Doris Day & friend.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Publicity added much spin & gloss to what was already a positive record

            CARMEL,  California––Doris Day,  97,  died from pneumonia on May 13,  2019.

Day was remembered worldwide as a singer who recorded more than 650 songs between 1939 and 1967;  an actress who starred in more than 40 films between 1947 and 1968,  as well as her own television situation comedy,  1968-1973;  and an animal advocate,  for whom the Doris Day Animal Foundation,  the Doris Day Animal League,  and the Doris Day Equine Center were all named.

Distinguishing the real Doris Day,  however,  from the legend manufactured by publicists,  gossip columnists,  and the roles she played was never easy.

Composer Oscar Levant (1906-1972) in 1965 famously remarked on the Perry Como Show that he knew Doris Day before she made her first film,  “before she was a virgin.”

Doris Day at a 1928 dance recital. She was six years old.

Careers in show biz & for animals began with a train wreck

Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922 in Cincinnati,  Ohio,  her name appears to have first appeared in print on January 13,  1939,  in connection with an incident she later remembered as indirectly kindling her interest in animal welfare,  as well as beginning her ascent to stardom by changing her career direction.

Reported the Hamilton Daily News Journal,  “The Pennsylvania Railroad Company,  joint defendant with the Pittsburgh,  Cincinnati,  Chicago,  & St. Louis Railroad company,”  had elected to contest lawsuits filed as “result of a crossing accident on October 13,  1937.”

“The suits were instituted,”  the Hamilton Daily News Journal said,  “by Doris Kappelhoff,  age 16,  professional dancer,  who seeks $20,000;  Albert Schroeder,  who asks $10,500;  and Marian Bonekamp,  age 18,  who seeks $5,000.  The trio,  all residents of Cincinnati,  were riding in Schroeder’s car when it collided with a locomotive.”

Doris Day circa 1950.
(DorisDay.com photo)

Changed both her name & her age

Turning from dancing to singing as result of her injuries,  winning her first singing job from big band leader Barney Rapp,  Doris Kappelhoff became Doris Day,  according to her official biographies,  because “Kappelhoff” was too long to fit on marquees.

But,  six years before recording her first hit,  Sentimental Journey,  in 1945,  the future Doris Day was still far from becoming a headliner.  More likely,  “Kappelhoff” sounded too Germanic,  with the U.S. close to war with Germany.

Official biographies also contend that,  as Wikipedia has it,  “For most of her life,  Day believed she had been born in 1924 and reported her age accordingly;  it was not until her 95th birthday — when the Associated Press found her birth certificate,  showing a 1922 date of birth — that she learned otherwise.”

The 1939 Hamilton Daily News Journal item about the railway crossing accident,  however,  establishes that Day knew her actual age all along.

Doris Day had many dogs later in life.
(Facebook photo)

Tiny the dog?

Leaving the subsequent facts of Doris Day’s singing and acting careers,  and her frequently complicated personal life,  to mass media and entertainment media to untangle,  ANIMALS 24-7 perused several books,  many obituaries,  and approximately 3,000 articles at NewspaperArchive.com to try to discover the truth of her involvement in animal advocacy.

According to a posthumous remembrance by Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block,  “Her beloved dog,  Tiny,  was her closest companion and a comforting presence while she recovered from injuries sustained in a car crash that ended her budding career as a dancer.  When they were out for a walk together,  Tiny uncharacteristically bolted away and was struck by a car and tragically killed.  Tiny’s death left Doris with a strong determination to help animals.”

The 1939 Hamilton Daily News Journal item affirms that the car crash occurred.  The rest of the story,  though media documented practically everything of note that Doris Day said and did during her eight decades of fame,  does not appear to have surfaced until the 1970s.

Doris Day & Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Day recalled in 2015 that “she first became interested in animals on the set of a 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film,”  Nick Thomas of the Victorville Daily Press wrote in a feature entitled “A Christmas message from Doris Day.”

“One of my first profound experiences working with animals in my films was in Morocco on the set of The Man Who Knew Too Much,”  Day told Thomas.  “I was never one to make waves when working on my films,  but was appalled at the condition of the local animals used in this film.”

Because The Man Who Knew Too Much was made abroad,  there apparently was no on-set supervision by the American Humane Association,  which had begun monitoring the sets of U.S.-made films through a contract with the Screen Actors Guild in 1940.

Day “refused to continue,”  she continued to Thomas,  “until we made sure they were all well-fed,  well-treated,  and happy.  I think this was one of the instances where I truly realized how my celebrity could help improve animals’ lives.”

