|
AR-NEWS Digest 472
Topics covered in this issue include:
1) (CA) In the Ring Without the Bull
by NOVENAANN@aol.com
2) Monkey debate
by Sean Thomas
3) Deciding the Fate of Canada's Monkeys
by Sean Thomas
4) Monkey Business
by Sean Thomas
5) Monkey Business
by Sean Thomas
6) 60 yo UK Pensioner faces jail threat for feeding birds
by Vegetarian Resource Center
7) Rome Zoo trails in restoration league
by Vegetarian Resource Center
8) vegan prison food in Ireland
by Vegetarian Resource Center
9) (MI) Pound Seizure Update
by Wyandotte Animal Group
10) Admin Note [was:(MI) Pound Seizure Update]
by allen schubert
11) RE: Animal Action holds Funeral
by "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
12) RE: Monkey Business
by "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
13) RE: Animal Action holds Funeral
by "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
14) Killing Primates
by "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
15) New hope of mobility for disabled
by Vadivu Govind
16) Arabian Leopard Captured
by Vadivu Govind
17) (MI) Pound release update
by Wyandotte Animal Group
18) (SG) Frog Meat
by Vadivu Govind
19) Thalidomide: Has the horror drug of the '60s become hereditary?
by Vadivu Govind
20) "Animal group" says Nigeria center of illegal trade
by L Grayson
21) Fwd: National Animal Protection Organizations File 1998 Statewide Ballot Ini...
by LMANHEIM@aol.com
22) Re: trapping; more corrections (sorry!)
by KSchrdrfan@aol.com
23) (TH) Thai Shrimp Farmers Harm Forests
by allen schubert
24) Activists Needed in the Watkins Glen, NY area!!
by "ida"
25) Animals on Death Row Inspire Needham MA Couple
by Vegetarian Resource Center
26) Refusal to Dissect
by Vegetarian Resource Center
27) (JP) Toddlers may have picked up O-157 in cow barn
by Vadivu Govind
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 19:06:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: NOVENAANN@aol.com
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (CA) In the Ring Without the Bull
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24202@envirolink.org>
In the Ring Without the Bull
Hogwash, Cry Animal Activists, Condemning Bloodless School for Anglo=20
Amateur Matadors
By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 1997; Page A03
The Washington Post=20
CHULA VISTA, Calif.=97In the exotic and dangerous world of bullfighting,=20
it has been axiomatic for centuries that only those with Latin blood=20
have the passion, skill and courage to become a matador and face the=20
fearsome Bos Taurus.
But that was before the explosion in popularity of "extreme games" and=20
the founding of the California Academy of Tauromaquia here, an amateur=20
matador training school for Anglos. Its students are bent on high-risk=20
adventure while engaging in a sport that has cult status in the=20
Mediterranean and Latin America but remains anathema to animal rights=20
activists here.
The academy's students include Jim Koustas, 28, a software developer=20
from Denver who has never been to a bullfight but hungers to participate=20
in this "wonderful, tragic play between man and beast." Tricia Slane,=20
23, a pet groomer and aspiring actress from Batavia, N.Y., initially=20
joined the academy hoping to advance her acting career but showed so=20
much natural talent and enthusiasm that she will become its first=20
graduate next month. Soon afterward, she will face cows in bloodless=20
ring exercises in Mexico.
Since the academy opened this spring, its students have been training at=20
a sandlot playing field at an elementary school here, 10 miles south of=20
San Diego, but engaging in nothing more lethal than flourishing their=20
bright red capes at instructors brandishing a pair of bullhorns.=20
Bullfighting is illegal in California and elsewhere in the United=20
States, and Coleman Cooney, a taurine aficionado who co-founded the=20
academy, says he's not interested in provoking animal rights activists=20
by staging even bloodless fights here.
Consequently, Slane's final test will take place in nearby Tecate,=20
Mexico, where she will have to perfect her cape techniques against a=20
half-dozen young cows before being declared ready to fatally plunge her=20
sword between a fighting bull's shoulder blades.
"I think she can do it. She's naturally athletic, she's dedicated and=20
she has the desire. She has what they call `gusano,' the worm. It gets=20
in you and you become obsessed with fighting a bull," said Peter=20
Rombold, Slane's instructor and a veteran amateur bullfighter with 40=20
kills under his belt before he co-founded the academy with Cooney.
"But then, you never know until you get in front of the animal and get=20
bumped around a little. That's when valor enters into it, and that's not=20
something you can always predict," Rombold added. An infuriated bull=20
projects a shield of raw energy that can be intimidating to a novice=20
until he or she learns to "read" the animal's body language and select a=20
technique to fit its characteristics, he said.
But not intimidating, apparently, to Slane, who said, "That's what you=20
want, to have the bull charge." She did allow, however, that the bulls=20
she saw during a recent visit to Tijuana "looked pretty big."
The 51-year-old Rombold, who said he became hooked on bullfighting at=20
age 14 when his father took him to Tijuana's Plaza de Toros, said he had=20
to struggle for years to overcome an entrenched cultural bias in the=20
predominantly Latin world of bullfighting and became what Cooney calls=20
"an American original," one of only about a half-dozen active Anglo=20
amateur matadors who have made a sizable number of kills.
He has devoted his life to tauromaquia, the science of bullfighting,=20
traveling to Mexico and buying his own bulls whenever he can afford it.=20
An average 1,000-pound bull can cost from $700 to $1,200, while purebred=20
bulls fetch $10,000 or more.
Cooney, 40, said he became a bullfighting "fanatic" while living for=20
seven years in Spain. There he was profoundly affected by the 1984 fatal=20
goring of Paquirri, the first major Spanish bullfighter killed in the=20
ring in years. Cooney bought a season ticket to bullfights, then became=20
an aficionado practico, finding small bulls with which to hone his=20
skills before becoming an amateur matador.
Although amateur bullfighting is growing in popularity in Spain, the=20
south of France and in Latin America, it still is not widespread here,=20
Cooney acknowledged. The Portuguese community in California's San=20
Joaquin Valley stages about 30 bloodless bullfights a year, and there is=20
a school in San Antonio that educates Americans on the cultural aspects=20
of bullfighting and arranges visits to Mexican bullrings.
Jennifer O'Connor, a cruelty caseworker for People for the Ethical=20
Treatment of Animals (PETA), said the academy here was engaging in=20
"utter hypocrisy by teaching something that's illegal in our country and=20
defending it by saying they're actually doing it somewhere else.
"The intent is the same, to torture and kill animals. Killing animals=20
for pure fun is just wrong, and it doesn't matter what cultural guise=20
it's done under," she said.
But Cooney is convinced there is a latent fascination of bullfighting=20
among Americans that is driven partly by a romantic attraction to the=20
cultural heritage of the sport and partly by the growth of such risky=20
pursuits as glacier snow-boarding and all-terrain skateboarding.
"I want to do with bullfighting what Americans always do with imported=20
activities: make it really serious. I'm selling a European lifestyle,"=20
said Cooney, whose academy charges $500 tuition for a three-month=20
course. Beside practicing cape technique and matador moves in the ring,=20
students study videos of renowned matadors in action and attend=20
bullfights in Tijuana.
Cooney said that as Californians of Hispanic origin approach a majority=20
of the population early in the next century, pressure will increase on=20
state legislators to relax the laws banning the sport.
Koustas said he views bullfighting as an extension of his love for=20
adventure that has led him to telemark skiing, mountain biking and=20
travels through Cambodia. "This will be the pinnacle of extreme," he=20
said.
Although he sometimes fantasizes about becoming a professional matador,=20
Koustas will settle for amateur status as a hobbyist.
"That should satisfy me," Koustas said.
@CAPTION: California Academy of Tauromaquia co-founder Peter Rombold is=20
the bull to the red cape of Tricia Slane, who will become the academy's=20
first graduate next month. While bullfighting is illegal in the state,=20
students train on school sandlot.=20
(CA) In the Ring Without the Bull
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 20:29:15 -0700
From: Sean Thomas
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Monkey debate
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24210@envirolink.org>
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 4
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 175
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Thursday 17 July 1997
Animal research: part of the price of good health
Even scientists dedicated to ending animal testing admit
facilities like Ottawa's primate colony will be needed
for a long time, writes Sharon Kirkey
Sharon Kirkey
The Ottawa Citizen
Skin substitutes and brain cells that can grow in Petri
dishes are just some of the alternatives scientists are
aggressively pursuing to reduce the need for using
animals in research.
But even the director of an organization dedicated to
ending testing on animals doubts medical science will
overcome the need for facilities such as Health Canada's
colony of research monkeys -- at least in the foreseeable
future.
"I have to have as my goal that at some point in the
future we won't be doing animal research," says Gilly
Griffin, executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian
Centre for Alternatives to Animals in Research.
"But I have to take a pragmatic view too. We still have
big, big problems to solve. We haven't solved AIDS, we
haven't solved neurodegenerative diseases, we haven't
solved cancer," Ms. Griffin said.
"We can do a lot of (research) in cellular systems, but
at the end of the day you're still going to have to do a
bit of animal research as well."
A colony of 750 long-tailed macaque monkeys is poised to
become the latest victim of federal government
restructuring and downsizing. A Royal Society panel of
scientists and philosophers has been appointed to
determine, among other key considerations, whether the
colony is "unique, valuable and necessary" to protect the
health of Canadians.
The monkeys cost the government about $1 million a year
to maintain. That money comes from Health Canada
emergency funds. The monkeys have been used in research
into AIDS and herpes, to screen polio vaccines and to
measure the effects of ingesting chemicals ranging from
PCBs to caffeine.
But just how much Canada -- and medical science
researchers -- still need a monkey breeding colony has
emerged as a key issue in the controversy.
"What I'm hoping is that the Royal Society will have a
good look at what kind of research is really necessary at
this point using primates in Canada," said Ms. Griffin,
who is also an information officer for the Council on
Animal Care, which ensures animals used in research are
properly care for.
"I think that we should be looking less and less to using
primates," Ms. Griffin said. "There is not much use for
them in testing procedures any more, and in terms of
research, who knows?"
Researchers are moving away from using animals in
experiments, not only because of pressure from
animal-welfare activists but cost.
Today, researchers are investigating alternatives that
can stop compounds from ever reaching animals for
testing, Ms. Griffin said.
For example, researchers are using jelly-like substances
for eye and skin toxicity tests. One such substance,
called corristex, is being used to test materials for
corrosiveness. Until now, these chemicals would have been
tested on rabbit skin.
Researchers are using a bacteria test to determine
whether a chemical can produce a mutation that may lead
to cancer.
Previously, scientists had to test for those DNA
mutations in animals.
And scientists are working on different cell cultures to
try to get brain cells, or neurons, to grow in Petri
dishes the same way they would grow in animals.
But while alternatives to animal testing like these are
becoming part of mainstream science, researchers probably
will never be able to completely simulate the human body
"with a lab dish or computer, at least not in my lifetime
or your lifetime," said a senior Health Canada research
scientist, who asked not to be identified.
"The proof in the pudding, as far as I'm concerned, is
that you have to put the chemical back into the whole
animal to see if it does react the way that things seem
to be going on in the test tube."
Thalidomide, the anti-morning-sickness drug that was
banned worldwide in 1962 after causing severe birth
defects in more than 12,000 babies, was never thoroughly
tested in animals.
"When it comes down to putting something into humans,
whether it's a food additive or drug or an environmental
pollutant, you have to go to an animal system to do some
of your testing," the Health Canada scientist said.
And no one knows what diseases or viruses lurk around the
corner.
The main reason monkeys are used in research is because
they are so close to humans on the evolutionary ladder.
The similarity of monkey AIDS to human AIDS has allowed
the disease in monkeys to serve as a model for the human
disease.
If Health Canada were to close the monkey colony, "we
would have to look at importing those animals again," Ms.
Griffin said.
Only about one of every 10 primates that are trapped and
then transported for research survives -- one of the
reasons the federal colony was put in place.
"I don't want to see us going through getting (monkeys)
from the wild again," Ms. Griffin said.
"What I would like to see, and I hope this is what the
Royal Society is going to do, is really give a good
objective look at what research is actually being done,
and what research is really necessary using primates in
Canada."
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
Monkey debate
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 20:30:58 -0700
From: Sean Thomas
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Deciding the Fate of Canada's Monkeys
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24216@envirolink.org>
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 4
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 213
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Thursday 17 July 1997
Monkey business
Panelists deciding fate of a $1M-a-year monkey colony
will try to detach themselves from their evolutionary
cousins, writes Charles Enman.
Charles Enman.
Ottawa Citizen
A Royal Society panel will consider whether Health Canada
still needs the colony of monkeys that it keeps at
Tunney's Pasture.
