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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, JUNE 2010
EDITORIAL FEATURE: Sick & injured animals hide. Shelters need to be seen.
Two members of the ANIMAL PEOPLE team had recent occasion to deliver an injured rabbit to a world-renowned wildlife rescue center. The drive should have taken less than an hour, including a 20-minute ferry boat crossing. Unfortunately, no one at ANIMAL PEOPLE had ever been there before. There was neither a map nor a physical address on the center's web site. Instructions received from center staff before beginning the journey proved to be incomplete. Directions downloaded from Google maps proved to be wrong. Also, the center is located on a dead-end street whose name we were given, but there are two dead-end streets of the same name within about half a mile of each other, probably once connected but no longer.
Altogether, finding the wildlife rescue center took four hours, eight telephone calls, and half a tank of gasoline. Along the way, the ANIMAL PEOPLE expedition met another carload of people with another injured animal who also could not find the center. Each call to the center brought a different set of directions.
Whether a quicker journey could have saved the rabbit will never be known. Upon arrival, all that could be done was euthanasia.
This might be considered an extreme and unusual experience, except that ANIMAL PEOPLE staff have often encountered similar runarounds in making our frequent visits to animal shelters and rescue centers all over the world. It is not surprising that small, desperately underfunded animal care facilities in developing nations are occasionally difficult to locate. On balance, however, the most unexpectedly hard-to-find animal care facilities are in the U.S. and other affluent nations.
It is understandable that animal care facilities are often in out-of-the-way places. Traditionally animal shelters have been located on inexpensive land far enough from neighbors to avoid complaints about barking dogs and animal odors. Frequent barking and bad smells can be prevented by progressive design and good management, but even the best designed and best managed shelters may be consigned to the boondocks by zoning laws written decades ago to keep stables and slaughterhouses out of residential areas.
The reality that a shelter or sanctuary may not be conveniently located is not by itself an insurmountable obstacle to public access. Increasing recognition that improved access brings more visitors, more volunteers, and ultimately more donations is why the majority of animal shelters in the U.S. now offer dogs and cats for adoption through the 700-odd PetSmart Luv-A-Pet in-store boutiques, which have rehomed more than three million animals since 1990. The idea is that if bringing visitors to the shelter is difficult, a microcosm of the shelter can be taken to them.
Because a major "secret" of success in business is being conveniently located, every PetSmart store is easy to find, with prominent signage, plenty of parking, and maps of how to get there at multiple local web sites. But even if the nearest PetSmart store is several hundred miles away, an animal care facility whose management understands the importance of encouraging access can attract visitors by the busload.
The founders of Kanab, Utah, were polygamist Mormons who moved there in 1848. The Mormon church renounced polygamy in 1890, but polygamist enclaves persist near Kanab to this day, a location so far out in the desert as to seemingly ensure isolation.
Hollywood film makers found Kanab about 80 years after the polygamists. Ironically, the movie moguls were attracted for a similar reason: expansive western movies could be made near Kanab with little risk of accidentally incorporating anachronistic scenery, such as power poles or passing cars. Westerns were made in Kanab for about half a century. But after the studios that used Kanab quit making westerns, the film sets fell idle. The site remained unused for more than 10 years--until the Best Friends Animal Society discovered it, bought it, and built the most visited animal sanctuary in the world. More than 27,000 people per year find their way to Best Friends, 7,000 of them for multi-day stays as volunteers, even though Kanab is still several hours from the nearest airport.
Knowing that visitors to shelters and sanctuaries tend to become the most generous and loyal volunteers and donors, Best Friends actively encourages guests with every device and method that a chamber of commerce might use to promote tourism. As well as advertising the sanctuary itself, Best Friends advertises scenic national parks and monuments that might be accessed from the same highways, distributes lists of local restaurants and overnight accommodations, and--above all else--offers maps and directions.
It is often facetiously said now that if one can find Kanab, one cannot miss finding Best Friends; but if one cannot find Kanab, just go to Best Friends and ask where the town is.
Through extensive web-searching, ANIMAL PEOPLE discovered that hundreds of animal shelters and sanctuaries do not have a physical address on their web site, just a post office box, and only about half offer any sort of map or directions for visitors.
Yet the importance of maintaining visibility and accessibility is actually among the oldest lessons in humane work.
The success of Best Friends, the fastest-growing U.S. animal advocacy group for about 15 years now, echoes a lesson also taught by Henry Bergh, who founded the American SPCA in 1867 and is usually credited with founding the U.S. humane movement. Bergh, a very tall man for his time, always wore a top hat, even when top hats passed from vogue. He wore the top hat, he often explained, so that everyone could see where he stood, so as to stand with him. Then he would take off the top hat and pass it, collecting donations enough to keep the ASPCA alive.
In truth, Bergh did not really found the U.S. humane movement, in the sense of starting the first influential organization. Elizabeth Morris and Annie Waln had founded the Animal Rescue League of Philadelphia in 1858. This, not the ASPCA, was the first U.S. humane society with surviving descendants. Among them are the Morris Animal Refuge and the Women's Humane Society, and--indirectly--the Philadelphia SPCA and American Anti-Vivisection Society.
But Morris and Waln are not well-remembered, largely through their own tendency to avoid becoming well-known. Frequently overwhelmed by the volume of animals abandoned at their doorstep, Morris and Waln struggled all their lives against a tendency to recluse themselves, which they apparently recognized as counterproductive. Their tendency to hide became most pronounced when they briefly held the Philadelphia animal control contract. Initially trying to save every animal, Morris and Waln later used chloroform to kill the many animals they could not accommodate. Troubled by killing animals, like generations of humane workers who followed them, and fearing their actions would not be understood, Morris and Waln retreated even more from public contact.
Under Bergh, the ASPCA never held an animal control contract, and barely engaged in animal sheltering. But Bergh did found the U.S. humane movement in the sense of inviting, attracting, and encouraging public participation. His overt emphasis was upon enforcing the first New York state humane law. His actual focus was upon using law enforcement--and the attention attracted by crime reportage--to educate the public about how animals ought to be treated.
Realities of wildlife rescue & rehab
From Bergh to Best Friends, animal advocacy and humane work have proceeded between recognition of the need for effective, enthusiastic outreach, and the tendency toward the depressed and embittered self-isolation that afflicted Morris and Waln. Unfortunately, throughout most of this time the majority of shelter workers have perceived--or at least have been trained to accept--that the job includes an obligation to kill large numbers of animals, some young and healthy, others grievously neglected or abused. Transferring grief and guilt by blaming the public became a time-honored and institutionalized coping mechanism.
Though shelter killing has now been reduced to about a seventh of the peak numbers reached circa 40 years ago, mistrust of the public remains endemic among humane animal care providers. Spirits are much higher now among those who handle dogs and cats, who are today as likely to be rehomed as killed, but wildlife care providers may never have been more dispirited. Most wild animals brought to rescue centers do not survive the combination of injuries or illness with capture and transportation stress. Even those who are restored to health tend to have little chance of successful return to the wild, after weeks or months of depending on humans for food and security. The few who are released have high mortality--and the successes are usually never seen again. Meanwhile, wildlife rescuers continue to see victims of hunters, trappers, and reckless motorists, newborn fawns orphaned by people who thought the fawns were abandoned by mothers who were usually just quietly grazing nearby, rabbits and squirrels who have been mauled by dogs allowed to run off-leash in inappropriate places, and birds and small mammals who have been injured by free-roaming pet cats (rarely by true feral cats, who tend to quickly kill and eat their prey).
New Hampshire attorney and animal advocate Peter Marsh observed at the first Spay USA conference in 1993 that people who are intensely concerned about particular kinds of animal tend to take on the characteristics of those animals. Marsh went on to describe how feral cat neuter/return practitioners tended to defeat themselves by working furtively, in the shadows, insufficiently communicating to the public what they are doing and why. This tendency continues to inhibit neuter/return work, and has contributed to enormous misunderstanding among birders, in particular, about the behavioral differences between feral cats and free-roaming pets.
Marsh could have made the same observation about wildlife caregivers. No one, in theory, could do more to educate the public about how to avoid harming wild animals through thoughtless behavior, including conditioning them to seek food handouts. Wild animals can be safely fed by providing habitat where they may find their normal diet. Some wildlife charities teach how to do this. But teaching requires engaging the public.
Several years ago ANIMAL PEOPLE profiled nature centers in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas, some of them more than a century old, which welcome and teach tens of thousands of visitors per year. We are aware of many other such centers in other parts of the country, that combine wildlife rescue with wildlife education, and allow the rehabilitated animals who cannot be released to help do a lot of the teaching.
On the other hand, there are those like the facility that could not be found. The ANIMAL PEOPLE delegation were told that it does not publish a physical address lest vandals come to harm the animals. Indeed, vandals do occasionally raid shelters and sanctuaries, harming animals--but such crimes are almost always committed without forethought by local delinquents. And if a psychopath was inclined to seek out an animal care facility to attack, that person could call for directions just like anyone else, using a false pretext.
The facility in question also, as a matter of policy apparently originating long ago with the founder, does not allow the public to see more than a token few of the animals in care, and does not use animals in public education, even those who can never be released and are thoroughly habituated to handling. The stated idea is to protect the animals from stress, but the net effect is to neglect educational opportunities--and to leave wildlife education using live, interactive animals to keepers and breeders of wildlife pets.
ANIMAL PEOPLE believes, as did Henry Bergh, that while enormous good can be done for individual animals through providing conscientious care, by far the greater role of humane work is to educate the public to appreciate animals and live in a manner considerate of animal well-being. Rescuing every animal who suffers as result of human ignorance, indifference, or deliberate mistreatment is far beyond the ability of the humane community at this time--much less the ability to save animals hurt in "acts of nature"; but each rescue, and each adoption of a suitable companion animal, is a chance to teach lessons that reduce the numbers of animals in need of rescue and rehoming.
Effective humane institutions want the public to learn from everything they do. Since people learn most from what they experience, effective teaching begins with accessibility.
•••••
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
"Tong wars" in Ahmedabad make dogcatching methods an Indian national issue
AHMEDABAD--"Tong wars" in Ahmedabad, India, in mid-June 2010 made dog-catching methods a national issue, hotly debated in multiple articles in the Times of India, Daily News & Analysis, The Mirror, The Express--in short, most of the leading newspapers covering northwestern India.
The issue exploded out of the ongoing efforts of Ahmedabad resident Lisa Warden, a Canadian citizen, to bring the city into compliance with the Standard Operating Procedure Manual for Sterilization of Stray Dogs, published in 2009 by the Animal Welfare Board of India.
Ahmedabad, the scene of deadly riots in 2001, remains one of the more intensely politicized and factionalized cities in India. The animal control and Animal Birth Control program contracts, allocated at the ward level, have often been managed as political patronage, and as cover for routing money to supporters of the people in authority, without verification as to whether the contracted work is actually done.
One Ahmedabad-based organization, Animal Help Ahmedabad, is nationally recognized for performing high-volume, high-quality dog sterilization surgery, and has become a major Animal Birth Control program contractor in other cities--and even in the neighboring nation of Bhutan.
But Animal Help Ahmedabad, after sterilizing 45,000 dogs in Ahmedabad in 2006, ran afoul of violence from rival organizations seeking ward ABC contracts, and had worked in Ahmedabad on only a limited scale until Warden arrived. Taking advantage of being obviously not part of any of the Ahmedabad ethnic factions, Warden--with the prominent support of Animal Welfare Board of India chief General Rammehar Kharb--in 2008 set about seeking reform in an unusually public and aggressive manner.
In March 2010 Warden observed that the use of long-handled iron tongs by Ahmedabad dogcatchers appeared to be unacceptably violent. And the tongs are prohibited by the Standard Operating Procedure manual, which constitutes the enforcement regulations for the Indian national dog control law.
"Of the dogs caught by the Ahmedabad dogcatchers with tongs who reached the Animal Help Foundation still alive, 20% had to be put down due to internal bleeding," Warden e-mailed to Kharb and ANIMAL PEOPLE. After Animal Help complained, Warden wrote, the dogcatchers quit bringing the dogs they caught to Animal Help for sterilization, and instead dumped them amid rubbish heaps on the outskirts of the city.
Warden was scarcely the first to seek an end to the use of iron tongs to catch dogs, a method common in India for more the 80 years, but rarely seen anywhere else. The tongs were introduced by the British for use in capturing actively rabid dogs, but came to be used to catch any and all dogs.
Delhi, Kolkata banned tongs
In January 2005 the Delhi-based Society for Stray Canine Birth Control ordered all dogcatchers there to "immediately discontinue the use of tongs in catching of stray dogs for spay/neuter," summarized the Delhi ABC provider Samrakshan in relaying the directive, because "This method has been known to cause a lot of injuries and at times even proved fatal for dogs."
Debdwaipayan Chottopadhyay, chief municipal health officer for Kolkata, in March 2007 banned the use of tongs there. The Calcutta High Court refused to ban tongs outright, but "did instruct the municipality that if there were any other feasible methods for restraining dogs, that should be looked into," recalled Compassionate Crusaders Trust founder Debasis Chakrabarti.
"I find it difficult to condone catching terrified dogs with tongs," commented Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna, citing "photographs of at least two dogs with torn midsections and entrails hanging out" after Chennai dogcatchers used tongs to catch them.
"In general," Krishna said, "the catching process is the most traumatic portion of the street dog ABC program, and the use of tongs makes this so extremely traumatic that it may be kinder to just kill the animals on sight by shooting."
Responding to the evidence that Warden provided, Kharb on April 20, 2010 warned the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation that continuing to capture dogs with tongs and dump them in rubbish heaps would "constitute an offence under the Penal Code."
After six weeks of back-and-forth, Warden told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation contacted me on June 14 to come and pick the tongs up, according to an unofficial deal we worked out. A television crew accompanied us and the whole episode was filmed, both on my video camera and on that of the TV station. The Ahmedabad official," who was to surrender the approximately 20 sets of tongs, "refused to sign the agreement I had prepared for him," Warden said, "which stipulated that he agreed to abide henceforth by the laws of India, that he agreed never to use tongs again, never to dump or dislocate dogs, and so forth.
"We did finally manage to persuade him to write a statement in his own words," Warden continued, "agreeing never to use tongs again, and to abide by the laws of India. I have the statement in my possession. The official then instigated a mob to try to get the tongs back out of my vehicle. They attempted to block my vehicle and stopped us from getting in. A scuffle ensued, in which I peeled them off my car one by one and told them in no uncertain terms to sod off."
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation subsequently charged Warden with obstructing government. Warden-- receiving largely favorable media coverage--responded by posting video of dogcatchers allegedly injuring dogs with tongs to prominent social networking web sites.
"Congratulations, gentlemen," Warden wrote in an open letter. "You have succeeded in putting Ahmedabad and Gujarat," the state within which Ahmedabad is located, "on the map as the world capital of state-sanctioned human savagery against innocent animals, and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is the chief villain. You can be certain that as a result of your barbarism," Warden asserted, "you have successfully derailed once and for all any hope Ahmedabad ever had of winning UNESCO world heritage status," a long coveted goal of the city government.
"I have sent in my statement to the police and am cooperating fully with the investigation," Warden told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "They want me to return the tongs. Ever so sadly, I cannot do so, as the tongs have been destroyed."
In apparent indirect retaliation, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation meanwhile withdrew tenders it recently offered for bidding on the ward animal control contracts, after Animal Help proved to be the only qualified bidder.
--
B O O K S
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Animals As Persons: Essays on the abolition
of animal exploitation by Gary L. Francione
Columbia University Press, (61 West 62nd St., New York, NY 10023), 2008.
235 pages, paperback.
Animals As Persons anthologizes seven of legal scholar Gary Francione's best known examinations of the intersection of law and animal rights philosophy.
Francione rarely directly addresses the legal and philosophical rationales for animal exploitation. He does, however, speak toward them through extensive critiques of the arguments of Peter Singer and Tom Regan, whose Animal Liberation (1976) and The Case for Animal Rights (1983) introduced animal rights theory to mainstream academic discourse; Josephine Donovan, who as co-editor of Beyond Animal Rights (1996) made the most ambitious of many attempts to meld animal rights philosophy with feminism; and Cass Sunstein, who co-edited the 2004 textbook anthology Animal Rights: Current Debates & New Directions, before becoming director of the Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs for U.S. President Barack Obama.
Opposing almost all human use of animals, Francione condemns as "welfarist" practically any reform or argument which recognizes the necessity of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's, at least in the present legal and political context, as a precondition for improving here-and-now conditions for animals. Francione recognizes the need pointed out by the late animal rights tactician Henry Spira for reforms to build in a "stepwise, incremental manner," so that each gain does not obstruct the opportunity to achieve more later. Yet Francione is dismissive of many of the specific reforms that Spira worked longest to achieve.
"That the animal movement actively promotes doing less harm as a morally acceptable solution to the problem of animal exploitation is troubling," Francione writes of programs that seek to improve conditions for farmed animals through issuing seals of approval for farms that meet requirements for animal welfare.
"If X is going to rape Y," Francione continues, "it is 'better' that X not beat Y as well. It would, however, be morally repugnant to maintain that we can be 'conscientious rapists' by ensuring that we not beat rape victims. Similarly, it is disturbing that animal advocates are promoting the notion that we can be morally 'concientious omnivores' if we eat supposedly 'humanely' produced [animal] products." From an abolitionist perspective, Francione is right. Spira would not have argued against his philosophical view. Reality, though, is that if one lives in a society where rape is an entrenched major industry, promoted by one of the largest branches of government, practiced daily by most people who have the right to vote, with beating the victims a routine practice, one may have to work simultaneously on two different fronts to stop both the beatings and the rapes, and recognize that not every offender is going to give up both at once, especially when doing both remain the social norm. Somehow one must get each offender to make some change, in a manner that leads to making another, instead of backsliding under peer pressure. In such a dismal situation, giving up beating rape victims may have to be sold to the offenders as making moral progress, even if it is only a small first step toward relieving the suffering of the victims and is still far from winning recognition of the victims' rights. --Merritt Clifton
--
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
The Link Between Animal Abuse & Human Violence
Edited by Andrew Linzey
Sussex Academic Press (P.O. Box 139, Eastbourne, East Sussex BN24 9BP, U.K.), 2009. 300 pages, hardcover. $84.95.