No documentation

Day must have told the same story to someone else earlier,  because then-Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle blogged on her birthday in April 2014 that “as a young actress, she had the courage to stand up to the formidable Alfred Hitchcock on the set of The Man Who Knew Too Much, saying she wouldn’t work unless the emaciated animals on the set received proper care.”

Lindsay Pollard-Post of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals told essentially the same story in her posthumous remembrance of Doris Day.

But ANIMALS 24-7 was unable to find any published trace of the Morocco story predating 2014––not from Day herself,  not from other members of The Man Who Knew Too Much cast and crew,  not from the publicists who continually bolstered her image,  and not from the gossip columnists who detailed her every move.

Shirley Temple was twice the American Humane Association “cover girl.”

Doris Day v. Shirley Temple

And it was not as if actresses maintaining a wholesome all-American image––or their agents––had not already made a point of promoting kindness toward animals for generations.

Shirley Temple,  for example,  a film star from 1933 to 1950,  at the height of her popularity posed as cover girl for the June 1935 and March 1936 editions of the American Humane Association magazine, The National Humane Review.

Doris Day in “Jumbo,” 1962.

Shirley Temple,  however,  while playing late career roles similar to those of Doris Day,  and though seven years younger,  was done as an actress by age 21.

Doris Day,  25 when she made her screen debut,  enjoyed her peak of success during her thirties and early forties.  During that time Day played many roles which,  while not overtly inhumane by the standards of the era,  were not especially sensitive toward animals,  either.  Her on-screen romantic opposites included cowboys,  ranchers of species from cattle and poultry to lobsters,  rodeo performers,  and a circus elephant trainer in Jumbo (1962).

That Touch of Mink (also made in 1962) both borrowed from and amplified a sales slogan used to promote mink coats.

Yes, Doris Day posed in 1952 with dyed poodles.  (Beth Clifton collage.

“Be Kind to Animals Week”

The earliest clips that ANIMALS 24-7 found furnishing any evidence that Doris Day had any more than ordinary awareness of animal suffering or sentience were media releases published in May 1965,  when the American Humane Association named Day and actor Fred MacMurray,  the leading man in several Day films,  as co-chairs of “Be Kind to Animals Week”––a role that Shirley Temple filled in 1936.

After that,  the next mention of Doris Day in the same article as the word “humane” came in April 1969.  That was when a dog named Lord Nelson Again was nominated for a Performing Animal Television Star of the Year award for his work on the Doris Day Show.

The “Patsy” awards,  as they were known,  were presented from 1951 to 1986 by the American Humane Association.  After the AHA dropped the program,  the concept was revived and expanded as the Genesis Awards by Broadway actress Gretchen Wyler (1932-2007),  initially under the auspices of the Fund for Animals,  founded in 1968 by TV Guide and Parade columnist and author Cleveland Amory (1917-1998).

The Genesis Awards were later hosted by the Ark Trust,  founded in 1991 by Wyler herself,  merged into the Humane Society of the U.S. in 2002.

Doris Day & Cleveland Amory.
(Fund for Animals photo)

Cleveland Amory introduced Doris Day to activism

Doris Day appears to have become involved in animal advocacy in earnest at age 48,  in mid-1970,  after Amory asked her to become a member of the Fund for Animals honorary celebrity board.

Making a publicity appearance on behalf of the Fund for Animals,  Day in October 1970 told Joan Crosby of the Newspaper Enterprise Association that “They call me the dogcatcher of Beverly Hills.  If I find a dog wandering loose,  I check his collar,  then take him home.”

Day also told of rescuing two dogs,  at different times,  from busy streets.

Doris Day until mid-life had no evident qualms about wearing fur.

Posed in opposition to fur

Day,  a longtime frequent fur-wearer,  stepped into controversy on behalf of animals for the first time when Amory in July 1971 persuaded her and fellow actresses Mary Tyler Moore,  Angie Dickinson,  Amanda Blake and Jayne Meadows to pose in a glossy magazine ad headlined “Five Women Who Can Easily Afford Any Fur Coat in the World Tell Why They’re Proudly Wearing Fakes.”

The two-page ad was placed by E. F. Timme & Son, a leading maker of faux fur garments.

Reported The New York Times, “The ad will appear The New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Look, McCall’s, Cosmopolitan, New York and Esquire. It will not appear in Vogue because, according to the Levine shop, the magazine turned it down and has not as yet given an official reason.

