the Supreme Court of India.
From the ruling until obliged to stop, the Indian Express said, the Babu administration paid 18 dogcatchers two and a half times the previous rate per dog caught.
Seeking to continue the killing, Kerala State Human Rights Commission chair N. Dhinakar and the Ombudsman for Municiplalities in March 2009 directed the city to stop "stray dog menace" and expedite "disposal of stray dogs."
Indian national policy mandates sterilizing dogs, rather than killing them for population control. Municipalities are directed to conduct Animal Birth Control programs following the Animal Welfare Board protocol, or to hire nonprofit agencies to do the job.
The AWBI allows ABC programs to euthanize dogs who are ill, injured, or dangerous. Animal Rescue Kerala in September 2006 trained 25 dogcatchers to participate in a purported Thiruvanatha-puram ABC program, but the program turned out to be a ruse for killing dogs under the ABC exemption. Purebred dogs were spared and sold, alleged R.Abhed Kiran Kandamath of the Bhima Club.
Animal Rescue Kerala founder Avis Lyons contested the Thiruvanathapuram policy, but in April 2007 the Kerala High Court authorized the city to continue killing dogs. Kerala state minister for local self-government Paloli Mohammed Kutty then "directed the heads of local self-government institutions to take effective steps to end the stray dog menace before May," The Hindu reported.

Camp Lejeune follows Army, bans pit bulls

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. --The U.S. Marine Corps on April 16, 2009 banned pit bull terriers, Rottweilers, wolf hybrids, and "any other breeds [of dog] with dominant traits of aggression" from Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine base on the Atlantic Coast.
Camp Lejeune commanding officer Colonel Richard P. Flatau Jr. signed the order just over three months after the U.S. Army banned pit bulls, Rottweilers, wolf hybrids, chows, and Dobermans from Army base housing throughout the world.
The Camp Lejeune order covers the housing of approximately 50,000 active duty Marine Corps personnel, plus more than 100,000 civilian dependents of Marines and civilian base staff.
"The reason for this change is clear," said Flatau. "To the extent possible, we want to prevent unnecessary injuries resulting from dangerous or potentially dangerous animals. These specific breeds present an unreasonable risk to the health and safety of our residents and are therefore prohibited."
The 24-page order "allows current Lejeune residents who have the breeds to keep them if they have an approved pen. A fenced yard is not enough," explained Estes Thompson of Associated Press.
The order also details all other requirements for pets kept by Camp Lejeune residents. "Besides the obvious changes with respect to vicious breeds," Flateau said, "the order also acts as a guide for residents to follow. There may be some questions as to what steps to take when bringing a pet on base. This order will answer those questions. Vicious breeds or not," Flatau added, "we still need to regularly ensure standard veterinary requirements are being enforced for all pets residing on base. The health and safety of all residents is paramount."
Elaborated Corporal Billy Hall, "Past incidents involving domestic animal attacks aboard Camp Lejeune have prompted recent revisions to the existing base order regulating the possession and control of pets." Most notably, a visitor's pit bull killed a three-year-old on May 14, 2008. The attack came as the Marines faced a $5 million lawsuit over a 2005 attack by a Rottweiler at Camp Lejeune that cost a child an ear.
"Because of a brutal, violent attack by a dog upon a 3-year-old boy in base housing that tragically killed the little boy," Flateau affirmed in a written statement, "I directed a rigorous and thorough review of current policy by my staff. Many experts took part, including veterinarians, animal control officers, safety experts, housing managers, lawyers and others. The review, proposal of recommendations, and my decisions have taken the past 11 months to complete." Flateau called the order "not hasty or ill-conceived, and the right thing to do in order to reduce unacceptable risk to people."
Pit bulls, Rottweilers, and wolf hybrids are singled out, Flateau said, because of "a significant body of empirical evidence indicating they are apt to violent behavior, often unpredictable and have the capability to inflict severe harm or death."
Flateau noted that military police responded to twelve more dog attacks at Camp Lejeune while he and other senior staff deliberated.
Camp Lejeune is the second major U.S. Marine Corps base to enact a breed-specific dog policy. Marine Base Quantico in Virginia already prohibits "potentially dangerous dogs such as full or mixed breeds of pit bulls (Stafford Bull Terrier, America Staffordshire Terrier and other similar breeds)." The base commander may also deem any other dog to be dangerous and therefore excluded.

Indianapolis considers requiring pit bulls to be sterilized

INDIANAPOLIS--Indianapolis city/county council member Mike Speedy on April 24, 2009 introduced an ordinance to make Indianapolis the biggest city in the U.S. to mandate sterilizing pit bull terriers.
The introduction comes three years after a breed-specific ordinance proposed by another Indianapolis councillor met intense opposition. Her ordinance was watered down into a conventional dangerous dog law, providing penalities of only $50 for the first violation and $100 for the second, with impoundment coming only on third offense.
"An Indianapolis Star review of dog bite data for 2008 revealed that pit bull bites soared 33% from the previous year and were three times higher than in 2006. Pit bulls also account for more bites and more severe bites than any other breed," reported Heather Gillers of the Star.
Speedy took up the issue after constituent Brenda Hill, 68, was severely mauled in her own yard in January 2009 by two pit bulls who escaped from a neighbor. Though Hill survived, the attack followed a familiar pattern: an analysis of 88 U.S. pit bull fatalities by DogsBite.org founder Colleen Lynn, all occurring in 2006-2008, found that pit bulls are four times more likely to kill a person off the premises where the dogs live than all other dog breeds combined.
The 2006 political antagonists are again mobilized. Mauled by a pit bull in 1992, Caress Garten of Indianapolis wrote a book inspired by her experience, In Defense of Innocents, and has advocated for dog attack victims ever since. Opposing breed-specific legislation are--among others-- Humane Society of Indianapolis executive director John Aleshire and Indy Pit Crew founder Cynthia Morgan.
Speedy perceived, he told ANIMAL PEOPLE, that "This issue will not be decided by human interests. This issue will be resolved by concern about the dogs."
Before introducing his bill, Speedy consulted other voices within the large and often polarized Indianapolis humane community. Speedy won the support of Foundation Against Companion Animal Euthanasia founders Scott and Ellen Robinson, who are respectively an emergency room physician and the director of a low-cost dog and cat sterilization clinic known worldwide for high output and a record-setting low rate of surgical complication. Speedy also won the backing of Humane Society of the U.S. regional representative Desiree Bender, who founded Where Angels Run, a pit bull shelter in Arkansas. Speedy incorporated their input into his bill, which he calls the At Risk Dog Proposal.
"The At Risk Dog proposal is designed to protect people from devastating dog bites and pit bull breeds from abuse," said Speedy. "Additionally, it requires more humane treatment for all dogs, such as prohibiting direct point chaining. It introduces higher fines for violations with unaltered dogs, and requires that all dogs and cats leaving the Indiana-polis Animal Care & Control shelter be spayed or neutered.
"Pit bull advocates have been giving their all for the last 10 years to pit bull specific spay/neuter, adoption, outreach and training programs with little progress," Speedy told an April 24, 2009 press conference held outside Brenda Hill's home. "It is time that we admit, as a community, that they need legislative help," Speedy said. "They are unable to achieve the needed results solely by voluntary programs. And as I have come to learn, pit bull-type dogs deserve laws that provide them with extra protection."
The Speedy bill is similar to ordinances recently adopted in Omaha, Little Rock, and San Francisco. The Omaha ordinance has only been in effect for six months, but the Little Rock ordinance has cut pit bull bite incidents in half, animal services director Tracy Roark told WTHR Eyewitness News. "There was a day when you could walk down any street in central Little Rock and see several pit bulls chained up. You don't see that anymore," Roark said.
The San Francisco ordinance took effect in January 2006. "In the two and a half after the law went into effect, 23% fewer pit bulls were impounded and 33% fewer were euthanized than in the 2.5 years prior to the law," San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control acting director Rebecca Katz told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Nationally, pit bulls have risen from under 1% of the U.S. dog population through the first 85 years of the 20th century, and 5% of shelter admissions when the first breed-specific surveys of shelter dogs were done in the late 1980s, to about 5% of the dogs, 25% of shelter admissions, and 50% of shelter dog killing since 2000. Among the U.S. pit bull population of about 3.5 million, about a third per year enter shelters, compared with about 5% of the dogs of all other breeds combined. About one million pit bulls per year are killed in shelters.
Dogfighting has leaped from near extinction as recently as 1990, with just a few remaining strongholds reported in the South, to more prominence than at any time since the rise of the U.S. humane movement in the mid-19th century. And pit bulls have accounted for half or more of all fatal and disfiguring dog attacks in at least 27 consecutive years.
Older legislation seeking to curtail the problems associated with pit bulls has typically just banned keeping pit bulls--sometimes with loopholes based on hair-splitting distinctions among pits and closely related breeds.
Where strict pit bull bans have been enforced, for example in Denver for all but 15 months of the past 21 years, they have producd markedly lower numbers of pit bull bites, fatalities, impoundments, shelter killing, and arrests for dogfighting. Denver appears to be the only major U.S. city where pit bulls consistently account for less than 5% or even less than 10% of dog impounds.
The Cincinnati city council on March 25, 2009 reinforced a pit bull ban in effect since November 2003 by providing that anyone convicted of keeping, breeding, selling or transferring ownership of a pit bull in any way, except through surrender to an animal shelter, may be sentenced to serve up to six months in jail, twice the previous maximum penalty of 90 days. "The changes apply to any dog owner not grandfathered in when the pit bull ban went into effect in November 2003," wrote Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Jane Prendergast.
Many Ohio cities enacted pit bull bans of varying strength circa 20 years ago, after the state had four fatal pit bull attacks in 1986-1988. Since then, Ohio has had only two more dog attack fatalities, both by pit bulls, and one of those, in 1993, resulted in the dog owner being convicted of murder.
Opponents of breed bans and other breed-specific legislation have repeatedly tried to overturn them on constitutional grounds. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2008 upheld the constitutionality of breed-specific dog regulation by refusing to hear an appeal of a case against the Toledo ordinance. The Toledo ordinance limits possession of pit bull terriers to one per person, and requires that pit bulls be muzzled when off their home property.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of Toledo in August 2007. The Ohio Supreme Court verdict followed other court decisions upholding breed-specific legislation in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Letters

