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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN//2.0"> <html> <head> <title>AR-NEWS Digest</title> </head> <BODY bgcolor=fbfaea text=#211818 link="#190748" alink="#FFFFEF" vlink="#401C92"> <center> <IMG SRC="IMAGES/HEAD.GIF" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/digest/images/head.gif" USEMAP="#toplinks" BORDER="0"><BR> <img src="IMAGES/YCBAR.GIF" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/digest/images/ycbar.gif"><a href="../INDEX~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/index.html"><img src="IMAGES/HOMEBAR.GIF" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/digest/images/homebar.gif" border=0></a><br></center> <map name="toplinks"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="345,27,393,54" href="../../../tppmsgs/msgs0.htm#14" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/envirohome.html"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="458,7,512,27" href="../SUPPOR~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/Support.html"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="401,7,446,26" href="../SEARCH~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/search.html"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="352,7,386,26" href="../ORGS~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/Orgs.html"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="298,7,337,25" href="../NEWSPA~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/newspage.html"> <AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="211,7,286,27" href="../SUB~1.HTM" tppabs="http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/sub.html"> </map> <center><TABLE cellspacing=15 border=0> <TR> <TD width=50 align=center> </TD> <TD width=400 align=left> <!-- PAGE CONTENT GOES BELOW --> <pre> AR-NEWS Digest 659 Topics covered in this issue include: 1) [UK] Vets 'wasted two years' in battle against BSE by David J Knowles <dknowles@dowco.com> 2) [UK] The woman who discovered BSE by David J Knowles <dknowles@dowco.com> 3) (Aust)Application to import Bumble Bees by bunny <rabbit@wantree.com.au> 4) CNN: Cat still purring at 33 by "Cari Gehl" <skyblew@hotmail.com> 5) (Aust)RFI Live rabbit imports for meat production by bunny <rabbit@wantree.com.au> 6) Anniversary of Victory for Animal by SDURBIN@VM.TULSA.CC.OK.US 7) Shrine Circus by SDURBIN@VM.TULSA.CC.OK.US 8) Toronto: Seal Hunt Protest by Cesar Farell <c.farell@utoronto.ca> 9) [US] EDITORIAL: "Shared duty to save monkeys" (TCT, 2/5/98) by Steve Barney <AnimalLib@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu> 10) Computer Internship by Michael Markarian <mmarkarian@fund.org> 11) [US] "Monkey proposal advances through county panel" by Steve Barney <AnimalLib@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu> 12) [US] "Zoo monkeys need protection" by Steve Barney <AnimalLib@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu> 13) (US) Engler: He was 'shocked' by allen schubert <alathome@clark.net> 14) (US) Engler: Oprah's show was 'bomb' that led to drop in cattle prices by allen schubert <alathome@clark.net> 15) Letters Needed to Dane County (Wisconsin) Board of Supervisors by "Linda J. Howard" <ljhoward@erols.com> Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 00:39:39 From: David J Knowles <dknowles@dowco.com> To: ar-news@envirolink.org Subject: [UK] Vets 'wasted two years' in battle against BSE Message-ID: <3.0.3.16.19980209003939.27cf77d0@dowco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >From The Electronic Telegraph - Monday, February 9th, 1998 Vets 'wasted two years' in battle against BSE By Roger Highfield, Science Editor GOVERNMENT vets wasted a year in the fight against mad cow disease by overlooking the first recognised case and another through delays in tests to establish the nature of the epidemic. A researcher into scrapie, the sheep equivalent, said scientists could have reacted to news of the first BSE case in weeks, rather than years. The Ministry of Agriculture has always said the first case was confirmed in November 1986 in Kent by the Central Veterinary Laboratory. But Government experts had discovered the disease more than a year earlier, one of a number of oversights detailed in a four part BBC2 series, Mad Cows and Englishmen, starting on Sunday. A post mortem report by Carol Richardson, from the Central Veterinary Laboratory, dated Sept 19 1985, reveals how she had seen spongiform encephalopathy in brain tissue from a fresian from