Thirty-six professionals, mostly well known in the field, contribute to The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of references offer theories about animal abuse.
Why do some five-year-old boys who stomp kittens to death grow up to be ax murderers while others lead constructive lives? No one really knows, but there is a lot of speculation. Marie Louise Peterson and David P. Farrington in chapter two suggest that children who are cruel to animals lack empathy. Why they lack empathy is open to speculation. Is it biological, environmental, or both?
Elenora Gullone in chapter three cites the nine motivations behind animal abuse discovered decades ago by Stephen Kellert and Alan Felthous through interviewing convicted criminals. Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke in chapter 11 suggest that serial killers "retaliate for perceived injustices they have suffered." So they take out their rage on humans and animals. But why do some individuals with festering grievances go on murderous rampages, while others merely fulminate in web postings? No one can say for sure.
Studies discussed in The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence indicate that animal abusers tend to share low-self esteem, exposure to domestic violence, and academic failure. People who inflict violence against humans usually harm animals as well, if they have contact with animals. For instance, caseworkers investigating child abuse often find maltreated domestic pets in the same home. The exceptions tend to be homes where there are no pets.
The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence presents an interesting discussion in Chapter 17 about the FBI and animal cruelty. An agent in the FBI Behavioral Science unit offers his perspectives about repeat offenders, animal abuse, and serial murders. I'd like to hear more from the agent, as his contributions are too brief.
Teach compassion and respect for all living things, Joan E. Schaffner recommends in Chapter 18. Such teaching may prevent a child from becoming violent.
But what about children who are already killing or maiming animals? What options are available for treating an eight-year-old boy who sets puppies on fire? Clearly such cases presents the boy's school, his family, and the criminal justice system with moral, ethical, and legal dilemmas. The boy is too young for incarceration, but ignoring the nature of his crime is not possible, either. Can he be rehabilitated? And if so, where? Few established programs exist to successfully treat violent youthful offenders.
The scope of The Link Between Animal Abuse and Human Violence is mostly restricted to violence against domestic pets, although hunting is mentioned toward the end. What about the people who debeak chickens, and operate puppy mills?
Much more animal abuse and neglect occurs within legal parameters than is recognized as criminal. Participating in legal activities that harm animals almost certainly has similar effects on the psyche, but this appears to have barely been studied.
--Debra J. White
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Forbidden creatures
by Peter Laufer, Ph.D.
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2010.
272 pages, hardcover. $19.95.
"The chimp killed my friend," screamed Sandra Herold into the telephone on February 16, 2009 as her pet chimp Travis mauled her friend Charla Nash. Nash had come to help corral the out-of-control animal, who had previously behaved well for her, but Travis pulled her from her car, bit and clawed off most of her face, and tore her hands off. Cornered upon arrival in his patrol car, police officer Frank Chiafri shot Travis dead after Travis pulled the driver's side door open.
The city of Stamford, Connecticut in February 2010 agreed to pay Chiafri's expenses for counseling to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. His feelings are easily understood. Photos of what remained of Nash's face (not in Forbidden Creatures) haunted me for days. The incident haunts Peter Laufer, too, who weaves discussion of it throughout Forbidden Creatures--a book which had a much different starting point.
Sandra Herold, however, is no longer facing a $50 million lawsuit from Nash's family: Herold, 70, died on May 24, 2010 from a heart attack.
An award winning writer, film maker, and broadcaster for more than 40 years, Laufer became interesed in exotic pets through his work on habitat issues in Latin America. The habitat research evolved into his most recent previous book, The Danger-ous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists (2009). That led to further exploration of the world of animal smugglers who serve the people for whom "Fido and Tabby aren't enough." Laufer journeyed from the swamps of Florida to the desert Southwest to university scholars and beyond to find out why people want "forbidden creatures" like Travis the chimp.
The import of endangered animals is regulated in the U.S. by the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which is also the main U.S. mechanism for enforcing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, brokered and administrated by the United Nations. Once exotic and endangered animals are in the U.S., however, the applicable state and local laws are "a confusing patchwork," Laufer says. For example, until the gruesome attack on Charla Nash, almost anyone could buy a captive-bred chimp. Now 21 states prohibit keeping chimps as pets, but the Captive Primate Safety Act, originally introduced in Congress in 2007, remains stalled in the U.S. Senate despite clearing the House of Representatives 323-90 in 2009.
Even where legislation to restrain or prohibit private possession of exotic animals is in effect, enforcement is often lax. Breeders find ways to sell exotic species, and importers find ways to sell trafficked species, often misrepresented as having been captive-bred. Almost any kind of animal can be purchased via the Internet, for example, with few questions asked.
The animals themselves are most often at risk from their typically inexperienced and naive keepers, and from the other people to whom the animals are shown off. But sometimes, as in the Charla Nash case, exotic pets injure or kill humans.
Travis the chimp once wore diapers. He brushed his own teeth, dined on filet mignon, and slept in his owner's bed. Most chimpanzees are not killing machines, though wildlife researchers have learned that some individual chimps appear to be serial killers, but forcing a chimp into a domesticated role is contrary to the animal's nature.
So why do people acquire exotic animals? Laufer encountered many stated reasons. The buyer of a 12-day-old serval at a Missouri exotic animal auction said, "He'll suck on my face." She did not appear to know the Charla Nash story. Someone else bought a spider money because it was cute. Missouri has virtually no laws that interfere with keeping or selling exotic animals. Wildlife auctions in Missouri sells everything from aardvarks to zebras.
Missouri also has about 3,200 licensed dog breeders, whose lobbying clout within the state legislature has for decades killed all efforts to restrain breeding animals for the pet industry. In May 2010 a coalition called Missourians for the Protection of Dogs presented 190,127 petition signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State, seeking to take a proposed "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act" directly to the voters on the November 2010 state ballot. Breeders, allied with hunters and agribusiness, are already fighting hard against the proposition. But even if it passes, it will not address the exotic animal trade. Passage might, however, weaken opposition to regulating the exotic animal industry.
Laufer traveled to the Florida swamps to investigate reports that tens of thousands of feral Burmese pythons now inhabit the Everglades. A pet python in July 2009 killed two-year-old Shaiunna Hare in her crib in Oxford, Florida. On June 3, 2010 Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law a ban on private possession of pythons and six other reptile species.
Meanwhile, rather than surrender their now prohibited reptiles, keepers continue to set them loose. In May 2010, for example, days after the Florida legislature sent the python ban to Crist, a four-foot-long tegu was photographed in the Ocala National Forest. Native to Brazil, tegus are a carnivorous lizard known to have bred in three other parts of Florida since the first tegu found in Florida was discovered in 2006.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which investigates illegal exotic animal peddling, has only 200 agents, a fraction of the staff needed to enforce federal wildlife trafficking laws. The Drug Enforcement Agency, by contrast, has 5,000 agents--who may find exotic wildlife during their investigations as often as the USFWS, since the illegal drug and exotic wildlife traffic are closely linked.
Animal People readers already know that keeping a wild animal as a pet is a bad idea. Recommend Forbidden Creatures to anyone who thinks it is not. --Debra J. White
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Kids Making a Difference for Animals
by Nancy Furstinger & Sheryl L. Pipe
John Wiley (111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030), 2009.
(Order c/o <www.aspcaonlinestore.com>.)
84 pages, hardcover. $12.99.
Kids Making a Difference for Animals is inspirational, heartwarming, and reduced me to tears, sharing examples of children and teens committed to improving life for animals, both domestic and wild.
While some kids talk on their cell phones or spend time at the local mall, others discover a different path. "I immediately started crying to my mom that I wanted to save dogs," a teen from East Haven, Connecticut says of her awakening experience. Like thousands of other children in the U.S. and around the world, she now participates in rescuing animals from shelters and fostering them for adoption.
Dogs on chains, feral cats, and endangered species catch the attention of children who believe their lives matter. Every child mentioned in the book is a true friend to animals and the environment. I can't mention them all, but consider the sixth grade students in upstate New York who heard their local shelter had run low on pet food. They collected 456 cans and bags of food plus a few hundred dollars so that homeless dogs and cats would eat.
In 2005 a 12-year old girl and her mother co-founded an equine rescue. So far they have rescued 73 horses, ponies and mules from slaughter.
Ayna Agarwal, visiting India with her family, was so shaken by an injured puppy on a busy street, ignored by everyone, that she started a web site called Stop Pet Overpopulation Globally, which raises funds for sterilizing pets in India.
Kids Making a Difference for Animals shows reason for hope. The next generation is well-prepared to tackle pet overpopulation, vanishing wildlife habitats and the ever present threat of animal cruelty.
-- Debra J. White
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Zimbabwe/North Korea "Noah's Ark" animal deal is reportedly cancelled due to international pressure
HARARE--The Zimbabwean government "has aborted a wildlife trade deal with the secretive Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea amid widespread condemnation from pressure groups," Bernard Mpofu of The Independent reported on June 17, 2010.
The Independent is the largest Zimbabwean newspaper not controlled by the Zanu-PF political party, which is headed by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
The $23,000 deal was "blocked after local and international natural resources campaigners criticised the destined living conditions of the animals at Pyongyang Zoo," Mpofu said.
North Korea was to receive "elephant, giraffe, jackal, zebra, catfish, civet, blue monkey, and spotted hyena," Mpofu listed. Earlier reports said that the sale was to include "two of every species in Hwange National Park."
The transaction was disclosed to the world on May 13, 2010 by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair Johnny Rodrigues.
Zimbabwe Parks & Wildlife Authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo told Mpofu that she could neither confirm nor deny that the sale was cancelled. Mpofu wrote that "sources said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now been tasked with formally informing North Korea of Zimbabwe's decision to cancel the deal. The wildlife authority said it was considering applications from five other countries willing to buy Zimbabwe's wildlife," Mpofu added.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
OBITUARIES
Rue McClanahan, 76, died of a stroke on June 3, 2010 in Manhattan. Born and educated in Oklahoma, McClanahan relocated to New York City and landed her first off-Broadway stage role in 1957. Television producer Norman Lear cast her in episodes of All In The Family (1971) and Maude (1972), and she also performed in the 1982-1984 series Mama's Family before rising to stardom in Golden Girls (1985-1992.) McClanahan debuted as a PETA spokesperson against fur in 1988, began promoting cruelty-free cosmetics in 1989, and spoke out against abuse of animals in show business in 1990. As each issue led to another, McClanahan became spokesperson for the Farm Sanctuary legacy program in 1996, and went on to many other prominent roles in activism, including lecturing Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry for shooting pheasant in a 2003 photo-op and petitioning President George W. Bush to allow animal rescuers into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Michael Winters, 30, was killed in an apparent pack dog attack on June 15, 2010 at the home he shared with his father Michael Kywa in New Russia Township, Lorain County, Ohio. Some reports placed the scene in neighboring Henrietta Township. The dogs reportedly included a Rottweiler mix, five bull mastiffs, and three pit bull/boxer mixes. Tonya Sams and Michael Sangiacomo of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Winter "rescued stray dogs and cared for them at his home." But Winter did not appear to have been well-known to other local dog rescuers. Richard Payerchin of the Northern Ohio Morning Journal reported that "In the past two years, the Erie Shores Humane Society received three anonymous calls about dogs fighting or being beaten with a 2-by-4 board at the property," according to humane investigator Shannon Moss. Moss found that the dogs "did not seem sickly or malnourished to me," but "did seem overly aggressive." Winters was the first person to be killed by rescued dogs since 2007, but was the seventh person to suffer disfiguring injuries from a rescued dog in 2010, and the 27th since 2006.
Brittany R. Schult, 23, who worked at the Eden Valley organic farm operated by the Seventh Day Adventist mission near Masonville, Colorado, drowned after jumping into the frigid and fast-flowing Charles Hansen Feeder Canal to try to rescue a puppy. The puppy survived, but Schult was swept several miles downstream.
Jeri Cox, 71, died on May 28, 2010 in Lakeland, Florida, after fighting cancer since 2006. Living across the street from the animal shelter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she met shelter director Warren Cox in 1958. Cox had just become the first person known to have used TV to promote pet adoptions. They soon married, and raised four daughters while Warren held leadership positions at 24 humane societies in 13 states. He is currently acting executive director of the Lakeland SPCA.
Les Line, 74, died of a heart attack on May 23, 2010 in Sharon, Connecticut. Line broke into journalism by writing an outdoors column for a local newspaper while still in high school. As editor of the Michigan Audubon Society newsletter, Line helped to persuade the state legislature to end a 120-year-old bounty on wolves. Line joined the staff of the National Audubon Society magazine Audubon in 1965. Promoted to editor in 1966, he introduced a slick format that helped to boost circulation from about 35,000 to nearly 500,000, revitalizing the National Audubon Society and influencing the entire magazine industry. Line was noted for having predicted that the Exxon Valdez oil spill would happen, 12 years before it did, and for bucking National Audubon Society board policy by criticizing the capture of the last wild Calif-ornia condors to be bred in zoos. "As a young editor in Michigan, he would sometimes write an anti-cat editorial, just to provoke cat fanciers. At Audubon, he would anger as many readers as he pleased with articles favoring controlled hunting," recalled New York Times obituarist Douglas Martin. "But Line's visibility was undoubtedly highest when he was fired in March 1991." The National Audubon Society "had decided that it wanted to be a bigger player among environmental groups; consultants suggested that it could invigorate the magazine by de-emphasizing birds. The board replaced Line with the former managing editor of a supermarket tabloid." The attempt to reinvent the organization and the magazine failed. The National Audubon Society returned to a focus on birds, and Line was a frequent freelance contributor and columnist for the last decade of his life.
Michelle Rein, 44, was killed by a train on June 11, 2010 while rescuing her black Chihuahua Taz from the tracks at the Bryn Mawr station in Philadelphia. Taz survived. An adjunct professor in the history department at Villanova University, Rein taught a course called Women in the Middle East, and was an expert on Islamic art and architecture. "According to family and friends, Rein suffered from chronic regional pain syndrome, an autoimmune illness that incapacitates its victims," wrote Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Bonnie L. Cook. This may have contributed to the accident.
Hassan Ali, a forest guard at Orang National Park in Assam, India, was shot dead on June 11, 2010 after confronting four alleged poachers including a home guard named Isha Haq Ali and a mahout (elephant handler) named Tajuddin. All four suspects were arrested, said park divisional forest officer Sushil Daila.
Robyn Lotz, 26, a volunteer at the Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, was killed by an African lion on June 1, 2010. The lion escaped from an improperly secured holding cage while Lotz and other workers spread new hay in the lion's main cage and seized the back of Lotz's head in his mouth. Chipangali owner Kevin Wilson shot the lion to free Lotz, but she was dead on arrival at the nearest hospital.
John Wakefield, 95, died in May 2010 in Mysore, Karnataka, India. Born in Gaya, Bijar, Wakefield was of the fifth generation of his family to live in India; his great-grandfather arrived in 1826. Wakefield shot his first leopard at nine and his first tiger at 10, and after serving in the British Army from 1941 to 1954, worked as a hunting guide until the passage of the 1972 Wildlife Preservation Act forced him to switch to promoting non-lethal ecotourism. During the next 30 years, while many other promoters' practices damaged habitat and contributed to the loss of wildlife, Wakefield was credited with leading the development of non-intrusive wildlife ecotourism in India, chiefly in Karnataka state.
Sandy Herold, 70, died on May 24, 2010 from a heart attack. Herold for 14 years kept a male chimpanzee named Travis at her home in Stamford, Connecticut. The chimp bit people in 1996 and 1998, and escaped to rampage through the streets for two hours in 2003, then tore the face and hands off Herold's friend Charla Nash in February 2009 and was shot dead in the act of attacking the first police officer to respond to Herold's call.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
ANIMAL OBITS
Arrell, 24, a black-maned African lion (above), was euthanized due to incurable painful conditions of age on May 21, 2010 at the Primarily Primates sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas. Like many black-maned lions in the U.S., who may be descended from Barbary lions imported from Egypt and Ethiopia in the early 20th century, Arrell originally belonged to a circus. The circus left him with a veterinarian to be declawed and have a canine tooth removed, but never reclaimed him. Arrell and a Siberian tiger were sold to an exotic pet keeper, who in 1993 retired both cats to the Buffalo Roam Wildlife Sanctuary, operated by Judy Savage near Seguin, Texas. Arrell was transferred to Primarily Primates in 2003. Savage closed Buffalo Roam in March 2005, after a two-year effort to find new homes for the animals.
Nuka, 21, one of the last three Alaska sea otters who survived oiling by the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in 1989, was euthanized due to incurable painful conditions of age at the Seattle Aquarium on May 26, 2010. "For years, Nuka struggled with immune-system problems, poor skin and fur, and seemed unable to groom herself properly, which meant she ate more than normal to avoid hypothermia. While no one could say what caused her problems, they were consistent with early exposure to petroleum," wrote Seattle Times environment reporter Craig Welch.
Fur Elise, 20, a white cat adopted by Phyllis Clifton in early 1990 from the Berkeley Humane Society in Berkeley, California, was euthanized in Freeland, Washington due to acute kidney failure on May 20, 2010. Phyllis Clifton, mother of ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton, died in December 2008. Fur Elise came to live with Merritt Clifton when his father Jack Clifton was briefly hospitalized in March 2010. By quirk of fate, a fire that broke out at about the time of Fur Elise's death razed much of the Berkeley Humane Society shelter, killing 15 cats. All of the dogs in the shelter were rescued.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Animal Equality, of Spain, collects video from 172 pig farms in just three years
MADRID--Sharon Nunez, founder of the less-than-five-year-old organization Animal Equality, on May 19, 2010 disclosed that 70 Animal Equality volunteers between August 2007 and May 2010 "physically entered a total of 172 pig farms in 11 regions of Spain," documenting their findings with 200 hours of video and 25,000 still photos.
Nunez released 50 minutes of the video and 2,600 photos.