Trust funds

Your April 2009 editorial "Trust funds lost when most needed" points out some issues vitally important to any non-profit, and for that matter, for any individual hoping to provide sustenance for a charity.
--Ruth Gobeille
Executive Director
Animal Rescue League
of Southern Rhode Island
P.O. Box 458
Wakefield, RI 02880
Phone: 401-792-2233

Jakarta ponies

God bless you for helping those poor ponies in Jakarta, and for helping so many animals in Third World countries. I would never know about their suffering if not for ANIMAL PEOPLE. Pain is pain and suffering is suffering, no matter whether it is animal or human, and no matter whether it is here or on the other side of the world.
--Natalie Pepper
San Lorenzo, Calif.

Reluctance to travel

I very much appreciated your appeal on behalf of the Jakarta ponies. It reminded me of my mother's reluctance to travel-- because inevitably one encounters cruelty and indifferent cultural attitudes. Then the traveler feels helpless and dismayed. You and your allies, however, have not stood helpless. You are working out solutions for animals and the people, who are also in desperate situations and need education.
--Heidi Fulcher
Winslow, Arizona

Desensitizing

I feel compelled to respond to your appeal on behalf of the Jakarta ponies. It talked about desensitizing. This is a subject that has occupied my thoughts for a very long time. Although it may be commonly the case that people become desensitized after repeatedly hearing horror stories, this certainly does not apply to me. The more I hear about the atrocities occurring in this world, the sicker and more emotionally drained I become. I am one of your subscribers who asked to stop receiving ANIMAL PEOPLE because it has increasingly caused me physical pain and general unwellness. I truly believe my case is not isolated, especially among older people. The onslaught of mail I receive describing horrific cruelties to animals is making me very, very sick. I am not closing my eyes to the cruelties. I am fully aware of them, but to read about them in gory detail is just beyond my emotional tolerance.
I am very grateful that you were able to ensure some care and compassion for the ponies that you encountered while traveling. I am enclosing a donation so that you can continue your work.
Your observations regarding the cruelties visited on all the other innocent animals, sparrows, frogs, turtles, etc. are equally disturbing, leaving me speechless and truly sad.
--Margot C. Palma
Southbury, Connecticut

Editor's note:

In recognition that our readers are already thoroughly sensitized to animal suffering and committed to ending it, ANIMAL PEOPLE policy is to avoid using photographs and descriptive details that go beyond what is minimally necessary to explain the issues we cover. Thus ANIMAL PEOPLE accounts of cruelty are typically less vivid than appear in mainstream news media, and magnitudes less stark than often appears in protest literature and fundraising appeals.
Though ANIMAL PEOPLE spares readers unnecessary detail about animal abuse and neglect, this does not exempt us from investigating each situation we report about--and many more--in full depth and detail, often in person at the scene.

Irate chimp shot at alleged puppy-mill

ST. LOUIS--Responding to a "loose chimpanzee" call from Winston, Missouri, 60 miles north of Kansas City, Daviess County sheriff's deputy Larry Adams on March 30, 2009 initially tried to help Brent Hudson, 49, Cherace Hudson, 41, and Mary Overton, 52, to get the chimp back into secure premises.
When the chimp opened the door of Adams' patrol car, grabbed his leg, and tried to hit him, Adams fatally shot the chimp, a nine-year-old male named Timmy.
Adams reported seeing three other chimps and 100-200 dogs at the scene, but when the Missouri Department of Agriculture and Humane Society of Missouri arrived two days later with a search-and-seizure warrant, they found only 15 dogs and three cats.
Posting a reward of $3,000 for information leading to discovering the missing animals, however, soon paid off.
"With help from tipsters, investigators tracked the dogs to breeders in Cameron, 10 miles south of Winston, and in Grain Valley, an eastern suburb of Kansas City," reported Tim O'Neil of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Humane Society of Missouri recovered 102 dogs, who were taken to the society headquarters in St. Louis.
"The USDA found the other three primates at a pet shop in Pleasant Hill, another Kansas City suburb," Daviess County chief deputy Todd Watson told O'Neil.
The Hudsons and Overton face 17 counts of animal neglect, breeding without a license, keeping unregistered dangerous animals, and improperly disposing of dead animals, among other alleged offenses.
Missouri governor Jay Nixon and agriculture director Jon Hagler visited the impounded animals at the Humane Society of Missouri headquarters on April 8.
During the first quarter of 2009 the Missouri Department of Agriculture transferred to humane societes more than 1,300 dogs who were impounded from alleged unfit breeders, Nixon and Hagler told media. But under archaic regulations that treat dogs as livestock, "The state also arranges for dogs from shoddy breeders to be sold at auction to other breeders," reported Associated Press writer Cheryl Wittenauer.
"Critics question the practice if poor facility conditions have compromised the animals' health. They also argue bad breeders shouldn't profit from the sale of their confiscated or surrendered dogs," said Wittenauer. Hagler promised to review the practice.
The Missouri chimp escape and shooting came about six weeks after police in Stamford, Connecticut fatally shot a 14-year-old male chimp named Travis, ending a rampage in which Travis critically injured Charla Nash, 55, blinding her for life and biting off her hands, nose, lips, and eyelids.
Nash had often worked with Travis before. On the evening she was mauled she was trying to help Travis' keeper, Sandra Herold 70, to calm him.
Nash's family has sued Herold for $50 million, and has moved to have photos of Nash's injuries sealed by the court.
The Nash attack helped the Captive Primate Safety Act to win passage by the U.S. House of Representatives eight days later. U.S. Senate action is pending.

