Komputer for Alle 1998 #6/1998 CD 6 (Gul).iso/web/ffa/wwwenv~1.org/arrs/digest/news46~6.htm/text0010.txt

Text File | 1998-04-03 | 47.4 KB | 986 lines

>South China Morning Post
Wednesday  July 16  1997
     Aquarium fish in hot water

     ALEX LO

     Faulty aquarium appliances can cook your fish and start a fire, the
Consumer Council warned yesterday.

     They cause an average of one fire every three days, according to Fire
Services Department statistics.

     In a survey of 33 electrical air and water pumps and fluorescent lamps
for tanks, the council found only five met international safety standards.

     "Our tests affirm the fire hazard these accessories pose to users. They
can also cause  electric shocks when users come in contact with water," the
council's Dr Michael Tsui  Fuk-sun said.

     He added that 27 samples tested had cords, plugs, fuses and thermostats
wrongly wired or designed. Nine had sub-standard power supply cords.

     The council had two complaints this year. One claimed a device used to
regulate aquarium water temperature had overheated and cooked the fish.
The council also called on owners of 120,000 unsafe air-conditioners in
public housing  estates to fix them.


Date: Wed Jul 16 06:27:08 1997
From: Michael Garner <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Great Ape Project WWW Update
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


Dear AR people,

The Great Ape Project's WWW pages have moved to:

http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/gap/gaphome.html

The pages are updated regularly.
Comments and questions to [e-mail] are welcome.

Regards,
David Pearson
GAP-UK Coordinator.



---
The Great Ape Project


Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 07:32:54 -0400
From: allen schubert <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: (US) Olestra snack chips draw more consumer complaints
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


Of interest for reasons of health and those against P&G....
from CNN web page:
-----------------------------------
                     Olestra snack chips draw more consumer complaints

                     July 15, 1997                            =20
                     Web posted at: 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT)

                     From Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen

                     (CNN) -- Food companies in the United States are
                     preparing to go nationwide with snack chips made
                     with the fat substitute olestra. But ahead of the
                     sales campaign there have been more complaints by
                     consumers that these chips cause severe stomach
                     problems.

                     Recent documents from the Food and Drug
                     Administration show that more than 800 consumers
                     have called in to complain that they got sick from
                     chips made with olestra.

                     One woman said she suffered from cramps about two
                     hours after eating a one ounce bag of olestra
                     chips, and that the snack caused severe diarrhea.

                     A man complained of severe abdominal cramps.
                     "After about one hour of eating ... I could hardly
                     walk," he said.

                     And another consumer reported that he woke up in
                     the middle of the night with severe cramps and was
                     unable to make it to the bathroom.

                      Some scientists say they are not surprised
                           by the number of complaints about olestra.
                     Dr. Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public
                     Health says olestra works in such a way that it
                     passes right through a person's gastrointestinal
                     tract.

                     Stampfer said the FDA should take snacks made with
                     olestra off the market. So far the olestra snacks
                     have been available only in test markets in Ohio,
                     Indiana and Colorado.

                     "It's causing these
                     gastrointestinal                      "It's causing these
                     problems, it's a mistake       gastrointestinal
                     to let it go into our                   problems, it's a
                     food supply and they              mistake to let it go
                     should admit the mistake     into our food supply
                     and just remove it,"                 and they should
admit
                     Stampfer said.                         the mistake and
just

just

remove it."
                     The FDA declined to
                     comment. However, Procter =97 Dr. Meir Stampfer
                     & Gamble, which makes
                     olestra, said 800
                     complaints were not much considering that millions
                     of people had eaten the chips.

                     "It's important to understand this is a very low
                     rate of response, it's less than 0.01 percent,"
                     said the company's Greg Allgood.

                     Allgood said olestra chips were very popular in
                     the snack market. "Most people tell us this is a
                     product that works for them and they really
                     enjoy," he said.

                     Procter & Gamble also asked some of the people who
                     complained about the chips to try them again. The
                     company claimed that when people did eat them
                     again, they felt no different than when they ate
                     regular chips.

                     The olestra manufacturer now hopes to take the
                     chips nationwide sometime next year. But one
                     consumer group, the Center for Science in the
                     Public Interest, said it will try to make sure
                     that won't happen. It has set up its own toll-free
                     line (1-888-OLESTRA) and said it has received 800
                     additional complaints.


