Oslo Fashion

Week bans fur

from catwalk

O S L O––Oslo Fashion Week

founder Pål Vasbotten on January 8, 2011

confirmed to ANIMAL PEOPLE that the

only Norwegian fashion event of global note

has banned fur from the catwalks.

Oslo Fashion Week, held twice a

year since 2004, will next be celebrated from

February 15 through February 21, 2011.

Unconfirmed reports quoting

Vasbotten with a variety of different attribu-

tions circulated for more than two weeks

before the Oslo Fashion Week web site first

mentioned the ban by including a third-hand

account by Katherine Sweet of the fashion

publication R a d a r. Sweet reported that

Vasbotten told The Huffington Post that ban-

ning fur from the catwalk “has been a very

natural choice for us because we do not want

[Oslo Fashion Week] to appear as an arena in

which to promote products based on the treat-

ment of animals [as] prohibited by animal

welfare concerns in several countries.”

But the Huffington Post item was

actually a link to an on-line petition posted on

December 14, 2010 by Change.org blogger

Annie Hartnett, in response to anonymous

and substantially identical news items includ-

ing the same quote that appeared in European

Young silver foxes on fur farm.

(Modeste Herwig/Bont voor Dieren)

animal rights and vegetarian web media

beginning about 24 hours earlier.

The widely distributed web report

stated that “The change was sparked by anti-

fur effort Mote Mot Pels (Fashion Against

Fur), which gathered more than 220 of the

Norwegian fashion elite together to rally

against using animal pelts on the catwalk.”

“Ethical values are a very complex

issue in most industries, and also i n t h e

industry that we are promoting,” Vasbotten

told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “That’s why we

started the Nordic Initiative for Clean &

Ethical Fashion (NICE) three years ago,”

which promotes Norwegian woolen goods,

but has not directly addressed fur.

“Most of the issues in the textile

fashion industry, aside from those concern-

i n g the consumers, need to be addressed

outside our country,” Vasbotten continued.

In Norway, however, “when it comes to fur,

we have a small fur farming industry. They

a r e s u b s i d i z e d by the government to the

tune of approximately 50 million k r o n e r

every year, and the resulting export-turnover

i s around 350 million kroner. It is very

p a i n f u l to see those animals in their m i n i s-

c u l e c a g e s , locked up for life, sometimes

with open wounds. We have seen these pic-

tures for many years and it seems that neither

(continued on page 10)

Fighting bull. (Steve Hindi/SHARK)

Spanish national broadcasting agency

banishes bullfights to protect children

M A D R I D––The Spanish national

Associated Press correspondent Harold Heckle.

broadcasting agency, Corporación de Radio y

RTVE made the de facto exclusion of

Televisión Española (RTVE) on January 8,

bullfights from broadcasts official in the 2011

2011 made official that it will no longer tele-

edition of the corporate stylebook. A chapter

vise bullfights.

titled “Violence against animals” says RTVE

RTVE “has not shown bullfighting in

has ceased broadcasting bullfighting in part

any of its programs for months, citing low

because bullfights are usually held at hours

audience ratings and budget problems,” wrote

(continued on page 15)

ANIMAL

PEOPLE

News For People Who Care

About Animals

January/February 2011

Volume 20, #1

What does the Food Safety Modernization

Act mean for farmed animal welfare?

WASHINGTON D.C.––U.S. Presi-

stipulate that the provisions of the Food Safety

dent Barack Obama on January 4, 2011 signed

& Modernization Act extend to protecting ani-

into law the Food Safety Modernization Act,

mal health as well as human health.

the most extensive update of U.S. food safety

Section 208 of the Food Safety

legislation since 1938. The enforcement regu-

Modernization Act directs the chief administra-

lations are due to be completed by 2014.

tor of the Environmental Protection Agency,

Though not specifically an animal

Secretary of Health & Human Services,

welfare bill, the Food Safety Modernization

Secretary of Agriculture, and state, local, and

Act has huge implications for animal welfare,

tribal governments to prepare “specific stan-

especially in regard to livestock and poultry

dards and protocols” for “clean-up, clearance,

disease control.

and recovery activities” following outbreaks of

The Food Safety Modernization Act

“foreign animal diseases.”

specifically does not amend or supercede the

This is to include directions for “the

Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry

disposal of large quantities of animals” who

Products Inspection Act, the Egg Products

“have been infected or contaminated by…for-

Inspection Act, and the Packers & Stockyards

eign animal diseases.”