It costs $1 million per year to keep the 750 long-tailed
macaque monkeys in captivity -- so the panelists will
have to look, in part, at economic and bottom-line
considerations, especially in a time of shrinking
departmental budgets.
Of course, these aren't goldfish or white rats -- they're
monkeys, our furry evolutionary cousins. And some people
think they therefore come with ties that bind.
But do the five panelists think so?
The Citizen spoke to three of them yesterday. Each said
they care about monkeys but would not allow their
feelings to savage the dispassion they must bring to the
issue at hand.
So you see, their feelings are avuncular, but there's not
a monkey's uncle among them.
The chair of the panel, Conrad Brunk, is a philosophy
professor at the University of Waterloo.
From childhood, monkeys have had some place in his
imaginary universe.
"As a small child, I had a fantasy of owning a monkey,"
he recalls. "I loved to think about the organ grinder's
monkey. And I loved to be read stories about monkeys."
Did he feel an affinity for monkeys?
"Obviously I did, and I think that's natural for humans.
The behaviour of monkeys is so close to our own -- and
especially close to the behaviour of children.
"I think a child, seeing a monkey, will say, 'Here's a
being that's very close to my own experience of the
world.'"
Mr. Brunk says the very closeness of primate
consciousness and sensibility to the human "makes the
whole issue of animal welfare and animal rights
especially sensitive. Monkeys and other primates have a
broader range of potential injuries and emotional
reactions than lower animals.
"Is the monkey feeling bored? Feeling confined? Maybe
feeling deprived of certain kinds of activity natural to
the species? These questions will have more impact on a
monkey's consciousness than they would on a fish or
chicken or rat."
The very resemblance of monkeys and other primates to
human beings means "we owe them the kind of treatment and
respect that is very similar to what we owe ourselves,"
Mr. Brunk said.
The same treatment we give to children, say?
"No, I wouldn't go that far. But there is a possibility
that they could suffer in a way that, considering their
evolvement, is simply unacceptable."
Mr. Brunk said the committee will have to seek a
consensus that represents not only the member's views but
those of the Canadian public at large. For that reason,
the public will be invited to submit its views on whether
the government should maintain the primate colony at
Tunney's Pasture.
For Michael McDonald, director of the Centre for Applied
Ethics at the University of British Columbia, the
resemblance of monkey to man is incontestable.
"Even as a child, seeing monkeys at zoos and circuses, I
was fascinated to see how much they are like us --
they're so social, they need lots of contact with their
own kind.
"Of course, they're our genetic kin, and many people
would say they're in some ways our spiritual brothers.
They have a more developed mental and emotional space
that does recall the human being."
Ethicists even see the beginnings of moral behaviour
among monkeys, Mr. McDonald says.
"They seem to develop something that looks like morality
among themselves," he says. "There seems something
altruistic in the way parent monkeys care for their
offspring. And sometimes you see behaviour that looks
like sacrifice for the sake of the group." An example of
the latter could be the struggle a dominant monkey will
engage in with intruders.
"Is this really altruism?" Mr. McDonald asks. "Perhaps
it's just something to preserve the dominance of the
alpha male. But a great deal of primate behaviour seems
to demonstrate that ethics may simply be an evolutionary
adaptation to living with creatures of your own kind."
Andrew G. Hendrickx, director of the California Regional
Primate Centre at the University of California at Davis,
has worked with monkeys for 35 years.
Growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he never saw a monkey.
But after completing university, he started working with
them and was immediately fascinated.
"And I'm still fascinated," he says. "Their intelligence
and their emotional similarity to us has got to spark
some degree of emotional connection.
He says, however, that his "scientific objectivity is
never clouded."
The lab monkey's life is no dog's life, he's quick to
point out.
Lab directors now insist on "environmental enrichment
opportunities" for their primate charges.
Captive monkeys typically enjoy what Mr. Hendrickx
compares to the jungle gyms that city parks provide for
children. Monkeys used to be housed singly, but are now
kept in groups to reduce loneliness. Mirrors are put up
in cages so the monkeys can keep tabs on what their
cohorts are doing.
Captive monkeys also get excellent nutrition and medical
care.
"With the nutrition and the medical care and the
enrichment, I would say the monkey in the lab is better
off and probably happier than the monkey in the jungle,"
Mr. Hendrickx says.
Mr. McDonald says the committee will consider many
options.
Perhaps the colony should be maintained. Perhaps it
should be sold piecemeal to other research groups.
Perhaps the monkeys should be kept from reproducing and
simply allowed to die out.
Or perhaps the animals should be put down, though he
doesn't like this last possibility.
But Pierre Thibert, chief of the animal resources
division at Health Canada, says no monkey is in peril.
If it is decided to sell the monkey colony, a nucleus
group might be sold intact to a research group in the
United States or Canada. The others would be sold to
other interested research institutions.
"I'm quite sure there is no way we will be killing the
animals," Mr. Thibert says.
Monkeys sell for between $1,000 and $4,000, depending on
their age. The most valuable are of reproductive age.
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
Deciding the Fate of Canada's Monkeys
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 16:06:52 -0700
From: Sean Thomas
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Monkey Business
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24224@envirolink.org>
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 4
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 213
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Thursday 17 July 1997
Monkey business
Panelists deciding fate of a $1M-a-year monkey colony
will try to detach themselves from their evolutionary
cousins, writes Charles Enman.
Charles Enman.
Ottawa Citizen
A Royal Society panel will consider whether Health Canada
still needs the colony of monkeys that it keeps at
Tunney's Pasture.
It costs $1 million per year to keep the 750 long-tailed
macaque monkeys in captivity -- so the panelists will
have to look, in part, at economic and bottom-line
considerations, especially in a time of shrinking
departmental budgets.
Of course, these aren't goldfish or white rats -- they're
monkeys, our furry evolutionary cousins. And some people
think they therefore come with ties that bind.
But do the five panelists think so?
The Citizen spoke to three of them yesterday. Each said
they care about monkeys but would not allow their
feelings to savage the dispassion they must bring to the
issue at hand.
So you see, their feelings are avuncular, but there's not
a monkey's uncle among them.
The chair of the panel, Conrad Brunk, is a philosophy
professor at the University of Waterloo.
From childhood, monkeys have had some place in his
imaginary universe.
"As a small child, I had a fantasy of owning a monkey,"
he recalls. "I loved to think about the organ grinder's
monkey. And I loved to be read stories about monkeys."
Did he feel an affinity for monkeys?
"Obviously I did, and I think that's natural for humans.
The behaviour of monkeys is so close to our own -- and
especially close to the behaviour of children.
"I think a child, seeing a monkey, will say, 'Here's a
being that's very close to my own experience of the
world.'"
Mr. Brunk says the very closeness of primate
consciousness and sensibility to the human "makes the
whole issue of animal welfare and animal rights
especially sensitive. Monkeys and other primates have a
broader range of potential injuries and emotional
reactions than lower animals.
"Is the monkey feeling bored? Feeling confined? Maybe
feeling deprived of certain kinds of activity natural to
the species? These questions will have more impact on a
monkey's consciousness than they would on a fish or
chicken or rat."
The very resemblance of monkeys and other primates to
human beings means "we owe them the kind of treatment and
respect that is very similar to what we owe ourselves,"
Mr. Brunk said.
The same treatment we give to children, say?
"No, I wouldn't go that far. But there is a possibility
that they could suffer in a way that, considering their
evolvement, is simply unacceptable."
Mr. Brunk said the committee will have to seek a
consensus that represents not only the member's views but
those of the Canadian public at large. For that reason,
the public will be invited to submit its views on whether
the government should maintain the primate colony at
Tunney's Pasture.
For Michael McDonald, director of the Centre for Applied
Ethics at the University of British Columbia, the
resemblance of monkey to man is incontestable.
"Even as a child, seeing monkeys at zoos and circuses, I
was fascinated to see how much they are like us --
they're so social, they need lots of contact with their
own kind.
"Of course, they're our genetic kin, and many people
would say they're in some ways our spiritual brothers.
They have a more developed mental and emotional space
that does recall the human being."
Ethicists even see the beginnings of moral behaviour
among monkeys, Mr. McDonald says.
"They seem to develop something that looks like morality
among themselves," he says. "There seems something
altruistic in the way parent monkeys care for their
offspring. And sometimes you see behaviour that looks
like sacrifice for the sake of the group." An example of
the latter could be the struggle a dominant monkey will
engage in with intruders.
"Is this really altruism?" Mr. McDonald asks. "Perhaps
it's just something to preserve the dominance of the
alpha male. But a great deal of primate behaviour seems
to demonstrate that ethics may simply be an evolutionary
adaptation to living with creatures of your own kind."
Andrew G. Hendrickx, director of the California Regional
Primate Centre at the University of California at Davis,
has worked with monkeys for 35 years.
Growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he never saw a monkey.
But after completing university, he started working with
them and was immediately fascinated.
"And I'm still fascinated," he says. "Their intelligence
and their emotional similarity to us has got to spark
some degree of emotional connection.
He says, however, that his "scientific objectivity is
never clouded."
The lab monkey's life is no dog's life, he's quick to
point out.
Lab directors now insist on "environmental enrichment
opportunities" for their primate charges.
Captive monkeys typically enjoy what Mr. Hendrickx
compares to the jungle gyms that city parks provide for
children. Monkeys used to be housed singly, but are now
kept in groups to reduce loneliness. Mirrors are put up
in cages so the monkeys can keep tabs on what their
cohorts are doing.
Captive monkeys also get excellent nutrition and medical
care.
"With the nutrition and the medical care and the
enrichment, I would say the monkey in the lab is better
off and probably happier than the monkey in the jungle,"
Mr. Hendrickx says.
Mr. McDonald says the committee will consider many
options.
Perhaps the colony should be maintained. Perhaps it
should be sold piecemeal to other research groups.
Perhaps the monkeys should be kept from reproducing and
simply allowed to die out.
Or perhaps the animals should be put down, though he
doesn't like this last possibility.
But Pierre Thibert, chief of the animal resources
division at Health Canada, says no monkey is in peril.
If it is decided to sell the monkey colony, a nucleus
group might be sold intact to a research group in the
United States or Canada. The others would be sold to
other interested research institutions.
"I'm quite sure there is no way we will be killing the
animals," Mr. Thibert says.
Monkeys sell for between $1,000 and $4,000, depending on
their age. The most valuable are of reproductive age.
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
Monkey Business
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 16:00:53 -0700
From: Sean Thomas
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Monkey Business
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24228@envirolink.org>
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 4
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 216
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Friday 18 July 1997
Health Canada considers private monkey business
Breeding mill would produce primates for profit
Randy Boswell
The Ottawa Citizen
The creation of a private, profit-making monkey mill for
government and industry research labs is among the
options available to Health Canada as it considers what
to do with its primate breeding colony of 750 long-tailed
macaques.
The idea, listed along with several other alternatives in
a report completed last month that examined Health
Canada's animal resources division, contrasts with a
recommendation issued Wednesday by an expert panel of
American scientists that has been considering the future
of that country's population of 1,500 research
chimpanzees.
The U.S. National Research Council, in a study sponsored
by the National Institutes of Health, urged a five-year
moratorium on chimpanzee breeding in the States because
an "oversupply has created substantial management
problems for the institutions that house them."
The U.S. panel also urged the establishment of
"sanctuaries" for chimps no longer needed for
experiments, and rejected the idea of killing unwanted
animals.
The future of the Ottawa monkeys, which have been used
since 1983 for research into environmental toxins and
AIDS and to test polio vaccines, will be the focus of a
study due in November from a panel of scientists and
philosophers named this week by the Royal Society of
Canada.
Health Canada requested the analysis as it faced the
fallout of massive federal budget cuts and changing
trends in animal research. The department has concluded
that, without some prospect of cost recovery, it can no
longer justify spending $1 million a year for the care
and maintenance of monkeys for which there is declining
need within Health Canada itself.
But one of the potential solutions to the predicament,
according to the June report, is to privatize the colony
through an employee takeover or direct sale to a private
firm.
Plans to "determine a market value for the monkey colony
as a commercial operation" are listed in the department's
recommendations.
Over the years, some of the monkeys have been sold to
outside agencies and universities, but on a modest scale.
"Several members of the pharmaceutical and testing
laboratory sectors felt that if they had access to
animals from the HPB (Health Protection Branch) colony,
more sophisticated (and lucrative) testing could be
conducted in Canada," the report stated.
It is the superior quality of the Health Canada monkey
colony, for research purposes, that makes potential
commercialization attractive -- even in an era when
public campaigns against the use of laboratory primates
have driven many researchers toward using rodents or
high-tech alternatives to animals for their experiments.
