Monthly Archives: July 2005

Worldwatch: World Meat Production Increased 2 Percent in 2004

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A recent Worldwatch Institute reported noted that meat production increased two percent in 2004 from 2003 to an estimated 258 million tons worldwide.

That two percent increase, involved a much larger increase in total animals killed, however. Due to reports of Mad Cow disease in North America, Worldwatch noted, beef production was up less than one percent and the global beef trade actually declined.

That low growth had to be compensated elsewhere for total meat production to increase, which meant hundreds of thousands if not millions more chickens and pigs slaughtered for meat.

Annual meat production is likely to grow for the foreseeable future. Currently developing nations only consume 12.3 kg of meat per person, compared to an average of 30 kg per person in developed nations. As the economies of developed nations such as China continue to improve, world meat production will also continue to grow.

As The Namibian noted, today Asia accounts for more than 60 percent of global pork production. That represents a 50 percent increase in just 10 years.

Source:

Meat consumption on the rise. The Namibian, July 26, 2005.

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U.S. Sen. James Jeffords Introduces Captive Primate Safety Act

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U.S. Sen. James Jeffords (I-Vt.) recently introduced the Captive Primate Safety Act in the U.S. Senate.

The bill, which parallels a similar House of Representatives bill introduced last year, would add primates to a federal list of wildlife species that private individuals are prohibited from owning.

The bill is clearly motivated by recent, highly publicized attacks by captive primates, such as that at Animal Haven Ranch where two chimpanzees were shot and killed in March after they mauled a visitor to the ranch.

In announcing his bill, for example, Jeffords said,

The Captive Primate Safety Act is a common sense solution to a potentially very serious problem. Monkeys, chimpanzees, and other nonhuman primates can be dangerous if not cared for properly and can pose an even greater risk to our public health as carriers of dangerous diseases. Our legislations is need to help federal agencies control and monitor these species within our borders.

But this argument, if you\’ll pardon the pun, appears to be specious. In a press release lauding the bill, for example, the Humane Society of the United States estimates that are 15,000 primates currently in private hands. But the best estimate of injuries caused by those animals is 100 over the last 10 years.

Compare that to estimates of the number of injuries from dog bites. A 1998 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that dog bites accounted for more than 300,000 visits to the emergency room annually. That\’s more than 900 visits every single day to the emergency room nationwide due to dog bites.

And since Jeffords is so concerned about children, it should be noted that the bulk of victims of dog bites are minors. The median age of dog bite victims in the 1998 study was just 15 years.

Perhaps if the HSUS and Jeffords really want to get rid of a dangerous animal that targets children, they\’ll first push a Captive Canine Safety Act first and then turn their attention to the extremely small safety problem posed by captive primates.

The full text of the proposed Captive Primate Safety Act can be read here.

Sources:
Senate Bill Introduced to Restrict Pet Trade in Monkeys, Chimpanzees. Press Release, Humane Society of the United States, July 27, 2005.

Incidence of Dog Bite Injuries Treated in Emergency Departments. Harold B. Weiss, MS, MPH; Deborah I. Friedman; Jeffrey H. Cohen, MD. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1998, V.279, No.1, pp.51-3.

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New Jersey SHAC Activists Arrested

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New Jersey police recently arrested animal rights activists Janice Angelillo and Nicholas Cooney and searched Angelillo\’s residence and automobile in connection with a number of criminal acts.

Angelillo and Cooney were arrested around 4 a.m. July 21st outside a Hoffman-LaRoche facility. They allegedly gave officers fake identification after being stopped on foot outside the facility.

According to Gannett,

Just before the Thursday arrest, police had been alerted to an incident in nearby Bloomfield in which derogatory slogans toward Hoffman-LaRoche were spray-painted on a white fence in the same color paint found on the hands and clothing of Angelillo and Philadelphia resident Nicholas Cooney, said Capt. Steve Serrao, assistant director for operations of the state Office of Counter Terrorism.

After the arrest, police obtained a search warrant for Angelillo\’s black Subaru which was parked nearby. Police said that evidence obtained from the car implicated Angelillo and Cooney in another incident that occurred within 24 hours of their arrests.

Police also raided the residence of Angelillo, who lives with fellow animal rights activist Ted Nebus. They removed a computer and animal rights-related materials from the residence according to the Home News Tribune.

Both Angelillo and Cooney have been arrested numerous times in their protests against very SHAC targets.

Source:

Borough couple caught in probe. Arielle Levin Becker, Home News Tribune, July 25, 2005.

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HR 1329. Captive Primate Safety Act

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Captive Primate Safety Act (Introduced in House)

HR 1329 IH

109th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 1329

To amend the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 to treat nonhuman primates as prohibited wildlife species under that Act.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 16, 2005

Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas (for herself and Mr. SIMMONS) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Resources

A BILL

To amend the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 to treat nonhuman primates as prohibited wildlife species under that Act.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the `Captive Primate Safety Act\’.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    The Congress finds the following:

      (1) There may be as many as 15,000 nonhuman primates including chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, capuchins, and other monkeys, owned by private individuals in the United States.

