Month: July 2005

New Jersey SHAC Activists Arrested

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.

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

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.

Worldwatch: World Meat Production Increased 2 Percent in 2004

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.

HR 1329. Captive Primate Safety Act

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’.

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

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.

Newkirk: Sometimes You Have to Carry a Big Stick

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.