Komputer for Alle 1998 #6/1998 CD 6 (Gul).iso/web/ffa/wwwenv~1.org/arrs/digest/news39~4.htm/text0005.txt

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>South China Morning Post, Internet Edition
May 3 1997
The bear facts about a killer
ELDRID RETIEF


The inmates of Cell Block D were restless. A few were hammering on the metal
doors. Officially it is known as the Polar Bear Compound. To the locals in
Churchill, Manitoba, where the bears convene every year in readiness for a
winter feeding frenzy on frozen Hudson Bay, it's the Polar Bear Jail,
housing the most feared and fearless killers in the North.

   Fourteen bears were in the jail when we were there. Former mayor and tour
company owner Mark Ingebrigtson told us most bears were not aggressive. They
only capture the bears when they get too close to town.

   Those are tranquilised humanely and jailed in an old Quonset hut, a relic
of the time there was a military base in these parts.

   Some of the concrete-block cells with their metal doors are for single
male bears, others for mothers and their cubs.

   Many pregnant females converge in October to a den site about 60
kilometres south of Churchill where in mid-winter they give birth.

   In jail, the Polar Bears are not fed, just given water.

   Bob, a driver/guide, said of the jail: "The old hands who've been here
before take it placidly. They settle down quietly to await release."

   When the Hudson Bay begins to freeze over, the Polar Bears are airlifted
out one by one on a first in, first out system.

   Sedated, they are transported back into the wilderness in nets dangling
from a helicopter.

   You might say Churchill is the staging point for the polar bears' winter
feed.

   From October to November they arrive from their summer ranges south of
Churchill and ice floes will carry them out on to the bay to spend their
winter hunting seals. The seal pups, which they cherish, are rich in fat and
protein. Often the seals are too quick for them. They probably miss nine out
of 10 and they need to kill two seals a week to keep their cubs alive.

   By spring, when the ice melts, the polar bears are prepared for their
long fast, having stored enough fat reserves to see them through the summer.

   The Inuit call them pihoqia,  the ever-wandering one. At the last
estimate, there were only 12,000 polar bears left in the world, most of them
in Canada.

   At Churchill one of the last great wilderness adventures awaits tourists.

  Slap in the middle of one of the world's most demanding environments,
Churchill is a one-horse town of a thousand inhabitants, hundreds of polar
bears and Beluga whales.

   In the winter it is transformed into an icy desert.

   The Northern Lights flash and ripple overhead, sketching surreal
technicolour patterns in the night sky.

   You will stay at hotels with names like Bear Country Inn, Tundra Inn and
Aurora Inn.

   Probably the most important building for the people of Churchill is the
Town Complex.

   Here, under one roof, you will find the school, civic offices, ice-hockey
arena, curling rink, swimming pool, gymnasium, library, indoor playground,
theatre, cafeteria and bowling alley and health/hospital complex.

   Occasionally you will run into a sign: Polar Bear Alert. Stop - Don't
walk in this area.

   There is even a bear hotline. On the outskirts of Churchill at Cape Merry
the sign says: If you are not accompanied by a park guide while visiting
Cape Merry and a polar bear is sighted, leave the area immediately. Never
approach a bear. Bear Alert phone 675-BEAR.

   Halloween night comes at the peak of bear movement near the town.

   That is when dozens of townsfolk in radio-equipped cars patrol the
outskirts, watching for bears to protect the children.

   This is frontier country, but it is like an urban area with a high
mugging rate, so you stay away or you are wary, one eye over your shoulder
looking out for polar bears as you walk home at night.

   We were at the Parks Canada museum one evening when an Australian tourist
asked about the timing of the cinema show and the danger of walking home
later in the dark.

   The Parks Canada attendant said: "I've lived here 40 years and you won't
catch me walking home at night at this time of the year."

   The only way to be sure to see the polar bears is to travel out on the
tundra in heated, specially designed vehicles adapted to go out on the snow
and the ice.

   Then there is the Tundra Buggy, designed and built by a Churchill man,
Len Smith.

   These all-terrain monsters sit about 4.5 metres above the ground on huge
balloon tyres that exert minimum pressure on the fragile tundra.

   They go through steep ditches without jolting passengers, cross mushy
tundra with comparative ease and drive across rivers and on to lakes even
into the Hudson Bay up to a depth of nearly two metres.

   Sitting in the tundra buggy is about as close as you will want to get to
a Polar Bear.

   We are picked up early in the morning by coach. The drive is about an hour.

   On the way we see polar bears ambling across the snowy wasteland.

   Most of the tour operators head for Gordon's Point where there is a
stationary camp of buggies docked together.

   Here tourists spend a day or more and the cooking smells attract the
polar bears.