“In 1970, according to the Publisher’s Information Bureau,  Vogue carried 36 pages of advertising from the real fur folks,” the New York Times item finished.

Decompression chamber.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Doris Day’s most influential,  yet least known role for animals

By November 1971,  Day had also begun fundraising for Actors & Others For Animals.  Actors & Others For Animals both then and now promoted spay/neuter surgery and adoptions of pets from animal shelters.  Day took up both causes.

“I feel so deeply about this and I’m getting more intense about it all the time,”  Day told syndicated Hollywood gossip columnist Margaret McManus in December 1971.

Day soon thereafter took on arguably her most influential,  yet least remembered role on behalf of animals,  speaking out against the use of decompression to kill animals in the Los Angeles shelters.

Decompression at the time rivaled carbon monoxide gassing as the most common method of shelter killing throughout the U.S.––and the humaneness of it was rarely questioned.

Doris Day herself might have raised questions about decompression much earlier,  if she had thought much about it;  but few people did.

“The chambers must go!”

At least twice,  in February and June 1950,  Associated Press distributed news items about Doris Day in proximity to items about the introduction of decompression to kill dogs and cats by Richard Bonner,  then director of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation.  The method was promptly endorsed and promoted by the American Humane Association.

Bonner and the AHA believed,  at the time,  that decompression would be a less painful and frightening death for animals than gassing.  Even today,  nearly 70 years later,  the AHA continues to promote decompression as a “humane” slaughter method for poultry.

But,  demanded Doris Day in a March 10,  1972 interview with “Hollywood Hotline” columnist Marilyn Beck,  “The chambers must go!  The needle is the only humane way of putting animals to sleep.”

Woody Allen, Richard Bonner, & Anna Marie San Martin,  Miss Pussycat 1965.

Stumped as to solution

Wrote Beck,  “Asked what potion that needle might contain,  she said she did not know.”

That might have been of concern.  At the time several lethal injections were widely used which were,  and are,  no less painful and frightening to the victims than decompression,  including strychnine,  magnesium sulfate,  and T-61,  a paralytic mix of three drugs developed for use by fur farmers.  (The three drugs are Embutramide, Mebezonium iodide,  and Tetracaine hydrochloride.   The combination has been banned in the U.S. since 1986.)

Family Weekly,  a nationally distributed weekend newspaper supplement,  in August 1972 published a single-paragraph denunciation of decompression by Doris Day.

Doris Day & friend, date & source unknown.

But had national influence

Within days the city of Berkeley,  California abolished the use of decompression to kill pound animals,  the first city to do so,  after months of pressure on the city council led by George and Diane Sukol of the Committee for the Protection of Domestic Animals and Julie Stitt and Martha Benedict of Friends of the Berkeley Dogs.

San Francisco and Portland,  Oregon abolished decompression in 1976.  The movement became a wave.  Houston and Austin,  Texas,  the last U.S. cities to use decompression,  both quit by mid-1985.

Doris Day appears to have never claimed credit for starting the wave with her 1972 interviews.  Neither does she appear even to have been aware of her influence against decompression,  or,  indeed,  to have ever mentioned it again on the record.

Doris Day & kittens.  (Believed to be publicity shot for The Doris Day Show.)

National Cat Protection Society

Also in 1972,  Doris Day lent her name to the grandiosely named National Cat Protection Society,  a local cat shelter founded in Long Beach in 1968 by humane officer Richard Calore.  Day does not appear to have remained involved for long.

Calore died in 1988,  leaving the organization to his widow Gerri,  shelter manager Denise Johnston,  and attorney Richard Tanzer.

The National Cat Protection Society in 1993 paid $26,500 in civil penalties and costs for allegedly providing misleading information about euthanasia policies and adoption rates to donors and people who surrendered cats.

Denying that the society had done anything wrong,  Tanzer said the settlement was reached to avoid the cost of fighting the charges,  brought by the Los Angeles County district attorney.

(Beth Clifton collage)

The National Cat Protection Society subsequently closed the Long Beach shelter,  opened others in Newport Beach and Spring Valley,  and currently claims net assets of about $7.5 million,  paying Gerri Calore $147,000 a year,  Johnson nearly $148,000,  and Tanzer $108,000,  according to the most recent available IRS Form 990 filings.

Founded her own organization in 1978

Most of Doris Day’s work on behalf of animals throughout the rest of her life involved fundraising and allocating grants to various projects.

