Category: Uncategorized

Wisconsin Supreme Court to Take Up Mourning Dove Hunt Season

In March, a Circuit Court overturned a lower court injunction barring the start of a mourning dove season in Wisconsin scheduled to begin on September 1. The Wisconsin State Supreme Court recently agreed to review that ruling, however.

Wisconsin Citizens Concerned for Cranes and Doves is also moving to obtain an injunction preventing the mourning dove hunt from going forward in the mean time. The group’s co-founder John Wienke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that otherwise the hunt is likely to take place before the Supreme Court could schedule oral arguments in the case.

Of special interest beyond this issue is that Wisconsin voters approved a constitutional amendment in March 2003 guaranteeing the right to hunting, fishing and trapping. In agreeing to hear the case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court directed lawyers to address the ramifications of the new constitutional amendment on the mourning dove hunt issue.

Source:

Court will review dove hunting; Constitutional amendment may play into decision. Meg Jones, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 17, 2003.

UK Considers Requiring "Domestic Animal" Label of Some Furs

According to The Independent (London), Great Britain’s Trade and Industry Secretary is considering rules that would require a “domestic animal” label on furs that are made from the fur of dogs and cats.

The United States banned the import, export or sale, of clothes made of cat or dog fur after Burlington Coat Factory sold coats that turned out to contain dog fur. Great Britain apparently currently has no law banning such furs nor requiring labelling.

The Independent quotes Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock as pushing for the rules. Hancock told The Independent,

Cat and dog fur is a cheaper option than other fur and is being used all over Europe. I am sure it’s being sold in Britain and I have spoken to traders abroad in countries like Bulgaria and Romania where there is a massive stray dog problem and their fur is routinely used. This fur is being passed off as Siberian fox or rabbit fur and people have no idea it is from dogs and cats.

Source:

Fur clothes to be given ‘domestic animal’ label. Marie Woolf, The Independent (London), June 20, 2003.

Washington State Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Animal Traps

On June 19, 2003 the Washington State Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to a November 2000 voter-approved initiative that banned the use of body-gripping traps and a number of poisons when used to capture mammals for recreation or commercial purposes.

Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management had challenged the ban claiming the wording of the initiative violated several sections of that state’s constitution. Specifically CRWM pointed out that the Washington State Constitution required that,

a. “no bill shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title?

b. ?no act shall ever be revised or amended by mere reference to its title, but the act revised or the section amended shall be set forth in full length?

But the Washington State Supreme Court rejected that argument. Justice Faith Ireland wrote for the majority that,

A more moderate interpretation, as compared to those offered by the parties, is that the title deals with banning methods of trapping and killing animals. Using the above quoted examples of general and restrictive titles to guide the determination here, I-713’s title is general. I-713’s title contains specific topics as well, namely, body- gripping traps and pesticides. As in Amalgamated, however, those topics are merely incidental to the general topic reflected in the title – a ban on methods of trapping and killing animals. The title for I-713 is most accurately described as general and does not contain two subjects. However, even if we assume, arguendo, that the title is restrictive, it is still a constitutionally valid title. The subjects of trap and pesticide use for animals are related so as not to be the individual, disjointed subjects that Citizens contend they are. The provisions in the initiative governing the types of traps and pesticides that may be used are fairly within the subject expressed in the title.

This was a victory for the Humane Society of the United States which successfully pushed the initiative.

Having lost in this case Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management is still pursuing a separate lawsuit to invalidated both I-713 and I-655, which passed in 1996 and banned bear-baiting and cougar hunting with hounds. For that lawsuit, the CRWM is using a Public Trust Doctrine argument which it summarizes as,

The doctrine, simply stated, recognizes that sovereign (representative government) has the sole and exclusive administrative obligation and responsibility to protect, manage and conserve navigable waters, fish and wildlife for the enjoyment and use by the public for transportation, commerce and related activities and purposes.

CRWM is arguing that while a state legislature could ban bear baiting, such a ban could not be enacted via a voter initiative because it impinges on the Public Trust situated in the representative legislature.

