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- Forwarded at the request of Robert Nixon:
-
- Blackie, a five year old, 40 lb. Lab-mix had been kept under a house at the
- end of a 4 ft. leash all her life. Neighborhood kids would throw rocks and
- sticks at her almost every day. When she was discovered last February, her
- two front paws were frozen to the ground. Blackie, although her genetics
- would dictate a pleasant disposition, is not sociable - understandable
- because of her background. She goes after other animals and doesn't like
- kids. While she at first will not accept adults, once she learns they
- won't abuse her, she warms up like any dog would and becomes a wonderfully
- sweet companion.
-
- The woman who rescued her has two dogs and two cats. Her landlord has
- ordered Blackie out or she'll evict.
-
- Blackie needs a home with adults who have no animals. While she does not
- care for children, chances are she would learn to accept them as she now
- does adults, but it might take time due to the abuse she's suffered.
-
- Blackie is spayed, housebroken, and is getting intensive professional
- behavior training which should help her disposition. She is a sweet little
- dog who shouldn't have to die because some morons abused her.
-
- Anyone interested please call 708-258-6176. Please understand we will do a
- thorough check. As most animal people know, bunchers are lurking
- everywhere ready to snap dogs up to sell to research. Also, we will take
- Blackie back if things don't work out.
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 17:55:50 +0800 (SST)
- From: Vadivu Govind <kuma@cyberway.com.sg>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: (IN) Spotted deer `done to death'
- Message-ID: <199707230955.RAA29404@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
- >The Hindu Online
- Spotted deer `done to death'
- Date: 23-07-1997 :: Pg: 03 :: Col: d
- By Our Staff Reporter
- CHENNAI, July 22.
-
- A female spotted deer which strayed into the built up area of
- Perungalathur, was chased by a group of people and despite efforts to
- protect it, the annual was ultimately done to death.
-
- According to Ms. Mita Banerjee, Wildlife Warden, Chennai, a casual
- labourer working in the Children's Park, Guindy, saw a group of people
- chasing the deer at Perungalathur on Monday. The group also inflicted
- injuries on the animal. On seeing this, the casual labourer caught the deer,
- tied its legs with a rope and safely lodged it in a house in the same area.
- The worker came to the Children's Park, Guindy, to take the officials to
- the spot.
-
- When the officials reached the scene, they learnt that the animal had been
- `taken away'. Enquiries with the residents revealed that the group had
- returned and taken away the animal in an autorickshaw. After a few hours
- `deer meat' was supplied to some of the residents by the group.
-
- The officials were on the lookout for the people who killed the animal, Ms.
- Mita Banerjee said.
-
-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 07:58:07 -0400
- From: allen schubert <alathome@clark.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: (US) Meat Inspection Law Criticized
- Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970723075803.006d2710@clark.net>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
- from AP Wire page:
- ------------------------------------
- 07/23/1997 01:52 EST
-
- Meat Inspection Law Criticized
-
- By KATHERINE RIZZO
- Associated Press Writer
-
- WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iowa meat processors can sell emu steaks or alligator
- ribs across state lines, but not their beef.
-
- The reason: All of that state's meatpacking plants have chosen to be
- inspected by Iowa, not the U.S. Agriculture Department.
-
- It's a contradiction that a lot of other states want the federal
- government to do away with so that processors can sell beef, pork and
- chicken wherever they can find customers.
-
- ``There is absolutely no rationale, equality, fairness or reason to hang
- onto this law,'' Iowa Agriculture Secretary Dale Cochran told federal
- regulators Tuesday.
-
- Under current law, only meat inspected under federal eye can be shipped
- from state to state.
-
- Twenty-six states do their own meat inspections, accounting for about 7
- percent of U.S. meat and poultry production. For plants in those states,
- the products must remain in that state, even though state inspection
- programs are set up with USDA approval, must be equal or better than
- USDA's program and are partially financed by USDA.
-
- It's a meaty issue under debate on several fronts, with small processors
- and state governments pitted against large producers and consumer
- activists. The controversy has USDA reconsidering the rule, Congress
- proposing bills to repeal it, and a court case filed by Ohio contending
- its industry has been fouled by a bias against plants that choose cheaper
- state inspections rather than federal.
-
- Further complicating things, Uncle Sam allows barrier-free distribution
- of meat from Mexico, Canada and 32 other countries as long as it has been
- inspected according to standards at least equal to USDA requirements.
-
- Michael Weaver, who is about to open a new, federally inspected beef
- jerky plant in Painesville, Ohio, said, ``The foreign trade exposes it in
- black and white.
-
- ``This ban on interstate shipment of meat and meat products discriminates
- against tax-paying Americans in their own country,'' he said.
-
- Weaver urged the regulators to give his state-inspected colleagues the
- same sales opportunities as foreign meat producers.
-
- But Oklahoma meat processor, Jerry Gisinger, contended states ``cannot
- provide the proper degree of protection for the people.''
-
- ``The state program is driven by politics and expedience,'' he told USDA
- officials at a public meeting. ``I could get relief through political
- interference.''
-
- That was met with varying degrees of hostility by some state officials
- who have been trying to convince Washington that their inspections are
- thorough, safe and reliable.
-
- ``We put people in jail for those sorts of things,'' huffed Ohio
- Agriculture Director Fred Daily.
-
- ``What you're saying is not true,'' said Louisiana Agriculture
- Commissioner Bob Odom. ``That's a disgrace to your industry. How can you
- say we let kids eat thousands of pounds of state-inspected meat when you
- say it's unsafe?''
-
- An Illinois woman whose 6-year-old son died after eating a tainted
- hamburger scolded the advocates.
-
- ``There's a lot of whining that's going on in here,'' said Nancy Donley
- of the consumer group Safe Tables Our Priority. ``There is nothing
- stopping any of you or any of your constituents from shipping interstate.
- Just do what is expected, follow the rules and you can do it.''
-
- USDA is accepting comments on the issue through Aug. 22.
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:08:46 -0400
- From: allen schubert <alathome@clark.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: (US) This Dog Is on a Roll
- Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970723080844.006d2564@clark.net>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
-
-
- (PETA in the news)
- from Washingtonpost.com:
- ------------------------------------------------
-
- This Dog Is on a Roll
-
- In Food Fight, It's Wienermobile and Fans Over
- Animal Rights Activists
-
- By Karl Vick
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Wednesday, July 23, 1997; Page A01
- The Washington Post
-
- DUNDALK, Md., July 22ùWhatever headway it may
- or may not have made on behalf of the world's
- rabbits, pigs and kangaroos, People for the
- Ethical Treatment of Animals has reigned as a
- grandmaster of contemporary public protest.
-
- Or rather, it did until 9:05 a.m. today, when
- the animal rights PR juggernaut ran head-on
- into the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile on a
- supermarket parking lot here. And ended up
- looking like road kill.
-
- The Wienermobile stands 27 feet long, runs on
- six cylinders and seats four. It is at once the
- symbol of Oscar Mayer hot dogs and an American
- icon. Inherently cheerful and hilariously
- designed and redesigned over the years (the
- late Brooks Stevens, who also designed
- Harley-Davidson motorcycles, added the buns in
- 1958), the Wienermobile is widely regarded as
- pretty wonderful.
-
- "It is," conceded PETA spokesman Bruce
- Friedrich. "It is very, very fun.
-
- "Which is why it's so invidious. It's selling
- the idea that eating hot dogs is fun. When, in
- fact, it is a violent, bloody business, and it
- has got to stop."
-
- Driven by this moral certainty, the group has
- dogged the Wienermobile all summer, clearing
- the decks for a series of clashes between two
- titans of public relations. "You know there are
- 10 of them," Friedrich said, meaning
- Wienermobiles. "And there are more than 400
- stops nationwide." PETA has marshaled resources
- sufficient to target 50 stops, including the
- one in a parking lot outside the Giant Food
- store on Merritt Boulevard in this blue-collar
- Baltimore suburb.
-
- "Vegetarians Attack Wienermobile," read the
- headline on the news release PETA issued in
- advance. In smaller type: "Company Uses
- Children to Promote Cruelty to Pigs."
-
- The children began arriving before 9 a.m., tots
- clutching motherly hands and climbing under the
- rope of colored flags tied around overturned
- shopping carts. They had come to sing the
- "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" or the "Bologna
- Song" (their choice) in front of a video
- camera, as they were invited to do by
- commercials and print ads during the last two
- weeks.
-
- Touring the country on a "talent search" for
- cute children to star in commercials is the
- Wienermobile's regular summer assignment.
- (Winters are spent on goodwill tours and sports
- events; a Wienermobile was the pace car in the
- Glenn Brenner 5K Run two years ago.)
-
- "Who wants to practice?" asked Mike Ballog, one
- of three all-American types in Oscar Mayer
- T-shirts who travel in the Wienermobile. A
- little boy hopped and clapped. "I do!" he said.
-
- Another boy stood at the microphone with his
- cap on backward. He was about to start singing
- when the chanting started.
-
- "Cruelty we won't tolerate! Get the slaughter
- off the plate!"
-
- The sound began beyond the minivans. Four
- people were marching toward the assembled
- children. Each carried a sign: "Did your food
- have a face?" One was dressed in a pig suit.
-
- "Oscar Mayer is to blame! Exploiting children
- is a shame!"
-
- The children froze. Several stared at the
- ground. The boy at the microphone began to
- sing, but his words were drowned out. Two of
- the PETA people had bullhorns.
-
- They marched up to the rope. Inside it, adults
- began to fume.
-
- "Oh, that makes me so mad!" Angel Brown
- informed the mother next to her. "They're doing
- more harm to these kids than any hot dog
- could." She looked down at her daughter, Emily,
- 4. "Emily, don't listen to this, okay?" she
- said.
-
- Emily did not seem to know what was going on.
- She asked her mother what "slaughter" means.
- Nearby, another little girl wanted to know why
- adults get to be so loud.
-
- Brown, meanwhile, worked her way toward the
- protesters. She pointed at their feet. "Wait,
- wait!" she cried. "I do see leather shoes!"
- Brown clearly knew how to hurt an animal-rights
- activist.
-
- "I'm a vegetarian," she explained. "Have been
- for 18 years. I don't eat meat or meat
- byproducts."
-
- Emily does, though. "I've got no choice but to
- feed her meat, for health reasons," Brown said.
- "Little kids need some meat. She can't take a
- protein supplement."
-
- The protesters backed away a bit. And though
- the chants stayed angry ("Stop the torture!
- Stop the pain! Oscar Mayer is to blame!"), the
- chanters began to look a little uncertain
- themselves. The three television cameras that
- had arrived with them were now focused on the
- stricken faces of small children caught in some
- strange adult cross-fire.
-
- The coverage, which PETA solicited, is a PETA
- specialty. In an era in which conventional
- tactics of confrontation have faded well beyond
- blase -- homeowners associations march,
- schoolchildren picket; assignment editors yawn
- -- PETA always has found some new bit of street
- theater to lure the cameras.
-
- One Thanksgiving, while the president was
- inside offering the traditional pardon to a
- turkey contributed by the poultry industry,
- PETA found a tom that had been so zealously
- bred for breast meat that it could not stand.
- It was set in a wheelchair outside the White
- House gate.
-
- It was a classic PETA event, combining cartoon
- comedy and guerrilla tactics with a jaunty
- flair calculated to overwhelm everything except
- the group's point. On July 10, Laurel resident
- Paul Martin climbed a billboard in San Antonio
- with a mock meat hook protruding from his
- abdomen. "Hooked on Meat?" read the 50-foot
- banner from which he dangled. "Go Vegetarian."
-
- With the Wienermobile, however, the group
- clearly bit off more than it could chew. The
- backfire wasn't as bad as when PETA tried to
- take out ads invoking cannibalistic serial
- killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but there was clearly a
- miscalculation.
-
- "People really love the Wienermobile," Ballog
- said. Wienermobile workers -- "hotdoggers" --
- see this constantly on the road, where the
- vehicle travels through a sea of smiles and
- happy toots. "It's like being in a parade all
- the time," says hotdogger Toby Jenkins.
-
- But it's when the Wienermobile is stationary
- that the affection really gushes in. Parked,
- the Wienermobile fairly floats on a reservoir
- of goodwill that's been accumulating for
- generations. Toddlers too young to have learned
- the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" from TV stare
- up at baby boomer parents who could not forget
- it if they tried.