The Ottawa colony's "unique nature and irreplaceability,"
as the Health Canada report describes it, derives from
the fact that the genetic history of the monkeys is known
for two generations and that they are free of the herpes
virus that infects much of the North American primate
research stock.
In 1991, a veterinarian at the Texas Primate Centre
contracted a rare monkey herpes virus and died; a Health
Canada scientist died in 1958 after he was bitten by an
infected animal.
The macaque or Cynomolgus monkey is also in greater
demand than the widely available rhesus monkey because
"cynos" are smaller and thus easier to house and control.
"If made available to industry and universities on a
larger scale than in the past, the HPB monkey colony
could be an important element in the science and
technology infrastructure of Canada," it noted.
"Toxicological testing companies would have the ability
to attract more lucrative contracts, and this in turn
would contribute to the science base of the country with
a concomitant positive impact on Canadian
competitiveness."
About 800 macaques are used annually for product testing
in Canada, most purchased from primate suppliers in
Texas.
"The monkey colony in Ottawa is strategically located to
the supply of these animals to industry and institutions
located in Montreal and Toronto," says the report.
"Several companies have expressed that the HPB colony
would be their first choice supplier because of ease of
shipping, less traumatized animals ready for test much
sooner, and the fact that animals are of a much higher
quality."
Monkeys sell for between $1,000 and $4,000, depending on
their state of maturity, and monkeys in their
reproductive prime are the most expensive.
William Leiss, the Queen's University professor who
convened the expert panel on behalf of the Royal Society,
said Health Canada officials recognize "they could cover
their costs" by stepping up sales of monkeys. But he says
the department turned to the expert panel partly because
it is searching for better alternatives.
"They don't want to do it," he said, but acknowledged
that the panel could conclude that increased revenues
from marketing of the monkeys would benefit taxpayers and
help Canada maintain a valuable research resource.
Stephanie Brown, an animal rights activist with the
Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, warned that
"trying to make a buck means producing a lot of animals"
and risking the same kind of "glut" that appears to have
developed in the U.S. market for chimpanzees.
Ms. Brown, who recently sat on a Health Canada advisory
committee examining the future of its animal resources
division, slammed the notion of "approaching the future
of the colony as an entrepreneur."
Dr. Jim Wong, chief veterinarian with the Canadian
Council on Animal Care and the man responsible for
inspecting the living conditions of Health Canada's
monkey colony, said the expert panelists -- and
ultimately federal officials -- face an excruciating
choice because of the financial pressures at the Health
Protection Branch.
"If I was doing a research project I'd want to eliminate
as many variables as possible," he says, referring to the
macaque colony's disease-free status and richly
documented medical history. "That's why these animals
would be highly desirable."
But he says the animals are also expensive to maintain
and "do you breed them for the sake of breeding them on
the chance that there might be a buyer?"
One of the leading U.S. authorities on lab animals,
citing this week's recommendations on Amerian
chimpanzees, says Canada should tread carefully before
commercializing its primate colony -- for both economic
and ethical reasons.
"There's money to be made, but I doubt the market is that
large," says Andrew Rowan, director of the Tufts
University Centre for Animals and Public Policy.
Mr. Rowan recently met with Health Canada officials, as
they began to ponder the future of the colony, to provide
advice on alternatives to animal research. He recalls
that "there was a lot of tension in the room" because
many of the scientists were concerned about losing their
jobs should the monkey colony be disbanded.
"My own preference is that we should look toward
decreasing animals in research instead of looking for
ways to promote it," he said. "The danger is that you can
oversell one's need (for monkeys) in order to justify the
maintenance of the population."
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 3 ---- Lines: 175
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Thursday 17 July 1997
Animal research: part of the price of good health
Even scientists dedicated to ending animal testing admit
facilities like Ottawa's primate colony will be needed
for a long time, writes Sharon Kirkey
Sharon Kirkey
The Ottawa Citizen
Skin substitutes and brain cells that can grow in Petri
dishes are just some of the alternatives scientists are
aggressively pursuing to reduce the need for using
animals in research.
But even the director of an organization dedicated to
ending testing on animals doubts medical science will
overcome the need for facilities such as Health Canada's
colony of research monkeys -- at least in the foreseeable
future.
"I have to have as my goal that at some point in the
future we won't be doing animal research," says Gilly
Griffin, executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian
Centre for Alternatives to Animals in Research.
"But I have to take a pragmatic view too. We still have
big, big problems to solve. We haven't solved AIDS, we
haven't solved neurodegenerative diseases, we haven't
solved cancer," Ms. Griffin said.
"We can do a lot of (research) in cellular systems, but
at the end of the day you're still going to have to do a
bit of animal research as well."
A colony of 750 long-tailed macaque monkeys is poised to
become the latest victim of federal government
restructuring and downsizing. A Royal Society panel of
scientists and philosophers has been appointed to
determine, among other key considerations, whether the
colony is "unique, valuable and necessary" to protect the
health of Canadians.
The monkeys cost the government about $1 million a year
to maintain. That money comes from Health Canada
emergency funds. The monkeys have been used in research
into AIDS and herpes, to screen polio vaccines and to
measure the effects of ingesting chemicals ranging from
PCBs to caffeine.
But just how much Canada -- and medical science
researchers -- still need a monkey breeding colony has
emerged as a key issue in the controversy.
"What I'm hoping is that the Royal Society will have a
good look at what kind of research is really necessary at
this point using primates in Canada," said Ms. Griffin,
who is also an information officer for the Council on
Animal Care, which ensures animals used in research are
properly care for.
"I think that we should be looking less and less to using
primates," Ms. Griffin said. "There is not much use for
them in testing procedures any more, and in terms of
research, who knows?"
Researchers are moving away from using animals in
experiments, not only because of pressure from
animal-welfare activists but cost.
Today, researchers are investigating alternatives that
can stop compounds from ever reaching animals for
testing, Ms. Griffin said.
For example, researchers are using jelly-like substances
for eye and skin toxicity tests. One such substance,
called corristex, is being used to test materials for
corrosiveness. Until now, these chemicals would have been
tested on rabbit skin.
Researchers are using a bacteria test to determine
whether a chemical can produce a mutation that may lead
to cancer.
Previously, scientists had to test for those DNA
mutations in animals.
And scientists are working on different cell cultures to
try to get brain cells, or neurons, to grow in Petri
dishes the same way they would grow in animals.
But while alternatives to animal testing like these are
becoming part of mainstream science, researchers probably
will never be able to completely simulate the human body
"with a lab dish or computer, at least not in my lifetime
or your lifetime," said a senior Health Canada research
scientist, who asked not to be identified.
"The proof in the pudding, as far as I'm concerned, is
that you have to put the chemical back into the whole
animal to see if it does react the way that things seem
to be going on in the test tube."
Thalidomide, the anti-morning-sickness drug that was
banned worldwide in 1962 after causing severe birth
defects in more than 12,000 babies, was never thoroughly
tested in animals.
"When it comes down to putting something into humans,
whether it's a food additive or drug or an environmental
pollutant, you have to go to an animal system to do some
of your testing," the Health Canada scientist said.
And no one knows what diseases or viruses lurk around the
corner.
The main reason monkeys are used in research is because
they are so close to humans on the evolutionary ladder.
The similarity of monkey AIDS to human AIDS has allowed
the disease in monkeys to serve as a model for the human
disease.
If Health Canada were to close the monkey colony, "we
would have to look at importing those animals again," Ms.
Griffin said.
Only about one of every 10 primates that are trapped and
then transported for research survives -- one of the
reasons the federal colony was put in place.
"I don't want to see us going through getting (monkeys)
from the wild again," Ms. Griffin said.
"What I would like to see, and I hope this is what the
Royal Society is going to do, is really give a good
objective look at what research is actually being done,
and what research is really necessary using primates in
Canada."
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
Monkey Business
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 01:15:19 -0400
From: Vegetarian Resource Center
To: AR-News@envirolink.org
Subject: 60 yo UK Pensioner faces jail threat for feeding birds
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24230@envirolink.org>
London Times
July 19 1997
BRITAIN=20
Neighbours protest at noise and nuisance as rooks,
pigeons and starlings descend on homes=20
Woman faces jail threat for feeding birds=20
A PENSIONER who attracts thousands of birds to
her home by smothering her garden with food was
warned yesterday that she could go to prison.=20
A council had become so exasperated with Barbara
Simpson it had asked a judge to jail her for breaking
an injunction forbidding her from feeding the birds at
her home in the village of Preston, near Weymouth,
Dorset.=20
Mrs Simpson, 60, agreed yesterday at Winchester
Crown Court not to put out any bird seed, nuts,
cheese or other scraps on her lawns or surrounding
pavement until her case is heard. But Mr Justice
Kennedy allowed Mrs Simpson to continue feeding
her 30 doves from a bird table =AD despite being told
the table measured 24 sq ft.=20
Neighbours had complained that Mrs Simpson spent
=A3100 a week on assorted food for the birds. Rooks,
pigeons and starlings perched on neighbouring
houses throughout the day, causing noise and
nuisance, waiting for Mrs Simpson to feed them.
Environmental health officers claimed the food was
sometimes strewn 6in deep.=20
Mrs Simpson who is married to Robert, a retired
newsagent, told the judge that she had not been
present when the injunction was granted in
December last year. Trevor Ward, representing
Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, said Mrs
Simpson's previous solicitor asked to be released
from the case a month ago.=20
Mr Justice Kennedy said he did not think it right to
proceed with an application to commit to prison
someone who was not represented.=20
He said he would adjourn the case but only on
condition that Mrs Simpson gave an undertaking not
to feed the birds in the same terms as the injunction.=20
He told Mrs Simpson the birds could manage without
her: "They will be able to find enough in July and
August without any help from you."=20
Outside the court Mrs Simpson said: "The birds are
my children and I would be prepared to go to prison if
they stopped me feeding them."=20
She began feeding the birds 15 years ago, when a
sick baby blackbird landed on her doorstep. Since
then she has begun emptying bags of cheese and
nuts on to her front lawn and the path each day.=20
Vera Marshall, a neighbour in the seaside village,
said: "It's been terrible. It smells like a chicken run
and when we complain she just tells us not to be
unkind. It begins at 5am when all the rooks start
cawing away and waking us up. Then we get
hundreds of other birds sitting on our roofs waiting for
her to come out. How would you like 200 pigeons
sitting on your roof? We've got rats in the area now."=20
"I've lived here for seven years and she's been doing
this ever since I arrived. We all go outside and try and
clap the birds away which works temporarily but then
they're back after two minutes.=20
"The council have tried to clear up the mess but as
soon as they leave she comes out and pours more
food out."=20
60 yo UK Pensioner faces jail threat for feeding birds
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 01:24:58 -0400
From: Vegetarian Resource Center
To: AR-News@envirolink.org
Subject: Rome Zoo trails in restoration league
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24234@envirolink.org>
London Times
July 19 1997
BRITAIN=20
ROME FILE - by RICHARD OWEN
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/timfgneur04001.html?1114390
Rome Zoo trails in restoration league=20
THE restoration of the Villa Borghese gardens
continues apace as part of Rome's millennial
preparations. The 17th century Villa Borghese itself,
with restored masterpieces by Canova, Titian and
Caravaggio, has been under siege by visitors since
it reopened earlier this month after a 13-year
closure. Other great Renaissance buildings in the
park, such as the Villa Giulia, have also been
restored.=20
But the park also houses one of Rome's eyesores =AD
the cramped and old-fashioned Municipal Zoo,
which has woefully inadequate facilities for its 1,100
caged animals. The zoo's lack of resources was
highlighted recently when vandals climbed over the
fence at night and started attacking a family of four
tapirs with iron bars and a billiard cue. One tapir,
Alfiero, was killed, and another, Filippo, was badly
injured. Claudio Manicastri, the zoo manager, said
the zoo only had three guards at night, and their
patrol car had broken down.=20
Rome Zoo trails in restoration league
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 02:21:53 -0400
From: Vegetarian Resource Center
To: AR-News@envirolink.org
Subject: vegan prison food in Ireland
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24238@envirolink.org>
The Irish Times
FRONT PAGE=20
Monday, January 6, 1997=20
Hostages still held as prisoners make demands=20
By Jim Cusack and Joe Humphreys=20
The Department of Justice has agreed to investigate
complaints by six prisoners in an attempt to defuse the
worst hostage crisis in the history of the prison service.=20
There was no indication by early today that any of the
prison officers who were seized at 6.30 p.m. on
Saturday had been injured. However, the six
hostage-takers include two prisoners whose mental
states are a source of concern. They are armed with a
blood-filled syringe, table legs and metal tubing.