   Their sense of smell is so acute that they can detect a scent 32
kilometres away and pick up the scent of a seal under a metre of snow and ice.

   Feeding is strictly forbidden, carrying a C$1,000 (HK$5,540) fine.

   Yet tourists will still go into the local stores to ask for sardines so
that they can feed the bears.

   When we arrive at Gordon's Point there are five polar bears snoozing
lethargically in the cold sun in a state of semi-hibernation.

   Two others spar playfully for 20 minutes to let off a bit of steam and
then waddle into the freezing sea to cool down.

   Another is nibbling sea-weed and then rolls around in the snow. They love
the ice.

   "I've seen one break off a piece of ice and use it like a piece of soap
to cleanse himself with both paws," said Bob.

   This is a total role-reversal. Here the polar bear is in its own
environment, in its kingdom, watching the humans confined to their caged
buggies, being fed their hot soup, egg salad sandwiches and coffee.

   One lumbers over, pigeon-toed, to check us out, disturbing the tiny snow
buntings. He stands on his hind legs and peers in the windows, sniffing.

   No matter how often you have seen one in a zoo, nothing can quite prepare
you for the real thing.

   It is magnificent. Massive head held high, coal-black nose and eyes set
in an ivory coat. Only when it approaches this close do you begin to get an
idea of the massiveness and the power.

   Most of the males weigh in at about 450 kilograms, but the biggest polar
bear ever measured was nearly four metres high and weighed 900kg.

   Yet the bear can walk on thinner ice than a human can because of its
weight distribution and the size of its paws.

   "He doesn't fear anything. Around these parts he's top of the food chain.
He has only man to fear. It may look cuddly, but it can kill a 200 kilogram
seal with one swipe of its paw," said Bob.

   Soon the other tundra wagons form a semi-laager around our bears. Two of
them had started playing again, standing on their hind legs and pawing at
each other.

   The one tires of this frivolity, sits down and simply rolls on his back
like a giant teddy bear. The other takes a mouthful of ear and tugs at it,
but when he detects there is no interest, he stalks off, bored.

   Instead, he comes inspecting the humans in the tundra buggy, poking his
nose against the windows, no doubt thinking of all the fat inside.

   An arctic fox comes snooping around. One gets close to the polar bear and
then lopes off hurriedly when the bear shows an interest at this possible
tidbit. That day we saw 12 polar bears.

   Len Smith told us: "Most I ever saw on one day was 62. That was a freak
year. The bears were just everywhere."

   Back in Churchill we find a cute poster in one of the few shops. The
photo is by famed wildlife photographer and writer Robert Taylor.

   Looking much like an overweight Mae West, the Polar Bear has her eyes
closed, her legs daintily crossed. Come up and see me some time, she says.

   Thousands of tourists are doing exactly that every October and November.

For information contact Churchill Chamber of Commerce, Box 176, Churchill,
MB R0B 0E0 Canada. Phone [phone].

  Travel is edited by Mike Currie - Fax: [phone]; e-mail:
<[e-mail]">

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 13:57:31 +0800 (SST)
>From: Vadivu Govind <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (CN) Chinese circus animals dumped
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Sorry. There were some comments on this post meant for private e-mail.
But of course, if anyone has any leads/contacts/ideas on how we can help,
let me know. I feel desperately helpless about the state of animals in Asia.

Vadivu

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 17:06:03 +0800
>From: bunny <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: US Farmers death sparks BSE fear
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

US farmer's death sparks BSE fear.

>From "The Countryman" (Western Australia) 24/4/97

Tim Evans reported that:

"The US cattle and beef industry went into major crisis control mode last
week after an Indiana farmer died of Crutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD).

The news hit the industry like a bomb.
News service reports speculated on the possible cause and top
of the list was Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE) - mad cow
disease.

The man was a rose farmer and reports had him being infected by blood
and bone meal.

Although that is almost impossible to prove the cattle futures market went
into a nose dive on the back of the speculation.

Brokers warned the mere mention of BSE in the US was enough to make the
market and industry very nervous, especially when other factors like a 7-8
per cent increase in cattle on feed were taken into account.

The US Department of Agriculture and the FDA acted very quickly to deny any link
between the man's death and cattle.

They said about 250 Americans died of CJD every year, and that this one was
a farmer was of little concern.

But the seed had been sown.

There were reported fears that the disease which had devastated the British
industry could spread to the US, especially if it could be proved
contaminated meat had been fed to cattle.

In order to control any possible outbreak, the US is considering measures
against BSE.

The FDA will soon implement a final rule that will ban use of mammalian tissue
in ruminant rations which comes a year after the US began a moratorium on
the use of ruminant protein in livestock feeds."