-
- Folks in their seventies walk up with Wiener
- Whistles from their childhood, then ask about
- Little Oscar, who drove the Wienermobile for
- years. Now in his eighties, Little Oscar "talks
- about it like it was yesterday," Ballog says.
-
- In fairness, not even Oscar Mayer began to
- fathom what it had in the Wienermobile until
- 1986, when, to celebrate its 50th birthday, the
- company sent what was then the only surviving
- vehicle on a farewell tour. Wienermobile
- manager Russ Whitacre said the outpouring
- persuaded executives of the vehicle's emotional
- power, a power that was still not evident to
- everyone in the Giant parking lot today.
-
- After the protesters finally drifted away and a
- new crowd of children was assembling, Peggy
- Nemoff walked up.
-
- "I'm the pig," Nemoff said, now in street
- clothes. Her T-shirt read "Animal Liberation is
- Human Liberation." "The parents were mad at
- us?" she said. "Why?"
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:08:46 -0400
- From: allen schubert <alathome@clark.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: (US) This Dog Is on a Roll
- Message-ID: <199707231216.IAA21995@envirolink.org>
-
-
- (PETA in the news)
- from Washingtonpost.com:
- ------------------------------------------------
-
- This Dog Is on a Roll
-
- In Food Fight, It's Wienermobile and Fans Over
- Animal Rights Activists
-
- By Karl Vick
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Wednesday, July 23, 1997; Page A01
- The Washington Post
-
- DUNDALK, Md., July 22=97Whatever headway it may
- or may not have made on behalf of the world's
- rabbits, pigs and kangaroos, People for the
- Ethical Treatment of Animals has reigned as a
- grandmaster of contemporary public protest.
-
- Or rather, it did until 9:05 a.m. today, when
- the animal rights PR juggernaut ran head-on
- into the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile on a
- supermarket parking lot here. And ended up
- looking like road kill.
-
- The Wienermobile stands 27 feet long, runs on
- six cylinders and seats four. It is at once the
- symbol of Oscar Mayer hot dogs and an American
- icon. Inherently cheerful and hilariously
- designed and redesigned over the years (the
- late Brooks Stevens, who also designed
- Harley-Davidson motorcycles, added the buns in
- 1958), the Wienermobile is widely regarded as
- pretty wonderful.
-
- "It is," conceded PETA spokesman Bruce
- Friedrich. "It is very, very fun.
-
- "Which is why it's so invidious. It's selling
- the idea that eating hot dogs is fun. When, in
- fact, it is a violent, bloody business, and it
- has got to stop."
-
- Driven by this moral certainty, the group has
- dogged the Wienermobile all summer, clearing
- the decks for a series of clashes between two
- titans of public relations. "You know there are
- 10 of them," Friedrich said, meaning
- Wienermobiles. "And there are more than 400
- stops nationwide." PETA has marshaled resources
- sufficient to target 50 stops, including the
- one in a parking lot outside the Giant Food
- store on Merritt Boulevard in this blue-collar
- Baltimore suburb.
-
- "Vegetarians Attack Wienermobile," read the
- headline on the news release PETA issued in
- advance. In smaller type: "Company Uses
- Children to Promote Cruelty to Pigs."
-
- The children began arriving before 9 a.m., tots
- clutching motherly hands and climbing under the
- rope of colored flags tied around overturned
- shopping carts. They had come to sing the
- "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" or the "Bologna
- Song" (their choice) in front of a video
- camera, as they were invited to do by
- commercials and print ads during the last two
- weeks.
-
- Touring the country on a "talent search" for
- cute children to star in commercials is the
- Wienermobile's regular summer assignment.
- (Winters are spent on goodwill tours and sports
- events; a Wienermobile was the pace car in the
- Glenn Brenner 5K Run two years ago.)
-
- "Who wants to practice?" asked Mike Ballog, one
- of three all-American types in Oscar Mayer
- T-shirts who travel in the Wienermobile. A
- little boy hopped and clapped. "I do!" he said.
-
- Another boy stood at the microphone with his
- cap on backward. He was about to start singing
- when the chanting started.
-
- "Cruelty we won't tolerate! Get the slaughter
- off the plate!"
-
- The sound began beyond the minivans. Four
- people were marching toward the assembled
- children. Each carried a sign: "Did your food
- have a face?" One was dressed in a pig suit.
-
- "Oscar Mayer is to blame! Exploiting children
- is a shame!"
-
- The children froze. Several stared at the
- ground. The boy at the microphone began to
- sing, but his words were drowned out. Two of
- the PETA people had bullhorns.
-
- They marched up to the rope. Inside it, adults
- began to fume.
-
- "Oh, that makes me so mad!" Angel Brown
- informed the mother next to her. "They're doing
- more harm to these kids than any hot dog
- could." She looked down at her daughter, Emily,
- 4. "Emily, don't listen to this, okay?" she
- said.
-
- Emily did not seem to know what was going on.
- She asked her mother what "slaughter" means.
- Nearby, another little girl wanted to know why
- adults get to be so loud.
-
- Brown, meanwhile, worked her way toward the
- protesters. She pointed at their feet. "Wait,
- wait!" she cried. "I do see leather shoes!"
- Brown clearly knew how to hurt an animal-rights
- activist.
-
- "I'm a vegetarian," she explained. "Have been
- for 18 years. I don't eat meat or meat
- byproducts."
-
- Emily does, though. "I've got no choice but to
- feed her meat, for health reasons," Brown said.
- "Little kids need some meat. She can't take a
- protein supplement."
-
- The protesters backed away a bit. And though
- the chants stayed angry ("Stop the torture!
- Stop the pain! Oscar Mayer is to blame!"), the
- chanters began to look a little uncertain
- themselves. The three television cameras that
- had arrived with them were now focused on the
- stricken faces of small children caught in some
- strange adult cross-fire.
-
- The coverage, which PETA solicited, is a PETA
- specialty. In an era in which conventional
- tactics of confrontation have faded well beyond
- blase -- homeowners associations march,
- schoolchildren picket; assignment editors yawn
- -- PETA always has found some new bit of street
- theater to lure the cameras.
-
- One Thanksgiving, while the president was
- inside offering the traditional pardon to a
- turkey contributed by the poultry industry,
- PETA found a tom that had been so zealously
- bred for breast meat that it could not stand.
- It was set in a wheelchair outside the White
- House gate.
-
- It was a classic PETA event, combining cartoon
- comedy and guerrilla tactics with a jaunty
- flair calculated to overwhelm everything except
- the group's point. On July 10, Laurel resident
- Paul Martin climbed a billboard in San Antonio
- with a mock meat hook protruding from his
- abdomen. "Hooked on Meat?" read the 50-foot
- banner from which he dangled. "Go Vegetarian."
-
- With the Wienermobile, however, the group
- clearly bit off more than it could chew. The
- backfire wasn't as bad as when PETA tried to
- take out ads invoking cannibalistic serial
- killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but there was clearly a
- miscalculation.
-
- "People really love the Wienermobile," Ballog
- said. Wienermobile workers -- "hotdoggers" --
- see this constantly on the road, where the
- vehicle travels through a sea of smiles and
- happy toots. "It's like being in a parade all
- the time," says hotdogger Toby Jenkins.
-
- But it's when the Wienermobile is stationary
- that the affection really gushes in. Parked,
- the Wienermobile fairly floats on a reservoir
- of goodwill that's been accumulating for
- generations. Toddlers too young to have learned
- the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" from TV stare
- up at baby boomer parents who could not forget
- it if they tried.
-
- Folks in their seventies walk up with Wiener
- Whistles from their childhood, then ask about
- Little Oscar, who drove the Wienermobile for
- years. Now in his eighties, Little Oscar "talks
- about it like it was yesterday," Ballog says.
-
- In fairness, not even Oscar Mayer began to
- fathom what it had in the Wienermobile until
- 1986, when, to celebrate its 50th birthday, the
- company sent what was then the only surviving
- vehicle on a farewell tour. Wienermobile
- manager Russ Whitacre said the outpouring
- persuaded executives of the vehicle's emotional
- power, a power that was still not evident to
- everyone in the Giant parking lot today.
-
- After the protesters finally drifted away and a
- new crowd of children was assembling, Peggy
- Nemoff walked up.
-
- "I'm the pig," Nemoff said, now in street
- clothes. Her T-shirt read "Animal Liberation is
- Human Liberation." "The parents were mad at
- us?" she said. "Why?"
-
- (US) This Dog Is on a Roll
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:28:30 -0400
- From: allen schubert <alathome@clark.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: RFI: (US) Little Rock Zoo
- Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970723082828.006f6504@clark.net>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
- Request for Information (and any help)
- posted for--and send replies to: Cassondra cfarinho@cisco.com
- -------------------------------------------
- This is a letter I sent to the director of the Little Rock Zoo after a
- recent visit. I was seriously distraught at the conditions the animals
- were enduring. PLEASE HELP!!
-
- c/o Zoo DirectorJuly 22, 1997
- Little Rock Zoo
- Fair Park Blvd.
- Little Rock, AR 72211
-
- Dear Sir/Madam:
-
- I recently visited your zoo on Thursday July 17, 1997 and I cannot
- express to you how upset I was when I left your facility. I have
- traveled the world over, and have been in many zoos abroad and in the
- US, and I have never seen one that was as poor as yours.
-
- The overall atmosphere, in general, is dingy and unkempt but by far
- worse are the conditions of the animal pens. Not only are they
- aesthetically unpleasing, they certainly cannot possibly simulate the
- animals natural habitats. I can honestly say to you that I was near
- tears several times during my visit. To begin with, the day was
- extremely hot which seems to be par for the course in your region of the
- states. Several of the animals were out in the open sun with little
- shade if any. One prime example are the zebras. Their landscape was
- nothing but dirt and rocks and a lone tree for shade. There was not a
- hint of grass to be seen.
-
- Moreover the bears displays were comparably desolate. In the pit where
- water could be readily available for them to cool themselves there was
- none. You could actually feel their misery in their small concrete
- "homes". There is a plaque near the gorilla display that states that
- the habitats are created to simulate the animalsÆ natural land. This is
- the biggest joke IÆve ever heard. IF, and I mean IF, there was a patch
- of green in an animals pen, it was a bunch of native (to Arkansas that
- is) weeds!! Not to mention the disgusting pool of algae and slime that
- resides in the middle of the gorillas cage. I pray that is not their
- only source of drinking water!!
-
- By far the most depressing display though were the catsÆ cages. An
- animal that is used to running wild in an open plain had barely enough
- room to take two steps before it reaches the other side of its cage. The
- lions pen was by far the worst.
-
- The conditions for these animals are UNACCEPTABLE. There is no possible
- way that your facility at this time is providing the proper physical as
- well as mental stimulation for these animals. I am aware that your
- facility may not have the funding of the larger more known zoos, but if
- you canÆt afford to give the animals the proper habitats to assure a
- healthy life, then you should not be open for business.
-
- I am also writing letters to several animal protection agencies to make
- them aware of the issues. I am not writing this letter to be a trouble
- maker for your business, but from what I witnessed, I am concerned
- enough to care. I hope you are too and will take my feedback seriously.
-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:28:30 -0400
- From: allen schubert <alathome@clark.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: RFI: (US) Little Rock Zoo
- Message-ID: <199707231230.IAA23185@envirolink.org>
-
-
- Request for Information (and any help)
- posted for--and send replies to: Cassondra cfarinho@cisco.com
- -------------------------------------------
- This is a letter I sent to the director of the Little Rock Zoo after a
- recent visit. I was seriously distraught at the conditions the animals
- were enduring. PLEASE HELP!!
-
- c/o Zoo Director July 22, 1997
- Little Rock Zoo
- Fair Park Blvd.
- Little Rock, AR 72211
-
- Dear Sir/Madam:
-
- I recently visited your zoo on Thursday July 17, 1997 and I cannot
- express to you how upset I was when I left your facility. I have
- traveled the world over, and have been in many zoos abroad and in the
- US, and I have never seen one that was as poor as yours.=20
-
- The overall atmosphere, in general, is dingy and unkempt but by far
- worse are the conditions of the animal pens. Not only are they
- aesthetically unpleasing, they certainly cannot possibly simulate the
- animals natural habitats. I can honestly say to you that I was near
- tears several times during my visit. To begin with, the day was
- extremely hot which seems to be par for the course in your region of the
- states. Several of the animals were out in the open sun with little
- shade if any. One prime example are the zebras. Their landscape was
- nothing but dirt and rocks and a lone tree for shade. There was not a
- hint of grass to be seen.