Act. However, the act includes 28 specific

Section 2008 may improve animal

mentions of animals. Most of the mentions

welfare by helping to prevent the spread of

debilitating livestock diseases. But

pending the issuance of enforce-

ment regulations,

Section 2008

raises concern about what methods

may be recommended for killing

animals who may have been

exposed to pathogens, and may

not be transported for conventional

slaughter, lest transport spread the

disease that the killing is intended

to control.

In 2003, for example,

Newcastle disease, a fungal infec-

tion deadly to birds, spread from

gamecocks to egg farms in San

Diego County, California. Acting

on the advice of American

Veterinary Medical Association

animal welfare committee member

Gregg Cutler, several egg produc-

ers cleared their facilities of poten-

tially infected hens by tossing them

alive into a woodchipper.

Mass slaughter to eradicate

disease is a strategy used since

antiquity, but the numbers of ani-

mals killed have soared since 1996,

raising awareness worldwide that

existing protocols for killing and

disposing of the remains of dis-

eased livestock and poultry are

inadequate. Livestock and poultry

(continued on page 8)

A “Summit for Horses” held in Las Vegas during the first week of January 2011 pushed

killing wild horses taken off the range by the Bureau of Land Management and exporting the

meat. BLM chief Bob Abbey opposed the idea. Coverage is on page 13.

(Photo by Kim Bartlett)

Chinese activists object

deal to sell seal meat &

to Canadian

oil to China

BEIJING, HALIFAX– – C a n a d i a n

Fisheries Minister Gail Shea on January 12,

2011 announced to news media by teleconfer-

ence call from Beijing that the Canadian Food

Inspection Agency and the Chinese

Administration of Quality Supervision have

reached an agreement which will allow

Canadian sealers to export seal meat and oil

to China for human consumption.

Struggling to find new markets

since the European Union banned the import

of seal products in July 2009, Shea and

Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries

Minister Clyde Jackman visited China to

finalize the agreement after more than a year

of negotiation. Shea “couldn’t put a dollar

value on the possible seal meat and oil

exports, but said it will be up to the industry

to promote a product they have tried for years

to introduce to the Asian country,” reported

Alison Auld of Canadian Press.

“Initialling this arrangement of

course means we now have access, but it will

be up to the industry to ensure that we actual-

ly start selling some of these products into the

marketplace,” Shea acknowledged.

“The population is so high in China

that if everybody buys some pelt or product

from seal, we won’t have to trade anymore

with Europe,” Magdalen Islands Sealers’

Association president Denis Longuépée spec-

ulated to CBC News.

“Yes, Chinese consumers have

impressive purchasing power,” responded

Beijing Animal Welfare Association director

Qin Xiaona. “Yet, I am sure Chinese con-

sumers would reject seal products without a

moment’s hesitation if they knew the cruelty

behind them.”

Agreed China Small Animal

Protection Association founder Lu Di, to

Agence France-Presse, “’Do not give to oth-

ers what you yourself do not want’ is an

ancient Chinese proverb. It is insulting for

Canada to market these products in China.”

The directors of 42 Chinese animal

advocacy organizations joined Qin Xiaona

and Lu Di in signing a joint letter of protest.

“This is a slap on the face for

China, Chinese culture and Chinese people,”

wrote Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional direc-

tor for International Fund for Animal

Welfare,

in a separate statement. “China is

(continued on page 13)

2 - ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011

Editorial feature

Empowerment through

ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011 - 3

understanding the phases of a cause

Social Movement Empowerment Project founder Bill Moyer was last mentioned in

ANIMAL PEOPLE in his obituary, published in our January/February 2003 edition. His

insights, however, have helped to inform almost every ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial.