Three of the prisoners, including a man charged in
connection with the murder of the journalist, Veronica
Guerin, are heroin addicts. It is possible these men
may have been aggravated by a lack of the drug after a
package of heroin was seized by prison authorities last
week. The three heroin addicts were yesterday
supplied with physeptone, the heroin substitute used to
treat addicts. According to sources at Mountjoy, the
ring-leader of the group appears to be Mr Paul "Hippo"
Ward (32), the Crumlin man who is awaiting trial on a
charge of conspiracy to murder Ms Guerin.
Three of the other hostage-takers, Warren Dumbrell
(22), Joseph Cooper (26) and Edward Ferncombe
(23), are described by garda=ED as unstable and
dangerous.
The two other prisoners involved in the protest have
said they do not wish to be named. One is in prison for
robbery and the other for grievous bodily harm.
The prisoners have made a series of complaints. Mr
Ward is protesting his innocence. The others are
protesting against living conditions and have made
allegations of ill-treatment by prison staff. They are also
seeking transfer to other prisons.
The four hostages have not been named. One officer
has 17 years' service, another seven years and two are
only in their second year as prison officers.
Last night, the Labour TD Mr Joe Costello, appealed to
the prisoners to release the prison staff unharmed. Mr
Costello said it was virtually unheard-of for prisoners to
take prison staff hostage in Ireland and that such a
development could have serious adverse effects on
prison reform. He added that if the prisoners wished to
make formal allegations of ill-treatment to the garda=ED
they were entitled to do so, and to have these
allegations investigated by the garda=ED.=20
After the hostages were taken, the Department of
Justice initiated its Hostage Situation Management
Plan, which has been prepared for more than two years
in anticipation of such an event.
Teams of prison officers who are trained in hostage
negotiation have been working in shifts at the
separation unit, which is on the fourth floor of the old
prison infirmary.
Mrs Veronica Ferncombe, the mother of one of the
hostagetakers, Eddie Ferncombe, visited him at
Mountjoy Prison yesterday. She said that he had given
an assurance that no one would be harmed in the
siege, and that he would give himself up if he was
granted access to a solicitor.
The family of Mr Ward were critical of the conditions
inside the prison.
"It's like a pig-sty. It's not fit for anyone to live in," said
one of Mr Ward's sisters.
Ferncombe (23) stabbed a Mormon missionary to
death in Clondalkin in May, 1990. Although initially
charged with the murder of Gale Stanley Critchfield
(20), the State dropped this charge and accepted
Ferncombe's guilty plea to manslaughter. He received
nine years' imprisonment. Ferncombe, who was born in
Birmingham but brought up in Clondalkin, has been a
regular source of trouble in prison. In April 1993 he
attacked a prison officer in Limerick and broke his jaw.
This precipitated further violence in the prison, followed
by allegations that prison officers overreacted and
assaulted prisoners. He received a further two years'
imprisonment for the assault on the prison officer.
In autumn 1994, Ferncombe refused to eat prison food
and demanded a vegan diet consisting of vegetables
prepared without the use of any animal fats or dairy
products. He was being provided with a vegetarian diet
at the time. He took the matter to the High Court but
failed to provide medical evidence that his health was
affected by not having vegan food.
Dumbrell was arrested last November shortly after he
robbed a corner shop in Crumlin. During the robbery he
injured the shopkeeper's elderly mother with a cudgel.
Cooper, from Rathfarnham, is serving a five-year term
for kidnapping.=20
vegan prison food in Ireland
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 23:23:48 -0400
From: Wyandotte Animal Group
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (MI) Pound Seizure Update
Message-ID: <199707211055.GAA24246@envirolink.org>
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 16
Thanks to all who have written and called since the last post of this
message. Especially those in Utah and Colorado. The Mayor of Riverview
mentioned those two states at a recent press conference. To update briefly,
we are urging two cities whose contract is up for renewal with an animal
dealer to stop pound seizure. One city, being small without their own
animal shelter, ships their animals to the larger city. The smaller city is
on our side and recently held a press conference with us to urge the larger
city to end the practice. I am reposting the message below, minus the
contact for the small city, and ask that if you haven't written or called
yet, to PLEASE do so. The pressure is working as the cities keep delaying
the decision-making process for what they call time to find out more on
alternatives ... exploratory times.
----------------------------- Content-type: APPLICATION/OCTET-STREAM
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: BASE64
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 109
This attachment was sent as file POUND.ALT
It was saved in file POUND _ALT A
Note: One or more attachments were saved to your personal
storage ("A" disk). Most programs and documents sent
from a PC will need to be downloaded to a PC to be
usable; select the BINARY option of your file
transfer program.
If you know the attachment was plain text, but it is
now unreadable, it may need translation from ASCII
to EBCDIC. If it was saved as "README TXT A", the
command would be "A2ETEXT README TXT A".
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 19:29:56 -0400
From: allen schubert
To: wag@heritage.com, ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Admin Note [was:(MI) Pound Seizure Update]
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970721192952.006a1604@clark.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Please avoid attaching files to posts to AR-News.
While many subscribers may have no problem handling attachments, some do.
For some people, an attached file is downloaded as gibberish, gibberish
that takes time to download. For others, it may be a useless thing that is
"forgotten" after the message was deleted--however, the "attachment" may
still be on the hard drive.
And...depending on the attachment, it *might* contain a virus if it uses a
"template" (this type of virus is known as a "macrovirus"). Some
subscribers' computers do not have anti-virus software. (For virus
information, there are a number of sources on the web.)
***So...please offer to send the attachment via private e-mail (for those
subscribers who reply privately).
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 09:03:35 -0400
From: "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
To: "ar-news@envirolink.com" ,
"sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca"
Subject: RE: Animal Action holds Funeral
Message-ID:
Sean...
Can't anyone meet with the Royal Society of Canada and ask them for funding
to build a santuary for the primates. This is an absolute outrage and
needs to be stopped now.
Also, can't they hold them until funds are available to place them or to
build a santuary?
TKS -- AM
----------
From: Sean Thomas[SMTP:sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 1997 3:34 AM
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Animal Action holds Funeral
Animal Action conducted a small ceremony today in Ottawa, Canada,
marking the death of the first 20 primates killed as funding for Canda's
monkey colony was cut by the Minister of Health.
Members of the group planted 20 crosses in the lawn of the center and
left an offering of fruit next to a picture of one of the monkeys.
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 09:25:16 -0400
From: "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
To: "ar-news@envirolink.com" ,
"sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca"
Subject: RE: Monkey Business
Message-ID:
Sean and others...
If you know of any primate sanctuaries around the world, please post them (names, address,
phone and fax #'s). Need ASAP.
TKS -- AM
----------
From: Sean Thomas[SMTP:sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 1997 7:00 PM
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Monkey Business
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 1 ---- Lines: 4
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 2 ---- Lines: 216
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Friday 18 July 1997
Health Canada considers private monkey business
Breeding mill would produce primates for profit
Randy Boswell
The Ottawa Citizen
The creation of a private, profit-making monkey mill for
government and industry research labs is among the
options available to Health Canada as it considers what
to do with its primate breeding colony of 750 long-tailed
macaques.
The idea, listed along with several other alternatives in
a report completed last month that examined Health
Canada's animal resources division, contrasts with a
recommendation issued Wednesday by an expert panel of
American scientists that has been considering the future
of that country's population of 1,500 research
chimpanzees.
The U.S. National Research Council, in a study sponsored
by the National Institutes of Health, urged a five-year
moratorium on chimpanzee breeding in the States because
an "oversupply has created substantial management
problems for the institutions that house them."
The U.S. panel also urged the establishment of
"sanctuaries" for chimps no longer needed for
experiments, and rejected the idea of killing unwanted
animals.
The future of the Ottawa monkeys, which have been used
since 1983 for research into environmental toxins and
AIDS and to test polio vaccines, will be the focus of a
study due in November from a panel of scientists and
philosophers named this week by the Royal Society of
Canada.
Health Canada requested the analysis as it faced the
fallout of massive federal budget cuts and changing
trends in animal research. The department has concluded
that, without some prospect of cost recovery, it can no
longer justify spending $1 million a year for the care
and maintenance of monkeys for which there is declining
need within Health Canada itself.
But one of the potential solutions to the predicament,
according to the June report, is to privatize the colony
through an employee takeover or direct sale to a private
firm.
Plans to "determine a market value for the monkey colony
as a commercial operation" are listed in the department's
recommendations.
Over the years, some of the monkeys have been sold to
outside agencies and universities, but on a modest scale.
"Several members of the pharmaceutical and testing
laboratory sectors felt that if they had access to
animals from the HPB (Health Protection Branch) colony,
more sophisticated (and lucrative) testing could be
conducted in Canada," the report stated.
It is the superior quality of the Health Canada monkey
colony, for research purposes, that makes potential
commercialization attractive -- even in an era when
public campaigns against the use of laboratory primates
have driven many researchers toward using rodents or
high-tech alternatives to animals for their experiments.
The Ottawa colony's "unique nature and irreplaceability,"
as the Health Canada report describes it, derives from
the fact that the genetic history of the monkeys is known
for two generations and that they are free of the herpes
virus that infects much of the North American primate
research stock.
In 1991, a veterinarian at the Texas Primate Centre
contracted a rare monkey herpes virus and died; a Health
Canada scientist died in 1958 after he was bitten by an
infected animal.
The macaque or Cynomolgus monkey is also in greater
demand than the widely available rhesus monkey because
"cynos" are smaller and thus easier to house and control.
"If made available to industry and universities on a
larger scale than in the past, the HPB monkey colony
could be an important element in the science and
technology infrastructure of Canada," it noted.
"Toxicological testing companies would have the ability
to attract more lucrative contracts, and this in turn
would contribute to the science base of the country with
a concomitant positive impact on Canadian
competitiveness."
About 800 macaques are used annually for product testing
in Canada, most purchased from primate suppliers in
Texas.
"The monkey colony in Ottawa is strategically located to
the supply of these animals to industry and institutions
located in Montreal and Toronto," says the report.
"Several companies have expressed that the HPB colony
would be their first choice supplier because of ease of
shipping, less traumatized animals ready for test much
sooner, and the fact that animals are of a much higher
quality."
Monkeys sell for between $1,000 and $4,000, depending on
their state of maturity, and monkeys in their
reproductive prime are the most expensive.
William Leiss, the Queen's University professor who
convened the expert panel on behalf of the Royal Society,
said Health Canada officials recognize "they could cover
their costs" by stepping up sales of monkeys. But he says
the department turned to the expert panel partly because
it is searching for better alternatives.
"They don't want to do it," he said, but acknowledged
that the panel could conclude that increased revenues
from marketing of the monkeys would benefit taxpayers and
help Canada maintain a valuable research resource.
Stephanie Brown, an animal rights activist with the
Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, warned that
"trying to make a buck means producing a lot of animals"
and risking the same kind of "glut" that appears to have
developed in the U.S. market for chimpanzees.
Ms. Brown, who recently sat on a Health Canada advisory
committee examining the future of its animal resources
division, slammed the notion of "approaching the future
of the colony as an entrepreneur."
Dr. Jim Wong, chief veterinarian with the Canadian
Council on Animal Care and the man responsible for
inspecting the living conditions of Health Canada's
monkey colony, said the expert panelists -- and
ultimately federal officials -- face an excruciating
choice because of the financial pressures at the Health
Protection Branch.
"If I was doing a research project I'd want to eliminate
as many variables as possible," he says, referring to the
macaque colony's disease-free status and richly
documented medical history. "That's why these animals
would be highly desirable."
But he says the animals are also expensive to maintain
and "do you breed them for the sake of breeding them on
the chance that there might be a buyer?"
One of the leading U.S. authorities on lab animals,
citing this week's recommendations on Amerian
chimpanzees, says Canada should tread carefully before
commercializing its primate colony -- for both economic
and ethical reasons.
"There's money to be made, but I doubt the market is that
large," says Andrew Rowan, director of the Tufts
University Centre for Animals and Public Policy.
Mr. Rowan recently met with Health Canada officials, as
they began to ponder the future of the colony, to provide
advice on alternatives to animal research. He recalls
that "there was a lot of tension in the room" because
many of the scientists were concerned about losing their
jobs should the monkey colony be disbanded.
"My own preference is that we should look toward
decreasing animals in research instead of looking for
ways to promote it," he said. "The danger is that you can
oversell one's need (for monkeys) in order to justify the
maintenance of the population."
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
----------------------------- Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
---- M U L T I P A R T ---- Decoded from: 7BIT
---- Part 3 ---- Lines: 175
Ottawa Citizen Hit reload or refresh if you're not getting today's
Online date.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
[Image]
National
Highlights
[Image]National
News
[Image]Across
Canada
[Image]News in
Depth
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
[National - Ottawa Citizen Online]
Thursday 17 July 1997
Animal research: part of the price of good health
Even scientists dedicated to ending animal testing admit
facilities like Ottawa's primate colony will be needed
for a long time, writes Sharon Kirkey
Sharon Kirkey
The Ottawa Citizen
Skin substitutes and brain cells that can grow in Petri
dishes are just some of the alternatives scientists are
aggressively pursuing to reduce the need for using
animals in research.