-
- Moreover the bears displays were comparably desolate. In the pit where
- water could be readily available for them to cool themselves there was
- none. You could actually feel their misery in their small concrete
- "homes". There is a plaque near the gorilla display that states that
- the habitats are created to simulate the animals=92 natural land. This is
- the biggest joke I=92ve ever heard. IF, and I mean IF, there was a patch
- of green in an animals pen, it was a bunch of native (to Arkansas that
- is) weeds!! Not to mention the disgusting pool of algae and slime that
- resides in the middle of the gorillas cage. I pray that is not their
- only source of drinking water!!
-
- By far the most depressing display though were the cats=92 cages. An
- animal that is used to running wild in an open plain had barely enough
- room to take two steps before it reaches the other side of its cage. The
- lions pen was by far the worst.
-
- The conditions for these animals are UNACCEPTABLE. There is no possible
- way that your facility at this time is providing the proper physical as
- well as mental stimulation for these animals. I am aware that your
- facility may not have the funding of the larger more known zoos, but if
- you can=92t afford to give the animals the proper habitats to assure a
- healthy life, then you should not be open for business.
-
- I am also writing letters to several animal protection agencies to make
- them aware of the issues. I am not writing this letter to be a trouble
- maker for your business, but from what I witnessed, I am concerned
- enough to care. I hope you are too and will take my feedback seriously.
-
-
- RFI: (US) Little Rock Zoo
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:08:28 -0400
- From: Patrick Nolan <pnolan@animalwelfare.com>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: USFWS news realease
- Message-ID: <33D6105C.AC6317A8@animalwelfare.com>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
- Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
-
- *************************************************
- * Note: the following is forwarded from the FWS-news listserv. *
- * I was intrigued by the phrase "safe and ethical hunting." Huh? *
- *************************************************
-
- For release July 18, 1997 Hugh Vickery 202-208-1456
-
- OLYMPIC CHAMPION KIM RHODE TOUTS HUNTER
- SAFETY IN PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
-
- "Hunting safety isn't inherited . . . you have to teach it," Olympic
- Gold
- Medalist Kim Rhode says in a new television public service announcement
- produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that will begin airing
- across the country this fall.
-
- The PSA is the fourth in a series produced by the Service in cooperation
-
- with state wildlife agencies to promote safe and ethical hunting. Past
- spots have not only encouraged parents and older hunters to teach
- children
- the basics of hunting safety but also to be considerate of landowners
- and
- obey other ethical guidelines.
-
- Rhode, who won the International Double Trap competition at the 1996
- Games
- in Atlanta, appears with her mother in 30-second, 20-second, and
- 15-second
- spots. She credits her parents with teaching her hunting safety when
- they
- took her hunting as a little girl.
-
- "They not only helped me become a good shot, they taught me the most
- important lesson of all -- how to hunt safely," Rhode says in the spot.
- "Not everyone will grow up to be an Olympic champion, but everyone can
- learn to be a safe and ethical hunter. It's up to you."
-
- At the end of the spot, viewers are given the telephone number for the
- hunter education program in their state. State wildlife agencies are
- assisting in the distribution of the spots.
-
- "We are delighted to have someone of the stature of Kim Rhode
- participate
- in this campaign," said Service Acting Director John Rogers. "She
- epitomizes the best traditions of hunting."
-
- "The entire campaign has been a great success because safety is a
- message
- you can't repeat too often," Rogers said, noting that in the past as
- many
- as 80 percent of the stations that receive the spots have decided to air
-
- them. "The television stations that air these spots know they are
- engaged
- in a meaningful public service."
-
- The spots were produced with funds under the Federal Aid in Wildlife
- Restoration program, financed by a federal excise tax on firearms,
- ammunition and archery equipment and administered by the Service.
- -FWS-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:15:05 -0400
- From: Patrick Nolan <pnolan@animalwelfare.com>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: fun with PETAbashing
- Message-ID: <33D611E9.9C822248@animalwelfare.com>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
-
-
- 'Hot Dog' Wins a Food Fight
-
- By Karl Vick
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Wednesday, July 23, 1997; Page A01
-
- DUNDALK, Md., July 22 ù Whatever headway it may or
- may not have made on behalf of the world's rabbits, pigs and
- kangaroos, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has
- reigned as a grandmaster of contemporary public protest.
-
- Or rather, it did until 9:05 a.m. today, when the animal rights
- PR juggernaut ran head-on into the Oscar Mayer
- Wienermobile on a supermarket parking lot here. And ended
- up looking like road kill.
-
- The Wienermobile stands 27 feet long, runs on six cylinders
- and seats four. It is at once the symbol of Oscar Mayer hot
- dogs and an American icon. Inherently cheerful, hilariously
- designed (by the late Brooks Stevens, who also designed
- Harley-Davidson motorcycles), the Wienermobile is widely
- regarded as pretty wonderful.
-
- "It is," conceded PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich. "It is very,
- very fun.
-
- "Which is why it's so invidious. It's selling the idea that eating
- hot dogs is fun. When, in fact, it is a violent, bloody business,
- and it has got to stop."
-
- Driven by this moral certainty, the group has dogged the
- Wienermobile all summer, clearing the decks for a series of
- clashes between two titans of public relations. "You know
- there are ten of them," Friedrich said, meaning Wienermobiles.
- "And there are more than 400 stops nationwide." PETA has
- marshaled resources sufficient to target 50 stops, including the
- one in a parking lot outside the Giant Food store on Merritt
- Boulevard in this blue-collar Baltimore suburb.
-
- "Vegetarians Attack Wiener mobile," read the headline on the
- news release PETA issued in advance. In smaller type:
- "Company Uses Children to Promote Cruelty to Pigs."
-
- The children began arriving before 9 a.m., tots clutching
- motherly hands and climbing under the rope of colored flags
- tied around overturned shopping carts. They had come to sing
- the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" or the "Bologna Song" (their
- choice) in front of a video camera, as they were invited to do
- by commercials and print ads during the last two weeks.
-
- Touring the country on a "talent search" for cute kids to star in
- commercials is the Wienermobile's regular summer assignment.
- (Winters are spent on goodwill tours and sports events; a
- Wienermobile was the pace car in the Glenn Brenner 5K Run
- two years ago.)
-
- "Who wants to practice?" asked Mike Ballog, one of three
- all-American types in Oscar Mayer T-shirts who travel in the
- Wienermobile. A little boy hopped and clapped. "I do!" he
- said.
-
- Another boy stood at the microphone with his cap on
- backward. He was about to start singing when the chanting
- started.
-
- "Cruelty we won't tolerate! Get the slaughter off the plate!"
-
- The sound began beyond the minivans. Four people were
- marching toward the assembled kids. Each carried a sign: "Did
- your food have a face?" One was dressed in a pig suit.
-
- "Oscar Mayer is to blame! Exploiting children is a shame!"
-
- The kids froze. Several stared at the ground. The boy at the
- microphone began to sing, but his words were drowned out.
- Two of the PETA people had bullhorns.
-
- They marched up to the rope. Inside it, adults began to fume.
-
- "Oh, that makes me so mad!" Angel Brown informed the
- mother next to her. "They're doing more harm to these kids
- than any hot dog could."
-
- She looked down at her daughter, Emily, 4. "Emily, don't listen
- to this, okay?" she said.
-
- Emily did not seem to know what was going on. She asked her
- mother what "slaughter" means. Nearby, another little girl
- wanted to know why adults get to be so loud.
-
- Brown, meanwhile, worked her way toward the protesters.
- She pointed at their feet. "Wait, wait!" she cried. "I do see
- leather shoes!" Brown clearly knew how to hurt an
- animal-rights protester.
-
- "I'm a vegetarian," she explained. "Have been for 18 years. I
- don't eat meat or meat byproducts."
-
- Emily does, though. "I've got no choice but to feed her meat,
- for health reasons," Brown said. "Little kids need some meat.
- She can't take a protein supplement."
-
- The protesters backed away a bit. And though the chants
- stayed angry ("Stop the torture! Stop the pain! Oscar Mayer is
- to blame!"), the chanters began to look a little uncertain
- themselves. The three television cameras that had arrived with
- them were now focused on the stricken faces of small children
- caught in some strange adult cross-fire.
-
- The coverage, which PETA solicited, is a PETA specialty. In
- an era in which conventional tactics of confrontation have faded
- well beyond blase ù homeowners associations march,
- schoolchildren picket; assignment editors yawn ù PETA
- always has found some new bit of street theater to lure the
- cameras.
-
- One Thanksgiving, while the president was inside offering the
- traditional pardon to a turkey contributed by the poultry
- industry, PETA found a tom that had been so zealously bred
- for breast meat that it could not stand. It was set in a
- wheelchair outside the White House gate.
-
- It was a classic PETA event, combining cartoon comedy and
- guerrilla tactics with a jaunty flair calculated to overwhelm
- everything except the group's point. On July 10, Laurel resident
- Paul Martin climbed a billboard in San Antonio with a mock
- meat hook protruding from his abdomen. "Hooked on Meat?"
- read the 50-foot banner from which he dangled. "Go
- Vegetarian."
-
- With the Wienermobile, however, the group clearly bit off
- more than it could chew. The backfire wasn't as bad as when
- PETA tried to take out ads invoking cannibalistic serial killer
- Jeffrey Dahmer, but there was clearly a miscalculation.
-
- "People really love the Wienermobile," Ballog said. Wiener
- mobile workers ù "hotdoggers" ù see this constantly on the
- road, where the vehicle travels through a sea of smiles and
- happy toots. "It's like being in a parade all the time," says
- hotdogger Toby Jenkins.
-
- But it's when stationary that the affection really gushes in.
- Parked, the Wienermobile fairly floats on a reservoir of
- goodwill that's been accumulating for generations. Toddlers too
- young to have learned the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" from
- TV stare up at baby boomer parents who could not forget it if
- they tried.
-
- Folks in their seventies walk up with Wiener Whistles from
- their childhood, then ask about Little Oscar, who drove the
- Wiener mobile for years. Now in his eighties, Little Oscar
- "talks about it like it was yesterday," Ballog says.
-
- In fairness, not even Oscar Mayer began to fathom what it had
- in the Wienermobile until 1986, when, to celebrate its 50th
- birthday, the company sent what was then the only surviving
- vehicle on a farewell tour. Wienermobile manager Russ
- Whitacre said the outpouring persuaded executives of the
- vehicle's emotional power, a power that was still not evident to
- everyone in the Giant parking lot today.
-
- After the protesters finally drifted away and a new crowd of
- children was assembling, Peggy Nemoff walked up.
-
- "I'm the pig," Nemoff said, now in street clothes. Her T-shirt
- read "Animal Liberation is Human Liberation.""The parents
- were mad at us?" she said. "Why?"
-
- ⌐ Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:15:05 -0400
- From: Patrick Nolan <pnolan@animalwelfare.com>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: fun with PETAbashing
- Message-ID: <199707231423.KAA04319@envirolink.org>
-
-
- 'Hot Dog' Wins a Food Fight
-
- By Karl Vick
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Wednesday, July 23, 1997; Page A01
-
- DUNDALK, Md., July 22 =97 Whatever headway it may or
- may not have made on behalf of the world's rabbits, pigs and
- kangaroos, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has
- reigned as a grandmaster of contemporary public protest.
-
- Or rather, it did until 9:05 a.m. today, when the animal rights
- PR juggernaut ran head-on into the Oscar Mayer
- Wienermobile on a supermarket parking lot here. And ended
- up looking like road kill.
-
- The Wienermobile stands 27 feet long, runs on six cylinders
- and seats four. It is at once the symbol of Oscar Mayer hot
- dogs and an American icon. Inherently cheerful, hilariously
- designed (by the late Brooks Stevens, who also designed
- Harley-Davidson motorcycles), the Wienermobile is widely
- regarded as pretty wonderful.
-
- "It is," conceded PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich. "It is very,
- very fun.
-
- "Which is why it's so invidious. It's selling the idea that eating
- hot dogs is fun. When, in fact, it is a violent, bloody business,
- and it has got to stop."
-
- Driven by this moral certainty, the group has dogged the
- Wienermobile all summer, clearing the decks for a series of
- clashes between two titans of public relations. "You know
- there are ten of them," Friedrich said, meaning Wienermobiles.