Obama family accepts a "second chance" dog from Ted Kennedy

WASHINGTON D.C.-- Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and his wife Victoria in early April 2009 ended months of speculation that President Barack Obama and family would adopt a shelter dog for daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, by giving the Obamas a purebred Portuguese water dog-- not a shelter dog, but a "second chance" dog, who was returned to the breeder after reportedly failing in at least one previous home.
Originally named Charlie, according to the anonymous FirstDogCharlie web site that leaked the news on April 10, 2009, the dog was renamed Bo by the Obamas.
Charlie/Bo reportedly came from Amigo Portuguese Water Dog Kennels near Dallas/Forth Worth, where the Kennedy family's own three Portuguese water dogs--Sunny, Splash, and Cappy--were whelped.
"There's lots of stuff that didn't leak out, including a secret get-acquainted session with the family at the White House a few weeks ago," reported Washington Post staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia. Roig-Franzia had been promised a scoop, but was two days behind the web in disclosing the basics.
"The visit, known around the White House as The Meeting, was a surprise for the Obama girls," Roig-Franzia wrote. "Bo wore a lei. Bo charmed the First Family, a source who was there said. He sat when the girls sat, stood when the girls stood. He made no toileting errors and did not gnaw on the furniture. Bo has been receiving lessons in good behavior from the Kennedys' dog trainers at a secret, undisclosed location outside Washington.
"The choice of a Portie raised one complication," Roig-Franzia acknowledged. "The Obamas have long said they wanted a rescue dog. But Portuguese water dogs almost never end up in shelters."
After accepting the gift dog from the Kennedys, the Obamas pledged to make a donation to the Washington Humane Society.
"I think all of us who work trying to place homeless animals had hoped that they would choose a shelter dog," spokesperson Steve Gruber of the Mayor's Alliance for New York City Animals told Ellen Wulfhorst of Reuters. "Choosing a shelter dog would have been a really powerful message to the American people."
Added Antonia Kwalick, adoption coordinator for the Infinite Hope rescue group in Brooklyn. "It would have been good for the girls to actually walk into a shelter to see how many animals need homes. They should have set a better example."
Often bitter rescuer response tended to overlook that the Kennedys rather than the Obamas took the long-delayed initiative in acquiring Bo, and made a point of buying a dog who had some "rescue pedigree," after scouts failed to find a suitable Portuguese water dog in a shelter. The Obamas wanted a Portuguese water dog because the breed has a reputation for not provoking allergic response--a problem for Malia.
"This decision to buy a dog from a breeder will be responsible for the upcoming deaths of thousands of animals," fumed one prolific online poster. "First because buying from a breeder will now be elevated and emulated, with Obama as a model. Second because the idea of saving an animal from a shelter will be degraded. Third, because more animals will be bred by breeders. And fourth because more 'bred' animals will eventually be dumped and killed."
Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle struck a more moderate note. "With all the shelter talk, Obama set high expectations," Pacelle acknowledged. "He and the First Lady acted responsibly in postponing any decision about a dog until they were well settled in their new home, an approach we recommend to potential adopters. The Obamas' decision disheartened animal advocates. But the dog was a second-chance dog. And we're happy for Sasha and Malia, who have been exceedingly patient.
"Nonetheless, the disappointment in America among our supporters is palpable," Pacelle added. "I've been getting lots of e-mails from folks who feel passionately that an opportunity was squandered to help shelters and the animals in them. Obviously, there is no one to provide a better example to the American public than President Obama, and no one better to say there's not a thing wrong with dogs at shelters.
"So be disappointed," Pacelle advised, "but don't despair for long. Hold him accountable to make other decisions that will have enormous implications for animals. He can still laud shelters and speak about the urgency of supporting them. He can get Bo neutered. He can actively support policies that crack down on puppy mills, eradicate Class B dealers [who sell random-source dogs to laboratories], enforce laws against dogfighting, promote regulations to ensure safe food for our companion animals, and much more."
As to how much breeders might benefit from the Obama dog acquisition, Linda Brown of Wolf Den Kennel in Chester County, Pennsylvania offered a dissenting perspective.
"I thought when Joe Biden bought a puppy from me, what an honor," Brown told NBC reporter Karen Araiza. ""Never, never, never again."
Brown said she spent $4,000 in legal fees to successfully contest citations for alleged violations of animal welfare laws that followed her moment of fame, and was harassed constantly by activists.

Did new flu emerge from a pig farm?

MEXICO CITY--Rumors swept the world during the last week of April 2009 that a newly detected H1N1 flu virus variant suspected of killing as many as 149 Mexicans might have evolved at a factory-style pig farm at Perote, in Vera Cruz state on the Gulf of Mexico. As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press on the night of April 28, however, little medical or veterinary evidence supported the hypothesis that the disease is of factory farm origin, and some evidence seemed to refute it.
Among the first 1,995 suspected Mexican cases of the new flu strain, only 27 were laboratory-confirmed. Lab-confirmed human cases had occurred in 19 other nations, including 64 cases in the U.S., but no deaths were reported outside of Mexico.
Bloggers and news media usually called the virus "swine flu," but although it contained genetic material of swine origin, nothing linked it to recent swine infections.
The Perote farm belongs to the Mexican firm Granjas Carroll, a half-owned subsidiary of Smithfield Inc., the world's largest pork producer. Smithfield spokesperson Keira Ullrich told media that an internal investigation had found no clinical signs or symptoms of swine influenza in animals and employees at any of its Mexican facilities. A United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organiz-ation team reportedly reached Pecote on April 28 to seek independent confirmation.
"We deny completely that the influenza virus affecting Mexico originated in pigs because it has been scientifically demonstrated that this is not possible," claimed the Mexican National Organization of Pig Production and Producers.
That was an exaggeration, but at press time the case for factory farm involvement appeared to rest on the coincidence that the earliest identified case of the new H1N1 virus variant was detected in 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, who lives near the Granjas Carroll pig farm.
Hernandez fell ill on April 2, Mexican health secretary Jose Angel Cordova told media. Many other Perote residents fell ill at about the same time, but "Only one sample from the group, that belonging to the boy, was preserved," reported Tracy Wilkinson and Cecilia Sanchez of the Los Angeles Times. "It was retested after other cases of the new strain were confirmed elsewhere in the country, Cordova said. The boy had the same disease. It is unknown how many more of the hundreds of people who fell sick in Perote also were infected by the strain."
"In Perote," Wilkinson and Sanchez found, "residents of the hamlet known as La Gloria have complained since mid-March that the pig farm was tainting their water and causing respiratory infections. In one demonstration in early April, they carried signs with pictures of pigs crossed out with an X and the word 'peligro'--danger. Residents told reporters at the time that more than half the town's 3,000 inhabitants were sick, and that three children under age two had died.
"Local health officials mobilized when the outbreak was first reported," Wilkinson and Sanchez reported, "but they gave a different account: The infection may have started with a migrant farmer who returned from work in the U.S. and gave the disease to his wife, who in turn passed it to other women in the community."
"La Gloria was not alone in experiencing a fierce flu outbreak in recent weeks," noted Marc Lacey of The New York Times. "Public health officials in other parts of Mexico said they had noticed an unusual spike in cases in the beginning of April, when the normal flu season would usually end."
Door-to-door census taker Maria Adela Gutierrez, 39, of Oaxaca, capital city of Oaxaca state, on April 13 became the first confirmed fatality from the new H1N1 strain.

James Wilson, MD

Most reports associating the Perote pig farm with the H1N1 outbreak, including two widely distributed columns by Grist food editor Tom Philpot, referenced a biosurveillance web site and blog posted by James M. Wilson V, M.D., of Seattle.
Wilson has done biosurveillance for the U.S. armed forces, the USDA, NASA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other agencies, and is cofounder of the Veratect Corporation, which "provides animal and human infectious disease event detection and tracking globally," says his online biographical page.
But Wilson was more cautious than many of the people who used his material.
"One key myth I wish to dispel," Wilson updated on April 27, "is the claim that there was any credible link to a pig farm. Such claims must be verified through solid epidemiological investigation."
Wilson on April 24 posted a "Swine Flu in Mexico" timeline that began with a March 30 report that "a 47-year-old attorney was hospitalized in a coma at Ottawa General Hospital following a recent trip to Mexico."
On April 27 Wilson acknowledged that this case "tested negative according to Canadian officials," and that there was therefore no reason to link it to H1N1.
On April 2, the timeline continued, "Local media source Imagen del Golfo reported that [Vera Cruz] state health officials recorded a 15% increase in disease over an unspecified period in the highland areas of Vera Cruz, which includes La Gloria. The increase was primarily due to higher levels of upper respiratory disease and gastroenteritis. Specifically, officials noted an increase in pneumonia and bronchial pneumonia. Health officials attributed the increase to seasonal climate changes."
On April 6, recounted Wilson's timeline, "Local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria. Sources characterized the event as a 'strange' outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. Health officials recorded 400 cases who sought medical treatment in La Gloria, population 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town's population had been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February. Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak," as Wilkinson and Sanchez of the Los Angeles Times confirmed.
"However," Wilson continued, "health officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases were 'isolated' and 'not related' to each other."

Flu or biting flies?