      (2) Primates can potentially transmit such dangerous human diseases as yellow fever, monkey pox, Ebola and Marburg virus, Foot and Mouth Disease, tuberculosis, herpes-b, and Simian Immunodeficiency Virus.

      (3) Primates are highly intelligent and social animals. Most captive environments cannot meet their complex social and psychological needs, and pet primates are often kept chained or confined in small enclosures.

      (4) A number of privately owned nonhuman primates have attacked humans and other animals, or have escaped from their enclosures to freely and dangerously roam the community.

      (5) Over 40 percent of the 234 primate species are now threatened with extinction, and primate pet ownership does not contribute to the conservation of the species.

SEC. 3. ADDITION OF NONHUMAN PRIMATES TO DEFINITION OF PROHIBITED WILDLIFE SPECIES.

    Section 2(g) of the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 (16 U.S.C. 3371(g)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end `or any non-human primate\’.
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USDA Reports Increase in Mink Pelt Production

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released its annual report on mink pelt production in the United States.

In 2004, total mink production increased by 1 percent over 2003, while the cash value of all mink pelts produced in 2004 increased by 21 percent to $124 million, up from $102 million in 2003. Average pelt price increased from $40.10 in 2003 to $48.40 in 2004. That was the highest average pelt price sinced 1995 when mink pelts averaged $53.10.

In all, 2,563,100 mink pelts were produced in the United States in 2004, and 642,100 females were bred to produce kits.

The total number of mink farms in the United States declined by 3 percent in 2004, down to 296 compared to 305 in 2003.

The USDA\’s complete report on mink pelt production can be read here.

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Profile of Researcher Who Spent Six Months in Jail to Protect Rodney Coronado

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This month Alta Mira press published Skidmore College professor Rik Scarce\’s book Contempt of Court: A Scholar\’s Battle for Free Speech from Behind Bars describing the six months Scarce spent in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about his interviews with Rodney Coronado.

When he was a doctoral student at Washington State University, Scarce interviewed Coronado as part of research he was doing for his book, Eco-Warriors. Apparently, Scarce liked to keep his friend close and his research subjects closer, as Coronado was house-sitting for Scarce when the Animal Liberation Front broke into a lab at Washington State in 1991 and caused more about $150,000 in damages.

Not surprisingly, Scarce was subpoenaed in 1993 to testify before the grand jury investigating the Washington State attack. When he refused to answer questions put to him by the grand jury, U.S. District Court Judge William Fremming ordered Scarce jailed for contempt of court. Scarce remained imprisoned for 159 days when the judge decided further incarceration was unlikely to lead to Scarce testifying.

The Washington State University break-in was never solved.

Scarce\’s story is, of course, interesting in part due to the recent jailing of New York Time\’s reporter Judith Miller over her refusal to divulge information about sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of a CIA agent\’s identity. This writer believes that there should simply be no shield protecting journalists or researchers from divulging information in the investigation of a crime. Scarce\’s position is even more ridiculous, given that he clearly had a personal relationship with Coronado beyond any interviews he did with Coronado for his research (in fact, Scarce refused to even testify if he\’d ever had any confidential conversations with Coronado, much less what those conversations might have included).

Scarce deserved the censure and imprisonment he received for trying to shield Coronado.

In an odd twist, after receiving his PhD, Scarce ended up teaching for a while at Michigan State University — Coronado, of course, was ultimately convicted of firebombing at lab at the university.

But Coronado\’s subsequent conviction and advocacy of violence don\’t stop Scarce and Coronado from getting together when the two appear the same animal rights extremist conferences. According to a 2004 State News article,

Last year, Scarce was reacquainted with Coronado for the first time in more than 10 years at a \”Revolutionary Environmentalism\” conference in California.

. . .

At that conference, Scarce spent about an hour with Coronado in his hotel room, getting reacquainted.

\”We had just the most wonderful talk,\” Scarce said. \”He is continuing to think deeply about the environmental movement and what it is all about.\”

Yeah, that must have been a scintillating conversation.

Sources:

\’Scared to death,\’ but kept his word. Dennis Yusko, Times Union, July 22, 2005.

Can Scholars Protect Confidential Sources? Peter Monaghan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 1999.

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Supreme Court Case Forces Prosecutor\’s to Drop Charges Against Animal Rights Extremists

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Federal prosecutors announced in July that a 2003 Supreme Court decision forced them to drop four extortion charges against animal rights extremist Peter Daniel Young. Young, 27, was indicted in 1998 and accused of several fur farm break-ins. He was captured earlier this year after 7 years on the run.

Young had originally been charged with four counts of extortion using the same legal theory that had led to a novel civil lawsuit against anti-abortion activists. That theory attempted to stretch the definition of extortion to include criminal acts that were designed to drive a legal establishment, such as an abortion clinic, out of business.

The National Organization for Women won a civil racketeering lawsuit against anti-abortion extremist Joe Scheidler. NOW argued that Scheidler had engaged in pattern of encouraging and participating in numerous criminal acts designed to shut down abortion clinics. Like the animal rights extremists, the anti-abortion extremists used violence, threats, and harassment to intimidate their targets.