"This intensive work comprises the largest investigation into animal exploitation so far carried out in Spain," Nunez said.
In actuality the Animal Equality investigation was larger by itself than all previous undercover probes of farms and slaughterhouses combined, worldwide.
The Animal Equality volunteers "recorded, amongst other events, how workers routinely kill pigs by slamming them against the floor," Nunez said, or "how pigs are hit, kicked or have fingers thrust into their eyes to force them to stand or walk," and witnessed "countless scenes of cannibalism--as much on organic or 'free-range' farms as on factory farms."
Nunez said that "97.1 per cent of the farms visited--167 out of 172--were chosen at random, demonstrating that the material obtained is representative of the sector and not isolated or biased. The remaining farms visited were specifically chosen due to having received one or more 'Golden Pork' awards, given by the Institute of Food Technology & Research and the Ministry of Rural & Marine Environments, to farms considered to be exemplary."
A vegan organization started in 2006, Animal Equality gained access to farms in Andalusia, Aragon, Castilla Leon, Castilla La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, the Basque region, and Valencia, Nunez said. She hinted that further investigations may follow, mentioning that "we are currently active in the United Kingdom, Italy, Peru, Venezuela and Colombia," as well as Spain.
Undercover video documentation of abuse of farm animals appears to have begun in Europe almost a decade after the first big U.S. exposés. As in the U.S., European investigators were initially limited to what they could videotape from outdoors, having no way to get the bulky video equipment of the time inside barns and slaughterhouses. Much of the pioneering video documentation in Europe was done by members of the German/British charity Animals Angels, who followed trucks hauling horses and other animals from eastern nations to slaughtering facilities within the European Union. Whenever the trucks stopped, the Animals Angels videographers would take the opportunity to take dimly lit close-ups through the ventilation slats in the vehicles' sides. Loading and unloading also presented video opportunities.
Reportedly investigating factory farming for 11 years, the Hillside Animal Sanctuary, of Frettenham, Norfolk, United Kingdom, achieved apparently the first big undercover video exposé of conditions inside a European poultry barn in April 2006. Four days after the videographer recorded two employees of the Beck Farm in Felthorpe, Norwich playing "bat and ball" with live turkeys, the images were on television.
Bernard Matthews Ltd., the owner of Beck Farm, suspended six employees in connection with the incident: those involved, and those who knew about it but did not stop it or report it. The two main participants pleaded guilty to cruelty.
A year to the day after the Beck Farm video reached the public, the Scottish organization Advocates for Animals used undercover video to reveal extreme overcrowding in battery cages on an egg farm near West Linton, "owned or run by Scotland's largest independent egg producer, Glenrath Farms," Advocates for Animals director Ross Minett said. But the Advocates for Animals exposé did not catch on with mass media, and did not bring other immediate results-- although it may have helped to inspire Animal Equality, whose video investigations in Spain began soon after Advocates for Animals began a public education campaign using images from the West Linton probe.
More than two years elapsed before the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and the Animal Rights Action Network, of Limerick, Ireland, scored simultaneous hits against abuses on pig farms in May 2009.
Dagens Nyheter reinforced print coverage posted to the newspaper web site with video clips showing pigs so crowded that some stood on top of others, while a farmer insisted they were "fine as long as they have food and water."
The ARAN exposé of conditions at a pig breeding facility based in County Cavan, Ireland "came about when an employee contacted ARAN to report pigs had been killed with sledgehammers," said ARAN founder John Carmondy. The pig farm worker also described sickly live pigs being dumped to die among others who were already dead. Video also disclosed cannibalism among the pigs.
"We worked quietly behind the scenes with the employee," Carmody said, "capturing the cruelty on video through a camera phone. Once we had enough cruelty documented, we contacted the Department of Agriculture and local Gardai (police) with details of the cruelty and laws that were broken." Then ARAN "went public with the footage and released it to national press with immediate pick up."
In October 2009 the Polish organizations Otoz Animal and Stradla Zwierzàt partnered with Compassion in World Farming to use video of alleged severe neglect at a dairy farm in Janowice, Poland, to obtain help for 600 suffering cows.
The two Polish organizations had already reported the situation to the Polish Chief Veterinary Office, a CIWF press release said, "but help was only forthcoming when the incident was brought to the attention of the media and the local police," CIWF continued. After the video aired on national television, CIWF said, the Polish Chief Veterinary Officer ordered that 19 of the most badly debilitated cows should be slaughtered. Though this was not the desired result, it was an indication of the influence of video.
Inside-the-barns documentation meanwhile made a splash in Australia when Emma Haswell of Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania on March 26, 2009 captured video of alleged cruelty and neglect at Longeronong Livestock, of Gingin, which produces about a third of the pigs whose meat is sold under the Westpork Mindarra brand. In August 2009 the company and an employee pleaded guilty to one count of omitting to do a duty which resulted in causing pain to an animal and one count of management of an animal reasonably likely to result in pain or suffering," reported Nick Clark of the Hobart Mercury. The individual was fined $2,500 Australian currency. The farm was fined $10,000.
The Haswell video succeeded where previous investigations had failed. Reported Ronan O'Connell of The West Australian, "It is understood the charge stems from an investigation that began in early 2007 following claims by an animal welfare group that pigs at the facility had been forced to wallow in filth so deep they struggled to walk and had been left to die slowly once illness took hold. The police stock squad and local government, health, agriculture and immigration officials raided the Gingin piggery in January 2007 after a complaint from the group," but the raid did not bring convictions or lasting improvements in management.
Additional charges based on the January 2007 undercover video operation were brought by the Department of Local Government & Regional Development in early 2009, but dropped on June 8, 2010 "in light of technical legal difficulties which came to the Department's attention at a late stage. Those difficulties are not expected to recur in future prosecutions," said the Department of Local Government & Regional Development in a prepared statement.
Animals Angels continues using video to document abuses in horse transport and slaughter, most recently in Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Video clips from Animals Angels and the Canadian Horse Defense Coalition were aired in April 2010 by television networks in Canada, The Netherlands, France, and Belgium.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Brenda Barnette to head L.A. Animal Services
LOS ANGELES--Brenda Barnette, most recently chief executive officer of the Seattle Humane Society, was introduced on June 17, 2010 by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as the sixth director of Los Angeles Animal Services since 2000.
Barnette was hired after a year-long search to find a successor to Ed Boks, who resigned in April 2009 after just under four years in Los Angeles. Boks' immediate predecessor, Guerdon Stuckey, was fired by Villaraigosa after just 13 tumultuous months on the job, only days after Villaraigosa took office. Stuckey had succeeded Jerry Greenwalt, who retired under intense pressure from activist factions. Greenwalt had taken over from the late Dan Knapp after Knapp finished his tenure on a prolonged sick leave attributed to stress.
Barnette, 62, came to the Seattle Humane Society in June 2006. During her tenure adoptions rose from circa 4,500 per year to 6,091 in 2009, the most in the 112-year history of the organization.
Previously, as executive director of Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation in Walnut Creek, California from mid-2003 to January 2006, Barnette doubled program spending, halved fundraising and administrative expense, cut the debt owed for a $16 million new shelter from $6 million to $3 million, and boosted adoptions from 456 in the year before the new shelter opened to more than 1,800 in 2005.
Barnette earlier enjoyed similar success as executive director of Pets In Need, in Redwood City, California, and was development director at the San Francisco SPCA while it increased revenue ninefold within 10 years of going no-kill in 1984.
Her appointment in Los Angeles was immediately criticized by several of the most vocal critics of the previous Animal Services directors.
"She is coming from a private shelter where they could refuse to take in some animals," former Animal Services commissioner Marie Atake told Rick Orlov of the Los Angeles Daily News. "Their website said they charged $200 for people to drop off animals. That limits the animals they get. In Los Angeles, she will be dealing with issues that a private organization doesn't face. Here, they have to deal with animal cruelty and pit bulls and cock fighting and enforcement issues she didn't have to deal with in Seattle."
Agreed Animal Issues Movement founder Phyllis Daugherty in an e-mail to ANIMAL PEOPLE, "I don't think anyone without Los Angeles experience and especially someone with no law enforcement experience can do anything but harm here. We've now had a string of outsiders and they have destroyed what structure we had. I am definitely going to oppose this move by the mayor. We have very specific needs at this point. The two assistant general managers who have been in charge have begun to restore the underpinnings. We need stability, not change. I listened to her talk. She has absolutely no concept of what it is like to run a large--or any size--animal control deparment. Plus she is totally involved in breeding and showing," Daugherty charged.
Sherman Oaks activist Daniel Guss wrote in a March 2010 Los Angeles Daily News op-ed column that "Villaraigosa needs now a progressive-minded shelter leader," mentioning Barnette among a list of nine people he believed fit the definition, but told Orlov that he is "deeply concerned about the mayor once again failing to seek broad public input given his disastrous hire last time," and is also concerned about Barnette allegedly being a dog breeder.
Barnette was legislative liaison for the American Kennel Club in Seattle, and acknowledges having bred a Portuguese water dog who now lives with her 30-year-old daughter, but told Carla Hall of the Los Angeles Times that "To think I'm a breeder is a little bit of a stretch."
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Save the Rhino accepts Safari Club funding
LONDON--"Save the Rhino, the British charity set up to protect one of the world's most endangered animals, is endorsing shooting them for fun and is directly profiting from trophy hunts of other species," revealed Daniel Foggo of the London Sunday Times on May 30, 2010.
Foggo said he had learned from Save the Rhino fundraising manager Lucy Boddam-Whetham that, as Foggo summarized, "The charity formed its view on trophy hunting after being approached by Safari Club International with offers of money in 2006. Since then the Safari Club has donated sums of between £6,000 and £10,000 a year. Safari Club International has so far donated about £32,000 to Save The Rhino, much of it raised by auctioning the trophy hunts of other animals to shooting enthusiasts.
"A British shooting magazine, Sporting Rifle, has announced an auction of trophy hunts of animals such as wild boar, muntjac, and red deer, with all the proceeds to go to Save the Rhino," Foggo added.
"No qualms"
Responded Save the Rhino director Cathy Dean, in a 1,200-word posting to the Save the Rhino web site, "We have always believed that sustainable management of wildlife - including culling, cropping and trophy hunting - is a necessary conservation tool. It is also a valid and lawful form of income generation...We therefore have no qualms about working with Safari Club International or any other responsible hunting organization."
Continued Dean, "We consulted rhino conservation programs we support in African countries that allow trophy hunting. We asked them whether they were willing to be put forward as the potential beneficiary of Safari Club-generated funds. One organization ruled itself out." The Safari Club "eventually selected Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa as the program it wanted to help fund," Dean said. "The quasi-governmental organization in charge of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, itself employs hunting and the sale of live animals at game auctions as a way of generating income. Since 2006," Dean disclosed, "Safari Club's London chapter and the Safari Club International Foundation have provided financial support to Save the Rhino International and Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, giving a total to date of £29,755. In 2009," Dean added, "we were invited to apply to the Safari Club International Small Grants Committee for an unrelated grant and received £3,876 towards the work of the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe."
British Charities Commission filings show that Save the Rhino had total income of £603.899 in 2008, when it lost £88,074, but spent 61% more on fundraising in 2009, boosting revenue to $868,716-- worth about $1.3 million in U.S. funds.
Save the Rhino has also operated in the U.S. since 2006, with a four-member board, including Dean and Boddam-Whetham, all of them located in Britain.
Laikipia Wildlife Forum
Both the British and the American branches of Save the Rhino have been especially generous to the Laikipia Wildlife Forum, an association of Kenya landowners formed in 1995, which leads efforts to repeal the 1977 Kenyan national prohibition of sport hunting. In 2008 and 2009 the Laikipia Wildlife Forum received a total of £87,912 from Save the Rhino in Britain, amounting to 10% of total Save the Rhino grant allocations worldwide. Although the Laikipia Wildlife Forum ranked fourth in funding from Save the Rhino in 2008 and third in 2009, over both fiscal years combined it was first.
Of a reported $126,657 in Save The Rhino U.S. program expenditure in fiscal 2009, $75,908--60%--was granted to the Laikipia Wildlife Forum.
Save the Rhino founding patrons, recalled Foggo, "included Douglas Adams author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, who helped raise its profile by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in a rhino costume. Runners in similar suits completing marathons for the charity have since become a familiar sight. Save the Rhino's current patrons include Martina Navratilova, the former tennis champion, who won £86,000 for the charity on the US version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
SHARK files charges against Philadelphia Gun Club &
exposes National College Rodeo Finals horse shocking
CASPER, PHILADELPHIA-- Seeming to be in two distant places at the same time, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) founder Steve Hindi on June 17, 2010 pressed a criminal case against the Philadelphia Gun Club in Bensalem, Pennsyl-vania, for alleged cruelty to a pigeon during a February 2010 pigeon shoot, and posted video clips to YouTube showing bucking horses being shocked that very day at the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyoming.
Both Hindi's case against the Philadelphia Gun Club and the College National Finals rodeo video received extensive local news coverage--and upstaged his unveiling, two days earlier, of a drone helicopter capable of documenting events such as pigeon shoots and rodeos that exclude cameras from the spectator areas. (See page 12.)
Though Hindi is the complainant in the Philadelphia Gun Club case, and the subject of the complaint is a pigeon he retrieved, the case was actually filed by Pennsylvania Legislative Animal Network humane officer Johnna Seeton. Seeton has sought unsuccessfully to prosecute pigeon shoots in the past in a variety of Pennsylvania jurisdictions where there are still held. A July 1999 Pennsylvania Supreme court verdict that pigeon shoot promoters and participants could be charged with cruelty halted the Labor Day pigeon shoot held for 65 years in Hegins, but other courts have held that pigeon shoots do not violate the Pennsylvania state anti-cruelty law if "reasonable efforts" are made to prevent and minimize the resultant animal suffering.
Hindi and Seeton contend that "reasonable efforts" were not made on behalf of the pigeon Hindi named Roberta. Finding her on February 10, 2010 with shotgun injuries to one wing and a broken leg, Hindi nursed her back to health.
Pennsylvania is believed to be the last state where pigeon shoots are still held.
Casper Star-Tribune staff writer Tom Morton described in detail the SHARK video clips from the College National Rodeo Finals, and extensively quoted Hindi, as well as rodeo spokespersons who contended that horses are shocked only if they are known to stall in the starting chute, rather than rushing out into the ring. This is claimed to be necessary for safety reasons. "If a horse is a 'known chute-staller,'" Hindi responded, "the horse should not be used in a rodeo. When a horse stalls," Hindi added, "the horse doesn't explode--the horse doesn't do anything."
"Two years ago," Morton recalled, "Hindi and SHARK applauded Cheyenne Frontier Days for tightening its rules on the use of hand-held electric shock devices on horses after SHARK posted similar videos on YouTube."
"The stock contractor of record for the 2010 College National Finals Rodeo," Hindi mentioned, "is Harry Vold. SHARK investigators have repeatedly caught animals being secretly shocked at Vold's rodeos, including in Cheyenne, Dodge City, and Kansas City."
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Animal defenders win seven major environmental conservation awards
Save The Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton is to receive the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize and accompanying Lilly Medal on September 25, 2010. The awards are presented by Cummins Inc., maker of diesel engines. The 2009 winner was longtime Wildlife Conservation Society field biologist George Schaller.
"Four decades ago," recalled the award announcement, "Douglas-Hamilton pioneered scientific study of elephant social behavior. He led emergency anti-poaching efforts in Uganda to bring the elephant population there from the brink of extinction. In September 2009, Douglas-Hamilton worked to rescue a rare herd of desert elephants in northern Kenya and Mali, threatened by one of the worst droughts in nearly a dozen years. In the spring of 2010, a devastating flood destroyed the Save the Elephants camp in Kenya including staff tents, computers, and years of field research notes. With a team of local researchers, the camp is now being rebuilt."
The announcement also noted that Douglas-Hamilton helped to lead successful opposition to Tanzanian and Zambian proposals to sell stockpiled elephant ivory.
Animal defenders on Earth Day 2010 won four of the six $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prizes. Sereivathana Tuy, 39, of Cambodia, was recognized for promoting nonlethal protection of crops and villages from elephant rampages, primarily through public education and fencebuilding. Randall Arauz, of Costa Rica, who founded the Association for the Restoration of Sea Turtles in 1997, was recognized for seven years of efforts against shark fishing, including winning passage of both national and United Nations legislation against killing sharks just for their fins, and winning a string of court victories seeking enforcement of the Costa Rican national laws. Soy and corn farmer Lynn Henning, 52, of Hudson Township, Michigan, was honored for her work since 1999 in leading Sierra Club campaigns against factory farming. Malgorzata Gorska, 37, of the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds, was honored for 14 years of ultimately successfully effort to keep the Via Baltica expressway between Warsaw and Helsinki from cutting through the Rospuda Valley, a rich wetland habitat for wolves, elk, lynx, boars, otter, and beaver, as well as birds. Gorska is now fighting a plan to build an airport in the same vicinity.
Lawrence Mugisha, VMD, operations director for the Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust since 2003, in May 2010 was named inaugural recipient of the Rudolph Ippen Young Scientist Award, presented by the European Association of Zoo & Wildlife Veterinarians in memory of German zoonotic disease researcher Rudolph Ippen, who died in 2009. Mugisha was honored a month after Chimpanzee Sanctuary & Wildlife Conservation Trust educator Silver Birungi received the South Conservation Education Commitment Award from the International Primatological Society. The Chimapnze Sanctuary & Wildlife Conserv-ation Trust cares for 44 orphaned chimpanzees at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary on Lake Entebbe in Uganda.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Resistance to Indian company plan to site animal lab in Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR, DELHI-- Protesting a variant on the chemical and pharamceutical industry practice of outsourcing animal testing to developing nations with lax regulation, "Animal lovers, activists, a senator, and Miss Malaysia/World 2009/2010 Thanuja Ananthan were among those who gathered in front of the Indian High Commission" in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysia capital city, on June 10, 2010 "to protest a plan by Vivo Bio Tech to build an animal testing laboratory in Malacca," the Star of Malaysia reported.