Continued the April 6 timeline entry, "Residents believed the outbreak was caused by contamination from pig breeding farms operated by Granjas Carroll. According to residents, the company denied responsibility and attributed the cases to 'flu.'" This was apparently the first mention of flu in connection with the La Gloria disease outbreak.
"However," the timeline added, "a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste, and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak."
Many insect-borne diseases produce flu-like symptoms, including the ricketsial and malarial disease families--but the ricketsial diseases are caused by bacteria, and the malarial diseases by protozoan parasites.
On April 27, Wilson posted that his timeline mention of flu "was simply to flag an event as worthy of closer scrutiny and higher awareness, as there was absolutely no proof of true involvement of this company in the outbreak. A proper epidemiological investigation is required to prove such links."
Meanwhile, added the April 6 Wilson timeline entry, "A health cordon was established around La Gloria. Officials launched a spraying and cleaning operation that targeted the fly suspected to be the disease vector. State health officials also implemented a vaccination campaign against influenza, although sources noted physicians ruled out influenza as the cause of the outbreak. Finally, officials announced an epidemiological investigation that focused on any cases exhibiting symptoms since March 10."
Ten days later, on April 16, wrote Wilson, "Veratect reported the Oaxaca Health Department indicated that an unspecified number of atypical pneumonia cases were detected at the Hospital Civil Aurelio Valdivieso in Reforma, Oaxaca State, Mexico. No information was provided about symptoms or treatment for the cases. NSS Oaxaca reported that rumors were circulating that human coronavirus was spreading at the hospital; sources did not provide any response to these statements from the hospital or health officials. Laboratory samples were sent to Mexico City for analysis. According to NSS Oaxaca, health officials intensified preventive measures aimed at mitigating further spread of the disease."

Why "swine flu"?

Explained ProMED animal disease moderator Peter Cowen on April 25, "The H1N1 virus is called 'swine flu' because of the outbreak of the 1918 virus that caused significant mortality in both swine and human populations. The virus probably has a wild bird origin," as all influenzas have evolved from avian diseases.
"Influenza viruses regularly circulate in swine populations," Cowen continued. "Swine flu viruses have been known to infect humans, [but] it appears as if no exposure to swine has occurred among people who have come down with the current novel H1N1 virus. Since we know nothing of how this particular virus has gotten into the human population, but there apparently is no history of swine exposure, it probably makes more sense epidemiologically to refer to this simply as an H1N1 influenza.
"Unfortunately," Cowen concluded, "the name 'swine flu' will imply a simple transmission between swine and people, when in reality its origin and epidemiology are likely to be much more complex."
Elaborated fellow ProMED animal disease moderator Arnon Shimshony, "Swine influenza in senso stricto," unlike the common use in connection with the H1N1 virus afflicting humans, "is an animal disease, caused by a specific porcine virus. Swine influenza viruses are very contagious, mainly affecting pigs, but can sporadically cause disease in turkeys and humans. Such an interspecies infection, when occurring, is not followed by further spread in the affected populations," who become dead end hosts.
"The current influenza virus spreads readily among humans without any known involvement of, or contact with pigs," Shimshony emphasized. Thus, regardless of origin, "The causative virus can persist among humans independent of animal involvement."

Genetic link

Assistant professor Raul Rabadan, PhD. of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University on April 28 shared with ProMed members the strongest medical hint before ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press that the H1N1 outbreak might be associated with pig farming. But Rabadan's finding did not point directly toward factory pig farming, or even to pig farming per se.
"My group and I are analyzing the recent sequences from the isolates in Texas and California of swine H1N1 deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Inform-ation," Rabadan posted. "Preliminary analysis using all the sequences in public databases suggests that all segments are of swine origin," contrary to earlier reports that the new H1N1 virus included elements from human and avian viruses. Rabadan's team found the parts of the new virus "related to Asian/European swine and the rest to North American swine. There is also an interesting substratification between these groups," Rabadan observed, "suggesting a multiple reassortment."
Rabadan's findings pointed toward the new H1N1 virus originating in pigs. However, the mix of Asian/European swine and North American swine virus segments may point toward hybridized boars, commonly raised for hunting and the restaurant trade-- and feral in much of North America--rather than factory-farmed pig breeds.
However, reminded the British Department of Food, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs later in the day, "The virus has not been isolated from pigs, and there have been no reports of unusual disease in pig herds.
"H1N1 and H3N2 swine flu viruses are endemic among pigs in many countries and something that the industry deals with routinely," DEFRA continued. "Outbreaks among pigs normally occur in late fall and winter. U.S. studies have shown that between 30% and 50% of the pig population have been exposed to H1N1 infection at some time. Mexico does not routinely report swine influenza," DEFRA noted, "so there is some uncertainty regarding the situation in that country."
However, DEFRA concluded, "We consider there is a negligible likelihood of introducing human influenza strain H1N1 to the U.K. by the legal import of pigs or pig products from North America. There is no evidence that meat or other products would be contaminated with known strains of virus."
Commented the Office International des Epizooties [World Organization for Animal Health] in a parallel statement, "The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore, it is not justified to name this disease swine influenza. Urgent scientific research must be started in order to know the susceptibility of animals to this new virus," the OIE said, "and if relevant to implement biosecurity measures, including possible vaccination to protect susceptible animals."

Mixing vessels

Speaking before Rabadan released his genetic findings, OIE director general Bernard Vallat told Agence France-Presse that the new H1N1 virus contains an avian strain of American origin, and American swine strain and an apparent Asian swine strain, and an American human strain. But even with that mix, Vallat explained, "There is no proof that this virus, currently circulating among humans, really is of animal origin. There is no element to support this."
Both pigs and humans are influenza "mixing vessels," within whom different flu strains can meet, incubate, and mutate.
Regardless of the medical evidence, animal advocates seized upon the H1N1 outbreak as an opportunity to expose and denounce aspects of factory farming other than disease transmission.
Posted Michigan activist Eileen Liska, "What intensive confinement factory farming has done to the animals, in terms of the cruelty involved, the drugs used to offset the disease and stress caused to the animals by how they are overcrowded and not allowed to meet their basic behavioral needs, etcetra, is going to come back to haunt us until we change our ways, and that doesn't even include the human side effects from eating meat filled with antibiotics and hormones."
"For more than 23 years we have warned that cramming thousands of animals into factory farms is not only bad for the animals," said Farm Sanctuary cofounder Gene Baur. "These stressful, filthy, disease-ridden confines are also bad for humans. Animals packed by the thousands in unnatural conditions suffer immensely and these unhealthy, overcrowded operations are a breeding ground for disease--swine flu, avian flu, e-coli, salmonella, mad cow diseaseŠFactory farms are a prescription for disaster."
Baur mentioned pending federal legislation which, if passed, "would eliminate the use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics on factory farms."
This measure is favored by most of the human health community as well as animal advocates, since heavy use of antibiotics in farming is tending to increase the capacity of infectious bacteria to resist antibiotic treatment. --Merritt Clifton

Hunted turtles need more than a shell

LITTLE ROCK, TALLAHASSEE--The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conserv-ation Commission on April 15, 2009 unanimously voted to ban capturing or killing freshwater turtles. The proposal--if ratified in June 2009--would bring into effect the strongest restriction on turtle hunting in the U.S.
But the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission on March 29, 2009 rejected a proposal to stop "commercial harvest, sales and export" of turtles.
Commission director Scott Hender-son acknowledged that, "We have seen a lot of pressure on turtles in the last three years."
The most recent available data indicates that Arkansas turtle hunters are exporting about 200,000 turtles per year. However, Henderson told the Conway Log Cabin Democrat, "Our staff recommendation is that it is not an emergency and should be included in our regular fishing regulations process."
Catch limits may be discussed later this year, but pressure on the Arkansas turtle population will not be eased this spring.
Audubon Society of Central Arkansas member Bill Shepherd of Little Rock testified that turtles in Arkansas are in trouble from multiple directions. "Mortality of eggs and hatchlings is immense," Shepherd explained. "Fire ants, feral pigs, raccoons and other predators eat the turtle eggs."
But mentioning the threats from other species may have helped to give the commissioners a pretext for delay in addressing the human threat, while continuing a multi-year effort promote more pig hunting.
"In the petition to stop taking of turtles in Arkansas," noted the Log Cabin Democrat, "the comment was made that commercial harvest of turtles has been banned in Illinois, North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi. Texas has banned it on public waters. Oklahoma has begun a three-year moratorium on taking turtles from public waters," as of May 2008, "and Georgia is preparing legislative action on taking turtles."
State after state is beginning to restrict turtle hunting because live market demand from China has put U.S. turtles under the same kind of sudden intensified pressure that has recently extirpated turtles from much of Southeast Asia.
But the newly enacted restrictions mostly have loopholes that weaken enforcement if a turtle hunter is not actually caught in the act. Texas, for instance, forbade hunting turtles in public waters in 2007, but allowed hunters to continue taking snapping turtles, soft-shell turtles, and red-eared sliders from private property. This allows anyone caught with a bag of turtles to claim the turtles were caught on private property-- and allows Texas turtle hunters to continue to export about 100,000 turtles per year.
"The demand pits ancient culture against modern conservation and increasingly threatens turtle populations worldwide," assessed Los Angeles Times reporter Kim Christensen in December 2008. "As Asian economies boomed, more and more people began buying turtle, once a delicacy beyond their budgets. Driven in particular by Chinese demand, Asian consumption has all but wiped out wild turtle populations not just in China, but in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere in the region. Now conservationists fear that the U.S. turtle population could be eaten into extinction. In 1999, an international consortium of biologists and others estimated that the Asian turtle trade had grown to about 10 million of the reptiles a year," or just under the sum of current U.S. exports.
"By many accounts, demand has since grown dramatically," Christensen found. "Those who catch turtles typically use baited hooks on trotlines, some stretching for miles. Their catch is bagged boxed and shipped live to U.S. customers on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico--and to Asian gateways such as Hong Kong and Taiwan."

