Deslorelin takes

the lead in quest

for non-surgical

birth control

N A I R O B I––Veterinary contracep-

tive researcher Henk J. Bertschinger wowed

the Africa Animal Welfare Action confer-

ence in Nairobi on September 8, 2010 with

two presentations hinting that the anti-GnRH

agonist approach to animal birth control may

be applicable in cats and dogs.

Bertschinger, of the University of

Pretoria in South Africa, recapped and

updated a 2007 paper he and colleagues pub-

lished in the journal Wildlife Research,

describing “the treatment and contraception

of 23 captive and 40 free-ranging lionesses

and four captive tigers in South Africa,”

using a range of different sized deslorelin

implants. Deslorelin is a hormone analog,

modeled on the natural hormone LHRH (lut-

enizing-hormone releasing hormone) that

turns reproductive processes on and off in the

brains of both male and female animals.

“All combinations of deslorelin

showed the length of contraception to be

around 30 months with one treatment lasting

40 months in one captive lioness,”

Bertschinger and four co-authors wrote.

“No side effects occurred,” they

African lion cubs: vanished from 80% of their former habitat in just 35 years. (Kim Bartlett)

Looking the wrong way for causes of

bushmeat poaching and predator loss

Dog climbing stairs at the Blue Cross of

India, in Chennai. (Kim Bartlett)

reported, “although several of the lionesses

were treated repeatedly for up to eight years.

Deslor-elin (Suprelorin formulation) is a safe

and effective means of controlling reproduc-

tion in captive or free-ranging populations of

lions,” the team concluded. “Where contra-

ception is to be maintained,” Bertschinger et

al wrote, “the implementation of implants at

24-month intervals is recommended.”

Bertschinger also described the

results of contraceptive studies he has done

with African elephants since 2000 at the

Makalali Game Reserve in South Africa,

funded by the Humane Society of the U.S.

and Humane Society International.

HSUS/HSI also sponsored Bertschinger’s

participation in the Africa Animal Welfare

Action conference

The most noteworthy aspect of

Bertschinger’s work with deslorelin was

longterm contraceptive success in free-rang-

ing female felines. This had been believed to

be possible, based on laboratory studies and

earlier studies with captive animals.

However, the deslorelin formulation that

Bertschinger used, Suprelorin, made by the

Australian firm Peptech Animal Health, is in

contraceptive use best known as a product

for male animals. Peptech literature men-

tions use of Suprelorin for fertility control of

(continued on page 7)

N A I R O B I––Often exposed involve-

ment of Asian financiers in rhino horn and ele-

phant ivory poaching fueled a ubiquitous belief

among frustrated animal defenders attending the

early September 2010 African Animal Welfare

Action conference in Nairobi, Kenya that Asian

workers in Africa are also implicated in out-of-

control bushmeat poaching and catastrophic

crashes of predator populations.

African Animal Welfare Action con-

ference attendees guesstimated that Chinese

workers alone were involved in from 20% to

80% of all the bushmeat poaching in Africa.

Nairobi-based wildlife photographer

Karl Amman, who has for more than 20 years

documented the bushmeat trade, more conserv-

atively suggested that Chinese involvement

might be much less than 5%, centering on rep-

tiles and pangolins.

But scant documentation supports the

belief that Chinese workers are verifiably

(continued on page 10)

ANIMAL

PEOPLE

News For People Who Care

About Animals

September 2010

Volume 19, #7

American Humane Association

approves decompressing chickens

D E N V E R – –Former Pew Charitable

Then the AHA, in its first farm ani-

Trusts deputy director of philanthropic services

mal policy action under Ganzert,

on

Robin Ganzert took office on August 31, 2010

September 7, 2010 endorsed what it termed “a

as new chief executive officer of the American

new method of controlled-atmosphere stunning

Humane Association with a statement distanc-

for poultry called Low Atmospheric Pressure

ing the AHA from “extreme ideas purported by

System, or LAPS, as a humane practice,”

those who argue that…people have no right to

based on unpublished research presented to the

raise animals for food.”