- "And there are more than 400 stops nationwide." PETA has
- marshaled resources sufficient to target 50 stops, including the
- one in a parking lot outside the Giant Food store on Merritt
- Boulevard in this blue-collar Baltimore suburb.
-
- "Vegetarians Attack Wiener mobile," read the headline on the
- news release PETA issued in advance. In smaller type:
- "Company Uses Children to Promote Cruelty to Pigs."
-
- The children began arriving before 9 a.m., tots clutching
- motherly hands and climbing under the rope of colored flags
- tied around overturned shopping carts. They had come to sing
- the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" or the "Bologna Song" (their
- choice) in front of a video camera, as they were invited to do
- by commercials and print ads during the last two weeks.
-
- Touring the country on a "talent search" for cute kids to star in
- commercials is the Wienermobile's regular summer assignment.
- (Winters are spent on goodwill tours and sports events; a
- Wienermobile was the pace car in the Glenn Brenner 5K Run
- two years ago.)
-
- "Who wants to practice?" asked Mike Ballog, one of three
- all-American types in Oscar Mayer T-shirts who travel in the
- Wienermobile. A little boy hopped and clapped. "I do!" he
- said.
-
- Another boy stood at the microphone with his cap on
- backward. He was about to start singing when the chanting
- started.
-
- "Cruelty we won't tolerate! Get the slaughter off the plate!"
-
- The sound began beyond the minivans. Four people were
- marching toward the assembled kids. Each carried a sign: "Did
- your food have a face?" One was dressed in a pig suit.
-
- "Oscar Mayer is to blame! Exploiting children is a shame!"
-
- The kids froze. Several stared at the ground. The boy at the
- microphone began to sing, but his words were drowned out.
- Two of the PETA people had bullhorns.
-
- They marched up to the rope. Inside it, adults began to fume.
-
- "Oh, that makes me so mad!" Angel Brown informed the
- mother next to her. "They're doing more harm to these kids
- than any hot dog could."
-
- She looked down at her daughter, Emily, 4. "Emily, don't listen
- to this, okay?" she said.
-
- Emily did not seem to know what was going on. She asked her
- mother what "slaughter" means. Nearby, another little girl
- wanted to know why adults get to be so loud.
-
- Brown, meanwhile, worked her way toward the protesters.
- She pointed at their feet. "Wait, wait!" she cried. "I do see
- leather shoes!" Brown clearly knew how to hurt an
- animal-rights protester.
-
- "I'm a vegetarian," she explained. "Have been for 18 years. I
- don't eat meat or meat byproducts."
-
- Emily does, though. "I've got no choice but to feed her meat,
- for health reasons," Brown said. "Little kids need some meat.
- She can't take a protein supplement."
-
- The protesters backed away a bit. And though the chants
- stayed angry ("Stop the torture! Stop the pain! Oscar Mayer is
- to blame!"), the chanters began to look a little uncertain
- themselves. The three television cameras that had arrived with
- them were now focused on the stricken faces of small children
- caught in some strange adult cross-fire.
-
- The coverage, which PETA solicited, is a PETA specialty. In
- an era in which conventional tactics of confrontation have faded
- well beyond blase =97 homeowners associations march,
- schoolchildren picket; assignment editors yawn =97 PETA
- always has found some new bit of street theater to lure the
- cameras.
-
- One Thanksgiving, while the president was inside offering the
- traditional pardon to a turkey contributed by the poultry
- industry, PETA found a tom that had been so zealously bred
- for breast meat that it could not stand. It was set in a
- wheelchair outside the White House gate.
-
- It was a classic PETA event, combining cartoon comedy and
- guerrilla tactics with a jaunty flair calculated to overwhelm
- everything except the group's point. On July 10, Laurel resident
- Paul Martin climbed a billboard in San Antonio with a mock
- meat hook protruding from his abdomen. "Hooked on Meat?"
- read the 50-foot banner from which he dangled. "Go
- Vegetarian."
-
- With the Wienermobile, however, the group clearly bit off
- more than it could chew. The backfire wasn't as bad as when
- PETA tried to take out ads invoking cannibalistic serial killer
- Jeffrey Dahmer, but there was clearly a miscalculation.
-
- "People really love the Wienermobile," Ballog said. Wiener
- mobile workers =97 "hotdoggers" =97 see this constantly on the
- road, where the vehicle travels through a sea of smiles and
- happy toots. "It's like being in a parade all the time," says
- hotdogger Toby Jenkins.
-
- But it's when stationary that the affection really gushes in.
- Parked, the Wienermobile fairly floats on a reservoir of
- goodwill that's been accumulating for generations. Toddlers too
- young to have learned the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" from
- TV stare up at baby boomer parents who could not forget it if
- they tried.
-
- Folks in their seventies walk up with Wiener Whistles from
- their childhood, then ask about Little Oscar, who drove the
- Wiener mobile for years. Now in his eighties, Little Oscar
- "talks about it like it was yesterday," Ballog says.
-
- In fairness, not even Oscar Mayer began to fathom what it had
- in the Wienermobile until 1986, when, to celebrate its 50th
- birthday, the company sent what was then the only surviving
- vehicle on a farewell tour. Wienermobile manager Russ
- Whitacre said the outpouring persuaded executives of the
- vehicle's emotional power, a power that was still not evident to
- everyone in the Giant parking lot today.
-
- After the protesters finally drifted away and a new crowd of
- children was assembling, Peggy Nemoff walked up.
-
- "I'm the pig," Nemoff said, now in street clothes. Her T-shirt
- read "Animal Liberation is Human Liberation.""The parents
- were mad at us?" she said. "Why?"
-
- =A9 Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
-
- fun with PETAbashing
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 07:35:25 -0700 (PDT)
- From: Friends of Animals <foa@igc.apc.org>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: California Trapping Initiative
- Message-ID: <2.2.16.19970723102114.34af3b0a@pop.igc.org>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
- Friends of Animals was a charter member of the committee that
- developed the 1998 California Trapping Initiative, and incorporated as
- Protect Pets and Wildlife, also known as ProPAW. After investing
- considerable resources including many months of staff time in developing
- the 1998 California Trapping Initiative proposal, Friends of Animals
- regretfully resigned from the committee and withdrew from active support of
- the initiative, shortly before the initiative language was
- announced--because in our assessment, that language does more to disguise
- cruelty than to prevent it.
-
- Friends of Animals understood from the beginning the necessity of
- balancing ideal objectives with the realities of obtaining voter support.
- We understood that a successful California Trapping Initiative could go no
- farther than preventing those cruelties we might convince the majority of
- Californians to vote against. Our objective, therefore, was to put forth
- the strongest possible bill that could obtain majority support. We
- recognized that while majority support for a clear, simple anti-cruelty
- proposal could be won, according to extensive public opinion surveys,
- obtaining passage of any anti-trapping bill would require a hard political
- struggle against hunters, trappers, and agribusiness.
-
- Conventional political wisdom holds that, "As California goes, so
- goes the nation." Animal use industries will spend heavily to defeat any
- proposal which challenges their control of wildlife and habitat management.
- Thus a successful initiative campaign must be prepared to meet
- no-holds-barred opposition, whom no compromise will satisfy. An
- initiative against cruel trapping must win in California not by winning
- over undecided voters, as it might in a less politically polarized and
- contested state, but rather by attracting a large turnout of voters, the
- majority of whom--as confirmed by polling--may be strongly motivated in
- support of a clear, direct, effective anti-cruelty proposal.
-
- Support for an anti-cruelty ballot proposal becomes less motivated,
- again as polling confirmed, when a clear, direct, effective proposal is
- encumbered with exceptions--in the case of the California Trapping
- Initative, to permit certain types of cruel trapping to continue, in a
- misguided effort to reduce opposition.
-
- In short, when inevitably facing committed opposition, it is more
- effective to rally friends than to try to buy off foes at cost of losing
- friends. Trapping defenders in California are committed; trapping
- opponents, albeit in the majority, must be motivated to defeat them.
-
- Friends of Animals from the beginning of discussion warned the
- California Trapping Initiative committee against adopting initiative
- language which permits cruelty to continue, while perhaps conveying to the
- public the misguided notion that passage of the initiative will prevent it.
- Some other committee members held that the most important objective of the
- California Trapping Initiative is simply achieving a symbolic victory, to
- sustain the momentum achieved by the passage of stronger measures in other
- states and signify to elected officials the need for humane redirection of
- public policy.
-
- Friends of Animals recognizes the value of symbolism, sustaining
- momentum, and sending messages to legislators.
-
- Yet a symbolic "victory," Friends of Animals recognized, would
- come no more easily in California than a real victory, achieving real
- change--and a symbolic "victory" might become a significant defeat if it
- permits recognized cruelty to continue, even as voters are persuaded that
- passage brings abolition.
-
- The specific language of the initiative proposal is self-defeating
- in stating in the preamble of the list of traps to be banned by the
- California Trapping Inititative that, "It is unlawful for any person to
- trap for the purposes of rereation or commerce in fur any fur-bearing
- mammal or nongame mammal," because such language addresses the motivation
- instead of the practice. If the trapper pretends to be controlling
- nuisance wildlife, the trapper may continue to use any or all of the
- banned traps. Already, according to California state statistics, of the
- 15,011 animals who were trapped by potentially banned methods in 1995, 25%
- (3,730) were trapped by just one nuisance wildlife control agency, the
- Animal Damage Control unit of the USDA, including exactly two-thirds of
- the 3,700 coyotes. In addition to the ADC, there are countless private
- nuisance wildlife trapping agencies in California, whose records are not
- public. It is thus highly probable that the majority of trapping in
- California is already done for purported nuisance wildlife control, or
- could be said to be done for that reason, and it would not be difficult
- for any trapper to proclaim a primary objective other than recreation and
- fur-selling.
-
- The California Trapping Initiative addresses this possibility with
- further language declaring that, "It is unlawful for any person to buy,
- sell, barter, or otherwise exchange for profit the raw fur" of any mammal
- trapped by the types of trap that are to be banned. This clause is
- unenforceable, however, because state wildlife law enforcement personnel
- have no jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service, nor over other forms of
- interstate transport by which trappers might send pelts to the major fur
- auctions, all of which are already held in other states.
-
- Two further clauses additionally weaken the California Trapping
- Initiative even while superficially appearing to strengthen it. First,
- the initiative proposes that it shall become "unlawful for any person,
- including employees of the federal, state, county, or municipal
- government, to use or authorise the use of any steel-jawed leghold trap,
- padded or otherwise, to capture any game mammal, fur-bearing mammal,
- nongame mammal, or any dog or cat."
-
- This appears to extend the leghold trap prohibition to nuisance
- wildlife trappers--but it allows such trappers to continue using snares and
- Conibear traps, which are as cruel as leghold traps in usually causing
- prolonged suffering, even if the victim animal does eventually strangle or
- drown. ADC data indicates that 30% of trapped coyotes, 40% of trapped
- badgers, 72% of trapped raccoons, 95% of trapped beavers, and 100% of
- trapped muskrats are killed with snares and/or Conibear traps. Applying
- these ratios to the total number of animals trapped in California suggests
- that snaring and Conibear trapping account for about two-thirds of all
- trapping: approximately 10,055 of the 15,011 animals killed.
-
- The California Trapping Initiative language then adds, "The
- prohibition in this subdivision does not apply to federal, state, county,
- or municipal government employees or their duly authorized agents in the
- extraordinary case where the otherwise prohibited padded-jaw leghold trap
- is the only method available to protect human health or safety."
-
- Since all wildlife may bite, transmit zoonotic disease, carry
- fleas, drop feces, or otherwise represent a transient threat to human
- health and safety, if humans don't use common sense in interactions with
- the animals in question, and since ADC trappers are duly authorized
- governmental agents, this clause amounts to an open-ended negation of much
- of the rest of the California Trapping Initiative. Other would-be
- "nuisance wildlife" trappers may also be permitted to use padded leghold
- traps in connection with work authorized by government, which need involve
- no more than a "contract" to kill any and all furbearing animals found
- within a particular city or county jurisdiction. The language indeed gives
- trappers considerable incentive to curry local political favor, to the
- longterm deteriment of winning strong enforcement of the intent of the law.