But even the director of an organization dedicated to
ending testing on animals doubts medical science will
overcome the need for facilities such as Health Canada's
colony of research monkeys -- at least in the foreseeable
future.
"I have to have as my goal that at some point in the
future we won't be doing animal research," says Gilly
Griffin, executive director of the Ottawa-based Canadian
Centre for Alternatives to Animals in Research.
"But I have to take a pragmatic view too. We still have
big, big problems to solve. We haven't solved AIDS, we
haven't solved neurodegenerative diseases, we haven't
solved cancer," Ms. Griffin said.
"We can do a lot of (research) in cellular systems, but
at the end of the day you're still going to have to do a
bit of animal research as well."
A colony of 750 long-tailed macaque monkeys is poised to
become the latest victim of federal government
restructuring and downsizing. A Royal Society panel of
scientists and philosophers has been appointed to
determine, among other key considerations, whether the
colony is "unique, valuable and necessary" to protect the
health of Canadians.
The monkeys cost the government about $1 million a year
to maintain. That money comes from Health Canada
emergency funds. The monkeys have been used in research
into AIDS and herpes, to screen polio vaccines and to
measure the effects of ingesting chemicals ranging from
PCBs to caffeine.
But just how much Canada -- and medical science
researchers -- still need a monkey breeding colony has
emerged as a key issue in the controversy.
"What I'm hoping is that the Royal Society will have a
good look at what kind of research is really necessary at
this point using primates in Canada," said Ms. Griffin,
who is also an information officer for the Council on
Animal Care, which ensures animals used in research are
properly care for.
"I think that we should be looking less and less to using
primates," Ms. Griffin said. "There is not much use for
them in testing procedures any more, and in terms of
research, who knows?"
Researchers are moving away from using animals in
experiments, not only because of pressure from
animal-welfare activists but cost.
Today, researchers are investigating alternatives that
can stop compounds from ever reaching animals for
testing, Ms. Griffin said.
For example, researchers are using jelly-like substances
for eye and skin toxicity tests. One such substance,
called corristex, is being used to test materials for
corrosiveness. Until now, these chemicals would have been
tested on rabbit skin.
Researchers are using a bacteria test to determine
whether a chemical can produce a mutation that may lead
to cancer.
Previously, scientists had to test for those DNA
mutations in animals.
And scientists are working on different cell cultures to
try to get brain cells, or neurons, to grow in Petri
dishes the same way they would grow in animals.
But while alternatives to animal testing like these are
becoming part of mainstream science, researchers probably
will never be able to completely simulate the human body
"with a lab dish or computer, at least not in my lifetime
or your lifetime," said a senior Health Canada research
scientist, who asked not to be identified.
"The proof in the pudding, as far as I'm concerned, is
that you have to put the chemical back into the whole
animal to see if it does react the way that things seem
to be going on in the test tube."
Thalidomide, the anti-morning-sickness drug that was
banned worldwide in 1962 after causing severe birth
defects in more than 12,000 babies, was never thoroughly
tested in animals.
"When it comes down to putting something into humans,
whether it's a food additive or drug or an environmental
pollutant, you have to go to an animal system to do some
of your testing," the Health Canada scientist said.
And no one knows what diseases or viruses lurk around the
corner.
The main reason monkeys are used in research is because
they are so close to humans on the evolutionary ladder.
The similarity of monkey AIDS to human AIDS has allowed
the disease in monkeys to serve as a model for the human
disease.
If Health Canada were to close the monkey colony, "we
would have to look at importing those animals again," Ms.
Griffin said.
Only about one of every 10 primates that are trapped and
then transported for research survives -- one of the
reasons the federal colony was put in place.
"I don't want to see us going through getting (monkeys)
from the wild again," Ms. Griffin said.
"What I would like to see, and I hope this is what the
Royal Society is going to do, is really give a good
objective look at what research is actually being done,
and what research is really necessary using primates in
Canada."
FRONT PAGE | CITY | SPORTS | BUSINESS | NATIONAL | WORLD
| EDITORIALS
ENTERTAINMENT | YOUR MONEY | INTERNET | COLUMNISTS |
CLASSIFIED
Praise or criticism? Give us your FEEDBACK
Copyright 1997 The Ottawa Citizen
yy Monkey Business
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 09:33:54 -0400
From: "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
To: "ar-news@envirolink.com" ,
"sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca"
Subject: RE: Animal Action holds Funeral
Message-ID:
Sean and others...
Where is Animal Action located (address, phone #, etc.)?
TKS -- AM
----------
From: Sean Thomas[SMTP:sean.thomas1@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 1997 3:34 AM
To: ar-news@envirolink.com
Subject: Animal Action holds Funeral
Animal Action conducted a small ceremony today in Ottawa, Canada,
marking the death of the first 20 primates killed as funding for Canda's
monkey colony was cut by the Minister of Health.
Members of the group planted 20 crosses in the lawn of the center and
left an offering of fruit next to a picture of one of the monkeys.
Sean Thomas, Co-Director
Animal Action
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 09:46:34 -0400
From: "D'Amico, AnnMarie"
To: "'ar-news@envirolink.org'" ,
"'ar-views@envirolink.org'" ,
"'ar-wire@waste.org'" ,
"'ar-dc'"
Subject: Killing Primates
Message-ID:
Hello...
If anyone has any information on the following, please post. This info is needed ASAP.
If you know of any primate sanctuaries in the world, please give names, addresses, phone and fax
#'s.
Also, if you know of any facilities that do research on primates those names, addresses, phone and
fax #'s are needed as well.
TKS -- AM
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 22:34:58 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: New hope of mobility for disabled
Message-ID: <199707211434.WAA31639@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>The Straits Times
21 July 97
New hope of mobility for disabled
LONDON -- Two groups of American scientists had taken significant steps
towards restoring mobility to the severely disabled, The Sunday Times
reported yesterday. The newspaper said researchers at the University of
California's San Diego School of Medicine believe they can prove two human
genes could regenerate nerve growth in the spine. Last week, it said, the
researchers reported they had restored movement to the hind legs of rats
with severed spines.
The researchers took tissue samples from the rats and added the gene
NT-3, which encourages nerve growth in foetuses. Those samples that started
to express the NT-3 protein were then planted in the damaged region of the
spine to make the nerves regrow.
To date, the genetic engineering has been successful, with nearly all
the rats regaining full or partial movement of their legs.
However, there is a problem, according to Dr Mark Tuszynski, who led
the team: "Wecan't stop it growing nerve tissue and so the regeneration can
get out of hand.
"That is why we are starting work on another known human gene called
nerve-growth factor, or NGF. It is not very good at restoring function to
the rear limbs, but it is very good at regenerating the right amount of
nerve tissue."
He believes the two genes could be combined.
"All we need now is for another group to repeat our findings in rats
and larger animals and then we will be ready for human clinical trials. I
really think this treatment could help restore mobility to the severely
disabled, but it will be several years away yet."
Meanwhile, surgeons from the University of Florida claim they have also
taken a step towards restoring the severely disabled with the first
transplant of spinal tissue into a man with a painful cavity in his spine.
They used spines -- each about 2.5 cm long -- from six foetuses and
implanted them in the patient's spinal cavity. The operation is not intended
to cure his condition but to reverse the loss of nerve tissue. He will be
watched closely to see if his mobility improves.
Last week's operation is the first of 10 that are expected to be
carried out over the next two years, the newspaper said.
The surgeons hope eventually to be able to pioneer a means of using
foetal spines to bridge gaps in adult spines to restore full mobility to
the severely disabled.
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 22:46:02 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Arabian Leopard Captured
Message-ID: <199707211446.WAA05623@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>CNA Daily English News Wire
ARABIAN LEOPARD CAPTURED
Riyadh, July 20 (CNA) An endangered Arabian leopard has been captured in a
remote area of southwestern Saudi Arabia.
The male leopard is now being examined at the National Wildlife Research
Center near Taif. It is the first Arabian leopard to be held in captivity
for decades, according to wildlife experts.
However, the National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development
is urging the public not to attempt to capture any more leopards.
Only 150 Arabian leopards are believed to left in the wild, mostly in
mountainous areas located between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman. Experts
say that unless drastic measures are taken to
protect the animals, the species will soon become extinct. (By Yang I-feng)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 11:01:23 -0400
From: Wyandotte Animal Group
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (MI) Pound release update
Message-ID: <1.5.4.16.19970721150123.2fc70f90@mail.heritage.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I apologize! For some reason, my mail program considered it to be a file
attachment last night when I mailed this message. Always before it put .txt
messages right inside the email message. Anyway, I've now cut and paste it,
so it should be all set. Again, I apologize for the file attachment earlier.
_____________________________________________________________________
Thanks to all who have written and called since the last post of this
message. Especially those in Utah and Colorado. The Mayor of Riverview
mentioned those two states at a recent press conference. To update briefly,
we are urging two cities whose contract is up for renewal with an animal
dealer to stop pound seizure. One city, being small without their own
animal shelter, ships their animals to the larger city. The smaller city is
on our side and recently held a press conference with us to urge the larger
city to end the practice. I am reposting the message below, minus the
contact for the small city, and ask that if you haven't written or called
yet, to PLEASE do so. The pressure is working as the cities keep delaying
the decision-making process for what they call time to find out more on
alternatives ... exploratory times.
ACTION ALERT
HELP KEEP OUR PETS FROM BEING SENT TO
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION LABS!
The City of Taylor currently practices pound release, which means they sell
their unclaimed pound
animals to a USDA-Class B animal dealer who then turns around and sells them
to animal
experimentation labs. The City of Riverview, without their own pound, sends
their animals to the
Taylor pound where they end up with the same animal dealer. The contract
with this dealer is up for
renewal. The contract was allegedly due for renewal on June 30. When we
talked with staff in
Mayor Pitoniak's office, we were told that they extended their investigation
time into alternatives
because of calls and letters they were receiving. We won't stop until they
guarantee their words in
writing that they have found an alternative and have stopped selling their
animals to for
experimentation. Please write or call the following people TODAY and urge
them to end this
barbaric practice and instead use your tax dollars on public education
regarding proper pet care and
spaying and neutering. Only until we begin to lower the number of animals
born will there be any
decrease in the amount of animals brought to pounds each year.
Mayor Greg Pitoniak 23555 Goddard
Road
Taylor MI 48180
(313) 374-1450
Jack Haydon
City Council Chairperson
(313) 374-1320
(same address)
You may wish to make some of the following points:
** There is no way of knowing if an animal brought to a pound is someone's
lost pet. Pounds are
required to hold animals for only a few days and many caretakers cannot find
their pets in time to
reclaim them.
** Pounds that do not enjoy the public's confidence cannot do an efficient
and cost-effective job of
animal control. People will not willingly bring stray or unwanted pets to
them. Thus, fewer lost pets
are returned and fewer unwanted pets are adopted. Pound release robs pets
of a second chance at
life.
** The assumption that these animals are doomed to die anyway callously
disregards our moral
responsibility. The choice becomes painless euthanasia verses laboratory
experimentation, which
may produce pain, induce disease, require a long, suffering death and be of
no benefit to the public.
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 00:33:39 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (SG) Frog Meat
Message-ID: <199707211633.AAA05801@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>The Straits Times
21 July 97
Jumping frog legs, aren't they popular?
WHEN Mr Wan Bock Thiaw goes to sleep each night, he usually hears a
cacophony of croaking.
It is the mating call of thousands of bull frogs in the backyard of his
single-storey house in Lim Chu Kang.
To him, it is a lullaby which sends him deeper into dreamland. The
croaking means more baby frogs will be produced for his family-run frog
breeding business.
Mr Wan, 45, owns the only frog farm here. He supplies live frogs to
more than 100 customers, including hotels, seafood restaurants, hawkers and
wet-market stalls.
His Jurong Frog Farm, at the Lim Chu Kang Agrotechnology Park of the
Primary Production Department, has 30,000 American bullfrogs and more than
10,000 tadpoles. Still, he has to import extra frogs from Indonesia to meet
the demand.
Last year, for example, more than 930,000 live frogs were imported from
Indonesia and Malaysia, said PPD spokesman S. Y. Goh.
The figure includes the live frogs imported by Mr Wan and other frog
importers.
Besides live frogs, frozen frog legs are also brought in from
Indonesia. However, no statistics are available on how many of them are
imported, says Mr Goh.