Leading the demonstration were the SPCA Selangor, Sahabat Alam Malaysia, which represents the international organization Friends of the Earth in Malaysia, PETA/Malaysia, and representatives of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments.
Vivo Bio Tech, headquartered in Himayath Nagar, Hyderabad, reportedly conducts toxicity testing and cosmetic product safety testing on species including dogs, rabbits, mice, rats, hamsters and guinea pigs, and is believed to be opening a laboratory in Malaysia in order to expand into doing experiments on macaques.
"The proposal, which has only recently come to light, is the result of collaboration between Vivo Bio Tech and the Malacca state-owned company Melaka Biotech Holdings," said BUAV director of special projects Sarah Kite. "It is particularly disconcerting," Kite added, "because Malaysia has no legislation governing the use of animals in research."
"While the state encourages foreign and local investments to further boost Penang's economy," responded Penang deputy chief minister P. Ramasamy to the Star of Malaysia four days after the demonstration, "it also practises caution to ensure such investments do not cause discomfort to the people and environment, including animals."
God & monkeys
But Malacca chief minister Mo-hamad Ali Rustam two weeks earlier told Associated Press writer Julia Zappei that the Vivo Bio Tech project had already received state approval. "God created animals for the benefits of human beings. That's why he created rats and monkeys," Mohamad Ali Rustam insisted. "We cannot test on human beings," he told Zappei. "This is the way it has to be. God created monkeys, and some have to be test subjects."
Star of Malaysia reporters Derrick Vinesh and S.S. Yoga disclosed on June 12, 2010 that an animal research lab similar to the one proposed by Vivo Bio Tech had already been "operating on the quiet for three years."
"The company, Progenix Research, says on its website that it is an independent contract research organisation offering toxicology services to worldwide pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and agrochemical clients," wrote Vinesh and Yoga. "It says it conducts toxicology tests on beagles, purpose-bred macaques, rodents, and rabbits," at a site in the Penang Science Park at Bukit Minyak.
"A check by The Star," Vinesh and Yoga added, "found that there were fewer than 15 cars parked in the compound and closed-circuit TV cameras were installed around the two-story building."
"The existence of the laboratory came as a surprise to the state Wildlife and National Parks Department," Vinesh and Yoga added. "Department director Noor Alif Wira Othman said the department had not issued any permit for primates to be bred for research."
"Breeding primates for research requires permits for catching, keeping, breeding, selling or buying of the primates. We will inspect these premises," Noor Alif Wira Othman told Vinesh and Yoga.
Said Sahabat Alam Malaysia president S.M. Mohd Idris, "We have been actively fighting against the animal testing lab in Malacca. Little did we know there was a lab conducting similar activities here in Penang."
Standards
While Malaysia currently has no legislation governing animal research, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation undersecretary Rofina Yasmin Othman in mid-May 2010 confirmed to Darshini Kandasamy of the Malay Mail that she has been working since mid-April 2010 on "the development of national standards and guidelines for the use of animals in line with international standards. We are engaged in active discussions with agencies and ministries including the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries," Rofina said, "and will continue to play a proactive role in relevant technical issues."
Summarized Darshini Kandasamy, "Rofina said the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is also reviewing draft guidelines from the Laboratory Animal Science Association of Malaysia on the ethical use and care of animals. When asked if a special ethics committee would be formed to manage and oversee the guidelines, she said the task would fall under the purview of the existing interim Bioethics Committee.
"Earlier," Darshini Kandasamy continued, "Ministry of Health director-general Hasan Abdul Rahman conceeded that there is now no specific authority or legislation governing the use of animals. But, he assured there is a protocol applied for use of animals in testing. Research involving animals needs approval from a committee."
Said Hasan Abdul Rahman, "The practice at this time is for research facilities, such as universities or the Medical Research Institute, to form their own committees. As for now, there exist no guidelines" other than those that the institutions' own internal animal care and use committees may have developed.
In April 2010 Malacca chief minister Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam told media that Malacca state would seek authorization for the proposed Vivo Bio Tech lab from the federal Ministry of Health, and would form an ethics committee if the ministry requires it.
No permits
But Hasan Abdul Rahman "said the Ministry of Health has nothing to do with the issue of animals used for testing at the planned biotechnology centre in Malacca, and that such proposed research and testing would not be conducted in any Health Ministry facility," wrote Darshini Kandasamy.
"Dr. Hasan said use of animals came under the jurisdiction of two other agencies--the Wildlife & National Parks Department and the Department of Veterinary Services. Any agency wishing to use wildlife for testing, especially non-human primates like the long-tail macaque, is required to obtain written approval from the Wildlife & National Parks Department," Darsini Kandasamy added. "Dr Hasan said checks found that the company behind the upcoming Malacca biotechnology centre had yet to make any such application."
Permits are also required to import non-native animals into Malaysia. Associated Press writer Eileen Ng reported on April 26, 2010 that "Officials from the wildlife and veterinary departments said they were not aware of the Vivo Bio Tech project and have not received any application from Vivo Bio Tech to import animals for research. The company has said that Vivo may import beagles from Holland and try to obtain domestic primates for testing before turning to overseas sources," Ng wrote. In 2009, Ng added, "a French pharmaceutical research company proposed setting up an animal testing laboratory in southern Johor state using imported macaques, but the project was suspended amid an outcry from environmental groups."
Affirmed Agence France-Presse, "Officials familiar with the plan said the Johor State Investment Centre wrote on May 8, 2009 to Malaysia's wildlife and national parks department, requesting permission to import macaques for the testing lab."
Indian interest
Vivo Bio Tech apparently became interested in opening a lab in Malaysia after the outcome of the May 2009 Indian national elections appeared to slow the momentum of changes to the regulation of animal experiments sought by longtime minister for chemicals and fertilizer Ram Vilas Paswan.
In March 2009, reported Gireesh Chandra Prasad of the Economic Times, Ram Vilas Paswan presented to Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh a set of proposals said to have been based on input from "top executives of drug makers such as Ranbaxy, Biocon, Wockhardt, Pfizer, Wyeth and F. Hoffmann LaRoche."
The proposals included easing the requirements for licensing an animal lab and undoing a regulation which requires that "One animal cannot be subjected to more than five clinical trials, and must survive and lead a good life after the tests," Gireesh Chandra Prasad said he was told by an anonymous official. "Faster approvals for animal and human experiments is another reform planned," Gireesh Chandra Prasad wrote.
Prime minister Singh was returned to office--and immediately after the election appointed animal advocate Jairam Ramesh to head the Ministry for Wildlife and Forests, including holding the animal welfare portfolio.
Ramesh made his views on animal experiments clear when in January 2010 he inaugurated a national conference of the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals, the Indian agency that oversees animal experimentation. India has prohibited the use of nonhuman primates in experiments since 1978. The Indian pharmaceutical industry hoped in particular that this restriction would be lifted.
"There is growing demand for use of primates in experimentation," Ramesh acknowledged. "But we need not open the floodgates to use animals in experimentation in the name of academic knowledge."
Pointing toward an exhibit of alternatives to animal use assembled by Inter-NICHE, Ramesh continued that, "This wonderful exhibition shows what a modern technology can do to bring about a revolution in methods of experimentation. We must refine our methods, and replace animals in experiments. The Indian culture respects all forms of life, animal as well as human," Ramesh added. "We will show respect in use of animals in experimentation. We have a great deal of political commitment toward animal welfare." Ramesh suggested that learning to do advanced pharmaceutical research without use of animals would better position India as an international leader in drug development.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Reckoning the wildlife losses
Who is compiling the Deepwater Horizon body count?
"Within each of the animal rescue stations set up along the Gulf Coast is a makeshift morgue for oiled and ill creatures that didn't make it," reported Katy Reckdahl of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. "Pathologists and laboratory staff are carefully cataloging each dead creature as part of larger criminal, civil and scientific inquiries into how the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has affected animals and their habitats.
"The operations cannot be photographed or observed by outsiders," Reckdahl said, "because they are part of a massive body of evidence outlining the harm that the spill has caused wildlife, in violation of federal laws such as the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act."
Estimates that the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill killed 250,000 sea birds and 2,800 sea otters were developed from collecting and evaluating the remains of more than 35,000 birds and 1,000 sea otters. Exxon eventually agreed to pay $100 million as criminal restitution for harm to wildlife, plus $900 million over 10 years in settlement of damage suits.
"Anybody who shows up dead will get a necropsy," response team member Mike Walsh told Reckdahl. A former Sea World head veterinarian, Walsh is now associate director of the Aquatic Animal Health Program at the University of Florida.
The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program requires the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to produce a definitive assessment of harm to wildlife and a restoration plan that will operate at no cost to taxpayers.
In addition to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, state wildlife agencies, and International Bird Rescue Center personnel, the Pascagoula River Audubon Center in Moss Point and the National Audubon Society in early June 2010 trained and deployed 30 invited volunteers to produce a coastal bird survey based on comprehensively sampling six one-mile sections of beach.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
BP partnered with The Nature Conservancy & other big green groups
WASHINGTON D.C.--"The Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners," observed Washington Post staff writer Joe Stephens on May 23, 2010. "The organization also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years.
"The Conservancy," wrote Stephens, "already scrambling to shield oyster beds in the region from the spill, now faces a potential backlash as its supporters learn that the giant oil company and the world's largest environmental organization long ago forged a relationship that has lent BP an Earth-friendly image. Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked alongside BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate change issues. And an employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska."
Commented Dean Zerbe of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, "The Nature Conservancy believes in having working relationships with corporations active in certain environmentally sensitive industries. However, it is not the relationship with BP but rather how the Nature Conservancy has mishandled its relationship that has caused it harm and damaged its reputation," Zerbe said. "The Nature Conservancy wore kid gloves in handling its relationship with BP at the beginning of the spill--to the detriment of its role as a leader in environmental issues and the consternation of many donors."
Eventually, Zerbe continued, "after much damage to the charity, the Nature Conservancy stated on its Web site that it is revisiting its relationship with BP and the actions of BP before and after the spill." Zerbe praised "the correct decision," but added that "The Nature Conservancy board and leadership shouldn't have taken this long to arrive at the obvious."
Wrote Stephens, "The Nature Conservancy is far from the only environmental nonprofit with ties to BP. Conservation International has accepted $2 million in donations from BP over the years and has partnered with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, who was then BP's chief executive, sat on the board of Conservation International.
"The Environmental Defense Fund, which has a policy of not accepting corporate donations," Stephens noted, "joined with BP, Shell International, and other major corporations to form the Partnership for Climate Action, which promotes 'market-based mechanisms' to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"About 20 energy and environmental groups," Stephens continued, "including the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, and the National Audubon Society, joined with BP Wind Energy to form the American Wind and Wildlife Institute, which works to protect wildlife through 'responsible' development of wind farms.
"Years ago," Stephens finished, crediting research by fellow Washington Post staffer Alice Crites, "a 2001 Nature Conserv-ancy internal study found that most members saw a partnership with BP as 'inappropriate.' Many members felt a relationship with an oil company was 'inherently incompatible.' To a minority of members, accepting cash from these types of companies was viewed as 'the equivalent of a payoff.'"
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Defective search & seizure warrants typically keep cases from going to trial
Cases involving defective warrants, or none, are usually dismissed before actually going to trial. The most commonly cited error is that the investigators overstep legal limits in seeking probable cause to obtain warrants.
For example, Justice Robin Clute of Ravalli County, Montana on June 8, 2010 dismissed three counts of cruelty filed in 2008 against Paula Fisher, of Victor, Montana, after Ravalli County sheriff's deputies impounded 10 horses, 17 goats, and two cats from her property. All but three of the horses were later returned to Fisher, said Perry Backus of the Ravalli Republic. In the Fisher case, the deputies obtained a search warrant, but only after entering her property to inspect the animals more closely, having seen them first from a road. The deputies passed a "No trespassing" sign.
In two recent cases the search warrants were held to have been improperly obtained because the evidence used to obtain them was allegedly not fully disclosed to the judges who signed the warrants.
In the first case, New Mexico 3rd Judicial District Judge Lisa Schultz on November 10, 2009 dismissed with prejudice 50 combined counts of dogfighting, cruelty, and conspiracy brought against twin brothers Daron and Duryea Scott of El Paso, Texas. The Scotts were accused in August 2007 of breeding pit bull terriers for fighting in Chapparal, New Mexico. "The grounds for the dismissal were based on a state Court of Appeals decision in September 2009, upholding a decision by a District Court judge to suppress all evidence in the case," wrote Las Cruces Sun-News reporter Diana M. Alba. "3rd Judicial District Judge Douglas Driggers ruled that the warrant was improperly obtained. Dona Ana County sheriff's investigator Robyn Gojkovich in August 2007 telephonically secured a search warrant for the seizure of pit bulls from two Chaparral properties rented by the Scotts. Questions arose about whether she entirely read the support documentation for the warrant to the judge, a requirement, and whether the telephonic approval was valid. Prosecutors appealed Driggers' decision, but it was reaffirmed by the state appeals court." Judge Schultz also ordered that 57 pit bulls seized from the Scotts should be returned, but only 17 remained in custody, according to a lawsuit the Scotts filed in August 2009 against Dona Ana County.
In Yankton, South Dakota, Turner County Judge Tami Bern on May 3, 2010 refused to allow the Second Chance Rescue Center, of Sioux Falls, to keep 172 dogs who were seized on September 2, 2009 from hunting dog breeder Dan Christensen, of Hurley. The seizure was conducted in partnership with the Humane Society of the U.S.
The Second Chance Rescue Center at the time held the Sioux Falls animal control contract, but relinquished it to the Sioux Falls Humane Society in December 2009. Turner County animal control officer Rosie Quinn worked for the Sioux Falls Humane Society for eight years, but left the humane society to found the Second Chance Rescue Center in March 2006. Quinn resigned from the rescue center in January 2010 amid allegations that the shelter was infected with parvovirus--the same disease that reportedly occasioned the impoundment of Christensen's dogs, five days after Quinn found that they "appeared to be okay" during an August 27, 2009 inspection.
Quinn did not mention that finding when she requested the seizure warrants, Judge Bern found. That meant that the warrants were obtained on incomplete and misleading information, Judge Bern ruled on February 1, 2010. Reported John Hult of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, "Quinn testified that 'she was specifically directed not to disclose that information' to the court, the judge's ruling states. The ruling does not say who might have directed Quinn not to disclose the information. Instead, Quinn pointed to observations from an unrelated April visit to Christensen's property to justify the seizure, according to the ruling."
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Irish Supreme Court in 2009 rejected attempt to use a "no warrant" defense
DUBLIN--Globally, defenses based on alleged warrantless search and seizure are usually considered a quirk of U.S. law, since the U.S. Fourth Amendment protection against warrantless entry is uniquely strong. The Irish Supreme Court on May 1, 2009 rejected a rare non-U.S. attempt to use lack of a warrant as a defense.
Barrister and customs officer Donba Sfar, of St. Bronagh's, Lisdoo, Dundalk, contended that Irish SPCA inspector Paul Mellon and the Louth SPCA improperly seized 17 dogs from the yard and outbuildings of a house she owned in Oaklawns, Dundalk, in December 1998. The dogs were allegedly starving and had cannibalized another dog.
Sfar conducted her own defense and appeals. The Irish Supreme Court ruled that while her home was on the Oaklawns property, the places from which the dogs were seized were not part of her actual dwelling, and were therefore not subject to a warrant requirement.
U.S. law holds that all properties are subject to warrant requirements, except under "exigent circumstances."
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Baghdad deploys gunmen to kill dogs
BAGHDAD--More than 42,000 of the estimated 1.25 million stray dogs roaming Baghdad were shot in the 60 days preceding June 11, 2010 according to the London Daily Mail foreign service.
The pace of dog-shooting had apparently increased sixfold since Sam Dagher of the The New York Times reported in March 2010 that about 10,000 dogs had been shot since December. The shooting, Dagher said, augmented "a program begun late last year in which the national Ministry of Agriculture's veterinary services teamed up with the municipality, the police, and even the army in some of the tougher neighborhoods. Mostly the dogs are killed with rotten raw meat laced with strychnine." Dagher described a poisoning crew "being harassed a bit over whether dogs are really Iraq's biggest worry."
The killing escalated after reported rabies outbreaks in Baghdad suburbs. Similar culls have followed rabies cases in other Iraq cities.
If there are 1.25 million stray dogs in Baghdad, a city of about seven million people, the shooting and poisoning might kill about a third of estimated puppy survivorship during the same two months. The toll might be roughly equal to normal mortality from other causes--not likely to lastingly reduce the dog population. However, because dogs run and hide from gunfire, and tend to become nocturnal when persecuted, the shooting is likely to reduce the visibility of dogs to much of the public.
"We could consider this the biggest campaign of dog execution ever," boasted Baghdad chief veterinarian, Mohammed al-Hilly, apparently unaware that New York City in the 1960s killed dogs at a 25% faster rate for eight consecutive years without effecting any drop in dog numbers.
"Al-Hilly claimed the huge amounts of litter that began heaping up in the capital as violence paralysed public services had helped to trigger the problem," the Daily Mail reported. "Al-Hilly said the cull was the only option, given the numbers of dogs on the loose," the Daily Mail continued.
"Culling stray dogs was a nightly routine under Saddam Hussein, but the rapid deterioration in security after the U.S. invasion kept the veterinary teams off the streets. Now, authorities have 20 dedicated teams each consisting of two shooters and two veterinarians, often accompanied by police patrols on daytime operations," the Daily Mail said, adding that the shooting campaign is costing the Baghdad Governorate Council and mayor's office about $35,000.
This would be about equal to the cost of vaccinating the dogs against rabies instead of shooting them. Mass anti-rabies vaccination, however, has yet to be attempted in Iraq. Sterilization surgery is almost unknown.
Formed in 2003 by U.S.-trained veterinarian Farah Murrani, who helped care for the animals at the Baghdad Zoo after nearby fighting stopped in May 2003, the Iraq Society for Animal Welfare recruited U.S. Army vets to teach small-incision, high-speed dog and cat sterilization. ISAW collapsed within a year, however, after death threats forced Murrani to leave the country.