Peter Stent's farm near Midhurst, West Sussex. She said seven others had earlier been lost with "nervous" symptoms. A vet, David Bee, had seen the first cases before Christmas 1984. No reference to this outbreak was made by Dr Gerald Wells and colleagues at the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Surrey when they published the first description of the symptoms and pathology of the Kent case in Oct 1987 in The Veterinary Record. A letter to the laboratory from the Veterinary Investigation Centre near Winchester in June 1987 also referred to the Carol Richardson case and to another from the same farm a year later. The first case officially noted followed a report from Colin Whitaker, a vet from Ashford, puzzled by strange behaviour in the dairy herd at Plurenden Manor Farm that dated back to April 1985. When Mr Whitaker described the cases to a meeting in London, Mr Bee realised that it was the same disease that had been diagnosed as cow scrapie by Carol Richardson. Dr Wells had even reviewed and amended her "cow scrapie" report, first within a few days of it being written and then in June, 1987. But he made no reference to it in his Veterinary Record paper, even though her report referred to "neuronal vacuolation" in the midbrain and brain stem that is typical of scrapie in sheep and the disease we now call BSE. He had also changed her diagnosis from mild to moderate vacuolation, on first examining the pathology slides, though he blamed it on a toxic cause. With hindsight, he told the BBC2 programme, the Stent cases were the first investigated but he said he lacked information to put the findings into context. Nine months later, a type of antelope, a nyala, died of spongiform disease. The findings were reported but it took the chief veterinary officer 18 months to clear the article. ⌐ Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998. Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 00:46:48 From: David J Knowles <dknowles@dowco.com> To: ar-news@envirolink.org Subject: [UK] The woman who discovered BSE Message-ID: <3.0.3.16.19980209004648.0a3714b6@dowco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >From The Electronic Telegraph - Monday, February 9th, 1998 The woman who discovered BSE THE first person to recognise that scrapie, the sheep disease, may have infected cows to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, was Carol Richardson, a pathologist at the Central Veterinary Laboratory. The events that led to the discovery began on Dec 22, 1984, when David Bee, a vet in Petersfield, Hants, was contacted by Peter Stent, a farmer, after one of his dairy cows began behaving strangely and did not respond to treatment. "She'd lost weight. She was looking unwell and her back was up in the air," said Mr Bee, who describes his experience in Mad Cows and Englishmen, a four-part series for BBC2, starting on Sunday at 8.05pm. On routine visits to the Pitsham Farm in West Sussex, he found it "really spooky" when he noticed that the problem was spreading to other cows. The original cow was by then worse, showing head tremor. It died the next February. The vet followed a number of leads without success, dubbing it "Pitsham Farm Syndrome". By then, Mr Stent had lost nine cows and had become desperate, taking the 10th victim to the local ministry laboratory. The head was sent to the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, where its brain was examined by Ms Richardson. She said: "My specialisation is foetal pathology but in September 1985 I acted as a duty pathologist." She can still remember that it was a "nice sunny day" when, on Sept 19, 1985, she looked into a microscope and saw tiny holes, or vacuolations, in stained sections of the cow brain, a feature that she had seen many times before in sheep affected by scrapie. "What was exciting was that this was in a cow," she said. "This was the first time I had seen these lesions in a cow." She took the slides to a colleague. She said: "He agreed with me that it was a case of bovine scrapie, which he had never seen before." Her colleague thought that the senior neuropathologist, Dr Gerald Wells, had seen similar cases. Dr Wells was away that day. However, his corrections to her post mortem report reinforced her diagnosis. He told the programme that he did not make the connection with the sheep spongiform disease. The problem was put down to toxic poisoning. No reference to this outbreak was made by Dr Wells and his colleagues in Weybridge when they published