“Recognizing the need to stop animal homelessness at its source, she founded the Doris Day Pet Foundation in 1978,”  wrote Lindsay Pollard-Post of PETA,  “which later became the Doris Day Animal Foundation.”

The focal Doris Day Animal Foundation programs,  Pollard-Post mentioned,  have been “providing grants for spaying and neutering,  funding humane education in schools,  and helping senior citizens pay for their animal companions’ food and veterinary care.”

Doris Day with dogs on Carmel Beach.
(Inside Edition 2013)

The Doris Day Animal Foundation also “supported Alley Cat Rescue’s Guide to Managing Community Cats and other programs,”  recalled Alley Cat Rescue founder Louise Holton.

Spay/Day USA

Probably the best-known Doris Day Animal Foundation project was and is Spay Day USA,  designated in 1995 “to encourage each American to have at least one cat or dog spayed or neutered.”

Animal shelters,  rescues,  and veterinary clinics around the U.S. continue to build spay/neuter promotions around Spay Day USA.

The name echoes that of Spay/USA,  a national spay/neuter information hotline begun by Esther Mechler several years earlier,  sponsored by the North Shore Animal League America since 1992,  but the projects have never been institutionally related.

Terry Melcher

Terry Melcher & the Doris Day Animal League

More widely known than the Doris Day Animal Foundation,  if only because of the voluminous amount of direct mail fundraising appeals it generated,  was the Doris Day Animal League,  a nonprofit lobbying organization begun in 1986 by Day’s son Terry Melcher.

“The son of actress and singer Doris Day and her first husband,  the trombonist Al Jorden,   Melcher was known for his role,” primarily as a record producer,  “in shaping the sounds of the folk and surf music scenes in California,”  wrote New York Times obituarist Jeff Leeds after Melcher died of cancer at age 62 in November 2004.
Melcher worked with musicians including the Beach Boys,  the Byrds,  the Mamas & the
Papas,  and Ry Cooder at various times.  Melcher was also executive producer of The Doris Day Show,  1968-1972,  and a later program called Doris Day’s Best Friends.

Refusing to produce music for Charles Manson,  Melcher was reputedly Manson’s primary target when in July and August 1969 his followers murdered nine people at four locations––but Melcher was not actually present when any of the murders were committed.  He later testified against Manson,  who died in prison in 2017.

Bill Wewer, 1990.

Who was Bill Wewer?

Melcher hired tax lawyer and direct mail entrepreneur Bill Wewer to incorporate and build support for the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL).  Previous Wewer ventures had already brought two Congressional investigations and a Justice Department reprimand.

Wewer hired another attorney,  Holly Hazard,  as the lobbying face of the Doris Day Animal League.   Wewer himself became a contract attorney for the 1990 March for the Animals,  but left both DDAL and the March staff in early 1990 to join the anti-animal rights group Putting People First,  begun by his wife Kathleen Marquardt in 1989.

Rick Spill, 1995.

A columnist for Fur Age Weekly in 1990-1991, Wewer appears to have morphed into an individual who called himself “Rick Spill” while infiltrating at least four animal advocacy organizations in 1993-1997.  “Spill” dropped abruptly out of view after ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton exposed his dual roles.

Soon thereafter,  in November 1997,  Wewer resurfaced,  representing the Humane Society of Ventura County,  California.  Wewer reportedly died from lymphatic cancer in 1999 in San Francisco,  but the San Francisco coroner’s office confirmed that the death certificate was issued based on faxed information from a hospice,  without anyone from the coroner’s office ever seeing the remains.

A man named Rick Spill,  whose appearance and biographical details resembled those of Wewer,  died in Vallejo,  California,  in October 2014.

Doris Day late in life.
(DorisDay.com photo)

Merged into Humane Society of the U.S.

Hazard in August 2006 merged the Doris Day Animal League into the Humane Society of the U.S.,  though HSUS continued to use the DDAL name in fundraising appeals until after Hazard retired in mid-2018.

In 20 years of independent operation the Doris Day Animal League never spent less than half of its revenues on fundraising and administration,  cumulatively spending more than two-thirds of all the money it ever raised on direct mail,  raising as much as $2.5 million per year from approximately 180,000 donors.

Concept drawing for the Doris Day Equine Center.

Doris Day Equine Center

The Doris Day Equine Center originated after the Morill County,  Nebraska sheriff’s department in April 2009,  acting on information provided by Habitat for Horses founder Jerry Finch,  discovered about 200 severely neglected horses in custody of Jason Charles Medina,  43,  at a quasi-rescue facility called the 3-Strikes Mustang Ranch.