Hunting vs. roadkills

Within less than a decade turtle hunting has become the greatest threat to the survival of freshwater turtles in the U.S. since the invention of automobiles added roadkills to the hazards they must evade in moving among ponds, ditches, and waterways in their annual search for a mate.
Motor vehicles kill about 1.6 million turtles per year in the U.S., ANIMAL PEOPLE estimated in 1994, by comparing data from a variety of regional and local counts. Though traffic in turtle habitat has increased, the roadkill toll has probably dropped since then. Efforts to modify roads to protect turtles at favored crossing points have helped, but mainly there are just fewer turtles to make the crossings.
More than 31.7 million live turtles, nearly 11 million per year, were exported legally from the U.S. between November 2002 and November 2005, according to the World Chelonian Trust.
"Animals exported from the United States have four primary destinations," World Chelonian Trust director Darrell Senneke reported in 2006. "The first is directly to the food markets of China and Southeast Asia. The second is to Asian turtle farms where the majority are 'grown out,' as in our cattle feed lots, and then sent to the markets. The third is for breeding stock in turtle farms. The fourth is for the huge pet markets around the world."
Only about 737,000 of the turtles exported alive from the U.S. were wild-captured--but turtle farming also cuts into the wild population.
"Baby turtles are being sent to China," Iowa Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Joe Fourdyce told Des Moines Register reporter Juli Probasco-Sowers after the July 2008 arrest of two men for allegedly catching turtles by illegal means, with a net lacking an identification tag. Facing fines of up to $2,299 apiece, the men reportedly intended to tell their catch to breeders. The breeders would collect the eggs from the captured turtles, hatch the eggs in an incubator, and sell the hatchlings to China.
As well as using wild-caught breeding stock, some turtle farmers use eggs or hatchlings collected from wild nests.
"Arguments can be made both for and against this trade," Senneke acknowleged. "Some people opine that the shipment and sales of American species produced in large numbers actually save endangered foreign species by taking their place in the food and pet markets. Others argue that the shipment and subsequent release of American species," either through accidental escapes or deliberate release as a religious ritual, "do tremendous damage to the ecology of countries around the globe with breeding colonies of high fecundity American turtles competing with possibly endangered native species. Still other people will argue that there is no such thing as an ethically acceptable trade in turtles whatsoever."

Slow recovery--or none

Unlike most hunted species, Senneke pointed out, turtles recover slowly from intensified predation, if at all.
"Turtles are very long lived animals," Senneke wrote, "who, under normal conditions, have a combination of high adult survival and very low hatchling and juvenile survival. Low recruitment into a population is offset by the long breeding life of the adults under normal circumstances. When an adult turtle is removed from the wild it is not just that turtle who is removed, but also the reproductive potential of that animal over a breeding life that may exceed 50 years. Research has shown that there is no compensation of increased hatchling survival in response to a reduced adult population. As a result, removal of even a few adults from a population can result in the decline and eventual loss of the entire population."
Only about 50 people are involved in catching freshwater turtles in Florida, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission believes, but they sell about 560,000 pounds of turtle per year, mostly softshell species, for between $0.75 and $1.40 per pound.
But the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission may have underestimated the numbers of people trying to cash in while turtles can still be found in the wild-- and their impact. In Iowa, for example, where reportedly just four turtle trapping licenses were sold in 1998, 176 were sold in 2008. The volume of turtles caught in Iowa increased from 29,000 pounds in 1987 to 235,000 pounds in 2007, Iowa State University ecology professor Fred Janzen told Marco Santana of Associated Press.
Several states lack even a method of estimating hunting pressure on their turtle populations.
"Because there are no regulations," explained Joey Holleman of the Columbia State in March 2008, "South Carolina officials say it's impossible to come up with an accurate number of turtles taken from the Palmetto State. However, one Louisiana turtle farmer claimed to take 30,000 turtles from South Carolina in 2003."
"We're the last state where it's open warfare on turtles," Riverbanks Zoo curator of herpetology Scott Pfaff told Holleman. "It's the only animal exploited for food that requires no permit, so the species is being exterminated and South Carolina gets nothing."
The South Carolina legislature in 2008 considered bills to curtail hunting eight turtle species and to stop all turtle hunting, but neither bill became law. As the May 2009 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, both houses of the South Carolina legislature had passed a bill in yet-to-be-reconciled amended forms, which would provide that "It is unlawful for a person, or a group of individuals traveling in one vehicle, to remove, or attempt to remove from this State more than ten, either in one species or a combination of species," nine named turtle species. This would be in combination with an annual export limit of 20 turtles.
A loophole is that the bill, H 3121, allows the continued sale of yellowbelly and snapping turtles "if these turtles were taken from a permitted aquaculture facility or a private pond pursuant to a permit issued by the department at the request of the owner or owner's agent."
Georgia legislators Joe Wilkinson, Bob Lane, Calvin Hill, and Ed Lindsey on March 3, 2009 introduced a bill, HB 603, which would halt turtle hunting, but six weeks later the bill had yet to move.
"Georgia law currently allows an unlimited number of freshwater turtles to be harvested from the wild and sold as food," summarized the Center for Biological Diversity, Satilla Riverkeeper, Altamaha Riverkeeper, and the Center For Food Safety in a 2008 petition to the legislature. "Under this regime, every non-protected freshwater turtle in Georgia can be legally collected and sold. Unregulated harvest and commercial collection are rapidly depleting Georgia's wild turtle populations."
The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity has joined local organizations in eight Midwestern and Southern states in seeking to stop or at least significantly slow the hunting toll on turtles.
"People in states where there's either no regulation or lax regulations are literally strip mining streams," explained Center for Biological Diversity spokesperson Jeff Miller. "We're going to see some catastrophic results. It's way beyond anything that's sustainable."
Editorially agreed the New York Times on January 26, 2009, "States should impose much tighter restrictions on the harvesting and export of wild turtles. Internationally, the problem is more complicated. There have been efforts to monitor the species of wild turtles found in Chinese markets, but as long as the appetite for turtles--and traditional medicines derived from them--persists, we fear it will be hard to curtail such a profitable and disastrous trade."
"The situation of turtle conservation in China is improving," Hainan Normal University chelonian researcher Shi Haitao in July 2007 told 200 delegates to a joint meeting of the Turtle Survival Alliance and the World Conservation Union's tortoise and freshwater turtle specialist group at Zoo Atlanta. According to Shi Haitao, the volume of turtles sold at the Qingping market in Guangzhou had fallen 80% in 10 years.
But there may be two reasons for that beyond increased concern for turtles.
One is that Wal-Mart, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, has opened superstores in the region that sell live turtles and frogs. So have competitor chains, including Carrefour of France, Metro of Germany, and Tesco of Britain.
Wal-Mart chief executive officer Lee Scott declared in October 2005 that Wal-Mart has a duty to be a "good steward for the environment." But Wal-Mart has yet to respond to the question ANIMAL PEOPLE asked of Scott and the company multiple times in 2007, "How does Wal-Mart reconcile selling turtles (and frogs) for human consumption in your stores in China with your policy of sustainability?"
The other reason for falling turtle sales at the Qingping market may be that the world is running out of turtles.
--Merritt Clifton