Hiring gunmen with few other skills to kill dogs is a frequent ploy of unstable governments, who seek to create jobs for factions that might otherwise turn to crime or insurgency.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Seabird rescues revive debate over whether oiling victims should be cleaned
GRAND ISLE--The disaster for pelicans predicted ever since the Deepwater Horizon burned and began leaking oil on April 20, 2010 hit in full force when large amounts of oil at last reached the coastal islands of Louisiana six weeks later.
Queen Bess Island, near Grand Isle, "is the worst-hit area in the state in terms of wildlife," state biologist Michael Carloss told Allen Johnson of Agence France-Presse on June 5.
The Queen Bess Island pelican rookery is home to thousands of birds, many of them oiled, but too lightly to permit safe capture, Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries ornithologist Michael Seymour told Mira Oberman of Agence France-Presse.
"The only way to catch a bird in that condition is to chase the bird repeatedly until the birds gets tired," Seymour said. "We're just going to be putting him under more stress than we need to."
Seymour has "seen eggs crushed by well-meaning amateurs who trampled through a pelican colony to capture a single oiled bird. Even stepping onto a rocky shore can send hundreds of panicked nesting birds into the skies, exposing their fledglings and eggs to the sweltering sun. Taking an oiled chick away from its parents means it may never learn the skills it needs to survive on its own. And capturing a lightly oiled bird still able to fly and feed itself could mean leaving chicks or eggs untended," Oberman summarized.
Despite the difficulties, more than 400 oiled pelicans were recovered in the eight days from June 5 to June 14--a greater total just in the first two days than in the preceding six weeks. Among them were the first oiled pelican found in Mississippi. The rescues revived debate about whether rescuing oiled birds is cost-effective, has conservation value, and can be justified from a humane perspective.
"Cleaning a single pelican can require 300 gallons of water," reported Associated Press writers John Flesher and Noaki Schwartz. "Scientists with the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in California said it costs them $600 to $750 to clean a bird. Fewer than 10% of brown pelicans who were cleaned and marked for tracing after a 1990 spill in Southern California were accounted for two years later," Flesher and Schwartz continued, "while more than half the pelicans in a control group could be found, three scientists with the University of California at Davis, reported in 1996. The formerly oiled birds also showed no signs of breeding."
"Silvia Gaus, an animal biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park in northern Germany, claims it would be kinder to let the birds perish peacefully or euthanize them humanely," wrote online birding columnist Melissa Mayntz. "Limited studies have shown that oiled birds have a survival rate of less than 1%, and after release many die within a week," she said.
Said the U.S. Minerals Management Service in a 2002 environmental analysis of Gulf oil drilling projects, "Studies indicate that rescuing and cleaning oiled birds makes no effective contribution to conservation, except conceivably for species with a small world population."
But also in 2002 a study by Humboldt State University scientists found that gulls who were treated after a California spill had approximately the same survival rate as gulls who escaped oiling. Said lead study author Dan Anderson, a professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of California, at Davis, "If nothing else, we're morally obligated to save birds who seem to be savable."
The Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds has handled more than 50,000 oiled seabirds since 1968, with exceptionally good success in treating penguins.
"Some species might tolerate it better than others, but when you compare the benefits to the costs, I am skeptical," offered Ron Kendall, director of the Institute of Environ- mental and Human Health at Texas Tech University.
"Oil may be doing a species considerable harm, but rehabilitation won't change that," said University of California at Santa Cruz ecologist Jim Estes. "It will just help a relatively small number of individuals."
Responded Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, "What do you want us to do? Let them die?" Helping to rescue oiled birds since 1970, Holcomb described to reporters changes in methods over the years that have markedly increased survival rates. The most important may be rehydating and feeding rescued birds, and giving them time to rest, before beginning the stressful oil removal process.
Veterinarian Robert MacLean, of the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans, acknowledged to Flesher and Schwartz of Associated Press that there is almost no data from which to determine the success rates of cleaning and releasing non-avian species. MacLean had helped to rescue and clean three Kemp's ridley sea turtles.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill meets the Gulf hypoxic dead zone
NEW ORLEANS--Sixty-three days after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill started on April 20, the documented toll on wildlife included 997 dead birds, only 265 of them oiled; 749 oiled live birds; 400 dead sea turtles, only eight of them oiled; 128 live sea turtles, 84 of them oiled; and 51 mammals, 47 of them dead, including 38 dolphins, but only four of them oiled.
"These are the consolidated numbers of collected fish and wildlife reported to the Unified Area Command from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, incident area commands, rehabilitation centers, and other authorized sources operating within the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident impact area," prefaced the online report, updated daily at <www.ibrrc.org/gulf-oil-spill-birds-treated-numbers-2010.html>.
"Researchers say there are several reasons for the relatively small death toll," summarized Associated Press writers Jay Reeves, John Flesher, and Tamara Lush. "The vast nature of the spill means scientists are able to locate only a small fraction of the dead animals. Many will never be found after sinking to the bottom of the sea or being scavenged by other marine life. And large numbers of birds are meeting their deaths deep in the Louisiana marshes where they seek refuge from the onslaught of oil."
"Historically, we estimate that 10% of oiled birds are found," Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research team member Rebecca Dunne told Mira Oberman of Agence France-Presse.
Opined Greenpeace marine biologist John Hocevar, "I think part of the reason why we're not seeing more yet is that the impacts of this crisis are really just beginning."
But none of these factors are unique to the Deepwater Horizon spill.
What is unique is that the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred within the Gulf hypoxic dead zone, the legacy of more than 30 years of an entirely different and mostly ignored environmental disaster.
Agricultural runoff from throughout the Mississippi River drainage basin produces an annual accumulation of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients that feed algal blooms where the freshwater flow from the mouth of the Mississippi mingles with the warm Gulf of Mexico saltwater. Algal dieback and decomposition then consumes oxygen faster than the Gulf currents can bring more oxygen down from the surface.
Fish avoid the dead zone as it expands each spring--and so do fish-eating birds and marine mammals. The oil spill gave them additional incentive to depart.
"What's amazing is there's so little bird life out here right now," National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration turtle researcher Kate Sampson told Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles Times on June 17. "Either they've moved on, or the oiling has had a tremendous impact. We saw a few laughing gulls fly by yesterday," Sampson said. "They were oiled, but they could still fly. And we saw a northern gannet, a diving bird. It was oiled too." Mostly, though, Sampson suggested, "I can only imagine that the birds left because the dining hall is closed."
Wrote Murphy, "A few dead fish float in the water, though dolphin-fish, tuna, flying fish, and the occasional shark can still be seen swimming near the surface, threading their way through the wavy, sometimes iridescent gobs of crude."
Big as two states
At peak size each July, the Gulf hypoxic dead zone averaged about 3,200 square miles in size from 1985 to 1992. It nearly doubled to 6,200 square miles from 1993 to 2001. Then it expanded to 8,500 square miles in 2002, larger than Connecticut plus Rhode Island, and has usually been close to that size in recent years, according to data collected by Gene Turner of Louisiana State University and Nancy Rabalais, chief scientist for Northern Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Studies.
2009 was an exception, with the dead zone occupying just 3,000 square miles, but 2010 is expected to be a record year, as the Deepwater Horizon oil and methane discharges add to the hypoxic effect.
The Deepwater Horizon oil contains about 40% methane, eight times more than most oil deposits, Texas A&M University oceanographer John Kessler told Associated Press writers Matthew Brown and Ramit Plushnick-Masti on June 18.
"In early June, a research team led by Samantha Joye of the Institute of Undersea Research and Technology at the University of Georgia investigated a 15-mile-long plume drifting southwest from the leak site," reported Brown and Plushnick-Masti. "They said they found methane concentrations up to 10,000 times higher than normal, and oxygen levels depleted by 40% or more. The scientists found that some parts of the plume had oxygen concentrations just shy of the level that tips ocean waters into the category of 'dead zone'-uninhabitable by fish, crabs, shrimp and other marine creatures. Kessler said he has found oxygen depletions of between 2% and 30% in waters 1,000 feet deep."
The net effect appears to be that the Deepwater Horizon is creating a deep water dead zone beneath the algally created dead zone closer to the surface. "Representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged that so much methane in the water could draw down oxygen levels and slow the breakdown of oil in the Gulf, but cautioned that research was still under way to understand the ramifications," wrote Brown and Plushnick-Masti.
Texas A&M University oceanographer Steven DiMarco suggested that giant squid might be affected, since they live in deep water, and also sperm whales, who feed on squid. One dead sperm whale was found floating 77 miles south of the Deepwater Horizon site during the third week of June, reported Kate Spinner of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. "That it was caused by the spill is hard to say," Texas A&M University marine biology professor Randall Davis told Spinner.
"Davis was among a group of researchers in the mid-1990s who recommended that the Mississippi Canyon area--where the oil spill is occurring--be protected [as critical habitat] for sperm whales," Spinner recalled. "Such protection might have stopped drilling in the area, or at least put further restrictions on permits. But Davis said the Minerals Management Service, which funded the research, took the scientists' recommendation out of their report."
As the Deepwater Horizon oil drifts east toward coastal Alabama and Florida, it may extend the Gulf hypoxic dead zone to areas not previously affected.
Mark Robson, director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Division of Marine Fisheries Management, told Reeves, Flesher, and Lush that "his agency has to find any scientific evidence that fish are being adversely affected off his state's waters," they wrote. "He noted that it is common for fish to flee major changes in their environment, however," so that the evidence of an impact might be the absence of fish, rather than big fish kills, as occur as result of oxygen depletion in lakes and rivers.
"In some areas along the coast, researchers believe fish are swimming closer to shore because the water is cleaner and more abundant in oxygen," Reeves, Flesher, and Lush continued. "More oil could eventually wash ashore and overwhelm the fish. They could also become trapped between the slick and the beach, leading to increased competition for oxygen in the water and causing them to die as they run out of air."
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
What do past spills predict for Deepwater Horizon impact?
The Deepwater Horizon oil discharge, after 62 days, was believed by the U.S. Coast Guard to have reached a volume of as much as 156 million gallons--making it the second worst oil disaster in history, 15 times larger than the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The Deep-water Horizon spill is expected to reach 250 million gallons by the time BP completes drilling four pressure relief wells in August 2010 and finally caps the undersea gusher.
The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean Sea receive more than four times as much sunlight per year than the Prince William Sound, however, and that translates into exponentially greater activity by wind, waves, and microorganisms to mitigate the effects of oil spills.
The largest previous offshore oil spill anywhere was a 1979 blowout at Ixtoc I, a Pemex drilling site about 500 miles southwest of the Deepwater Horizon. Ixtoc I spewed 138 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf before Pemex stopped the leak with a relief well completed 290 days later.
"The oil was everywhere, long black sheets of it, 15 inches thick in some places," fouling 150 miles of Texas beach, recalled Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald.
Marine biologist Wes Tunnell anticipated ecological death for the region. Marine life declined by as much as 50% in some samplings; 80% in others. Amphipod marine worms and small crustaceans, near the bottom of the food chain for fish and birds, "were practically wiped out," Tunnell said. The female portion of the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle population fell to just 300. Yet Kemp's ridley sea turtles recovered to record nesting seasons in 2006 and 2007, and the other afflicted species rebounded as well. "You look around and it's like the spill never happened," shrugged Tunnell. "There's a lot of perplexity in it for many of us."
"The environment is amazingly resilient, more so than most people understand," said National Autonomous University of Mexico deep sea biologist Luis A. Soto. "We thought the Ixtoc spill was going to have catastrophic effects for decades. But within a couple of years, almost everything was close to 100% normal."
Soon after Ixtoc I was capped, Hurricane Frederic hit. "Overnight, half the 3,900 tons of oil piled up on Texas beaches disappeared," wrote Garvin. "Human clean-up efforts began putting a dent in the rest. Even in Mexico, which had neither the resources nor the hurricanes of the U.S., the oil began disappearing under a ferocious counterattack by nature. In the water, much of it evaporated; on beaches, the combined forces of pounding waves, ultraviolet light, and petroleum-eating microbes broke it down."
"The environment in the Gulf of Mexico is used to coping with petroleum," concluded Tunnell. "The equivalent of one to two supertankers full of oil leaks into the Gulf every year. The outcome of that is a huge population of bacteria that feed on oil and live along the shoreline.'"
The Ixtoc I experience was echoed in the aftermath of other major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Among the half dozen largest, in July 1979 the supertankers Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain collided off Tobago, spilling 46 million gallons of crude oil. The Atlantic Empress spilled another 41 million gallons off Barbados on August 2, 1979 while being towed. On June 8, 1990, 60 miles southeast of Galveston, Texas, the supertanker Mega Borg lost 5.1 million gallons. On November 28, 2000, on the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, the oil tanker Westchester ran aground near Port Sulphur, Louisiana, dumping 567,000 gallons. More than seven million gallons of oil were spilled during Hurricane Katrina from various sources, a total volume about two-thirds of the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. Then, on January 23, 2010, the tanker Eagle Otome and a barge collided in the Sabine-Neches Waterway near Port Arthur, Texas, losing about 462,000 gallons.
Two much smaller oil spills that were in the news in early 2010 demonstrated that the location and timing of oil spills are larger factors in causing harm to wildlife than volume, though the greater the volume lost, the greater the risk that some oil will drift into sensitive habitat.
In Edmonton litigation started over the deaths of at least 1,606 ducks who on April 28, 2009 landed in a pond of oil resulting from Syncrude Canada oilsands extraction work in northern Alberta. Oilsands extraction in the vicinity, involving three companies, is also believed to have killed 27 black bears, 31 foxes, 21 coyotes, and dozens of deer, plus moose, muskrats, beavers, voles, martens, wolves and bats, according to Mike Hudema of Greenpeace: 164 mammals in all.
On April 6, 2010 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a $16.9 plan to restore migratory seabird habitat damaged by leaks from the Jacob Luckenbach, a tanker carrying up to 450,000 gallons of oil that sank in 1953, 17 miles southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. The leaks killed more than 50,000 birds between 1990 and 2002, when the source of the oil was finally identified and the wreck was drained of oil.
The biggest oil spill ever occurred at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in California, on March 14, 1910.
"Halfway between the towns of Taft and Maricopa in Kern County," recalled New York Times science writer Justin Gillis, "a well blew out and continued spewing oil for 18 months. The ultimate volume spilled was calculated at 378 million gallons. Nearly half was recovered and refined by the Union Oil Company. The rest soaked into the ground or evaporated. Today," Gillis wrote, "little evidence of the spill remains."
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Petco to pay $1.75 million to settle case alleging neglect
SAN DIEGO--Petco Animal Supplies Inc. on June 2, 2010 agreed to pay $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit alleging a persistent pattern of animal neglect and overcharging customers, brought by the city of San Diego and the counties of San Mateo, Marin, San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
Petco is a 1,000-store national chain, but all of the plaintiffs are on California.
Petco agreed in May 2004 to settlements totaling $914,254 in a similar case brought by the same counties, plus the city of San Francisco. "Under terms of the new settlement," reported San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Erin Allday, "Petco must create programs that include daily inspections of animals and their living environments, and veterinary care for sick and injured animals. Petco did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. A Petco spokesman said the changes mentioned in the settlement have already been instituted."
"We have definitely seen a pattern develop from Petco with regards to improper animal care," responded Marin Humane Society spokesperson Carrie Harrington, to Rob Rogers of the Marin Independent Journal.
The cases settled in 2010 began, in part, when despite the 2004 settlement "Investigators from the Marin Humane Society determined that the county's Petco stores in Novato and San Rafael had not been adequately cleaned and maintained," Rogers recalled. "In some instances," Rogers wrote, "sick animals had not been identified and removed from sales floor habitats."
PETA announced in February 2008 that after five years under PETA boycott, Petco had agreed to reduce the animal inventory in Petco stores by 30% and enforce stricter animal care standards for animal suppliers. PETA has continued to expose abuses at some facilities that supply small mammals and birds to Petco. Dogs and cats available at Petco stores are offered for adoption by local shelters and rescues.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
BP burns pledge to wildlife fund, too
NEW YORK CITY--Less than 24 hours before British Petroleum began burning oil recovered from the Deepwater Horizon leakage capture pipe at sea, BP president Tony Hayward announced that BP had created a wildlife fund that would receive any profits made from selling the recovered oil.
"BP is committed to protecting the ecosystems and wildlife on the Gulf Coast. We believe these funds will have a significant positive impact on the environment," Hayward told New York Daily News staff writer Meena Hartenstein on June 8, 2010.
Hartenstein noted that Hayward "failed to mention that under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, BP is required by law to fund clean up and restoration of wildlife in the Gulf damaged by its operations."
Reported Associated Press writers Brian Skoloff and Ray Henry the next afternoon, "Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production, said a semi-submersible drilling rig would capture and burn about 420,000 gallons of oil daily. Once on board, oil and gas collected from the well will be sent down a boom and burned at sea," meaning that there will apparently be no sales of the recovered oil, and no profits to commit to helping wildlife.
Associated Press writers Justin Pritchard, Tamara Lush, and Holbrook Mohr meanwhile exposed "glaring errors and omissions" in BP's 582-page oil spill response plan for the Gulf of Mexico region, and in a 52-page site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
"The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as 'sensitive biological resources,'" Pritchard, Lush, and Mohr discovered. "None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf."
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Special prosecutor to probe University of Wisconsin use of decompression
MADISON--Dane County Circuit Court Judge Amy Smith on June 2, 2010 found probable cause to believe that nine University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers and faculty members have for more than 20 years violated state law by killing sheep in a hyperbaric chamber, also known as a decompression chamber.
Judge Smith appointed attorney David A. Geier to serve as special prosecutor in determining whether the scientists and their supervisors should face criminal charges.
Of 303 sheep exposed to decompression since 2000 in experiments performed at the university's diving physiology laboratory, funded by the U.S. Navy, three sheep have died while still in the hyperbaric chamber. Another 23 sheep have died within 24 hours of being removed from the chamber.