-
- Friends of Animals recognizes that it may be necessary to permit a
- very limited exemption for the use of certain otherwise prohibited trapping
- methods in circumstances where no other method can as expediently prevent
- imminent risk to public health and safety. However, the California
- Trapping Initiative language does not provide a narrow exemption for the
- exceptional case. Unlike the Arizona initiative passed in 1994, it does
- not limit the use of padded leghold traps to regularly employed personnel
- of health departments. Under the California Trapping Initiative, any
- public agency could authorize anyone as "agent" to use padded leghold traps
- to capture wildlife, in the pretense that the mere presence of the animal
- might be hazardous to human health or safety. Nothing stipulates that the
- purported threat must be imminent, significant, or even remotely
- probable.
-
- The California Trapping Initiative also addresses poisoning, in
- recognition that livestock producers may turn to poison if they are not
- allowed to use cruel traps against predators. The attempt to forestall the
- substitution of one cruel practice for another is well-advised, but the
- prohibition is excessively narrow in stipulating that it applies only to
- the use or attempted use of "sodium fluroacetate, also known as Compound
- 1080, or sodium cyanide." While these may be the poisons of most
- immediate concern, and while many other means of poisoning animals may be
- restricted by other legislation already in effect, for instance the
- requirement that pesticides must be approved and registered by the
- Enviuronmental Protection Agency, additional means of poisoning wildlife
- may be discovered and/or adapted from practices which would remain legal.
- Friends of Animals contends that little or no cruelty is prevented if, for
- instance, instead of using Compound 1080, ranchers drain their old
- antifreeze into dishpans and then leave them near coyote trails. Such
- "accidental" poisoning with a legal substance causes no less animal
- suffering. A flat prohibition on poisoning furbearing and nongame wildlife
- would be far more to the point.
-
- Friends of Animals recognizes the value of collective support of
- positive proposals which might reduce animal suffering, even when such
- proposals fall short of seeking everything that they might. When full
- steps forward cannot be taken, Friends of Animals may support
- half-steps--if they are still in a forward direction, and do not inhibit
- subsequent full steps. Friends of Animals believes, however, that the
- California Trapping Initiative as ratified by ProPAW may at most only jog
- in place. Even if won, at tremendous cost of animal protection resources,
- it may accomplish no more than changing the rationale for cruelty. Worse,
- in obliging trappers to pretend to motives other than fun and profit, it
- may cause the trapping industry and allied interest groups to escalate the
- hate campaigns long waged against such lucratively trapped "nuisance"
- species as muskrats coyotes, beavers, raccoons, and skunks, to the
- longterm detriment of these animals, who already suffer intense
- persecution despite their positive roles in naturally controlling other
- so-called nuisance species and conserving wetlands. If the California
- Trapping Initative indirectly encourages more abuse of "nuisance" wildlife,
- it will amount to taking a giant step backward, showing trappers a way to
- circumvent humane concerns while rebuilding the trapping industry.
-
- Owing to the serious self-defeating aspects of the California
- Trapping Initiative, Friends of Animals has withdrawn from the ProPAW
- campaign. We continue to put our energy and resources behind other
- campaigns and proposals which we believe have a far more realistic
- opportunity to reduce and prevent animal suffering.
-
-
- # # #
-
- Priscilla Feral
- President, Friends of Animals
- July 22, 1997
-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:54:05 -0400
- From: "West, Jamey" <jlwest@exchange.nih.gov>
- To: "'AR-NEWS@ENVIROLINK.ORG'" <AR-NEWS@envirolink.org>
- Subject: FW: fun with PETAbashing
- Message-ID:
- <c=US%a=_%p=NIH%l=NIHEXCHANGE-970723145405Z-125178@imc.nih.gov>
-
- Anyone who would like to send letters to the Washington Post; please
- send them to Letters to the Editor, The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, Northwest
- Washington DC
- 20071
- All leters must be signed, with address, and phone(business and home)
- (they will call before printing). They are tough to get in, so spend some
- time and thought. Keep it brief, less than 300 words,and to the point.
- Good Luck and thank you.
-
- ----------
- From: Patrick Nolan[SMTP:pnolan@animalwelfare.com]
- Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 1997 10:15AM
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: fun with PETAbashing
-
- 'Hot Dog' Wins a Food Fight
-
- By Karl Vick
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Wednesday, July 23, 1997; Page A01
-
- DUNDALK, Md., July 22 - Whatever headway it may or
- may not have made on behalf of the world's rabbits, pigs and
- kangaroos, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has
- reigned as a grandmaster of contemporary public protest.
-
- Or rather, it did until 9:05 a.m. today, when the animal rights
- PR juggernaut ran head-on into the Oscar Mayer
- Wienermobile on a supermarket parking lot here. And ended
- up looking like road kill.
-
- The Wienermobile stands 27 feet long, runs on six cylinders
- and seats four. It is at once the symbol of Oscar Mayer hot
- dogs and an American icon. Inherently cheerful, hilariously
- designed (by the late Brooks Stevens, who also designed
- Harley-Davidson motorcycles), the Wienermobile is widely
- regarded as pretty wonderful.
-
- "It is," conceded PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich. "It is very,
- very fun.
-
- "Which is why it's so invidious. It's selling the idea that eating
- hot dogs is fun. When, in fact, it is a violent, bloody business,
- and it has got to stop."
-
- Driven by this moral certainty, the group has dogged the
- Wienermobile all summer, clearing the decks for a series of
- clashes between two titans of public relations. "You know
- there are ten of them," Friedrich said, meaning Wienermobiles.
- "And there are more than 400 stops nationwide." PETA has
- marshaled resources sufficient to target 50 stops, including the
- one in a parking lot outside the Giant Food store on Merritt
- Boulevard in this blue-collar Baltimore suburb.
-
- "Vegetarians Attack Wiener mobile," read the headline on the
- news release PETA issued in advance. In smaller type:
- "Company Uses Children to Promote Cruelty to Pigs."
-
- The children began arriving before 9 a.m., tots clutching
- motherly hands and climbing under the rope of colored flags
- tied around overturned shopping carts. They had come to sing
- the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" or the "Bologna Song" (their
- choice) in front of a video camera, as they were invited to do
- by commercials and print ads during the last two weeks.
-
- Touring the country on a "talent search" for cute kids to star in
- commercials is the Wienermobile's regular summer assignment.
- (Winters are spent on goodwill tours and sports events; a
- Wienermobile was the pace car in the Glenn Brenner 5K Run
- two years ago.)
-
- "Who wants to practice?" asked Mike Ballog, one of three
- all-American types in Oscar Mayer T-shirts who travel in the
- Wienermobile. A little boy hopped and clapped. "I do!" he
- said.
-
- Another boy stood at the microphone with his cap on
- backward. He was about to start singing when the chanting
- started.
-
- "Cruelty we won't tolerate! Get the slaughter off the plate!"
-
- The sound began beyond the minivans. Four people were
- marching toward the assembled kids. Each carried a sign: "Did
- your food have a face?" One was dressed in a pig suit.
-
- "Oscar Mayer is to blame! Exploiting children is a shame!"
-
- The kids froze. Several stared at the ground. The boy at the
- microphone began to sing, but his words were drowned out.
- Two of the PETA people had bullhorns.
-
- They marched up to the rope. Inside it, adults began to fume.
-
- "Oh, that makes me so mad!" Angel Brown informed the
- mother next to her. "They're doing more harm to these kids
- than any hot dog could."
-
- She looked down at her daughter, Emily, 4. "Emily, don't listen
- to this, okay?" she said.
-
- Emily did not seem to know what was going on. She asked her
- mother what "slaughter" means. Nearby, another little girl
- wanted to know why adults get to be so loud.
-
- Brown, meanwhile, worked her way toward the protesters.
- She pointed at their feet. "Wait, wait!" she cried. "I do see
- leather shoes!" Brown clearly knew how to hurt an
- animal-rights protester.
-
- "I'm a vegetarian," she explained. "Have been for 18 years. I
- don't eat meat or meat byproducts."
-
- Emily does, though. "I've got no choice but to feed her meat,
- for health reasons," Brown said. "Little kids need some meat.
- She can't take a protein supplement."
-
- The protesters backed away a bit. And though the chants
- stayed angry ("Stop the torture! Stop the pain! Oscar Mayer is
- to blame!"), the chanters began to look a little uncertain
- themselves. The three television cameras that had arrived with
- them were now focused on the stricken faces of small children
- caught in some strange adult cross-fire.
-
- The coverage, which PETA solicited, is a PETA specialty. In
- an era in which conventional tactics of confrontation have faded
- well beyond blase - homeowners associations march,
- schoolchildren picket; assignment editors yawn - PETA
- always has found some new bit of street theater to lure the
- cameras.
-
- One Thanksgiving, while the president was inside offering the
- traditional pardon to a turkey contributed by the poultry
- industry, PETA found a tom that had been so zealously bred
- for breast meat that it could not stand. It was set in a
- wheelchair outside the White House gate.
-
- It was a classic PETA event, combining cartoon comedy and
- guerrilla tactics with a jaunty flair calculated to overwhelm
- everything except the group's point. On July 10, Laurel resident
- Paul Martin climbed a billboard in San Antonio with a mock
- meat hook protruding from his abdomen. "Hooked on Meat?"
- read the 50-foot banner from which he dangled. "Go
- Vegetarian."
-
- With the Wienermobile, however, the group clearly bit off
- more than it could chew. The backfire wasn't as bad as when
- PETA tried to take out ads invoking cannibalistic serial killer
- Jeffrey Dahmer, but there was clearly a miscalculation.
-
- "People really love the Wienermobile," Ballog said. Wiener
- mobile workers - "hotdoggers" - see this constantly on the
- road, where the vehicle travels through a sea of smiles and
- happy toots. "It's like being in a parade all the time," says
- hotdogger Toby Jenkins.
-
- But it's when stationary that the affection really gushes in.
- Parked, the Wienermobile fairly floats on a reservoir of
- goodwill that's been accumulating for generations. Toddlers too
- young to have learned the "Oscar Mayer Wiener Jingle" from
- TV stare up at baby boomer parents who could not forget it if
- they tried.
-
- Folks in their seventies walk up with Wiener Whistles from
- their childhood, then ask about Little Oscar, who drove the
- Wiener mobile for years. Now in his eighties, Little Oscar
- "talks about it like it was yesterday," Ballog says.
-
- In fairness, not even Oscar Mayer began to fathom what it had
- in the Wienermobile until 1986, when, to celebrate its 50th
- birthday, the company sent what was then the only surviving
- vehicle on a farewell tour. Wienermobile manager Russ
- Whitacre said the outpouring persuaded executives of the
- vehicle's emotional power, a power that was still not evident to
- everyone in the Giant parking lot today.
-
- After the protesters finally drifted away and a new crowd of
- children was assembling, Peggy Nemoff walked up.
-
- "I'm the pig," Nemoff said, now in street clothes. Her T-shirt
- read "Animal Liberation is Human Liberation.""The parents
- were mad at us?" she said. "Why?"
-
- (c) Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:50:24 -0500
- From: "Michael B. Harris" <mbharris@execpc.com>
- To: AR-News@envirolink.org
- Subject: Ted Nugent in the News
- Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970723105024.006d37b0@mail.execpc.com>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
- Founder Ted Nugent spurned
- volunteer group, regional
- leader says.
-
-
- Taken from The Milwaukee Journal/Sentienl, July 21, 1997.
-
- Milwaukee, WI: The regional director of a Ted Nugent United Sportsmen
- Chapter Withdrew from the organization Sunday, saying the rock star
- spurned his invitation to meet with volunteers.
-
- Todd Mascaretti said he traveled to meet with Nugent in Peoria, Ill.,
- Saturday and asked him to meet with volunteers and thank them for
- their efforts in the Hunters for the Hungry program and other activities.
-
- Mascaretti thought Nugent could stop in Racine on his way to play a
- Sunday night gig at the Waukesha County Fair. He was wrong. According
- to Mascaretti, Nugent had this response to his request: " I don't
- need you. I don't need those people. Tell them to go home. Tell
- them to kiss my ..."
-
- Nugent could not be reached in Waukesha Sunday night to respond to
- Mascaretti's comments. Mascaretti said the exchange pushed him to
- announce his withdrawal from the national sportsmen's group, which
- Nugent founded nearly a decade ago.
-
- "His representation and comments toward the people who are doing all
- the work are not what we deem needed." Mascaretti said. "We don't
- need that type of attitude and representation." Volunteers in the
- Hunters for the Hungry program, and off-shoot of Nugent's United
- Sportsmen, collect food for needy residents and participate in
- other charitable causes. Mascaretti said Nugent had turned his back
- on the people who have helped make his organization a success.