AHA Farm Animal Welfare Scientific

Ganzert in her next sentence men-

Advisory Committee in July 2010 by Yvonne

tioned “the inhumane farming practices that

Vizzier Thaxton, Ph.D. of Mississippi State

contributed to the massive egg recall” due to

University.

salmonella contamination of eggs produced

Developed by the poultry harvester

primarily by farms owned by Austin “Jack”

company TechnoCatch LLC and OK Foods

DeCoster, whose abusive methods on some of

Inc., the LAPS method of “controlled atmos-

those same farms were exposed only weeks

phere” stunning is not the approach usually

earlier by the vegan advocacy group Mercy for

meant by the term, and certainly not the “con-

Animals.

trolled atmosphere” approach advocated by

People for the Ethical Treatment of

Animals since 2004 as a more

humane method of poultry slaugh-

ter than conventional shackling and

decapitation.

“Controlled atmosphere”

poultry killing usually refers to

gassing the birds with nitrogen,

argon, or carbon dioxide.

Explained the AHA media

release, “LAPS is used to thin the

air, reducing available oxygen

(similar to high-altitude condi-

tions). Unlike other controlled-

atmosphere stunning systems, it is

not necessary to add any gaseous

substances––the atmosphere is

controlled by reducing the volume

of oxygen. The research is to be

published in the Journal of Applied

Poultry Research this winter. The

USDA has said in a letter that it

does not object to the system and

OK Foods, Inc. will begin its use.”

The language of the AHA

release recalled the March 1950

National Humane Review a r t i c l e

“Is the Decompression Chamber an

Improvement Over Other Methods

of Euthanasia?” by Richard L.

Bonner, then general manager of

the Los Angeles Department of

(continued on page 15)

Once poached out of Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya, black rhinos were reintroduced

in 1984. Nakuru rhinos are now used to restore rhinos to other parks. (Kim Bartlett)

Alleged rhino poaching gang

served trophy hunters as well

as Asian medicinal demand

J O H A N N E S B U R G– – S t a r t l i n g

photos of the September 22, 2010 arraign-

ment of 11 alleged members of an interna-

tional rhino poaching syndicate reached the

world despite the officially unexplained

efforts of police to keep photographers out.

News photographers Werner

Beukes of the South African Press Agency,

Herman Verwey of B e e l d, and Lewellyn

Carstens of the South African Broadcasting

Corporation were detained for 45 minutes and

one of them was roughed up by police,

according to the South African National

Editors’ Forum. No motive for the police

action was offered.

The photos showed, standing in the

Limpopo dock, not poor villagers, hundreds

of whom died when shoot-to-kill orders were

issued across much of Africa to protect rhinos

and elephants in the late 1980s, but rather

several affluent and well-connected land-

owning white Afrikaners.

Among them were Out of Africa

Adventurous Safaris operator Dawie Groene-

wald, his wife Sariette Groenewald, profes-

sional hunter Tielman Erasmus, veterinarian

Karel Toet, his wife Marisa Toet, veterinari-

an Manie du Plessis, and five alleged co-con-

spirators. Suspected of killing rhinos to sell

the horns to Chinese and Vietnamese brokers,

the Groenewalds in particular were known to

have business relationships with Safari Club

International and infuential members of the

Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, which

has aggressively courted Chinese investment.

All 11 suspects were released on

bail by Musina magistrate Errol Luiters.

They were scheduled to reappear in court on

April 11, 2011 to face charges of assault,

fraud, corruption, malicious damage to prop-

erty, illegal possession of firearms and

ammunition, and contravening the National

Environmental Management Biodiversity Act,

according to RhinoConservation.org.