    (US) Olestra snack chips draw more consumer complaints
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 17:10:23 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: (MY) Animal beauty contests
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>




>The Star Online
Wednesday, July 16, 1997=20

Looking for beauty among the beasts

ALOR STAR: A national-level animal beauty contest is likely to be organised
this year following Tan Sri Sanusi Junid's plan to hold a state-level
contest next week as an alternative to beauty pageants.=20

State executive councillor Ahmad Lebai Sudin said Kedah would hold its
first animal beauty contest on July 24, adding winners stood a chance to
represent the state at the national-level contest to be held later.=20
Ahmad said the state-level contest, to be held in conjunction with Farmers
Day celebrations here at the Pokok Sena Agro-Tech Exhibition site, would
see dozens of "beauties" vying for cash prizes totalling RM10,000, trophies
and certificates.=20

Among the categories are locally bred and artificially inseminated cattle and
goat and poultry.=20

"Animals which are well-trained and obey the command of their owners
will receive bonus points," he added.=20

The three-day celebrations will also see the revival of the coconut tree
climbing competition =97 another of Sanusi's "pet projects" when he was
agriculture minister.=20



    (MY) Animal beauty contests
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 07:39:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jean Colison <[e-mail]>
To: Ar-news <[e-mail]>
Subject: Conflict Between Creatures
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


(don't miss last sentence)

