This comes on the heals of China’s massive, unnecessary and brutal dog kill. You can read more about this unbelievable action at:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
more-on-chinese-killing-of-54429-dogs.html
Chan created a card that features the Chinese characters for "love" and "respect" along with the actor’s signature.
Along with that is the inscription: "Of course it is our duty as human beings to love and respect each other. But that obligation extends to our animal friends as well. They are just as deserving of our care and kindness."
I give much respect to Chan for taking this position and challenging his heartless homeland.
Article:
Action star Jackie Chan urges China to 'have a heart for dogs'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060831/
en_afp/healthchinadogsanimals_060831135006
Thu Aug 31, 9:50 AM ET
BEIJING (AFP) - Hong Kong action star
Jackie Chan has urged China to "have a heart for dogs" after thousands of the animals were killed to fight rabies outbreaks, the animal rights group PETA said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Chan has teamed up with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization, to stop the mass culling of dogs to fight a disease that can easily be prevented with vaccinations.
The kung fu movie hero has created a unique greeting card that will be auctioned off on eBay starting Thursday to benefit PETA Asia-Pacific's humane rabies control campaign, the group said in a press release.
Shaped like a heart, the handmade card features the Chinese characters for "love" and "respect" along with the actors signature.
It also carries the inscription: "Of course it is our duty as human beings to love and respect each other. But that obligation extends to our animal friends as well. They are just as deserving of our care and kindness."
Chan is an icon of popular culture, not only in Hong Kong but in China.
"With Jackies help, we hope to make dog culling a thing of the past," says PETA Asia-Pacific Director Jason Baker. "Humane rabies prevention programs not only save dogs lives, they also save human lives."
Meanwhile PETA representatives have met with Chinese government officials in the wake of the mass slaughter and provided them with posters and guidelines for humane methods of rabies control.
With an increase in the number of people raising dogs, rabies has emerged in recent weeks as a top public health priority, as more people have contracted rabies from dog bites.
Although people are supposed to vaccinate their dogs and register them, many families, especially in the countryside, violate the regulations partly because they do not want to pay vaccination or registration costs.
News of plans by authorities in the eastern province of Shandong to kill up to half a million dogs, following the death of 16 people from rabies in the past eight months, made headlines worldwide.
One county in southwest Yunnan province earlier in August ordered more than 50,000 dogs killed after rabies led to the deaths of three people.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Contracted Companies Continue Massive Seal Clubbing In Namibia: Brutality for Profit
Amazing this is still going on and at such a massive level. Must be trying to catch up to the kings of seal slaughter – Canada. Of course, they use the same methods – brutal hacking at the head with a pick. Of course, no babies or young are left alone.
Article:
Animal rights group urges end to massive seal cull in Namibia
http://science.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1196252.php
/Animal_rights_group_urges_end_to_massive_seal_cull_in_Namibia
By DPA
Aug 30, 2006, 19:00 GMT
Windhoek/Johannesburg - Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) Wednesday protested the culling of an estimated 91,000 seals in Namibia.
The culling of baby and adult harp seals - the animals are clubbed or shot - began some weeks ago at Cape Cross.
The cull at Cape Cross on the country's southern Atlantic coast, carried out by companies contracted to the government, is undertaken each year.
'The Namibian government has come up with every excuse imaginable for this barbaric slaughter except for the real motive behind it - profit,' Peta said in a statement.
In a letter addressed to the southern African nation's Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Abraham Iyambo, the lobby group said there was 'good reason why the annual Namibia seal slaughter is considered the cruelest seal hunt on the plant' and urged, on behalf of 'concerned citizens around the world' for an end to the practice.
Peta also rejected the Namibian government's position that the culling is key to keeping seal numbers low and ultimately protecting fish stocks.
Article:
Animal rights group urges end to massive seal cull in Namibia
http://science.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1196252.php
/Animal_rights_group_urges_end_to_massive_seal_cull_in_Namibia
By DPA
Aug 30, 2006, 19:00 GMT
Windhoek/Johannesburg - Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) Wednesday protested the culling of an estimated 91,000 seals in Namibia.
The culling of baby and adult harp seals - the animals are clubbed or shot - began some weeks ago at Cape Cross.
The cull at Cape Cross on the country's southern Atlantic coast, carried out by companies contracted to the government, is undertaken each year.
'The Namibian government has come up with every excuse imaginable for this barbaric slaughter except for the real motive behind it - profit,' Peta said in a statement.
In a letter addressed to the southern African nation's Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Abraham Iyambo, the lobby group said there was 'good reason why the annual Namibia seal slaughter is considered the cruelest seal hunt on the plant' and urged, on behalf of 'concerned citizens around the world' for an end to the practice.
Peta also rejected the Namibian government's position that the culling is key to keeping seal numbers low and ultimately protecting fish stocks.
Canadian Government Decides Against Introducing a Bill from Last Parliament That Would Have Modernized 19th Century Definitions of Animal Cruelty
Wow, to not even go ahead with a common sense bill against cruelty makes you wonder why. Do they actually like cruelty?
Article:
Animal cruelty bill lacks teeth, say rights groups
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.
html?id=58c89141-0a7d-4f73-8589-721c21d8f89e&k
=92219&p=1
Joel Kom
CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
OTTAWA - The Conservative government has decided against re-introducing a Liberal bill from the last Parliament that would have modernized 19th century definitions of animal cruelty a decision that has angered animal-rights groups who lobbied to pass the bill for the past seven years.
The government will instead support a Liberal senator's bill, known as S-213, that focuses mostly on increasing fines and jail terms for animal cruelty offences, a spokesman for Justice Minister Vic Toews said Tuesday.
The Conservatives won't re-introduce the last Parliament's legislation, which itself was the fourth version of an animal-cruelty bill dating back to 1999, because it wasn't part of the party's platform, Mike Storeshaw said.
''S-213 is an approach we'd support,'' he said. ''We think the (penalties) that exist are too low and S-213 is a good way of handling it.''
The Senate bill, introduced in April by Liberal Senator John Bryden, would raise the maximum jail term to five years for indictable offences, higher than the current two-year maximum. The bill would also raise the maximum fine from the current $2,000 to $10,000 and allow judges to impose a lifetime ban on animal ownership for anyone convicted of animal cruelty.
Those penalties were all included in the last Parliament's legislation, which died last year after the election was called.
But the big difference, animal-rights groups said, was the parliamentary bill modernized definitions of animal cruelty that hadn't been updated since the first such law was passed in 1892. While some minor changes were made in the 1950s, they said, the Senate bill lets most of the 19th-century rules live on. For example, crimes against animals are considered property offences.
''The most unfortunate development around the whole debate ... is the introduction of Senator Bryden's bill,'' said Shelagh MacDonald, program director for the Ottawa-based Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, adding she was "enormously disappointed" with the Conservative plan.
MacDonald said the Senate bill fails to lower the high threshold that demands prosecutors prove someone intended to neglect animals, something the parliamentary bill would have done. The threshold came into play, MacDonald said, when a judge acquitted a Saskatchewan farmer charged with starving more than 30 sheep to death because the judge didn't feel the farmer intended to starve the animals.
The Senate bill would also not extend the law's protection to wild or unowned animals.
''If you can't convict to begin with, what difference does it make if the penalties are larger or smaller?'' said Cele Partap, a spokeswoman for the Toronto-based World Society for the Protection of Animals Canada.
Some had criticized the last parliamentary legislation for its potential to spark lawsuits from overzealous animal-rights groups who, they said, would go as far as making hunting and fishing illegal. Partap called that a ''radical statement,'' saying anything already lawfully regulated such as hunting and fishing would have been unaffected by the parliamentary bill.
That bill had, in various incarnations, been kicking around Parliament since 1999, yet it was never passed either because of an election call or because the parliamentary session ended. Storeshaw said he couldn't comment on animal-rights groups' specific concerns, only to say the government supported the Senate bill.
Brian Murphy, the Liberals' associate justice critic, said he was ''relatively receptive'' to the Conservatives' plans to back the Senate bill despite his preference to re-introduce the old legislation. But, he added, MPs would have the chance to make amendments to the Senate bill before it would become law, something his party would ''absolutely'' look at.
Ottawa Citizen
Article:
Animal cruelty bill lacks teeth, say rights groups
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.
html?id=58c89141-0a7d-4f73-8589-721c21d8f89e&k
=92219&p=1
Joel Kom
CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
OTTAWA - The Conservative government has decided against re-introducing a Liberal bill from the last Parliament that would have modernized 19th century definitions of animal cruelty a decision that has angered animal-rights groups who lobbied to pass the bill for the past seven years.
The government will instead support a Liberal senator's bill, known as S-213, that focuses mostly on increasing fines and jail terms for animal cruelty offences, a spokesman for Justice Minister Vic Toews said Tuesday.
The Conservatives won't re-introduce the last Parliament's legislation, which itself was the fourth version of an animal-cruelty bill dating back to 1999, because it wasn't part of the party's platform, Mike Storeshaw said.
''S-213 is an approach we'd support,'' he said. ''We think the (penalties) that exist are too low and S-213 is a good way of handling it.''
The Senate bill, introduced in April by Liberal Senator John Bryden, would raise the maximum jail term to five years for indictable offences, higher than the current two-year maximum. The bill would also raise the maximum fine from the current $2,000 to $10,000 and allow judges to impose a lifetime ban on animal ownership for anyone convicted of animal cruelty.
Those penalties were all included in the last Parliament's legislation, which died last year after the election was called.
But the big difference, animal-rights groups said, was the parliamentary bill modernized definitions of animal cruelty that hadn't been updated since the first such law was passed in 1892. While some minor changes were made in the 1950s, they said, the Senate bill lets most of the 19th-century rules live on. For example, crimes against animals are considered property offences.
''The most unfortunate development around the whole debate ... is the introduction of Senator Bryden's bill,'' said Shelagh MacDonald, program director for the Ottawa-based Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, adding she was "enormously disappointed" with the Conservative plan.
MacDonald said the Senate bill fails to lower the high threshold that demands prosecutors prove someone intended to neglect animals, something the parliamentary bill would have done. The threshold came into play, MacDonald said, when a judge acquitted a Saskatchewan farmer charged with starving more than 30 sheep to death because the judge didn't feel the farmer intended to starve the animals.
The Senate bill would also not extend the law's protection to wild or unowned animals.
''If you can't convict to begin with, what difference does it make if the penalties are larger or smaller?'' said Cele Partap, a spokeswoman for the Toronto-based World Society for the Protection of Animals Canada.
Some had criticized the last parliamentary legislation for its potential to spark lawsuits from overzealous animal-rights groups who, they said, would go as far as making hunting and fishing illegal. Partap called that a ''radical statement,'' saying anything already lawfully regulated such as hunting and fishing would have been unaffected by the parliamentary bill.
That bill had, in various incarnations, been kicking around Parliament since 1999, yet it was never passed either because of an election call or because the parliamentary session ended. Storeshaw said he couldn't comment on animal-rights groups' specific concerns, only to say the government supported the Senate bill.
Brian Murphy, the Liberals' associate justice critic, said he was ''relatively receptive'' to the Conservatives' plans to back the Senate bill despite his preference to re-introduce the old legislation. But, he added, MPs would have the chance to make amendments to the Senate bill before it would become law, something his party would ''absolutely'' look at.
Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Greed and Vanity Still Strong: Fur Makes Big Come Back: China and Rich Drive This Bloody Industry
Not good news. Seems that most don’t heed the reality of the cruelty of fur and are now flocking back to it.
Of course, cruel China - leads the way. And this is in addition to their continued torture and slaughter of dogs and cats for fur and food. See
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
crash-course-in-unbelievable-cruelty.html
Also at fault is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States. More on this can be found in the article below.
For more on the reality of fur and for pictures and video of what actually occurs to make a fur coat visit:
http://www.furkills.org/
http://www.furisdead.com/
Here are a few paragraphs from the article below:
American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days.
After a few rough decades, fur is back. Spurred by a boom in demand from China and recent popularity at home thanks to glossy marketing, the price of American mink pelts jumped 33 percent just last year.
Denmark rules the fur industry, selling 80 percent more mink than the U.S. Garment manufacturing is ruled by Asia, rather than New York. Expanding markets in China, Korea and Russia are helping drive demand.
To resuscitate the business, American Legend, a cooperative of 220 North American mink ranchers, undertook advertising campaigns, hiring supermodels Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen and MacPherson. They capitalized on exploding Westernization and wealth in Asia brought by a rejuvenating economy.
Article:
After soft decades, fur popularity soars
A boom in China and high-profile marketing in America are causing prices to rebound.
http://www.readingeagle.com/index.asp
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE In a drab conference room in a nondescript Renton, Wash., warehouse during the spring, an auctioneer took a podium beneath huge photos of supermodels in mink coats and fur lingerie.
Before him, dozens of men and women buzzed in a babel of foreign languages Russian and Italian, Chinese and Korean. But their common language was hanging on racks in the room next door: some 1.7 million shimmering pelts of farm-raised mink, and hundreds of thousands of wild beaver, raccoon, weasel and fox.
This is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days.
After a few rough decades, fur is back. Spurred by a boom in demand from China and recent popularity at home thanks to glossy marketing, the price of American mink pelts jumped 33 percent just last year.
Yet a trade that helped put Seattle on the map today takes place largely out of view, in a heavily guarded, fenced-in warehouse protected from anti-fur protesters. And there's an entirely new unease: Two years ago, a handful of buyers from New York, Canada and China hatched a scheme to rig bids and buy hundreds of otter pelts on the cheap, according to federal prosecutors.
That led to a long-running Justice Department antitrust investigation that still may be in the works. Federal prosecutors remain mum. But class-action lawyers are circling.
And once again the fur trade faces the prospect of being drawn into an uncomfortable spotlight.
Nowadays, Denmark rules the fur industry, selling 80 percent more mink than the U.S. Garment manufacturing is ruled by Asia, rather than New York. Expanding markets in China, Korea and Russia are helping drive demand.
It wasn't always so.
Fur was becoming controversial as early as the 1960s, and by the 1980s and early 1990s it was the target of sabotage by animal-rights activists, who vandalized stores. In 1991, activists burned a small Edmonds, Wash., factory that made feed for farmed mink. All over the country, mink were sprung from their cages, and farms were raided, even torched.
In addition, there were economic troubles in Asia and a glut of furs. Prices crashed.
To resuscitate the business, American Legend, a cooperative of 220 North American mink ranchers, undertook advertising campaigns, hiring supermodels Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen and MacPherson. They capitalized on exploding Westernization and wealth in Asia brought by a rejuvenating economy.
“Beginning in 1999, we tried to refocus the industry and consumers that (fur) could be an integral part of fashion,” said Steve Casotti, vice president of American Legend.
While protesters continue to commit acts of eco-sabotage, and to portray the fur industry as cruel, inhumane and unnecessary in the modern world, celebrities such as rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and pop singer and actress Jennifer Lopez are seen and photographed in mink coats. In places such as Korea, China, Russia and Turkey, the rich are driving expensive cars, wearing Rolexes and buying fur, said Alvin Glickman, a fur buyer in New York.
Of course, cruel China - leads the way. And this is in addition to their continued torture and slaughter of dogs and cats for fur and food. See
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
crash-course-in-unbelievable-cruelty.html
Also at fault is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States. More on this can be found in the article below.
For more on the reality of fur and for pictures and video of what actually occurs to make a fur coat visit:
http://www.furkills.org/
http://www.furisdead.com/
Here are a few paragraphs from the article below:
American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days.
After a few rough decades, fur is back. Spurred by a boom in demand from China and recent popularity at home thanks to glossy marketing, the price of American mink pelts jumped 33 percent just last year.
Denmark rules the fur industry, selling 80 percent more mink than the U.S. Garment manufacturing is ruled by Asia, rather than New York. Expanding markets in China, Korea and Russia are helping drive demand.
To resuscitate the business, American Legend, a cooperative of 220 North American mink ranchers, undertook advertising campaigns, hiring supermodels Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen and MacPherson. They capitalized on exploding Westernization and wealth in Asia brought by a rejuvenating economy.
Article:
After soft decades, fur popularity soars
A boom in China and high-profile marketing in America are causing prices to rebound.
http://www.readingeagle.com/index.asp
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE In a drab conference room in a nondescript Renton, Wash., warehouse during the spring, an auctioneer took a podium beneath huge photos of supermodels in mink coats and fur lingerie.
Before him, dozens of men and women buzzed in a babel of foreign languages Russian and Italian, Chinese and Korean. But their common language was hanging on racks in the room next door: some 1.7 million shimmering pelts of farm-raised mink, and hundreds of thousands of wild beaver, raccoon, weasel and fox.