End
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kia hora te marino, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, kia tere ai te karohirohi
i mua tonu i o koutou huarahi.
                              -Maori Prayer

(May the calm be widespread, may the sea be as the smooth surface of the
greenstone and may the rays of sunshine forever dance along your pathway)

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 08:18:21 -0400 (EDT)
>From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Lori Gauthier, Animal Rescuer in Kentucky
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

I've spoken to Lori several times and we've sent some supplies.  The problem
she is having in aquiring food is that she is not yet non-profit so the major
food companies will not work with her.  She needs an attorney to walk her
through the incorporation/application for non-profit status process.  She
also needs a KY licensed veterinarian to help her.  Our vet was going to go
up to assist but he can't practice in KY.

Lori is very dedicated, very legit, and has a lot of common sense.  She's one
woman working in a fairly poverty stricken area trying to help flood victims'
animals.  I'd suggest sending her money to buy pet food.  The last time I
talked to her, she was down to about $250 with about 1000 animals she was
trying to assist in feeding.  These animals belong to folks who were
displaced by the March floods and who are trying to keep their animals with
them while they try to rebuild their lives and homes.  Vicky Crosetti,
Executive Director, Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley, Knoxville, TN.



Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 07:06:38 -0800
>From: [e-mail] (IGHA/HorseAid Volunteer)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: National Horse Day
Message-ID: <v02140b01af90f9a30e50@[206.250.103.130]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

We would like to remind everybody on the "list" that May 4th (the first
Sunday in May) is the day to celebrate both "National Horse Day" (U.S.),
and "The International Day of the Horse" (global), simply -- a day to be
held "...in celebration of the horse".

More info: http://www.igha.org/news.html (our new URL)
                         (or)
http://home.earthlink.net/~ighahorseaid/news.html (old)



Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 07:06:43 -0800
>From: [e-mail] (IGHA/HorseAid Volunteer)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: PMU Farms on Fox Network's MILLENNIUM TV show.
Message-ID: <v02140b02af90f9c81722@[206.250.103.130]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The May 2nd episode of MILLENNIUM (Fox Network) centered around the PMU
farms controversy and the treatment of PMU horses.

We wish to thank Chris Carter, the show's creator/producer for publicizing
the cruelty involved with PMU farming and the "normal" disposition of the
PMU disposable end product (the foals that go to slaughter), in an
intelligent and factual way, and one that was so well woven into the story
line that no "message agenda" was evident in focusing on the negative
aspects of PMU farm production.

More info: http://www.igha.org/pmu_link.html (our new URL)
                         (or)
http://home.earthlink.net/~ighahorseaid/pmu_link.html (old)


Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 11:20:26 -0400
>From: Vegetarian Resource Center <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: positive health publicity for National Salad Month
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

We recently posted two things:

May is "National Salad Month"
the dairy industry is really getting "hot"
     to push their products, and
     is citing lots of gerrymandered
     research to substantiate their
     claims
(for instance, one control group was given
a diet strictly limited in vegetables and fruits,
and dairy, and observed, then a control group
was given 10 vegetables and fruits a day,
and dairy products, and their blood values
improved - citing, presumably, the importance
of dairy products in the diet.)

Looks like there are some new pushes by the
milk promoters.

How are we going to respond to that "research"?
More important, does this have an impact on the
general public, and does the public see that kind
of promotion, and what do they think, if they see it?

Is there anything truly effective that we can do?

The corporate promoters are doing lots of
things to sell their products, and isn't it about
time that we establish effective PR offices
for vegetarianism - perhaps groups like
PCRM and VRG and NAVS?

Salad Month is a great promotional opportunity,
I would think, now that March, Spring, and
the GAMO are over, and
April, Earth Day/Earth Month, and
World Week for Lab Animals are over.

Isn't this something that vegetarian organizers
should consider in their planning calendars,
if we could get corporate backing for this
type of educational work, lots of the
health vegetarians (65% in USA, by most studies)
could "come back home" to "us."

      - Maynard

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 12:57:16 -0700 (PDT)
>From: David J Knowles <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"


[The following is a review of book about the McLibel trial - it's not
totally anti-McD, but might might be of interest]

>From The Electronic Telegraph - Saturday, May 3rd, 1997

A quarter pounder of flesh

McDonald's serves writs as well as burgers and fries, finds Ross Clark

"McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial" by John Vidal (MacMillan, ú15.99)


WHEN Ronald McDonald, the clown who is the mascot of the McDonald's
hamburger empire, goes visiting local fΩtes he turns up in a white Cadillac,
addresses schoolchildren as "my little fries", and gently suggests they all
pop down to their local hamburger bar for a
bite to eat. The paternalism of such selling techniques was evidently too
much to bear for the anarchists and environmental protesters who make up an
organisation called London Greenpeace (which has nothing to do with the
international movement of the same name).