A Conflict Between Creatures

As Humans Move Into Predators' Habitat, Both May Be Under Attack
By Tom Kenworthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 13, 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post
DENVERùMoses Street, a photographer from Estes Park, Colo., was jogging
near dusk on a popular trail in Rocky Mountain National Park in the fall
of 1995 when, by chance or instinct, he glanced over his shoulder and
felt a stab of primal fear few humans ever experience. A cougar was
directly behind him, on its hind legs, in the final stage of attack.
Waving his arms and yelling, Street managed to get the cougar to back
off. He fended off a second approach with a large tree branch. He
climbed atop the ruins of an old cabin and warded the lion off a third
time by again swinging the branch. Street then scurried up a tree and
hunkered down for a frigid overnight, dressed only in a T-shirt and
running shorts. In the dead of night, the mountain lion began climbing
the tree.
"I could just hear him," Street said. "If you've ever heard a squirrel
scramble up a tree, magnify that. He'd put a claw in and there would be
a crunch." Swinging blindly with his branch, Street hit the lion and it
retreated. Park rangers, called by Street's girlfriend when he failed to
return from his jog, came to his rescue about 2 a.m.
Street's encounter is part of a growing phenomenon, involving not just
mountain lions here along the front range of the Rocky Mountains, but
other large predators such as bears, alligators and wolves in numerous
areas throughout the nation. With hunting on the decline and prey
species such as deer on the increase, with the success of wildlife
conservation programs, and with more people moving into once-remote
areas, humans and large, potentially dangerous, predators are seeing a
lot more of each other.
Sometimes there are frightening and costly results:
In Florida, alligator attacks on humans are becoming more common, as the
once-endangered reptile has bounced back from near extinction, and the
state's burgeoning human population encroaches on its habitat. Although
there have been only eight fatal attacks in the last half century, three
of them have come in the last four years, including the death in March
of 3-year-old Adam Binford, who was snatched by an 11-foot alligator
while wading in the shallow waters of a placid lake to pick a water lily
for his mother.
Fatal attacks by cougars are also on the increase. A study by Northern
Arizona University wildlife ecologist Paul Beier found that there were
more fatal attacks (five in all) by cougars on humans from 1970 to 1990
than there were in the previous 80 years. And that study was completed
before a fatal attack in 1991 on a Colorado jogger and two more fatal
attacks in California in 1994.
Wolf conservation efforts in the upper Midwest have been so successful
that an animal once hounded to near extinction by government bounty
programs is now taking up residence close to major metropolitan areas,
with an accompanying toll on domestic pets and livestock. Aided by
government restoration programs, wolves are also beginning to thrive
again in the northern Rockies and are occasionally preying on cattle and
sheep.
"Critters are showing up where they didn't used to show up," said Bill
Berg, a wildlife biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources. "And it's because they're adapting more and more -- to
people, to highways, to new ways of life."
People, however, are not always adapting so readily to predators in
their midst.
When William J. Elder moved from Omaha to an upscale foothills community
a half hour west of Denver, he was attracted by the magnificent views of
the Continental Divide and by the abundant wildlife, including mule deer
and elk. Nobody warned him about the mountain lions frequenting the back
yards of $500,000 homes.
Out walking early one morning in a light snow, the 42-year-old attorney
was beginning a second loop around his neighborhood when he saw fresh
mountain lion tracks -- following right behind the footprints he had
left on his first lap.
Turning to Bill Anderson, his walking companion that morning, Elder
said: "I don't know about you, Anderson, but I'm heading home."
As a parent of young children, Elder became even more concerned when an
18-year-old high school senior was killed by a cougar while running in
Idaho Springs, just 15 miles from Elder's house. Elder bought a handgun
for protection, but gave it up after his first trip to the firing range
when a badly aimed shot ricocheted into his leg.
Perplexed that both his neighborhood association and state officials
seemed more interested in the lions' welfare than in his and his
children's, Elder fired off an angry letter to the Colorado Division of
Wildlife. "Remove this beast from my community," Elder pleaded. "I am
unable to see any benefits whatsoever that this animal confers upon my
community or upon the ecosystem where I live."
To Colorado wildlife officials, it was a familiar refrain. "Every time
we get a new influx of people, a new development and people moving in
from out of state, we go through it again," said Bob Davies, a wildlife
biologist for Colorado's Division of Wildlife. "Basically they freak out
and they want something done immediately."
More often than not, the animal loses. Late last month, a 175-pound
black bear had to be shot after breaking into as many as 10 houses in
Douglas County, Colo., south of Denver. The bear was destroyed by
sheriff's deputies shortly after emerging from one home with a tortilla
dangling from its mouth.
Bear populations, and complaints about nuisance bears, are also on the
rise in Virginia and Maryland. Forty years ago there were estimated to
be only a dozen black bears in western Maryland; today there are roughly
200. Virginia, with more suitable habitat, has a bear population of
about 3,500.
In the Southwest, coyote attacks on humans are occurring more frequently
as the coyote population grows and communities expand into the desert.
In April the Arizona Game and Fish Department shot two coyotes after two
boys were bitten in Scottsdale, and in February a 4-year-old girl
sustained more than 30 cuts and puncture wounds from a coyote attack in
South Lake Tahoe.
In Florida, where 1,000 people a day move into the state, officials are
struggling with demands for immediate action as people and alligators
compete for shrinking wetland habitat. Wildlife officials estimate the
state is now home to about a million adult alligators, a tribute to the
success of the federal Endangered Species Act and state-sponsored
conservation programs.
More gators and more people have meant more conflict. Alligators are
attacking people about 18 times a year in the 1990s, double the rate of
the previous decade. With large, sometimes menacing alligators showing
up in backyard ponds, swimming pools, and even pushing through screen
doors, the state is fielding about 15,000 "remove this alligator" calls