Rabies risk is medically identified from eating dogs & cats

HANOI--People who prepare dog and cat meat for human consumption are at risk of contracting rabies, warned medical researcher Heiman Wertheim, M.D. in the March 18, 2009 edition of PLoS Medicine
PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed open-accesss online scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science. With offices in San Francisco and Cambridge, England, PLoS Medicine "gives the highest priority to papers on the conditions and risk factors that cause the greatest losses in years of healthy life worldwide," state the editors.
Wertheim and colleagues from the National Institute of Infectious & Tropical Diseases and the National Institute of Hygiene & Epidemiology in Hanoi, Vietnam, researched the association of dog meat with rabies after encountering two cases.
The first patient "had prepared and eaten a dog who was killed in a road accident; rabid dogs were known to inhabit the neighborhood. The second patient butchered and ate a cat who had been sick for a number of days," e-mailed Wertheim to members of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
"It is thought that infection occurred during the slaughtering [or butchering], and not by eating the meat," Wertheim continued, "as the meals were shared by others who did not become infected.
Rabid dogs have been found in dog slaughterhouses, where workers are vaccinated as part of the national rabies control program, Wertheim explained, but people who kill dogs for personal consumption usually are not vaccinated.
"Vietnamese doctors already consider dog slaughtering a risk factor for rabies transmission, but it is important that other health care workers and policy makers, both inside and outside Vietnam, are aware of this risk factor," Wertheim concluded.
Shamsudeen Fagbo of the Depart-ment of Tropical Veterinary Diseases at the University of Pretoria in South Africa responded to the Wertheim posting by suggesting that rabies is also contracted through killing and butchering dogs and cats in parts of Africa.
"In Nigeria," posted Fagbo to the scientifically refereed ISID ProMed mailing list, "dog eating is very common in states such as Plateau, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Kaduna, Kebbi and Ondo. Cat eating, though not as common as dog eating, can also be encountered, even in cosmopolitan places such as Lagos. While human consumption of bats is also common," Fagbo added, "there seems to have been little or no local effort (as per the limited information available) to evaluate the risk of rabies transmission.
"Rabies is no doubt underreported and probably misdiagnosed in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa," Fagbo continued. "Cultural and religious beliefs will also contribute to the underreporting of human rabies that may arise from the consumption of infected but apparently healthy dogs and cats. The [rabies-related] Lagos bat and Mokola lyssaviruses remain under-diagnosed in the human populace."
Fagbo pointed out that a little-noticed paper entitled "Rabies in apparently healthy dogs: histological and immunohistochemical studies," published in 2006 in The Nigerian Postgraduate Medical Journal, identified dog-eating as a high-risk practice in restaurants near two military barracks in Maiduguri, an overwhelmingly Muslim city where eating dogs is otherwise culturally forbidden. The researchers found evidence of rabies in the heads of 16 of 52 dogs who had been butchered. "If the observations [of authors B.B. Ajayi, J.S. Rabo JS, and S.S. Baba] are confirmed," wrote Fagbo, "this, in their words, 'signifies a new dimension in the epidemiology of the disease.'"
Also in 2006, rabies was linked to two human fatalities in the Philippines.
"Ressia Mae Edoria, 4, of Barangay Molobolo, Cauayan, Negros Occidental died last December of rabies and encephalitis, days after neighbors gave her dog meat" at a drinking party," reported Margaux C. Ortiz of The Philippine Inquirer in Makati City on February 1, 2006. "Renante Edoria, the girl's father, said his daughter suffered from high fever and exhibited symptoms of rabies shortly after eating the meat."
Hospitalized on December 13, 2005, Ressie Edoria died a few hours later. Animal Kingdom Foundation veterinarian Winston Samaniego told Ortiz that the rabies virus may have attacked her as rapidly as it did by entering her nervous system though a tooth cavity.
"I am now appealing to everyone to stop eating dogs to avoid this kind of tragedy," said Renante Edoria.
In June 2006, the Philippines Sun Star reported, "One man died and 23 others are under observation after eating rabid dogs in Maasin, Iloilo. Rolando Carmelita, Jr. died after he cooked and ate a rabid dog. He also fed the meal to his relatives. Not contented, they cooked and ate two more rabid dogs."
Added Greg Salido Quimpo of Animal Kingdom Foundation, "The victim's mother is a village councilor. She passed a resolution banning the eating of dogs."
Malaysian Society of Parasitology & Tropical Medicine president S. Vellayan, M.D. warned in July 2008 via Marjorie Chiew of The Star of Malaysia that rabies is only one of the health hazards of eating dogs, after politicians objecting to the presence of street dogs suggested that the dog should be eaten.
"Eating stray dogs is not encouraged," Vellayan said, "because some of them may have viruses, bacteria and parasites and can bring about parasitic problems such as cysts and tapeworm infection. These can be transmitted from animals to humans if the meat is not cooked thoroughly. People can also be infected with tapeworms and rabies when slaughtering the infected animals with their bare hands," Vellayan cautioned.
Vellayan suggested that rabies might be more common in dogs from northern and border states. He also cited risk of dog-eaters contracting tuberculosis, salmonellosis and leptospirosis. "Protozoan diseases such as toxoplasmosis can be transmitted via the oral route to humans," summarized Chiew. "In the congenital form, transplacental infection can take place in the early months of a woman's pregnancy, resulting in abortion or stillbirth."
Increasing recognition of eating dogs and cats as a vector for transmission of rabies may have the most significance in southern China and parts of the Philippines.
Thousands of people per year die of rabies in China, almost entirely in the regions where dogs are commonly eaten and raised for meat. So-called "meat dogs" are not vaccinated, because of the belief that vaccination would make them unfit for consumption.

Scientists confirm-- Hurt crabs feel pain

BELFAST--Hermit crabs feel pain when injured and change their behavior to avoid the source of pain, reported Robert Elwood of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on March 27, 2009.
"With vertebrates we are asked to err on the side of caution and I believe this is the approach to take with crustaceans," concluded Elwood.
"Ripping the legs off live crabs and crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment," warned Jennifer Viegas of the Discovery Channel.
More than 4,130 news web sites amplified Elwood's findings, soon to be published in the journals Animal Behavior and Applied Animal Behavior Science.
The hermit crab study was Elwood's second well-publicized attempt to establish to the satisfaction of most remaining scientific skeptics that crustaceans feel pain. New Scientist in November 2007 published Elwood's findings about the behavior of 144 prawns after he daubed one of their antennae with a solution of diluted acetic acid. The prawns immediately groomed and rubbed the daubed antennae, but not their other antennae. This, Elwood wrote, was "consistent with an interpretation of pain experience."
The Guardian headlined a report about the prawn study "Blow for fans of boiled lobster." But other researchers alleged fault with Elwood's experiment.
"Even a single-cell organism can detect a threatening chemical gradient and retreat from it," University of Utah pain researcher Richard Chapman told Guardian reporter Ian Sample.
Elwood designed the hermit crab study to respond to the criticisms of the prawn study. He and colleague Mirjam Appel collected hermit crabs from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland.
"All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat," reported Viegas.
Hermit crabs, rather than forming their own shells, occupy shells discarded by other animals. Once they find a satisfactory shell, they are reluctant to abandon it. Their usual response to a threat is to retreat farther into the shell.
Elwood and Appel offered the hermit crabs alternative shells to move into, but shells less attractive to them than the shells they already had.
Elwood and Appel then gave some of the crabs small electric shocks while they were inside their old shells.
hells. They also groomed themselves in a manner that Elwood and Appel described as "a protective motor reaction, viewed as a sign of pain in vertebrates." Crabs who were not shocked did not take the opportunity to change shells.
"There has been a long debate about whether crustaceans including crabs, prawns and lobsters feel pain," Elwood summarized in a media release. "We know from previous research that they can detect harmful stimuli and withdraw from the source of the stimuli but that could be a simple reflex without the inner 'feeling' of unpleasantness that we associate with pain. This research demonstrates that it is not a simple reflex but that crabs trade their need for a quality shell with the need to avoid the harmful stimulus."

Trade-offs

"Such trade-offs are seen in vertebrates," Elwood wrote, "in which the response to pain is controlled with respect to other requirements. Humans, for example, may hold a hot plate that contains food, whereas they may drop an empty plate, showing that we take into account differing motivational requirements when responding to pain.
"Trade-offs of this type have not been previously demonstrated in crustaceans," Elwood continued. "The results are consistent with the idea of pain being experienced by these animals."
Elwood spoke specifically to the treatment of crustaceans by the seafood industry. "More research is needed in this area where a potentially very large problem is being ignored," he said. "Legislation to protect crustaceans has been proposed [in Britain] but is likely to cover only scientific research. Millions of crustaceans are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry. There is no protection for these animals, with the possible exception of certain states in Australia."
In Elwood's Applied Animal Behavior Science paper, he and co-authors Stuart Barr and Lynsey Patterson cite seven reasons for believing that crustaceans suffer. In addition to the findings of the hermit crab and prawn experiments, they explain, crustaceans placed under stress demonstrate physiological changes consistent with feeling pain, including release of adrenal-like hormones. If crabs are given anesthetics or analgesics, they appear to feel relieved, showing fewer responses to negative stimuli.
Contrary to the supposition that having a brain is necessary to feel pain, Elwood et al argue, crustaceans have "high cognitive ability and sentience."
Feelings of pain and stress in mammals are associated with the neocortex. Because crustaceans lack a neocortex, prevailing belief until recently was that they lack the physiological structure necessary to suffer.
Responds Elwood, "Using the same analogy, one could argue crabs do not have vision because they lack the visual centres of humans." In fact, fish, lobsters and octopi all have vision, and some species have relatively advanced vision, despite lacking a visual cortex. The explanation is that their neurological systems are organized in a different manner, with different control structures.
"It was also thought," said Viegas of the Discovery Channel, "that since many invertebrates cast off damaged appendages, it was not harmful for humans to remove legs, tails and other body parts from live crustaceans. Another study led by Lynsey Patterson, however, found that when humans twisted off legs from crabs, their stress response was so profound that some later died."

