Animal Rights Online - Issue#6/19/05

[Catchawave]

The official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter


Established 1997
ARO archives at www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/


Editor ~ [e-mail]
Issue # 06/19/05




Publisher ~ Susan Roghair - [e-mail]
Journalists ~ Greg Lawson - [e-mail]
~ Michelle Rivera - [e-mail]
Webmasters ~ Randy Atlas - [e-mail]
~ Trevor Chin - [e-mail]
Staff ~ Alfred Griffith - [e-mail]
~ Andy Glick - [e-mail]
~ Sheridan Porter - [e-mail]
~ Bill Bobo - [e-mail]
~ Katie Vann - [e-mail]
~ Michelle Michelson - [e-mail]


THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:

1 ~ Another Mad Cow in the United States?
2 ~ The SPCA of Texas: A Volunteer's Perspective
3 ~ Calling All Animal-Lovin' Artists
4 ~ Help Out The Critter Corral
5 ~ Website of Note
6 ~ The Cassandra Principle and the Demise of the Cod
7 ~ A Dog Sits Waiting
8 ~ Memorable Quote




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~1~
Another Mad Cow in the United States?
By Greg Lawson - [e-mail]



Are there more mentally challenged cows among us? Many researchers think so, and many also believe that there is a government conspiracy to cover up the extent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in our country. A downer cow (or is that a vertically challenged bovine?) from an undisclosed US state tested positive for mad cow disease last November, but the US Department of Agriculture resisted retesting the animal. The animal had initially tested positive twice on what are known as rapid tests, but negative on another type of test called immunohistochemistry.

Last November, a watchdog group, Consumers Union, asked the USDA to run another type of test called a Western Blot test and to send brain samples to a respected lab in Weybridge, England. The USDA replied that it had no intention of taking either action. The agency waited seven months to take further action until the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General requested that the USDA retest using the Western Blot test. The agency hasn’t released the results of that test but they have sent brain samples to the International BSE Laboratory in Weybridge. It will be another week or so until the lab in England reports their results.

Eighteen months ago the Bush administration promised to end the practice of feeding American cattle chicken litter, cattle blood and restaurant leftovers in order to strengthen defenses against the transmission of mad cow disease. No action has been taken. Cattle continue to be fed chicken droppings, cattle blood and slaughterhouse waste.

Another tactic that would make the US meat supply safer, the labeling of meat packages with country of origin information, suffered a setback last Monday when the US Agricultural Appropriations Committee voted to not fund the USDA to write final rules for meat labeling. Country of origin labeling was first approved in the 2002 farm bill and was supposed to take effect in 2004. Under pressure from meat producer lobbyists, Congress voted to delay funding for the program until September 2006. The Bush administration wants to repeal labeling for meat altogether.

Although the stock market reported a drop in cattle futures last Monday, by Tuesday the market had almost completely recovered. People just don’t seem to be that concerned about mad cow disease, or any of the other meat pathogens that kill thousands in our country each year.

Do you trust the meat industry and the federal government to ensure the safety of meat? As for me, I am glad my veggie-burgers are clearly labeled with the place of origin and that there has not been the discovery of a single mad soybean.



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~2~
The SPCA of Texas: A Volunteer's Perspective
By Pamela Bertsch - [e-mail]
Frisco, Texas



A few weeks ago I could hardly wait to sit down to watch the ABC 20/20 feature piece about the SPCA of Texas. The ABC cameras had been on site at the SPCA for a few months last fall. The crew told me they were doing a piece about how the SPCA of Texas rescues animals from deplorable living conditions and also about the horrors of puppy mills. I had been a volunteer for the SPCA of Texas for two years by that time and had seen animals go from hopeless to happy lives thanks to the hard work of the SPCA of Texas and their rescues. I remember Dave Garcia, VP of the SPCA of Texas telling me about how they were going to try to do a rescue once a month for a while. I told him over and over how much respect I had for him and the SPCA of Texas. Some of my friends have adopted dogs from the rescues. Some of the animals can't walk very well because of the tight confinement at the puppy mills, but are doing better each day. When I look at these animals I just think to myself that if it weren't for the SPCA of Texas they would still be in miserable, unhappy conditions. To my dismay instead of the 20/20 piece being about the SPCA of Texas and its admirable rescues, it was actually turned upside down to make the SPCA of Texas out to be the criminal, not the animal abusers. 20/20 said that the SPCA of Texas took animals from people to make money for themselves! They made it look like the SPCA of Texas convinced the judge to award them the animals even though they weren't in that bad of condition. I must also say that John Stossel never once visited the SPCA of Texas during the process. John Stossel worked hard to try to make Dave Garcia out to be a liar. Dave stood his ground in a very nice manner.