Judge Smith ruled in a 24-page decision that only the four most recent sheep deaths, in 2007 and 2008, occurred within the three-year statute of limitations. Judge Smith ruled in response to a petition from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Alliance for Animals, explained Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley, "seeking criminal charges against 14 university employees. Under the law," said Ryna, "any citizen can petition for charges if a district attorney declines to prosecute a case. Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard concluded last year that the experiments were likely illegal, but said filing charges would not be a wise use of limited resources."
The researchers contended that scientific research is exempted from the Wisconsin humane law. Judge Smith found that the law includes no exemptions. Chapter 951.025 of the Wisconsin state code says only, "No person may kill an animal by means of decompression." The University of Wisconsin claimed to have suspended the decompression experiments as result of District Attorney Blanchard's opinion that they were illegal. But the researchers' position that the experiments were legal suggests, Judge Smith wrote, "that because the university interprets the statute in its favor, it may well continue to decompress animals to death contrary to law, unless I take action."
Commonly used for about 40 years to kill shelter animals who were not reclaimed or adopted, decompression was eventually recognized as unacceptably cruel. The city of Berkeley, California, in 1972 became the first in the U.S. to ablish decompression; the cities of Houston and Austin, Texas, in 1985 were the last. The Wisconsin Humane Society stopped using decompression in March 1976, and as the agency which then had primary responsibility for enforcing the state humane law, held decompression to constitute illegal cruelty. Several shelters in smaller Wisconsin cities continued to use decompression for another several months, but all quit before the end of 1977. Language specifically prohibiting decompression was added to the state humane law in 1985, and was amended into present form in 1987.
University of Wisconsin animal care and use program director Eric Sandgren, School of Veterinary Medicine surgical sciences chair Dale Bjorling, and Foundation for Biomedical Research president Frankie Trull denounced Judge Smith's ruling in terms hinting that they may seek to amend the law.
"You can assume that this catastrophe is likely," Alliance for Animals director Rick Bogle told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "It is impossible to overstate the university's influence with the state legislature and local politics. They just tried to get an exemption for adequate food and water tacked on to Windchill's law," an attempt to reinforce the state humane law named for a nine-month-old colt who died in 2008 from lingering effects of starvation and hypothermia. "Had the law passed," Bogle said, "they would have been successful. It is simply a matter of time," Bogle predicted, "before they seek exceptions to every section of the Crimes Against Animals chapter of the state's laws."
Decompression experiments similar to those done at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are done by at least two other U.S. universities, PETA believes.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Iranian cleric issues fatwa against keeping pet dogs
TEHRAN--Acknowledging that the Koran does not explicitly prohibit contact with dogs, the Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, 86, nonetheless decreed in a June 19, 2010 fatwa published by the Iranian newspaper Javan Daily that dogs are "unclean" and should not be kept as pets.
"We have lots of narrations in Islam that say dogs are unclean," Shirazi said in his fatwa, or religious opinion, disregarding that most mentions of dogs attributed to the Prophet Mohammed himself are favorable and that some of his inner circle kept dogs.
"Friendship with dogs is a blind imitation of the West," Shirazi declared, according to Robin Pomeroy of Reuter. "There are lots of people in the West who love their dogs more than their wives and children."
Now retired from government and living in Qom, Shirazi is among the last of the senior clerics who ruled Iran after the 1979 ouster of the U.S.-backed Shah. In a previous fatwa he argued that "In certain circumstances, death by stoning [as punishment for adultery] can be replaced by other methods of punishment." Hadith 4:538, among the sayings attributed to Mohammed, describes a circumstance in which Allah chose not to punish an adulteress at all. Recites the hadith, narrated by the disciple Abu Huraira, "Allah's Apostle said, 'A prostitute was forgiven by Allah, because, passing by a panting dog near a well and seeing that the dog was about to die of thirst, she took off her shoe, and tying it with her head-cover she drew out some water for it. So, Allah forgave her because of that."
Iranian senior clerics and other authorities have tried to prohibit or limit pet-keeping before. In October 2002 the hardline prayer leader Gholamreza Hassani, of the northwestern city of Urumiyeh, reportedly declared "I call on the judiciary to arrest all long-legged, medium-legged and short-legged dogs along with their long-legged owners. Otherwise I'll do it myself." A few weeks later Tehran authorities ordered that all cats in the city should be killed.
Tehran head of security Ahmad Reza Radan in August 2007 forbade walking dogs in public, according to Radio Free Europe. "In the past," Radio Free Europe recounted, "dog owners have received warnings or were forced to pay fines for having a pet dog. Despite such harassment, dog ownership has increased, especially among young people in Tehran."
ANIMAL PEOPLE has received numerous reports since Radan's edict of Tehran residents being accosted by police for walking dogs or searching for lost dogs. Most have been briefly detained and their dogs impounded but in 2008 Fox News reported that a 70-year-old man received 30 lashes and was jailed for four months for walking a dog.
Senior clerics in several other nations have recently issued fatwas pertaining to dogs.
Agence France-Press reported in July 2008 that "Saudi Arabia's religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women." Othman al-Othman, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Riyadh, said the order implemented a decision made by Prince Sattam bin Abdul Aziz, the acting governor of Riyadh, and followed "an old edict issued by the supreme council of Saudi scholars."
In August 2009 the Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah of Beirut, Lebanan, issued a fatwa authorizing the killing of stray dogs. But Fadlallah made clear that "The rule is to protect animals and preserve their lives," with the exception that "if their behavior represents a danger for the lives of people, as is the case with stray or fierce dogs, then killing them is authorized."
Fadilalled produced his fatwa in response to petitioning from villagers who were concerned about both recent rabies outbreaks and a reported proliferation of fighting dogs in the Bekaa valley.
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Appellate court upholds warrantless entry and seizure to save animal's life
LOS ANGELES--A three-judge panel of the California Second District Court of Appeal ruled on June 3, 2010 that warrantless entry of private property and seizure of an animal may be permitted if necessary to save the animal's life. The verdict was among the first to recognize "exigent circumstances" in an animal-related case reaching an appellate court.
Wrote the court, "Where an officer [of law enforcement] reasonably believes an animal is in immediate need of aid due to injury or mistreatment, the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment may be invoked."
William Heyman, attorney for defendant Keith Chung, pledged to further appeal the verdict.
Summarized the Second District Court of Appeal, "Keith Chung was charged with two counts of cruelty to an animal and possession of a controlled substance. Prior to trial, Chung moved to suppress evidence seized during a search of his residence on the theory the police lacked exigent circumstances justifying warrantless entry."
The case originated, the court recited, when Chung's neighbor, Jennifer Lee, "called the police in the early morning hours of July 13, 2007, and reported hearing the high-pitched crying of a dog in pain." Los Angeles police officer Peter Correa and his partner responded. Chung denied having a dog, but the officers heard a dog whimper.
"Believing there was an animal in distress, the officers entered without a warrant after Chung refused the officers permission to enter," said the court summary. "The officers found an injured dog on the patio and a dead dog in the freezer section of the refrigerator. Both dogs had suffered head trauma. The live dog was euthanized by a veterinarian later that morning," the court said.
"The trial court denied the motion to suppress, finding it was reasonable under the circumstances for the officers to enter the condominium without first obtaining a warrant in order to aid a live animal the officers reasonably believed was in distress," the court continued.
Chung pleaded no contest to one count of cruelty, was sentenced to 16 months in prison, and appealed his conviction, contending that the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendent warrant requirement "should be limited to preserving human life," the court continued.
"Chung notes dogs are considered personal property, and asserts it is inappropriate to justify warrantless entry into a residence to protect a dog's life," the court explained. Chung's appeal cited two 1996 precedents, one of which held that animal control officers could not enter a home without a warrant to impound the homeowner's dog for violation of a leash law, while the other rejected the claim of exigency to justify seizing a dog who had bitten someone two days earlier.
The court in the latter case "conceded exigent circumstances may justify warrantless seizure of a biting dog from a residence if necessary to determine whether the dog had rabies. However, no exigent circumstances were shown," the Second District Court of Appeal noted.
The court cited four precedents for warrantless actions on behalf of an animal in other states: People v. Thornton (1997), in Illinois, in which a police officer entered an apartment where a dog had barked for several days; Suss v. ASPCA (1993), in New York, involving the rescue of a cat who was trapped between the walls of two buildings; Tuck v. United States (1984), in Washington D.C., in which heat-stressed rabbits were removed from an unventilated pet store display window; and State v. Bauer (1985) in Wisconsin, pertaining to the rescue of horses from a barn.
First-level courts have often accepted "exigent circumstances" as providing "probable cause" for warrantless search and seizure in cases not appealed to higher levels.
For example, chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on February 10, 2010 ruled that Kootenai County animal control officer Karen Williams and county sheriff's deputies did not need a warrant to take three allegedly neglected horses from the property of horse trader Blair W. Dunham in May 2008. "There was no violation of Dunham's constitutional rights," Judge Winmill wrote. "The probable cause standard is a flexible, common-sense approach requiring only that the facts available to the officer would warrant a belief" that a crime is occurring.
The horses in the Dunham case were the subject of complaints from others who had seen them. Williams and the sheriff's deputies saw reason to be concerned about them from locations with public right of access. Dunham was not present to be asked about the horses' condition or about permission to enter her property to act on the horses' behalf. Dunham was acquitted of three counts of cruelty in February 2009. She then sued Kootenai County, "alleging several of her rights were violated by excessive force, cruel and unusual punishment and conspiracy," reported Coeur d'Alene Press staff writer Tom Hasslinger.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Burning the oil spill evidence
NEW ORLEANS--Rumors flew for weeks that British Petroleum clean-up crews were secretly incinerating the remains of wildlife oiled by the April 20, 2010 wreck of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Often obstructed by BP personnel, despite an order from U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen that media were to be allowed access to all areas normally open to the public, reporters wondered just what they were not being allowed to see--especially since many gained access to heavily oiled habitat despite the BP interference.
But some of the first claims that oiled remains were being burned on beaches turned out to have been recycled from the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. A similar rumor traced to Salt Lake City, where a 500-barrel spill into Red Butte Creek and the Jordan River on June 11 oiled about 280 ducks and geese. About 10 birds were killed. The Hogle Zoo saved the rest.
Catherine Craig of CNN at last found partial confirmation of the burning rumors on June 13, interviewing shrimper Mike Ellis, who said he had been hired by BP to do sea turtle rescue. Ellis asserted that the BP approach to collecting and burning floating oil in the immediate vicinity of the sunken Deepwater Horizon was likely to be burning oiled sea turtles.
Los Angeles Times reporter Kim Murphy got the details four days later.
"The large strands of sargassum seaweed atop the ocean are normally noisy with birds and thick with crustaceans, small fish and sea turtles," Murphy wrote. "But now there are no birds. The seaweed is devoid of life except for the occasional juvenile sea turtle, speckled with oil and clinging to the only habitat it knows. The burn operations have proved particularly excruciating for the turtle rescuers, who have been trolling the same lines of oil and seaweed as the boom boats, hoping to pull turtles out of the sargassum. In one case, the crew had to fall back and watch as skimmers gathered up a long line of sargassum that hadn't yet been searched, which they believe was full of turtles who might have been saved.
"The same convergences of ocean currents that create long mats of sargassum," Murphy continued, "also coalesce the oil, creating islands of death sometimes 30 miles long. Hardest hit of all, it appears, are the sea jellies and snails who drift along the gulf's surface, some of the most important food sources for sea turtles."
Said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission researcher Blair Witherington, "These animals drift into the oil and it's like flies on fly paper."
Earlier, Murphy was heartened when a lone sea turtle came ashore through oil along the beaches of southern Alabama and laid her eggs--but then clean-up workers ran over the nest with a vehicle. Fortunately, Murphy continued, "Volunteers were able to find the nest, safely dig up the 127 new ping-pong-ball-sized egg, and rebury them in a safe location. The nest, which is the first to be laid in the area since the oil spill began, will be fenced off to protect the eggs until they hatch in about two months."
Sea turtles are among the hardest-hit species in the Deepwater Horizon spill region. Oceana marine scientist Elizabeth Wilson told Houston Chronicle reporter Harvey Rice on June 9 that the hundreds of sea turtles found dead since the oil spill began "far exceed the 30 to 50 stranded turtles normally found this time of year" on Gulf Coast beaches.
But sea turtles are benefiting from the closure of the oil spill region to fishing and shrimping. Sea Turtle Restoration Project marine biologist Christopher Pincetich told Osha Gray Davidson of OnEarth.org in May 2010 that fishers and shrimpers have killed about 25,000 sea turtles per year in the Gulf during the past decade--and killed as many as 86,000 sea turtles per year as recently as 2000, before use of Turtle Excluder Devices on nets was enforced.
Among other marine species afflicted by the spill, "Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier," observed Associated Press writers Jay Reeves, John Flesher, and Tamara Lush on June 16--but the numbers of dead dolphins found in the spill vicinity actually dropped, following the unexplained deaths of 101 dolphins in the two months before the Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank. This was the most dead dolphins found in March and April along the Gulf coast in seven years, and was nearly seven times the annual average, said National Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin-istration spokesperson Monica Allen.
Eight studies of bottlenose dolphin behavior after other Gulf oil spills have found that dolphins may suffer harm from inhaling fumes from oil spills, and may experience liver damage and neurological disorders from longterm exposure, but usually do not consistently avoid oil slicks.
Sharks also seem relatively resistant to the effects of oil spills, but "At this point, we do not know what the [longterm] impact will be," Gulf Coast Research Lab scientist Eric Hoffmayer told Al Jones of the Biloxi Sun Herald. "The adults, of most of the species we have here," Hoffmayer said, "likely have been exposed to some part of the oil. Right now, they are pupping in the Mississippi Sound, a nursery for sharks. Whatever the mother is exposed to, the pups have been exposed to as well."
As the Deepwater Horizon oil plumes drift toward coastal Florida, oil is entering manatee habitat, and "can have a lot of harmful effects if manatees come in contact with it," Save the Manatee Club executive director Patrick Rose told Rich Phillips of CNN. "Everything from coating their skin to getting in their eyes, to being ingested," Rose continued, but "We don't know specifically because it's not been documented," he admitted. The Deepwater Horizon may be the first major oil spill to affect many manatees.
Rescuing manatees who have been injured by collisions with boats long since became routine in Florida waterways, but "Capturing and rescuing hundreds of manatees has never been done," Rose said. "We would lose manatees, I believe, if those numbers of manatees are involved."
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service manatee oil response coordinator Nicole Adimeyr was more optimistic. "If we had to move dozens, we've been assured that we can get the resources," Adimeyr said.
Oiled mantees would be treated at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, the Institute for Marine Mammals Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, and possibly also the Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park, Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa and the Miami Seaquarium, all in Florida.
"The West Indian manatee population in the Gulf of Mexico stands at about 5,000," Phillips said. "This past winter's extended cold wiped out almost 10%."
(More BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill coverage appears on pages 8-9.)
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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Cell phone videocams open factory farms to public view
BOULDER, URBANA--Ignoring 20 years of warnings by leading U.S. agribusiness educators and pundits has begun to cost the livestock industry serious money and-- perhaps--consumer confidence.
Increasingly frequent and effective undercover exposés are acquainting ever more of the public with meat, egg, and dairy production practices, including with the ineffecacy of agribusiness at improving animal welfare despite frequent promises.
More than a hundred activists have now worked undercover at many hundreds of factory farms and slaughterhouses, documenting procedures with thousands of hours of video. None have failed to find conditions and practices that appall mainstream consumers of meat, eggs, and dairy products when the video clips are broadcast and posted to web sites.
Four cases amplified by mass media during the last week of May and first week of June 2010 brought to life the worst nightmares long predicted for agribusiness by Colorado State University professor of psychology and livestock handling consultant Temple Grandin, CattleNetwork blogger Chuck Jolley, and the late University of Illinois agriculture professor emeritus Stan Curtis--among others.
Maine Contract Farming agreed to pay $34,674 in fines and restitution for alleged cruelty to laying hens at an egg farm in Turner, Maine.
"The company will also donate $100,000 to the Maine Department of Agriculture to help monitor egg farms," reported Lewiston Sun-Journal staff writer Scott Taylor. The violations, occurring in 2008-2009, were brought to light by Mercy for Animals.
The sum of the fines and restitution amount to small change for a major agrcultural producer, but the donation to reinforce agricultural law enforcement amounts to an admission that the entire egg industry needs more policing.
While the Maine Contract Farming case was in settlement negotiation, a four-week investigation by Mercy for Animals during April and May 2010 documented staff at Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio "punching young calves in the face, body-slamming them to the ground, pulling and throwing them by their ears, routinely using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs, and stomach, kicking cows too injured to stand in the face and neck, beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars, twisting cows' tails until the bones snapped, and punching cows' udders," a Mercy for Animals media release summarized.
Conklin Dairy Farms worker Billy Gregg, Jr., 25, was charged with 12 counts of misdemeanor cruelty. A felony charge of improperly handling a firearm in a motor vehicle was added after Gregg was reportedly found to have a loaded gun in his car when he arrived at the company offices to be fired.
Conklin Dairy Farms received a notice of violation from Ohio Department of Agriculture inspector Jill M. Duel several days later for improperly disposing of dead animals. An unknown number of cattle carcasses, found in a water-filled pit, were later buried at least four feet underground, as Ohio law requires.
Vermont bust
Also during the first week of June 2010 two former employees of Bushway Packing in Grand Isle, Vermont, were charged with cruelty to calves on their way to slaughter. The charges resulted from a September 2009 exposé by the Humane Society of the U.S. Video collected by an HSUS undercover investigator during six weeks of employment at Bushway Packing allegedly caught Christopher Gaudette, 37, shocking a downed calf 16 times, kicking the calf, pouring water over the calf's head to increase the strength of the shocks, and then shocking the calf seven more times.
Frank Perretta, 51, "secretary of the company and one of its corporate directors," according to Associated Press writer John Curran, "was shown the video by USDA inspectors and said he would never condone the behavior Gaudette had engaged in. But he, too, was cited for excessive shocking of a calf, and for kneeing another animal in the backside," Curran wrote. Vermont prosecutor Cindy Maguire told Curran that the case was the first time cruelty charges had ever been filed against a Vermont slaughterhouse.