Source:

High court upholds state trapping ban. Paul Query, The Associated Press, June 20, 2003.

A Brief Explanation of the NO-713 and Public Trust Doctrine Lawsuits. Washingtonians for Wildlife Conservation, Press Release.

African Elephant Moved to Tennessee Zoo Over Animal Rights Objections

In May, animal rights groups lost their bid to prevent the Los Angeles Zoo from moving a 42-year-old female African elephant to the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee.

Los Angeles resident Catherine Doyle had sued to get a temporary restraining order blocking the move, but the zoo moved the elephant two days before the scheduled hearing on the restraining order.

Animal rights groups that had opposed the move, including The Humane Society of The United States (HSUS), In Defense of Animals, Last Chance For Animals and Venice Animal Allies Foundation, blasted the move. In a joint press release, the groups complained,

In its attempt to keep [elephants] Ruby and Gita together, Doyle’s lawsuit accuses the Los Angeles Zoo of violating public policy and trust, as well as the California Administrative Procedure Act. It does not cite any violation of the Endangered Species Act. This outrageous ploy on the part of the zoo and the L.A. City attorney was a blatant delaying tactic designed to leave Ruby’s fate in legal limbo and enabled the zoo to carry out their plan of transferring Ruby to the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee, regardless of the elephants’ mutual welfare.

“I believe the L.A. Zoo, with Mayor Hahn’s endorsement, has shown its true colors with this covert operation of moving Ruby under the cover of darkness over a holiday weekend,” declares Gretchen Wyler, VP HSUS Hollywood Office. “The zoo has resorted to reprehensible legal maneuvering to achieve its intractable goal of separating these elephants, and like thieves in the night, has spirited away city property from the residents of Los Angeles.”

“Shame on the zoo for sneaking Ruby away in chains in the middle of the night, taking her away from her home and her best friend, while our request for a temporary restraining order was to be ruled on today,” states Yael Trock, the attorney for the plaintiff Catherine Doyle. “We are not giving up on this and intend to take further legal action.”

The Los Angeles Zoo moved the elephant because the Knoxville Zoo has an interest in developing an African elephant breeding program whereas the L.A. Zoo is in the process of focusing on Asian elephants in a process that could eventually lead to a breeding program as well.

Sources:

Animal Protection Groups Blast L.A. Zoo for Spiriting Away Elephant Under Cover of Darkness. In Defense of Animals, Press Release, May 27, 2003.

Despite protests, L.A. Zoo Sends Elephants to Tennessee. Carla Hall, Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2003.

A Really Strict Vegetarian

Vancouver Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe recently penned an op-ed column about being a vegetarian in light of the finding of a single cow in Canada that was afflicted with Mad Cow Disease. But Yaffe has a criterion that dictates what she eats that makes even strict vegans look like slackers.

Yaffe likens her conversion to vegetarianism to becoming a Born Again Christian,

I can’t rationalize why I should think of a cow any differently than I think of the four sensitive animals I share my home with. Perhaps bovines aren’t as responsive or manipulative. But what’s the basis for assuming they feel no pain?

Those who start contemplating such things find themselves bound to turn away from meat consumption, and chicken and fish for that matter.

Because such thoughts result in a transformation that, is suggest, is akin to being born again for those who find religion.

Those who aren’t born again think of those who are as a bit bonkers. That’s the way I viewed vegetarians before I became one.

So what could motivate such a religious-like transformation so quickly? What sort of life changing event led Yaffe to change completely the way she views the world? For Yaffe, it was simply watching a movie,

It happened to me and my husband several years ago after watching a video, Babe, a clever flick about a pig that lets the viewers see the world from the animals’ perspective.

The next day, meat didn’t look quite the same. We began pondering the cruel and careless things done to animals to prepare them for our dinner plate. It’s nothing short of torture. If the animals could communicate, what might they say?

I suppose the world can be thankful that, given the hold that fictional films seem to have over Yaffe, that she and her husband were not watching “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or “Silence of the Lambs.”