-
- This is not the first sign of a rift between Mascaretti and Nugent.
- The rock star criticized Mascaretti in October 1995 for using the
- name of Nugent's organization in his attacks on plans to build a new
- stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers. Mascaretti fought the stadium
- plans and ran against Sen. George Petak in a 1996 recall election
- won by Kimberly Plache (D-Racine). Mascaretti, running as a Libertarian
- finished third in the election.
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:32:11 -0700 (PDT)
- From: Mike Markarian <MikeM@fund.org>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: New Address
- Message-ID: <2.2.16.19970723123242.21cf87ea@pop.igc.org>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
- The Fund for Animals' campaign office in the D.C. area has moved. Our new
- address is:
-
- The Fund for Animals
- World Building
- 8121 Georgia Avenue, Suite 301
- Silver Spring, MD 20910
-
- Our phone and fax numbers remain the same.
-
- Thank you.
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:08:28 -0400 (EDT)
- From: ISAR@aol.com
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: EU Allows Fur Import
- Message-ID: <970723130724_540347412@emout15.mail.aol.com>
-
- By David Fox BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuter) - The European Union Tuesday
- agreed to allow imports from Canada and Russia of fur from animals caught by
- leg-hold traps despite such devices being banned in the 15-nation bloc.
-
- EU diplomats said Britain, Austria and Belgium voted against a proposal for
- an agreement on leg-hold trap standards, but a key change of mind by France
- meant the law will go through.
-
- The proposal had three times been rejected by EU environment ministers, but
- the 15-nation-bloc's foreign ministers -- who are responsible for trade
- policy -- passed the agreement on a majority vote.
-
- European Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan hailed the agreement as a
- triumph of sense over emotion. "This will ensure, for the first time, that
- nations have to abide by minimum standards when it comes to trapping
- fur-bearing animals," he told Reuters.
-
- But animal rights groups immediately condemmed the move with the Europgroup
- for Animal Welfare saying: "This is not a painless solution -- under the
- terms of this agreement animals will continue to suffer immensely while
- Canada and Russia will claim that their trapping methods are humane."
-
- The EU has long been at odds with Russia, Canada and the U.S. over imports of
- fur from animals such as beaver and muskrat caught with jawed leg-hold traps
- or so-called "drowning traps."
-
- It passed a law in 1991 making it illegal from January 1995 for the EU to
- import any fur from animals caught by such devices, but the law was postponed
- for a year and has still never been implemented.
-
- The Commission -- the EU's executive -- persuaded member states that they
- faced a serious risk of World Trade Organization action if they banned
- imports of trapped fur.
-
- Under the proposal, in agreement with Canada, there would be a ban on all
- kinds of jaw-type leghold traps for seven of 12 Canadian species under
- consideration.
-
- Use of such traps for the remaining five species would be outlawed from March
- 31, 2000, but only provided the deal is in place before October 1 this year.
-
- Under the deal Russia will ban the traps by Dec. 31, 1999 and will be given
- financial help to do so.
-
- The Commission hopes the deal will pressure the United States into coming on
- board.
-
- Russia, Canada and the United States argue that trapping fur is a legitimate
- way of life for thousands of indigenous ethnic groups and a ban on their
- products is unacceptable extra-territorial trade legislation.
-
- 23:57 07-22-97
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:38:45 -0400
- From: Mesia Quartano <primates@usa.net>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: EU to allow fur imports
- Message-ID: <33D641A5.FCB@usa.net>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
- Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
-
- 01:18 PM ET 07/22/97
-
- EU to allow fur imports
- By David Fox
-
- BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuter) - The European Union Tuesday
- agreed to allow imports from Canada and Russia of fur from
- animals caught by leg-hold traps despite such devices being
- banned in the 15-nation bloc.
-
- EU diplomats said Britain, Austria and Belgium voted against
- a proposal for an agreement on leg-hold trap standards, but a
- key change of mind by France meant the law will go through.
-
- The proposal had three times been rejected by EU environment
- ministers, but the 15-nation-bloc's foreign ministers -- who are
- responsible for trade policy -- passed the agreement on a
- majority vote.
-
- European Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan hailed the
- agreement as a triumph of sense over emotion. ``This will
- ensure, for the first time, that nations have to abide by
- minimum standards when it comes to trapping fur-bearing
- animals,'' he told Reuters.
-
- But animal rights groups immediately condemmed the move with
- the Europgroup for Animal Welfare saying: ``This is not a
- painless solution -- under the terms of this agreement animals
- will continue to suffer immensely while Canada and Russia will
- claim that their trapping methods are humane.''
-
- The EU has long been at odds with Russia, Canada and the
- U.S. over imports of fur from animals such as beaver and muskrat
- caught with jawed leg-hold traps or so-called ``drowning
- traps.''
-
- It passed a law in 1991 making it illegal from January 1995
- for the EU to import any fur from animals caught by such
- devices, but the law was postponed for a year and has still
- never been implemented.
-
- The Commission -- the EU's executive -- persuaded member
- states that they faced a serious risk of World Trade
- Organization action if they banned imports of trapped fur.
-
- Under the proposal, in agreement with Canada, there would be
- a ban on all kinds of jaw-type leghold traps for seven of 12
- Canadian species under consideration.
-
- Use of such traps for the remaining five species would be
- outlawed from March 31, 2000, but only provided the deal is in
- place before October 1 this year.
-
- Under the deal Russia will ban the traps by Dec. 31, 1999
- and will be given financial help to do so.
-
- The Commission hopes the deal will pressure the United
- States into coming on board.
-
- Russia, Canada and the United States argue that trapping fur
- is a legitimate way of life for thousands of indigenous ethnic
- groups and a ban on their products is unacceptable
- extra-territorial trade legislation.
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:43:29 -0700 (PDT)
- From: "Christine M. Wolf" <chrisw@fund.org>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: Elephant poaching incidents
- Message-ID: <2.2.16.19970319014632.2faf539e@pop.igc.org>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
- The following is forwarded from the CITES-L discussion list:
-
-
- >I have now received the following information on poaching incidents around
- >the time of the recent CITES meeting and since. This information was sent
- >to me from Tusk Force in the UK: I have not been in touch with the sources
- >directly, and have no more details.
- >
- >Zambia
- >1) 12 elephants poached in one week in lower Zambesi. Source: Melanie
- >Shepherd.
- >
- >2) "At least 2 large gangs of 28 and 19 poachers gone into the North part
- >of the South Luangwa National Park" Source: Rex Haylock (North Luangwa
- >Conservation Project).
- >
- >CAR
- >1) "200 elephants poached in northern CAR, near the Sudanese border
- >before CITES". Source: Verbal report by UNESCO to EIA on 20 June.
- >
- >Kenya
- >1) "Approx 200 armed Somali bandits on their way into Tsavo East" verbal
- >report to Simon Trevor on 19 June (day of downlisting).
- >
- >2) On 20 May Ian Redmond heard in Kenya that 6-8 elephants were killed by
- >Walingulu bow hunters in south Tsavo, near Chuma Gate, and 4-5 killed in
- >northern section by armed Somali bandits, one of whom was caught in an
- >ambush by KWS rangers and admitted he was ivory poaching because he'd
- >heard the ban would be lifted soon. Souce: Daniel Woodley, KWS pilot via
- >Anthony Russell, tour operator.
- >
- >Ghana
- >22 July 1997
- >
- >" I regret to inform you that just a few weeks after CITES, we have
- >recorded our first elephant poaching incident in Mole National Park, the
- >premier park in Ghana. This has never happened since 1988.
- >
- >The elephant was shot twice below the ear but ran towards a game post
- >where it dropped along the way. The elephant, however, had its only tusk
- >intact probably due to the fact that it had got close to the camp, and
- >the poacher(s) feared to risk arrest.
- >
- >The incident occurred on or about 17 June 1997. It is significant to note
- >that the poaching started soon after the decision to down-list some
- >southern African elephant populations to Appendix II.
- >
- >G.A Punguse
- >Chief Wildlife Officer"
- >
- >
- >
- >--
- >Ronald I. Orenstein Phone: (905) 820-7886
- >International Wildlife Coalition Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
- >1825 Shady Creek Court
- >Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2 Internet: ornstn@inforamp.net
- >
- >
- >
- ******************************************************************
- Christine Wolf, Director of Government Affairs
- The Fund for Animalsphone: 301-585-2591
- World Buildingfax: 301-585-2595
- 8121 Georgia Ave., Suite 301e-mail: ChrisW@fund.org
- Silver Spring, MD 20910web page: www.fund.org
-
- "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
- the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead)
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:36:24 +0000
- From: aaa@ihug.co.nz
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: 4 arrests Marineland July 5th NZ
- Message-ID: <199707232104.JAA09775@icarus.ihug.co.nz>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
- Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
-
- In support for World
- Day for Captive Dolphins we (nz activists) did a protest at
- Marineland in Napier on Sat July 5th, what follows is just my run down
- of what happened, followed by copies of some of the local news
- articles/stories that reported it. The main problem with coordinating
- an anti-Marineland campaign is that Napier is so far away, its 5 hours
- drive from me! Protests cannot be regular and its hard to get people
- willing to travel so far - as this usually entails having to stay over
- in Napier and it all gets rather expensive! Because protests at
- Marineland cannot happen often, I thought we should go all out to get
- media attention and cause as much disruption to Marineland as possible
- and planned a CD [civil disobediance] action for biggest impact.
- Though the protest made 6pm and late news on both major TV chanels
- here - being second biggest story of the day on chanel three, it
- didn't get reported in the national newspaper; the Herald. It did make
- local papers however, including Wellington's 'the Dominion' -
- (Wellington is the Capital of NZ).
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Friday July 4th was World Day for Captive Dolphins. Frustrated at the
- lack
- of action and campaigning against Aotearoa's own Dolphin prison
- activists from around the country decided that this year, something
- would be done to highlight the plight of the four female dolphins
- being held at Marineland. Many groups including Auckland Animal
- Action, Wellington Animal Action and S.A.F.E (Save Animal From
- Exploitation). were involved in the protest. A national day of action
- was called for Saturday July 5th, and this day now marks the start of
- a campaign to free Cassana, Kelly, Shona and Selina.
-
- BACKGROUND
-
- All four dolphins at Marineland were captured from the wild in the
- Hawkes
- Bay area. They were ripped from their families and their home in the
- open ocean. The dolphins, used to swimming miles each day are now
- confined to a small circular tank, a barren environment. The only fish
- they see are the dead ones handed to them by the trainers, no plants
- in the pool, no barnacles, no ocean currents, only two performances a
- day infront of staring crowds of humans, only plastic balls and hoops.
- No use for echo location - only the walls of the tank to find. Yet
- incredibly some may percieve these dolphins to be the 'lucky ones'
- when it comes to Marineland. Because most of the dolphins who come
- into contact with Marineland end up dead. Most dolphins do not survive
- long at all in captivity, about 5 months is the average. These four
- dolphins are the survivors. Marineland's death toll already stands at
- 68. We are asking that the killing ends. 68 dead. Just think about it.
- Why didn't Marineland stop after the first 5 they caught died, or the
- first 10, ...the first 20...30? Marineland say that they care about
- the worlds dolphins, that they want people to support their
- conservation, that they want to teach people to care about dolphins.
- Yet still after 40 deaths, 50 deaths, 60 DEATHS they contnued on.
- Until at last some survivors. Yet even these, who probably represent
- the strongest, most resiliant of their kind; that have managed to
- survive in their small tanks, suffering the boredom, the deprivation,
- the loss of their families, even these individuals, from the moment of
- their capture are doomed. As soon as a dolphin is placed in captivity
- their life expectancy is immediately halved. Two of the dolphins at
- Marineland have already been in captivity for 20 years.
-
- THE PROTEST
-
- We arrived in Napier on Friday night - 4th July. After checking out
- Marinelands front doors we found that they were perfect for D-locking
- closed. We had brought down five D-locks. Marineland had two doors at
- their front entrance, with just one more D-lock we figured we could
- lock both sets of doors and have 4 activists, one representing each of
- the four captive dolphins locked to each handle of the doors. Getting
- up early the next morning we rushed out to buy the sixth D-lock.
- Since several press releases had gone out there were worries that
- Marineland would know we were coming. We later found out that the
- protest had been anounced on the 6am news that morning on the radio!