One of the greatest experiences I've had at the SPCA of Texas was helping with a 300-dog rescue they conducted from a puppy mill near Wills Point Texas. Most of the dogs had no teeth. Many of their eyes were cloudy from improper nutrition. Some were blind. When I got to the warehouse where the runs were set up I couldn't believe my eyes! It was like pure Hell in there! The smell was unlike anything I'd ever smelled. The empty cages these dogs were kept in for sometimes up to 10 years were piled high against the wall. I looked at all the dogs and most of them had been kept four or five to a small cage. They had lived on a grated cage floor and some didn't have fur on their tails because it was all rubbed off. I was there to bathe the dogs so if the SPCA of Texas got awarded them they'd be ready to be spayed and neutered and put up for adoption. The dogs were so sweet, but you could tell they never had any love or fun. They liked being talked to nicely, but they really didn't understand what it was. I put down bedding in their cages and started to clean them. They just looked at me quietly, but they knew I was helping them. Some dogs had to have their feet soaked first just to remove the feces packed on them before their baths. After all the volunteers had bathed all of them their spirits began to rise. Such a difference in just three days! Some of the larger dogs had been tethered outside without shelter in the heat and cold all their lives. Some couldn't see, but they were such troopers. Some had a lot of trouble walking and many had arthritis; however, they all came up to get and to receive love from the volunteers that they had been so desperately in need of for so long. The dogs from this rescue were awarded to the SPCA of Texas and the animals that were adoptable all got wonderful homes.

If any of you watched the 20/20 report I hope my account of the experiences I've had at the SPCA of Texas will ensure you that 20/20 and John Stossel didn't report the truth about the organization. The SPCA of Texas doesn't need to steal animals to make money. They always have plenty of animals in need of homes. They don't need to go out and get them. The shame of it all was that at the end of the report John Stossel told everyone to be careful who you give your money to, because there are fraudulent charities out there. My heart sank.



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~3~
Calling All Animal-Lovin' Artists to Seattle
July 23 through July 31



North of Seattle, Pigs Peace Sanctuary (www.pigspeace.org), home to over 190 rescued pigs — some big, some little — and other rescued animals, will make the sanctuary not only a safe haven for animals and their human friends but an art destination as well. We are encouraging artists to include a vacation trip to the great Northwest.

Artists are invited to be at the sanctuary and work during the days, Saturday July 23rd through Sunday July 31st, or you are invited to stay overnight and camp out that week for a night or two or seven... (BYOT... bring your own tent)! Vegan cooks have already promised to provide dinners for the artists each night of that week.

Works can be painted directly on buildings OR painted on wood and attached to buildings OR sculptures can be free-standing or attached to buildings OR you can send works of art to be permanently displayed. The art all needs to be animal-safe if close to the ground because piggies use anything their height as scratching posts and/or for nibbling.

If you have never been to Pigs Peace, you are welcome to visit ahead of time so that you can be inspired about how your creations can help the animals. It's about a 45 minute ride north of Seattle to the sanctuary (directions on the site), and the chosen spots will be on a first-come basis.

Contact artist and event coordinator Jules Anslow (425/252-7989, [e-mail]) for information and please RSVP before July 10.

The pigs thank you for your creations.

Pigs Peace Board Member, Veda Stram ([e-mail])



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~4~
Help Out The Critter Corral



The Critter Corral (http://www.crittercorral.org/) was founded in April 1999 to find homes for homeless and unwanted guinea pigs. Our goal is to find them new loving homes. To date, we have rehomed almost 1200 guinea pigs around the Greater Chicago area.

We have signed up with an ink cartridge and laser toner recycling program that gives us at least $1.00 per used ink cartridge and $4.00 per toner to assist us with our rescue program. If you'd like to help us by recycling these, please e-mail your "snail mail" address to [e-mail]. We'll proceed to mail you a bundle of postage paid envelopes (don't worry -- these envelopes are paid for by the recycling center and not by our shelter!) All you have to do is place one cartridge or toner into a single envelope, and then drop the envelope in your mailbox! You're not only assisting The Critter Corral, but you're also helping the environment.



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~5~
Website of Note



This slide show is a pictorial of what it's like for a dog going through the Atlanta Shelter system. It's just one out of millions, throughout the country, every year.



http://www.spotsociety.org/fatedog.html





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~6~
The Cassandra Principle and the Demise of the Cod
Commentary by Captain Paul Watson



The problem with being a conservationist is that we have all become like Cassandra, the doom and gloom prophetess princess of Troy.

It is our burden to make predictions based on the observed ecological stupidity of humanity and to cast these predictions out as warnings. And like Cassandra we appear doomed to have our predictions ignored or dismissed.