Joseph Okori, African rhino pro-

gram chief for the World Wildlife Fund, wor-

ried to News24 of Johannesburg that the

defendants would leave South Africa to evade

prosecution. “If you have professionals

(continued on page 13)

2 - ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010

Editorial feature

“Zero grazing” vs. the

ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010 - 3

Five Freedoms

Few animal advocates doubt these days that the use and misuse of more than 47 bil-

lion farmed animals worldwide is the most urgent and critical issue before us. Whether one

favors ushering humanity toward vegetarianism or veganism, or only more nuanced efforts to

reduce and mitigate animal suffering in husbandry and slaughter, animal agriculture involves

many times more animals and more misery than all other human activities combined.

Indeed, from a third to half of all the birds in the world are factory-farmed chickens.

Farmed mammals far outnumber all companion animals and probably all wildlife larger than a

dog. Even the highest estimates of the numbers of animals used in laboratories per year appear

to be lower than the volume of animals slaughtered for human consumption on most days of

the week.

Farm animal welfare has also become a priority for consumers, voters, govern-

ments, and even agribusiness itself. Probably the most significant achievement of animal

advocacy, recently or ever, is that animal product marketers now feel compelled to use terms

such as “cage free” and “free range” in their advertising and on product labels, and that most

major U.S. supermarkets now stock vegetarian and vegan products, from block tofu to whole

heat-and-serve meatless meals.

Competing animal welfare certifications appear in almost every supermarket refriger-

ator or egg case, along misleading labels offered by companies who are unwilling to change

their methods, yet recognize the importance to the public of at least appearing to be humane.

Some agribusiness front groups continue to resist almost every effort to improve

farm animal well-being, even in areas such as disease control, where better welfare means big-

ger profits. Yet few agribusiness executives today, even those trying to obstruct or evade leg-

islation to help farm animals, do not at least pay lip service to the ideal of better farm animal

welfare.

Widespread concern about the care of farmed animals is of relatively recent origin.

Despite a short-lived flurry after Ruth Harrison published Animal Machines in 1964, farmed

animal welfare was almost absent from mainstream humane literature for most of the 20th cen-

tury. Peter Singer to some extent directed attention to the treatment of farmed animals in

Animal Liberation, the 1976 book credited with sparking the animal rights movement, but the

first animal rights organizations that focused entirely on farmed animals––the Coaliton for

Nonviolent Food, Farm Animal Reform Movement, Humane Farming Association, Farm

Sanctuary, and United Poultry Concerns––all struggled for nearly two decades in the shadows

of organizations focused on vivisection, animal use in entertainment, and other campaigns

that do not tend to go so far inside the average person’s comfort zone as discussions of diet.

Arguably the most influential person in humane work worldwide in the mid-20th

century was Eric Hansen, who at various times headed the Humane Society of Missouri, the

American Humane Association, and the Massachusetts SPCA, which were then three of the

five largest humane societies worldwide. Hansen saw farm animal welfare as a priority,

unlike most of his contemporaries, but from an inverse perspective. Hansen believed, before

the rise of factory farming, that the attention to animal welfare offered on the best small fami-

ly farms of his era could become a model for responsible pet care, and for improving the care

of animals in zoos and laboratories.

Hansen had some reason to think so. Despite the certainty of slaughter at an early

age, most farmed animals in the mid-20th century got a great deal more fresh air, sunshine,

and outdoor exercise than laboratory and zoo animals. Even in the U.S., many dogs and most

cats still foraged and hunted on their own for most of their food, were not allowed indoors,

and never received veterinary care.

Hansen at the MSPCA dismantled the financially struggling Bands of Mercy, begun

by MSPCA founder George Angell to promote humane education, and the Jack London

Clubs, begun by Angell’s successor Francis Rowley as proto-animal rights groups, which

mobilized teens to seek abolition of abuses including dogfighting and animal use in circuses.