Mr Wan, who calls himself The Frogman, says: "Singaporeans are eating
five times more live frogs now than five years ago."
He is, of course, delighted with this trend. In 1992, his company supplied
20 tonnes of frogs to customers here. This year, it will be supplying about
96 tonnes.
He adds: "Singaporeans prefer live frogs to frozen frog legs as the
former are fresh and taste sweeter."
He declines to disclose his farm's annual turnover, except to say that
business is good. His farm-bred frogs make up 40 per cent of the market
supply here.
The Wan family used to run a chicken and pig farm in Jurong, but
switched to frog farming in 1977. The farm moved to its present 1.1-ha site
at Lim Chu Kang three years ago.
Today, Mr Wan runs the business with help from his wife, Madam Liew Quee
Fong, 40, his father, Mr Wan Toh, who is in his 80s, and two employees. His
two daughters and one son, aged from nine to 14, pitch in after homework and
school.
The frogs are kept in 70 cemented ponds and fibre tanks in a giant
greenhouse, which has netting on top to provide shade as frogs need a cool
environment to breed.
The amphibians have green, brown and black bodies and the males are
distinguished from the females by their bigger ears. The males also have
brighter green and yellow necks; females have just green necks.
The frogs used for breeding are a year old and weigh about 500 g each,
unlike those sold in markets, which are six to seven months old and weigh
250 to 300 g.
The breeding frogs measure about 30 cm from the head to the tip of their
webbed feet.
They are put into two big cemented "match-making pools", where Mr Frog
and Ms Frog have a choice of a few thousand potential spouses per pool.
So how does the male signal that he has found his dream girl? Does he
hop around with glee? Well, not exactly.
"Once he finds a suitable partner, he just hops on top of her,"
explains Mr Wan. He then takes the couple to an egg-laying pool.
The farm has 16 of these egg-laying pools. Two to three pairs of frogs
usually shareone egg-laying pool.
A female frog lays about 8,000 eggs at a time, says Mr Wan, adding that
a frog can lay eggs 12 times a year.
Once the eggs are fertilised by the male frog, the parent frogs are
removed from the pools, leaving the eggs to hatch on their own in a month's
time.
Later, the tadpoles are transferred to bigger "growing up" ponds. It
takes three months to grow from egg to baby frogs, said Mr Wan.
The frog-breeding business is so fascinating that members of residents
committees and women's groups often drop by for free visits.
They are shown a video of the farm and then taken around the greenhouse.
They can buy live frogs at $10 for three -- much cheaper than at the wet
markets, where they are sold at an average price of $5 each.
The amphibians are stunned with a blow to the head with the wooden end
of a knife before they are killed and later cooked.
Low in fat, good for asthma
THE Chinese believe eating frogs is good for health.
They believe it can strengthen children's legs, says Mr Wan Bock Thiaw,
owner of the Jurong Frog Farm.
"Frog soup with pepper is said to be good for people with asthma, too,"
he points out, adding that frog meat also contains Vitamins A, B1 and B12.
Ms Sally Cheong, manager of the Yunnan Garden Restaurant at the IMM
Building in Jurong, claims: "Eating frogs will help you balance the yin and
yang of the body's internal system."
Yin and yang -- the principle of balancing cooling and heaty foods --
form part of the traditional Chinese system of maintaining health.
The frog is said to have yin, or cooling, properties, said Ms Cheong.
People who lead stressful lives are believed to have more yang. They
thus need to take in more yin to balance their system.
Frog meat is also low in fat. With Singaporeans becoming more health
conscious, more people are now eating frog -- and not just the common dish
of frog legs done Sichuan-style.
The body of frogs -- minus the head, feet and webbed toes -- can be
steamed, fried, done claypot-style or as soup or porridge.
There are many places where frog (tin kai) cuisine can be found, from
kopi tiam and hawker stalls to hotel and seafood restaurants.
For instance, claypot frogs with chilli and spices, frog porridge and
claypot frog with spring onions are top sellers at a stall, Sik Tak Ko, at
the Grand View Cafe in Geylang Lorong 14.
The stall, which is open from 11 am to 4 am, is also popular with
nightbirds who drop by for supper after their disco and karaoke sessions.
One customer, broker Mike Tan, 41, says he visits the stall two to
three times a week as his favourite dish is chilli claypot frog.
Stall-holder Mr Richard Koh, 42, who moved from Eminent Plaza in Jalan
Besar to Geylang just two months ago because of poor business, reports
better business at his new premises.
His stall had sales of $20,000 in the first month and this shot up to
$35,000 in the second month. His dishes cost from $8 to $22 each.
Those who like to eat frog in air-conditioned comfort can visit Hai
Tien Lo at the Pan Pacific Hotel and Tsui Hang Village Restaurant at Asia
Hotel.
Other establishments offering frog include the Yunnan Garden Restaurant
in Jurong, the Long Beach Restaurant at the East Coast Parkway and Marina
South and Palm Springs at IMM Building in Jurong.
According to masterchef Chan Chen Hei of Hai Tien Lo, customers now
consume 20 kg of frog meat a month -- a 20- to 30-per cent increase
compared with the past.
Over at the Long Beach chain, customers consume 400 kg to 500 kg of live
frogs a month today, says a spokesman. This is the first year the chain is
offering live frogs. In the past, they had only frozen frog legs.
Meanwhile, housewives keen to cook their own dishes can buy live frogs
at some wet markets here.
The Chinatown wet market now has 10 stalls selling live frogs. Frog
seller Wong Kam Fong, 47, has special offers to beat the competition. He
sells three frogs for $14 at his stall. Usually, one frog here sells for $5.
Which frogs are edible?
THOUGH it is consumed in the largest numbers here, the American
bullfrog or Rana Catesbeiana, as it is called by zoologists, is not the only
edible frog in this region.
Three other frogs found in South-east Asia are edible, though people
here do not eat them, according to the National University of Singapore's
Zoology Department.
They are the Malayan Giant Frog, the Malesian Frog and the young of the
Crab-Eating Frog.
The Malayan Giant Frog, which is light brown in colour, is one of the
largest jungle frogs in the region.
As it is a jungle frog, it is difficult to breed. These frogs, which have
large meaty legs, can be found in the more remote areas of Indonesia or
Malaysia.
The Malesian Frog is also wild and resembles the Malayan Giant Frog.
The young of the Crab-Eating Frog is usually bred in frog farms in the
region and sold as feed for golden dragon fish in aquariums.
There are two other types of frog which are not eaten. They are the
Asiatic Bullfrog and the Asian Toad, which are found commonly in the
garden, says a spokesman from the department.
The Asiatic Bullfrog has two yellow bands on its flanks.
The Asian Toad is not a frog per se -- it comes from a different branch of
the family.
However, one frog to avoid at all cost is the Poison Arrow Frog (Genus
Dendrobates) from South America. It is the most poisonous of all frogs.
South American Indians dip their darts and the arrows of their blow
pipes on the secretion of the frog and use it as poison to kill animals,
like monkeys. The poison is fatal to humans.
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 00:55:42 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Thalidomide: Has the horror drug of the '60s become hereditary?
Message-ID: <199707211655.AAA09946@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>The Age
Melbourne Online
19 July 97
Has the horror drug of the '60s become hereditary?
By JUDITH WHELAN
and MARTIN DALY
WHEN Glenn and Deborah Harrison were expecting their third
child, they were confident the baby would be as healthy as its
two brothers. Deborah had a scan at 20 weeks in which the
technician could not pick up the foetus' arms and legs. But the
technician who did a second scan a week later reassured the
parents that everything was there, even fingers and toes.
So when Georgina was born without feet, and with arms and
hands so badly deformed as to be virtually useless, the couple
were astounded. "We couldn't believe it. It was like a bolt of
lightning," Mr Harrison said.
Georgina's deformities mirrored his own. Mr Harrison, 36, was
a thalidomide baby. His mother had taken the drug to counter
morning sickness in the first trimester of her pregnancy, before it
was known that the drug could cause serious deformities in
unborn children.
Like other thalidomide children born in the early 1960s in
Britain, Mr Harrison benefited from an out-of-court settlement
arranged on behalf of the victims with Distillers, the umbrella
company of the drug's manufacturer.
Because the case for compensation never reached court, the
company that made thalidomide has never admitted public
liability for the drug's effects, nor has it been admitted publicly by
Guinness, the company that bought Distillers in 1986 and now
handles any compensation claims.
This week, the Harrisons lodged the first claim with Guinness
seeking compensation for a second-generation thalidomide
victim. They are convinced Georgina's deformities are due to Mr
Harrison's mother taking thalidomide as Glenn was in her womb.
That their sons Jason, 10, and Bobby, 7, were born without
deformity has not lessened their conviction.
In Britain, there are 456 people alive who were affected by
thalidomide in the 1960s. According to Mr Harrison, and the
Thalidomide Action Group, which is supporting his
compensation claim, 11 of the survivors' children were born with
deformities of varying severity. Such deformities usually occur
once in every 1500 children.
Georgina, almost four, is one of the most severely affected of the11.
Another child was born with legs but had very short arms
and six shortened fingers instead of hands.
Another, the child of two people affected by thalidomide, was
born with deformed fingers. The remaining eight were "very mild
cases", said the chairman and founder of the Thalidomide Action
Group, Freddie Astbury, a 37-year-old Liverpool man born
without arms or legs as a result of the drug. Despite such
overwhelming figures, there has been as yet no proof that the
effects of thalidomide can be passed down through generations.
But work in Sydney and Pennsylvania by the man who revealed
the effects of thalidomide in 1961, Dr William McBride, and his
colleagues, and due to be published in Britain next week, wouldappear to
give considerable backing to the Harrisons' claim.
In a paper to be published in the specialist journal Teratogenesis,
Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis, Dr Peter Huang and Dr
McBride, of Foundation 41, show that in experiments with rats
they found thalidomide altered the DNA of developing embryos.
Dr McBride's initial studies of the drug in the 1950s and 1960s
had shown thalidomide was a teratogen, that is it caused the
malformation of a developing embryo. The latest studies, carried
out in conjunction with Dr Huang and Dr William Tuman of
Pharmacon Research International in Pennsylvania, suggest that
thalidomide is also a mutagen, that is it causes the cells in that
embryo to change.
Dr Huang and Dr McBride injected pregnant rats with
thalidomide and found that the DNA in the embryos changed. In
earlier studies in 1990, they had found that the rats' DNA
changed after injection with thalidomide, but could not show the
definite link between the drug and the change.
In these latest studies, they used radioactive thalidomide. The
radioactivity acted as a marker to show that the thalidomide
interacted with the DNA.
The research involved injecting eight pregnant rats in their tails
with radioactive thalidomide on day 12 of gestation.
Twenty-four hours later, they were sacrificed. About 40 baby
rats were collected and the DNA was extracted.
The results are presented in the paper due to be published next
week. A further study, carried out in Pennsylvania and involving
rabbits will be published in three months. It also found that
thalidomide interacts with DNA. "We wanted it done with
another species and in another laboratory," Dr McBride said.
Dr McBride was struck off the New South Wales medical
register in 1988 after the Medical Tribunal found him guilty of
scientific fraud over experiments he claimed showed Debendox,
another morning sickness drug, caused malformations. He has
continued to work at Foundation 41, although he admitted that
"we haven't got much money and we are winding things up". But
he still pursues the issue. This month, he lectured on his findings
in New Hampshire and will go on to Germany to investigate thehigher
incidences of cancer there in first-generation thalidomide
victims.
Of the 2500 survivors in Germany affected by the drug, one
woman and four men have been treated for cancer. The men all
had testicular cancer. Yet the accepted incidence of testicular
tumors is one in every 50,000 males. "Thalidomide is a
teratogen, a mutagen and seems to be a carcinogen, in other
words a full house," Dr McBride said.
IN Australia, where there are just 35 surviving thalidomide
victims, there are no cases of second-generation deformity. But
in England, Germany and Italy, many children have been born
with deformities that mirror their parents'.
"In England, these people have had normal children, at least one,
and then the affected child," Dr McBride said. The drug
appeared to have a mosaic effect, often depending on when in
her pregnancy the child's grandmother took the drug. "If the
grandmother took it at the time the gonads were forming, you
can get a germinal mutation."
The studies by Dr Huang and Dr McBride do not prove that
thalidomide alters DNA in humans or that those changes can be
passed to subsequent generations. The only way to do that
would be to carry out the same tests
of humans as with the rats, an ethical impossibility.
Dr Huang says one way to further support his results is an
international database to monitor the offspring of thalidomide
victims who, 30 years after the drug was used by their mothers,
are having families of their own.