"The abuse was called 'inexcusable' by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last year," Curran added. "It led to the closing of Bushway Packing and calls for closer regulation of animal handling. Ultimately, the state legislature passed a bill creating a Livestock Care Standards Advisory Council. The bill allows the state to deny a commercial slaughter license to people who are convicted of animal cruelty."
Compassion over Killing meanwhile released video that led to Santa Cruz Animal Services seizing 88 birds from the California chicken and duck producer Cal-Cruz Hatcheries in May 2009. Only 38 of the birds survived. The survivors were taken to the Farm Sanctuary location in Orlands, California. [See page one photo.]
"9/11 for industry"
University of Illinois agriculture professor emeritus Stan Curtis, 68, died on April 25, 2010, two years and four days afer warning Feedstuffs readers that "Animal agriculture will have to become more transparent," and "People distrust secretiveness, but they value openness."
If agribusiness failed to maintain animal welfare standards capable of withstanding public scrutiny, Curtis cautioned, and failed to show the public good examples, animal advocates would continue to produce a seemingly endless series of exposés of conditions and practices that no one could defend.
Curtis lived long enough to see it, including exposés of alleged animal welfare violations at four Iowa egg farms released by HSUS just three weeks before his death.
More than half of all the undercover video exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses that have ever been broadcast or posted to web sites have been aired since a 2008 PETA exposé of a MowMar Farms pig breeding facility near Bayard, Iowa that MowMar co-owner Lynn Becker called "the 9/11 event in the swine industry."
"This is a wakeup call for the industry," agreed American Association of Swine Veterinarians executive director Tom Burkgren. The video showed staff beating pigs with metal rods and urging others to do likewise, live piglets in a dead pile, and castration and tail-docking being done without anesthesia. MowMar Farms, of Fairmont, Minnesota, only bought the 6,000-sow site in Iowa 28 days before the PETA video was released. The video images were collected by PETA undercover operatives for three months before MowMar acquired the facility and changed the management. MowMar subsequently fired six employees who eventually pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals. PETA asked that 12 more employees be fired--and the Iowa Farm Bureau endorsed the PETA call for prosecutions.
"PETA did animal agriculture a favor," opined Faces of Farming founder Trent Loos. "I have to wonder, though, why it took the assistance of an organization with a vegan agenda to stop this ongoing display of disrespect toward animals?"
"This isn't about one farm--it's about a culture of cruelty that exists everyplace we go undercover on a factory farm or slaughterhouse," PETA vice president Bruce Friedrich told media. "Anyone eating factory-farmed meat is paying to support it." PETA asked MowMar to install cameras in all animal housing, to monitor employee conduct.
Cell telephones that can transmit live video to web sites mean agribusiness can no longer keep how animals are treated out of public view. The only question is who uses video images, for what purpose.
Even if factory farm or slaughterhouse security guards quickly capture an activist clandestinely taking and transmitting video, persuasive evidence of animal abuse and neglect might already be reaching an international audience--and use of offshore web hosts can mean the evidence is beyond the reach of corporate lawyers before the videographer is removed from the premises. No matter how the videographer is punished, images transmitted into the public domain might circulate for decades.
Cameras in the barns
Colorado State University professor of psychology and animal science Temple Grandin began warning agribusiness about the potential of undercover video to transform public perception of livestock rearing and slaughter in May 1991. Grandin has repeatedly advised lecture audiences of factory farm and slaughterhouse executives that they can either learn to use closed-circuit video cameras to monitor animal welfare and show the world positive images of routine animal treatment, or be exposed just as has already occurred at more than 200 animal industry facilities.
Grandin began recommending that farms and slaughterhouses use video surveillance soon after Minneapolis cocktail waitress Becky Sandstedt released to news media selected clips from 40 hours of video she covertly made of the handling of downed cattle and pigs at United Stockyards Inc. in South St. Paul. United Stockyards agreed after five weeks of protest and public pressure to stop accepting deliveries of cattle and pigs who could not walk to slaughter.
Sandstedt soon afterward took a full-time job with Farm Sanctuary, but the video technology of the time was not easily used to produce further exposés of an industry that had been put on guard. The equipment was expensive, hard to use covertly, and required activists to enter agribusiness facilities with items easily recognized as out of the ordinary.
Seven years passed before SHARK undercover investigators Steve Wong and Dug Hanbicki documented the inside procedures at the Concord Meat Processing Company and Long Chen Hmong Livestock Inc., both of South St. Paul--but the images they captured, especially of pig slaughter, were so disturbing that no mainstream media would air them. The World Wide Web had debuted five years earlier, but most users lacked the connection speed needed to view videos online.
Video clips of abusive practices obtained by Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association from inside workers at an Iowa Beef Packers plant in Wallula, Washington finally gave the public a view of slaughter in May 2000. The Wallula clips were broadcast by leading Seattle and San Francisco television news stations.
A week later a North Carolina TV station accidentally aired a PETA undercover video that brought the convictions of several Belcross Farms personnel for cruelty to a pig.
PETA followed up with other undercover investigations documented by videotape. The poultry processing firm Pilgrim's Pride in July 2004 fired three managers and eight hourly workers at a slaughterhouse in Moorfield, West Virginia, where a PETA undercover videographer documented workers killing chickens by stomping them and beating them against walls. In December 2004 AgriProcessors Inc. of Postville, Iowa, the only U.S. slaughterhouse authorized to export meat to Israel, agreed to amend their slaughtering procedures after a seven-week PETA undercover operation produced 30 minutes of damning video that called into question whether AgricProcessors' meat could really be considered kosher.
YouTube changes picture
But all of the elements needed for animal advocates to fully and repeatedly expose factory farming and slaughter were not yet in place until the February 2005 debut of YouTube. Suddenly anyone could post brief video clips and compete for public notice. The introduction of cell telephones capable of capturing video meanwhile gave anyone the ability to document anything. The mostly young and highly transient farm and slaughterhouse labor force--including many illegal aliens of no fixed address--had already made cell telephones ubiquitous and inconspicuous at agribusiness workplaces. A worker receiving or making a brief cell phone call had become so routine as to barely be noticed by supervisors, if at all.
Undercover video exposés of animal agriculture entered the YouTube era after Compassion Over Killing investigator John Brothers documented conditions at Esbenshade Farms in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania during the first week of December 2005. The Compassion Over Killing video "showed hens impaled on loose wires, hens unable to eat or drink because they were entangled in the wire cages, and hens left to die in aisles without food and water," summarized Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Harold Brubaker.
Esbenshade Farms, with about 600,000 hens on that farm, and about 2.3 million birds at any one time altogether, is among the leading U.S. egg producers. Company chief executive H. Glenn Esbenshade was acquitted of cruelty charges in June 2007, after successfully contending that the video showed only standard agricultural practices. The anti-cruelty laws of Pennsylvania and 30 other states exempt standard agricultural practices from prosecution as cruelty.
But while Esbenshade won in the court of law, he did not appear to win in the court of public opinion. More than 10,000 people saw the Compassion Over Killing video on YouTube. Thousands more saw it on other web sites.
Public rejects "normal"
Farm animal advocates have always believed that the public would reject the routine mistreatment of livestock, if they saw it. The Esbenshade case proved the point: the more Esbenshade contended that what the Compassion Over Killing video showed was normal, the less the animal suffering it showed seemed to be accepted.
The Humane Society of the U.S. did the first of several hidden video exposés of Michael Foods Egg Products Co. facilities in June 2006, finding similar "normal" conditions. Hired to remove dead hens from battery cages, said HSUS video marketing outreach coordinator Erin Williams, the undercover operative videotaped live hens confined in cages with decomposing birds, hens caught in the cage wire, sick and injured hens, and immobilized hens who were allegedly dying from starvation and dehydration, inches from food and water. A Compassion Over Killing undercover video investigation found similar conditions at a Michael Foods egg barn at an unspecified location in August 2009. Then HSUS a month later distributed video from a Michael Foods egg barn in LeSeuer, Minnesota. Michael Foods told Tom Webb of the St. Paul Pioneer Press that "Some or all of the scenes showing dead birds being removed from cages were staged."
Nonetheless, the 2006 video helped to persuade one of Michael Foods' biggest customers, the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, to begin transitioning to the use of free range eggs. Campaigns against the IHOP restaurant chain and Dunkin Donuts for using Michael Foods eggs from battery caged hens continue, waged by HSUS and Compassion Over Killing primarily with online video clips.
PETA meanwhile placed two undercover investigators inside an Ozark Butterball turkey hatchery in Arkansas for 40 days between April and June 2006. Compassion Over Killing placed one investigator in a Goldsboro Milling turkey hatchery in North Carolina, also a Butterball brand supplier, for three weeks in June and July 2006. Video from both operations aired as Thanksgiving 2006 approached.
The Compassion Over Killing video showed culled hatchlings being stuffed into plastic bags and pulverized in macerating machines. Sleepy Creek Farms general manager Nick Weaver, who also oversaw the Goldsboro Milling turkey hatcheries, objected to Leigh Dyer of the Charlotte Observer that this is accepted under industry guidelines.
"To portray it as this horrible, sinister situation is just not fair, just not accurate," Weaver protested.
Again the defense that the exposed procedures are normal and accepted appeared to amplify the impact of the undercover videos on the public.
Videos bring action
No such defense was possible after a Mercy for Animals undercover investigator in May 2007 produced video of House of Raeford Farms turkey production workers "using live turkeys as punching bags, ripping their heads off, and slaughtering conscious birds," as a Mercy for Animals media release summarized. Mercy for Animals unsuccessfully sought felony charges against the alleged abusers. House of Raeford management insisted that the investigator instigated the abuses, but the Denny's restaurant chain changed turkey suppliers.
2007 closed with a pre-Christmas announcement by Mepkin Abbey, of Monck's Corner, South Carolina, that it would begin an 18-month transition out of the egg business. Selling eggs and chicken manure had provided 60% of the income for the Trappist monastery. PETA in January 2007 had collected undercover video in which a monk compared starving hens to induce a "forced molt" and new laying cycle to fasting for religious reasons.
Mepkin Abbey retreated from egg production nine days after PETA disclosed undercover video made from September to November at the Murphy Family Ventures pig farm in Garland, North Carolina--a supplier to Smithfield Foods. Video of workers dragging pigs by their snouts, an ear or a leg to be killed, hitting and jabbing pigs with metal rods, and injured pigs going untreated brought the prosecution of one employee and indictment of another, who fled the state.
Three employees of Aviagen Turkeys Inc. in Lewisburg, West Virginia, were charged with felony animal abuse as result of actions documented by PETA undercover video in 2008. Two pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in June 2009 in Greenbriar County, but were then indicted for separate felonies in October 2009 in Monroe County.
HSUS, however, produced the most publicized undercover video exposé to date in January 2008 at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company in Chino, California. More than 120 newspaper and magazine articles and 14,600 web sites amplified the findings of the lone HSUS investigator, who documented extensive abuse of downed cattle at one of the 18 slaughterhouses that supplied meat to the USDA school lunch program. The USDA withdrew inspection of Hallmark/ Westland, forcing it to close for nine months, before reopening under a different name and new management. Two workers were criminally prosecuted. One was sentenced to serve 270 days in jail; the other was deported to Mexico. The influence of the video helped HSUS to win passage of a California ballot proposition in November 2008 that banned veal crating and gestation crates for sows, and requires that battery caging for hens be phased out.
In May 2008 a similar HSUS video made at the Westminster Livestock Auction Market in Carroll County, Maryland, led to the prosecution of owner James E. Horak for violating state animal health rules, and caused the Maryland Department of Agriculture to reinforce inspection procedures.
Mercy for Animals
Mercy for Animals, however, has conducted more successful undercover video investigations of farms and slaughterhouses during the past two years than HSUS and PETA combined. Still only 26, Nathan Runkle started Mercy for Animals at age 15, having grown up with the technology he uses. Since Runkle and the other Mercy for Animals staff are mostly still in the same age bracket as many of the young and relatively inexperienced workers hired by agribusiness, they appear to have little trouble fitting in, cell phones included.
Some of the most dramatic images of battery-caged hens used during the California initiative campaign were collected by a Mercy for Animals investigator during a two-month stint at egg ranches in the San Joaquin Valley. The job was done while the petition campaign to put the initiative on the ballot was still underway.
From December 2008 until February 2009 a Mercy for Animals undercover agent documented dehorning operations, workers punching and kicking cows to get them to move, and dragging newborn calves from their mothers by one leg at Willet Dairy in Locke, New York. Months of futile effort to persuade the Cayuga County District Attorney's Office to bring charges against the alleged offenders followed.
In January 2010 Mercy for Animals finally posted the evidence to YouTube. More than 50,000 people viewed the Willet Dairy video within the next few weeks. Among them was New York State Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, of Manhattan, who proposed a ban on tail-docking similar to one enacted in 2009 in California. Willet Dairy in Feruary 2010 announced that one worker had been suspended and that the company would undergo an audit of animal care.
In May and June 2009 Mercy for Animals videotaped how unwanted male chicks were culled and killed at a hatchery in Spencer, Iowa. Hy-Line North America admitted to "animal welfare policy violations" at the hatchery three months later, after undergoing an independent audit.
In November 2009 Mercy for Animals distributed a 12-minute video of scenes an investigator witnessed during three months of employment at Country View Family Farms in central Pennsylvania, including piglets being picked up by their ears and tossed, and sick piglets being killed in an allegedly malfunctioning gas chamber.
"Cow-cams"
All of this exasperates Temple Grandin. "On farms in Europe," she told readers of Meat & Poultry in 2008, "you can look at a 'cow cam' on a dairy farm and watch calves being born and cows being milked on the Internet. Many people on both the farm side and the meat plant side [of agribusiness] are overly cautious about showing what we do. A common comment is 'people will not understand.' What many industry managers do not realize is that the public is forming attitudes from negative propaganda on the Internet. We need to post the good stuff. In every phase of agriculture and the meat industry," Grandin wrote, "we need to say to ourselves, 'Would I be proud to show what I am doing to my out-of-town holiday or wedding guests?' If you are squirming and cringing, you need to improve your practicesŠHacking horns off of large cattle, beating up animals, or shoving them around with a forklift does not pass this test.
"There are some people in the industry who have the 'stockade' mentality," Grandin continued. "Their response is to batten down the hatches and install security gates. That is useless. An undercover employee with a hidden camera will have a key-card to open the gate." Once again Grandin urged farms and slaughterhouses to use cameras themselves to monitor animal care and handling. "A few progressive places, such as FPL Foods in Georgia, have installed video auditing," Grandin noted. "Some other companies are in the process of installing it. I would like to see the day when a meat plant has live video on the Internet," Grandin challenged.
Persuasion
Mercy for Animals persuaded Radlo Foods, of Maine, to adopt video auditing. Radlo as of April 2009 was a supplier to the Eggland's Best label, and was a major customer of Quality Egg. Based in Jeffersonville, Pennsylvania, Quality Egg had acquired the former DeCoster Egg Farm in Turner, Maine. Under founder Jack DeCoster, the farm became notorious for violations of labor laws and environmental standards even before Mercy for Animals founder Nathan Runkle was born. Animal welfare shortcomings were also often mentioned, but at the time there were no applicable laws to be enforced.
Between December 2008 and February 2009 a Mercy for Animals investigator documented the usual mistreatment of hens on egg farms--and several instances of sadistic behavior by employees. Eggland then accused Radlo of violating contractual terms by obtaining eggs from a farm that failed to meet the Eggland animal welfare standards. Radlo announced that it would no longer buy eggs from the former DeCoster complex, and would work to become 100% cage-free.
In October 2009 several Radlo staff joined Maine state animal welfare agents in completing a training program provided by the American Humane Association.
"Radlo is committed to converting all egg production operations to new sustainable laying systems that are good for laying hens, consistent with American Humane Certified standards," American Humane announced. "This will be achieved in part by installing video monitoring equipment for observation and oversight of humane best practices in the facilities."
American Humane Certified, the American Humane farm animal welfare program, heavily invested for several years in a video monitoring system developed by HS3 Technologies. The first producer to use it was GCB Foods LLC, of Nashville, North Carolina. On September 29, 2008, American Humane announced that GCB Foods had installed video cameras that "allow American Humane to monitor animal welfare at the facility remotely through real-time video."
The partnership between American Humane and HS3 Technologies appears to have ended. According to a document filed by HS3 Technologies with the Federal Trade Commission, "Effective February 28, 2010 the American Humane Association terminated a master licensing and monitoring agreement dated February 1, 2009. Under the agreement our company agreed to provide and install digital video surveillance systems and equipment at such locations as are designated by AHA. AHA has claimed that the company's showing of a marketing video of animals at a trade show without AHA written permission was an incurable breach of the contract. Our company believes the termination by AHA is a breach of the contract," HS3 Technologies stated, "and we are evaluating our response."
Video systems have so far been marketed to agribusiness primarily as tools for monitoring whether workers perform assigned duties, and for preventing theft and substance abuse. Video security cameras are now common at factory farms and slaughterhouses, but tend to be focused more on entrances and corridors than on the animals.
The use of video systems such as Grandin and American Humane recommend to keep animals under observation will require more cameras, yet video technology has decreased so much in price that putting a videocam over every cage, stall, or pig pen may not look like a big investment relative to the cost of losing animals due to mishandling, fighting among stressed animals, and illnesses that presently elude notice until many animals have collapsed. In other words, continuous video monitoring of animal welfare may be good for profits, as well as better for the animals.
Employee surveillance as now practiced by many companies in agribusiness may catch thousands of employees sneaking calls on their cell phones. But it is unlikely to stop some of those calls from transmitting the evidence that factory farming and slaughter are ugly businesses. Stopping calls that prove embarrassing to agribusiness will require eliminating welfare problems that cell phone video can document.
--Merritt Clifton
Letters
Using credit cards in adoption screening
Thank you for publishing "Rethink-ing adoption screening in the computer age" in your May 2010 edition.