- Fortuneately no one at Marineland listens to the news! The four of us
- locking on dressed tidily that morning, not just to look respectable
- for the press, but so that we would not look like protesters and so
- not arouse suspicion while approaching marineland - if they had heard
- about a demo they may have put on extra security. The four of us left
- the cars first, at about 10 minutes to 10am. Quietly and quickly we
- reached the entrance to Marineland. One door was open, we shut it,
- no-one was even on the front desk to see us attach the larger and
- stronger D-locks around each of the main doors, then D-lock ourselves
- around our necks to each of the four door handles. So much worry! But
- soooo easy!! It took several minutes before anyone noticed that people
- were locked to the doors and the entrance was blocked. At first we
- thought we heard laughter from inside, then someone came and tried to
- open the door from inside and found we had locked the doors shut, some
- commotion could be heard as staff came out of a side entrance, and
- were greeted by the main body of protesters who were now arriving with
- signs, banner and mega phone.
- Press were also present by now, having been told the protest would
- start
- at 10am. Camera's rolled and interviews began with those of us locked
- to the doors. These made the evening news on both main TV chanels. The
- first show at Marineland was to start at 10.30am, people soon started
- to arrive, it being the first Saturday of the school holiday's this
- was mostly people with families. Several families thought twice about
- coming and turned around leaving, at least one stating their approval
- of our cause and honking in support as they drove away.
- Seeing all this Marineland staff got a bit over enthusiastic and
- scuffles
- broke out as they attempted to push protesters away from the side
- entrance they weretrying to herd people through. A good close up of
- one man pushing a Wellington activist was caught on camera and aired
- on nationwide TV.
- Those of us chained to the doors never really saw any Marineland
- staff as
- they were busy at the side entrance. Eventually when police arrived
- they brought the manager over who asked us officially to leave, we did
- not and were later cut off with bolt cutters - really big ones. We
- were herded into a waiting police wagon and taken to Napier police
- cells.
- Four arrests were made -of the four people D-locked to the doors.
- They
- are: Deidre Bourke, Auckland Animal Action; Cassie Carney; Marianne
- MacDonald and Gary Reese the Auckland SAFE co-ordinator. As you only
- have to give you name, address, date of birth and occupation to police
- that is all we gave. This made them very angry. They yelled at us,
- called us silly and unco-operative and threatened to hold us until
- court was open - in three days time - if we didn't supply additional
- information like where we were born, our phone numbers etc. Eventually
- they relented and stopped trying to get this out of us and took us to
- our cells. The other protesters soon arrived outside the police
- station - they told police we were vegan and would need vegan food. In
- the end police agreed to pass on some food for us - tofu luncheon,
- dried apricots, potato chips, orange juice, and best of all,
- strawberry soy drinks [my personal favourite]. We were held for about
- three hours before being released, the threats to hold us till Tuesday
- obvious scare tactics with no substance. We were charged with
- trespass and told we had to be in court on that coming Tuesday to
- enter our plea's.
- This meant we could not go home that evening and had to hang around
- Napier for the next few days - unfortunately for marineland this meant
- more demo's. Although the four of us were only locked to their doors
- for an hour or so, we later found out that the two larger D-bolts,
- which we had secured around Marinelands doors had stayed on well into
- the afternoon, taking about 4-5 hours to remove, and meaning their
- main entrances stayed locked most of the day.
- The next day we again showed up to the 10.30am show. We leafleted
- outside
- until we heard the show begin. A van was driven up to Marinelands
- fence so that we could sit on its roof with placard's visible to the
- crowd of people inside. The megaphone was then used to talk over the
- Marineland show, disrupting visitor's nice peaceful day out.
- You would think this protest would be an 'easy' issue. But we
- actually got
- lots of hostility from people. Napier is very proud of its number one
- tourist puller. But the issue was also a very hard one for most people
- as most people attending the show really did believe that they loved
- dolphins and so they were all the more defensive. No one wants to
- think they support the abuse of dolphins after all. I guess the more
- an issue confronts people the more argumentative they seem to be. It
- was funny how many people told us we should be working and didn't we
- have anything better to do - only to be rebuffed by the obvious
- defence that it was a Sunday and we didn't go to work on our weekends!
- And the number of people who tried to rationalise that the dolphins
- were safer in that small tank than in the wild! I wonder how those
- same people get out of their homes I mean they might get run over or
- something. Its a dangerous world out there!
- On Tuesday we went to court and entered a plea of 'not guilty'. We
- will
- have to return Napier for our trial also. This means more Marineland
- demo's are planned!
- With the costs of D-locks and travelling it was defintiely the most
- expensive demo Auckland Animal Action have ever organised - but well
- worth it I think. Here's the pressclippings...
-
- -----------------------------------------------
-
- NEWS CLIPPINGS
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- ------ --------------------
-
- THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
- SATURDAY, JULY 5 1997
- Lead Story, page one - with picture of group of 6 activists, including
- the four D-locked to Marineland doors.
-
- "ARRESTS FOLLOW DOLPHIN PROTEST"
-
- Four people were arrested outside Marineland this morning during a
- protest against dolphins being kept in captivity.
-
- A group of about 15 protesters armed with placards, banners and
- loudspeakers set up outside the Marine Parade attraction just beofre
- opening time at 10am.
-
- Four protesters padlocked themselves to the main entrance and Napier
- police were called. After discussions with both Marineland management
- Gary Macdonald and the protesters, police cut them free with
- boltcutters and they were led away peacefully.
-
- Not so peaceful was the protesters first attempts to block punters
- from entering Marineland. There was a brief scuffle as staff helped
- the first people into Marineland via a side entrance. Shouting by
- protesters failed to sway any more of the small group of people who
- did enter the building.
-
- All the protesters were from out of town and belonged to various
- animal-rights groups including Save Animals From Exploitation (SAFE),
- Gary Reese from SAFE, said the protest was to mark World Day for
- Captive Dolphins.
-
- "Keeping dolphins for human entertainment is unethical and outdated.
- It's an archaic thing to do in this dy and age", he said.
-
- The previous Conservation Minister was approached about placing a ban
- on dolphins and other such species in captivity but nothing
- eventuated. The protesters were certain the present minister would be
- approached in future.
-
- Marineland had killed 68 dolphins since it opened in 1965 and most
- people now realised how easy it was to see dolphins in the wild, Mr
- Reese said.
-
- Mr Macdonald said there was no dispute over the number of dolphins who
- had died at Marineland. However, most of these deaths occurred in the
- first few years it was open through inexperience. The last dolphin to
- die had died in 1989 of old age.
-
- Greenpeace had checked out the facility and while it would not accept
- dolphins being kept in captivity, conceded Marineland dolphins were
- well looked after.
-
- He understood the Conservation Minister did not have the authority to
- enforce a ban and only an Act of Parliment would suffice.
-
- However, the time would come when the Napier City Council would have
- to make a decision about Marineland's future, most likely when the
- four dolphins currently at Marineland had died.
-
- The council had promised to undertake a major review of the facility
- in four years time. That review would determine whether dolphins would
- continue to be a part of the display or not. If this was the case, it
- would entail an upgrade of present facilities, Mr Macdonald said.
- Marineland had no desire to capture any more dolphins at present.
-
- The last protest at Marineland occurred in 1986.
-
- The remaining protesters were unsure whether they would contnue their
- protest following the arrests.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- ------ --------------------
-
- HAWKES BAY HERALD TRIBUNE
- JULY 7th 1997
- PAGE
-
- "FOUR TO FACE TRESPASS CHARGES"
-
- Four people arrested on Saturday during a protest outside Marineland
- have been charged with trespass, Sergeant Cary Howat said today.
-
- The four, a 31 year old male and three females, aged 32, 25 and 20,
- are all from Auckland.
-
- They were among a group of about 15 protesters outside the Marine
- Parade attraction about 10am protesting against dolphins being kept in
- captivity.
-
- The protesters belong to various animal-rights groups.
-
- They held the protest on Saturday to mark World Day for Captive
- Dolphins.
-
- The four were arrested after they padlocked themselves to the
- Marineland gates and forced police to use boltcutters to cut them
- free.
-
- They were led peacefully away by police.
-
- The four will appear in the Napier District Court tomorrow.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- ------ --------------------
-
- THE DOMINION
- JULY 7th 1997
-
- "MARINELAND PROTEST"
- Police were called in to keep the peace on Saturday as about 15 animal
- liberation activists tried to block entrances to marineland in Napier.
- The activists were proesting against the keeping of dolphins in
- captivity.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- ------ --------------------
-
- THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
- JULY 7TH 1997
- PAGE 2
-
- "FOUR WILL APPEAR IN COURT AFTER DOLPHIN PROTEST"
-
- Four Aucklanders will appear in Napier District Court tomorrow after a
- protest outside Marineland on Saturday.
-
- A group of about 15 protesters demonstrated against keeping dolphins
- in captivity. They locked the doors to the marine mammal centre with
- D-locks and four protesters attached themselves to the building with
- D-locks before police cut them free with boltcutters.
-
- A 31 year-old man and three women aged 20,25 and 32 will appear in
- Napier District Court tomorrow charged with trespass.
-
- More protesters returned to Marineland yesterday. Manager Gary
- Macdonald said the protest remained on the street although it became
- noisy during the moring show when protesters directed their loud
- hailers over the wall.
-
- Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE) spokesman Gary Reese said they
- would maintain a public presence in Napier today and tomorrow and a
- longterm campaign was planned by SAFE and other animal interest groups
- to free Marineland dolphins and to pressure the government into
- banning the future capture of dolphins. he was worried two of the
- older dolphins might be reaching the end of their lives and Marineland
- would want to replace them.
-
- Mr Reese said although there was a better chance of rehabilitating the
- younger dolphins into the wild, the older ones could be released into
- an enclosed marine sanctuary if they were unable to adjust.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- ------ -
-
- Deidre Bourke
- Auckland Animal Action
- PO Box 34 641; Birkenhead, Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand)
- Tel/Fax (09) 480 82 64
- e-mail: aaa@ihug.co.nz/~aaa
- http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~aaa
-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:29:54 -0700 (PDT)
- From: Mike Markarian <MikeM@fund.org>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org, seac+announce@ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu,
- en.alerts@conf.igc.apc.org
- Subject: VT Alert: Calls Needed for Mute Swans
- Message-ID: <2.2.16.19970723173110.32d74da2@pop.igc.org>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
- The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife is considering killing eight
- mute swans at Lake Arrowhead in Milton, Vermont, because they are considered
- a "non-native" species. The DFW is apparently taking a survey on whether
- callers are for or against the swan killing.
-
- Please call, fax, or write, asking the DFW not to kill the eight mute swans.
-
- Mr. Ron Regan, Director
- Division of Wildlife
- Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife
- 103 South Main, 10 South
- Waterbury, VT 05671
-
- Phone: 802-241-3700
- Fax: 802-241-3295
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 14:30:34 -0700 (PDT)
- From: Mike Markarian <MikeM@fund.org>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org, seac+announce@ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu,
- en.alerts@conf.igc.apc.org
- Subject: Mary Tyler Moore Speaks Out for Beavers
- Message-ID: <2.2.16.19970723173137.32d7fa5c@pop.igc.org>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
- For Immediate Release: Wednesday, July 23, 1997
-
- Contact: Marion Stark, 518-439-2631
-
- MARY TYLER MOORE ASKS ASSEMBLY SPEAKER SILVER TO CHOKE AND
- STRANGLE THE
- SNARE BILL
-
- ALBANY, N.Y. -- Actress and author, Mary Tyler Moore, has added her strong
- voice to environmental and wildlife advocacy groups and the general public's
- outcry against the legalization of the underwater snare trap on New York
- State beavers during open season and the lengthening of the trap check times
- to three full days. The snare trap injures and kills animals by strangulation.
-
- In her letter to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Mary Tyler Moore requests
- that he defeat the snare bill and adds, "I appeal to you (Speaker Silver) to
- choke and strangle this proposal instead of our friend the beaver and
- animals such as the bald eagle, dogs, calves and otters which have been
- caught in these traps too."
-
- # # #
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 18:27:59 -0400 (EDT)
- From: CFOXAPI@aol.com
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: EU ACCEPTS SPURIOUS TRAPPING AGREEMENTS
- Message-ID: <970723182607_205632076@emout17.mail.aol.com>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unknown-8bit
-
-
-
- ANIMAL PROTECTION INSTITUTE
- ****URGENT NEWS ADVISORY****
-
-
- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Camilla Fox
- July 23, 1997
- (415) 945-9309
-
- Trapping photos available
-
- U.S. MUST COMPLY WITH SO-CALLED "HUMANE"
- TRAPPING STANDARDS, SAYS EUROPEAN UNION
-
- SACRAMENTO, CA - After two years of delay, the European Union (EU) General
- Affairs Council voted on July 22 for new agreements with Canada and Russia on
- "humane" trapping standards that will ensure the use of the cruel leghold
- trap for an indefinite period of time. The Council also called upon the
- European Commission to reach an equivalent official agreement with the United
- States.