the first description of the symptoms and pathology of an outbreak in Ashford at the end of October 1987 in the Veterinary Record. Ms Richardson went on maternity leave, assuming that the matter was being investigated and believed that Dr Wells had already seen similar cases. But at a Christmas party, after Dr Wells reported the first official case in November 1986, she was told that she had seen the first case of BSE. In July 1988, Ms Richardson left the Central Veterinary Laboratory. When the makers of the programme showed Dr Hugh Fraser, a scrapie expert, her findings of Sept 10, 1985, he said that they "meant one thing and one thing only to me, and that is scrapie in cattle". That was the first that he had heard of the case. He said: "That would suggest to me that there were, probably, a large number - and how many I don't know - unrecognised cases of this disease occurring in cattle elsewhere, probably before 1985." In recent research, Prof Roy Anderson of Oxford University found evidence that people were exposed to the disease as early as 1980. Up to 54,000 infected animals were slaughtered for human consumption between 1980 and 1985. The new evidence on the first case will be submitted to the BSE public inquiry, which began on Jan 27 and will report in March. Ms Richardson, 56, has two sons and a daughter. She now lives near Woking with her husband, John, and 10-year-old daughter. She continues to eat beef, and said: "I insist now that we have only British beef." ⌐ Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998. Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 18:39:54 +0800 From: bunny <rabbit@wantree.com.au> To: ar-news@envirolink.org Subject: (Aust)Application to import Bumble Bees Message-ID: <1.5.4.16.19980209183216.22d7160c@wantree.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Monday 9th February 1998 Proponents have put forth a submission to import the Bumble Bee into Australia. The issue has been publicised very little and apparently comment has only been requested on the issue from Government organisations and environmental organisations. The topic was discussed on ABC radio today and they said if all went well we might have the bunble bee introduced into Australia within a year! EARTHBEAT: Saturday, 7th February, at 7.30am & Monday, 9th February at 2.30pm Earthbeat this week follows the flight of the Bumble Bee - it could come straight from Europe into our backyard. Sectors of the agricultural industry want to introduce the Bumble Bee because, they say, it increases the yield and quality of some fruit crops. If the application's successful, we could see Bumble Bees in Australia within months. But what effect will they have on our environment when they go feral? And Australia already has its own Bumble Bees - could they do the job just as well? Cop the buzz on Earthbeat. ===================================================================== ======== /`\ /`\ Rabbit Information Service, Tom, Tom, (/\ \-/ /\) P.O.Box 30, The piper's son, )6 6( Riverton, Saved a pig >{= Y =}< Western Australia 6148 And away he run; /'-^-'\ So none could eat (_) (_) email: rabbit@wantree.com.au The pig so sweet | . | Together they ran | |} http://www.wantree.com.au/~rabbit/rabbit.htm Down the street. \_/^\_/ (Rabbit Information Service website updated frequently) Jesus was most likely a vegetarian... why aren't you? Go to http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/4620/essene.htm for more information. It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 03:12:41 PST From: "Cari Gehl" <skyblew@hotmail.com> To: ar-news@envirolink.org Subject: CNN: Cat still purring at 33 Message-ID: <19980209111242.805.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain For anyone that wants a smile, go to: http://cnn.com/US/9802/03/fringe/old.cat/ Grandpa's birthday was last Tuesday and he is doing great! It's a cute article with pictures and some Quick-Time video of his birthday party. There is also a link to last year's article with video and pics from his 32nd birthday party. For all the bad news we get, it's always nice to see some happy stories - I know it made me smile! Take care and best wishes to everyone! Cari Gehl ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 20:43:47 +0800 From: bunny <rabbit@wantree.com.au> To: ar-news@envirolink.org Subject: (Aust)RFI Live rabbit imports for meat production Message-ID: <1.5.4.16.19980209203611.2c7f69e2@wantree.