Medina had obtained many of the horses from the Bureau of Land Management.  Convicted in 2010 on four counts of felonious neglect,  Medina eventually served five years in custody of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.  He was discharged in February 2015.

(DorisDay.com photo)

Habitat for Horses and various other sanctuaries took in about half of the 3-Strikes horses.  The Doris Day Animal Foundation then granted $250,000 to encourage the Humane Society of the U.S. to accommodate the rest at the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison,  Texas.

Founded by Amory in 1979 as a project of the Fund for Animals,  the Black Beauty Ranch was acquired by HSUS when the Fund for Animals was absorbed by HSUS in 2005,  seven years after Amory died in 1998.

Doris Day.  (Wikimedia Commons)

Last stand

Doris Day’s last major appearance on behalf of animals appears to have been the April 2014 celebration of what was billed as her 90th birthday at the Cypress Inn in Carmel,  of which she had been part owner,  with other partners,  for about 30 years.  It was actually Day’s 92nd birthday.

Associated Press television writer Lynn Elber reported that the event “included a
doggie fashion show,  adoption event and a tribute dinner for fans and friends.  Items autographed by Day and celebrity pals including Paul McCartney and Tony Bennett were auctioned off online and at the dinner.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate

(Beth Clifton collage)

Six years later it seems to be happening again

            PORT RICHEY,  Florida––Pasco County Animal Services and Suncoast Animal League personnel on May 3,  2019 removed thirty-two dogs,  four cats  and a gerbil from the rented premises of the Humane Society of West Florida,  a dilapidated former self-storage building in Port Richey,  Florida.

“According to Pasco County Animal Services,”  reported Isabel Rosales of ABC Action News WFTS,  in nearby Tampa Bay,  “the rescue was operating illegally for nine months without an active rescue license.  A county spokesperson says the Humane Society of West Florida failed to renew its rescue license in August 2018.”

“Hoarding.  Overwhelmed caregiver”

The Pasco County Animal Services seizure report described the case,  Rosales said,  as “Hoarding.  Overwhelmed caregiver.”

The allegedly overwhelmed caregiver was identified as Sharon McReynolds,  66.

Continued Rosales,  “McReynolds faces several citations,  including failure to vaccinate and failure to obtain animal license tags.  While the county cleared out her rescue of any pets,”  Rosales said, Suncoast Animal League founder and executive director Rick Chaboudy’s “biggest worry is she’ll be in charge of animals again.”

Inside the Humane Society of West Florida building,  Chaboudy told Rosales,  “That smell was a knockout punch.  How does she go in there and smell that smell and even think that’s okay?”

Sharon McReynolds

Alleged perp denies wrongdoing

Asked by Rosales whether he would testify in court against McReynolds,  Chaboudy said,  “I’d be the first in line.”

McReynolds,  in a 402-word statement posted with Rosales’ report on the WFTS web site,  essentially denied any wrongdoing,  accused Chaboudy of a lack of professionalism,  blamed the intense ammonia odor that Chaboudy described on “the failure of one of the four air conditioning units and refusal of the landlord to repair such promptly,”  and said that because of this,  “for the benefit of the animals’ well being,  assistance was sought.”

Rosales,  however,  reported that she “spoke with the property owner,  off camera,  who told us he was the one to call in the complaint because of the horrible smell.  This owner says he will not renew the rescue’s lease.”

Rick Chaboudy
(Suncoast Animal League photo)

Accuser set positive example

Chaboudy,  65,  meanwhile knows quite a bit about running animal shelters,  working with all-volunteer rescue organizations,  and operating in the climatically challenged,  economically depressed Suncoast environment.

For 20 years Chaboudy was executive director of the Humane Society of Pinellas.  He was a frontline rescuer in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  He founded the no-kill Suncoast Animal League a year later,  in 2006,  in a similar building also near U.S. Highway 19,  ten miles south.

“When Chaboudy and Annette Dettloff,  a former HSP volunteer,  set up in their modest Suncoast Animal League digs behind Palm Plaza off U.S. 19, they had $232 in the bank,”  reported Belleair Bee editor Chary Southmayd.

The Suncoast Animal League is scarcely rolling in the clover now,  but by dint of 13 years of hard work is now a $750,000-a-year organization,  according to www.Guidestar.org,  though IRS Form 990 filings show annual income as being more like $450,000 per year.