A key strategist for Martin Luther King’s 1966 open housing campaign in Chicago,

Moyer after 1972 spent the rest of his life teaching advocacy tactics. At invitation of ANI-

MAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett, who was then editor of the long defunct A n i m a l s ’

A g e n d a magazine, and Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral, Moyer in September

1989 visited Stamford, Connecticut, to present one of his Movement Action Plan workshops

to about 40 leaders of national animal rights groups.

Early in his presentation, based on the histories of other major causes and social

movements, Moyer explained that a movement evolves as a variety of different flashpoint

events occur that illustrate a failure to uphold an existing and widely recognized social value.

The movement develops momentum as the people who respond to the different flashpoint

events come together to seek one or more common goals that have some tangible substance––

for example, laws that may be passed, projects that may be funded, and personal behavior

that may be changed.

As these tangible goals are fulfilled, the underlying social value is strengthened and

new norms are established for upholding the value. For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote in

the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men

are created equal...” Eighty-seven years later Abraham Lincoln echoed Jefferson in the first

sentence of the Gettysburg Address, declaring human moral equality to be the bedrock value

upon which the U.S. was founded. Yet even a century later, when Moyer developed his theo-

ries about movement evolution as a campaign strategist for Martin Luther King, the principle

of equality was still often ignored in the routine management of public institutions. The civil

rights movement initially desegregated public institutions, then expanded into broader efforts

which advanced the greater goal of ending all racial discrimination.

The underlying social value pertaining to animals might be summarized as “be kind

to animals,” or “don’t be cruel to animals.” Both of these ideas have been expressed in the

teachings of major religions for millennia, and have been recognized to some extent in the

secular laws of many nations for 100 to 200 years. The emergence of the humane movement

in the 19th century, the animal welfare movement in the mid-20th century, and the animal

rights movement in the late 20th century each advanced the values of being kind to animals, or

at least not being deliberately cruel toward animals, by giving them increasingly tangible and

specific form in legislation, norms of personal conduct, and institutional support, such as the

foundation of humane societies and the opening of animal shelters.

Central to Moyer’s Movement Action Plan concept is recognition of the use of what

he called the “transformative demand,” which is a sort of gearshift that converts the energy

developed around flashpoint events into momentum toward tangible change. Transformative

demands in the animal cause––among many others––include “sterilize your pets,” “don’t wear

fur,” and “punish egregious cruelty as a felony.”

Transformative demands do not in themselves change the underlying societal value,

but as they succeed, they increase the extent of compliance that is expected of every citizen,

making the value more meaningful as a social norm. Sometimes the value itself is expanded,

as in extending the idea that “all men are created equal” to women.

Not every transformative demand achieves the gear-shifting sought by activists in a

single step, or even in a single movement. Often a gearing-down process occurs, enabling the

cause to proceed, albeit more slowly than activists wish, when there is not yet enough

momentum to move faster. The gearing-down process may be controversial within the cause,

since to some activists it may appear to represent retreating from essential goals and accept-

ing––if only temporarily––a new status quo which is still much less than ideal. But the gear-

ing-down does not mean the movement is failing, Moyer pointed out. It may only mean that

more people are getting aboard, to be brought up to speed. Once those people are up to speed,

change may come faster. Moyer emphasized that different parts of a movement, making and

responding to differing transformative demands, may exist simultaneously in different phases,

much as a clock simultaneously marks hours, minutes, and seconds.

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ANIMAL PEOPLE

News for People Who Care About Animals

Published by Animal People, Inc.

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Each movement and each component sub-movement, if winning public

support––progresses through eight cyclical phases that Moyer identified through long observa-

tion of the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, anti-nuclear movement, and

labor movement, among others in which he was personally involved.

Crisis management

Moyer also explained that the cycles of progressive movements mesh opposite to the

efforts of the powerholders to stop time or turn the clock backward.