This is the American Legend auction, the largest remaining fur market in the United States, where $100 million in business is transacted in a few days.
After a few rough decades, fur is back. Spurred by a boom in demand from China and recent popularity at home thanks to glossy marketing, the price of American mink pelts jumped 33 percent just last year.
Yet a trade that helped put Seattle on the map today takes place largely out of view, in a heavily guarded, fenced-in warehouse protected from anti-fur protesters. And there's an entirely new unease: Two years ago, a handful of buyers from New York, Canada and China hatched a scheme to rig bids and buy hundreds of otter pelts on the cheap, according to federal prosecutors.
That led to a long-running Justice Department antitrust investigation that still may be in the works. Federal prosecutors remain mum. But class-action lawyers are circling.
And once again the fur trade faces the prospect of being drawn into an uncomfortable spotlight.
Nowadays, Denmark rules the fur industry, selling 80 percent more mink than the U.S. Garment manufacturing is ruled by Asia, rather than New York. Expanding markets in China, Korea and Russia are helping drive demand.
It wasn't always so.
Fur was becoming controversial as early as the 1960s, and by the 1980s and early 1990s it was the target of sabotage by animal-rights activists, who vandalized stores. In 1991, activists burned a small Edmonds, Wash., factory that made feed for farmed mink. All over the country, mink were sprung from their cages, and farms were raided, even torched.
In addition, there were economic troubles in Asia and a glut of furs. Prices crashed.
To resuscitate the business, American Legend, a cooperative of 220 North American mink ranchers, undertook advertising campaigns, hiring supermodels Cindy Crawford, Gisele Bundchen and MacPherson. They capitalized on exploding Westernization and wealth in Asia brought by a rejuvenating economy.
“Beginning in 1999, we tried to refocus the industry and consumers that (fur) could be an integral part of fashion,” said Steve Casotti, vice president of American Legend.
While protesters continue to commit acts of eco-sabotage, and to portray the fur industry as cruel, inhumane and unnecessary in the modern world, celebrities such as rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs and pop singer and actress Jennifer Lopez are seen and photographed in mink coats. In places such as Korea, China, Russia and Turkey, the rich are driving expensive cars, wearing Rolexes and buying fur, said Alvin Glickman, a fur buyer in New York.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Activists Ask Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals to Sever Ties with British Firm Huntingdon Life Sciences Over Its Use and Abuse of Laboratory Animals
Ah yes, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), the most cruel company on Earth. Here are just a few things that they are guilty of:
In a show called "It's a dog's life (see below for link to it)" it shows HLS workers punching beagle puppies in the face, shaking them violently and throwing them against walls.
Four subsequent investigations uncovered horrors in the way regular HLS staffers treated the animals, including deliberate cruelty, torture and bestiality.
Animals were also operated on without anesthetic.
In addition, test results were falsified in order to expedite products' time to market of products.
To learn more about the horror and abuse of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) including seeing the actual footage shoot inside see http://www.shac.net/MISC/Inside_HLS.html
Article:
Animal rights struggle reaches Teva
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/754730.html
By Nimrod Halpern
The international battle against British firm Huntingdon Life Sciences over its use of laboratory animals has reached Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals: Members of SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) demonstrated yesterday outside Teva offices in Israel, Belgium and Britain, demanding that Teva sever its relations with HLS, which kills about 500 test subjects each day, or 180,000 annually.
"We demand that Teva immediately sever its relations with HLS and adopt more efficient, safe scientific methods to test materials, which do not involve causing pointless pain and death to animals," said the Israeli branch of SHAC. HLS victims include dogs, cats, monkeys and rabbits.
Huntingdon Life Sciences is the biggest contract testing firm in Europe, according to SHAC.
The movement's goal is to shut down HLS by putting economic pressure on organizations and companies that do business with the animal-testing firm, including banks, investors, clients and suppliers.
So far, over 100 clients have cut their ties with HLS, and its shares have lost most of their value.
The company's owners were forced to infuse money of their own and also to move the company's headquarters from Britain to the United States.
The company's attempt to switch from the London Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange was also disastrous. In a dramatic move, NYSE announced on September 7, 2005, the day HLS shares were to have started trading, that it was suspending trade in the stock, with no set date for resumption. This was the first time in history that NYSE halted trade in a firm's shares based on a public battle against the company. Although NYSE did not explain its move at the time, it is known that animal rights activists were preparing to target the exchange as well.
SHAC was founded in 1999, two years after Britain's Channel 4 television aired deeply disturbing footage in a show called "It's a dog's life." The films, shot in secret, showed HLS workers punching beagle puppies in the face, shaking them violently and throwing them against walls.
Four subsequent investigations uncovered horrors in the way regular HLS staffers treated the animals, including deliberate cruelty, torture and bestiality. Animals were also operated on without anesthetic. In addition, test results were falsified in order to expedite products' time to market of products. Several HLS workers were convicted after these findings, and HLS was slammed with heavy fines.
In a show called "It's a dog's life (see below for link to it)" it shows HLS workers punching beagle puppies in the face, shaking them violently and throwing them against walls.
Four subsequent investigations uncovered horrors in the way regular HLS staffers treated the animals, including deliberate cruelty, torture and bestiality.
Animals were also operated on without anesthetic.
In addition, test results were falsified in order to expedite products' time to market of products.
To learn more about the horror and abuse of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) including seeing the actual footage shoot inside see http://www.shac.net/MISC/Inside_HLS.html
Article:
Animal rights struggle reaches Teva
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/754730.html
By Nimrod Halpern
The international battle against British firm Huntingdon Life Sciences over its use of laboratory animals has reached Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals: Members of SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) demonstrated yesterday outside Teva offices in Israel, Belgium and Britain, demanding that Teva sever its relations with HLS, which kills about 500 test subjects each day, or 180,000 annually.
"We demand that Teva immediately sever its relations with HLS and adopt more efficient, safe scientific methods to test materials, which do not involve causing pointless pain and death to animals," said the Israeli branch of SHAC. HLS victims include dogs, cats, monkeys and rabbits.
Huntingdon Life Sciences is the biggest contract testing firm in Europe, according to SHAC.
The movement's goal is to shut down HLS by putting economic pressure on organizations and companies that do business with the animal-testing firm, including banks, investors, clients and suppliers.
So far, over 100 clients have cut their ties with HLS, and its shares have lost most of their value.
The company's owners were forced to infuse money of their own and also to move the company's headquarters from Britain to the United States.
The company's attempt to switch from the London Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange was also disastrous. In a dramatic move, NYSE announced on September 7, 2005, the day HLS shares were to have started trading, that it was suspending trade in the stock, with no set date for resumption. This was the first time in history that NYSE halted trade in a firm's shares based on a public battle against the company. Although NYSE did not explain its move at the time, it is known that animal rights activists were preparing to target the exchange as well.
SHAC was founded in 1999, two years after Britain's Channel 4 television aired deeply disturbing footage in a show called "It's a dog's life." The films, shot in secret, showed HLS workers punching beagle puppies in the face, shaking them violently and throwing them against walls.
Four subsequent investigations uncovered horrors in the way regular HLS staffers treated the animals, including deliberate cruelty, torture and bestiality. Animals were also operated on without anesthetic. In addition, test results were falsified in order to expedite products' time to market of products. Several HLS workers were convicted after these findings, and HLS was slammed with heavy fines.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Pittsburgh Woman Sentenced to Three Months in Jail and Fined For Leaving Her Cat in a Hot Car
Though I still see this as a light sentence in relation to the stupidity and cruelty, it still sends a good message. Starting to take animal cruelty serious is being seen more and more. I commend the judge for not doing the usual probation, etc.
For more on what to do if you see an animal caught in a hot car see: http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/05/
if-you-see-animal-confined-to-vehicle.html
Article:
Woman sent to jail, left cat in hot car
http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?
newsid=17109680&BRD=2305&PAG=461&
dept_id=478569&rfi=6
By: AP
08/25/2006
Tia the cat is being cared for at Animal Friends in Ohio Township. AP
Pittsburgh - A woman was sentenced to three months in jail and fined for leaving her cat in a hot car, seriously harming the animal.
Cherie Phipps had been convicted in a similar case last year when a dog died of heat stroke in her overheated car in Mount Oliver, authorities said.
She was sentenced by district judge Wednesday in the cat case, although Phipps failed to show for the hearing, leading authorities to issue a warrant for her arrest.
The district judge also fined her $750, and prohibited from owning any animals for 90 days.
A passer-by contacted authorities on July 14 to report that the cat was in distress in the hot car in Pittsburgh. The cat will soon be healthy enough for adoption, Animal Friends humane officer Katie Waters said.
For more on what to do if you see an animal caught in a hot car see: http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/05/
if-you-see-animal-confined-to-vehicle.html
Article:
Woman sent to jail, left cat in hot car
http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?
newsid=17109680&BRD=2305&PAG=461&
dept_id=478569&rfi=6
By: AP
08/25/2006
Tia the cat is being cared for at Animal Friends in Ohio Township. AP
Pittsburgh - A woman was sentenced to three months in jail and fined for leaving her cat in a hot car, seriously harming the animal.
Cherie Phipps had been convicted in a similar case last year when a dog died of heat stroke in her overheated car in Mount Oliver, authorities said.
She was sentenced by district judge Wednesday in the cat case, although Phipps failed to show for the hearing, leading authorities to issue a warrant for her arrest.
The district judge also fined her $750, and prohibited from owning any animals for 90 days.
A passer-by contacted authorities on July 14 to report that the cat was in distress in the hot car in Pittsburgh. The cat will soon be healthy enough for adoption, Animal Friends humane officer Katie Waters said.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Like Giving a Junky Free Drugs: Leasing Elephants and Other Wildlife to China
What a ridiculous plan. Anyone who knows about Chinas treatment of animals knows that this will be a devastating act. China is by far the cruelest country on Earth. Need proof? Just read these posts:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
crash-course-in-unbelievable-cruelty.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
cruel-china-plans-another-large-dog.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
even-on-heels-of-beyond-disgusting-dog.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/05/
in-order-to-get-back-at-dalai-lama-and.html
The point is that China cannot be trusted with any species. To “lease” life to them is just plain stupid – like giving a junky free drugs.
Article:
Animal rights activists oppose Thai elephant lease to China
http://etna.mcot.net/query.php?nid=24276
BANGKOK, Aug 23 (TNA) - Animal rights activists in Asia have joined together to protest Thailand's plan to lend elephants and other wildlife to China, alleging that the animal exchange could place bio-diversity and the country's declining population of elephants at risk, a leading Thai activist said on Tuesday.
Soraida Salwala, secretary-general of Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, said more than 40 animal rights organisations from 10 Asian nations have jointly issued a statement protesting the Chiang Mai Night Safari's plan to exchange five Thai elephants, some chimpanzees, douc langur monkeys, and crocodiles for some white tigers from China.
She said Thai animals rights activist groups will meet Wednesday to plan a coordinated action to preventing the authorities from exporting the wildlife.
''We would not let it happen again...as when they successfully sent eight Thai elephants to Australia,'' she said.
Soraida said she believed the five elephants have already been moved to a shelter near Bangkok in preparation for their trip to China.
Despite the accusation from animal rights groups, Wattana Wittayaprasit, head of Cites Management Authority of Thailand, said the department has not yet given a green light to Chiang Mai Night Safari
as alleged.
He said the proposal arrived at his department two months ago and is under legal practice review and other considerations.
Meanwhile, government officials met Tuesday to discuss legal amendments to prevent elephant identity theft.
Schwann Tunhikorn, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, said he would propose a cabinet resolution to allow baby elephants to be registered at 30
days of age and to have a microchip implated under their skin, a practice usually done when the beasts are eight years old.
Mr. Schwann said the cabinet resolution would be a shortcut to amending a law regarding the use of animals as transport which has been in place for 67 years.
''Any changes to the law would need years to accomplish,'' he said.
Entering baby elephants into official records and giving them microchips containing individual demographic information at early age is believed by some experts to help prevent animal smuggling.
It would also help Thailand keep track of the country's population of elephants, he said.
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
crash-course-in-unbelievable-cruelty.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
cruel-china-plans-another-large-dog.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
even-on-heels-of-beyond-disgusting-dog.html
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/05/
in-order-to-get-back-at-dalai-lama-and.html
The point is that China cannot be trusted with any species. To “lease” life to them is just plain stupid – like giving a junky free drugs.
Article:
Animal rights activists oppose Thai elephant lease to China
http://etna.mcot.net/query.php?nid=24276
BANGKOK, Aug 23 (TNA) - Animal rights activists in Asia have joined together to protest Thailand's plan to lend elephants and other wildlife to China, alleging that the animal exchange could place bio-diversity and the country's declining population of elephants at risk, a leading Thai activist said on Tuesday.
Soraida Salwala, secretary-general of Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, said more than 40 animal rights organisations from 10 Asian nations have jointly issued a statement protesting the Chiang Mai Night Safari's plan to exchange five Thai elephants, some chimpanzees, douc langur monkeys, and crocodiles for some white tigers from China.
She said Thai animals rights activist groups will meet Wednesday to plan a coordinated action to preventing the authorities from exporting the wildlife.
''We would not let it happen again...as when they successfully sent eight Thai elephants to Australia,'' she said.
Soraida said she believed the five elephants have already been moved to a shelter near Bangkok in preparation for their trip to China.
Despite the accusation from animal rights groups, Wattana Wittayaprasit, head of Cites Management Authority of Thailand, said the department has not yet given a green light to Chiang Mai Night Safari
as alleged.
He said the proposal arrived at his department two months ago and is under legal practice review and other considerations.
Meanwhile, government officials met Tuesday to discuss legal amendments to prevent elephant identity theft.
Schwann Tunhikorn, deputy director-general of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, said he would propose a cabinet resolution to allow baby elephants to be registered at 30
days of age and to have a microchip implated under their skin, a practice usually done when the beasts are eight years old.
Mr. Schwann said the cabinet resolution would be a shortcut to amending a law regarding the use of animals as transport which has been in place for 67 years.
''Any changes to the law would need years to accomplish,'' he said.
Entering baby elephants into official records and giving them microchips containing individual demographic information at early age is believed by some experts to help prevent animal smuggling.
It would also help Thailand keep track of the country's population of elephants, he said.
Group Seeks to Build One-of-a-Kind Museum Protesting Research on Primates at University of Wisconsin - Madison and In General
This property sits in between the National Primate Research Center and the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory and so would be an amazing statement and educational tool. Yet, of course, there are now attempts to block the purchase, even to the point of breech of contract.
Essentially, this is the idea of Rick Bogle, founder of the Primate Freedom Project. He originally agreed to a contract with the owner last year to purchase the property for $675,000. It would be used to build a museum protesting research on monkeys featuring graphic depiction of the horrors of the work. This would be the first museum of its kind in the country.
The property contains sheds and warehouses and is between the National Primate Research Center and the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory.
We’ll see if the courts agree that there was indeed a breech of contract. Too bad the land owner is now on the side of unnecessary cruelty.
Article:
Animal rights activists fight to build museum next to UW labs
http://www.gazetteextra.com/primateprotest082306.asp
By Ryan J. Foley
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. - Plans to build a museum protesting primate research on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus were blocked when a business owner backed out of a contract to sell a key piece of property, an activist testified Wednesday.
But an attorney for the business owner countered that allowing the Primate Freedom Project to build the exhibit between two UW-Madison primate labs would stand in the way of a planned UW expansion and threaten the security of researchers.
"It is not in the public interest that this group acquire ownership of the property," attorney Allen Arntsen said.
The arguments came Wednesday in a lawsuit involving the animal rights' group, the university and Roger Charly, who owns property containing sheds and warehouses sandwiched between the National Primate Research Center and the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory.
Rick Bogle, founder of the Primate Freedom Project, testified his group reached a contract with Charly last year to purchase the property for $675,000 to build a museum protesting what he considers immoral research on monkeys. The space, featuring graphic depiction of the alleged horrors of the work, would be the first of its kind in the country.
Bogle alleges Charly backed out of the contract under pressure after a nonprofit connected to the university, concerned about the museum plans, offered to buy the property for $1 million.
Charly has said the deal was not binding and he reconsidered after hearing concerns that activists would use the space to intimidate and possibly attack researchers, a claim they dispute.
Ownership of the property is in limbo until the outcome of Bogle's lawsuit, which seeks to force Charly to follow through with the sale rather than selling the property to UW-Madison. Dane County Judge Sarah O'Brien was not expected to issue a ruling for at least one month.
"We stand ready with the money and we'd like to buy the property ... to display what's going on at primate labs in the United States," Bogle testified.