Dr Huang, a chemical pathologist with a background in chemical
carcinogenesis, met Dr McBride in the mid-1970s and urged
him to take his thalidomide research into DNA. In the 1980s Dr
Huang joined Foundation 41 with the aim of demonstrating a
connection between DNA and thalidomide-linked deformities.
He believed that as carcinogens interacting with DNA can cause
diseases, such as cancers, thalidomide binding with DNA might
cause birth defects.
"When you see a baby born with the obvious deformations on
arms and legs, it has to be a factor genetically, and you have to
think DNA," he said.
Dr Huang started his research in 1985. The new paper is a
follow-up to research by Dr Huang and his colleagues in 1990.
It showed that rat embryos treated with thalidomide suffered
extensive DNA damage. "The reaction to the first paper was
really unnoticed," Dr Huang said. "It was another one of those
theories. Now we can prove what we said before . . . now we
clearly can demonstrate that thalidomide or a portion of it does
interact with DNA."
The 1990 paper proposed that because the DNA embryo was
such an active organ, in that it replicates rapidly, it cannot afford
to stay damaged for very long. The DNA is always under
pressure to proceed to its next stage of development, from
embryonic development to foetal development.
In the case of embryonic development, any damage - such as
that caused by the thalidomide attaching to the DNA - if
repaired quickly, will be permanently repaired. "If not, the
damage will affect the embryos and this is why you see the limb
defects," Dr Huang said.
Whether Georgina Harrison has been affected by the
thalidomide, as has her father, remains a matter for legal and
medical debate.
The Harrisons are not suing Guinness for compensation, simply
presenting the company with a submission on Georgina,
supported by the opinions of two doctors. Mr Harrison said one
supported the theory that her deformities were caused by
thalidomide, the other was by "a sceptical doctor". He said
Guinness would be under no legal obligation to consider the
submission but it would have "a moral compulsion to look at it".
"We believe these children are born affected by thalidomide. We
are asking Guinness to make a payment for these people . . .
What we are looking for is a quality of life for them. We are not
asking for lottery-type payments for them."
Soon after Georgina's birth, Mr Harrison engaged lawyers to
sue the company and the hospital that failed to detect the
abnormalities in Georgina's ultrasound scan, but ran out of
money before any action got to court. He did not qualify for
legal aid. He is a small-business operator living in rural
Lincolnshire and also receives regular, if small, payments from
the trust fund set up in the 1970s to provide continuing
compensation to thalidomide victims.
"It cost me with one firm of solicitors 14,000 just to do their
ground work," he said. "All of my (lump sum) compensation I
spent on this. But I began to think, I've got a responsibility to my
other children and my wife to keep a roof over their heads." So
he abandoned his plans for court. His current case has been
partly funded by the Thalidomide Action Group, set up four
years ago by Freddie Astbury. A law change in Britain four
years ago meant some people who had been unable to prove
they were affected by thalidomide in the 1960s and 1970s
gained access to previously secret medical records that proved
their claim.
In the past 10 years, about 10 people have had their claims
recognised by Guinness. They are paid a lump sum (somewhere
around $110,000, depending on the severity of their deformities)
and then also receive payments from the trust fund, the amounts
again dependent on their condition.
In 1994, Guinness promised to top up the original trust fund with
$85 million over the following 15 years. The yearly $5.7 million
comes out of its charities budget. The head of Guinness' media
department, Murray Loake, said: "We were concerned it mightrun out of money
early next century because of current low
interest rates." It is this fund that the Harrisons hope will also be
able to compensate Georgina. Mr Loake said the Harrison
appeal was was with Guinness' legal department and he was
hopeful there would be a reply within a week. Beyond that, he
could not comment on the case. "It would be up to the medical
experts and the legal experts to decide," he said.
But what of the risks highlighted by the research that could
extend to other drugs, apart from thalidomide, which is now
used in treatments, including AIDS?
Dr Huang said: "I think you would now have to look more
carefully into medicines being used: that you will have to screen
drugs for teratogenic effects (birth defects)" He said the resultsof his
research were "frightening" because "we do not know if it
can be multi-generational".
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 21:25:13 -0500
From: L Grayson
To: ar-news
Subject: "Animal group" says Nigeria center of illegal trade
Message-ID: <33D3B3E1.7C0C@earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
11:04 AM ET 07/20/97
Animal group says Nigeria center of illegal trade
LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuter) - Gorillas and other endangered
animals from West and Central Africa are being exported through
the northern Nigerian city of Kano, which has become a center of
the illegal trade, an animal rights group said Sunday.
Mike Pugh, of the World Society for the Protection of
Animals, said his investigations, when posing as a dealer,
showed corrupt officials and good international air connections
had made Kano a stepping-stone for exports to Asia and the
Middle East.
``(A local dealer) told me there would be no problems
exporting any animals and he would pay an incentive to the
wildlife department to obtain the free disposal permit which he
told me was all I needed,'' Pugh told Reuters. ``All the
information I've got says that's true.''
Pugh said local wildlife officials gave him the permit to
export endangered chimpanzees, described as ``pet monkeys,'' for
little more than $200 when they were convinced he was a genuine
animal dealer wanting to send large numbers to India.
They could not issue an internationally-demanded CITES
(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species)
certificate for transporting endangered species, but said there
would be no need for it at the airport.
Airport and airline officials at Kano said the free disposal
permit and a health certificate were all that was required to
export animals, as long as arrangements were also made at the
destination.
``They said it was okay to export gorillas and chimps. 'If
you want to export an elephant no problem' one of them told
me,'' said Pugh.
He could not give a precise number of animals leaving, but
one dealer said he could provide up to 40 chimpanzees over six
months at $300 each and 10 gorillas for $660. Another offered 20
chimpanzees and four gorillas.
``Gorillas and chimps come from Cameroon and more chimps
come from Gabon,'' said Pugh. ``The adult animals are killed by
hunters for meat and then the babies are sold as pets or for
private zoos or medical research.''
Military-ruled Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, has
earned a reputation as a transit point for the international
trade in illegal drugs, as well as being known for corruption
and fraud.
^REUTER@
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 15:31:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: LMANHEIM@aol.com
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Fwd: National Animal Protection Organizations File 1998 Statewide Ballot Ini...
Message-ID: <970721152958_1447830077@emout18.mail.aol.com>
In a message dated 97-07-21 13:05:36 EDT, AOL News writes:
<< Subj:National Animal Protection Organizations File 1998 Statewide Ballot
Initiative
Date:97-07-21 13:05:36 EDT
From:AOL News
BCC:LMANHEIM
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 1997--A coalition
of seven major animal protection groups organized as "Protect Pets
and Wildlife" (ProPAW) has filed initiative language with the
California Attorney General for the 1998 statewide ballot to ban the
use of cruel traps and poisons for capturing and killing wildlife.
"More than 15,000 animals including bobcats, foxes and beavers
are trapped for their fur in California each year," said ProPAW
Campaign Manager Aaron Medlock. "Almost all are caught with cruel,
body-gripping traps such as the steel-jawed leghold, which snaps
shut with tremendous force on an animal's limb, and can grip other
non-targeted parts of an animal, such as the neck, as well.
"Such traps are not only inherently cruel, they are also
indiscriminate -- inflicting injury on anything that comes into
contact with them including family pets. These dangerous traps
should have been eliminated in California long ago."
In addition to banning the steel-jawed leghold trap and the use
of other cruel body-gripping traps for recreation or the fur trade,
the ProPAW initiative would prohibit the use of certain wildlife
poisons considered to be particularly severe and environmentally
toxic.
The two poisons that would be prohibited under the ProPAW
initiative are sodium fluroacetate, also known as Compound 1080, and
sodium cyanide. "Both are slow-acting poisons which cause extremely
drawn-out agonizing deaths," Medlock said. "In addition, Compound
1080, which was originally banned by the Nixon Administration but is
now making a comeback, can linger in the food chain, killing any
animals -- wildlife or pets -- that feed on the carcass of the
poisoned animal."
Compound 1080 is already prohibited in 16 California counties
because of concerns that endangered species will eat tainted
carcasses and die.
In order to place the initiative on the November 1998 statewide
ballot, ProPAW volunteers must collect signatures of more than
433,000 registered California voters over a five-month period
beginning this fall. Similar citizen initiatives to ban the use of
cruel traps have been approved by voters in Arizona, Colorado and
Massachusetts in recent years.
Voters interested in collecting signatures should contact one of
the sponsoring organizations: in Los Angeles, the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or The Ark Trust, Inc.; in
Sacramento, the Animal Protection Institute or The Humane Society of
the United States; in San Francisco, The Fund for Animals. The
International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Doris Day Animal
League are also sponsors of the initiative.
--30--EW/la RPL/la
CONTACT:
The Ark Trust, Inc.
Lisa Agabian, 818/786-9999
or
ProPAW Campaign
Aaron Medlock, 310/207-6774 >>
---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj: National Animal Protection Organizations File 1998 Statewide Ballot
Initiative
Date: 97-07-21 13:05:36 EDT
From: AOL News
SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 1997--A coalition
of seven major animal protection groups organized as "Protect Pets
and Wildlife" (ProPAW) has filed initiative language with the
California Attorney General for the 1998 statewide ballot to ban the
use of cruel traps and poisons for capturing and killing wildlife.
"More than 15,000 animals including bobcats, foxes and beavers
are trapped for their fur in California each year," said ProPAW
Campaign Manager Aaron Medlock. "Almost all are caught with cruel,
body-gripping traps such as the steel-jawed leghold, which snaps
shut with tremendous force on an animal's limb, and can grip other
non-targeted parts of an animal, such as the neck, as well.
"Such traps are not only inherently cruel, they are also
indiscriminate -- inflicting injury on anything that comes into
contact with them including family pets. These dangerous traps
should have been eliminated in California long ago."
In addition to banning the steel-jawed leghold trap and the use
of other cruel body-gripping traps for recreation or the fur trade,
the ProPAW initiative would prohibit the use of certain wildlife
poisons considered to be particularly severe and environmentally
toxic.
The two poisons that would be prohibited under the ProPAW
initiative are sodium fluroacetate, also known as Compound 1080, and
sodium cyanide. "Both are slow-acting poisons which cause extremely
drawn-out agonizing deaths," Medlock said. "In addition, Compound
1080, which was originally banned by the Nixon Administration but is
now making a comeback, can linger in the food chain, killing any
animals -- wildlife or pets -- that feed on the carcass of the
poisoned animal."
Compound 1080 is already prohibited in 16 California counties
because of concerns that endangered species will eat tainted
carcasses and die.
In order to place the initiative on the November 1998 statewide
ballot, ProPAW volunteers must collect signatures of more than
433,000 registered California voters over a five-month period
beginning this fall. Similar citizen initiatives to ban the use of
cruel traps have been approved by voters in Arizona, Colorado and
Massachusetts in recent years.
Voters interested in collecting signatures should contact one of
the sponsoring organizations: in Los Angeles, the American Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or The Ark Trust, Inc.; in
Sacramento, the Animal Protection Institute or The Humane Society of
the United States; in San Francisco, The Fund for Animals. The
International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Doris Day Animal
League are also sponsors of the initiative.
--30--EW/la RPL/la
CONTACT:
The Ark Trust, Inc.
Lisa Agabian, 818/786-9999
or
ProPAW Campaign
Aaron Medlock, 310/207-6774
To edit your profile, go to keyword NewsProfiles.
For all of today's news, go to keyword News.
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 16:26:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: KSchrdrfan@aol.com
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Re: trapping; more corrections (sorry!)
Message-ID: <970721162522_-1710786872@emout04.mail.aol.com>
9
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 19:36:35 -0400
From: allen schubert
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (TH) Thai Shrimp Farmers Harm Forests
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970721193633.006cb020@clark.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Environmental effects of factory farming.
from AP Wire page:
---------------------------------
07/21/1997 13:07 EST
Thai Shrimp Farmers Harm Forests
By JIRAPORN WONGPAITHOON
Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A little animal that spawned a big export
industry has grown into an even bigger problem in Thailand.
Black tiger prawns provide the lion's share of profits for Thailand's
fishing industry. Fish are the country's fourth-largest export and shrimp
account for 70 percent of the catch, reeling in $2.2 billion in 1996.
But those profits are coming at a tremendous cost to the environment.
Most shrimp are not caught at sea, but raised on farms among the mangrove
forests along Thailand's southern coasts. The methods used by Thai shrimp
farmers are destroying the forests at a rapid rate.
As the dense, water-rooted trees disappear, so do dozens of fish and fowl
species that use their cover as breeding and feeding grounds.
Since 1979, when the industry took off and put Thailand in the forefront
of a global boom in aquaculture, almost 50 percent of the country's
mangroves have been lost.
``Shrimp farming is the main factor,'' said Professor Sanit Aksornkoae, a
mangrove forest expert at Kasetsart University.