But an obvious problem immediately comes up — how do vegetarians decide what to eat and what not to eat. After all, there are all these people who claim to be vegetarians but also occasionally eat fish or even chicken. Yaffe seems to arrive at an incredibly stringent standard that would be almost impossible to actually follow,

Where do you draw the line, we were often asked; some vegetarians eat fish, for example. We decided anything that had a mother and a father was off limits for consumption. We never looked back or craved our former diet. Which we now see as archaic and inhumane.

So not only does Yaffe not eat animals, but she also avoids plants that reproduce sexually? How does she find out whether the plants she eats were the result of sexual or asexual reproduction (since many plants can use either method)? And why, exactly, is the method of reproduction the key for Yaffe? Would she eat a cloned animal? Apparently.

Yaffe writes that,

Meat-eaters must be people who don’t have much feelings or animals, or folks who don’t think about what’s experienced by animals. They’re in denial.

Or maybe just folks who do not take their religious ideologies from second-rate movies nor attach great moral import to the method of reproduction that an organism uses.

Source:

There is life after cooked flesh. Barbara Yaffe, The Vancouver Sun, June 1, 2003.

UK Proposes Banning Halal & Kosher Slaughter

Back in November 2002, UK Animal Welfare Minister Elliot Morley revealed that his office was looking into revising animal slaughter rules and possibly changing the way those rules governed Kosher and Halal slaughter. This month the Farm Animal Welfare Council formally proposed removing the exemption for Halal and Kosher slaughter that was included in 1995’s Welfare of Animals Regulations, in effect banning such slaughter.

The basic dispute is over whether it is cruel to slaughter animals without stunning them first. Currently, all animals slaughtered in Great Britain must first be stunned, except for those slaughtered for religious communities.

Both Islam and Judaism include dietary rules that prohibit eating animals that are injured in any way before they are slaughtered. So instead of stunning the animal first, such animals are killed by severing the neck and then hoisting the animal so that the blood drains out of the body.

Critics of this method say it is cruel. Compassion in World Farming’s Peter Stevenson told The Independent (London),

Scientific research shows that animals whose throats are cut while they are fully conscious can suffer terribly over relatively lengthy periods as they bleed to death.

In its report, the Farm Animal Welfare Council claims that it can take up to two minutes for animals slaughtered in this method to die.

But supporters of Halal and Kosher slaughter point out that stunning is also painful to animals, and studies show stunning animals occasionally goes wrong and results in animals suffering. Rabbi Yehuda Brodie told The Independent that, “There can be no doubt that every animals feels pain from the stunning, and moreover some 14,000 animals a year are stunned badly or wrongly.”

Both Muslims and Jews are united in seeing the proposal as an attack on religious minorities, with Brodie noting that, “One of the first enactments of the Nazis in 1933 was to outlaw the Jewish method of slaughter.”

Writing in The Guardian, Brian Klug notes that efforts to ban Kosher and Halal slaughter have been around for a long time in Great Britain and other parts of Europe (going back to the 1890s in Switzerland). Klug writes,

Whichever method is used, all animals at the point of slaughter are subjected to a violent act while fully conscious. All are cut or “stuck” (stabbed). All die by bleeding to death. Every method can — and does — go wrong.

. . . So what is the outcry really about?

The answer lies in the very terms in which the issue is framed (though not by FAWC itself): “humane” versus “ritual” slaughter. These are not merely labels for different methods. They imply two totally opposed sensibilities. . . .

Hence the lurid canards about animal being left to “slowly bleed to death”, as if every ounce of pain were being wrung from their tortured bodies, and as if their more fortunate confreres, the ones who are “humanely” killed, are gently put to sleep.

Sources:

The animal welfare lobby is wrong: Humane and ritual slaughter are racist metaphors for Us and Them. Brian Klug, The Guardian, June 11, 2003.

Muslims unite with Jews to defend animal slaughter rites. Paul Vallely, The Independent (London), June 11, 2003.