“The powerholders maintain their power and the status quo,” Moyer said, through

strategies beginning with “bureaucratic management to prevent the issue from becoming pub-

lic.” This includes trying to control public access to information, denying that a problem

exists, creating “societal myths which define the problem for the public opposite to reality,”

and projecting “the threat of demons, such as terrorism, to instill fear,” so that the public will

unquestioningly support the status quo.

“After a policy becomes a public issue,” Moyer observed, “the powerholders are

forced to switch to crisis management. They explain that their policies are needed to overcome

a bigger evil; re-emphasize old demons or create new ones; [and] create trigger events to jus-

tify and get public consent” for whatever they are doing. Opposition is at first ignored, then

discredited, destabilized, and repressed to whatever extent the powerholders are able to

accomplish. Eventually the powerholders begin to make promises of reform,

adopt more

conciliatory rhetoric, make a public show of conducting studies and engaging in negotiation,

and make “minor changes through reforms, compromises, and co-option of opponents.”

This may slow or stop the progress of the movement, or may precede more meaning-

ful change, depending on how the movement responds.

When Moyer addressed the animal rights movement leaders in 1989, the opposition

strategies he described were most evident in the efforts of animal researchers, the fur trade,

and animal entertainment to keep their practices hidden. Aggressive agent provocateur activi-

ty against Friends of Animals, funded by U.S. Surgical Corporation, had just been exposed.

Even bigger covert operations against PETA and the Performing Animal Welfare Society

were underway, funding by Feld Entertainment, the owners of the Ringling Bros. circus, and

would be exposed within the next several years. U.S. Surgical and Ringling defended their

activities as “counter-terrorism” made necessary by militant animal rights activism.

Of note, however, is that the industry-sponsored infiltration and disruption began

when even the actions claimed in the name of the “Animal Liberation Front” were still mostly

focused on documenting hidden practices. With just a few well-publicized exceptions, in the

1980s, most of the arsons, bombings, and vandalism subsequently associated with the ALF

came after the 1992 passage of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act.

Neither the covert actions, on either side, nor the seldom-used law, appear to have

had any enduring effect on the progress of the animal cause as a whole. By 1996 farmed ani-

mal and food issues had already moved from relative obscurity to the top concern of activists

who were then younger than age 40. In 2006 the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was

expanded into the present Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The chief difference between the

Acts, as introduced, was that while the 1992 Act focused on protecting laboratories and fur

farms from property damage, the 2006 Act sought to protect labs, fur farms, and factory

farms from exposure, after a series of “open rescues” embarrassed agribusiness by exposing

routine abuses. AETA was significantly amended shortly before passage by California Senator

Diane Feinstein to reduce the risk that it can be applied in response to exposure of conditions,

apart from vandalism, but that agribusiness sought such legislation is in itself indicative.

Breaking out of “normal times”

Warned Moyer, “The chief means by which the powerholders maintain unjust poli-

cies and keep them hidden from the public is by having a two-track system of official vs. oper-

ative doctrines and policies.” A successful movement, Moyer emphasized, “needs to show

that social conditions and powerholder policies violate the values, traditions, and self-inter-

ests of the public. This includes revealing the difference between official and operative policies

and doctrines.” Activists must “keep the issue and moral violations in the public spotlight;

keep the powerholders’ policies on society’s political agenda; counter the powerholders’

social myths, justifications, and denials; counter the powerholders’ demonology; and

involve increasingly larger portions of the public in programs that challenge the powerholders’

policies and promote alternative visions and programs.”

Moyer described the first phase of a cause as “Normal times,” in which “conditions

grossly violate widely held, cherished human values,” but “are maintained by the policies of

public and private powerholders, and by a majority of public opinion,” largely by default,

since the abuses “are neither in the public spotlight nor on society’s agenda of hotly contested

issues.” In normal times, Moyer explained, there may be an institutionalized opposition to

the status quo, which tries “to win achievable reforms through mainstream political channels

and the courts,” with a hierarchical management structure, professional staff, “and a mass

membership that carries out nationally decided programs.” But “These efforts have little suc-

cess,” in normal times, “because they do not have sufficient public support to provide the

political clout required to create change.” Independent from the institutional opposition, prin-

cipled dissent groups engage in protest, but “are usually small, little noticed, and ineffec-

tive.” Even in normal times, Moyer continued, community organizations often “represent the

[individual] victims’ perspective and provide direct services to victims,” but this activity tends

to keep the participants too busy and depleted to mount a political challenge to the status quo.

