Month: December 2003

Center for Animal Protection Takes Swipe at "Non-Producers" in the Animal Rights Movement

Back in August, a new animal rights group calling itself the Center for Animal Protection announced its formation in a press release posted to animal rights mailing lists. Apparently formed largely over the opposition to plans by the United States Department of Agriculture to kill about 2,700 geese in New Jersey, the press release took a number of swipes at other, unnamed, animal rights groups,

And we intend on setting definite standards for actual achievement.

Taking on the opposition means tightening standards at home. This includes encouraging those who support animal work with their efforts and funds to become more discriminating and demanding. In the corporate world, non-producers don’t last long. No CEO would long suffer an executive who talked about making sales, even presumed to instruct others how to do it, but never closed a deal. Among non-profits and in volunteer settings animal work sets few measurable markers. The result can be an unsettling admixture of smoke, mirrors, coattail riding — and stasis. (This in no way reflects on some remarkable work going on around the country: remarkable work is still the exception.)

Animals can’t hire us, and they sure as hell can’t fire us. In a vacuum or at the state level they are vulnerable to the self-satisfied: cruisers, well-funded sinecures, bloviators, experts without portfolios or the simply ineffective.

Hmm, I wonder who that was referring to (and if the group wants to set serious measures for success, they might consider fixing all of the broken links on the front page of their web site a bit more frequently).

Source:

Introducing: The Center for Animal Protection. Press Release, Center for Animal Protection, August 2003.

PETA Considers Legal Action Against "Domestic Terrorist" Martha Stewart

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced in September that it was considering lethal action against Martha Stewart after she boiled a live lobster on her Martha Stewart Living show.

In a press release PETA said,

Martha Stewart Living should change its name to Martha Stewart Dying. On a recent show, the domestic diva (or domestic terrorist, if you happen to be an animal) removed live soft-shell crabs from their shells and fried them while they writhed around in the pan. Just a few episodes previously, Martha boiled live lobsters and commented that lobsters don’t have a central nervous system, despite marine biologists? claims to the contrary.

As Connecticut law protects all animals from mutilation and cruel killing, PETA?s lawyers are considering legal action. One cannot justify the willful and callous act of deliberately choosing to remove the shells of conscious crabs and allowing the animals to writhe in a hot pan, cooking them to death as they struggle.

Source:

PETA Considers Legal Action Against Martha Stewart on Cruelty Charges. Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, September 2003.

2002 U.S. Fur Sales Close to Record Levels

Fur Commission USA had an interesting item in September about fur sales — preliminary figures from the Fur Information Council of America suggest that retails sales of furs hit about $1.7 billion in 2002. That would put retail sales just shy of the 1986-87 record high of $1.8 billion.

Animal rights activists have often taken credit for the huge decline in fur that saw sales drop from about $1.8 billion in 1987 to just $1 billion in 1990. Others blamed the decline on the 1987 stock market collapse and other economic factors.

Regardless of which explanation you prefer, it doesn’t appear that the drop in fur sales reflected any fundamental shift in consumer attitudes toward fur.

Source:

Preliminary results: US fur retail sales continue to surge. Fur Commission USA, September 3, 2003.

California Woman Dies After Taking RU-486

Eighteen-year-old Holly Marie Patterson died in September from complications that resulted after she took RU-486 to induce an abortion. Patterson obtained the drug from a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Patterson apparently followed the directions given to her by Planned Parenthood but died a week after taking the pill. Patterson’s father, Monty Patterson, told news organizations that an attending physician said that fragment of the fetus lodged in her uterus where they caused an infection that killed Holly.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this was the third death linked to RU-486 since the drug’s approval two years ago. In about 5 percent of cases, bleeding following taking the drug is so severe that surgery is required.

Anti-abortion groups were quick to seize on Patterson’s death as proof that RU-486 is not safe, while pro-abortion groups noted that more people die from using aspirin every year than from RU-486.

