Komputer for Alle 1998 #6/1998 CD 6 (Gul).iso/web/ffa/wwwenv~1.org/arrs/digest/news5~19.htm/text0065.txt

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>Special to Asahi Evening News
LIFE/ Hoofing along to the Cattle Museum
By JACQUELINE RUYAK

14 Sept 97

This being the year of the ox, what better time to visit the Cattle Museum?
The only full-fledged museum of its kind in Japan, it opened two years ago
in Maesawa, a town of about 15,000 peopleand who knows how many cattle, in
southern Iwate Prefecture.

Maesawa calls itself the home of cattle, and its beef is among some of the
most expensive on the market. No wonder that Maesawa cattle are the stars of
the municipal museum.

The Maesawa Cattle Museum also explores the multi-faceted relationship
between people and cattle around the world.

For example, you learn that some 12 hundred million dairy, beef or work
cattle are now raised worldwide, and that even-tempered, hard-working, and
loyal cattle have been an intimate part of human life in cultures around the
world. For millennia, oxen and water buffalo, along with horses,
made agriculture easier. Today, cattle still provide meat, milk, hides, and
bone meal to many.

Through the ages, cattle have also been important in art, religion,
literature and folklore. Paleolithic paintings of aurochs, those now-extinct
ancestors of cattle, decorate the caves at Lascaux and Chauvet in France.

China's Chan Buddhism produced the sublime "Ten Oxherding Pictures" which
depict a parable about an oxherd and his ox and symbolize the path to
enlightenment. Generations of Americans grew up on tales of Paul Bunyan and
Babe, his mythical blue ox. In India, cows remain sacred, while in
China and Japan it was long believed that rubbing a cow, or a figure of one,
brought good health or fortune.

When it comes to displays, the museum does a remarkable job.

First-floor displays are devoted to Maesawa cattle, a handsome breed of
black Japanese bovines produced by crossing Shimane cows with Tajima (Hyogo
Prefecture) bulls.

Kiyokiku, a stuffed specimen of the breed, greets visitors to this section.
Curator Aki Tanuma confessed that, won by his soft and expressive brown
eyes, she starts work each morning with a hello to Kiyokiku. She would
probably give him a pat or hug, too, if not for the sign saying, "Don't
touch me." A similar sign is placed by each stuffed specimen in the museum,
and understandably so.
It's truly hard to keep from reaching out and patting these lifelike figures.
For its juicy taste and marbled texture, Maesawa beef, which has been called
a work of art, ranks first in Japan, locals claim.

Raised in special well-ventilated sheds, Maesawa cattle are fed a diet based
in part on rice straw. Farmers take very good care of them. On top of that,
the region is known for a group of top-flight seed bulls.

Proof of the breed's excellence is that in the past decade, six Maesawa
cattlemen have taken top honors in a national competition for cattle raising.

"You've got to be close enough to your cattle to communicate with them,"
advises one of the winners.

Both first and second floors have intriguing fossils (or their
reproductions) aplenty. Downstairs there are whales, oysters, and other such
creatures from long ago when Maesawa was still ocean bed.

Displayed upstairs are fossils of huge bison, wild oxen (including one found
in Iwate Prefecture), and of the little leptomeryx eansi, a distant ancestor
of today's cattle, with a skeleton that suggests a creature as delicate and
as large as the common domestic cat. There is even a fossilized bison skull
for visitors to touch and hold.

Other second-floor displays explain just about everything about cattle,
except how they end up on you table. DNA, artificial insemination, what
their teeth are like at 14 days or 18 years, what those four stomachs look
like and what they do to food, are just part of the fascinating information
provided.

Who would have guessed that in the early 1950s carrier pigeons were used to
transport bull semen around Japan?

Four cattle breeds, all the result of crossbreeding, are now recognized as
Japanese, but a 1310 scroll depicts nine of the 10 cattle breeds then found
in Japan.

The museum has an 18th century reproduction of that scroll. Cattle also
appear in woodblock prints, on stamps, currency, plates, votive paintings,
and as toys of all kinds.

One corner of the museum is devoted to houses of the Toraja people of
Sulawesi, Indonesia, which are elaborately decorated with water buffalo
horns and carvings.

I first heard of the museum because of its collection of brass, bone and
bamboo cow bells from around the world.

On this past New Year's Eve, some 300 people gathered at the museum to ring
in the Year of the Ox with those bells. That won't happen for another 12
years, but meanwhile visitors can ring the bells on display.

Built on a hilltop, the museum affords a lovely panoramic view of the
Kitakami River, terraced rice fields, and distant mountains.

I don't eat meat, but if you want to try Maesawa beef at its source, head
next door to Maesawa Garden, which serves a variety of beef dishes, from an
800-yen hamburger steak to a 12,000-yen sirloin.

Free recipes from the restaurant are also available at the museum.

Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 11:25:16 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: (HK) Hope for handover to help green issues
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>South China Morning Post
Tuesday  September 16  1997

     Hope for handover to help green issues
     STAFF REPORTER

     The handover may push environmental issues up the mainland agenda,
according to the     ambassador of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

     Speaking at the launch of a charity walk for the fund's Mai Po bird
reserve, actress and     Miss Hong Kong 1994 Theresa Lee Yee-hung said: "It
is 1997 and we are now part of China. I really hope we can bring our
environmental knowledge to China because it  is a beautiful country - packed
with natural resources and unusual animals."

     Mai Po, near Yuen Long, attracts 68,000 birds flying south from Siberia
and northeast     China, including the rare and endangered Black-faced
Spoonbill.

     But the centre, which includes training facilities, costs $4 million a
year to run. It is     hoped the fund-raising walks on November 30, December
7 and 14 will pull in $1     million with a tickets $400 each and entry for
a family at $1,200.

     WWF communications manager Margaret Chan Mo-kit said: "Next year we are
hoping to use some of the money to improve disabled's access to Mai Po and
also to     construct some new educational facilities."

Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 23:47:11 -0400
From: Wyandotte Animal Group <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Rodeo Abuse on "Hard Copy" this week!!!!
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