The dispute is one of many between animal rights activists and UW-Madison, a top research university that houses one of eight federally supported primate labs. Scientists defend the use of monkeys to search for cures to human ailments such as AIDS and Parkinson's disease. Activists contend that monkeys are too similar to human beings for experimentation.
Bogle, a teacher-turned-activist, said he got the idea for the museum when he was sitting in front of the labs protesting in summer 2004. He said he moved to Madison months later to follow through with the purchase after Charly seemed agreeable to the deal.
Charly later signed an agreement selling the land to animal rights activist Richard McClellan, who had agreed to fund the purchase and be paid back later out of private donations, Bogle testified.
The property is remarkable because it is so close to two primate labs - which are usually shielded from the public - and has historical significance because former UW researcher Harry Harlow was a pioneer in the field.
"This is like George Washington's house if you're interested in American history," he said. "There's no piece of property like it in the United States."
Charly's lawyer, Arntsen, said the agreement with McClellan was not binding and the public would be better served with the sale to the university's real estate development arm.
Under cross-examination from Arntsen, Bogle acknowledged he sent threatening e-mails to researchers, had demonstrated at their homes and once said he dreamed of attacking a UW lab with a sledgehammer.
Alan Fish, UW-Madison's associate vice chancellor, testified the university made the $1 million offer for the property as part of a future plan to expand the research labs. He said expanding without the property would add $3 million to $5 million in construction costs to build around the space.
"We would literally be building a doughnut and not owning the hole," Fish said.
Having activists next door would also increase the cost of securing the labs by requiring additional surveillance cameras and more secure doors, windows and walls, Fish said.
Essentially, this is the idea of Rick Bogle, founder of the Primate Freedom Project. He originally agreed to a contract with the owner last year to purchase the property for $675,000. It would be used to build a museum protesting research on monkeys featuring graphic depiction of the horrors of the work. This would be the first museum of its kind in the country.
The property contains sheds and warehouses and is between the National Primate Research Center and the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory.
We’ll see if the courts agree that there was indeed a breech of contract. Too bad the land owner is now on the side of unnecessary cruelty.
Article:
Animal rights activists fight to build museum next to UW labs
http://www.gazetteextra.com/primateprotest082306.asp
By Ryan J. Foley
Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. - Plans to build a museum protesting primate research on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus were blocked when a business owner backed out of a contract to sell a key piece of property, an activist testified Wednesday.
But an attorney for the business owner countered that allowing the Primate Freedom Project to build the exhibit between two UW-Madison primate labs would stand in the way of a planned UW expansion and threaten the security of researchers.
"It is not in the public interest that this group acquire ownership of the property," attorney Allen Arntsen said.
The arguments came Wednesday in a lawsuit involving the animal rights' group, the university and Roger Charly, who owns property containing sheds and warehouses sandwiched between the National Primate Research Center and the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory.
Rick Bogle, founder of the Primate Freedom Project, testified his group reached a contract with Charly last year to purchase the property for $675,000 to build a museum protesting what he considers immoral research on monkeys. The space, featuring graphic depiction of the alleged horrors of the work, would be the first of its kind in the country.
Bogle alleges Charly backed out of the contract under pressure after a nonprofit connected to the university, concerned about the museum plans, offered to buy the property for $1 million.
Charly has said the deal was not binding and he reconsidered after hearing concerns that activists would use the space to intimidate and possibly attack researchers, a claim they dispute.
Ownership of the property is in limbo until the outcome of Bogle's lawsuit, which seeks to force Charly to follow through with the sale rather than selling the property to UW-Madison. Dane County Judge Sarah O'Brien was not expected to issue a ruling for at least one month.
"We stand ready with the money and we'd like to buy the property ... to display what's going on at primate labs in the United States," Bogle testified.
The dispute is one of many between animal rights activists and UW-Madison, a top research university that houses one of eight federally supported primate labs. Scientists defend the use of monkeys to search for cures to human ailments such as AIDS and Parkinson's disease. Activists contend that monkeys are too similar to human beings for experimentation.
Bogle, a teacher-turned-activist, said he got the idea for the museum when he was sitting in front of the labs protesting in summer 2004. He said he moved to Madison months later to follow through with the purchase after Charly seemed agreeable to the deal.
Charly later signed an agreement selling the land to animal rights activist Richard McClellan, who had agreed to fund the purchase and be paid back later out of private donations, Bogle testified.
The property is remarkable because it is so close to two primate labs - which are usually shielded from the public - and has historical significance because former UW researcher Harry Harlow was a pioneer in the field.
"This is like George Washington's house if you're interested in American history," he said. "There's no piece of property like it in the United States."
Charly's lawyer, Arntsen, said the agreement with McClellan was not binding and the public would be better served with the sale to the university's real estate development arm.
Under cross-examination from Arntsen, Bogle acknowledged he sent threatening e-mails to researchers, had demonstrated at their homes and once said he dreamed of attacking a UW lab with a sledgehammer.
Alan Fish, UW-Madison's associate vice chancellor, testified the university made the $1 million offer for the property as part of a future plan to expand the research labs. He said expanding without the property would add $3 million to $5 million in construction costs to build around the space.
"We would literally be building a doughnut and not owning the hole," Fish said.
Having activists next door would also increase the cost of securing the labs by requiring additional surveillance cameras and more secure doors, windows and walls, Fish said.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Even Though No Law Requires Cosmetic Ingredients and Food Additives Be Tested On Animals, Covance Refuses To Stop Unnecessary, Cruel Tests
The editorial below points out the most important facts in this argument: one, is that these tests are unnecessary. The others are that Covance and others like them are constantly breaking any rules, and are guilty of serious welfare violations.
Covance tests cosmetic ingredients and food additives on primates, dogs and other animals, despite the fact that no law requires that these products be tested on animals. Unlike Covance, most companies have implemented non-animal safety tests for cosmetics, food additives and other non-drug products.
In addition, Covance is guilty of serious animal welfare violations and was recently fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on documented allegations of striking, choking and tormenting primates at its Virginia facility.
Article:
Covance refuses to take path away from animal tests
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/
Aug. 23, 2006 12:00 AM
As a neurologist and public health specialist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, I'd like to correct misleading statements made by George Poste about the need for animal-testing companies like Covance ("Recognize need for animals in research," Aug. 18).
Covance tests cosmetic ingredients and food additives on primates, dogs and other animals, despite the fact that no law requires that these products be tested on animals. Unlike Covance, most companies have implemented non-animal safety tests for cosmetics, food additives and other non-drug products. In addition, Covance is guilty of serious animal welfare violations and was recently fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on documented allegations of striking, choking and tormenting primates at its Virginia facility.
Contrary to Poste's comments about animal advocacy groups, PCRM has a strict spokesperson policy forbidding comments that could be taken as promoting discrimination or illegal activity. Only one person has ever violated that policy, and as a result, he is no longer a PCRM member.
PCRM is a non-profit research and health advocacy organization that promotes non-animal research methods. In 2004, PCRM worked with a contract laboratory to develop the first cruelty-free insulin assay. Made without fetal calf serum or antibodies from mice, this assay is now marketed and sold worldwide.
Poste claims that the animal testing industry is interested in eliminating animal experiments. Why, then, does Covance continue to test cosmetic ingredients and food additives on animals instead of focusing on creating new technologies that would provide a more humane and effective way of measuring product safety?
- Aysha Akhtar, M.D.
Washington, D.C.
Covance tests cosmetic ingredients and food additives on primates, dogs and other animals, despite the fact that no law requires that these products be tested on animals. Unlike Covance, most companies have implemented non-animal safety tests for cosmetics, food additives and other non-drug products.
In addition, Covance is guilty of serious animal welfare violations and was recently fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on documented allegations of striking, choking and tormenting primates at its Virginia facility.
Article:
Covance refuses to take path away from animal tests
http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/
Aug. 23, 2006 12:00 AM
As a neurologist and public health specialist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, I'd like to correct misleading statements made by George Poste about the need for animal-testing companies like Covance ("Recognize need for animals in research," Aug. 18).
Covance tests cosmetic ingredients and food additives on primates, dogs and other animals, despite the fact that no law requires that these products be tested on animals. Unlike Covance, most companies have implemented non-animal safety tests for cosmetics, food additives and other non-drug products. In addition, Covance is guilty of serious animal welfare violations and was recently fined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on documented allegations of striking, choking and tormenting primates at its Virginia facility.
Contrary to Poste's comments about animal advocacy groups, PCRM has a strict spokesperson policy forbidding comments that could be taken as promoting discrimination or illegal activity. Only one person has ever violated that policy, and as a result, he is no longer a PCRM member.
PCRM is a non-profit research and health advocacy organization that promotes non-animal research methods. In 2004, PCRM worked with a contract laboratory to develop the first cruelty-free insulin assay. Made without fetal calf serum or antibodies from mice, this assay is now marketed and sold worldwide.
Poste claims that the animal testing industry is interested in eliminating animal experiments. Why, then, does Covance continue to test cosmetic ingredients and food additives on animals instead of focusing on creating new technologies that would provide a more humane and effective way of measuring product safety?
- Aysha Akhtar, M.D.
Washington, D.C.
After Witnessing Horrifying Animal Abuse, Women Decides to Change the Week Animal Abuse Laws in Mississippi
The reason I post this is that I commend this women and also to point out the obvious – cruelty laws are too week. You’ll see in this article why she is motivated and also examples of egregious cruelty that essentially go unpunished. It’s true, animal cruelty needs to be made a felony.
Here are a couple paragraphs from the article below:
“Buddy, the 16-week-old black Labrador retriever who was tortured with PVC pipe glue in Gautier, inspired Ladnier to begin an online petition. Ladnier plans to present the list of names to the House of Representatives in January in order to help change the law.”
"Any action of abuse or cruelty is a simple misdemeanor," Ladnier said. "Ev-eryday, someone comes home from work or school and kicks the dog simply because they had a bad day. Everyday someone strangles a cat or dog as an act of power and superiority. Someone has tied a litter of kittens in a sack and tossed them in the river or bayou. A puppy was thrown against a wall for having an accident on the rug. Cats are tied to a clothesline because it is rumored they will fight to the death to be freed. A dog has gone days with no food or water while tied to a tree."
Article:
Support to change the animal cruelty law grows
http://www.gulflive.com/news/mississippipress/
index.ssf?/base/news/1156328102263070.xml
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
By CHERIE WARD
The Mississippi Press
MOSS POINT -- Beth Ladnier of Moss Point is a woman wanting to help change the animal cruelty law in Mississippi.
"After everything that happened with Buddy I de-cided someone needs to stand up for our animals," Ladnier said. "For years and years we've heard stories like Buddy's and no one ever does anything. I decided I would."
Buddy, the 16-week-old black Labrador retriever who was tortured with PVC pipe glue in Gautier, inspired Ladnier to begin an online petition. Ladnier plans to present the list of names to the House of Representatives in January in order to help change the law.
"Any action of abuse or cruelty is a simple misdemeanor," Ladnier said. "Ev-eryday, someone comes home from work or school and kicks the dog simply because they had a bad day. Everyday someone strangles a cat or dog as an act of power and superiority. Someone has tied a litter of kittens in a sack and tossed them in the river or bayou. A puppy was thrown against a wall for having an accident on the rug. Cats are tied to a clothesline because it is rumored they will fight to the death to be freed. A dog has gone days with no food or water while tied to a tree."
Ladnier said these acts of abuse and cruelty happen on a daily basis in Mississippi and remembers a few years ago when a Moss Point home was discovered boarded up with several cats and dogs that were dead from lack of food and water.
"My husband was one who helped go in and clean the house up," Ladnier said. "It was horrific. These animals can't run to a domestic violence shelter. They can't call 911 or have the police protect them. What do they do? They limp back to their abuser with low-cast eyes and ask for a little love. Just a pat on the head or a kind word just to be cast aside again. It's got to stop and the prevention starts with changing the law."
Bill Richman, director of the Jackson County Animal Shelter, said stories like the ones Ladnier described are, unfortunately, an everyday occurrence.
Richman said a couple of years ago a puppy was found in the same area of Hickory Hill abused through a crude attempt at castration.
"It was practically the same neighborhood," Richman said. "It didn't get the same attention this dog has received, but we did try and find the people responsible. We even put out flyers to find the owner of the dog."
Richman said that dog, like Buddy, had to be euthanized.
Richman said he wants state and city officials to consider changing the animal cruelty laws.
"It needs to be a felony because the laws are too weak," Richman said.
"Just one animal abus-ed is too many and I wish the Lab wasn't the worst I've ever heard of, but I'm sad to say I've heard and seen worse."
Richman said he'd like to see strengthened all of the laws in place to protect animals.
"It's so hard to take an animal away from an abusive situation," Richman said. "We have to practically jump through hoops and then they just get a slap on the wrist. They pay their court cost and maybe a $10 fee and then walk away. We need laws in place so we can get things done faster. If we could move things along faster then we could save more animals from abusive situations."
Richman said the local judges always work well with the animal shelter, but until the law changes their hands are tied as well.
"They always do as much as the law will allow," Richman said. "They have to abide by what they're given. It's hard to make a difference when you have nothing backing you up."
Rep. Carmel Wells Smith said the animal cruelty law does need reviewing and she has been interested in the Buddy story from the beginning.
"I think it's just a matter of the proper wording," Smith said. "I cannot comprehend a mind that would find enjoyment in the acts of cruelty that were done to Buddy. It sickens me and makes me wonder what someone like that would do to a child."
Here are a couple paragraphs from the article below:
“Buddy, the 16-week-old black Labrador retriever who was tortured with PVC pipe glue in Gautier, inspired Ladnier to begin an online petition. Ladnier plans to present the list of names to the House of Representatives in January in order to help change the law.”
"Any action of abuse or cruelty is a simple misdemeanor," Ladnier said. "Ev-eryday, someone comes home from work or school and kicks the dog simply because they had a bad day. Everyday someone strangles a cat or dog as an act of power and superiority. Someone has tied a litter of kittens in a sack and tossed them in the river or bayou. A puppy was thrown against a wall for having an accident on the rug. Cats are tied to a clothesline because it is rumored they will fight to the death to be freed. A dog has gone days with no food or water while tied to a tree."
Article:
Support to change the animal cruelty law grows
http://www.gulflive.com/news/mississippipress/
index.ssf?/base/news/1156328102263070.xml
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
By CHERIE WARD
The Mississippi Press
MOSS POINT -- Beth Ladnier of Moss Point is a woman wanting to help change the animal cruelty law in Mississippi.
"After everything that happened with Buddy I de-cided someone needs to stand up for our animals," Ladnier said. "For years and years we've heard stories like Buddy's and no one ever does anything. I decided I would."
Buddy, the 16-week-old black Labrador retriever who was tortured with PVC pipe glue in Gautier, inspired Ladnier to begin an online petition. Ladnier plans to present the list of names to the House of Representatives in January in order to help change the law.
"Any action of abuse or cruelty is a simple misdemeanor," Ladnier said. "Ev-eryday, someone comes home from work or school and kicks the dog simply because they had a bad day. Everyday someone strangles a cat or dog as an act of power and superiority. Someone has tied a litter of kittens in a sack and tossed them in the river or bayou. A puppy was thrown against a wall for having an accident on the rug. Cats are tied to a clothesline because it is rumored they will fight to the death to be freed. A dog has gone days with no food or water while tied to a tree."
Ladnier said these acts of abuse and cruelty happen on a daily basis in Mississippi and remembers a few years ago when a Moss Point home was discovered boarded up with several cats and dogs that were dead from lack of food and water.
"My husband was one who helped go in and clean the house up," Ladnier said. "It was horrific. These animals can't run to a domestic violence shelter. They can't call 911 or have the police protect them. What do they do? They limp back to their abuser with low-cast eyes and ask for a little love. Just a pat on the head or a kind word just to be cast aside again. It's got to stop and the prevention starts with changing the law."
Bill Richman, director of the Jackson County Animal Shelter, said stories like the ones Ladnier described are, unfortunately, an everyday occurrence.
Richman said a couple of years ago a puppy was found in the same area of Hickory Hill abused through a crude attempt at castration.
"It was practically the same neighborhood," Richman said. "It didn't get the same attention this dog has received, but we did try and find the people responsible. We even put out flyers to find the owner of the dog."
Richman said that dog, like Buddy, had to be euthanized.
Richman said he wants state and city officials to consider changing the animal cruelty laws.
"It needs to be a felony because the laws are too weak," Richman said.
"Just one animal abus-ed is too many and I wish the Lab wasn't the worst I've ever heard of, but I'm sad to say I've heard and seen worse."
Richman said he'd like to see strengthened all of the laws in place to protect animals.