This is especially frustrating after we have been proven right so many times over the years and still the anthropocentric mind set continues to ignore the warnings. They ignored our warnings about the inevitability of major oil tanker spills. They ignored our predictions about commercial fishery collapses, about global warming, about the consequences of salmon farming and the list goes on and on.

Back in the early 1980’s I warned the Canadian government that the Atlantic cod fishery would collapse within a decade. It collapsed in 1992. The government announced a two year moratorium and I told the media in Newfoundland and Canada that a two year moratorium was ridiculous. I said at the time that the cod would not recover in ten years or fifty years and may not recover at all.

The Canadian government and its small army of scientific posers that I call biostitutes dismissed me as a doom and gloom environmentalist. I was called naïve, ignorant, stupid, and overly dramatic. Thirteen years later, my prediction is becoming reality.

This month researchers who have studied data over a 40 year period have discovered that the food chain in the North Atlantic has been drastically altered with the disappearance of the cod. What this means is that the entire Northwest Atlantic marine ecosystem is being restructured because of the collapse of East Coast cod populations and these same scientists are now saying that the data indicates that recovery of the cod may be impossible.

Ken Frank, a scientist who co-authored the report in Science magazine, said the findings provide an unsettling picture of the marine environment on the eastern Nova Scotia Shelf.

“It is worrisome,” Mr. Frank said in an interview from his office in Halifax. “It kind of suggests that we're locked into this alternate state right now and unless there is some kind of unusual event, it may take quite some time for the cod domination to return.”

He said the near disappearance of cod and other large species, such as haddock, flounder and hake, has led to what he calls a cascade effect. That is, large predators have declined dramatically, but the fish they preyed upon – herring, capelin, shrimp and snow crab – were allowed to thrive and eventually underwent a population explosion.

Cod, which used to sit on the top of the food chain, have now been replaced by smaller fish.

That also trickled down to the lowest members of the marine food chain – zooplankton and algae – which are being depleted at a faster rate because more and more fish are feeding on them. This has also raised the concern that the smaller fish species could diminish the nutrients they rely on.

“Their levels have now decreased because they're being eaten heavily by the exploding group,” said Mr. Frank, who works for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

“It was always known that when you deplete a predator, its prey will increase. But it was never suspected that this would cascade or extend all the way down to the base of the food chain.”

Let me see, “it was never suspected?” Of course not, because the government of Canada was listening to biologists and not to ecologists. Of course it was suspected. I suspected it and I was told I was crazy at the time for suspecting it.

These same scientists now say that they have also always known that the cascade effect existed in fresh water species, but they have never been able to prove until now that it could be found in the ocean. But if they had followed the precautionary principle they could have saved the cod. Instead they chose to remove the cod from the eco-system first and observed the effect afterwards.

The new report has raised concerns that the new marine environment will slow, and possibly prevent, the return of cod numbers which were once the economic foundation of most of the fishing communities along the Atlantic coast. The new dominant fish species are now preying upon young cod and with cod deposed as king thanks to the government and the fishing industry, the replacement species are thriving and keeping the cod from recovery.

The strange thing is that there is a need for dominant predators to keep the fish that prey upon the cod in check. Harp, hood and grey seals do that very well but instead of encouraging their populations, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans is intent upon reducing the numbers and some want to wipe the seals out altogether.

This report will not change things because many politicians, media people, corporations and government scientists have been blaming seals and not people for so long that they will never humble themselves to admit they were wrong. They would rather remain wrong and in denial than to admit they screwed up an entire marine eco-system.

Ken Frank commenting on the report said, “The collapse of cod should serve as a lesson that if you want to keep the populations sustainable you've got to have a conservation ethic in mind,” he said. “You've got to resist the temptation to fish so heavily that the stock will deplete itself.”

Now where have I heard that said before? Oh yes I said it, twenty years ago. I would like to say that no one was listening. They listened alright and dismissed me as knowing nothing and not having the proper credentials, meaning I didn’t work for the government.

Ken Franks said that there is a strong indication that the phenomenon of cascading might be found in other areas of the North Atlantic where cod has diminished. Duh, you think Ken?

Mr. Frank is exploring whether the food chain has been disrupted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Grand Banks and the Labrador Shelf. Meanwhile back on the West Coast of Canada the B.C. government and the Federal Department of Oceans and Fisheries are doing everything they can to totally collapse the wild salmon populations. It is another blind bonanza of profits in their support of salmon farms.

Disease, escapement, competition, pollution and now sea lice are all plaguing wild salmon populations, yet all this is ignored as the salmon farms on the West Coast do to the wild salmon what the drag trawlers did to the cod on the East Coast.

It’s not that the politicians and government scientists never learn, they just always seem to learn to late when it is to late. The government should be hiring ecologists to make considered predictions based on the basic laws of ecology.

