Day: September 9, 2002

Is SHAC Losing Its Effectiveness? Numerous Market Makers Trade Huntingdon Life Sciences

The Sunday Telegraph (London) reports that despite the efforts of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Huntingdon Life Sciences has attracted several market makers for its stock in the United States which puts it closer to a full listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

HLS stock is currently traded on the NASDAQ Over The Counter Bulletin Board. In mid-August, Oklahoma-based Legacy Trading completed a 30-day period of trading in HLS shares. As a result, now market makers in the United States can trade in shares of the stock without needing to fill out lengthy forms about the company.

Since then, the Telegraph reports that Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Knight Securities, MH Meyerson & Co., Hill Thompson Magid, Frankel & Co., Paragon Capital Markets and Herzog Heine Geduld have jumped on board to deal in small volumes of HLS on the OTC board.

Now, HLS will have to meet certain financial requirements to attain a listing on either NASDAQ’s national market or its small cap market. The stock has been trading in the $2-$2.50/share range. Minimum bid price for a national market listing is $5/share and for a small cap listing is $4/share (which a stock has to maintain for 90 consecutive trading days prior to the listing).

HLS’s profitability is in its own hands, but as long as it is able to meet its financial goals it looks like SHAC has lost its momentum in preventing shares of the company from being listed.

Source:

US traders back Huntingdon. Lauren Mills, Sunday Telegraph (London), September 8, 2002.

Now That’s Suppressing Dissent

When Hillary Clinton appeared at a 9/11 fundraiser last October, the crowd audibly booed her. VH-1, which broadcast the concert, replaced the booing with sounds of cheering and applause. Now, according to the Media Research Center, those fake cheers will also be on the DVD version of the concert.

Not surprising considering VH-1’s sister music network MTV recently highlighted those people who maintained after the terrorist attacks that America had brought the attacks on itself. Of course, the only person quoted to that effect was Jerry Falwell. Since Viacom’s busy editing out Hillary’s boos, why not pretend that the Blame America crowd is only on the extreme right.

Animal Rights Activist Mauled by Bear, Arrested for Failing to Pay Child Support

On August 25 animal rights activist Jeffery Scheu (at the time using the alias Jesshua Aman) was tracking a bison with the Buffalo Field Campaign when he apparently surprised a grizzly bear which proceeded to savagely maul him.

The Buffalo Field Campaign is a group opposed to federal and state efforts to control the number of bison migrating from Yellowstone National Park into Montana in search of feed during the winter months. An estimated 50 percent of the bison in Yellowstone carry a bacterial infection called brucellosis which Montana and federal authorities spent decades and tens of millions of dollars eradicating from cattle herds in the state.

After it was revealed that Scheu used an alias and was wanted in Ohio for failing to pay child support, the Buffalo Field Campaign quickly disavowed him maintaining that he did not represent their group (even though he was working with them as a volunteer at the time of the attack) and lied on a volunteer agreement.

Mike Mease, a spokesman for the group, said,

One bad apple slipped through our screen process and it took a grizzly to point him out. This is poetic justice.

As opposed to the 22 Buffalo Field Campaign activists arrested in the winter of 1998-1999 and the 21 activists arrested in the winter of 2000-2001.

Source:

Animal rights group distances itself from bear mauling victim. Associated Press, September 7, 2002.

Milwaukee Brewers Turn Down PETA's Vegetarian Sausage Request

The Milwaukee Brewers are one of a number of major league teams that feature inane “entertainment” that, in the Brewers’ case, features a race between a bratwurst, hot dog, Polish sausage and Italian sausage. The race features people dressed up in costumes who run on the warning track between the sixth and seventh innings.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently wrote to the Brewers to ask them to include a vegetarian soy sausage to the race. The Brewers said they have no plan to take PETA up on its suggestion as, “we consider the sausage race a tradition here that we don’t really care to change in any way.”

Good to see PETA going after the really serious important animal-related issues.

Source:

PETA’s demand a real wiener. The Associated Press, September 8, 2002.

Alaska Judge Upholds Judgment Against Friends of Animals, Lowers Award

An Alaskan Superior Court judge this week upheld a judgment by a Tok, Alaska jury that held biologist Gordon Haber and Friends of Animals liable for the release of a black wolf from a trap in 1997.

Haber released the wolf from a trap owned by Eugene Johnson; the wolf died several weeks later from injuries related to wire that Haber did not remove from the animal before releasing it.

At the time Haber released the animal, he was conducting research paid for by Friends of Animals. After Haber began distributing a videotape of the wolf’s release, Johnson sued both him and Friends of Animals claiming that the release violated Alaska state law.

In 2000, a jury agreed, awarding Johnson $40,000 in damages from Haber and $150,000 from Friends of Animals. They both appealed that verdict, but Superior Court Judge Richard Savell upheld the jury’s decision while at the same time agreeing that it had overstepped how much it could award in the case.

Savell reduced the award against Friends of Animals to $100,000 and holds Haber liable for about $79,000 in damages, but essentially permits Johnson’s estate (the trapper died in June 2002) to collect from only one defendant.

Neither Haber nor Friends of Animals has said whether it will appeal Savill’s ruling.

Source:

Man who freed wolf loses. Associated Press, September 8, 2002.

Is Alberta Being Hypocritical about Canned Hunts?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the decision by the Alberta government not to allow canned hunts at private game farms (see Alberta Premier Outlines the Horrors of Canned Hunts). Alberta premier Ralph Klein said that shooting animals in confined, penned-in areas was “abhorrent.” Game farmers in Alberta now want to know why, if canned hunts are really so horrible, the government itself is engaged in the practice.

Serge Buy of the Canadian Cervid Council, which represents elk and deer ranchers, told the Edmonton Journal that Alberta currently sells hunting licenses so that people can shoot elk on fenced-in land own by the province.

The government responded that the difference is a matter of size — elk hunted at the Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation area, for example, have 97 square kilometers to roam compared to game farms which are as small as just 100 hectares (roughly .6 square kilometers).

Source:

Elk ranchers renew debate over hunt farms: Province accused of contradictory policy. Dennis Hryciuk, The Edmonton Journal, September 7, 2002.