Though Moyer wrote with little awareness of humane history, he described quite

accurately the structure of the cause as it existed for decades before the rise of the animal

rights movement. There were staid, frustrated national organizations used to being on the los-

ing end of political battles; a handful of isolated advocacy groups trying to kindle a more

influential cause; and hundreds of local humane societies so overwhelmed with the demands

of sheltering three times as many animals as come to shelters now, and so dispirited by having

to kill about 90% from lack of adoptive homes, as to be more inclined to hide than to lead.

Such “normal times” are more than a generation behind us now, largely because ani-

mal advocates kept revitalizing the cause with what Moyer identified as second phase activity.

This consists of documenting grievances, “including the involvement of the powerholders,”

Moyer noted, and also documenting the failure of citizens’ attempts “to use the normal chan-

nels of public participation” to effect reform.

“Become experts,” Moyer advised, since successful second phase activity requires

thoroughly knowing both the issues and the relevant regulatory and political processes.

The third phase of the cause, evolving as expertise is developed and shared, features

“a new level of understanding about the seriousness of the problem, the violations of values,

how the public is affected, and about the illicit involvement of the powerholders and their

institutions,” Moyer outlined. “Growing numbers of discontented people quietly start new

autonomous groups, which as a whole form a new wave of grassroots opposition,” indepen-

dent of the older institutional opposition, who are seen “as working in a dead-end process with

the powerholders.”

At this stage, Moyer explained, “Though irritated, the powerholders remain rela-

tively unconcerned, believing that they can continue to contain the opposition through man-

agement of mainstream communications. The official policies remain believed and unchal-

lenged” by most of the public, “and the operative policies continue to be hidden.”

(continued on page 4)

4 - ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011

Empowerment through understanding the phases of a cause

(from page 3)

food business about public response to ongo-

ing exposure of abuses.

“Splits begin happening within the

power structure,” Moyer continued, “as over

time pressure from the new social and political

consensus causes some of the power-holding

elite to switch their position, even openly

oppose the policies of the central powerhold-

ers, in order to protect their own self-interest.”

At this stage, said Moyer, “Public opinion

opposing the powerholders’ policies slowly

swells to a large majority of up to 85%.”

Yet even then, Moyer cautioned,

much of the public may still fear change more

strongly than they oppose the status quo.

The seventh phase of the cause is

success. This may occur in a manner resem-

bling the fourth phase, when “a trigger event

sparks mobilization of broad popular opposi-

tion, but this time the overwhelming coercive

force in a relatively short time changes policies

or leadership,” summarized Moyer.

More often, “Realizing that they can

no longer continue their present policies, the

powerholders proclaim victory and start

changing their policies and conditions to those

demanded by the movement and social con-

sensus. The powerholders try to take credit for

this, even though they are forced to reverse

their policies, while activists often have diffi-

culty seeing their role in this success.”

Success is not the end

Concluded Moyer, “Success is not

the end of the struggle, but a basis for creating

new beginnings.” In the eighth phase, Moyer

said, the cause needs to “celebrate success;

follow up to make sure that new promises,

laws, and policies are actually carried out;

mobilize to achieve additional successes,

which are now possible under the new condi-

tions; and resist backlash which might reverse

the new gains.”

Failing to transition into eighth

phase activism cost animal advocates a signal

victory when in 1995 the Canadian govern-

ment revived the Atlantic Canada offshore seal

hunt, after a 10-year suspension. Campaigns

against the Atlantic Canada seal hunt had been

waged since 1900, kindling into an interna-

tional cause celebre in 1969. Yet, when the