"It's so hard to take an animal away from an abusive situation," Richman said. "We have to practically jump through hoops and then they just get a slap on the wrist. They pay their court cost and maybe a $10 fee and then walk away. We need laws in place so we can get things done faster. If we could move things along faster then we could save more animals from abusive situations."
Richman said the local judges always work well with the animal shelter, but until the law changes their hands are tied as well.
"They always do as much as the law will allow," Richman said. "They have to abide by what they're given. It's hard to make a difference when you have nothing backing you up."
Rep. Carmel Wells Smith said the animal cruelty law does need reviewing and she has been interested in the Buddy story from the beginning.
"I think it's just a matter of the proper wording," Smith said. "I cannot comprehend a mind that would find enjoyment in the acts of cruelty that were done to Buddy. It sickens me and makes me wonder what someone like that would do to a child."
Carson and Barnes Circus Again Questioned For Repeated Violations of Federal Animal Welfare Rules and Continued Cruelty
They’re still at it. Carson and Barnes circus is indeed one of the cruelest shows on Earth.
Article:
Animal rights group protests circus making upstate tour
http://www.wstm.com/Global/
story.asp?S=5288800&nav=2aKD
OWEGO, N.Y. An animal rights group is renewing its criticism of a circus now traveling across upstate New York, contending it repeatedly violates federal animal welfare rules.
The organization -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- has accused the Carson and Barnes Circus of mistreating its performing elephants.
The group wrote to lawmakers in rural Tioga County asking that they pass legislation to ban the use of bullhooks, electric prods and other devices on elephants.
A PETA (PEE'-tuh) spokeswoman described the items as "cruel tools" used to "beat elephants into submission."
Carson and Barnes officials deny their elephants are mistreated by trainers.
Some posters promoting Sunday's scheduled performance in Tioga County have been torn down in recent days.
Today, the circus is in Lockport in Niagara County. It's scheduled to make stops in 15 other upstate communities over the next three weeks.
Article:
Animal rights group protests circus making upstate tour
http://www.wstm.com/Global/
story.asp?S=5288800&nav=2aKD
OWEGO, N.Y. An animal rights group is renewing its criticism of a circus now traveling across upstate New York, contending it repeatedly violates federal animal welfare rules.
The organization -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- has accused the Carson and Barnes Circus of mistreating its performing elephants.
The group wrote to lawmakers in rural Tioga County asking that they pass legislation to ban the use of bullhooks, electric prods and other devices on elephants.
A PETA (PEE'-tuh) spokeswoman described the items as "cruel tools" used to "beat elephants into submission."
Carson and Barnes officials deny their elephants are mistreated by trainers.
Some posters promoting Sunday's scheduled performance in Tioga County have been torn down in recent days.
Today, the circus is in Lockport in Niagara County. It's scheduled to make stops in 15 other upstate communities over the next three weeks.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Again at Root of Animal Cruelty: Refuses to Buy Cage Free Eggs
Let’s remember here that Ben and Jerry’s was bought by Unilever in 2000. That being said, their mission is now to make lots of money for lots of stock holders.
If they truly ever had any positive mission (that’s in question) then it’s been lost entirely.
Just like Tom’s of Maine selling out to Colgate Palmolive -
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
toms-of-maine-sells-out-to-animal.html - the loss of a positive mission is clear.
Here are a few points from the article below:
The Humane Society's issue with Ben & Jerry's stems from a campaign against Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based foodservice company that provides eggs and potatoes to grocery stores and companies such as Ben & Jerry's.
In a report released late last week on its Web site, Humane Society of United States said it found in an undercover investigation that Michael Foods hens died of dehydration and starvation, and the dead birds were kept in cages with live ones. The hens' cages were too small for the birds to spread their wings, according to the report.
The report, titled "A Scoop of Lies," also outlines nearly a year of discussions with Ben & Jerry's in which the organization asked the company to stop doing business with Michael Foods.
Shapiro said at least two other Michael Foods customers -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods grocery chains -- have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs; more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities have reduced the use of caged bird eggs or eliminated them entirely.
Article:
Ben & Jerry's faces complaint about hens
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20060822/NEWS01/608220316/1009&theme=
Published: Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By Victoria Welch
Free Press Staff Writer
A national animal protection organization spoke out Monday against Ben & Jerry's, claiming the ice cream maker buys eggs produced by hens cooped in tight cages, a practice that belies Ben & Jerry's reputation as a socially and environmentally conscious company.
"No socially responsible company ought to be supporting that kind of animal cruelty," said Paul Shapiro, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of United States.
Ben & Jerry's spokesman Sean Greenwood said his company is aware of Humane Society's concerns, and has not ruled out switching to cage-free eggs.
"Obviously we take the issue of animal welfare real seriously," Greenwood said. The company's best option for buying the eggs used in all Ben & Jerry's ice cream and frozen yogurts is "something that we are still trying to evaluate, what is the best way for us to proceed at this point."
The Humane Society's issue with Ben & Jerry's stems from a campaign against Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based foodservice company that provides eggs and potatoes to grocery stores and companies such as Ben & Jerry's.
In a report released late last week on its Web site, Humane Society of United States said it found in an undercover investigation that Michael Foods hens died of dehydration and starvation, and the dead birds were kept in cages with live ones. The hens' cages were too small for the birds to spread their wings, according to the report.
The Burlington Free Press made three phone calls Monday to Michael Foods' corporate headquarters in Minnetonka, Minn., asking for comment, but those calls were not returned.
The report, titled "A Scoop of Lies," also outlines nearly a year of discussions with Ben & Jerry's in which the organization asked the company to stop doing business with Michael Foods.
Shapiro said at least two other Michael Foods customers -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods grocery chains -- have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs; more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities have reduced the use of caged bird eggs or eliminated them entirely.
"This is a trend of social responsibility that Ben & Jerry's should be behind," Shapiro said. "There's so much precedent of companies changing. Ben & Jerry's shouldn't find itself on the back burner."
Strong legacy
For much of its 28-year history, Ben & Jerry's has been known for its social awareness and environmental consciousness. Founders and former owners Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield established in 1985 the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, designed to fund community-oriented projects. In 1989, the company spoke out against the use of bovine growth hormone, citing concerns about economic impacts on family farms.
The company was purchased by Anglo-Dutch corporation Unilever for $326 million in 2000.
The company's mission statement includes a pledge "to make, distribute and sell the finest quality all natural ice cream and euphoric concoctions with a continued commitment to incorporating wholesome, natural ingredients and promoting business practices that respect the Earth and the Environment."
On the Ben & Jerry's Web site, the company includes an item about free-range chickens in its Frequently Asked Questions section:
"Our eggs come to us through a broker who deals with a number of suppliers of large poultry operations, none of which are free-range farms," the company writes in its answer. "According to this broker, 'the birds are maintained under humane and ethical standards established by the U.S. poultry industry for proper treatment of laying fowl, providing access to food, water, allocation of space per bird, air circulation, and protection from the elements.' The volume of eggs we require makes sourcing our eggs exclusively from free-range farms not feasible."
Greenwood, speaking on behalf of Ben & Jerry's, said his company was and has continued to be in contact with Humane Society of United States, an organization that is not directly affiliated with regional or local humane societies in Vermont. Ben & Jerry's was not comfortable with the Humane Society of United States' timetable for discontinuing the use of eggs from caged birds, Greenwood said.
"We really like the Humane Society. We value what they're about and appreciate their work on this," Greenwood said. "In the process of communicating back and forth on this, we have learned a lot. Our discussions with them helped us and have increased our learning regarding egg suppliers."
The problem, Greenwood said, is that there continues to be large gray areas of information around proper hen care. Ben & Jerry's ice cream produced in the United Kingdom does use eggs from cage-free hens, but those animals are more readily available and the eggs affordable than their American counterparts.
Shapiro said that, as a company known for thinking outside the corporate box and pushing for social awareness, Ben & Jerry's is obligated to find every way to make those practices feasible stateside.
"Ben & Jerry's is doing many things that are more socially responsible than other companies. But they are making claims that other companies don't make," Shapiro said. "If they're making these claims, it's important that they are living up to them."
Monday's news left at least one local humane society in a quandary. B.J. Rogers, executive director of the Humane Society of Chittenden County, said Monday that he had not read Humane Society of United States' allegations against Ben & Jerry's. The company has long supported his organization, he said, and often supplies free ice cream to Humane Society of Chittenden County events -- including a fundraiser scheduled for Thursday.
His staff was in the process Monday of contacting Ben & Jerry's officials to discuss the matter, Rogers said.
"If it is a case that there's question about their suppliers treating their animals humanely, that would be a concern for us," Rogers said. If Ben & Jerry's does use a producer that treats animals cruelly, "we would advocate directly to change those practices. If they refused to change those, we would have to reconsider accepting their gift, in the form of free ice cream for events.
"Ben & Jerry's has always been very good to us," Rogers said, "but we are committed to our mission before participants' getting free Ben & Jerry's ice cream."
If they truly ever had any positive mission (that’s in question) then it’s been lost entirely.
Just like Tom’s of Maine selling out to Colgate Palmolive -
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/03/
toms-of-maine-sells-out-to-animal.html - the loss of a positive mission is clear.
Here are a few points from the article below:
The Humane Society's issue with Ben & Jerry's stems from a campaign against Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based foodservice company that provides eggs and potatoes to grocery stores and companies such as Ben & Jerry's.
In a report released late last week on its Web site, Humane Society of United States said it found in an undercover investigation that Michael Foods hens died of dehydration and starvation, and the dead birds were kept in cages with live ones. The hens' cages were too small for the birds to spread their wings, according to the report.
The report, titled "A Scoop of Lies," also outlines nearly a year of discussions with Ben & Jerry's in which the organization asked the company to stop doing business with Michael Foods.
Shapiro said at least two other Michael Foods customers -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods grocery chains -- have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs; more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities have reduced the use of caged bird eggs or eliminated them entirely.
Article:
Ben & Jerry's faces complaint about hens
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20060822/NEWS01/608220316/1009&theme=
Published: Tuesday, August 22, 2006
By Victoria Welch
Free Press Staff Writer
A national animal protection organization spoke out Monday against Ben & Jerry's, claiming the ice cream maker buys eggs produced by hens cooped in tight cages, a practice that belies Ben & Jerry's reputation as a socially and environmentally conscious company.
"No socially responsible company ought to be supporting that kind of animal cruelty," said Paul Shapiro, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of United States.
Ben & Jerry's spokesman Sean Greenwood said his company is aware of Humane Society's concerns, and has not ruled out switching to cage-free eggs.
"Obviously we take the issue of animal welfare real seriously," Greenwood said. The company's best option for buying the eggs used in all Ben & Jerry's ice cream and frozen yogurts is "something that we are still trying to evaluate, what is the best way for us to proceed at this point."
The Humane Society's issue with Ben & Jerry's stems from a campaign against Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based foodservice company that provides eggs and potatoes to grocery stores and companies such as Ben & Jerry's.
In a report released late last week on its Web site, Humane Society of United States said it found in an undercover investigation that Michael Foods hens died of dehydration and starvation, and the dead birds were kept in cages with live ones. The hens' cages were too small for the birds to spread their wings, according to the report.
The Burlington Free Press made three phone calls Monday to Michael Foods' corporate headquarters in Minnetonka, Minn., asking for comment, but those calls were not returned.
The report, titled "A Scoop of Lies," also outlines nearly a year of discussions with Ben & Jerry's in which the organization asked the company to stop doing business with Michael Foods.
Shapiro said at least two other Michael Foods customers -- Trader Joe's and Whole Foods grocery chains -- have pledged to switch to cage-free eggs; more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities have reduced the use of caged bird eggs or eliminated them entirely.
"This is a trend of social responsibility that Ben & Jerry's should be behind," Shapiro said. "There's so much precedent of companies changing. Ben & Jerry's shouldn't find itself on the back burner."
Strong legacy
For much of its 28-year history, Ben & Jerry's has been known for its social awareness and environmental consciousness. Founders and former owners Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield established in 1985 the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, designed to fund community-oriented projects. In 1989, the company spoke out against the use of bovine growth hormone, citing concerns about economic impacts on family farms.
The company was purchased by Anglo-Dutch corporation Unilever for $326 million in 2000.
The company's mission statement includes a pledge "to make, distribute and sell the finest quality all natural ice cream and euphoric concoctions with a continued commitment to incorporating wholesome, natural ingredients and promoting business practices that respect the Earth and the Environment."
On the Ben & Jerry's Web site, the company includes an item about free-range chickens in its Frequently Asked Questions section:
"Our eggs come to us through a broker who deals with a number of suppliers of large poultry operations, none of which are free-range farms," the company writes in its answer. "According to this broker, 'the birds are maintained under humane and ethical standards established by the U.S. poultry industry for proper treatment of laying fowl, providing access to food, water, allocation of space per bird, air circulation, and protection from the elements.' The volume of eggs we require makes sourcing our eggs exclusively from free-range farms not feasible."
Greenwood, speaking on behalf of Ben & Jerry's, said his company was and has continued to be in contact with Humane Society of United States, an organization that is not directly affiliated with regional or local humane societies in Vermont. Ben & Jerry's was not comfortable with the Humane Society of United States' timetable for discontinuing the use of eggs from caged birds, Greenwood said.
"We really like the Humane Society. We value what they're about and appreciate their work on this," Greenwood said. "In the process of communicating back and forth on this, we have learned a lot. Our discussions with them helped us and have increased our learning regarding egg suppliers."
The problem, Greenwood said, is that there continues to be large gray areas of information around proper hen care. Ben & Jerry's ice cream produced in the United Kingdom does use eggs from cage-free hens, but those animals are more readily available and the eggs affordable than their American counterparts.
Shapiro said that, as a company known for thinking outside the corporate box and pushing for social awareness, Ben & Jerry's is obligated to find every way to make those practices feasible stateside.
"Ben & Jerry's is doing many things that are more socially responsible than other companies. But they are making claims that other companies don't make," Shapiro said. "If they're making these claims, it's important that they are living up to them."
Monday's news left at least one local humane society in a quandary. B.J. Rogers, executive director of the Humane Society of Chittenden County, said Monday that he had not read Humane Society of United States' allegations against Ben & Jerry's. The company has long supported his organization, he said, and often supplies free ice cream to Humane Society of Chittenden County events -- including a fundraiser scheduled for Thursday.
His staff was in the process Monday of contacting Ben & Jerry's officials to discuss the matter, Rogers said.
"If it is a case that there's question about their suppliers treating their animals humanely, that would be a concern for us," Rogers said. If Ben & Jerry's does use a producer that treats animals cruelly, "we would advocate directly to change those practices. If they refused to change those, we would have to reconsider accepting their gift, in the form of free ice cream for events.
"Ben & Jerry's has always been very good to us," Rogers said, "but we are committed to our mission before participants' getting free Ben & Jerry's ice cream."
Monday, August 21, 2006
New Book Traces Historical and Philosophical Roots of the Scientific, Philosophical and Agronomic Changes Which Led To Development of Vegetarianism
Quite a book. Groundbreaking to say the least. Very well researched and very intellectual. Does much to show that the ideas of today did not just appear. They literally are the result of years of prior intellectual development. Here are a few paragraphs from the review below. You’ll get a taste of what the book is all about:
Anatomists noticed that human teeth and intestines were more akin to those of herbivores than those of carnivores. Dieticians argued that meat did not break down in the digestive system, clogging blood circulation, whereas tender vegetables easily dissolved into an enriching fluid. Neural scientists discovered that animals have nerves capable of exquisite suffering, just as humans do, and this was discomfiting for people who based their entire moral philosophy on the principle of sympathy.
This helped to transform the image of vegetarianism from a radical political statement into a sound medical system. The idea that the vegetarian diet could be the most natural was so astonishingly prevalent in university medical faculties across Europe that it appears to have been close to a scientific orthodoxy.
When studying ideas that people formulated hundreds of years ago, it is important to understand them on their own terms, irrespective of whether they are 'right' or 'wrong' according to present-day understanding, because to do so allows them to provide insight into assumptions that still prevail in modern society - of which, in their nature, we are commonly unaware. The remarkable and long under-appreciated lives of early vegetarians are inroads into uncharted areas of history; they simultaneously shed light on why you think about nature the way you do, why you are told to eat fresh vegetables and avoid too much meat, and how Indian philosophy has crucially shaped those thoughts over the past 400 years.
