Month: May 2005

Viva! Says Plant-Based Diet Promotes Better Sex Life, But Nutrition Expert Says Not So Fast

In March, Viva! brought its campaign claiming that a vegetarian diet is key to a vigorous sex life to Scotland. The groups claimed that eating a vegetarian diet can prevent impotence and baldness, but a nutrition researcher suggested the group’s claims should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Viva! director Juliet Gellatley told the Sunday Herald,

People are much more savvy now than they were 10 years ago. Over that time the medical evidence has become much stronger, not just that vegetarians lead a longer life, which they certainly do, but also that they lead a healthier life.

But Dr. Jane Scott, a professor of public health and nutrition at Glasgow University, told the Sunday Herald that the group was vastly overstating the evidence,

It’s hard to tease out the effect of diet as opposed to the other aspects of a person’s lifestyle. A lot of studies focus on cultures that don’t eat meat, but then they might not drink or smoke either, and this is quite important. . . . [And some conditions are largely genetic] The chances are, if your dad was bald, you will be bald too. As for claims that a vegetarian lifestyle cures impotence, I would be extremely dubious and would like to see some proper evidence.

Come on, proper evidence? How would that advance the vegetarian snake oil salesmen?

Source:

Forget Viagra . . . vegetables are key to a longer sex life. Paul Dalgarno, Sunday Herald, April 10, 2005.

Japan Reportedly Set to Expand Number of Whales Species It Hunts for ‘Scientific’ Purposes

In April, the Japanese press claimed that along with plans to increase the number of minke whales it kills annually, it plans to begin taking humpback and fin whales, species which it has not hunted since the International Whaling Commission’s moratorium on commercial whale hunting went into effect in 1986.

Along with minke whales, Japan currently hunts sei whales, sperm whales and Bryde’s whales as part of a limited scientific research hunting it is allowed to cull without being in violation of the commercial hunting moratorium.

According to Kyodo news agency, Japan will submit a whaling plan to the IWC ahead of its meeting this summer in which it outlines plans to almost double its current take of 440 minke whales, as well as add around 10 humpback and 10 fin whales.

An unidentified Japan Fisheries Agency official would not comment on the veracity of the report, but did tell Reuters,

However, it has been recorded that the populations of the humpback and fin whales in Antarctica are increasing. Nobody disputes this.

. . .

We always maintain that we will discuss these things scientifically, but with whales, it quickly grows emotional.

This is clearly a ploy on the part of Japan to ratchet up the rhetoric in favor of eliminating the commercial moratorium on whaling ahead of the IWC’s next meeting. Currently the moratorium is hanging on by a thread, barely surviving recent efforts by Japan and Norway to return to regulated commercial hunting of whales.

Source:

Reports: Japan to Expand Whale Hunt to New Species. Elaine Lies, Reuters, April 12, 2005.

Meat, Milk from Cloned Animals Nearly Identical to Non-Cloned Meat, Milk

In a finding that must be a real surprise, the Center for Regenerative Biology at the University of Connecticut has concluded that milk and meat from cloned animals is nearly identical to meat and milk from animals produced the old fashioned way.

Currently the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked the food industry not to sell meat or milk from cloned animals until it can analyze the safety considerations.

The University of Connecticut research found that the meat from cloned cows contained higher levels of fat and fatty acids but at levels that were still within accepted ranges by the beef industry.

Analysis of milk from cloned animals had similar findings. Researcher Jerry Yang said the results indicated that the genes of cloned animals function as they do in non-cloned animals. Yang told the BBC,

The production of each milk protein constituent involves the elaborate regulatory function of many proteins and enzymes, and any abnormal gene expression would likely be reflected by imbalances in the constituents of milk.

These findings are consistent with two other studies published in the journal Cloning & Stem Cells in 2004 which also found that milk and meat from cloned animals were nearly identical to that from non-cloned animals.

Still, skeptics abound. Compassion in World farming director Joyce D’Silva told the BBC,

We don’t know what this technology will result in in the future; we know so far that it is unsustainable. Huge numbers of animals die. They are born with deformed lungs, hearts and kidneys which don’t function. They die slow and lingering deaths. Is this the technology that we need or want? I don’t think so.

Well, of course we don’t know what the future will bring, so we should simply ignore any technology that we lack perfect information about. That’s the animal rights way. If you don’t know something, then the last thing you want to do is emerge from ignorance.

Sources:

Produce from cloned cattle ‘safe’. The BBC, April 12, 2005.

Study: Cloned Meat, Milk Nearly the Same. Associated Press, April 11, 2005.

Bash the Toxic Toads?

Cane toads are poisonous, ugly-looking large toads that are a major problem in parts of Australia. Brought in early in the 20th century in an effort to control crop-destroying can beetle populations, the population of cane toads soon exploded and became a major pest itself. According to the BBC, there are as many as 100 million cane toads in Australia today.

Since animals such as fresh water crocodiles, dingoes and kangaroos can die from eating the toxic toads, reducing and/or eradicating them is a high priority.