a year. Under contract to the state, trappers round up and kill about
4,000 problem alligators a year.
"When I was a kid, an alligator would occasionally wander into town,"
said Henry Cabbage, of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.
"Now the town is wandering into alligator habitat. New residents who
move to Florida are unfamiliar with alligators, so they buy a house in a
subdivision with a retention pond. An alligator moves in, the residents
name him old Joe and toss him chicken parts because it's fun to watch
him eat. So a 12-foot alligator with a brain the size of a thumb starts
associating people with food. Pretty soon it's going to eat a dog or
attack a child."
An alligator who had lost its natural fear of humans may have been
responsible for an incident last July, when a 7-year-old Brazilian boy
was attacked when he tumbled off his rented bicycle and into a canal in
Everglades National Park. The alligator relinquished his grip on
Alexandre Teixeira only after the boy's mother and father rushed to his
aid, grabbing the alligator by the snout and pushing on its mouth.
"I took the mouth in my hand," said Helio Teixeira a few days after the
incident. "I tried to open it, but it was impossible. So I tried just to
keep it from moving." His wife, Maria Teixeira, then joined the dramatic
struggle for their son. "I put my hand inside the gator's mouth," she
told the Miami Herald. "I wanted to try and open it so it would let go
of my son. I felt the alligator press down one time on Alexandre, then
suddenly release its jaw. And his mouth opened."
Wolves don't often attack humans, but in the northern Rocky Mountain
states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, sheep and cattle are once again
being preyed upon, as natural migrations from Canada and
government-sponsored reintroduction programs return wolves to areas they
have not inhabited for decades.
For most of this century, the federal government did everything it could
to eradicate wolves: Thousands were poisoned, shot and trapped until the
species was extirpated from the West. Now the government has reversed
course. It has reintroduced red wolves into the Southeast, gray wolf
packs into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park and as early as
next year will put another sub-species, Mexican wolves, into the
Southwest.
At the same time, Canadian wolves have been migrating on their own into
northwestern Montana, and at least 10 packs of these immigrant wolves
are thriving as far south as Missoula.
Western ranchers are generally not happy about it, but in some cases
they are learning new ways to co-exist.
In February, for example, a transient wolf began preying on sheep on
Bill Mayo's Boulder, Wyo., ranch. He called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service for assistance, but when the agency was slow in responding, Mayo
dealt with the predator himself, and not in the time-honored rancher
way.
With his neighbor driving, Mayo roped the wolf from a speeding
snowmobile, put it in a horse trailer and waited for Fish and Wildlife
Service agents to arrive to transport it for release in Yellowstone
National Park. An environmental group, Defenders of Wildlife, paid him
$690 for his dead sheep, a payment Mayo appreciates but says does not
cover the cost of other sheep that ran away in terror and were never
seen again.
Mayo says he has no real problem with wolf reintroduction as long as
federal wildlife officials can keep them in Yellowstone and deal
promptly with those that wander. "We will be able to cope to a degree,"
he said, "but if wolves spread out and hit all my neighbors and kill our
sheep, our cattle and our horses, then we will have to figure out" how
to deal with it.
Western ranchers can envision their future by looking east, to
Minnesota, where there are now as many as 2,500 wolves and where
biologists expect enough dispersal into Michigan and Wisconsin by 1999
to remove the regional population from the endangered species list.
Minnesota pays out $40,000 to $65,000 a year in compensation for
wolf-killed livestock, and federal animal control officers track and
destroy 140 to 170 problem wolves a year in the upper Midwest.
Experts like Berg of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources are
astonished at how wolves have adapted to civilization, living in one
case within a couple of hundred yards of Interstate 94 west of Madison,
Wis., and in another, within an hour's drive of St. Paul, Minn. "Twenty
to 25 years ago, we were looking at wolves as just being residents of
the pristine wilderness," Berg said. "Now we have wolves 100 miles out
into the prairie and into central Minnesota where we didn't ever think
they would go."
The very success of wolf conservation programs is now presenting
wildlife managers with a new dilemma that is likely to grow worse if
state officials in Minnesota opt to open a wolf-hunting season once the
animal is fully recovered. Having fought to overcome those who revile
the wolf, biologists must now deal with a phenomenon that noted wolf
researcher L. David Mech calls "wolf protectionism."
"Those of us professionally involved with wolf recovery have
traditionally been maligned by anti-wolf people," Mech wrote recently in
the periodical Conservation Biology. "Now we are vilified by many wolf
lovers as wolf enemies because of our acknowledgment that wolves often
require control."
Rich Clough, a regional supervisor for the Montana Department of Fish,
Wildlife and Parks, faces the same conflicting pressures in managing the
burgeoning mountain lion population around Missoula, a small university
city where cougars and bears frequently wander into residential areas.
To lessen the chance of cougar attacks on people near Missoula, wildlife
officials have eased hunting regulations and aggressively trapped lions
that wander into town. That has eased the fears of many residents -- but
angered others.
Not long ago, Clough was out with his lion-hunting dogs trying to
capture a cougar adjacent to the married-student housing complex at the
University of Montana when an irate cougar lover stormed out of his
house waving a pistol.
"You have both sides of the issue within 100 feet of each other," Clough
said. "It's making management more difficult."
Street, the Colorado photographer who narrowly escaped a cougar attack
in 1995, understands that mixture of feelings all too well.
Fearful after his experience, Street no longer jogs on isolated trails,
and he only recently worked up the nerve to hike again in Colorado's
back country. Still, he feels enriched by his encounter, and he's more
adamant than ever about preserving wilderness.
"It was so neat to have been part of something wild," he said. "It was a
near-death experience, a kind of spiritual experience."
Not only should Colorado wildlife officials resist pressure to remove
cougars from inhabited areas, Street said, but they "should be shooting
the people building the houses instead."