Article:
Meaty arguments
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1855079,00.html
In The Bloodless Revolution, published today by HarperCollins, Tristram Stuart considers the history of vegetarianism in our society from its origins in the collision of ethical ideas of abstinence, early medicine and Indian philosophy. In this extract from his introduction, Stuart outlines the scientific, philosophical and agronomic developments of the past 400 years that gave birth to the attitudes towards consumption and ecology that we hold today
Monday August 21, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Bloodless Revolution by Tristram Stuart
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a time of immense scientific development. New discoveries and systematising theories emerged from all over Western Europe and filtered out into the widely educated population. Microscopes plunged the observing eye into thitherto invisible worlds; surgical explorations opened up concealed areas of the human body; ever-growing tables of astronomical observations from bigger and better observatories drove human knowledge deeper into space; accumulated navigational skills extended the known world almost to its limits, bringing new peoples and new species under the scrutiny of Enlightenment science - or 'Natural Philosophy' as the discipline was then known. If the vegetarian argument was to prosper it would have to keep up with the times and adapt its logic to modern systems of thought. Vegetarians developed elaborate scientific ways of defending their philosophy, and plugged their views into the main channels of Enlightenment thought.
Article continues
Intrepid investigations with the scalpel confirmed that the human body was almost identical to that of apes and very similar to other animals, which put the study of anatomy and physiology centre-stage in philosophical debate. Man was partly an animal: but scientists wanted to know exactly what sort of animal, herbivore or carnivore? A substantial sector of the intellectual world concluded that the human body, in its original form, was designed to be herbivorous - thus substantiating the scriptural evidence that the primeval diet was fruit and herbs.
Science flourished in the eighteenth century, but it was founded on the schism with received modes of thought engineered by the philosophers René Descartes and his vitally important rival, Pierre Gassendi. Within their new frameworks, Descartes and Gassendi set to work on the most pressing questions: the nature of the soul, of man, and man's place between God and nature. Contrary to all expectations, both Gassendi and Descartes agreed that vegetarianism could be the most suitable diet for humans. Amazingly, three of Europe's most important early seventeenth-century philosophers - Descartes, Gassendi and Francis Bacon - all advocated vegetarianism. At no time before or since has vegetarianism been endorsed by such a formidable array of intellectuals, and by the 1700s their pioneering work had blossomed into a powerful movement of scientific vegetarianism.
Anatomists noticed that human teeth and intestines were more akin to those of herbivores than those of carnivores. Dieticians argued that meat did not break down in the digestive system, clogging blood circulation, whereas tender vegetables easily dissolved into an enriching fluid. Neural scientists discovered that animals have nerves capable of exquisite suffering, just as humans do, and this was discomfiting for people who based their entire moral philosophy on the principle of sympathy. At the same time, the study of Indian populations indicated that abstinence from meat could be conducive to health and long life. This helped to transform the image of vegetarianism from a radical political statement into a sound medical system. The idea that the vegetarian diet could be the most natural was so astonishingly prevalent in university medical faculties across Europe that it appears to have been close to a scientific orthodoxy.
Numerous vegetarian doctors emerged all over Europe, transforming these scientific arguments into practical dietary prescriptions for patients believed to be ailing from over-consumption of flesh. These diet-doctors became conspicuous figures in society, much like the celebrity dieticians of today, but they were also primary movers in pioneering medical research. Meat was almost universally believed to be the most nourishing food, and in England especially, beef was an icon of national identity. It was still common to suspect that vegetables were unnecessary gastronomic supplements and that they were prone to upset the digestive system in perilous ways. The vegetarians helped to alter such suppositions, by presenting evidence that vegetables were an essential nutritional requirement, and that meat was superfluous and could even be extremely unhealthy. The vegetarians thus played a key role in forming modern ideas about balanced diets and put a spotlight on the dangers of eating meat, especially to excess.
Believing that the vegetable diet was healthier and meat was positively harmful invariably led people to the conclusion that the human body was designed to be herbivorous, not carnivorous, and that killing animals was unnatural. Examining natural laws was supposed to provide insights into God's creational design, independent from scriptural revelation. The new scientific observations were seen to endorse the old theological claims for the origins of the vegetable diet, and it gave added force to the view that human society's savage treatment of lesser animals was a perversion of the natural order.
These deductions were backed up by changing perceptions of sympathy which became one of the fundamental principles of moral philosophy in the late seventeenth century, and has remained an abiding force in Western culture. The idea of 'sympathy' in its modern sense as a synonym for 'compassion' was formulated as a mechanical explanation of the archaic idea of sympatheia, the principle - spectacularly adapted to vegetarianism by Thomas Tryon - according to which elements in the human body had an occult 'correspondence', like a magnetic attraction, to similar entities in the universe. Descartes' followers explained that if you saw another person's limb being injured, 'animal spirits' automatically rushed to your corresponding limb and actually caused you to participate in the sense of pain. Although the Cartesians thought that sympathy for animals should be ignored, later commentators argued that the instinctive feeling of sympathy for animals indicated that killing them was contrary to human nature. Vegetarians seized upon the unity of the 'scientific', 'moral' and 'religious' rationales and tried to force people to recognise that eating meat was at odds with their own ethics. Although most people preferred not to think about it, the vegetarians insisted that filling the European belly funded the torture of animals in unpleasant agricultural systems, and ultimately the rape and pillage of the entire world.
All these claims were fiercely repudiated and a distinct counter-vegetarian movement quickly rallied in defence of meat-eating. The intensity as well as the wide proliferation of the debate testifies to just how familiar the vegetarian cause became, and just how challenging most people felt it to be. It threatened to oust man from his long-held position as unlimited lord of the universe - and worse still, to deprive people of their Sunday feasts of roast meat. Leading figures in the medical world accepted some of the vegetarians' reforms - that people should eat less meat and more vegetables - but urgently asserted that man's anatomy was omnivorous or carnivorous not herbivorous, and that vegetables alone were unsuitable for human nourishment. Several philosophers, novelists and poets likewise insisted that sympathy for animals was all very well, but should not be taken to the extreme of vegetarianism.
Nevertheless, prominent members of the cultural elite espoused at least some of the views of the vegetarians and inspired a considerable back-to-nature movement in which diet played an important role. The novelist Samuel Richardson allowed the vegetarian ideals of his doctor, George Cheyne, to infiltrate his best-selling novels, Clarissa and Pamela. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, concurring with the anatomical case, argued that the innate propensity to sympathy was a philosophical basis of animal rights, thus spawning a generation of Rousseauists who advocated vegetarianism. The economist Adam Smith took on board the doctors' discovery that meat was a superfluous luxury and this provided an important cog in the taxation system of his seminal treatise on the free market. By the end of the eighteenth century vegetarianism was advocated by medical lecturers, moral philosophers, sentimental writers and political activists. Vegetarianism had sustained its role as a counter-cultural critique, backed up by evidence that many in the mainstream of society could accept.
The history of vegetarianism adumbrates recent revisionary criticism which questions traditional oppositions between the so-called irrationalism of religious enthusiasts and the 'Enlightenment' rationalism of natural philosophers. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the vegetable diet was munched raw at the communal board of the political and religious extremists - but it was also served with silver cutlery at the high table of the Enlightenment to the learned elite.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Europe was dominated by a culture of radical innovation - diverse movements bundled together under the name Romanticism. Hinduism became the object of veneration as a new wave of Orientalists travelled to India, learned Indian languages and translated Sanskrit texts to the delight of Western audiences. Some East India Company servants were so overcome by the benevolence of Indian culture that they relinquished the religion of their fathers and employers to embrace Hinduism as a more humane alternative. This played into the hands of radical critics of Christianity, such as Voltaire, who used the antiquity of Hinduism to land a devastating blow to the Bible's claims, and acknowledged that the Hindus' treatment of animals represented a shaming alternative to the viciousness of European imperialists. Even those more dedicated to keeping their Christian identity, such as the great scholar Sir William Jones, found themselves swayed by the doctrine, seeing it as the embodiment of everything the eighteenth-century doctors and philosophers had scientifically demonstrated.
As the ferment of political ideas brewed into revolutionary fervour in the 1780s, the vegetarian ideas from former centuries were incorporated once again into a radical agenda. Hinduism was held up as a philosophy of universal sympathy and equality which accorded with the fundamental tenet of democratic politics and animal rights. The rebel John Oswald returned from India inflamed with outrage at the violent injustice of human society and immersed himself in the most bloodthirsty episodes of the French Revolution. Others developed Rousseau's back-to-nature movement and lost their heads on the guillotine defending their vegetarian beliefs. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley joined an eccentric network of nudist vegetarians who were agitating for social revolution and immortalised their ideas in a series of vegetarian poems and essays. As atheism waxed, the anthropocentric bias of European Christianity was eroded, and humans were forced to acknowledge that they were more closely related to animals than was entirely comfortable. Utopian reformers still had the model of primeval harmony seared into their imaginations even though many of them regarded Eden as no more than a myth, so they learned to treat Judaeo-Christianity as an anthropological curiosity and paved the way for modern ideas about humanity and the environment.
As environmental degradation and population growth became serious problems in Europe, economists turned to the pressing question of limited natural resources. Many realised that producing meat was a hugely inefficient process in which nine-tenths of the resources pumped into the animal were wastefully transformed into faeces.
Utilitarians argued that since the vegetable diet could sustain far more people per acre than meat, it was much better equipped to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Once again the enormous populations of vegetarian Indians and Chinese were held up as enlightened exemplars of efficient agronomics. Such calculations eventually led to Thomas Malthus' warnings that human populations inexorably grew beyond the capacity of food production, and that famine was likely to ensue.
By the early nineteenth century most of the philosophical, medical and economic arguments for vegetarianism were in place, and exerting continual pressure on mainstream European culture. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the ideas inevitably transformed, but continuities can be traced to the present day. Figures as diverse as Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy developed the political ramifications of vegetarianism in their own ways, and continued to respond to India's moral example.
When studying ideas that people formulated hundreds of years ago, it is important to understand them on their own terms, irrespective of whether they are 'right' or 'wrong' according to present-day understanding, because to do so allows them to provide insight into assumptions that still prevail in modern society - of which, in their nature, we are commonly unaware. The remarkable and long under-appreciated lives of early vegetarians are inroads into uncharted areas of history; they simultaneously shed light on why you think about nature the way you do, why you are told to eat fresh vegetables and avoid too much meat, and how Indian philosophy has crucially shaped those thoughts over the past 400 years.
Anatomists noticed that human teeth and intestines were more akin to those of herbivores than those of carnivores. Dieticians argued that meat did not break down in the digestive system, clogging blood circulation, whereas tender vegetables easily dissolved into an enriching fluid. Neural scientists discovered that animals have nerves capable of exquisite suffering, just as humans do, and this was discomfiting for people who based their entire moral philosophy on the principle of sympathy.
This helped to transform the image of vegetarianism from a radical political statement into a sound medical system. The idea that the vegetarian diet could be the most natural was so astonishingly prevalent in university medical faculties across Europe that it appears to have been close to a scientific orthodoxy.
When studying ideas that people formulated hundreds of years ago, it is important to understand them on their own terms, irrespective of whether they are 'right' or 'wrong' according to present-day understanding, because to do so allows them to provide insight into assumptions that still prevail in modern society - of which, in their nature, we are commonly unaware. The remarkable and long under-appreciated lives of early vegetarians are inroads into uncharted areas of history; they simultaneously shed light on why you think about nature the way you do, why you are told to eat fresh vegetables and avoid too much meat, and how Indian philosophy has crucially shaped those thoughts over the past 400 years.
Article:
Meaty arguments
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1855079,00.html
In The Bloodless Revolution, published today by HarperCollins, Tristram Stuart considers the history of vegetarianism in our society from its origins in the collision of ethical ideas of abstinence, early medicine and Indian philosophy. In this extract from his introduction, Stuart outlines the scientific, philosophical and agronomic developments of the past 400 years that gave birth to the attitudes towards consumption and ecology that we hold today
Monday August 21, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Bloodless Revolution by Tristram Stuart
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a time of immense scientific development. New discoveries and systematising theories emerged from all over Western Europe and filtered out into the widely educated population. Microscopes plunged the observing eye into thitherto invisible worlds; surgical explorations opened up concealed areas of the human body; ever-growing tables of astronomical observations from bigger and better observatories drove human knowledge deeper into space; accumulated navigational skills extended the known world almost to its limits, bringing new peoples and new species under the scrutiny of Enlightenment science - or 'Natural Philosophy' as the discipline was then known. If the vegetarian argument was to prosper it would have to keep up with the times and adapt its logic to modern systems of thought. Vegetarians developed elaborate scientific ways of defending their philosophy, and plugged their views into the main channels of Enlightenment thought.
Article continues
Intrepid investigations with the scalpel confirmed that the human body was almost identical to that of apes and very similar to other animals, which put the study of anatomy and physiology centre-stage in philosophical debate. Man was partly an animal: but scientists wanted to know exactly what sort of animal, herbivore or carnivore? A substantial sector of the intellectual world concluded that the human body, in its original form, was designed to be herbivorous - thus substantiating the scriptural evidence that the primeval diet was fruit and herbs.
Science flourished in the eighteenth century, but it was founded on the schism with received modes of thought engineered by the philosophers René Descartes and his vitally important rival, Pierre Gassendi. Within their new frameworks, Descartes and Gassendi set to work on the most pressing questions: the nature of the soul, of man, and man's place between God and nature. Contrary to all expectations, both Gassendi and Descartes agreed that vegetarianism could be the most suitable diet for humans. Amazingly, three of Europe's most important early seventeenth-century philosophers - Descartes, Gassendi and Francis Bacon - all advocated vegetarianism. At no time before or since has vegetarianism been endorsed by such a formidable array of intellectuals, and by the 1700s their pioneering work had blossomed into a powerful movement of scientific vegetarianism.
Anatomists noticed that human teeth and intestines were more akin to those of herbivores than those of carnivores. Dieticians argued that meat did not break down in the digestive system, clogging blood circulation, whereas tender vegetables easily dissolved into an enriching fluid. Neural scientists discovered that animals have nerves capable of exquisite suffering, just as humans do, and this was discomfiting for people who based their entire moral philosophy on the principle of sympathy. At the same time, the study of Indian populations indicated that abstinence from meat could be conducive to health and long life. This helped to transform the image of vegetarianism from a radical political statement into a sound medical system. The idea that the vegetarian diet could be the most natural was so astonishingly prevalent in university medical faculties across Europe that it appears to have been close to a scientific orthodoxy.
Numerous vegetarian doctors emerged all over Europe, transforming these scientific arguments into practical dietary prescriptions for patients believed to be ailing from over-consumption of flesh. These diet-doctors became conspicuous figures in society, much like the celebrity dieticians of today, but they were also primary movers in pioneering medical research. Meat was almost universally believed to be the most nourishing food, and in England especially, beef was an icon of national identity. It was still common to suspect that vegetables were unnecessary gastronomic supplements and that they were prone to upset the digestive system in perilous ways. The vegetarians helped to alter such suppositions, by presenting evidence that vegetables were an essential nutritional requirement, and that meat was superfluous and could even be extremely unhealthy. The vegetarians thus played a key role in forming modern ideas about balanced diets and put a spotlight on the dangers of eating meat, especially to excess.
Believing that the vegetable diet was healthier and meat was positively harmful invariably led people to the conclusion that the human body was designed to be herbivorous, not carnivorous, and that killing animals was unnatural. Examining natural laws was supposed to provide insights into God's creational design, independent from scriptural revelation. The new scientific observations were seen to endorse the old theological claims for the origins of the vegetable diet, and it gave added force to the view that human society's savage treatment of lesser animals was a perversion of the natural order.
These deductions were backed up by changing perceptions of sympathy which became one of the fundamental principles of moral philosophy in the late seventeenth century, and has remained an abiding force in Western culture. The idea of 'sympathy' in its modern sense as a synonym for 'compassion' was formulated as a mechanical explanation of the archaic idea of sympatheia, the principle - spectacularly adapted to vegetarianism by Thomas Tryon - according to which elements in the human body had an occult 'correspondence', like a magnetic attraction, to similar entities in the universe. Descartes' followers explained that if you saw another person's limb being injured, 'animal spirits' automatically rushed to your corresponding limb and actually caused you to participate in the sense of pain. Although the Cartesians thought that sympathy for animals should be ignored, later commentators argued that the instinctive feeling of sympathy for animals indicated that killing them was contrary to human nature. Vegetarians seized upon the unity of the 'scientific', 'moral' and 'religious' rationales and tried to force people to recognise that eating meat was at odds with their own ethics. Although most people preferred not to think about it, the vegetarians insisted that filling the European belly funded the torture of animals in unpleasant agricultural systems, and ultimately the rape and pillage of the entire world.