Nonetheless, not everyone appreciated Liberal MP David Tollner’s suggestion for dealing with the toads — people should take bats to the toads as Tollner and others did when he was a child.

Tollner said,

We hit them with cricket bats, golf clubs and the like. Things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle and we would get stuck into them with that sort of thing as well. If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia.

Australia’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s immediately condemned the suggestion and said anyone who bashed cane toads with bats would be fined and/or jailed for animal cruelty. According to The Associated Press, animal welfare groups in Australia would prefer that the toads be killed by freezing them (now there’s an efficient way to deal with 100 million cane toads).

Tollner’s solution was endorsed, however, by Environment Minister Ian Campbell who told reporters,

I would encourage anything that has a practical effect on stopping cane toad numbers. I remember as a child growing up in Brisbane I used to shoot them with my air rifle. That was relatively ineffective, I can report.

The reader must, at this point, be wondering how Tollner and Campbell avoided becoming serial killers given the animal rights can that cruelty to animals is an accurate predictor of violence against people.

Sources:

Toxic Toad Problem? Join The Club. Associated Press, April 14, 2005.

Australia MP targets toxic toads. Phil Mercer, BBC News, April 11, 2005.

Colorado Dog Sled Operation At Center of Controversy Over Fate of Unwanted Sled Dogs

Krabloonik, a Colorado-based dog sled outfit, found itself in the middle of a public controversy in April after letters-to-the editor in local newspapers accused it of killing some of its dogs with a gunshot to the head and then disposing of the bodies of the dogs in a pile of waste.

In an op-ed published in the Aspen Daily news, Krabloonik owner Dan MacEachen admitted that the organization killed dogs that were either at the end of their working lives as well as pups who turned out to be incapable of pulling sleds. MacEachen maintain in his op-ed however, that the dogs were killed humanely and that the whole process was legal under Colorado’s animal welfare laws.

A former employee of Krabloonik’s claimed that the business killed up to 35 dogs annually in this manner, though MacEachen said the actual number is much lower.

A number of other dog sledding outfits contacted by the media said that while this method of killing used to be the norm, that it is no longer widespread within dog sledding outfits.

Four-time Iditarod winner Martin Buser told The Aspen Daily News, for example, that if he needs to euthanize a dog he calls in a veterinarian who administer’s a lethal injection. Buser maintained he had not had to euthanize a dog in several years.

Lynda Plattner, who runs a 300 dog sledding outfit in Alaska, has started up a nonprofit called Alaska’s Iditarod Sled Dog Retirement Foundation whose goal is to provide a retirement program specifically for Iditarod dogs. Plattner told Denver’s ABC 7,

There is no other animal in the world like them, and based on that fact alone, they deserve to continue to receive the best care possible long after their competitive days are over.

In response to an inquiry from ABC 7, the American Humane Society confirmed MacEachen’s interpretation that euthanizing dogs with a gunshot to the head was legal in Colorado, but AHA head Marie Belew Wheatley added that, “It is inconceivable to me that a business enterprise that profits off the work and loyalty of these dogs would fail to seek another more compassionate end for these animals.”

Given the heat dog sledding already receives from animal rights activists, you’d think dog sled outfits like MacEachen’s would not want to hand them an issue on a silver platter like this.

Source:

Krabloonik defends culling of pack. Chad Abraham, The Aspen Times, April 5, 2005.

Controversy over treatment of sled dogs. Chad Abraham, Vail Daily, April 9, 2005.

Humane Association Criticizes Shooting Dogs In Head. ABC 7, The Denver Channel, April 5, 2005.

PCRM Sues OSU — Wants Photographs and/or Videotapes of Spinal Cord Injury Course

In April, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a lawsuit against Ohio State University’s board of trustees seeking photographs and/or videotapes of OSU’s three-week long Spinal Cord Injury Research Techniques Course.

The course teaches students methods of injuring the spinal cords of laboratory animals so they can be used in animal models of such injuries. According to The Columbus Dispatch, 189 rats and 60 mice are injured as part of the course.

PCRM requested information from OSU about the course, and OSU turned over some written records about the course. But PCRM’s suit argues that it needs access to the photographs and/or videotapes in order to evaluate whether or not animals are being treated properly.

In its lawsuit, PCRM claims,

It is of significant societal importance that all U.S. and Ohio taxpayer-funded medical research performed by a noncommercial scientist at, through, and in conjunction with a public university is subject to public accountability and scrutiny.

By withholding the requested information, OSU is preventing the public from meaningfully and thoroughly understanding the process by which taxpayer-funded animal research, which purports to help humans, is conducted.

In its original communication to PCRM refusing to release any photographs or videotapes, OSU said that such records were OSU’s intellectual property, which is one of the exemptions to OSU’s public records law.

Source:

Doctors sue OSU for videos of spinal research on rats. Darrel Rowland, The Columbus Dispatch, April 12, 2005.