Special correspondent William Souder contributed to this report.
@CAPTION: Police spotted a six-foot-long alligator, above, off Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., and coaxed it to shore with help from beachgoers.
Rangers posted sign at left after Moses Street was chased by a mountain
lion while jogging in Estes Park, Colo. @CAPTION: Fish and Game wardens
Mike Conely, left, and Mark Jeter bag a dead mountain lion behind a home
in Valencia, Calif.
@CAPTION: Mary Avila, of Albuquerque, and Sheryl Colyer, of Washington,
check out a five-foot alligator captured on fifth green at Miami Shores
Golf Course in Miami.

⌐Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 97 07:01:00 UTC
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Dog Is Considered Personal Property: No Animal Cruelty Charges Filed
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

(Tulsa World, Tulsa, OK, USA): Because a  dead dog is considered the personal
property of its owner, the man who killed a pit bulldog and then beheaded it
will be charged not with animal cruelty for the beheading, but with malicious
mischief, the city prosecutor has decided.

Riley Johnson, 38, was defending himself when he shot two pit bulldogs in
his yard on June 30, City Prosecutor Patrick Boulden said. But he will face
a charge of malicious mischief for beheading one of the dogs after it died.

"A dog is considered personal property," he said. "When he cut the dog's
head off, he damaged someone's property."

Johnson's arraignment on the misdeameanor charge, which carries a
maximum penalty of $500 and 90 days in jail, is set for 8:30 a.m. Wed.
He has said he will fight any charges brought against him.

The dogs' owners, Rodney and Cynde Payton, have until Wednesday to pay a
$60 fine or plead not guilty to a charge of having dogs at large.

Animal Control Officers focused on the shootings throughout the
investigation. The beheading was done after the dog died and therefore
can't be considered animal cruelty, he said.

When the case was forwarded to the City Prosecutor's Office, no evidence
existed to support an animal cruelty charge, so the charge was amended to
malicious mischief.

The District Attorney's Office can pursue felony animal cruely charges
in extreme cases, Boulden said.

Rodney Payton has said he will file a civil suit against Johnson.


-- Sherrill
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 14:15:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Hunters Prepare Their Own Ballot Initiatives
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

>From the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America home page:

WLFA Embarks on Ambitious Constitutional Amendment Campaign
The Wildlife Legislative Fund of America has launched a major offensive to
protect sportsmen's
rights and to prevent the escalating use of the voter initiative process to
dictate wildlife
management policy.
WLFA wildlife law specialists have drafted a prototype constitutional
amendment to be used as a
model for states wishing to protect sportsmen and women from ballot box game
management.
Since 1990, anti-hunting ballot initiatives have been brought forth 13 times,
with sportsmen
proving victorious on only three occasions. In the past 20 years, hunting and
wildlife management
issues have been decided by popular vote 18 times. Last year alone accounted
for eight.
It is obvious that this serious trend will continue unless something is done
to stop, or impede, the
momentum of the anti-hunting organizations. Last year, these groups pumped
more than $4
million into eight states, eliminating hunting privileges and overruling
state wildlife agencies.
Currently, the ballot initiative process may be used to determine wildlife
issues in 24 states.
"Sportsmen must take the offensive in these 24 states," said WLFA vice
president, Rick Story.
Story recently outlined the WLFA effort and model language before the
nation's sporting
journalists at the annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of
America (OWAA).
"Wildlife management by public whim is wrong because it takes wildlife
professionals and elected
officials out of the picture," Story said. "It is therefore wasteful and not
in keeping with either the
American system of democracy or the best tenets of wildlife management."
On the heels of the 1996 initiative assault, sportsmen's coalitions and
legislators in several citizen
initiative states began to look toward constitutional amendments for
protection. Though initial
efforts proved unsuccessful in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming for varied
reasons, the
WLFA is confident the concept is valid and the tack is achievable. In
Michigan, amendment
legislation is pending in House Committee, while Colorado, Idaho and several
other states have
shown interest in introducing new wording in the next legislative session.
Understanding that the needs to protect sportsmen's pursuits are unique in
every state, the model
is designed to adapt to the drafting requirements and needs of any one of the
24 initiative states.
"Our plan is to circulate this proposed language to sportsmen, wildlife
agencies and interested
lawmakers and to work with anyone who seriously wants to end
emotionally-driven,
citizen-initiated ballot issues about wildlife," Story said.
In the late 1980s, The WLFA similarly provided states with hunter harassment
bill language which
was used as a model for legislation. As a result, today hunters in all 50
states are protected from
harassment while afield.