New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit

The Humane Society of West Florida,  ten miles north,  incorporated in 2015,  has yet to file an IRS 990,  according to Guidestar.

Within the same time frame that Chaboudy and Dettloff have been building the Suncoast Animal League,  McReynolds became well-known within the Florida animal rescue community for entirely different reasons.

On October 1,  2012,  the nearby city of New Port Richey transferred the community animal control contract from Pasco County Animal Services to the newly formed New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit,  formed under the umbrella of the New Port Richey Police Department,  supervised by then-police chief James Steffens.

Rosie, a Sharon McReynolds favorite, cried often and spun in circles.

Promised to take New Port Richey to no-kill

Sharon McReynolds,  her husband Jeff McReynolds,  and veterinarian Terry Spencer founded the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit and won the endorsement of the project from the New Port Richey city council,  Tampa Bay Times correspondent Robert Napper reported,  with the promise that they could simultaneously take the city to “no kill” status,  with a 90% “live release rate” for impounded animals,  and save taxpayers about $26,000 of the $60,000 per year previously pad to Pasco County Animal Services.

Sharon McReynolds became executive director.  Longtime local rescuer Tonya Vogt was named shelter director,  though the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit had no actual shelter,  housing animals in 11 borrowed runs at the nearby SPCA Suncoast instead.

(Founded in 1964 as the SPCA of West Pasco,  the SPCA Suncoast is not to be confused with the Suncoast Animal League.)

Spencer dropped out of the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit before actual animal control operations began.

Kiona, an aggressive pit bull with a large tumor, was treated at cost of $1,400 while other dogs went without basic treatment.

Pit bull shooting

Jeff McReynolds,  a former police officer,  and New Port Richey police officer Greg Williams were designated the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit animal control officers.

Within days two pit bulls were reported for menacing a pedestrian.  One of them charged Jeff McReynolds and was shot dead by Williams.  Criticized by Jeff McReynolds,  Williams remained a police detective,  but resigned as an animal control officer.

That may have sparked the first of many controversies to embroil the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit,  at least after it officially existed,  as there were already disputes about the mission of the new agency even before it had a name.

Another controversy developed in January 2013,  with all of the borrowed kennels full,  along with an array of stacked cages,  while a plan to build kennels behind the New Port Richey Police Department proved unworkable due to police security concerns.

Beth Clifton as New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit animal control officer.

Volunteered

Having previously been a Miami Beach police officer,  a Polk County animal control officer,  and a veterinary technician for the Pasco Animal Welfare Society,  I volunteered my services as an animal control officer to the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit.

Sharon McReynolds accepted my offer and seemed very happy to have me aboard.  Speaking at length by telephone,  we agreed that I would come to the shelter to meet the dogs and have a brief volunteer training session with another volunteer,  as well as signing a nondisclosure form.

Upon arrival,  Vogt showed me around..  I never received the volunteer training session because Vogt determined that it wasn’t necessary because of my background.

I also never received,  nor was asked to sign,  a nondisclosure form.  In the weeks to come,  I would realize the significance of that.

Three of the Humane Society of West Florida dogs who were surrendered to the custody of the Suncoast Animal League.

“No kill” sounded good…

Instead I was given a tour and met some of the dogs.  Soon I was equipped with a uniform and began ride-along training with Jeff McReynolds,  by then the only other animal control officer.  Jeff McReynolds acknowledged to me that he had failed the Florida Animal Control Association certification test.  The purpose of the ride-along training was to help me become familiar with the geography of New Port Richey and with the specific procedures of the New Port Richey Police Department.

The concept of “no kill” sheltering,  meaning that animals would not be killed simply for exhausting a set holding time or because a shelter was out of housing space,  sounded to me then like a sensible and humane plan for shelter animals.

But as I learned,  first through my New Port Richey experience,  and since then through extensive research into other attempts to convert animal control agencies to “no kill” by delegating much of their work to volunteers,  what I saw first-hand in New Port Richey is occurring all over the country.

Beth Clifton recommended Miracle for euthanasia due to illness including incurable neurological damage––but McReynolds refused to euthanize her.

“No kill” secrecy mirrors the “high kill” era

Overcrowding,  sickness,  suffering and secrecy to conceal the realities of “no kill” have become the new norms of animal sheltering,  in mirror image of the “high kill” era,  when shelters practiced secrecy to keep the public from finding out about that.