In place of sponsoring national youth organizations directed by the MSPCA through the sub-

sidiary American Humane Education Society, Hansen forged alliances with the 4-H Clubs and

Future Farmers of America. A model farm at the then-MSPCA headquarters taught what was

then considered best practice animal husbandry, including the slaughter methods later institu-

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ANIMAL PEOPLE

News for People Who Care About Animals

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tionalized nationally by the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958.

Hansen was aware of the many routine cruelties commonly practiced on small tradi-

tional farms, but believed that the influence of humane societies aligned with farmers could

introduce gentler methods. By the end of Hansen’s MSPCA tenure, however, small tradition-

al farms were already fast disappearing, and whatever possibilities might have evolved as

result of Hansen’s alliances with 4-H and the FFA were lost.

A Hansen initiative of more enduring success was the 1959 formation of the

International Society for the Protection of Animals. Initially an MSPCA subsidiary, ISPA was

in 1981 merged with the World Federation for the Protection of Animals, which had been

founded in 1953 as a project of the Royal SPCA of Great Britain, and became the World

Society for the Protection of Animals.

The World Federation was formed to help rebuild humane societies in western

Europe after World War II. Later it sponsored national humane societies in developing nations

which had been spun off from the British empire.

By the time WSPA came into being, both founding partner organizations had

already often worked in the same places as the livestock gift charities now known as Heifer

International, based in the U.S., and Send A Cow, an allied charity based in Britain.

Heifer International and Send A Cow were begun to rebuild animal agriculture in

western Europe after World War II. They too expanded into the developing world after west-

ern Europe recovered. The Heifer International and Save A Cow founders, like Hansen,

believed in the small traditional farms of the mid-20th century U.S. and rural Britain as role

models. As in the U.S. and rural Britain, however, that model proved unsustainable. Where

Heifer and Send A Cow have succeeded in introducing or reintroducing animal husbandry, as

in western Europe, increased animal production has helped to reduce prices and stoke demand

for animal products, until the cycle ends with small farms being swallowed up by factory

farms which are capable of producing many times more animals, at less cost in human labor.

Elsewhere, in nations where the full cycle has not yet occurred, stimulating animal

husbandry has often merely depleted soil and water. The July/August 2010 ANIMAL PEO-

PLE editorial, for instance, detailed how the effects of doubling livestock production in only

10 years destroyed topsoil and water holding capacity across much of Pakistan, contributing to

catastrophic floods.

Animal welfare

guidelines

Even where encouraging animal husbandry has not yet brought either factory farm-

ing or eco-disaster, gift livestock recipients who sell the offspring of successful breeding pro-

grams to friends and neighbors (who may not have recived Heifer or Send A Cow training)

have often produced neighborhood animal welfare catastrophes, a tendency ANIMAL PEO-

PLE examined in May 2003 and January/February 2007.

Under criticism, Heifer International eventually adopted a set of “Animal Well-

Being Guidelines,” introduced as part of all Heifer-sponsored projects. The seven focal points

include:

• Giving preference to purchasing animals who are already acclimatized to the area.

• Providing full training to farmers before they receive any livestock.

• Using appropriate shelter and separate pens for animals of different species.

• Teaching zero grazing techniques, which enhances animal health and ensures that

adequate food and water are provided.

• Emphasizing nutrition, including providing clean water at least twice a day,

• Encouraging indigenous breeds.

• Providing project participants with all initial vaccinations.

Most of these guidelines are only the basics of animal care in any captive context,

but Heifer International defines “zero grazing” as “keeping livestock in an enclosed, shaded

area and carrying fodder and water to them, instead of letting them wander in the open where

they are more likely to catch diseases or damage the environment.”

Simply translated, “zero grazing” is raising animals in close confinement––the basis

of factory farming. Though Heifer International works at the village and family level, and

does not undertake corporate-scale developments, the “zero grazing” approach is in effect cul-

tural preparation for accepting factory farming when corporate investors take over the markets

that Heifer helps to create.