In 1985 they began distributing leaflets entitled "What's Wrong with
McDonald's", which bore a number of reasonable complaints about the
organisation, such as the litter found outside its restaurants,  together
with several debatable accusations, such as "McDonald's food is so lacking
in bulk it is hardly possible to chew it", and a number of more fantastic
allegations, such as that McDonald's was in the habit of torturing animals.

McDonald's claimed the leaflets contained 35 libels. It identified five
members of the group who had helped to distribute the leaflets and served
them with writs for libel. Three apologised, but the other two, a barlady by
the name of Helen Steel and an unemployed postman called Dave Morris, chose
instead to defend themselves against the charges.

If McDonald's was expecting a pushover, it was mistaken. Despite their lack
of legal training, Steel and Morris managed to keep the  American
corporation's lawyers on the hoof for a record 313 days at the High Court;
judgment is finally expected in June.

Whichever way the judgment goes, it is difficult to see what McDonald's has
gained by taking on the two anarchists: as well as spending an estimated ú10
million on the case without any hope of obtaining much in the way of damages
from its virtually penniless adversaries, the hamburger chain seems merely
to have ensured that the contents of a little pamphlet which otherwise would
have been read by a few hundred people have now been repeated around
the world.

One yearns for a dispassionate guide to lead the way through the legal
quagmire. But, in spite of his assurances to the contrary, John Vidal has a
natural affinity with the politics of Steel and Morris, the book being
liberally spattered with appeals to the reader to see in
McDonald's the evils of capitalism as a whole. In his central argument -
that McDonald's has been over-zealous in protecting its image through the
law courts - Vidal has a point: the corporation is also on record for
threatening a Scottish sandwich-bar owner who has dared to use the prefix
"Mc" in her trading name. But it is unfair of Vidal not to mention that
McDonald's has itself been a victim of opportunistic legal action taken by
its customers; it was ordered to pay hefty, punitive damages to an American
woman who scalded herself while trying to drive away from one of its
branches with a cup of steaming hot coffee sandwiched between her thighs.

McDonald's emerges from this book as an unlovable organisation so dedicated
to standardisation that its workers are instructed to measure onion portions
to the nearest quarter-ounce, while its marketing executives have such a
cynical view of food that they are
capable of sending each other memorandums saying "we don't sell nutrition
and people don't come to McDonald's for nutrition".

But there is something missing from this portrayal of McDonald's as an evil
empire intent on ruining our diets and subverting local cultures: if
McDonald's really is as bad as Vidal makes it out to be, can't even just a
little bit of the blame for its international success - $30 billion in sales
in 1992, for example - be placed on the shoulders of the multitudes foolish
enough to be seduced by Ronald McDonald?

⌐ Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1997.

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 12:57:19 -0700 (PDT)
>From: David J Knowles <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [CA] Manitoban's consider themselves lucky dogs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>From The Vancouver Sun - Saturday, May 3rd, 1997

The following comes from a column written by Trevor Lautens

At this writing, Jessie, 2, Joshia, 7, Foxy, 12, and Micah, 13, were facing
possible removal as the crest of the Red River floodwaters in Manitoba
neared their homes. They are dogs.

They are the last of a purebred golden retriever kennel operated for 20
years by George Gertrell, principle of St George School in St Vital, a
southeast suburb of Winnipeg.

Possibly you are not thinking too much about the effect of the flood on
animals. But human beings - ceratinly the ones on the Prairies, where all
the best people come from - do some quite marvelous things in the face of
common danger, such as showing tender concern for other creatures.

For example, six large dogs in the care of the Winnipeg Humane Society were
scheduled to be flown Friday to Victoria's SPCA - rides courtesy of Canadian
Airlines International.

On Wednesday, 12 others were flown to Guelph, Ontario, on Air Canada. Don't
these airlines ever stop viciously competing with each other?

Vicki Burns, Winnipeg's humane society executive director, explained:
"People are too preoccupied right now to adopt animals." She arranged with
Victoria SPCA director Lynn West to have the six sent out for adoption on
the West Coast. A new life in balmy Victoria, tulips to pee on instead of
sullen mounds of dirty snow. Talk about lucky dogs.

Such is Winnipeg's community spirit that hundreds of people have registered
to take in pets during the emergency. And Burns met Thursday with a
neighborly team from the U.S. SPCA and the International Fund for Animal
Welfare, who have brought in a huge 75-foot disaster response vehicle from
North Dakota where they rescued 300 dogs and cats from the flood.