I received no paycheck during my short tenure in New Port Richey,  though there was talk about the two animal control officer positions becoming salaried.  I purchased some incidentals that were needed for the job with my own money.

A month into my time with the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit,  I could see that impounded animals were getting sick,  had become emaciated,  and were receiving at that time little or no veterinary treatment.

Most of the impounded dogs were pit bulls or pit mixes.  I had a pit bull of my own then,  had been involved in pit bull puppy rescue and transport,  and was sympathetic toward their plight.  (See Why pit bulls will break your heart.)

Bones, left, photographed at the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit; right, Bones before impoundment.

No vaccines,  few adoptions,  little care

No one wanted them and they were the dogs who suffered the most in custody of the New Port Richey Animal Control Unit,  languishing in their kennels,  habitually spinning in their wire crates.  I bought $100 worth of Nylabones for the dogs with my own money,  as otherwise they had nothing to do but stare off into space.

Unfortunately,  the dogs were also dying of parvovirus and becoming emaciated,  without receiving adequate veterinary care.  The dogs were not receiving vaccines to prevent disease.

I told Sharon Mcreynolds that we needed vaccine protocols.  I also strongly suggested euthanasia for at least one of the dogs,  Bones,  who had become weak from neglect and lack of veterinary care.

There were no measures set in place to prevent or reduce diseases,  such as quarantining newly arrived animals.  Because so many of the dogs were pit bulls,  and/or had serious behavior issues,  very few dogs were adopted out.

Two pit bull puppies that Beth Clifton treated for parvovirus at the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit.

Parvovirus

The borrowed SPCA Suncoast kennels became a hoarding situation,  incubating diseases,  including parvovirus,  which rapidly spread through the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit facilities,  then jumped to the SPCA Suncoast puppies.

By default,  because of my experience as a vet tech,  I become the dogs’ “veterinarian” in absence of regular veterinary visits.  I used my own money to purchase canine distemper vaccines from a local store.  The canine distemper vaccine is typically given in the form of the DHPP vaccination,  which protects a dog from parainfluenza,  parvovirus, hepatitis, and distemper at the same time.  Had this been given to each dog impounded,  promptly upon admission to the shelter,  as is recommended procedure for animal shelters throughout the world,  the parvo outbreak we experienced would not have occurred.

I advised both Sharon and Jeff McReynolds that we needed to be honest and forthright about the parvo outbreak.

Sharon McReynolds’ response,  however,  was to hang a lock on the shelter gate.  She did not take my advice until it was too late and she could no longer keep her secret.

Then-New Port Richey police chief James Steffens.

Doggy Bedlam

Though I was quite articulate about everything I witnessed,  even interim New Port Richey city manager Susan Dillinger dismissed my concerns,  in effect enabling McReynolds.  Perhaps Dillinger was too invested in the transfer of animal control from Pasco County Animal Services to the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit to see the situation clearly.

At that point,  six weeks into the job,  I realized that I needed to remove myself from what seemed to be Doggy Bedlam,  an insane asylum for dogs and volunteers who remained fixated on achieving the no-kill goal at any cost in suffering.

Dillinger and police chief Steffens asked me why I was leaving.  I told them the truth.

Police chief Steffens asked me to attend a city council meeting to speak in front of them and describe what I had experienced.  I accepted his invitation,  and was escorted to the meeting in a police car.  A police officer stood by my side as a bodyguard against a packed room full of New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit supporters who wanted my head for speaking out.

Hero died in his cage overnight without vet care.
(Jane Marinello photo)

Spoke up for Hero,  Frankie,  Bones,  & others

I stepped up and spoke my three minutes about all the suffering I’d seen,  especially about the deaths kept secret, while all traces of the dogs were removed from Facebook as though their lives did not matter.

I spoke up for Hero,  who died alone in his crate because of his lack of veterinary care.  I was called early one morning to help him,  but I believe he had died during the night,  as he was already in full rigor mortis.

I spoke up for Frankie,  a beautiful blue-eyed merle dachshund,  who was continuously sick and received no veterinary care until he just vanished as if he never existed.

And there was a pit bull whose name I cannot remember.  I was also called in to help him.  His kennel was covered in blood and feces and that smell of parvovirus that cannot be mistaken.  I insisted that he be taken to a veterinarian,  who euthanized him.

And there was Bones.  Bones was confiscated in a neglect situation.  He was deteriorating, losing weight,  listless and weak,  with patches of fur missing.  Bones was the dog whom I strongly suggested should be euthanized.  McReynolds’ answer was to return Bones to the owner who had neglected him in the first place.