All these claims were fiercely repudiated and a distinct counter-vegetarian movement quickly rallied in defence of meat-eating. The intensity as well as the wide proliferation of the debate testifies to just how familiar the vegetarian cause became, and just how challenging most people felt it to be. It threatened to oust man from his long-held position as unlimited lord of the universe - and worse still, to deprive people of their Sunday feasts of roast meat. Leading figures in the medical world accepted some of the vegetarians' reforms - that people should eat less meat and more vegetables - but urgently asserted that man's anatomy was omnivorous or carnivorous not herbivorous, and that vegetables alone were unsuitable for human nourishment. Several philosophers, novelists and poets likewise insisted that sympathy for animals was all very well, but should not be taken to the extreme of vegetarianism.
Nevertheless, prominent members of the cultural elite espoused at least some of the views of the vegetarians and inspired a considerable back-to-nature movement in which diet played an important role. The novelist Samuel Richardson allowed the vegetarian ideals of his doctor, George Cheyne, to infiltrate his best-selling novels, Clarissa and Pamela. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, concurring with the anatomical case, argued that the innate propensity to sympathy was a philosophical basis of animal rights, thus spawning a generation of Rousseauists who advocated vegetarianism. The economist Adam Smith took on board the doctors' discovery that meat was a superfluous luxury and this provided an important cog in the taxation system of his seminal treatise on the free market. By the end of the eighteenth century vegetarianism was advocated by medical lecturers, moral philosophers, sentimental writers and political activists. Vegetarianism had sustained its role as a counter-cultural critique, backed up by evidence that many in the mainstream of society could accept.
The history of vegetarianism adumbrates recent revisionary criticism which questions traditional oppositions between the so-called irrationalism of religious enthusiasts and the 'Enlightenment' rationalism of natural philosophers. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the vegetable diet was munched raw at the communal board of the political and religious extremists - but it was also served with silver cutlery at the high table of the Enlightenment to the learned elite.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Europe was dominated by a culture of radical innovation - diverse movements bundled together under the name Romanticism. Hinduism became the object of veneration as a new wave of Orientalists travelled to India, learned Indian languages and translated Sanskrit texts to the delight of Western audiences. Some East India Company servants were so overcome by the benevolence of Indian culture that they relinquished the religion of their fathers and employers to embrace Hinduism as a more humane alternative. This played into the hands of radical critics of Christianity, such as Voltaire, who used the antiquity of Hinduism to land a devastating blow to the Bible's claims, and acknowledged that the Hindus' treatment of animals represented a shaming alternative to the viciousness of European imperialists. Even those more dedicated to keeping their Christian identity, such as the great scholar Sir William Jones, found themselves swayed by the doctrine, seeing it as the embodiment of everything the eighteenth-century doctors and philosophers had scientifically demonstrated.
As the ferment of political ideas brewed into revolutionary fervour in the 1780s, the vegetarian ideas from former centuries were incorporated once again into a radical agenda. Hinduism was held up as a philosophy of universal sympathy and equality which accorded with the fundamental tenet of democratic politics and animal rights. The rebel John Oswald returned from India inflamed with outrage at the violent injustice of human society and immersed himself in the most bloodthirsty episodes of the French Revolution. Others developed Rousseau's back-to-nature movement and lost their heads on the guillotine defending their vegetarian beliefs. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley joined an eccentric network of nudist vegetarians who were agitating for social revolution and immortalised their ideas in a series of vegetarian poems and essays. As atheism waxed, the anthropocentric bias of European Christianity was eroded, and humans were forced to acknowledge that they were more closely related to animals than was entirely comfortable. Utopian reformers still had the model of primeval harmony seared into their imaginations even though many of them regarded Eden as no more than a myth, so they learned to treat Judaeo-Christianity as an anthropological curiosity and paved the way for modern ideas about humanity and the environment.
As environmental degradation and population growth became serious problems in Europe, economists turned to the pressing question of limited natural resources. Many realised that producing meat was a hugely inefficient process in which nine-tenths of the resources pumped into the animal were wastefully transformed into faeces.
Utilitarians argued that since the vegetable diet could sustain far more people per acre than meat, it was much better equipped to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Once again the enormous populations of vegetarian Indians and Chinese were held up as enlightened exemplars of efficient agronomics. Such calculations eventually led to Thomas Malthus' warnings that human populations inexorably grew beyond the capacity of food production, and that famine was likely to ensue.
By the early nineteenth century most of the philosophical, medical and economic arguments for vegetarianism were in place, and exerting continual pressure on mainstream European culture. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the ideas inevitably transformed, but continuities can be traced to the present day. Figures as diverse as Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy developed the political ramifications of vegetarianism in their own ways, and continued to respond to India's moral example.
When studying ideas that people formulated hundreds of years ago, it is important to understand them on their own terms, irrespective of whether they are 'right' or 'wrong' according to present-day understanding, because to do so allows them to provide insight into assumptions that still prevail in modern society - of which, in their nature, we are commonly unaware. The remarkable and long under-appreciated lives of early vegetarians are inroads into uncharted areas of history; they simultaneously shed light on why you think about nature the way you do, why you are told to eat fresh vegetables and avoid too much meat, and how Indian philosophy has crucially shaped those thoughts over the past 400 years.
Friday, August 18, 2006
California Law Would Require Pet Shops to Abide by Stricter Regulations: Keeping Detailed Records on the Animals They Sell
It would also require providing toys and exercise wheels for caged animals and other care issues.
Wow, another incredible step coming out of California. I think this is a great step and would lead eventually to greater accountability to a despicable industry. It still doesn’t go far enough, but will lead to improvement.
For more on the problems with pet stores and puppy mills visit: http://www.stoppuppymills.org/
For those in California who want to support it, the bill is AB2862
Article:
Measure could force pet shops to keep better records
Bill also calls for stricter rules on exercise and care
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/17/
BAG48KJR4S1.DTL&hw=Measure+could+force+pet+shops+to+
keep+better+records&sn=001&sc=1000
Kimberly Geiger, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Thursday, August 17, 2006
(08-17) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- Lawmakers will vote today on a bill that could require pet shops to abide by stricter regulations like keeping detailed records on the animals they sell and providing toys and exercise wheels for small animals like rats, hamsters, mice and guinea pigs.
A recent investigation conducted by an animal rights advocacy group prompted Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Leimert Park (Los Angeles County), to introduce a bill that would set into law a statewide regulatory policy for pet shops. Ridley-Thomas said current federal regulations are inadequate because they are vague and focus mostly on cats and dogs.
Major pet dealers like PETCO and PetSmart have lobbied against the idea, but last week brokered a deal with lawmakers. The original bill had included a highly detailed series of rules that would have become law, but PETCO and PetSmart said they would prefer to negotiate the specifics with a regulatory agency instead of the Legislature.
The bill now would require the state's Department of Consumer Affairs to "regulate the care and handling of companion animals sold to the general public at retail outlets."
"The pet industry itself has gotten the message that standards need to be raised," Ridley-Thomas said.
Pet shop owners initially opposed regulations contained in the bill that would have required them to keep better records, provide more cage space, and place toys and exercise wheels in cages.
Pet shop owners argued that these provisions should exclude mice that are sold as food for reptiles. The bill would have required pet shops to house no more than four mice per 1-square-foot-wide by 9-inch-tall container, and place an exercise wheel and gnawing item in the cage.
Jonathan Ito, owner of Animal Connection, one of six San Francisco pet shops that sells live animals, said the bill's provisions were unrealistic for a shopkeeper who sells mice exclusively as food. "We haven't sold mice as pets for a while now," said Ito. "I would have to set up exercise machines as if these are long-term pets."
In addition to the housing requirements, Ito said he opposed the bill's record keeping provisions which would have required him to document each animal's age, size, color marking, breed, sex and species as well as the names and contact information for the person or company that sold him the animal.
Ito said this type of record keeping is difficult when it comes to cats and dogs, but nearly impossible when dealing with a high volume of guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice.
The provisions were recommended to lawmakers by the Animal Protection Institute, the organization that conducted the investigation.
The institute's investigation of pet shops in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego gave pet shops statewide a poor grade for their treatment of animals, though San Francisco's shops performed better than those in the other cities.
The investigators visited four pet shops in San Francisco and reported that one shop failed to provide animals with sufficient space, one shop provided unclean water, one shop housed animals that showed signs of neglect, three shops housed animals that showed signs of psychological distress, and three shops kept animals in unsanitary enclosures.
The organization did not investigate large pet-shop chains like PETCO. The San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control had already filed a lawsuit against PETCO for repeated violations of existing law governing the treatment of animals. The city and county were recently awarded $50,000 and PETCO was required to improve its treatment of animals or face additional fines.
Ito suspects that the bill, AB2862, is part of a broader attempt by animal rights activists to stop the sale of animals entirely.
"The bill is sponsored by the Animal Protection Institute and they would rather have no one sell pets, so it's designed to do that," Ito said. "Based on the original provisions in that bill, we would not be able to provide the service we provide now."
Monica Engebretson, a spokeswoman for the Animal Protection Institute, said that when the group reviewed the results of its investigation, it concluded that animals should not be sold as pets. Regardless, she said, "this bill is not about putting pet shops out of business."
Wow, another incredible step coming out of California. I think this is a great step and would lead eventually to greater accountability to a despicable industry. It still doesn’t go far enough, but will lead to improvement.
For more on the problems with pet stores and puppy mills visit: http://www.stoppuppymills.org/
For those in California who want to support it, the bill is AB2862
Article:
Measure could force pet shops to keep better records
Bill also calls for stricter rules on exercise and care
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/17/
BAG48KJR4S1.DTL&hw=Measure+could+force+pet+shops+to+
keep+better+records&sn=001&sc=1000
Kimberly Geiger, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Thursday, August 17, 2006
(08-17) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- Lawmakers will vote today on a bill that could require pet shops to abide by stricter regulations like keeping detailed records on the animals they sell and providing toys and exercise wheels for small animals like rats, hamsters, mice and guinea pigs.
A recent investigation conducted by an animal rights advocacy group prompted Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas, D-Leimert Park (Los Angeles County), to introduce a bill that would set into law a statewide regulatory policy for pet shops. Ridley-Thomas said current federal regulations are inadequate because they are vague and focus mostly on cats and dogs.
Major pet dealers like PETCO and PetSmart have lobbied against the idea, but last week brokered a deal with lawmakers. The original bill had included a highly detailed series of rules that would have become law, but PETCO and PetSmart said they would prefer to negotiate the specifics with a regulatory agency instead of the Legislature.
The bill now would require the state's Department of Consumer Affairs to "regulate the care and handling of companion animals sold to the general public at retail outlets."
"The pet industry itself has gotten the message that standards need to be raised," Ridley-Thomas said.
Pet shop owners initially opposed regulations contained in the bill that would have required them to keep better records, provide more cage space, and place toys and exercise wheels in cages.
Pet shop owners argued that these provisions should exclude mice that are sold as food for reptiles. The bill would have required pet shops to house no more than four mice per 1-square-foot-wide by 9-inch-tall container, and place an exercise wheel and gnawing item in the cage.
Jonathan Ito, owner of Animal Connection, one of six San Francisco pet shops that sells live animals, said the bill's provisions were unrealistic for a shopkeeper who sells mice exclusively as food. "We haven't sold mice as pets for a while now," said Ito. "I would have to set up exercise machines as if these are long-term pets."
In addition to the housing requirements, Ito said he opposed the bill's record keeping provisions which would have required him to document each animal's age, size, color marking, breed, sex and species as well as the names and contact information for the person or company that sold him the animal.
Ito said this type of record keeping is difficult when it comes to cats and dogs, but nearly impossible when dealing with a high volume of guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice.
The provisions were recommended to lawmakers by the Animal Protection Institute, the organization that conducted the investigation.
The institute's investigation of pet shops in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego gave pet shops statewide a poor grade for their treatment of animals, though San Francisco's shops performed better than those in the other cities.
The investigators visited four pet shops in San Francisco and reported that one shop failed to provide animals with sufficient space, one shop provided unclean water, one shop housed animals that showed signs of neglect, three shops housed animals that showed signs of psychological distress, and three shops kept animals in unsanitary enclosures.
The organization did not investigate large pet-shop chains like PETCO. The San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control had already filed a lawsuit against PETCO for repeated violations of existing law governing the treatment of animals. The city and county were recently awarded $50,000 and PETCO was required to improve its treatment of animals or face additional fines.
Ito suspects that the bill, AB2862, is part of a broader attempt by animal rights activists to stop the sale of animals entirely.
"The bill is sponsored by the Animal Protection Institute and they would rather have no one sell pets, so it's designed to do that," Ito said. "Based on the original provisions in that bill, we would not be able to provide the service we provide now."
Monica Engebretson, a spokeswoman for the Animal Protection Institute, said that when the group reviewed the results of its investigation, it concluded that animals should not be sold as pets. Regardless, she said, "this bill is not about putting pet shops out of business."
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Editorial Exposes Truth Behind Iditarod: Dogs Merely Sacrifices to Attempt at Winners Glory
The race isn't until March, but it's a good time to let others know the hidden facts.
For more on the untold facts behind the Iditarod, see http://www.helpsleddogs.org/faq.htm and http://www.helpsleddogs.org/. Needless to say, you haven’t been getting the whole truth and you’ll be shocked by what you read.
Article:
Letter: Iditarod an abuse of dogs
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/
view.bg?articleid=138130
Thursday, August 17, 2006
In her review of Susan Butcher's life ("Celebrating women who made a difference," Aug. 16), Tad Bartimus neglected to mention that animal lovers criticized the musher for participating in the Iditarod. Butcher could never show that the race, with its well-documented history of abuses, isn't a sweatshop for dogs.
What happens to the dogs during the Iditarod includes death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, broken bones, pneumonia, torn muscles and tendons, diarrhea, vomiting, hypothermia, fur loss, broken teeth, viral diseases, torn footpads, ruptured discs, sprains, anemia and lung damage.
One of the dogs used by Butcher in the 1994 Iditarod died from "sudden death syndrome." Another dog dropped dead in 1987 from internal hemorrhaging, and, in 1985, two were killed and several were injured by a moose.
On average, 52 percent of the dogs that start the Iditarod do not make it across the finish line. According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do finish, 81 percent have lung damage. The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine reported that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
The facts show that the level of cruelty in the Iditarod is profound. The race belongs in history's garbage can.
MARGERY GLICKMAN
Director, Sled Dog Action Coalition,
Miami
For more on the untold facts behind the Iditarod, see http://www.helpsleddogs.org/faq.htm and http://www.helpsleddogs.org/. Needless to say, you haven’t been getting the whole truth and you’ll be shocked by what you read.
Article:
Letter: Iditarod an abuse of dogs
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/
view.bg?articleid=138130
Thursday, August 17, 2006
In her review of Susan Butcher's life ("Celebrating women who made a difference," Aug. 16), Tad Bartimus neglected to mention that animal lovers criticized the musher for participating in the Iditarod. Butcher could never show that the race, with its well-documented history of abuses, isn't a sweatshop for dogs.
What happens to the dogs during the Iditarod includes death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, broken bones, pneumonia, torn muscles and tendons, diarrhea, vomiting, hypothermia, fur loss, broken teeth, viral diseases, torn footpads, ruptured discs, sprains, anemia and lung damage.
One of the dogs used by Butcher in the 1994 Iditarod died from "sudden death syndrome." Another dog dropped dead in 1987 from internal hemorrhaging, and, in 1985, two were killed and several were injured by a moose.
On average, 52 percent of the dogs that start the Iditarod do not make it across the finish line. According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do finish, 81 percent have lung damage. The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine reported that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
The facts show that the level of cruelty in the Iditarod is profound. The race belongs in history's garbage can.
MARGERY GLICKMAN
Director, Sled Dog Action Coalition,
Miami
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Citizens Raise Awareness to Use of Animals in Pharmaceutical Testing: Demonstrations Outside Washington, D.C., Offices of Pharmaceutical Companies
Huntingdon Life Sciences was of particular discussion, but in general, a way to raise awareness to this issue.
Article:
Analysis: Animal advocates storm D.C.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/article_
1190494.php/Analysis_Animal_advocates_storm_D.C.
By Steve Mitchell Aug 15, 2006, 10:52 GMT
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Animal rights advocates held demonstrations outside the Washington, D.C., offices of several major pharmaceutical companies Monday to protest testing of potential medications on animals.
The activists said they also conducted protests at the homes of several pharmaceutical company employees in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area over the weekend, including staff of Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.
The advocates object to the fact the pharmaceutical firms do business with Huntingdon Life Sciences, which conducts animal tests that the activists consider brutal and unnecessary.
'We`re trying to bring attention to companies that are customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences; that they are killing 500 animals per day and that they`re practicing fraudulent science,' Camille Hankins, spokeswoman for Win Animal Rights, told United Press International.