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just heard from someone in South Australia that there are to be 20,000 breeding does (rabbits) imported from the Netherlands for some huge rabbit production set up in South Australia/Victoria. If anyone knows more on this, please contact me as soon as possible. (rabbit@wantree.com.au) It is amazing that Australia declares the European rabbit a "target organism" with rabbit calicivirus(rabbit hemorrhagic disease) the "agent organism" under the Biological Control Act [Australia] (to eradicate the European rabbit) and someone has supposedly been allowed to import 20,000 breeding does from the Netherlands to breed meat rabbits. Obviously the farmers have seen dollar signs in the lucrative Asian and Chinese markets (previously supplied with wild rabbits shot by shooters). Before RCD, we had shooters controlling feral rabbit numbers and we had "Outback foods" who supplied millions of dollars of game rabbits (shot by the shooters) to overseas buyers. Now Outback foods are bankrupted and the shooters are out of work and we have an uncontrollable hemorrhagic virus we never had before and yet the farmers want to fill sheds with breeding does from the Netherlands to breed meat rabbits for export. How disgusting. ===================================================================== ======== /`\ /`\ Rabbit Information Service, Tom, Tom, (/\ \-/ /\) P.O.Box 30, The piper's son, )6 6( Riverton, Saved a pig >{= Y =}< Western Australia 6148 And away he run; /'-^-'\ So none could eat (_) (_) email: rabbit@wantree.com.au The pig so sweet | . | Together they ran | |} http://www.wantree.com.au/~rabbit/rabbit.htm Down the street. \_/^\_/ (Rabbit Information Service website updated frequently) Jesus was most likely a vegetarian... why aren't you? Go to http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/4620/essene.htm for more information. It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire Date: Mon, 9 Feb 98 07:00:26 UTC From: SDURBIN@VM.TULSA.CC.OK.US To: ar-news@Envirolink.org Subject: Anniversary of Victory for Animal Message-ID: <199802091253.HAA09587@envirolink.org> (From PETA's calendar): On this day in 1996, Chevron Oil Corporation agreed to birdproof its United States stacks, to prevent birds from flying into them and being burned alive. -- Sherrill Date: Mon, 9 Feb 98 07:07:51 UTC From: SDURBIN@VM.TULSA.CC.OK.US To: ar-news@Envirolink.org Subject: Shrine Circus Message-ID: <199802091300.IAA10083@envirolink.org> Does anyone have any information on George Carden International, the producer of the Shrine Circus? This circus is coming to Tulsa February 26th. We're putting an ad in the paper about animals in the circus. Thanks, Sherrill Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 14:12:09 -0500 From: Cesar Farell <c.farell@utoronto.ca> To: ar-news postings <ar-news@envirolink.org> Subject: Toronto: Seal Hunt Protest Message-ID: <ECS9802091109A@utoronto.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII ATTENTION ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO END THE COMMERCIAL SEAL HUNT IN CANADA: On Saturday Feb. 28, 1998, four Toronto animal welfare groups will band together to hold a huge rally at Yonge and Bloor followed by a parade down Yonge St. to raise awareness about the atrocities of the Candian commercial seal hunt. Meet at the NE corner of Yonge and Bloor streets at 12 noon, Saturday, Feb. 28. The aim of this rally and parade is to draw public support for a total ban of the commercial seal hunt in Canada. This Toronto event will be a prelude to the National Commercial Seal Hunt Rally in Ottawa on Fri., March, 20, 1998. The 5 main reasons we are calling for an end to the commercial seal hunt are: - seal pups: the killing of seals under one year old - quotas: "saving seals for future generations" - seal penises: the ramifications of killing seals solely for their genitals - subsidies: a poor return on Candian tax dollars - cruelty: inherent in the commercial seal hunt This posting on behalf of: ARK II, Action Volunteers for Animals, CATCSH (Canadians Against the Commercial Seal Hunt), SETA (U of T) For more information, contact: ARK II (416) 536-2308 Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 16:59:50 -0600 From: Steve Barney <AnimalLib@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu> To: AR-News <AR-News@envirolink.org> Subject: [US] EDITORIAL: "Shared duty to save monkeys" (TCT, 2/5/98) Message-ID: <34DF8A66.239249D9@uwosh.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="Boundary_[ID_FhNEQDAkc9bBtHCO6ugnMQ]" 