But in 2003, the Supreme Court by an 8-1 vote overturned the judgment against Scheidler, saying that regardless of what Scheidler may have done, he did not commit extortion because he did not \”obtain\” property from his targets which is required by federal law for the crime of extortion to have occurred. The majority opinion said that,

It is undisputed that petitioners interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights. Likewise, petitioners\’ counsel has acknowledged that aspects of his clients\’ conduct were criminal. But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of shutting down an abortion clinic, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not \”obtain\” respondents\’ property. Petitioners may have deprived or sought to deprive respondents of their alleged property right of exclusive control of their business assets, but they did not acquire any such property. They neither pursued nor received \”something of value from\” respondents that they could exercise, transfer, or sell. United States v. Nardello, 393 U. S. 286, 290. To conclude that their actions constituted extortion would effectively discard the statutory \”obtaining\” requirement and eliminate the recognized distinction between extortion and the separate crime of coercion.

In his lone dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued the court had interpreted the statutes too narrowly, writing,

For decades federal judges have uniformly given the term \”property\” an expansive construction that encompasses the intangible right to exercise exclusive control over the lawful use of business assets. The right to serve customers or to solicit new business is thus a protected property right. The use of violence or threats of violence to persuade the owner of a business to surrender control of such an intangible right is an appropriation of control embraced by the term \”obtaining.\” That is the commonsense reading of the statute that other federal judges have consistently and wisely embraced in numerous cases that the Court does not discuss or even cite. Recognizing this settled definition of property, as I believe one must, the conclusion that petitioners obtained this property from respondents is amply supported by the evidence in the record.

The 2003 decision is why there have been no similar substantive RICO prosecutions of animal rights extremists. When federal prosecutors decided to indict extremists connected with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, they wisely chose to go after them for interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit same.

In light of the Scheidler decision, prosecutors in the Young case had no option but to drop the charges.

The solution to Scheidler case, by the way, is to petition Congress to alter the Hobbs act to make Stevens point explicit that a criminal conspiracy to deny access to legitimate business or other assets is included in the definition of extortion. Until then, the current federal approach of using federal statutes against interstate stalking is the best option available.

Unfortunately, the four counts of extortion filed against Young were the main charges against him. All prosecutors have left are two misdemeanor charges of violating the Animal Enterprise Act which each carry only one year in prison.

Source:

Feds drop extortion charges against accused mink farm raider. Associated Press, Todd Richmond, July 22, 2005.

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PETA Protests Circus; Concedes It Does Not Know of Any Instances of Abuse

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On July 19, four animal rights activists work with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood outside the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, Washington, complaining about the abuse that animals face in circuses. Unfortunately, even PETA had to concede it didn\’t know of a single instance of animal abuse by the Circus Gatti.

Protester Cari McCole, 19, told the Monroe Herald that,

I thought we should come out and let people know what\’s going on and educate them about animal abuse.

Hmm But, the newspaper reported (emphasis added),

The protest was organized in cooperation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, an animal rights group based in Norfolk, Va., McCole said. They plan to continue the protest through Thursday, she [McCole] said.

Lisa Wathne, a PETA specialist in captive exotic animals, said the group opposes circuses in general, but isn\’t aware of any specific animal abuse history involving Circus Gattie at the Monroe fairgrounds.

Using that sort of logic, one might argue that some animal rights activists engage in terrorism. I can\’t think of a single instance of Wathne committing such an act, but she should be banned on principle from public appearances.

Gotta love that animal rights logic.

Source:

Activists protest circus in Monroe. Yoshiaki Nohara, Monroe Herald, July 20, 2005.

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Eli Lilly Plans Withdrawal of Insulin in Canada; Diabetics Not Happy

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Animal-based insulin is becoming increasingly difficult to find in the West, and Eli Lilly recently announced plans to stop selling animal-insulin in Canada. That decision has brought on the anger of a number of diabetes charities who accuse the drug company of putting people ahead of profits in withdrawing the animal-insulin.

Until the early 1980s, all insulin was either beef or pork-based. But in the early 1980s, synthetic insulin began to get approval in Western countries and has gradually displaced animal-based insulin. Synthetic insulin has a number of advantages, including that it is cheaper to produce, has fewer impurities, and its is more-or-less identical to human insulin.

But some users of animal-based insulin claim that the synthetic insulin causes any number of side effects, and that it gives them better awareness of impending low blood sugar.

Comparative studies between the two, however, have tended to show that synthetic insulin is just as safe and effect as animal-based insulin, and avoids the potential of an immune response that is a risk with animal-based insulin.

Source:

Diabetics fear loss of animal insulin. Don Harrison, The Province, July 22, 2005.

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Newkirk: Sometimes You Have to Carry a Big Stick

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In an interview with the Shanghai Star, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals\’ Ingrid Newkirk described her group\’s outrageous campaigns and tactics, saying,

Sometimes sadly, you have to look quite scary and carry a big stick.

Of course we\’ve seen just how scary looking PETA activists can be, and the \”big stick\” line is the best explanation yet of that Earth Liberation Front donation.

Source:

Fighters for animal welfare. Shanghai Star, July 21, 2005.

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