'They need to make the ethical business choice to cut their ties to Huntingdon,' Hankins said.
A group of approximately 13 activists held posters and chanted outside the Merck office on Pennsylvania Avenue. They also held posters and distributed flyers to passersby outside the offices of AstraZeneca and Novartis.
The posters had a picture of a beagle that had been cut open, apparently as part of a study conducted at Huntingdon, with the message: 'Huntingdon Life Sciences, Puppy Killers.'
Hankins led chants that included '500 animal died today, Merck pharma is to blame' and 'Vivisection is a lie, How many animals have to die?'
Hankins said two other groups of activists conducted demonstrations at other pharmaceutical and biotech company offices in Washington, including Monsanto, Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline.
'We`re hoping to raise consciousness, and people will see the graphic images and understand that what Huntingdon Life Sciences is doing is wrong,' Hankins said. 'The animals have no hope except for the people, like us, who go out and speak for them.'
The effect on the pharmaceutical firms is unclear, but the companies apparently expected the protests. Increased security was in place at the AstraZeneca and Novartis offices and the security manager of the building said the protests were anticipated.
'There was a rumor going on that they might be coming,' Madison Agnew, security director of the buildings that houses the Washington offices of AstraZeneca, Novartis and Sanofi-aventis, told UPI.
Huntingdon Life Sciences did not return UPI`s call late Monday.
The protests are the latest incident in an intensifying battle between animal rights groups, law enforcement and the pharmaceutical industry.
The FBI has sought to crack down on the activists and one group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) USA, has all but been disbanded after its Web site was shut down and seven of its members were convicted in federal court in March of carrying out a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Huntingdon.
The case has had a chilling effect on animal rights advocates, but they say it won`t stymie the movement and may only serve to stiffen activists` resolve.
'We`re all scared ... in terms of our rights,' Brenda Shoss, a former spokeswoman for SHAC and now with Kinship Circles, told UPI. Shoss participated in the protests Monday.
'It seems like large corporations can manipulate the law through the use of money,' Shoss said, referring to the conviction of the SHAC 7, as the case has come to be known.
'The SHAC Website might have offended (Huntingdon), but since when is that illegal? And where does it stop?' she said.
But she added that the conviction of the SHAC members won`t intimidate activists from protesting and could have the effect of making activists more determined.
Article:
Analysis: Animal advocates storm D.C.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/article_
1190494.php/Analysis_Animal_advocates_storm_D.C.
By Steve Mitchell Aug 15, 2006, 10:52 GMT
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Animal rights advocates held demonstrations outside the Washington, D.C., offices of several major pharmaceutical companies Monday to protest testing of potential medications on animals.
The activists said they also conducted protests at the homes of several pharmaceutical company employees in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area over the weekend, including staff of Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.
The advocates object to the fact the pharmaceutical firms do business with Huntingdon Life Sciences, which conducts animal tests that the activists consider brutal and unnecessary.
'We`re trying to bring attention to companies that are customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences; that they are killing 500 animals per day and that they`re practicing fraudulent science,' Camille Hankins, spokeswoman for Win Animal Rights, told United Press International.
'They need to make the ethical business choice to cut their ties to Huntingdon,' Hankins said.
A group of approximately 13 activists held posters and chanted outside the Merck office on Pennsylvania Avenue. They also held posters and distributed flyers to passersby outside the offices of AstraZeneca and Novartis.
The posters had a picture of a beagle that had been cut open, apparently as part of a study conducted at Huntingdon, with the message: 'Huntingdon Life Sciences, Puppy Killers.'
Hankins led chants that included '500 animal died today, Merck pharma is to blame' and 'Vivisection is a lie, How many animals have to die?'
Hankins said two other groups of activists conducted demonstrations at other pharmaceutical and biotech company offices in Washington, including Monsanto, Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline.
'We`re hoping to raise consciousness, and people will see the graphic images and understand that what Huntingdon Life Sciences is doing is wrong,' Hankins said. 'The animals have no hope except for the people, like us, who go out and speak for them.'
The effect on the pharmaceutical firms is unclear, but the companies apparently expected the protests. Increased security was in place at the AstraZeneca and Novartis offices and the security manager of the building said the protests were anticipated.
'There was a rumor going on that they might be coming,' Madison Agnew, security director of the buildings that houses the Washington offices of AstraZeneca, Novartis and Sanofi-aventis, told UPI.
Huntingdon Life Sciences did not return UPI`s call late Monday.
The protests are the latest incident in an intensifying battle between animal rights groups, law enforcement and the pharmaceutical industry.
The FBI has sought to crack down on the activists and one group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) USA, has all but been disbanded after its Web site was shut down and seven of its members were convicted in federal court in March of carrying out a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Huntingdon.
The case has had a chilling effect on animal rights advocates, but they say it won`t stymie the movement and may only serve to stiffen activists` resolve.
'We`re all scared ... in terms of our rights,' Brenda Shoss, a former spokeswoman for SHAC and now with Kinship Circles, told UPI. Shoss participated in the protests Monday.
'It seems like large corporations can manipulate the law through the use of money,' Shoss said, referring to the conviction of the SHAC 7, as the case has come to be known.
'The SHAC Website might have offended (Huntingdon), but since when is that illegal? And where does it stop?' she said.
But she added that the conviction of the SHAC members won`t intimidate activists from protesting and could have the effect of making activists more determined.
Which Is Worse: China Massacring 50,000 Dogs Or U.S. Massacring 90,000 Horses?: Group Raises Awareness Again To Horse Slaughter
As an aside, a good question for some, but logically, they’re both incredibly bad. Neither is worse.
I applaud their efforts to raise awareness to horse slaughter. See our stories on horse slaughter at:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/07/
more-on-us-horse-slaughter-legislation_26.html
See our stories on the Chinese dog slaughter at:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
more-on-chinese-killing-of-54429-dogs.html
You’ll see below how you can help prevent horse slaughter for food. Start by going to: http://www.saveahorsenow.org
Article:
Which is Worse: China Massacring 50,000 Dogs or U.S. Massacring 90,000 Horses?
http://www.equestrianmag.com/news/
horse-massacre-china-us-angel-8-06.html
GLENVILLE, PA – Americans were outraged by recent media reports from Shanghai, China of the killing 50,000 dogs to stop rabies. But where’s the outrage over the killing of nearly twice as many American horses to be eaten by the French, Belgiums and Asians?
The five-day massacre began after three people died of rabies. Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten to death. Other killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, and then beat dogs to death.
In America “killer buyers” purchase horses, including retired thoroughbreds, beat them to death in killer pens in broad daylight, and ship them to meat processing plants in the U.S. to be sold overseas as horseflesh to be eaten.
“The dog massacre was widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing it as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on prevention,” reported USA Today on August 1, 2006.
“But who is talking about the shameful, horrid slaughter of American horses merely to satisfy the appetites of foreigners,” asks Jo Deibel, President of the Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue, Inc. http://www.saveahorsenow.org. “Why are we so outraged about the massacre of dogs yet are not outraged by the massacre of horses which not only are loved by so many but are an important part of our nation’s history and heritage?”
Angel Acres’s prime mission is to encourage the adoption by responsible owners of these beautiful horses whose only shortcoming is that they can no longer race at full speed. Deibel feeds, shelters and provides veterinary care for rescued horses until they are adopted.
Because of this shocking treatment of American racehorses, Deibel quit her job in Maryland to move to Pennsylvania where she founded Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue. Most horse rescue havens in the U.S. are operated by concerned individuals like Deibel who depend upon public support to continue.
Persons may go to http://www.saveahorsenow.org to learn how to adopt a horse or how to sponsor a horse by paying for its upkeep until it can be adopted.
Angel Acres Horse Rescue is a 501(c)3 non-profit rescue dedicated to saving horses bound for slaughter for human consumption. Angel Acres also assists in cases of neglect and abuse. Thoroughbreds are rescued from kill pens and adopted into loving homes.
I applaud their efforts to raise awareness to horse slaughter. See our stories on horse slaughter at:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/07/
more-on-us-horse-slaughter-legislation_26.html
See our stories on the Chinese dog slaughter at:
http://geari.blogspot.com/2006/08/
more-on-chinese-killing-of-54429-dogs.html
You’ll see below how you can help prevent horse slaughter for food. Start by going to: http://www.saveahorsenow.org
Article:
Which is Worse: China Massacring 50,000 Dogs or U.S. Massacring 90,000 Horses?
http://www.equestrianmag.com/news/
horse-massacre-china-us-angel-8-06.html
GLENVILLE, PA – Americans were outraged by recent media reports from Shanghai, China of the killing 50,000 dogs to stop rabies. But where’s the outrage over the killing of nearly twice as many American horses to be eaten by the French, Belgiums and Asians?
The five-day massacre began after three people died of rabies. Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten to death. Other killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, and then beat dogs to death.
In America “killer buyers” purchase horses, including retired thoroughbreds, beat them to death in killer pens in broad daylight, and ship them to meat processing plants in the U.S. to be sold overseas as horseflesh to be eaten.
“The dog massacre was widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing it as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on prevention,” reported USA Today on August 1, 2006.
“But who is talking about the shameful, horrid slaughter of American horses merely to satisfy the appetites of foreigners,” asks Jo Deibel, President of the Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue, Inc. http://www.saveahorsenow.org. “Why are we so outraged about the massacre of dogs yet are not outraged by the massacre of horses which not only are loved by so many but are an important part of our nation’s history and heritage?”
Angel Acres’s prime mission is to encourage the adoption by responsible owners of these beautiful horses whose only shortcoming is that they can no longer race at full speed. Deibel feeds, shelters and provides veterinary care for rescued horses until they are adopted.
Because of this shocking treatment of American racehorses, Deibel quit her job in Maryland to move to Pennsylvania where she founded Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue. Most horse rescue havens in the U.S. are operated by concerned individuals like Deibel who depend upon public support to continue.
Persons may go to http://www.saveahorsenow.org to learn how to adopt a horse or how to sponsor a horse by paying for its upkeep until it can be adopted.
Angel Acres Horse Rescue is a 501(c)3 non-profit rescue dedicated to saving horses bound for slaughter for human consumption. Angel Acres also assists in cases of neglect and abuse. Thoroughbreds are rescued from kill pens and adopted into loving homes.
Bill Put Forth In California That Would Make It a Crime to Endanger Animals by Leaving Them in Locked Vehicles
Looks like a good step. Of course, animal-hating Arnold Schwarzenegger has not yet taken a stance on this common sense bill.
Essentially, it would do the following:
People who endanger their pets by leaving them in cars could face up to six months in jail under legislation approved Monday by the state Assembly.
The measure would bar people from leaving or confining an animal in an unattended motor vehicle with conditions that could lead to suffering, injury or death. Those conditions could include lack of ventilation, extreme hot or cold weather or an absence of food or water.
First offenders could be fined up to $100 if the animal is unharmed, and as much as $500 and half a year in county jail if the pet incurs "great bodily injury." Repeat violators would face the more stringent punishment regardless of whether an animal was hurt.
For more on the dangers of leaving animals in cars see:
http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_care/
summer_care_tips_for_you_and_your_pets/
Article:
State Assembly Approves Bill Aimed at Saving Pets
Measure would make it a crime to endanger animals by leaving them in locked vehicles.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
pets15aug15,1,7121508.story?coll=la-headlines-california
By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2006
SACRAMENTO — People who endanger their pets by leaving them in cars could face up to six months in jail under legislation approved Monday by the state Assembly.
The measure would bar people from leaving or confining an animal in an unattended motor vehicle with conditions that could lead to suffering, injury or death. Those conditions could include lack of ventilation, extreme hot or cold weather or an absence of food or water.
First offenders could be fined up to $100 if the animal is unharmed, and as much as $500 and half a year in county jail if the pet incurs "great bodily injury." Repeat violators would face the more stringent punishment regardless of whether an animal was hurt.
The legislation notes that even when vehicle windows are left slightly open, a car's interior can heat to as much as 102 degrees within 10 minutes on an 85-degree day. Even a dog in good health can only withstand a body temperature of 107 or 108 degrees for a brief period before suffering brain damage or death, the legislation states.
The bill would allow a police officer, humane officer or animal control officer to remove an animal from a vehicle if they believe it is at risk. It would then be taken to a shelter or veterinary hospital, and the owner could not reclaim it until after paying all costs associated with its care.
The measure, SB 1806, sponsored by state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), passed the Assembly, 58 to 5. It previously was approved by the Senate, 31 to 3. Before being sent to the governor, the measure will return to the Senate for final approval of amendments added by the Assembly.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill.
Essentially, it would do the following:
People who endanger their pets by leaving them in cars could face up to six months in jail under legislation approved Monday by the state Assembly.
The measure would bar people from leaving or confining an animal in an unattended motor vehicle with conditions that could lead to suffering, injury or death. Those conditions could include lack of ventilation, extreme hot or cold weather or an absence of food or water.
First offenders could be fined up to $100 if the animal is unharmed, and as much as $500 and half a year in county jail if the pet incurs "great bodily injury." Repeat violators would face the more stringent punishment regardless of whether an animal was hurt.
For more on the dangers of leaving animals in cars see:
http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_care/
summer_care_tips_for_you_and_your_pets/
Article:
State Assembly Approves Bill Aimed at Saving Pets
Measure would make it a crime to endanger animals by leaving them in locked vehicles.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
pets15aug15,1,7121508.story?coll=la-headlines-california
By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2006
SACRAMENTO — People who endanger their pets by leaving them in cars could face up to six months in jail under legislation approved Monday by the state Assembly.
The measure would bar people from leaving or confining an animal in an unattended motor vehicle with conditions that could lead to suffering, injury or death. Those conditions could include lack of ventilation, extreme hot or cold weather or an absence of food or water.
First offenders could be fined up to $100 if the animal is unharmed, and as much as $500 and half a year in county jail if the pet incurs "great bodily injury." Repeat violators would face the more stringent punishment regardless of whether an animal was hurt.
The legislation notes that even when vehicle windows are left slightly open, a car's interior can heat to as much as 102 degrees within 10 minutes on an 85-degree day. Even a dog in good health can only withstand a body temperature of 107 or 108 degrees for a brief period before suffering brain damage or death, the legislation states.
The bill would allow a police officer, humane officer or animal control officer to remove an animal from a vehicle if they believe it is at risk. It would then be taken to a shelter or veterinary hospital, and the owner could not reclaim it until after paying all costs associated with its care.
The measure, SB 1806, sponsored by state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), passed the Assembly, 58 to 5. It previously was approved by the Senate, 31 to 3. Before being sent to the governor, the measure will return to the Senate for final approval of amendments added by the Assembly.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Illegal Wildlife Trade Destroying Species in Asia: Vietnam Especially Hit Hard
As sick as always. Not surprising that this is solely being driven by human belief that products made from slaughtered rare species will benefit them. Here are some facts from the article below:
Vietnam has become a major Asian crossroads, with animals being smuggled from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and as far as India for sale here and for export to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Over-exploitation for the illegal wildlife trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the survival of many species, he said.
"Nowhere is this more evident than in Vietnam, where wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to illegal trade and consumption."
There are gibbons found in a Hanoi cafe, black bears confiscated as cubs near the Lao border, and macaques from the Mekong delta.
3,000 tonnes of wildlife and wildlife products are shipped in and out of Vietnam every year, with only about three percent intercepted.
Half of the trade is for domestic consumption, the other half for export, he said in a report, mainly through the Chinese border crossings at Lang Son and Mong Cai, the area where the clouded leopard was found.
Up to 3,500 kilograms of illegal wildlife goods pass through these border towns daily, including pangolins, lizards, turtles, cobras, pythons, monkeys, bears and tigers.
Article:
Illegal wildlife trade takes heavy toll in Vietnam
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060814/sc_afp/
vietnamwildlifesmuggling_060814040150
by Frank Zeller Mon Aug 14, 12:01 AM ET
HANOI (AFP) - Snarling inside a cage and licking its wounds, a clouded leopard is recovering from being wire-trapped by poachers.
The jungle feline is one lucky cat.
It was rescued last month when Vietnamese guards surprised a trafficker carrying the sedated animal near the Chinese border.
But while the 18-kilogram (40-pound) female is now recuperating in an animal rescue centre, alongside black bears, gibbons and other rare species, many more wild animals end up in restaurants, traditional pharmacies and souvenir shops.
Southeast Asia's forests, a biological treasure trove, have become a gold mine for wildlife traffickers, say ecologists.
And Vietnam has become a major Asian crossroads, with animals being smuggled from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and as far as India for sale here and for export to China, Taiwan,
South Korea and Hong Kong.