Gertrell, the school principal, has already moved from his bungalow on rural
property in the suburb of St Germain because of the threat of flooding.
Fortunately, he had somewhere to go , a house in Charleswood that he'd sold
recently; the new owner doesn't take possession until mid-June.

He left the dogs in their kennels, returning to feed and exercise them twice
a day. He was reluctant to move them unless the extensive dike and ditch
network protecting the city couldn't hold back the waters. They are just
four kilometres from the gates of the Floodway, or Duff's Ditch, that
amazing trough dug around the city named for former premier Duff Roblin.

"They're large dogs," Gertrell explained. "Moving them to a 70-foot lot (in
Charleswood) would be stressful. Micah is deaf as a doornail. Changing dogs'
patterns can be pretty traumatic." Gertrell himself took in a litter of
eight six-day-old Labrador pups and their mother belonging to fellow
principal Bob Milman, who then had to move them a second time because of the
rising threat to Gertrell's property. Dog owners are something else, aren't
they?

[The rest of the article dealt with the human aspects of the flooding]

Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 16:24:00 -0400 (EDT)
>From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: LA Times: Transgenic Livestock
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Copyright 1997 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times;  May 1, 1997, Thursday,  Home Edition ; SECTION: Part A;
Page 1; Metro Desk

TRANSGENIC LIVESTOCK MAY BECOME BIOTECH'S CASH COW;  NEW DRUGS AND
ORGANS FOR
TRANSPLANT ARE AMONG GOALS. BUT OBSTACLES--INCLUDING POTENTIAL
BACKLASH--ARE
PLENTIFUL.

BYLINE: MARTHA GROVES, TIMES STAFF WRITER

   The world shook when Dolly the sheep was cloned. But nary a ripple greeted
the news of Rosie the calf.
   That was so even though the sweet-faced Holstein made its own impressive
history earlier in February, becoming the first cow to produce milk with
significant levels of a human protein--promising enrichment for infants and
elderly alike.
   Both beasts are products of laboratory tinkering in a field of
agricultural biotechnology known as transgenics--in which the DNA of other
species, often from human beings, is introduced into the genes of animals.
   Transgenic livestock breeding promises to be the bread and butter of a
burgeoning 21st century biotechnology industry--Rosie, after all, is a
potential cash cow if ever there was one. Cloning, with its allure of quickly
replicating animals with desirable traits, is more likely to be the icing on
the biotech cake.
   A handful of companies have been engaged in transgenics for the last
decade with varying success, among them Scotland's PPL Therapeutics, which
runs the labs that produced Dolly and Rosie.
   Some of these companies--often with funding from medical supply and
pharmaceutical giants--inject human genes into the embryos of mice, pigs,
goats and cows in the hope of sharply lowering the cost of producing
nourishing proteins and healing drugs. Others, such as Nextran and Alexion
Pharmaceuticals, nurture pigs with altered hearts and kidneys that could one
day be transplanted into human beings--a market projected to be worth
billions of dollars.
   Meanwhile, university and government research labs plug away with farmers
in mind, seeking to create livestock containing human genes that help resist
disease or produce more milk or leaner meat.
   But the twisting path to this brave new biotech world will be littered
with obstacles, and scientists recognize that they are bound to stumble along
the way. The research is painstaking and tedious, and societal backlash can
threaten at any turn.
   Even the staunchest proponents of ag biotech acknowledge that it will be
at least five or 10 years before practical, profitable applications are
commonly available. And all this expensive poking and prodding of animals
raises moral and ethical questions about whether society has the right to
pursue the science, and the stomach to deal with the consequences.
   Israeli researchers have reported work on featherless chickens; the birds
don't use up precious energy producing their plumage, but they look grotesque
and don't function normally. In Australia, sheep were injected with a
genetically engineered hormone that produces breaks in wool fibers as they
grow, enabling simple removal of the wool. Among the unforeseen side effects
for these self-shearing sheep: severe sunburn and heat stress.
   Problems have been apparent since U.S. Department of Agriculture
researchers reported the world's first transgenic livestock in 1985. Growth
hormone was inserted into genetically engineered pigs, which indeed grew
faster and contained less fat than their plain Jane counterparts. But the
pigs could not cope with the accelerated growth and suffered from crippling
arthritis, infertility and more than their usual share of gastric ulcers. The
research was halted amid a public outcry.
   "There's only a certain distance you can go in the name of science," said
Caird E. Rexroad Jr., a member of that team and research leader at the
federal Agricultural Research Service's Gene Evaluation and Mapping
Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. "You have to make a judgment."