Some mangrove is cleared for shrimp operations, some slowly killed by
farm runoff. And some farmers don't acknowledge the devastation.
``This mud is a mixture of shrimp feces, food and chemicals to keep the
shrimp healthy,'' said Boontham Srithong, 20, as he scooped a handful of
mud from the bottom of his prawn farm in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, 370 miles
south of Bangkok.
``The chemicals are good for the shrimp, so they should be good for the
trees also,'' Boontham said. ``And the mud will add more more soil to the
mangroves.''
But where a lush green line of trees and plants once stood across from
his farm, there is now nothing but cracked, dry clumps of earth and
withered gray stalks of vegetation, the result of releasing the muddy
mixture of feces and chemicals into the waters that nourish the forests.
Some agricultural experts in Bangkok blame the government's Fisheries
Department for encouraging Thais to enter the shrimp farming business
without teaching them how to better prevent ecological damage.
Recognizing the problem, the Fisheries Department recently launched four
test projects in conjunction with Thai agro-industrial conglomerate
Charoen Pokphand Group and other private companies to try to develop more
environment-friendly farming methods.
They hope to curb the damage to the mangroves while sustaining an
industry that has provided a good living for many Thais.
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 17:02:16 -0700
From: "ida"
To:
Subject: Activists Needed in the Watkins Glen, NY area!!
Message-ID: <199707212358.QAA13275@proxy4.ba.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
i need some activists to pioneer a new strategy at an event in the Watkins
Glen area in early August. This action can be as exciting or as
educational as you desire!
Please e-mail me at the above address or call me at (415) 388-9641 ext. 29
if you are interested.
Thanks--
lauren Sullivan
National Campaign Coordinator
In Defense of Animals
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 20:56:15 -0400
From: Vegetarian Resource Center
To: Veg-Boston@waste.org
Subject: Animals on Death Row Inspire Needham MA Couple
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970721205615.00c2f8d8@pop.tiac.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
EARNING REPUTATIONS AS DOGGED DEFENDERS
ANIMALS ON `DEATH ROW' INSPIRE NEEDHAM COUPLE
Author: By Matt Carroll, Boston Globe Staff
Date: SUNDAY, April 13, 1997
Page: 1
Section: West Weekly
NEEDHAM -- Defending dogs on ``death row'' is their specialty.
Steven Wise and Debra Slater-Wise, lawyers as well as spouses,
have turned a passion for animal rights into a legal battlefield for
towns trying to kill or banish dogs for biting people or other animals.
It's a niche they seem to occupy almost by themselves.
While other lawyers occasionally represent a dog owner, the
Needham couple work almost exclusively on animal cases,
particularly dog cases, ``because dogs get into the most trouble,''
Wise said.
The cases are almost invariably controversial. They typically involve
a dog attacking a person, often a child, or a neighbor's pets. The
cases pit the dog owners, with their deep emotional ties to a family
pet, against town officials and neighbors, who feel they are up
against a dangerous animal.
``The owners view the dogs as a family member,'' Wise said. ``The
boards of selectmen view the dogs as if they were a chair. If the
chair causes trouble, get rid of it. But the people are saying, `Hey,
these are my children.' ''
The couple, who work out of Boston and a home office, are working
singly or together on most of the high-profile ``death sentence'' dog
cases in area communities, including Maynard, Northborough and
Millis.
In Maynard, Misty and Shadow, mixed Rottweilers, after escaping
from an enclosure in their owners' back yard in November and
January, have killed one goat, and mauled another goat, a sheep
and a cat.
In Northborough, Sabbath, an Akita, bit an animal control officer in
January. In Millis, Rowdy bit two toddlers and an adult between 1990
and 1996. All the dogs have been ordered destroyed by the local
boards of selectmen, but their owners are fighting the orders.
Wise has a reputation for outspokenness. For instance, he has a
theory about justice in small towns: ``The smaller the town, the worse
time we will have, and the more unfair the hearing will be. If you tell
me the population, I can almost tell you in advance how fair the
hearing will be.''
They are willing to push as hard and as long as the pet owner is
willing to go, which generally is far.
Typically, cases start before the board of selectmen, can be
appealed to a clerk magistrate, and then to a District Court judge.
By the couple's own count, in about 150 of their cases where dogs
were ordered destroyed, only one dog has been killed, and that, they
said, was because the owner did not retain them to the end.
``No one who has stuck with us from beginning to end has lost their
dog,'' Wise said.
``Let's hope that continues,'' said Slater-Wise.
Defending the dogs is not cheap. It costs between $2,000 and
$20,000, generally amounting to around $9,000, they said.
``They are basically the last line of defense for an animal that has
been condemned to death,'' said Robert Fennessy, deputy director
for law enforcement at the Boston-based Massachusetts Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. ``They are excellent on behalf
of animals. Their heart is in the right place.''
But with success has come some notoriety. At its January meeting,
the City Solicitor and Town Counsel Association, which represents
local town counsels statewide, held a program on how to handle dog
cases, which have become increasingly complex, using some
handouts about the couple's cases.
``One reason it has become so complicated procedurally is
because [the couple] has raised -- aggressively raised --
sophisticated arguments in these pieces of litigation,'' said Ouida
C.M. Young, assistant city solicitor for Newton and president of the
association.
Town counsels said the time, money and energy they must devote to
the cases when the couple is involved has surprised them. But the
couple has won grudging respect.
``They are very competent people, no question,'' said Weymouth's
town counsel, George E. Lane Jr., who represented the town last
year in a case involving a Doberman.
Like other town counsels, Lane expressed some wonder at how far
people will go to save their pets. ``There has to be some balance,''
he said. ``Today people are as worried about their animals as their
family members.''
But the passion felt by animal owners is also felt by the couple, which
is what brought them together initially. They met in Vermont in 1992,
where Wise was teaching a course on animal rights at Vermont Law
School.
Slater-Wise, who had just graduated from Nova University Law
School in Florida, took the course to learn more about animal rights
issues. She had learned about Wise from a newspaper article
clipped by her father.
She took the course (earning a B-plus), and two years later married
the adjunct professor.
Wise, who is 46, slightly rumpled, and a 1976 graduate of Boston
University Law School, has one child from a previous marriage.
Slater-Wise, 31 and originally from New York, is now expecting --
twins -- in December.
While a team, they approach cases in different ways. He prefers not
to meet the dogs; she wants to.
``Their little doggie faces will haunt me and make me less effective,''
he said.
Meeting the dogs ``makes me more effective,'' she said. ``I know
what I am fighting for.''
As might be expected, the couple have some pets at their recently
purchased home in Needham. There's Marbury, a mutt about 6
months old obtained from Buddy Dogs in Sudbury, and Alice, a cat
about 1 1/2 years old.
The couple, who are vegetarians, have been animal lovers for a long
time. Wise said he wrote a letter when he was 7 or 8 to a state
legislator in Maryland, where he grew up, complaining about
conditions at a local farmers market.
But his feelings about animals did not crystallize until he read a book
by an Australian, Peter Singer, called ``Animal Liberation.'' In his
mid-1970s book, Singer expressed the idea that animals' feelings
should be taken into consideration because they are sentient
creatures.
``That gave an intellectual structure to my feelings,'' Wise said.
While he and his wife have made a reputation with dogs, they have a
much more ambitious agenda.
``We're trying to create the field of animal rights,'' Wise said. Current
law treats animals like any other piece of property, such as a car, he
said. The goal is to ``attain legal rights for nonhuman animals,
starting with chimpanzees.''
He has argued cases that include those involving how dolphins are
transported by the military and others against airlines for animals
killed during a flight.
The couple and Jane Goodall, an English scientist noted for her
studies of chimpanzees in Tanzania, have established a nonprofit
organization called the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental
Rights to push for their animal-rights goals.
He said it will take awhile: If their goal is measured by a 100 steps,
he figured he is on ``step 2.'' Still, he said, it took a long time just to
be taken seriously when he began arguing animal rights cases 15
years ago.
Now, he said, he will appear on the cover of the American Bar
Association's magazine in May: ``That wouldn't have happened 15
years ago.''
CARROL;04/08 CAWLEY;04/16,08:56 WEDOGS13
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 21:26:48 -0400
From: Vegetarian Resource Center
To: Veg-Boston@waste.org, Veg-Teen@envirolink.org
Subject: Refusal to Dissect
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970721212648.00e1b5d4@pop.tiac.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
DISSECT A SQUID? SOME SAY LETSTUDENTS ABSTAIN
Author: By Doris Sue Wong, Globe Staff
Date: FRIDAY, June 20, 1997
Page: B3
Section: National/Foreign
Lee Palmer was only 10 when she developed her own code of ethics.
In the fourth grade, she became a vegetarian. In the fifth grade, she
refused to dissect a squid. Palmer, of Lincoln, was told by her
science teacher she ``could hide in the hall and be given an F.''
With that experience etched in her memory, Palmer, now 18,
yesterday joined other students and animal rights activists at a State
House hearing to push for a bill that would let students abstain from
dissecting animals without facing a penalty.
Palmer and others told legislators on the Committee on Education
that there are ways for students to learn anatomy without sacrificing
thousands of animals each year. And the value of having elementary,
middle, and high school students participate in actual dissections,
these critics said, is questionable because fewer than 1 percent
usually go on to medical school.
Emily Hocker, an 18-year-old vegetarian who just graduated from
Concord-Carlisle High School, noted that while some high school
cafeterias offer ``animal-free, cruelty-free'' foods to accommodate
students, students are still forced to dissect rats, pigs, and cats in
biology class.
But Susan Offner, a biology teacher at Milton High School who in
1988 received the national Outstanding Biology Teacher of the Year
Award, said important biology lessons from texts are reinforced
during dissections.
For example, she said, while her ninth grade students this year
intellectually knew that the intestine of a mink is 20 feet long, that fact
did not really hit home until they dissected a mink in class and were
awed by how much room the intestine took inside the small animal's
body.
Offner added that students who are squeamish at the thought of
dissecting an animal become fascinated once the dissection starts.
Animal rights activists such as Esther Nowell of Wakefield said the
same lessons can be learned from tools such as a software
program called ``The Digital Frog,'' a step-by-step dissection on the
computer.
Offner said such computer programs are not as effective as the
actual procedure.
The bill under discussion yesterday would require that students be
given at least two weeks' notice before a dissection and allow
students to choose not to participate without penalty. Similar laws
have been enacted in California, Florida, Maryland, New York, and
Pennsylvania.
Offner said that if the bill were passed, dissections could become
such a bureaucratic nightmare for teachers that they they might
decide eventually to dispense with this teaching method.
Offner maintained that animals used for dissection, such as rats, are
surplus animals usually bred for scientific purposes or, in the case of
fetal pigs and minks, for commercial purposes that usually entail
slaughter.
But Karl Gossot of the Ethical Science Education Coalition in
Boston contended that animals used for dissections are usually
frogs captured from the wild or stray cats killed at animal shelters.
Julie Johnson of the Massachusetts Teachers Association called the
bill unnecessary. She said only a few students have serious
objections to dissections and that teachers usually accommodate
them.
In Palmer's case, her fifth-grade teacher did reconsider, exempting
her from the squid dissection after Palmer's parents backed her up.
DWONG ;06/19 CAWLEY;06/20,06:29 DISSEC20
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:26:34 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (JP) Toddlers may have picked up O-157 in cow barn
Message-ID: <199707220326.LAA29154@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Asahi Shimbun
21 July 97
Toddlers may have picked up O-157 in cow barn
TOYAMA--Two toddlers who contracted the O-157 E. coli bacteria may have
become infected when they touched cows at a stock farm in June, a
prefectural health research institute said last week.
Institute officials found samples of the bacteria on the floor of a cattle
shed at the farm and in the feces of a calf. The DNA patterns of the O-157
matched those of the E. coli bacteria contracted by the toddlers, both 2
years old.
Japan has no confirmed cases of O-157 food poisoning being picked up through
contact with animals, although the E. coli bacteria has been detected in cow
feces in Hiroshima and other prefectures, the institute said.
In Britain, there have been two reported cases of humans contracting the
food poisoning via animals, the institute added.
The prefectural government plans to call on stock farms and stockbreeders in
Toyama Prefecture to improve hygiene measures, government officials said.
The infected toddlers--a boy and a girl--suffered diarrhea and stomach aches
before the O-157 was detected on June 24 and 26. The two children have since
been discharged from hospital.
The health research institute checked their movements and diets and learned
that both toddlers' families had taken them separately to the same stock
farm in the east of Toyama Prefecture on June 15.
The toddlers both went into the cattle shed and touched cows. The institute
said cows are believed to be the source of O-157 infection.
It said the toddlers probably contracted the E. coli bacteria when they
licked their fingers.
|
|