Of course Heifer International resists recognizing the “zero grazing” policy as a pre-

cursor to factory farming. Instead, Heifer International touts it as part of “agroecology,”

defined as “the sustainable use and management of natural resources, accomplished by using

social, cultural, economic, political and ecological methods that work together to achieve sus-

tainable agriculture production.” Heifer International emphasizes that animals kept in “zero

grazing” systems are not overgrazing pastures and eroding hillsides with their hooves––but

cultivating the same erosion-vulnerable land to produce high-yield fodder crops has the same

net effect, or worse.

Further, instead of grazing animals distributing dung fertilizer wherever they wan-

der, to replenish the topsoil, confined animals leave dung where it is easily collected and sold,

or burned for fuel. The net effect––unless the farmers buy chemical fertilizer to rebuild the

nitrogen and other nutrient content of their topsoil, and grow and plow under “green manure”

crops such as winter wheat––can be more loss of productive land.

Send A Cow adopted the same animal care guidelines as Heifer International, plus

the Five Freedoms:

• Freedom from hunger and thirst: by ready access to fresh water and a diet to

maintain full health and vigour.

• Freedom from discomfort: by providing an appropriate environment including

shelter and a comfortable resting area.

• Freedom from pain, injury and disease: by prevention or rapid diagnosis and

treatment.

• Freedom from fear and distress: by ensuring conditions and treatment which

avoid mental suffering.

• Freedom to express normal behavior: by providing sufficient space, proper facili -

ties and company of animals’ own kind.

Heifer International does not promote the Five Freedoms, which were first articulat-

ed in 1967 by the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, formed by the British govern-

ment in response to Animal Machines. This committee in 1979 became the present Farm

Animal Welfare Council.

Though not codified into international law as such, the Five Freedoms are the foun-

dation concept behind the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Animals

During International Transport (1968), Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for

Farming Purposes (1976), and Convention for the Protection of Animals for Slaughter (1979).

Portions of these conventions have now been enacted in binding form by the European Union.

A succession of individuals and organizations have since 1924 sought the adoption

by first the League of Nations and later by other bodies a document which has in many amend-

ed forms, been variously called An Animals’ Bill of Rights, A Declaration of Animal Rights,

an International Animals Charter, and A Charter of Rights for Animals. WSPA in June 2000

introduced the current version as the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, hoping that it

might eventually win adoption into international law by the United Nations.

(continued on page 4)

4 - ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010

Editorial feature: “Zero grazing” vs. the Five Freedoms

(from page 3)

of misery resulting from animal husbandry also requires

encouraging short-term efforts such as fulfillment of the Five

Freedoms.

With that concession acknowledged, A N I M A L

PEOPLE believes that even if an animal welfare organization

promotes measures such as the expansion of cage-free egg

farms to replace egg production from battery cage farms, pro-

moting the expansion of animal agriculture itself is self-defeat-

ing. Moreover, promoting animal agriculture is not what ani-

mal advocacy donors support, nor is it what the public expects.

Incoming American Humane Association president

Robin Ganzert, for example, went far beyond necessity in

declaring in her first public statement that under her tenure, the

AHA would not be “accepting extreme ideas purported by those

who argue that..people have no right to raise animals for food.”

The directors of other organizations that accredit “humane”

production methods have not felt a need to denounce animal

advocates who believe animals should not be eaten––and

agribusiness itself has for the most part accepted vegetarians

and vegans as a market sector worth courting.

The global rise of concern about farmed animal wel-

fare has been produced by animal advocates presenting a clear

ethical challenge to agribusiness, to which much of the other-

wise uninvolved public has responded in a positive way, moti-

vated by personal discomfort about food choices. The effective

message has been simply, “This treatment of animals is unac-

ceptable.”

The legislation scaring agribusiness into accepting

animal welfare reforms has defined what animals must be able

to do––such as stand, turn around, and stretch––while leaving

the development of techniques that meet the test of public

acceptability mostly up to those who use animals.