   Benefits, Risks of Barnyard Biotech

   At PPL Therapeutics, the judgment has been that the potential benefits of
barnyard biotech--for both society and the company's bottom line--far
outweigh any risks. The company's lead product is a protein for the treatment
of cystic fibrosis and emphysema.
   PPL's U.S. branch is ensconced on several hundred acres amid the rolling
hills of Blacksburg, Va., near Virginia Tech. Working with pigs, cows and
rabbits, researchers at the 4-year-old operation view their mission as
generating transgenic livestock that can become individual factories,
churning out therapeutic proteins in greater quantity and for less money than
would be feasible by any other method. Once produced in milk, the proteins
can be isolated for inclusion in pharmaceuticals--or, eventually, sold as is,
as a beverage with enhanced properties.
   Scientists in February held a coming-out party for Rosie, the firstborn of
more than a dozen transgenic calves, after her initial milking revealed
strong levels of alpha-lactalbumin. The human protein provides an excellent
balance of amino acids, making it highly nutritious and especially suitable
for premature infants who cannot nurse.
   Although all potential applications haven't been worked out, "infant
formula is certainly a possibility," said Will Eyestone, PPL's head of bovine
technology in Blacksburg. Clinical trials are expected to begin within two
years.
   The aim of Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, Conn., is quite
different: to develop a herd of organ donors for the thousands of
individuals--many of them at death's door--awaiting transplants. The
5-year-old company is working with about 50 pigs containing two human genes.
   These high-tech hogs are housed in horse stalls at Tufts University's
School of Veterinary Medicine, an hour's drive west of Boston. The pigs'
appearance betrays no hint of their special properties. But, thanks to one of
the human genes, the animals' hearts, kidneys and lungs bear a human-like
sugarcoating that the company theorizes would make them compatible with the
human body. The other gene, researchers believe, would mop up any
inflammation resulting from a transplant.
   Alexion is testing this double-barreled approach by transplanting pig
organs into baboons. Organs from the transgenic pigs survive for days, versus
the hour or so a normal pig organ would last, said Stephen Squinto, Alexion's
co-founder and vice president of research. That survival time does not yet
justify a clinical test on human beings, the prospects for which, Squinto
said, "will be absolutely dependent on data from the primate model, and we'll
have a good feel for that within the next 12 months."
   The company has received $ 10 million in funding from U.S. Surgical Corp.,
a Norwalk, Conn., surgical supply company. Shares of Alexion, which went
public a year ago at $ 8.25 each, traded recently on the Nasdaq exchange at
about $ 11 before falling to $ 8.75. The cloning news from Scotland did not
sway interest one way or the other.
   "The people who are investors understand our technology," Squinto said.
   Cloning is not part of Alexion's research, but if it could be made
commercially feasible--a big if--it could provide a more effective, efficient
way of making colonies of animals. For now, the technique used in Scotland is
far too inefficient. It took scientist Ian Wilmut 25 often-frustrating years
and 277 tries to produce Dolly.

   Demand for Organs Is Enormous

   The market for "xenotransplantation"--the use of animal organs for
transplantation into human beings--could be enormous. According to the United
Network for Organ Sharing, 3,000 patients in the United States die each year
waiting for a transplant; 100,000 die annually without having qualified for a
spot on the waiting list. Salomon Bros., a Wall Street investment firm,
projected last year that demand for organs could be worth $ 6 billion by
2010, with patients worldwide seeking 450,000 organs a year.
   That number seems high--but only by $ 1 billion or so--to executives at
Nextran, a division of Baxter International, a medical products and services
company. Based in Princeton, N.J., Nextran is a leader in the field, having
launched a Phase I clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of
using transgenic pig livers outside the human body to treat patients with
acute liver failure.
   In this procedure, doctors pump blood from a vein in a patient's leg
through the pig liver, which is stored in a sterile container at the
patient's side. The blood is then pumped back into the body through the
jugular vein. The idea is to maintain liver functions until a human organ
becomes available.
   The company expects to report results within the next year. Nextran is the
only company so far to have won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration to use a transgenic pig organ in human testing.
   "Of all the ag products I can think of . . . this will have the greatest
impact clinically," said John S. Logan, vice president of research and
development. "If someone's dying of heart or kidney failure, it could save a
life."
   Marvin L. Miller, Nextran's president and chief executive, foresees that,
if approved eventually for transplantation, such organs would fetch $ 10,000
to $ 18,000 each. That, he said, raises questions: Can society afford to have
that many transplants done? Is it willing to shoulder the financial burden?
   Cost aside, society probably will have no qualms about using genetically
engineered pig organs, said Bernard E. Rollin, author of "The Frankenstein
Syndrome: Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals"
and a professor of philosophy and biophysics at Colorado State University.
   "In a society that eats pigs, there won't be a big uproar," he said. After
all, surgeons have successfully used pig heart valves in patients for years.
(And June will mark the 20th anniversary
of the first transplant of a baboon heart into a human being.)