Humane response

Much of the humane community has believed for decades that the treatment of crustaceans should become a topic of urgent concern--if only to avoid practices that might encourage callous treatment of other species.
In 1952, for example, delegates from 25 nations agreed at a convention hosted by the World Federation for the Protection of Animals--one of the three ancestors of the World Society for the Protection of Animals-- that boiling live crustaceans sets a bad example of how animals should be treated, and should be abolished.
PETA has staged heavily publicized live lobster releases almost annually for more than 25 years. In 2006 two members of Animal Rights Croatia locked themselves into a fish tank to dramatize the fate of lobsters.
Serious efforts have also been made by the humane community to assemble scientific evidence that crustaceans suffer. The Scottish organization Advocates for Animals in 2005 published a volume entitled Cephalopods & Decapod Crustaceans: Their Capacity To Experience Pain & Suffering, assessing all that was known at that time.
Such efforts have brought some results. Notably, the grocery chain Whole Foods in 2006 quit selling live soft-shelled crabs and lobsters for humane reasons.
But the humane community has also been embarrassed by incidents such as a crab cook held in 2005 to benefit the Prince Rupert SPCA. A sequel was cancelled in 2006 by the British Columbia SPCA, parent organization to the Prince Rupert SPCA, after Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson led a campaign against it.

Concern for fish

Concern about crustacean suffering is rising parallel to campaigns on behalf of fish. Hong Kong SPCA executive director Sandy Macalister, for instance, editorialized recently in the membership magazine Paw Prints against the practice of restauranteurs keeping giant groupers and other species on display in cramped tanks, until bought and killed for someone's dinner.
"These wonderful animals, which since the 1940s have lived and bred in the coral depths, now lie behind thick distorting glass in a narrow tank on the footpath," wrote Macalister. "How many times have we walked past such horrific living conditions for these animals without a second thought? Is it because we consider them to be `just fish'? If a passer-by or a restaurant patron knew that these magnificent creatures were more than 65 years old, would that make a difference?"
Macalister's editorial attracted extensive sympathetic coverage from Simon Parry of the South China Morning Post.
"Fish are vertebrates like us," University of Hong Kong biologist Yvonne Sadovy told Parry. "They have a backbone, and a lot of the biology and physiology have some similarities to us. Our nervous systems and hormonal systems in some ways are very similar. I think most biologists would say there is absolutely no reason to believe they would not feel pain. How they perceive it is obviously incredibly difficult to know, but you pick up a fish and take it out of water and put a hook in its mouth and it struggles. There is something clearly uncomfortable and not right and that fish perceives stress."
"When you consider what a fish does in its daily life--it can tell where it is, identify things and make decisions--it is clear there's far more going on than anyone suspects," Macalister said. "They learn, and they have memories, and they can identify people. They feel stress and they feel pain. People used to believe fish couldn't remember anything for longer than three seconds, but we know now that isn't true."
Fish in Hong Kong, as in most of the world, have only scant protection under existing anti-cruelty laws, but Macalister pointed out that laws follow public opinion.
"Attitudes, as well as the law, have to change," Macalister told Parry. "It's an issue of education."
Industry notice
Some people in the seafood industry are also beginning to notice animal welfare issues. Adam Anson, who writes for The Fish Site, The Pig Site, The Beef Site, and other online animal industry periodicals, noted in March 2009 that "Fish welfare needs have been left behind" in developing the aquaculture industry, even though "In 1997, the Treaty of Amsterdam agreed that throughout the European Union the concept of welfare is the same in fish as it is in mammals and birds and necessary protection should be applied."
This concept was reinforced in an April 8, 2009 communication to the European Commission by the EC Fisheries Directorate.
" This communication recognises the importance of the welfare of farmed fish for the development of sustainable aquaculture," summarized Eurogroup for Animal Welfare. "Eurogroup is pleased to see that the Commission plans to launch a project to evaluate fish welfare in aquaculture with a view to possibly introducing legislation on this topic," Eurogroup added.
Assessed Anson, "Research into this area has not just been hampered by a lack of investment, but also by the complexity of the issue and the difficulty in achieving scientific, relevant measurementsŠA further complexity is added by the numerous different species of fish that are now used in farming. Research must identify all the varying degrees of behavioral patterns and social activities. Welfare standards must, in turn, take these natural drives into account, applying unique welfare standards for each different species."
Noted Anson, "Some natural conditions will be impossible to recreate in a fish pen. For instance, Atlantic salmon will never be able to make their monumental migrations, risking life to reproduce, whilst trapped inside the confines of a net.
"It is easy to see how fish welfare is a complex and potentially very expensive issue for the industry," Anson concluded, "but the more that is understood, the more necessary the research seems." --Merritt Clifton

India balks at EU mention of animal welfare in trade pact

BRUSSELS, NEW DELHI--The government of Indian prime minister Man-mohan Singh reportedly objects to the inclusion of the phrase "animal welfare" in the provisional edition of a recently formalized protocol for negotiating a free trade agreement between India and the European Union.
The European Parliament approved the draft protocol for completing the EU-India Free Trade Agreement on March 26, 2009, more than five years after negotiations began with India in November 2003.
The text that reportedly offends the Singh government is scarcely provocative. Listed tenth among 62 enumerated "General Issues," the sentence in question "Considers it important that the Free Trade Agreement confirms the provisions of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement; calls on the Commission in this regard to address outstanding issues such as animal welfare."
This would appear to be consistent with Article 51-A[g] of the Constitution of India, authored by Jawaharal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, which states that "It shall be the fundamental duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the Natural Environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for all living creatures."
However, reported the Financial Express from New Delhi on April 15, 2009, "India has opposed a reported move by the European Union to include animal welfare issues in the World Trade Organisation negotiations. Reacting to reports of EU pitching for the inclusion of animal rights in the WTO talks, official sources said these were attempts by developed countries to block exports from developing countries using these standards."
An unnamed Indian official told the Financial Express, "These are non-tariff barriers to curb exports," which the official projected would "throw many people out of jobs in developing countries."
Of most apparent concern to the Singh cabinet are movement within the European Parliament to strengthen standards for animal use in laboratories and for livestock transport and slaughter.
The European Parliament Agriculture Committee on March 31, 2009 approved amended rules governing animal experimentation which, while much weaker than animal advocates had hoped for, will be much stronger than a new Indian regulatory regime introduced by the Singh administration on March 5, 2009.
Explained online commentator Smita Joshi, listed as information contact for Vivada Chemicals PLtd., of Mumbai, "A proposal from the department of pharmaceuticals now being considered by Manmohan Singh seeks to make comprehensive changes in the laws governing research funding, drug discovery, clinical trials, and approvals at different stages, so that Indian drug makers can re-orient themselves from being successful copiers of costly multinational brands to owners of scientific breakthroughs.
"Drug makers will get a new regulatory regime that is more friendly for investing in high-risk research, testing experimental drugs on animals, and protecting the research data shared with the regulators," Singh said. "Faster approval of various stages of animal and human experiments is another reform planned. Specific regulatory changes will be identified in a detailed project report to be prepared within six months after the Prime Minister clears the project, said an official."
Joshi indicated that the proposed Indian regulatory changes are based on the recommendations of "50 top executives of drug makers such as Ranbaxy, Biocon, Wockhardt, Pfizer, Wyeth and F. Hoffmann La Roche," who "identified the bottlenecks that hold drug firms from inventing new drugs."
Other developing nations have already attracted considerable investment in animal testing from the European Union and the U.S., by offering the combination of well-educated labor plus lax regulatory environments, but since 1964 India has had some of the strongest rules in the world governing animal experimentation.
The Indian pharmaceutical industry began a concerted effort to undo the rules after former Indian federal animal welfare minister Maneka Gandhi in January 2002 won rulings from the Supreme Court of India that allowed her to close five antivenin manufacturing firms for violating animal care standards. An alliance of pharmaceutical manufacturers with practitioners of animal sacrifice in mid-2002 pushed Mrs. Gandhi from office and in mid-2003 purged animal advocates from the Indian federal body that regulates animal research.
ANIMAL PEOPLE in April 2004 exposed the Indian pharmaceutical industry strategy by revealing the content of a leaked document entitled Harmonization of CPCSEA [regulatory] Norms in India With International Norms & Amendment of Breeding Rules With Regard to Import of Animals for Experimentation. The author, microbiologist S.C. Adlakha, Ph.D., was identified as an animal health consultant for the Animal Welfare Division, Government of India.
The exposé may have slowed the industry momentum somewhat, but the proposed changes outlined by Smita Joshi closely parallel Adlakha's recommendations.
The Indian government's 11th Five-Year Plan 2007-2012, published in January 2007, anticipated both expanded animal experimentation and more use of non-animal alternatives. Addressing the first Indian Congress on Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research, Testing and Education, Indian Council of Medical Research senior deputy director general Vasantha Muthuswamy simultaneously announced that a National Cell Science Centre would be established to pursue non-animal testing methods, and disclosed that a 100-acre National Breeding Facility to produce laboratory animals was in development in Andhra Pradesh state.
Meanwhile the directive on animal experimentation ratified by the European Parliament Agriculture Committee will cover the use of all vertebrate animals, cyclostome fish such as hagfish and lampreys, cephalopods such as octopi and squid, and decapod crustaceans, including crabs, lobsters, and prawns. The directive also governs the use of all independently feeding larval forms of regulated species, and embryonic or foetal forms during the last trimester of their development.
As such, the proposed directive will cast the broadest umbrella of any laboratory regulatory regime now in effect.
The directive provides broad exemptions for non-experimental standard practices in agricultural and veterinary practice, including animal husbandry practices such as artificial insemination and embryo transplanting; methods of marking animals such as ear-notching, tagging, tattooing, branding, and microchipping; and non-invasive practices.
Despite the expansion of regulatory jurisdiction in the directive, Eurogroup for Animals pronounced itself "deeply disappointed with the results of the vote" wherein the European Parliament Agriculture Committee approved the directive. Eurogroup represents an alliance of European animal welfare organizations in lobbying the European Parliament,
Alleged Eurogroup, "The Agriculture Committee have adopted amendments that will remove important mechanisms for the protection of research animals from the proposed text drafted by the European Commission if these amendments are also adopted in plenary," in May 2009.