Monty Patterson told the Associated Press that he did not blame RU-486 for his daughter’s death, but was not convinced that she and her boyfriend received enough information about the drug and its possible complications,

What’s disturbing is these young couples, they are relying upon what they think is good, solid info, and relying on what they think is a supportive network telling them everything is OK. I would have said, ‘You know what, they don’t know everything. Let’s get more information.

The most disturbing part of Holly Patterson’s death is that her boyfriend took her to a hospital three days after she took RU-486. Holly reported bleeding and cramps so severe she could not walk, but she was simply given painkillers and sent home.

Sources:

Teen Dies After Taking Abortion Pill. Associated Press, September 22, 2003.

Researchers Complete Rough Draft of Dog Genome

In September the Center for Advancement of Genomics and the Institute for Genomic Research announced they had completed a rough draft of the dog genome.

Both organizations are funded by genome researcher Craig Venter and used a partial shotgun sequencing process that, while not producing a complete sequence of the dog genome, provided a number of useful insights into the genetic makeup of man’s best friend.

The data was used to establish, for example, that up to 75 percent of known human genes have an analogue in the dog genome. The data also suggested that the dog genome was the first to diverge from the common ancestor of humans, mice and dogs, even though the dog genome is still much closer to the human genome than is the mouse genome (this odd combination of facts is due to the much faster mutation rate in mice as compared to human beings and dogs).

A more thorough sequencing of the dog genome is currently being led by the US National Human Genome Research Institute, but the Institute for Genomic Research argues there is a place for its fast, cheap shotgun approach to sequencing genomes. In a press release announcing the research, Venter said,

In little more than a decade genomics has advanced greatly and we now have approximately 150 completed genomes, including the human, mouse and fruit fly, in the public domain. With each sequenced genome the level of information gleaned through comparative genomics is invaluable to our understanding of human biology, evolution, and basic science research. Our new method is an efficient and effective way of sequencing that will allow more organisms to be analyzed while still providing significant information.

Dogs are susceptible to more known genetic diseases than any animal other than human beings, and many human diseases have canine counterparts. Information gleaned from the sequenced dog genome could help researchers better understand and treat human disease.

For example, in 2001, researcher Gregory Acland and others successfully created a genetic treatment for a retinal degenerative disease in dogs that is very similar to a retinal degenerative disease in human beings.

Sources:

Dog genome unveiled. John Whitfield, Nature, September 22, 2003.

Dog Genome Published by Researchers at TIGR, TCAG. Press Release, Institute for Genomic Research, September 25, 2003.

‘Walkies’ through dog genome. Jonathan Amos, September 25, 2003.

Gene therapy that restores vision for dogs holds hope for humans. Roger Segelken, Cornell Chronicle, May 3, 2001

Activists Take Journalist Along on Duck-Stealing Mission

Four animal rights activists with a group calling itself the Animal Protection and Rescue League took along a reporter for the Los Angeles Times during a September raid in which the activists stole four ducks from a duck shed owned by Sonoma Foie Gras.

Activists Bryan Pease, Kath Rodgers, Carla Brauer and a fourth individual who asked the LA Times reporter not to identify him, broke into the shed and took four Peking-Muscovy ducks. The activists told LA Times reporter Marcelo Rodriguez that they had carried out similar operations in the past as part of what they called “the underground railroad for ducks.”

The group apparently decided to ask a reporter to tag along after the media had largely ignored a video of the sheds the group had produced earlier in the year that was then released to the media by a group called Gourmet Cruelty (it did not help that local authorities concluded that animals in the sheds were being properly cared for).

Sonoma Foie Gras owner Guillermo Gonzalez, who has been the subject of relentless harassment by animal rights activists, aid that he would pursue legal action against the activists if they did, in fact, steal animals from his property. Gonzalez told the Times,

Unfortunately, some activists hold animals in higher esteem than they do humans. Our animals are treated humanely, and anybody who enters our farm can see that.

Source:

Activists Take Ducks From Foie Gras Shed. Marcelo Rodriguez, The Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2003.