The problem is that these pesky ecologists tend to be unconcerned about the profit factor and make annoying suggestions like shutting down fisheries or cutting back on quotas. This kind of talk is unpopular with fishermen and with the politicians they vote for.

And of course politicians don’t generally care what kind of environmental problems will result in a decade or two decades. They just care about the next election.

I’ve been concerned about and have been working on marine ecology issues since 1975. I will continue to do so long after many of politicians and the bureaucrats that I have opposed have retired. You don’t hear from them anymore. Unlike myself they were in for the short term and their only concern was re-election or a good pension. The fact is that the politicians and bureaucrats of the Canadian government over the last thirty years have presided over and they are responsible for the death of the major fisheries. Their incredible arrogance not only drove the cod into commercial extinction and promises to do the same with the salmon, but they actually transformed through their policies, an entire vast marine eco-system. They plundered it and they perverted it and they continue to apply their arrogance as the only solution to the problem they created.

My predictions have indeed become more dire every year. What I am predicting now is nothing less than the entire ecological collapse of the North Atlantic eco-system. A combination of global warming and species depletion and disruption that will have its inevitable consequence. The three basic laws of ecology have been violated for to many years.

The Law of Diversity that rules that the strength of an eco-system is dependent upon the diversity of species within it.

The Law of Interdependence that rules that all these species must be interdependent.

And the Law of Finite Resources that dictates that there are limits to growth. You don’t need expensive complex, long winded, drawn out studies to predict that an eco-system is in trouble. You just need to observe if the three ecological laws are being respected.

Therefore in the case of the Northwest Atlantic we can see that over the last three decades the diminishment of large fish species and the reduction in number of seals, whales, dolphins and seabird populations has resulted in a diminishment of diversity.

And the chain of interdependence has been broken and the smaller species are now becoming dominant in numbers and reducing the young of the larger species. And of course the law of finite resources simply translates that too many people and not enough fish will result in an excessive extraction of species and numbers from the eco-system leading to escalating diminishment of diversity and interdependence.

Translation – We have irreparably damaged the entire Northwest Atlantic Eco-system. Now there is no pleasure is saying I told you so but it is a fact that I told you so. Of course there is no reason for the government of Canada to listen to me now. They never listened to me before.

In Canada, you get the Order of Canada for plundering the land and sea and you get nothing but contempt for any effort to protect and conserve nature and wilderness. You see the Canadian government has never had much use for prophets – they have preferred profits.

Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President - Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Director - Sierra Club USA
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
President - Oceanic Research and Conservation Action Force
P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, Wa 98250
Tel: [phone] Cell: 310-701-3096
E-mail: [e-mail]
Website: http://www.seashepherd.org/



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~7~
A Dog Sits Waiting
Anonymous

A dog sits waiting in the cold autumn sun,
Too faithful to leave, too frightened to run.
He's been here for days now, with nothing to do,
But sit by the road, waiting for you.
He can't understand why you left him that day.
He thought you and he were stopping to play.
He's sure you'll be back, and that's why he stays.
How long will he suffer? How many more days?
His legs have grown weak, his throat's parched and dry,
He's sick now from hunger and falls, with a sigh.
He lays down his head and closes his eyes,
I wish you could see how a waiting dog dies.

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~8~
Memorable Quote





"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. If you had to kill your own calf before you ate it, most likely you would not be able to do it. To hear the calf scream, to see the blood spill, to see the baby being taken away from its momma, and to see the look of death in the animal's eye would turn your stomach. So you get the man at the packing house to do the killing for you."
~ Dick Gregory, Longtime Peace Activist
(The Shadow That Scares Me)






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Susan Roghair - [e-mail]
Animal Rights Online, President
Established 1997
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
-=Animal RightsOnline=-
In memory of my Sam - www.all-creatures.org/stories/a-sam.html
In memory of my Molly Girl - www.all-creatures.org/stories/a-molly.html
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[shockra]

1. I got my copy too.

:)

The commentary by Captain Paul Watson was chilling. Wow.

And I sure wish they'd interviewed THAT lady for the 20/20 piece on the Texas SPCA.

Appropriate timing for the shelter slide show.

I don't know if anybody else read the entire article on NC shelters in the Charlotte Observer, but my favorite part was probably the end:

Shelter workers who deal with the results of animal overpopulation have their share of horror stories. They're about people, not pets.

Like the Catawba County family that drops off a litter of pit bull puppies at least three times a year to be killed -- but won't agree to have the dogs neutered.

Or the Union County woman who brought in puppies to be killed, then tried to adopt a cat.

"Sometimes you would like to put to sleep some of the people that bring animals in," said Davis, a shelter worker.

"They are idiots."