   Consumer Reaction Hard to Predict

   But Rollin sees many potential dangers in high-tech breeding techniques.
"You can't predict what the insertion of a gene will or will not do," he
said. "A lot will depend on unintended consequences."
   Animal rights activists have long protested such research. Six years ago,
well before the world knew of Wilmut's breakthrough cloning work at the
Roslin Institute, activists torched two laboratories there. (The institute is
run by PPL Therapeutics.)
   Consumers' resistance to some bioengineered food products--and the
difficulties researchers have encountered in identifying favorable genes for
use in transgenics--make the payoff seem distant for private industry. As a
result, companies have slashed funding for researchers involved in genetic
engineering of livestock strictly for the sake of farming, rather than for
producing drugs. Most researchers attempting to aid farmers must rely on
funds from the USDA and other government entities.
   "It really is a hard slog," said James D. Murray, a professor of animal
sciences and veterinary medicine at UC Davis. "It's very expensive and very
long term and very hard to get it funded. That's why most work is done by
pharmaceutical companies, which see a big pot of gold."
   Murray succeeded recently in changing the fundamental properties of mouse
milk by injecting a gene that produced a human enzyme. The enzyme, found in
tears and saliva, can dissolve certain bacteria. Introducing the enzyme in
cow's milk, he figures, might cut down on gastrointestinal infections in
children who drink the milk. The presence of the enzyme could also aid the
dairy cows, decreasing the amount or severity of udder inflammations and
therefore reducing the need for antibiotics.
   But to prove his speculation, Murray needs a transgenic cow. In 20
pregnancies so far, the calves have all proved negative for the enzyme. The
process "is very inefficient," Murray said, adding ironically: "Our success
rate is in keeping with the worldwide average."

   The Possibilities Are Intriguing

   Consider Dolly, the longshot cloning success from Scotland. Until
researchers can dramatically boost the efficiency of Wilmut's technique, most
scientists agree, it will be merely a momentous novelty.
   Nevertheless, the research world is attracted by the possibilities. After
the announcement, scientists at the University of Wisconsin immediately set
about reproducing Wilmut's feat in cattle, using fetal skin cells rather than
the adult mammary cells used in Scotland. (Up till now, genetic engineering
efforts focused on dividing animal embryos to produce twins or triplets, or
on injecting genes into a fertilized egg in the hope that the offspring would
have specific traits.)
   Although the interest now is purely scientific, Wisconsin researcher Neal
First, a noted expert in the field, said the hope eventually is to develop a
reliable cloning method that could help farmers copy animals that produce
desirable cuts of meat, copious amounts of gene-enhanced milk--or even
pharmaceuticals.
   Striving to keep pace with consumers' wishes, farmers for decades have
been fooling with livestock genetics using artificial insemination, in vitro
fertilization and plain old crossbreeding. Just as cloning would, those
technologies tend to reduce genetic diversity.
   Take the dairy industry, said George Seidel, a cattle rancher and a
professor of physiology at Colorado State University. At the end of World War
II, there were 25 million dairy cows in the United States. Today, about
one-third that many cows produce 10% more milk than did the postwar herds.
The total feed consumed and manure produced are about half the earlier
levels.
   Helping to account for the improved milk yield is a decline in genetic
diversity: 90% of the dairy cows are Holsteins, versus 40% four decades ago.
Holsteins produce more milk with less fat than other breeds.
   "That reduces genetic variation," Seidel said. "But it's what consumers
wanted. If we had cloned cows from the 1950s, they would be much inferior to
today's cows.

   "Cloning," he added, "is not in any sense an ultimate technology for
improving animals. It's another tool."

