Revisiting Some AR2001 Complaints

Missed this the first time around, but someone dug up a fascinating message that Alex Hershaft posted to VegSource.Com describing the aftermath of last year’s Animal Rights 2001 conference. It seems that The Hilton used for this conference was less than pleased with some of the shenanigans that occurred at the July meeting.

Prior to the conference, The Hilton had spent millions of dollars renovating its site and, as a result, instituted a no pets policy. Apparently many visitors to AR2001 simply ignored that request,

In spite of it [the no pets policy], a number of people brought their dogs, and the hotel didn’t appreciate having to clean up after those animals who urinated on the new carpet. We will probably have to enforce a “no animal companion” policy of our own, unless someone can come up with a better solution.

Hmmm…what about the rights of the poor companion animals? (In fact several people replied to Hershaft that this was just a base prejudice against animals on the part of The Hilton).

The Hilton apparently did not appreciate the much-publicized protests at Nieman Marcus and Wendy’s (with the Wendy’s protest ending in several arrests).

The hotel is a member of the local merchants association, and the demonstrations at the nearby Wendy’s and Neiman Marcus gave them grief. We will have demonstrations at future conferences, but they will be part of the program, non-invasive, and well away from the hotel. However, here again, we will have to ask all participants to refrain from staging rump activities of their own

The Hilton was apparently not very happy when Neiman Marcus complained that protesters arrived in a Hilton van.

Of course when the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee set up protests areas for activists far from events, the activists acted as if the Constitution of the United States had been repealed. But scheduling demos so as to not offend The Hilton is apparently another story.

The message concludes that it is important to maintain the goodwill of The Hilton because, “We need a high-class venue, because of our size and because we are trying to project a middle class image.”

Yeah, wouldn’t want people to think they’re a bunch of nuts who protest Wendy’s and can’t keep their dogs from urinating on the carpet.

Source:

Hotel Grievances. Alex Hershaft, July 23, 2001.

Switzerland Abandons Ritual Slaughter Law

Switzerland’s government recently abandoned a proposed law that would have legalized ritual animal sacrifice.

Ritual animal slaughter has been illegal in Switzerland since 1893. The change in the law was supported by Jewish and Muslim leaders who expressed disappointment at the abandonment of the law.

The government’s about face came after animal rights activists began campaigning against the law earlier this year.

Source:

Bill legalising ritual animal sacrifice. Luke Coppen, The Times (London), March 16, 2002.

Dengue Fever Outbreak Hits Brazil

Brazil is in the grip of a full-blown outbreak of dengue fever with well over 400,000 cases reported and over 17 fatalities.

Dengue fever is a disease that usually causes severe headaches and muscle pains along with high fevers. Like malaria, it is usually transmitted by mosquito bites. Unusually heavy rains in parts of Brazil increased the number of mosquitos leading to the outbreak.

Efforts are underway to reduce the pools of stagnating water which the mosquito breed in, but there is still no end in sight to the disease outbreak.

Sources:

One-in-ten in Rio has dengue. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

Dengue fever grips Rio. The BBC, February 27, 2002.

Corruption, Instability Deters Investment in Caspian Sea

A recent conference on the status of the Caspian Sea area highlighted the ongoing lack of development due to corruption and a lack of any stable structure determining who has development rights over the area.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, control of the Caspian Sea was divided between Iran and the USSR. Currently five nations — Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan — claim rights over the sea, though so far the five nations have been unable to come to an agreement over the sharing of those rights.

That has left a lot of confusion that has deterred investment in the region. As U.S. envoy Steven Mann told the conference, “Successful development of the Caspian basin is not something we can consider inevitable.” That is true especially when the problem with corruption in the former Soviet republics is taken into account.

So what should be one of the wealthiest regions of the world, thanks to enormous untapped oil reserves, is nowhere near its potential due to a lack of a predictable legal structure.

Source:

Corruption ‘deters Caspian investors’. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

Does a Vegan Diet Minimize Animal Deaths?

The standard argument that animal rights advocated make for a vegetarian or vegan diet is that it is the diet that causes the least harm to animals. But is this, in fact, true?

Animals are killed, after all, in the production of the grains and vegetables that vegans and vegetarians eat. Steven Davis, an animal science professor at Oregon State University, recently looked at this issue and in an address to the European Society for Agriculture and Food Ethics argued that, in fact, a vegan diet is likely suboptimal if the main goal is to limit the number of animals killed.

The available data on how many animals are killed from agriculture is certainly spotty. Since field mice and other animals aren’t usually considered morally relevant, few people (including vegetarians and vegans) ever bother to ask how many animals die during the various aspects of agricultural production.

In a press release from OSU, Davis said,

Over the years that I have been studying animal rights theories, I have never found anyone who has considered the deaths of — or, the ‘harm’ to — animals in the field. This, it seems to me, is a serious omission. . . . Because most of these animals have been seen as expendable, or not seen at all, few scientific studies have been done measuring agriculture’s effects on their populations.

Still, Davis maintains that, based on the best available evidence, mortality for food production is likely to be high. One study Davis mentions, for example, found a 50 percent reduction in gray-tailed voles from just a single mowing of alfalfa. Add to that tractors involved in plowing, planting, and harvesting of crops, and the death toll starts to add up.

Based on the current evidence, Davis argues that a ruminant-pasture model of food production would minimize the deaths of animals. Essentially this ditches almost all animal agriculture except for beef and dairy products. Ruminants minimize animal deaths because cattle requires fewer invasive entries into fields with tractors and other machines.

The OSU press release says,

According to his calculations, such a model would result in the deaths of 300 million fewer animals annually (counting both field animals and cattle) than would a total vegan model. This difference, according to Davis, is mainly the result of fewer field animals killed in pasture and forage production than in the growing and harvest of grain, beans, and corn.

So please, the next time you sit down to eat, remember the animals — have a steak.

Source:

OSU Scientist Questions the Moral Basis of a Vegan Diet. Peg Herring, Oregon State University, March 5, 2002.

Saudi Arabia’s Religious Police Allegedly Contribute to Death of 15 Girls

On Monday, March 11, 2002, a fire destroyed a school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, killing 15 girls — most of whom were crushed to death in a panic to exit the building. But rescue efforts at the fire were hampered when members of Saudi Arabia’ religious police — the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — refused to allow either girls to leave the building or firefighters to enter the building. The reason? The girls were not wearing their traditional head scarves or black robes.

The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that a member of the COmmission told men trying to enter the building to try to save the girls that, “it is sinful to approach them” because they were not wearing the required garb.

Meanwhile, a civil defense officer told Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Eqtisadiah that he saw members of the Commission “being young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya . . . We told them that the situation was very critical and did not allow for such behavior. But they shouted at us and refused to move away from the [school’s] gates.”

The official response from the Saudi Arabian government has been to claim that the people blocking access to the school were not really members of the Commission. In an article in the Saudi English-language newspaper Arab News, the Civil Defense Department now claims that it has information “which casts doubt on whether the members of the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice who allegedly played a role in hampering rescue operation at the fire-hit Makkah girls? school were really members of the organization.”

As the Wall Street Journal put it, this claim smacks of a bad cover-up, but either way this is exactly the sort of attitude toward women and girls that Saudi Arabia’s leaders have long promoted with their funding and promotion of Islamic extremism.

Source:

Were commission members at fire tragedy impostors? Khaled Al-Fadly & Saeed Al-Abyad, Arab News, March 17, 2002.

Saudi police face deaths criticism. Reuters, March 14, 2002.