Many of the points addressed in this editorial are valid, but as a consumer who is concerned about identity theft and financial privacy, I would be very leery of an organization that required presentation of a credit card if I had planned to pay via cash or check. Further, if it were not revealed to me ahead of time that my credit would be checked when I was not applying for credit, employment or a security clearance, adverse publicity for the organization could result.
While I understand the reasons for requiring a credit card for non-credit purposes, applicable shelters should make these requirements known in publicity materials.
--Cecily Westermann
St. Louis, Missouri
<cwestermann@sbcglobal.net>
Editor's note:
Responded Helen Woodward Animal Center executive director Mike Arms, who has long recommended asking for a major credit card instead of doing extensive adoption screening, "I have never had an issue when requesting a credit card along with a driver's license or other photo ID. In past years when doing follow-ups with adopters, a high percentage of adopters who did not possess credit cards no longer lived at the addresses they reported during their adoption interview. It seems these folks were more transient. So credit cards are one more clue in helping us to find qualified homes."
Global Vets in Tanzania
In May 2010 we were happy to host students from Ontario Veterinary College under their Global Volunteer Vets 2010 Program. The Tanzania Animal Welfare Society is a needy grassroots organization. We welcome support to help us reach poor communities where animals are suffering.
--Dr. Thomas W. Kahema
Executive Director
Tanzania Animal Welfare Society
P.O. Box 10268
Dar es salaam, Tanzania.
Phone: 255-713-322-796
<tzanimal@yahoo.com>
Editor's note:
Two second-year Ontario Veterinary College students started the Global Vets program in 1997, based on a program called Defi Vet-Monde offered by the Faculte de medecine veterinaire at the Université de Montreal. The Global Vets program gives student vets an opportunity to investigate animal health care in developing nations. The International Veterinary Medicine Club was founded in 2006 to host the Global Vets program.
Contact the Global Vet program c/o Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 2W1; telephone 519-824-4120, x54401; <www.ovc.uoguelph.ca/globalvets/>.
City of Chennai, India extends Animal Birth Control program to cats
I am delighted to inform you that Chennai has become the first municipality in India--and, I may add, one of the very few in the world--to take up trap-neuter/spay-and release of street and feral cats.
The Chennai Animal Birth Control program for dogs, initiated by the Blue Cross of India in 1964, succeeded because of two factors, for both of which thanks are due to our former brilliant mayor, M. Abul Hassan. One of these factors was that he supported the dog ABC program in concept, if not financially. The other factor was that almost simultaneously Hassan improved the garbage removal system in the city, which reduced the carrying capacity of the Chennai habitat for street dogs. Chennai led the way in ABC by stopping the barbaric electrocution of dogs in 1996, five years before the Dog Control Rules of 2001 became law throughout India.
The Blue Cross of India took up ABC for cats, too, in 1964. Cats have not been a major issue in Chennai because we have always sterilized both cats and dogs, but with the number of dogs having come down drastically due to the success of ABC, more cats are being noticed than ever before. What Hassan did for the dogs of India is now being done for cats by Rajesh Lakhoni, IAS, Commissioner of the Chennai Corporation. While the dog program has been funded by the Blue Cross, with occassional funding for a few years from the Animal Welfare Board of India in the past, the cat program will be funded by Chennai to the extent of 500 rupees per cat. While this will not cover our total costs, this will be a trend-setting program for the rest of the country.
We congratulate the Chennai Corporation, and especially the mayor and commissioner, for this far-sighted act. We are most happy that the initiative for this came from the Commissioner himself.
--S. Chinny Krishna
Blue Cross of India
1-A Eldams Rd., Chennai
Tamil Nadu 600018, India
Phone: 91-44-234-1399
<chinnykrishna@gmail.com>
<www.BlueCross.org.in>
Bulgaria giving puppy to Barack Obama?
A three-month Bulgarian shepherd puppy is to be given by Bulgarian Prime Minister Bojko Borisov to U.S. President Barack Obama later this year, WAZ.euobserver.com reported on June 20, 2010.
At the same time, key Bulgarian officials are receiving thousands of letters and phone calls, but there is still no funding provided for encouraging and promoting sterilization of pets.
In fact, Bulgarian officials hide Europe's dirtiest industry. Our national cat and dog populations include about three million animals. Their annual birth rate remains near 100%.
Most unwanted pets are just waiting for death, in pounds, unlicensed laboratories, illegal fur factories, or by poisoning on the street, as when 11 dogs were poisoned in downtown Pernik in mid-March 2010.
The Bulgarian government has done nothing to restrict either cat and dog breeding, or commercial movement of stolen and unwanted pet animals.
In recent years the Sofia Animal Control Service has reported impounding and disposing of about 5,000 dogs annually, while every year the local pet dog population produces tens of thousands of offspring.
Curiously, there were no lost dogs reported as returned to their homes by Sofia Animal Control.
--Emil Kuzmanov
Animal Programs Foundation
18 Janko Sofijski Vojvoda Str.
1164 Sofia, Bulgaria
<animalprograms@abv.bg>
<http://animalprograms.webs.com>
Context of the AVMA guidelines on gassing
American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines are often mentioned by proponents of gas chamber euthanasia. While the guidelines say that gassing is acceptable they also say that a backup method is required for animals younger than 16 weeks and for various other conditions. The only acceptable backup is euthanasia by injection so the argument that cites security and safety concerns as a reason for using gas makes no sense.
Using a gas chamber according to AVMA guidelines requires euthanasia by injection for those animals that cannot be gassed. Those shelters who do not use euthanasia by injection backup are in violation of the very same AVMA guidelines they use to support continuing use of gas.
At a recent bill hearing in Lansing I listened to a prominent veterinarian state off the record that he would never put his own (or client) animals in a chamber. He said he would only use euthanasia by injection. This same vet opposed the Michigan bills requiring euthanasia by injection. The double standard of what's good for our own animals vs what's good for shelter animals is in full force.
I have watched, too many times to count, workers load chambers with fractious dogs and feral cats using an animal control pole. Getting the pole on the animals and stuffing them into chambers is no less dangerous than putting a fractious dog behind a restraint gate or a feral cat in a net so that pre-euthanasia anesthetics can be administered. In my experience, it is more dangerous to pole cats and dogs and try to load them into chambers.
--Doug Fakkema
Charleston, South Carolina
<dkfakkema@aol.com>
Details of the Idaho Falls choice to quit gassing animals
Thank you for "Gassing in animal shelters nears abolition, but continues on farms & in fields," published in your May 2010 edition. However, I was misquoted by your source, Katy Moeller of the Idaho Statesman, and would like the opportunity to correct the error.
The gas chamber at the Idaho Falls Animal Shelter did break down and could not be repaired. However the decision to not purchase a new gas chamber was not made because the shelter "couldn't afford $30,000 for a new one," as Moeller reported and you quoted Moeller. The decision to not purchase a new gas chamber was made because we--meaning animal shelter personnel, the police department and our city council--felt that this was the right thing to do. During the past few months, we have had many discussions regarding the use of the gas chamber and the timely breakdown of our gas chamber pretty much made the decision for us. Purchasing a new gas chamber was never an option.
--Irene M. Brown
Animal Services Manager
City of Idaho Falls Animal Shelter
2450 Hemmert Avenue
Idaho Falls, ID 83401
Phone: 208-612-8673
<ibrown@idahofallsidaho.gov>
<www.ifanimalshelter.org>
Correction:
Three paragraphs of the 10-paragraph May 2010 ANIMAL PEOPLE article "Is Zimbabwe loading animals two-by-two to send to North Korea?" contained reportage from Zimbabwe submitted by Zimbabwean journalist Barnabas Thondhlana, as part of a 15-paragraph article under his byline, without attribution to any other source. After ANIMAL PEOPLE credited Thondhlana in print and compensated him for his contribution, we learned that all 15 paragraphs that Thondhlana represented as his own had actually appeared, two days before he sent them, under the byline of Sandra Mandizvidza of the Zimbabwe Standard. The quotes that ANIMAL PEOPLE attributed to Thondhlana were actually from Mandizvidza. Asked to explain, Thondhlana failed to offer a coherent response.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
EPA agrees to regulate factory farm emissions & effluents
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Thirty-eight years after Congress told agribusiness to clean up their act, an estimated 20,000 factory farms may at last have to account for what they do with 500 million tons per year of cattle, pig, and poultry effluent.
Settling a lawsuit brought in 2009 by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the Waterkeeper Alliance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on June 1, 2010 agreed to identify and investigate manure discharges by factory farms.
If the EPA honors the settlement, the outcome could be the biggest economic blow to the meat industry yet, following three years of losses attributed to rising feed and fuel costs.
"Though experts say the U.S. pork industry is showing signs of turning around, producers have lost money in 27 of the last 29 months," reported Bill Draper of Associated Press. Smithfield, the world's largest pig producer, reported a $190 million loss for the fiscal year. "Industrywide," wrote Draper, "the National Pork Producers Council says hog producers have lost nearly $4.4 billion since September 2007." The poultry and dairy industries have also reported steep losses.
Of concern to animal advocates and environmentalists is that the EPA action might now be thwarted by agribusiness influence in the current Congress. U.S. federal agencies have in the past settled lawsuits from advocacy groups on terms favorable to the plaintiffs, only to be exempted by Congress from honoring the settlement agreements.
For example, in 2000 the U.S. Department of Agriculture settled a case brought by a subsidiary of the American Anti-Vivisection Society by agreeing to extend Animal Welfare Act protection to rats, mice, and birds, in accord with the letter of the 1971 law. Then two amendments to budget bills cut off funding for enforcing the settlement and made permanent the exclusion of rats, mice, and birds from Animal Welfare Act coverage.
Won first test
Agribusiness clout in opposition to EPA regulation, in alliance with the fossil fuel industry, was tested in the U.S. Senate on June 10, 2010 by a "resolution of disapproval" introduced by Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) which would have prohibited the EPA from further regulating so-called greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. The Murkowski resolution was defeated, 53-47, after U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to veto it if it cleared Congress.
But the National Cattleman's Beef Association pledged to "continue to fight against EPA greenhouse gas regulatory efforts," spokesperson Bethany Shively announced in the electronic newsletter Cattlemen's Capitol Concerns only moments after the Senate vote. In addition to supporting the Murkowski resolution "and similar resolutions introduced in the House by Represent-atives Ike Skelton (D-Missouri) and Joe Barton (R-Texas)," Shively wrote, the National Cattleman's Beef Association "has taken legal action to prevent the EPA from moving forward on greenhouse gas regulation," including separate cases filed in December 2009 and April 2010.
The United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization reported in 2006 that animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gases to the earth's atmosphere than any other human activity, including all forms of transportation combined. The EPA derives authority to regulate greenhouse gases from the 1972 Clean Air Act, a parallel law to the Clean Water Act of the same year, which the NRDC, Sierra Club, and Waterkeeper Alliance sued to enforce.
Deadly emissions
Historically agribusiness has been most concerned about the Clean Water Act, but more use of the Clean Air Act to curtail greenhouse gas emissions could raise the profile of yet another problematic and potentially politically explosive aspect of factory farming: there are increasing epidemiological indications that effluents and emissions from factory farms contribute to human mortality.
The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production reported in 2008 that factory farms "can be harmful to workers, neighbors, and even those living far from the facilities through air and water pollution, and via the spread of disease." The Pew Com-mission noted that "Workers in and neighbors of [these] facilities experience high levels of respiratory problems, including asthma."
Center for Rural Affairs cofounder Marty Strange reported similar findings more than 30 years earlier. But now there is considerably more documentation.
Wellesley College professor Stacy Sneeringer in 2008 reported in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics that infant mortality data for the years 1982-1997 suggested that doubling livestock production in a county "induces a 7.4% increase in infant mortality," summarized Meredith Niles of Grist.
"Sneeringer recognized that this phenomenon is a result of air pollution, most likely from ammonia and hydrogen sulfide," Niles continued. "These two gases also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen sulfide is also responsible for deaths when farmworkers enter poorly ventilated manure containment systems and die almost instantly. This is significant for policy," Niles suggested, "since most of the regulation of confinement and feeding operations to date has been implemented under the Clean Water Act--not the Clean Air Act."
U.S. factory farms annually produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population. Much of the excrement is allegedly disposed of in defiance of both the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.
The potential applications of the Clean Air Act to animal agriculture were not immediately recognized, but Congress in 1972 explictly identified agribusiness as one of the industries to be regulated by the Clean Water Act. Agribusiness lobbying pressure stalled EPA regulation of manure disposal, however, until the Natural Resources Defense Council won a consent decree from the agency in 1992.
In December 2000 the EPA at last proposed the long awaited enforcement regulations, but appointees of then-U.S. President George W. Bush amended the final rule that took effect in February 2003 by exempting factory farms from meeting water quality standards and letting them write their own permits for manure spraying on fields.
Calling the amended final rule "a conspiracy between a lawless industry and compliant public officials in cahoots to steal the public trust," Waterkeeper Alliance president and NRDC senior attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sued the EPA again, joined by the Sierra Club. The plaintiffs in February 2005 won a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling against the Bush administration action, but results were again slow to come.
The EPA at last proposed a new rule governing manure disposal in November 2008, but it met only one of the three main objections that the Waterkeeper Alliance, Sierra Club, and NRDC had raised in court.
Meanwhile the EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified livestock excrement as the biggest single cause of declining fish populations in 60,000 miles of polluted waterways, including 1,795 bodies of water in 39 states. Another 113,000 miles of waterways were found to be seriously affected.
Weak as they are, the existing provisions of the Clean Water Act pertaining to agricultural discharges were sufficient for Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer, Jr. to rule on May 6, 2010 against Hudson Valley Foie Gras in a case alleging more than 800 violations of the federal Clean Water Act by the largest U.S. foie gras producer. Baer enjoined Hudson Valley Foie Gras against further violations of the Clean Water Act, recommended a fine of $25,000 per day per offense for further violations, ordered the company to take remedial action, and further ordered the company to pay $50,000 for an environmental project in lieu of paying civil penalties.
The case was one of three lawsuits brought against New York state agencies and Hudson Valley Foie Gras in 2006 by the Humane Society of the U.S., after the New York Department of Environmental Conserv-ation fined Hudson Valley Foie Gras $30,000 for environmental violations, but the state-funded Empire State Development Corpor-ation granted Hudson Valley Foie Gras $420,000 to invest in expanding operations.
Larger branches of agribusiness have often used the weaknesses of the Clean Water Act enforcement regulations as a lever against efforts to strengthen state laws governing manure disposal. The typical argument is that if a state adopts stronger laws than the Clean Water Act, agribusiness within the state will be put at a competitive disadvantage against agribusiness in other states.
In New Mexico, for example, the EPA in 2007 ordered 11 major dairy producers to comply with the Clean Water Act. The New Mexico legislature in 2009 ordered the state Water Quality Control Commission to reinforce the federal action with stricter state regulations. The commission is to hold hearings on the proposed new regulations in summer 2010. The New Mexico dairy industry "contends added expense from the regulations would cost cities, counties and the state millions in tax revenue as dairies are forced to close or leave," Associated Press writer Sue Major Holmes summarized when the draft regulations were published. This is no small threat, Holmes continued, since "Milk is New Mexico's top cash commodity, producing more than $1.36 billion in 2008, according to the state Department of Agriculture."
"Atomic bomb"
Pig producers nationwide are even more concerned about stronger anti-pollution standards. Of the 67,000 pig farms in the U.S. today, more than 34,000 send at least 5,000 pigs per year to slaughter. The volume and noxiousness of the manure from pig farms has provoked more litigation than discharges from all other farming combined.
The Waterkeeper Alliance and Sierra Club have brought numerous cases against pig farm pollution, but the attorneys most active against pig producers are reputedly Charlie Speer of Missouri and Richard H. Middleton, Jr. of Georgia. Speer and Middleton in April 2009 cofounded a nonprofit law firm called the Center to Expose & Close Animal Factories.
Meanwhile Speer alone has reportedly won almost $10 million since 1999 from Premium Standard Farms and PSF affiliates. His biggest win was a $1.1 million settlement obtained for Ed and Ruth McEowen, of Cedar County, Missouri, in July 2009.
"The case revealed that one of the six barns constructed for the hog confinement and feeding operation was built without a required construction permit," summarized Wally Kennedy of the Joplin Globe. "The barns were built closer than 1,000 feet to the McEowen's home, in clear violation of regulations maintained by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources," Kennedy continued, and operated for six years before obtaining required operating permits.
The settlement enjoined contract pig farmers Douglas and Edith Mullings, the pig farming companies North View Swine and Tri-County Swine, the Missouri Farmers Association, which supplied pigs to the companies, and the Missouri Farm Bureau, which insured the operation, against "any future odor releases that might negatively impact the McEowens," Kennedy wrote.
"This is basically an atomic bomb when it comes to this type of case,'' exulted Speer. "There are over 400 nuisance cases like this one pending in Missouri, including 50 in Southwest Missouri," Speer told Kennedy. "This $1.1 million settlement," Speer predicted, "sets the bar for future settlements."
But the Missouri Supreme Court in the same week denied an appeal by the Richland Township Board of Directors against a ruling by a three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals against the township's attempt to regulate land use by pig farms.
A year later, in April 2010, a different three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals overturned the effort of the Missouri Parks Association and the village of Arrow Rock to prevent a pig farm from expanding in the vicinity of the village. Arrow Rock was in entirety designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Yet another legal showdown over pig excrement is imminent, predicted Draper of Associated Press in May 2010.
"Hog processing giant Premium Standard Farms spent $40 million over the last decade developing technology," Draper explained, "after a court ordered it to sharply reduce odors at its Missouri farms. A panel of experts recently approved a barn-scraper system that met goals established under a 1999 court settlement with environmental groups. But the deadline to implement the system is July 31, 2010 and the company--which said it had little success developing the technology until now--needs another two years to get the system in place. Missing the deadline would allow the state to sue."
Premium Standard Farms in 2004 won a six-year extension of the original deadline for compliance. Premium Standard keeps about 97,000 sows in Missouri, and sends about 1.8 million market hogs per year to slaughter from Missouri properties.
--Merritt Clifton
••••••END OF JUNE 2010 HTML
Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
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Cell: 360-969-0450
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