Category: Uncategorized

PETA Targets Hispanic Kids in Florida

In mid-March People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals targeted its anti-dairy campaign at young Hispanic with its Eche la leche, which roughly translates as “Dump Dairy.”

Of course the campaign got off to a bad start when some people pointed out the slogan in Spanish also has a double entendre meaning which we won’t go into here.

PETA also chose to hand out its Milk Trading Cards, but this time the cards had an ethnic theme. Here’s how Cloe Cabrera of the Tampa Tribune described the cards,

The new cards feature “Ear Infection Enrique,” “Diabetic Diane,” “Lactose-Intolerant Latoya” and “Milk-Stealing Ming,” [!!] all suffering ill effects from consuming milk.

. . .

The free cards he [PETA’s Hispanic Outreach coordinator William Rivas-Rivas] handed out to students made those points — in a way some might find offensive. “Milk-Stealing Ming,” depicted as an Asian, grabs a cow’s end as he sucks her teat; “Lactose-Intolernat Latoya,” a black girl, squats over a toilet; and “Ear Infection Enrique,” a Hispanic, pulls a gob of gunk from his ear.

And, of course, lets not forget this is the same PETA that Ingrid Newkirk insisted on national television does not target children. That claim, of course, was about as accurate as PETA’s claims about milk.

Sources:

PETA’s Having a Cow Over Milk Consumption. Cloe Cabrera, Tampa Tribune, March 16, 2003.

Anti-milk campaign’s Spanish translation hits sour note. Noaki Schwartz, Sun-Sentinel (Florida), March 31, 2003.

Is HLS at Risk of Being Delisted?

Accountancy Age carried a brief story in late March about one of the possible implications of Deloitte & Touche’s decision to sever ties with the animal testing firm — if it can’t find another accounting firm willing to take on its account, it could risk being delisted.

Deloitte & Touche caved into Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty extremists after just 10 days of harassment from animal rights activists. Are other big auditors going to want to take on that burden?

According to Accountancy Age,

. . . the Securities and Exchange Commission has said that if a company fails to file audited reports within the allotted time-scale, it would face being delisted from the stock exchange. ‘Cases are handled on an individual basis and extensions can be offered, but all reports filed with the SEC have to be audited,’ said John Nester, SEC Spokesman. He added that one a company is delisted, it no longer has to file its reports.

One would assume that the SEC would take the special circumstances into account here, but for how long?

Source:

HLS risks delisting in the US. Larry Schlesinger, AccountancyAge.Com, March 20, 2003.

Activists Blast Gopher Derby; Hunters Blast Gophers

Saskatchewan’s Second Annual Gopher Derby event earned the ire of animal rights activists as the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation announced it will expand the Gopher Derby into Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario this summer.

What’s a Gopher Derby? Well, basically, the goal is to kill as many gophers as possible between April 1 and June 23. During last year’s contest, more than 63,000 gophers were killed.

Why pick on gophers? Largely because farmers perceive the animals as a nuisance. They awaken from hibernation and begin eating crops. Estimates put total damage to crops from gophers in Alberta at between Canadian $20 million and $30 million. That’s a pretty serious problem. The gophers also dig holes which farmers claim cause livestock to fall and break their legs.

Animal Defense League of Canada’s Esther Klein told the Star Phoenix (Saskatoon),

It’s a sad thing. The killing of fellow creatures of the earth should not be done in a spirit of festivity. It should be done with respect, not celebration.

Sinikka Crosland of Responsible Animal Care Society complained to Reuters,

It’s a killing derby basically and there’s other ways of dealing with wildlife . . . We’re going to have people out there with their firearms blasting away at the gophers.

Well, at least she understands the basic of the event.

There is a $20 entry fee for the Gopher Derby. Half of the money will be split between the top 10 winners, and the other half will be donated to a wildlife preserve.

Sources:

Animal rights group takes aim at gopher shoot. Reuters, March 10, 2003.

Spring gopher-killing derby denounced at Saskatoon wildlife convention. Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, February 22, 2003.

Animal rights groups blast gopher derby: Motivation recreation instead of pest control. Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, March 6, 2003.

Lord Sainsbury on Science and Animal Rights Extremists

In March, British newspaper The Independent published a long profile of Lord Sainsbury of Turville, currently the science and innovation minister at the Department of Trade and Industry. Lord Sainsbury has been a major proponent of biomedical research and has been firmly pushing for the creation of a neuroscience research laboratory in Cambridge.

Lord Sainsbury tells The Independent that he has little use for animal rights extremists saying,

It is unacceptable that people are being harassed for working in a perfectly legitimate business. We have to make certain that as a government we give these companies all the help we can, in terms of legislation and police.

Sainsbury told the Independent that the government is working on new legislation to crack down on animal right extremism.

Source:

Just mad about the monkey business. Clayton Hirst, The Independent (UK), March 11, 2003.

ALF Got Your Goat – Literally

In mid-March, Animal Liberation Front extremists took credit for stealing 43 goats from a farm in the United Kingdom that supposedly was a supplier to Huntingdon Life Sciences. The activists issued a communique taking responsibility for the action saying,

In the early hours of Friday 15th March, activists did a raid on Water Farm Goat Centre, Stogursey, Bridgwater, Somerset which supplies many vivisection laboratories around the country such as the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences. Determined activists headed across fields to the farm full of goats and soon gained access to the barn containing them. Everyone worked as a team and set to work carrying the heavy mothers out of the pen and led them to the edge of the field. Nearly all the baby goats were also rescued, some just a few weeks old. Drivers were contacted and vehicles soon arrived and drove the animals to safety. These beautiful creatures would have been tortured in unnecessary experiments but now they have all been re-homed and will live happy lives in their natural habitat. We will continue to rescue more animals from abuse

Until all are free,

ALF

Or at least until a significant proportion of ALF activists are in jail.

Source:

43 Goats liberated from HLS SUpplier. Press Release, Animal Liberation Front, March 15, 2003.

Somebody Get That Woman a Fur Coat

Here’s a short item that appeared in the February 14th edition of Scotland’s Daily Record. It bears repeating in its entirety,

Four models were left shivering yesterday after cheeky thieves stole their clothes as they stripped off for animal rights. Carefully-placed lovehearts helped spread the message “Fur Out, Love In” in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street. Model Katie Black, 20, from Erskine, Renfrewshire, said: “I thought I was going to have to go home in my birthday suite when I saw a young guy nick our dressing gowns. We were really cold.”

Where’s a fur coat when you need one?

Heartfelt protest. The Daily Record (Scotland), February 14, 2003.