********************
   Question:   What do you see ahead for private-sector agricultural
biotechnology in light of the cloning of Dolly, the Scottish sheep?
     Answers:
   Jim McCamant, editor of the AgBiotech Stock Letter, Berkeley, Calif.:
   "I don't think it has had any significant impact at all on the stock
prices of biotech companies . It's not a big deal, investment-wise."
   ****
   Robert D. Bremel, managing director of Gala Design, a "designer milk"
biotech company, Sauk City, Wis.:
   "For many purposes, cloning is not needed. The reason the Dolly process
was done is that PPL Therapeutics is looking to remove a gene and replace it.
They need the cloning to make that work. So cloning is a necessary means to
an end. With current technologies, you can add genes but if you need to take
one out and put a new one in, it's much more complicated.  The Dolly
procedure makes it conceivable to do that. Whether they can get their
efficiencies up to make it commercially viable is another question."
   ****
   Vernon Pursel, research physiologist, Agricultural Research Service's Gene
Evaluation and Mapping Laboratory, Beltsville, Md.:
   "Pharmaceuticala and xenotransplantation the transplantation into human
beings of organs from genetically engineered animals are the hot areas, with
great financial potential. It's financially driven. Several of us in the U.S.
Department of Agriculture are still working toward production
purposes--growth of animals , disease resistance--that might have
considerable use in the future. But we don't know how far off that is."
   ****
   Bernard E. Rollin, professor of philosophy and physiology and biophysics
at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colo.:
   "With cloning, one can multiply a putatively desirable animal, but one can
make mistakes.  A researcher could screw up things that would show up in a
year or two."
   ****
   Caird E. Rexroad Jr., research leader, Gene Evaluation and Mapping
Laboratory, Beltsville, Md.:
   "Should we make a super-pig and tie up all our genetics in that? I think
the answer is clearly no. My vision is that designer genes are for specific
purposes. This is a tool--it's not a panacea, nor is it a Pandora's box."
   ****
   George Seidel, professor of physiology, Colorado State University:
   "There will be casualties with any kind of new experimentation. More
people were saved by penicillin than by any other drug. But more healthy
people were killed by it. There is a cost to every technological benefit."
   ****
   Vernon Pursel:
   "Population growth is a huge problem. There's a net increase in population
of 2.8 persons per second. It is frightening. That means that either we have
to somehow reduce population growth or be lots more efficient in how we
produce our food. The increases we had in farm production in the 1950s and
'60s resulted from fertilizers and insecticides. We pumped a lot of bad stuff
onto the soil. We have to find alternative ways to do that. Biotech is one of
the ways. But look at the Flavr-Savr a genetically engineered tomato that
failed to hold up to the rigors of transportation and handling . Getting any
of these things from the lab into the grocery store--that's a huge
undertaking."
   ****
   Keith Haglund, executive editor, The Journal of NIH Research, April 1997:
   "Goodbye, Dolly....It's time for you to leave center stage. Time for the
scientists and ethicists and policy-makers to play their parts."

 Compiled by MARTHA GROVES / Los Angeles Times


Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 22:44:04 -0400 (EDT)
>From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (MY) Mangrove forest threatened--UNSUBSCRIBE
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

I'd like to unsubscribe from AR news
Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 20:16:03 -0700
>From: Andrew Gach <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Canned lion hunts in South Africa
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Mandela under fire over lion-hunt scandal

Times of London

JOHANNESBURG (May 3, 1997 01:14 a.m. EDT) -- The horrors of South
Africa's lion-hunting industry, in which lions in captivity are drugged,
shot and skinned for "tourist trophies," are due to be shown on British
television next week in a documentary whose producers have accused
President Mandela's Government of failing to act to protect the animals.

Among allegations in the documentary is that hunting operators have
lured lions out of the Kruger National Park to be shot by tourists
paying thousands of dollars for the pleasure.  The Cook Report will show
footage of a lioness being shot several times against an
electrified fence by a tourist, who then poses with the animal before
its coat is skinned to become a "trophy."

Gareth Patterson, a South African environmentalist who was involved in
the investigations, says that the hunted lions are being bred in
captivity for the hunter's gun. More than 300 animals are said to be
involved. Mr. Patterson tells of one case in which a boy takes 16
shots to kill a badly wounded lion.

In another incident, a German hunter, unable to stalk on foot, is driven
into an enclosure and shoots his "trophy" from the vehicle.

The findings of the investigation were presented this week to South
African government representatives in London for comment. A video of the
hunt was reportedly shown to the tourism minister Pallo Jordan months
ago but so far he has not responded. "Apartheid is dead but now South
Africa urgently needs to evolve its inhumane outlook and policies
towards wild animals," Mr Patterson said. "International criticism could
soon mount against a country which has freed its people but whose
wildlife is still left at the mercy of a utilitarian philosophy of "if
it pays, it stays."

According to Mr. Patterson hunters are paying upwards of $20,000 for a
full hunt. He believes that if the lion breeding and hunting business is
not outlawed white lion hunts could soon be on offer with price tag of
around $45,000. Already exotic, non-indigenous species, such as black
panthers, are being offered at extortionate prices.

The documentary makers suspect that game lodges used by thousands of
British and other game viewing tourists each year may also be breeding
lions to be shot by high-paying clients. Some of the hunts are legal but
no less cruel than the illegal operations. In legal hunts the lion is
held captive in a fenced area waiting to be shot with no chance of
escape.

Mr. Patterson believes the television documentary could lead to calls
for a tourism boycott of South Africa and he has called on the
Government to take immediate action to end the trade.



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