"This clouded leopard could have earned the smugglers 70 million dong (4,300 dollars)," said Nguyen Van Nhung, a veterinarian at the Hanoi Wild Animal Rescue Centre.
"Its meat would have been eaten and its bones ground up for medicine," he said, pointing at the animal now pacing in its metal cage. "People believe it makes them stronger."
In the decade since the centre opened it has only received one other clouded leopard, said director Ngo Ba Oanh, which may be testimony to the heavy toll the trade has taken on Vietnam's natural environment.
"The cases that are picked up are the tip of the iceberg," said Eric Coull, Greater Mekong representative of conservation group WWF.
Over-exploitation for the illegal wildlife trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the survival of many species, he said.
"Nowhere is this more evident than in Vietnam, where wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to illegal trade and consumption."
The animals at the rescue centre are a cross-section of the species being slowly wiped out. There are gibbons found in a Hanoi cafe, black bears confiscated as cubs near the Lao border, and macaques from the Mekong delta.
Dr Nguyen Van Song of the Hanoi Agricultural University estimates 3,000 tonnes of wildlife and wildlife products are shipped in and out of Vietnam every year, with only about three percent intercepted.
Half of the trade is for domestic consumption, the other half for export, he said in a report, mainly through the Chinese border crossings at Lang Son and Mong Cai, the area where the clouded leopard was found.
Song believes up to 3,500 kilograms of illegal wildlife goods pass through these border towns daily, including pangolins, lizards, turtles, cobras, pythons, monkeys, bears and tigers.
Smugglers have used ambulances, wedding cars and funeral hearses to smuggle the contraband, or hired foot porters through middlemen so they cannot reveal their bosses' identities if caught.
Permits and licenses are sometimes forged, and customs officials threatened or bribed, Song wrote, blaming "influential people", a euphemism for organised crime.
-- "We can eat anything with four feet except the table" --
Like people elsewhere in East Asia, Vietnamese often express pride in their adventurous culinary tastes.
A popular saying in the region goes: "We can eat anything with four feet except the table. We can eat anything in the ocean except submarines. We can eat anything in the sky except planes."
Some wild animals are killed for their skins, to be stuffed or to make trinkets from tiger and bear teeth, ivory or turtle shell. Others end up in illegal private zoos. But three quarters die to be consumed, said Song.
Wildlife meat, and the wines and medicines made from it, have traditionally been believed to have healing and tonic properties in many Asian cultures.
"Many Vietnamese people believe that consuming wildlife products promotes good physical health, often paying exorbitant prices for products and meats derived from endangered species," said another WWF official.
Sulma Warne of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said he recently learnt of a case where a group of men paid thousands of dollars to commission a tiger, which was killed in Myanmar, dissected and smuggled in parts to Vietnam.
"It's a status symbol," Warne said. "The fact that you can get tiger meat shows you have money. It's illegal, it's difficult to get. It's like caviar."
A recent survey by WWF and TRAFFIC found that nearly half of Hanoi's residents had personally used wildlife products, a trend the groups plan to tackle with a public awareness campaign being launched later this month.
In Ho Chi Minh City, a survey of 1,600 restaurants by the group Wild Animal Rescue found 15 wild species on the menu, among them deer, snake and turtle.
"Vietnam is getting richer, but people also believe in ancient medicine and showing off their wealth and power by eating these endangered species," said Edwin Wiek of the Indonesia-based Borneo Orangutan Survival foundation.
"Vietnam is definitely a very big player in this market, unfortunately. It is a consumer as much as a transfer point."
Wiek has long monitored the trade, especially in primates, and recently returned two orangutans to Indonesia from an illegal hotel zoo near Ho Chi Minh City that also kept 70 bears, a tiger, monkeys and exotic birds.
"For some people, having a Ferrari outside their front door is not enough," said Wiek. "You have to have a chimpanzee or an orangutan in your backyard as well. Then you're really the man."
-- Rainforest species --
Over the past decade, biologists have been stunned to find that Vietnam, shut off for decades by war and politics, has rainforests far more species-diverse than previously known.
In 1992, researchers here discovered the saola, the world's largest new mammal found in over half a century. The forest-dwelling ox was not just a new species but also a new genus.
Since then a one-horned rhinoceros thought extinct in mainland Asia was rediscovered and biologists found three new deer species, 63 vertebrates and 45 unknown fish, says the recently-published 'Vietnam: A Natural History'.
Yet scientists are racing against time to catalogue the new animals before they are gone.
Many of Vietnam's wild areas have become denuded habitats, sometimes dubbed "empty forests." More than 300 animal species have disappeared and over 100 are threatened.
With virgin rainforests now reduced to a patchwork, fewer than 100 tigers, 100 wild elephants and 10 rhinos are believed to survive in the wild in Vietnam, their gene pools already too small to ensure their survival here.
Vietnam banned hunting without a permit in 1975 and has signed several treaties, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Yet enforcement is often weak, Song said, and the estimated profit of the illegal wildlife trade 30 times larger than state spending to combat it.
As long as demand grows, experts agree, the illegal trade will grow and continue to threaten the biological heritage of Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
"Vietnam has become famous over the past 15 years for the discovery of new species," said the WWF's Coull. "It could become famous for their extinction."
Vietnam has become a major Asian crossroads, with animals being smuggled from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and as far as India for sale here and for export to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Over-exploitation for the illegal wildlife trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the survival of many species, he said.
"Nowhere is this more evident than in Vietnam, where wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to illegal trade and consumption."
There are gibbons found in a Hanoi cafe, black bears confiscated as cubs near the Lao border, and macaques from the Mekong delta.
3,000 tonnes of wildlife and wildlife products are shipped in and out of Vietnam every year, with only about three percent intercepted.
Half of the trade is for domestic consumption, the other half for export, he said in a report, mainly through the Chinese border crossings at Lang Son and Mong Cai, the area where the clouded leopard was found.
Up to 3,500 kilograms of illegal wildlife goods pass through these border towns daily, including pangolins, lizards, turtles, cobras, pythons, monkeys, bears and tigers.
Article:
Illegal wildlife trade takes heavy toll in Vietnam
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060814/sc_afp/
vietnamwildlifesmuggling_060814040150
by Frank Zeller Mon Aug 14, 12:01 AM ET
HANOI (AFP) - Snarling inside a cage and licking its wounds, a clouded leopard is recovering from being wire-trapped by poachers.
The jungle feline is one lucky cat.
It was rescued last month when Vietnamese guards surprised a trafficker carrying the sedated animal near the Chinese border.
But while the 18-kilogram (40-pound) female is now recuperating in an animal rescue centre, alongside black bears, gibbons and other rare species, many more wild animals end up in restaurants, traditional pharmacies and souvenir shops.
Southeast Asia's forests, a biological treasure trove, have become a gold mine for wildlife traffickers, say ecologists.
And Vietnam has become a major Asian crossroads, with animals being smuggled from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and as far as India for sale here and for export to China, Taiwan,
South Korea and Hong Kong.
"This clouded leopard could have earned the smugglers 70 million dong (4,300 dollars)," said Nguyen Van Nhung, a veterinarian at the Hanoi Wild Animal Rescue Centre.
"Its meat would have been eaten and its bones ground up for medicine," he said, pointing at the animal now pacing in its metal cage. "People believe it makes them stronger."
In the decade since the centre opened it has only received one other clouded leopard, said director Ngo Ba Oanh, which may be testimony to the heavy toll the trade has taken on Vietnam's natural environment.
"The cases that are picked up are the tip of the iceberg," said Eric Coull, Greater Mekong representative of conservation group WWF.
Over-exploitation for the illegal wildlife trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the survival of many species, he said.
"Nowhere is this more evident than in Vietnam, where wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to illegal trade and consumption."
The animals at the rescue centre are a cross-section of the species being slowly wiped out. There are gibbons found in a Hanoi cafe, black bears confiscated as cubs near the Lao border, and macaques from the Mekong delta.
Dr Nguyen Van Song of the Hanoi Agricultural University estimates 3,000 tonnes of wildlife and wildlife products are shipped in and out of Vietnam every year, with only about three percent intercepted.
Half of the trade is for domestic consumption, the other half for export, he said in a report, mainly through the Chinese border crossings at Lang Son and Mong Cai, the area where the clouded leopard was found.
Song believes up to 3,500 kilograms of illegal wildlife goods pass through these border towns daily, including pangolins, lizards, turtles, cobras, pythons, monkeys, bears and tigers.
Smugglers have used ambulances, wedding cars and funeral hearses to smuggle the contraband, or hired foot porters through middlemen so they cannot reveal their bosses' identities if caught.
Permits and licenses are sometimes forged, and customs officials threatened or bribed, Song wrote, blaming "influential people", a euphemism for organised crime.
-- "We can eat anything with four feet except the table" --
Like people elsewhere in East Asia, Vietnamese often express pride in their adventurous culinary tastes.
A popular saying in the region goes: "We can eat anything with four feet except the table. We can eat anything in the ocean except submarines. We can eat anything in the sky except planes."
Some wild animals are killed for their skins, to be stuffed or to make trinkets from tiger and bear teeth, ivory or turtle shell. Others end up in illegal private zoos. But three quarters die to be consumed, said Song.
Wildlife meat, and the wines and medicines made from it, have traditionally been believed to have healing and tonic properties in many Asian cultures.
"Many Vietnamese people believe that consuming wildlife products promotes good physical health, often paying exorbitant prices for products and meats derived from endangered species," said another WWF official.
Sulma Warne of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said he recently learnt of a case where a group of men paid thousands of dollars to commission a tiger, which was killed in Myanmar, dissected and smuggled in parts to Vietnam.
"It's a status symbol," Warne said. "The fact that you can get tiger meat shows you have money. It's illegal, it's difficult to get. It's like caviar."
A recent survey by WWF and TRAFFIC found that nearly half of Hanoi's residents had personally used wildlife products, a trend the groups plan to tackle with a public awareness campaign being launched later this month.
In Ho Chi Minh City, a survey of 1,600 restaurants by the group Wild Animal Rescue found 15 wild species on the menu, among them deer, snake and turtle.
"Vietnam is getting richer, but people also believe in ancient medicine and showing off their wealth and power by eating these endangered species," said Edwin Wiek of the Indonesia-based Borneo Orangutan Survival foundation.
"Vietnam is definitely a very big player in this market, unfortunately. It is a consumer as much as a transfer point."
Wiek has long monitored the trade, especially in primates, and recently returned two orangutans to Indonesia from an illegal hotel zoo near Ho Chi Minh City that also kept 70 bears, a tiger, monkeys and exotic birds.
"For some people, having a Ferrari outside their front door is not enough," said Wiek. "You have to have a chimpanzee or an orangutan in your backyard as well. Then you're really the man."
-- Rainforest species --
Over the past decade, biologists have been stunned to find that Vietnam, shut off for decades by war and politics, has rainforests far more species-diverse than previously known.
In 1992, researchers here discovered the saola, the world's largest new mammal found in over half a century. The forest-dwelling ox was not just a new species but also a new genus.
Since then a one-horned rhinoceros thought extinct in mainland Asia was rediscovered and biologists found three new deer species, 63 vertebrates and 45 unknown fish, says the recently-published 'Vietnam: A Natural History'.
Yet scientists are racing against time to catalogue the new animals before they are gone.
Many of Vietnam's wild areas have become denuded habitats, sometimes dubbed "empty forests." More than 300 animal species have disappeared and over 100 are threatened.
With virgin rainforests now reduced to a patchwork, fewer than 100 tigers, 100 wild elephants and 10 rhinos are believed to survive in the wild in Vietnam, their gene pools already too small to ensure their survival here.
Vietnam banned hunting without a permit in 1975 and has signed several treaties, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Yet enforcement is often weak, Song said, and the estimated profit of the illegal wildlife trade 30 times larger than state spending to combat it.
As long as demand grows, experts agree, the illegal trade will grow and continue to threaten the biological heritage of Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
"Vietnam has become famous over the past 15 years for the discovery of new species," said the WWF's Coull. "It could become famous for their extinction."
Monday, August 14, 2006
New Study: Majority of People in India Actually Eat Meat: Religion Not Good Indicator of Behavior
Surprising to most. I posted this as an example of the importance of not defaulting to assumptions based on location or religion. Most assume that those in India are vegetarian. It actually turns out to be very much the opposite. Of course, the consequences for animal rights is profound.
Article:
More Indians eat meat, but some Christians do not
http://www.theindiancatholic.com/newsread.asp?nid=2906
NEW DELHI (ICNS) -- Contrary to beliefs, majority Indians eat meat or fish but at least eight percent of Christians in the country eat only vegetarian food, revealed a survey that two media organizations jointly held.
The Hindu -CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, conducted between August 1 and 6, is based on interviews with 14,680 respondents, spread across 883 villages and urban areas in 19 states.
The findings show that only 31 per cent of Indians are vegetarians. The figure is 21 percent for families (with all vegetarian members). Another nine per cent of the population is “eggetarian” or vegetarians who eat eggs.
The survey shows that vegetarianism is a habit inherited by cultural practice rather than individual belief.
However, religion and community do matter because as many as 55 per cent of Brahmins are vegetarians. But only 12 percent tribal people are vegetarians.
It also says Hindus who does daily worship are more likely to be vegetarian, but the majority of all Hindus are non-vegetarian. While 45 percent Upper caste Brahmins eat meat, people of other upper castes eating meat are said to be 72 percent.
Generally, Christians in India are considered to be meat eaters but the survey says, eight per cent of India’s 25 million Christians are also vegetarians.
More women are likely to be vegetarian than men. Also, those who are above the age of 55 are also likely to be vegetarian, showing a relation between age and vegetarianism. Among the young, the figure is only slightly below the national average.
Location too matters than caste, religion or community. The lowest number vegetarian families are in coastal states such as Kerala (two per cent), Tamil Nadu (eight per cent), Andhra Pradesh (four per cent), Orissa (eight per cent) and Bengal (three per cent).
Most land-locked States, especially in the west and north, are places with the highest proportion of vegetarian families: Rajasthan (63 percent), Haryana (62 percent), Punjab (48 percent), Uttar Pradesh (33 percent), Madhya Pradesh (35 percent) and Gujarat (45 percent).
An alarming revelation was on hunger in India. Some 35 per cent of people said at least once during the last year, they or someone in their family could not have two square meals a day.
Seven per cent say this happened `often.' This incidence is higher among Dalits and tribals and the urban and rural poor. The survey is a reminder that hunger is not related only to natural calamities or famine, but reality of daily life.
Article:
More Indians eat meat, but some Christians do not
http://www.theindiancatholic.com/newsread.asp?nid=2906
NEW DELHI (ICNS) -- Contrary to beliefs, majority Indians eat meat or fish but at least eight percent of Christians in the country eat only vegetarian food, revealed a survey that two media organizations jointly held.
The Hindu -CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, conducted between August 1 and 6, is based on interviews with 14,680 respondents, spread across 883 villages and urban areas in 19 states.
The findings show that only 31 per cent of Indians are vegetarians. The figure is 21 percent for families (with all vegetarian members). Another nine per cent of the population is “eggetarian” or vegetarians who eat eggs.
The survey shows that vegetarianism is a habit inherited by cultural practice rather than individual belief.
However, religion and community do matter because as many as 55 per cent of Brahmins are vegetarians. But only 12 percent tribal people are vegetarians.
It also says Hindus who does daily worship are more likely to be vegetarian, but the majority of all Hindus are non-vegetarian. While 45 percent Upper caste Brahmins eat meat, people of other upper castes eating meat are said to be 72 percent.
Generally, Christians in India are considered to be meat eaters but the survey says, eight per cent of India’s 25 million Christians are also vegetarians.
More women are likely to be vegetarian than men. Also, those who are above the age of 55 are also likely to be vegetarian, showing a relation between age and vegetarianism. Among the young, the figure is only slightly below the national average.
Location too matters than caste, religion or community. The lowest number vegetarian families are in coastal states such as Kerala (two per cent), Tamil Nadu (eight per cent), Andhra Pradesh (four per cent), Orissa (eight per cent) and Bengal (three per cent).
Most land-locked States, especially in the west and north, are places with the highest proportion of vegetarian families: Rajasthan (63 percent), Haryana (62 percent), Punjab (48 percent), Uttar Pradesh (33 percent), Madhya Pradesh (35 percent) and Gujarat (45 percent).
An alarming revelation was on hunger in India. Some 35 per cent of people said at least once during the last year, they or someone in their family could not have two square meals a day.
Seven per cent say this happened `often.' This incidence is higher among Dalits and tribals and the urban and rural poor. The survey is a reminder that hunger is not related only to natural calamities or famine, but reality of daily life.
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