WLFA Model Constitutional Amendment Draft
The state of ______'s fish and wildlife belong to the people and shall be
utilized and
maintained on a sustained yield basis. Laws shall be passed to provide for
the
conservation of the fish and wildlife resources of the state, including laws
to empower
an agency specializing in the study, protection, use, and scientific
management of fish
and wildlife and their habitat. Such laws, and such agency, shall not permit
any taking
which will reduce the population of any species authorized for taking as a
game species
below that level essential to its continued health and existence. No laws or
regulations
which permit, limit, or prohibit that taking of any species of fish and
wildlife shall be
valid, except laws enacted by the General Assembly and regulation adopted by
the
agency specializing in the study, protection, use, and scientific management
of fish and
wildlife and their habitat. Notwithstanding the provisions of (insert
appropriate
section(s) of state constitution), the initiative and referendum shall not be
used to enact
or reject any laws which permit, limit, or prohibit the taking of any species
of fish and
wildlife.
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 97 15:44:54 -0000
From: [e-mail]
To: <[e-mail]>
Subject: All cotton wearers take notice
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

100-YEAR FIGHT WITH BOLL WEEVIL TAKES BIG STEP FORWARD

     ABILENE, Texas, July 14, 1997--The long-running battle with the boll
weevil, a tiny creature that has played havoc with American cotton
crops since before the turn of the century, took a major step forward
today with the approval of U.S. Department of Agriculture funding from a
new loan program for the expanding boll weevil eradication effort in
Texas.

     "This assistance, along with the efforts of the Texas Boll Weevil
Eradication Foundation and our other partners at the Texas Farm Credit
Bank, the National Cotton Council and the State of Texas, brings us
closer to saying goodbye to one of the most persistent threats ever to a
major segment of our farm economy," said Randy Weber, Associate
Administrator of USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA).  "A lot of credit is
also due to Rep. Charles Stenholm for his continuing interest and strong
support."

     Carolyn Cooksie, FSA Deputy Administrator for Farm Loan Programs,
also stressed the importance of the program: "Because weevil
eradication means a great deal to cotton producers, it is a very high
priority for the FSA.  In a few months, the agency developed a loan
program from scratch to support the eradication foundations.  Ordinarily,
a complex project like this could take a year or more, but the FSA farm
loan staff really pushed themselves to the limit to implement this program
in time to keep the eradication efforts going in 1997."

     Weber said that "when this undertaking in Texas is completed, it will
mark the end of a journey begun as a trial in 1978 in Virginia and North
Carolina in a cooperative State-Federal-Industry effort to finally remove
the boll weevil as a threat to cotton growers.  In those 19 years, the
boll
weevil has been systematically eliminated in many cotton-growing
regions of the United States, including both coasts and part of Mexico."

     Added Bill Grefenstette, senior operations officer for UDSA's Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service: "We have been working with the
cotton growing community for years, and it's exciting to see that we now
have in the loan program a financial mechanism that allows the program
to be more affordable to growers...a mechanism that helps bring the cost
of the program more in line with the realities of their cash flow."

     Weber, Cooksie, and Grefenstette were in Abilene to help put the
final
touches on a $25 million loan to keep the eradication program moving
forward in Texas.  The loan will be used for term debt financing and
allow the Farm Credit Bank to provide a line of credit to meet the
foundation's operating needs.  USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service has provided about $9 million this fiscal year to assist
eradication
efforts.

     The eradication program relies primarily on a combination of
intensive
trapping and careful spraying to eliminate the cotton-eating beetles.
Since the program began, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, most of Alabama, central Tennessee, California,
Arizona and adjacent areas of Mexico have completed the eradication
program.  Only the mid-South, Texas,  New Mexico, and Oklahoma are
left, with grower referenda scheduled in several large areas this fall.
Once eradication is completed, the need for pesticides is drastically
reduced.