-
- U.S. officials have refused to give up leghold traps and say they will not
- sign a negotiated agreement that requires any phase-out of leghold trap use.
-
- The new agreements nullify the original intent of Regulation 3254/91 (the
- European Union Leghold Trap Fur Import Ban) to ban imports of fur pelts from
- countries still using the leghold trap or not complying with "internationally
- agreed humane trapping standards." Passed by the EU in 1991 and originally
- scheduled to begin in January 1, 1995, the regulation is intended to reduce
- pain and suffering to furbearing animals worldwide.
-
- The Clinton administration has threatened international trade sanctions
- through the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the EU implements the ban.
-
- The new agreements exempt Canada and Russia from the ban and permit
- continued use of standard steel-jaw leghold traps for two to four years.
- Other forms of leghold traps may be used for at least eight more years and
- indefinitely if they meet certain trap standards. In addition, a 300 second
- threshold has been accepted for kill-type traps allowing animals to suffer in
- excruciating pain for up to five minutes.
-
- The weakened agreements are a great disappointment to animal advocates and
- to those who have fought for more than two years to ensure implementation of
- the ban in its original form.
-
- "Millions of animals die in cruel leghold traps each year," said Camilla
- Fox, Wildlife Program Coordinator for the Animal Protection Institute. "The
- regulation has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, allowing
- fur-exporting countries to claim that animals will now be trapped æhumanelyÆ
- according to æinternational trapping standards.Æ It is a terrible tragedy
- that concern for free trade has preempted concern for improving the welfare
- of animals worldwide."
-
- The U.S. will face an import ban in December if a similar agreement is not
- signed by then. Animal advocates are urging the Clinton administration to
- support HR 1176 that would ban the leghold trap nationwide and bring the U.S.
- into compliance with the EU regulation. "The U.S. government should be
- ashamed of undermining this progressive European legislation," said Fox.
- "More than 80 countries have already banned the leghold trap. It is time
- our country took a stand and banned this instrument of torture forever."
-
- ###
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 20:04:30 -0400 (EDT)
- From: CFOXAPI@aol.com
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: CA ACTIVISTS: HELP SAVE RED FOXES
- Message-ID: <970723200429_1624463945@emout14.mail.aol.com>
-
-
- *****Wildlife at Shoreline Park in Mountain View Need Help
- Now*****
-
- Officials at Shoreline Park plan to trap and kill red foxes using
- taxpayer dollars.
-
- The reasons given for this indiscriminate killing have changed over the past
- months once spurious claims were challenged and disproved by animal
- protection organizations.
-
- The senseless trapping and killing any animal is cruel and unnecessary when
- there are a number of non-lethal alternatives available. These alternatives
- have been supplied to both Glen Lyles, Shoreline Manager and David Muela,
- Community Service Director and have been ignored.
-
- The park should educate the public and institute guidelines on how to
- co-exist with wildlife and should most importantly ***leave the animals
- alone***.
-
- What you can do:
-
- Please join us in a peaceful protest to educate the public and the media
- about this issue.
-
- **When: Sunday, July 27th
-
- **Time: 11:00am
-
- Where: entrance to Shoreline Park (Hwy. 101 to Shoreline Blvd. exit; follow
- signs for Shoreline Amphitheater on Shoreline Blvd.; Shoreline Blvd. dead
- ends to Shoreline Park, gather at entrance to park).
-
- Please also call or write:
-
- Mr. Dave Muela
- Shoreline Park Supervisor
- (415) 903-6331
- City of Mountain View
- P.O. Box 7540
- Mountain View, CA 94039
-
- **For more information, please call Simone Haas at (415) 221-2767
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 21:49:11 -0400 (EDT)
- From: Franklin Wade <franklin@smart.net>
- Subject: UPC Alert: DA Won't Prosecute Emu Beaters
- Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970723214129.25005A-100000@smarty.smart.net>
- MIME-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
-
- United Poultry Concerns
- Action Alert
- No Prosecution of Men Who Beat Twenty-Two Emus To Death?
-
-
- July 23, 1997
-
- Today in Tarrant County the District Attorney's Office
- announced it will not press cruelty charges against Steven and
- Russell Vinson, the two medical doctors who beat to death twenty-
- two penned emus with aluminum baseball bats on June 28, 1997.
-
- The district attorney's office told UPC president Karen
- Davis on July 21 that there was no proof that the men's conduct
- was cruel. He said that maybe if the men had starved the birds or
- set them on fire the case might be different. The last bird to
- die in the pen was described by the humane investigator as
- "vomiting blood and staggering until it fell on the ground and
- couldn't get up anymore."
-
- Attorney Richard Alpert, who recommended not to prosecute,
- told Karen Davis that breeders all over Texas are beating their
- emus to death "even as we speak." He said the only difference
- between the Vinsons and others is that the other breeders
- "generally tie the birds up first." He said this as if to say
- that the fact that others are beating their emus to death makes
- it a common practice so it is not "cruel" or a crime under the
- law.
-
- What Can I Do?
-
- Contact:
- Robert Mayfield
- Deputy Chief, Misdemeanor Court
- Tarrant County Criminal Justice Building
- 401 West Belknap
- Fort Worth TX 76196
- ph: 817-884-1649
- fax: 817-884-2499
-
- Tell him to revise the decision and to recommend prosecution of
- Steven and Russell Vinson, the two brothers who beat their
- captive emus to death. Their decision compounds the evil and
- sends a message to other breeders that they can beat their birds
- to death without fear of legal consequences.
-
- _____________________________________________________________________
- franklin@smart.net Franklin D. Wade
- United Poultry Concerns - http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/upc
- Compassion Over Killing - http://www.envirolink..org/arrs/cok
-
-
-
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 10:38:56 +0800 (SST)
- From: Vadivu Govind <kuma@cyberway.com.sg>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: (US) Jailbirds treated to emu stew
- Message-ID: <199707240238.KAA11397@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
-
- >South China Morning Post
- Thursday July 24 1997
-
- Jailbirds treated to emu stew
-
- ASSOCIATED PRESS in Phoenix
-
- The sheriff who dresses inmates in pink underwear, houses some outdoors
- in army tents and keeps them in check with cameras mounted on dog patrols,
- has a new treat for prisoners: ostrich or emu casserole.
-
- Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, agreed to accept a donation
- yesterday of nearly 40 ostriches and emus from a Phoenix couple who operate
- an ostrich farm and want to reduce their inventory.
-
- "I almost hate giving inmates such a fine quality meat product, but at
- least it's free," the sheriff said.
-
- The birds should provide enough meat to feed nearly 7,000 inmates two
- meals of ostrich casserole, he said. He has ordered his kitchen staff to
- begin experimenting with recipes for the meat. "We've never served this
- stuff before and we want it to at least taste good," the sheriff said.
-
- No one is predicting how the inmates will like the exotic meat, but the
- sheriff said they should not complain because it has significantly less fat,
- calories and cholesterol than beef.
-
- The sheriff has asked his food services manager to look into the possibility
- of starting a prison meat-processing plant so the sheriff's office can
- accept and process meat donations of any kind. "It makes sense and it may be
- a good vocational programme for inmates," he said.
-
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 10:54:05 +0800 (SST)
- From: Vadivu Govind <kuma@cyberway.com.sg>
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: Spare organs grown from cells
- Message-ID: <199707240254.KAA13386@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
- Mime-Version: 1.0
- Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
-
-
-
- >South China Morning Post
- Thursday July 24 1997
-
- Spare organs grown from cells
-
- ASSOCIATED PRESS in Boston
-
- Scientists have grown replacement organs for sheep, rats and rabbits
- using the animals' cells in a technique that could at some stage be used to
- make spare parts for humans.
-
- While scientists have already found ways to grow skin and cartilage,
- two Harvard researchers claim to be the first to have grown animal tissue
- from organs, including the heart, kidneys and bladder.
-
- "As surgeons, that's what we dream about - having a shelf full of body
- parts," said Dr Anthony Atala, who pioneered the technique with Dario Fauza.
-
- Their new method - which was to be presented yesterday at a conference
- of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons in Turkey - has already
- been used to build new bladders and windpipes for sheep, a kidney for a
- rat, and leg muscles for a rabbit.
-
- The organs - built with tissue taken from grown and baby animals - were
- transplanted into the creatures and have worked fine so far, the
- researchers said.
-
- The two doctors said the greatest hope for the technique could be in
- correcting common birth defects. They have developed a method for growing
- replacement organs for newborns while they are still in the womb. For
- example, if a foetus has a malformedtrachea, surgeons could extract some of
- those cells from the womb, grow the new windpipe in the lab and have it
- ready to be transplanted when the baby is born.
-
- Tests on humans, in the womb and out, are set to begin within a year,
- and the researchers hope to get approval from the Food and Drug
- Administration for routine use within five years.
- Cornell University researcher Thomas McDonald said the method appeared
- to be a way around the biggest obstacle to organ transplants - the body's
- rejection of foreign parts.
-
-
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 23:14:37 -0400 (EDT)
- From: JTESPINOSA@delphi.com
- To: ar-news@envirolink.org
- Subject: Stop elephant rides by Lydia
- Message-ID: <01ILLDMPG7OI8YCW86@delphi.com>
- MIME-version: 1.0
- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
-
- Lydia the elephant to be used for the miserable spectacle of elephant
- rides.
-
- Lydia the elephant is to be used to give rides at three different events in
- suburban Chicago in the upcoming weeks. Such uses of wildlife are
- remarkably degrading, presenting a sight that is the epitome of human
- domination of other animals. When elephants are used for such
- purposes, there is a very real danger to public safety as well. Many
- cases have been documented of frustrated or confused elephants lashing
- out aggressively to harm people and property. Not surprisingly, many
- deaths have been caused by such avoidable mishaps.
- Elephants used for entertainment are violently trained, requiring enough
- beating and deprivation to break their spirits' before they begin to serve
- humans from fear. The conditions that these animals endure during
- their performing lives are best described as grossly inadequate.
- Performing elephants spend the vast majority of their lives in chains,
- unable to move about freely or engage in other natural behaviors. This
- treatment does take its toll on the elephants who react with bored
- frustration, aggression and disease susceptibility.
- The elephant to be used for the elephant rides in these three events is a
- prime candidate for such a violent outburst, having attacked four
- elephants in the past. Two of the elephants attacked died as a result of
- their injuries. Imagine the amount of strength it takes to kill another
- elephant. Releasing this same energy in an attack on a much smaller,
- weaker human would lead to predictably lethal consequences. Such
- aggressive behavior is unheard of amongst female elephants in the wild
- and is purely the result of the miserable existence Lydia endures. Most
- recently, an elephant expert reviewed photos and film of Lydia's feet
- and stated that they were being improperly cared for, and the USDA
- has cited Lydia's exploiter for various violations of the Animal Welfare
- Act. Please write, phone and fax to keep Lydia from being forced out
- onto the hot, hard pavement for the folly of ignorant humans.
-
- Planning to have elephant rides at the "Ridgefest"city festival Aug.
- 8,9,10:
- Chicago Ridge Mayor Eugene L. Fiegel
- 10655 S. Oak Avenue
- Chicago Ridge, IL 60415
- phone (708) 425-7700
- fax (708) 425-9942
-
- Planning to have elephant rides at the Bridgeview city festival Aug. 28-
- Sept 1:
- Mayor John Oremus
- Bridgeview City Hall
- 7500 Oketo Avenue
- Bridgeview, IL 60455
- phone (708) 594-2525
- fax (708) 594-1584
-
- Planning to have elephant rides again (had them the June 29th
- weekend) the third week in September to promote her business:
- Renee Grabinski-owner
- Pup-n-Pop Hot Dogs
- 8258 S. Harlem Avenue
- Bridgeview, IL 60455
- phone (708) 458-7425
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Joe Espinosa
- Illinois Animal Action
- PO Box 507
- Warrenville, IL 60555
- (630) 393-2935
-
- </pre>
- <!-- END OF PAGE CONTENT -->
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