Primate experiments

"Eurogroup is particularly disappointed that the Members of the European Parliament have allowed tests to be carried out on animals that cause severe prolonged suffering," the Eurogroup statement continued. "The authorisation procedure for determining what testing may be carried out has also been weakened. Some MEPs have even contradicted themselves," said Eurogroup, "by voting to make it easier to experiment on primates, while in September 2008 they adopted a resolution calling for non-human primate research to be phased out."
The approved directive stipulates that wild-caught primates, great apes, and members of endangered species may not be used in experiments except to help conserve their species. Experiments using purpose-bred primates may be "undertaken with a view to the avoidance, diagnosis, prevention or treatment of life-threatening or debilitating clinical conditions in human beings," including so-called basic research which seeks to identify how biological systems work, including how they respond to injuries and disease. This tends to be the most controversial branch of biomedical research.
The directive reinforces the prohibition on use of wild-caught primates by requiring that primates used in experiments must be "the offspring of non-human primates which have been bred in captivity," according to a phase-in schedule based on the number of generations of each type of primate who have bred in captivity and are sufficiently abundant to fill anticipated research demand.
Marmosets must be second-generation captive-bred as soon as the directive takes effect. Rhesus and crab-eating macaques must be second-generation captive-bred by seven years later. All other primates must be second-generation captive-bred by 10 years from the directive taking effect.
The directive forbids using stray and feral domestic animals in experiments, forbids using wildlife, and requires that any mice, rats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, frogs, dogs, and cats used in experiments must be purpose-bred. However, exemptions to the purpose-bred rule for wildlife and other commonly used species may be granted by member states.
The directive also limits how animals may be used if subjected to multiple scientific procedures.
Animal-using scientific institutions will be required to establish permanent ethical review panels similar to the Institutional Animal Care & Use Committees required in the U.S. since 1971.
The rules governing the use of primates may inhibit the ambitions of some Indian politicians and entrepreneurs to undo a 1978 prohibition on exporting primates for lab use. Their argument, echoed by factions in Malaysia and Indonesia, is that macaques in particular are a common urban nuisance, especially since street dog numbers have declined, enabling macaques to push deeper into cities, and should be "harvested" for economic use.
Scientists are mostly not eager to use wild-caught primates, however, especially in viral disease research, since wild primates carry many viruses which could spread to humans and in any event tend to complicate studies involving human viruses.
Despite this concern, wildlife traffic investigators suspect that many of the purported captive-bred macaques imported into the U.S. and European Union in recent years have actually been caught in the wild. Of 27,905 monkeys imported into the U.S. in 2008, 26,499 were crab-eating macaques; 838 were rhesus macaques.
China, whose primate breeding industry is suspected of "laundering" wild-caught macaques, exported 18,074 monkeys to the U.S. in 2008. Another 1,920 came from Cambodia, and 1,800 from Vietnam, both nations where major dealers are allegedly involved in monkey-laundering.

Livestock transport

The livestock transport issue may be at least as sensitive to India as animal experimentation, even though India neither imports nor exports much livestock to European Union nations, and would therefore not be directly affected by pending EU proposals to strengthen livestock transport regulations.
The concern for India is that the European Union is responding to international pressure from both animal advocates and health agencies to much more closely regulate animal welfare in transit. Illnesses including hoof-and-mouth disease, Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the H5N1 avian influenza, and mad cow disease have spread not only from nation to nation but continent to continent in recent years via trade in livestock.
This is a difficult topic for India, because while India nominally prohibits the export of cattle and their progeny for slaughter, India is in truth among the global leaders in exporting cattle and buffalo to slaughter. More than 17,000 buffalo and 500 cattle per day are exported to slaughter from Punjab alone, reported Varinder Singh of the Chandrigarh Tribune in April 2008.
Stronger international treaties governing animal welfare in livestock transport might oblige the Indian government to acknowledge, regulate, and supervise the clandestine traffic. But that could be political suicide for the party in power, since regulating cattle export for slaughter could be portrayed as approving of the slaughter of cows, the "Mothers of India," considered sacred by devout Hindus and Jains.
"Conscious that animal transportation has always been a controversial issue, the European Commission has nevertheless decided to return to it and strengthen welfare standards for the 60 million cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, poultry and horses moved each year in Europe," reported Luc Vernet of Europolitics on April 16, 2009.
"Before the European Parliament," Vernet said, "health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou committed to make a proposal in this direction before the [mid-2009] European elections. Her services therefore developed a draft regulation which anticipates establishing maximum load densities on trucks, prohibiting the transportation of animals to slaughterhouses beyond a journey of nine hours, and limiting convoys for other reasons."
A 120-page impact study acknowledges that the changes might produce a "slight increase" in European meat prices.
"But according to Italian hauliers the increase will be more than slight," reported The Pig Site. "Many member countries, including the United Kingdom, argue that animal welfare could be better served by enforcing the existing regulations across Europe. Farming organisations in Spain say that more important than journey time is good animal management when loading and unloading, and in supplying water. And they say any reduction in density will simply mean wasted fuel."
Countering the industry opposition, "Eurogroup For Animals has written to the European Commission to express our concerns over the half-hearted approach" of the draft regulation, Eurogroup announced on April 24.
"Although we welcome the Commission's proposal to restrict the transport of animals sent to the slaughterhouse to nine hours," Eurogroup specified, "the text allows for an unrestricted number of exemptions that may be granted by member states. An imprecise definition of 'slaughter animals' will also allow transporters to avoid journey time restrictions," Eurogroup alleged. "If they say the animals are being transported for fattening, they will be able to transport them longer.
"Eurogroup is also concerned that the text does not make reference to a legal basis for real-time checks on transport movements via a global positioning unit--a clear necessity if the proposed regulation is to be properly enforced," Eurogroup said.
The implications of Vassilou proposals for India, however indirect, received considerable attention from Indian business media. The Statesman, for example, quoted Vassilou, European Commission Animal Health & Welfare Directorate advisor Michael Scannel, and Czech agriculture minister Petr Gandalovic, who currently holds the EU Farm Council rotating chair.
"Animal welfare is gaining rapid momentum, not only in the EU but worldwide," said Vassiliou, adding that animal welfare requirements should be included as "non-trade concerns" in World Trade Organization agreements.
Added Scannell, "Getting formal recognition of animal welfare standards within binding WTO agreements is crucial for unlocking the United Nations and World Bank resources needed to help the developing world raise its animal welfare levels"
--Merritt Clifton

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

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