     The boll weevil originally found its way into the United States from
Mexico around 1892.  Costing producers over $ 12 billion over the years,
it resisted all attempts to get rid of it until the current program began
moving across the Cotton Belt in 1978.
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 16:33:15 -0700
From: Lawrence Carter-Long <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Sympathetic Fur Story on MSNBC's WWW Site
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Check it out at:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/84222.asp

Nice Links too!!!

Lawrence Carter-Long
Coordinator, Science and Research Issues
Animal Protection Institute
phone: [phone]
[e-mail]

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind
and proving that there is no need to do so, almost
everyone gets busy on the proof."  -  Galbraith's Law
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 22:28:54 -0700
From: Sean Thomas <[e-mail]>
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Subject: No More Monkey Business for Health Canada
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                 [National - Ottawa Citizen Online]

                                   Wednesday 16 July 1997

                 Monkeys in the middle

                 Research colony could join victims of federal downsizing

                 Randy Boswell and Chris Cobb
                 The Ottawa Citizen

                 A Royal Society panel         Wayne Cuddington, The
                 of scientists and
                 philosophers has been      Ottawa Citizen / Bred for
                 appointed to consider      research, these monkeys face an
                 the fate of Canada's       uncertain fate in an era of
                 only colony of             budget cuts and animal-rights
                 research monkeys --        activism.
                 750 long-tailed
                 macaques that live at
                 a breeding centre and in laboratories throughout the
                 Health Canada compound at Tunney's Pasture.

                 The animals, offspring of an original brood brought to
                 Canada from the Philippines in 1983, have been used for
                 research into AIDS and herpes, to screen polio vaccines
                 and probe the effects of ingesting chemicals ranging from
                 PCBs to caffeine. Many of their forebears were sacrificed
                 to high-profile studies that contributed to banning lead
                 from gasoline, and the colony was recently described in
                 an internal Health Canada report as "unique in the world"
                 because its complete genetic history is known for two
                 generations and its members are free of a herpes virus
                 that taints many of the research primates in North
                 America.

                 Now they are monkeys in the middle of organizational
                 upheaval at Health Canada, a federal department plagued
                 by deep budget cuts and a recent clash over political
                 meddling in scientific research. The inquiry into the
                 colony -- which could be maintained as is, sold off or
                 privatized -- emerges as Health Canada confronts its own
                 uncertain future as a national centre for health testing
                 and research.

                 "With these animals, we know everything about them," said
                 one senior Health Canada scientist, whose research career
                 in environmental contaminants has been built around
                 projects involving the monkeys.

                 The scientist, who asked not to be identified, said
                 having an in-house colony of monkeys means "the logistics
                 are dramatically reduced" for research projects that
                 would otherwise depend on imported animals with unknown
                 family histories and possibly carrying viruses.

                 The monkeys cost Health Canada about $1 million a year to
                 maintain.

                 Pierre Thibert, chief of the Animal Resources Division at
                 Health Canada, said yesterday that because of budget cuts
                 the primate colony is in financial crisis.

                 Researchers who use the monkeys must now pay a per diem
                 of about $17 -- a cost which is straining other budgets
                 and in some cases pricing the monkeys out of the research
                 market for government scientists.

                 Thibert said the review will be key to the colony's
                 future but restructuring of some kind is inevitable. The
                 research with the monkeys is vital whether conducted by
                 Health Canada, a university or private industry, he
                 added.

                 "If the Royal Society decides there is a need for a
                 monkey colony to protect the health of Canadians then
                 there has to be a certain input by the government," said
                 Mr. Thibert. "It would be a shame to lose such expertise.
                 We have one of the best research centres in Canada with
                 excellent personnel and an exceptional quality of care.
                 We have to adjust but there will be a future, hopefully,
                 for the animal resources division."

                 Among the many issues at play is the ethics of breeding
                 hundreds of fellow primates, in captivity, to serve
                 purely human interests.

                 "In my mind, the first criteria the panel will have to
                 weigh is the question of animal welfare," says Queen's
                 University professor William Leiss, head of the Royal
                 Society of Canada committee that agreed to strike the
                 expert panel at the behest of Health Canada.

                 "The second question we need to ask is whether we have a
                 need for the colony that the public would support,
                 whether there are benefits to human health we can't
                 otherwise get," said Mr. Leiss. "And then there's the
                 question of who's going to pay for it."

                 A technician in the department's health protection
                 branch, who also asked not to be identified, said the
                 fact that the colony operation faces possible closure
                 reflects "decisions being made from an economic point of
                 view rather than a public health perspective."

                 He added that if the federal government divests itself of
                 the colony "we're going to be relying on foreign
                 research."

                 Steven Gilbert -- a former Health Canada researcher who
                 continues to collaborate on studies involving the Ottawa
                 monkeys from his current post as president Biosupport
                 Inc. in Redmond, Washington -- says the colony "has made
                 an unbelievable contribution to understanding the effects
                 of lead, mercury, caffeine" and other substances.

                 But he acknowledged that unlike some American colonies
                 which can be housed year-round in outdoor pens, bitter
                 Ottawa winters mean the monkeys must be kept inside in
                 more expensive surroundings.

                 In the States there are seven major research colonies,
                 all attached to universities but largely funded by the
                 U.S. government. Monkeys in the U.S. are used mostly for
                 AIDS research.

                 Significantly, says Mr. Leiss, two of the five Royal
                 Society panelists who will examine the local colony's
                 future -- philosophy professor Conrad Brunk from the
                 University of Waterloo and professor of applied ethics
                 Michael McDonald from the University of British Columbia
                 -- are not scientists.

                 "I think it suggests that some of the ethical issues
                 involved in animal research are part of the agenda," says
                 Mr. Brunk, named chairman of the panel. "I don't think
                 you want only scientists involved when some of the issues
                 could be political and ethical."

                 Others on the panel are: Dr. Albert Clark, a biochemistry
                 professor at Queen's University and director of research
                 at the Kingston General Hospital; Dr. Andrew Hendrickx,
                 director of the California Regional Primate Research
                 Center; and Dr. Michel Klein, vice-president of research
                 at vaccine manufacturer Pasteur MÄrieux Connaught Canada
                 in Toronto.

                 Three years ago there were 1,200 monkeys in the Health
                 Canada colony but some were sold to private companies or
                 universities. Monkeys sell for between $1,000 and $4,000,
                 depending on their state of maturity, and monkeys in
                 their reproductive prime are the most expensive. (Health
                 Canada has some 8,000 research animals, mostly mice and
                 rats, down from 25,000 a few years ago. They are all at
                 Tunney's Pasture).

                 Monkey research is declining everywhere, noted Thibert,
                 largely because of the expense of keeping the animals and
                 because scientists have grown tired of criticism from
                 animal rights activists.

                 One of those activists, Stephanie Brown of the Canadian
                 Federation of Humane Societies, was recently part of a
                 Health Canada committee that examined the entire Animal
                 Resources Division. She says she's concerned that the
                 Royal Society -- rather than a multi-stakeholder group
                 including animal welfare activists -- was asked for
                 specific recommendations on the colony's future.

                 "I fear that there are no animal protectionists (on the
                 panel)," said Ms. Brown, who has called for the closure
                 of the colony in the past and recently urged that a
                 jungle-like "sanctuary" be created for older monkeys that
                 have "given their due" to medical research and deserve at
                 least as much compassion as "an old horse being put out
                 to pasture."

                 Ms. Brown conducted inspections of the monkey colony in
                 the past and once criticized cages as too sterile,
                 crowded and boring. She says the colony's living
                 conditions have improved since a move to larger pens and
                 "group housing" arrangements in which the monkeys appear
                 more relaxed and "breed like crazy."

                 But the changes haven't altered the federation's basic
                 view that monkeys shouldn't be used for scientific
                 research. "If a lot of the research is ending at Health
                 Canada, then there's even less reason to keep the
                 colony."

                 The report from the Royal Society panel, expected by
                 November, will cost about $70,000 and be made public. It
                 will not be binding on Health Canada.

                 "Our role is to determine the most preferable option,"
                 said Mr. Leiss, "and although it isn't binding, I expect
                 Health Canada to take it very seriously."

                 The Royal Society is also inviting submissions from the
                 public to its Expert Panel on the Primate Colony at fax
                 number 613-991-6996 or mailing address 225 Metcalfe St.,
                 Suite 308, Ottawa, Ont. K2P 1P9.

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                         Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK

                             Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen


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