Sharon McReynolds is at far left, top & bottom; Jeff McReynolds at front right, bottom, at New Port Richey city council meeting, backed by no-kill activists.

Tampa Bay Times editorial

At that point in time,  I was the only New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit volunteer who had spoken up for the animals.  I was vilified and attacked for months on social by other volunteers and supporters of the unit.

But the Tampa Bay Times editorial board supported me.

“New Port Richey’s animal control experiment is failing,”  the Tampa Bay Times editorialized on March 9,  2013,  “and the city must repair or replace this amateurish department with a professionally led effort.

The Tampa Bay Times mentioned “volunteers bad-mouthing a trained expert who determined that an aggressive pit bull with a large tumor was not suitable for adoption.”  This was the pit bull who was running with the one Williams shot.

“Instead,”   the Tampa Bay Times recounted,  “untrained volunteers did their own assessment and ran up a $1,400 veterinary bill to treat the animal,”  while other dogs in custody went without even basic medications.

New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit vehicle.

“Missing professionalism”

“Missing professionalism allowed volunteers to unfairly scapegoat departing police Chief James Steffens,”  the Tampa Bay Times continued.  “Steffens championed accountability,  but that seemed to be of little concern elsewhere,”  perhaps persuading Steffens to leave New Port Richey to take a position with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department.

“Animal control officer Jeff McReynolds backed a city-owned vehicle into a parked motorcycle and failed to document the accident until weeks later,”  the Tampa Bay Times recalled.  “His wife,  Sharon McReynolds, failed to notify City Hall or the neighboring SPCA Suncoast when two dogs died of parvovirus.

Bones

“A few weeks later, she told police officer Greg Williams, in an email,  ‘We appreciate if this is kept somewhat quiet,  as it could become a nightmare in the press.’  The SPCA lost 10 dogs to the virus and refunded adoption fees to the families who unknowingly took home sick animals. As a result, the SPCA wants to evict the city from the kennel property for failing to disclose the virus outbreak.”

Nothing promptly put out of misery

After describing my resignation,  the Tampa Bay Times concluded that “It’s time for the city to put this animal control effort out of its misery.”

But nothing about the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit was put out of its misery when it should have been.

Although I was no longer part of the nightmare,  I closely followed what came afterward,  including the relocation of the impounded animals to a leased facility ten miles away in Land O’ Lakes,  and the subsequent resignations of Vogt and others.

Chester, running in 2013 in New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit custody, remained with Sharon McReynolds until Rick Chaboudy found him, paralyzed, at the Humane Society of West Florida.

Not in a million years did I imagine that months after my own resignation,  I would receive a tearful apology from some of those who had treated me so poorly, much less sit in a room with 13 of them,  united to expose the suffering they had seen under Sharon McReynolds.

“Sort of like a restroom wall”

New police chief Kim Bogart nonetheless defended Sharon McReynolds,  telling WTSP reporter Beau Zimmer that the criticisms of her management were “sort of like a restroom wall.”

New Port Richey mayor Bob Consalvo told media in August 2013 that the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit was “really not working out,”  and that he believed the animal control contract should be returned to Pasco County Animal Services.

Even then,  though,  the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit staggered on through Jeff McReynolds’ resignation in November 2013 and Sharon McReynolds’ resignation at the end of the year.

Chester’s last sunset.

Sunset

Retaining Pasco County Animal Services for 2014 and 2015 cost New Port Richey $197,000,  half again more than the city had been paying per year before the New Port Richey Animal Protection Unit fiasco.  At that,  Pasco County Animal Services declined to accept the 35 dogs and 14 cats remaining in New Port Richey custody,  who were reportedly left to Sharon McReynolds to house or rehome somehow.

At least one of those dogs,  the pit bull Chester,  vigorous in 2013,  was still in McReynolds’ custody on May 3,  2019,  when Chaboudy found him paralyzed at the Humane Society of West Florida.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Chaboudy told ANIMALS 24-7 that Chester was briefly fostered and taken to the beach,  “so that he could have some good memories,”  before he was euthanized to relieve incurable suffering.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate

(Beth Clifton collage)

Don’t believe everything you read on can labels, say class action lawsuits

Do you eat dolphins?  Does your cat?

Not likely,  and certainly not knowingly––but three class action lawsuits filed on May 13,  2019 by nationally noted legal firms specializing in consumer affairs contend that if either you or your cat eats tuna,  the tuna probably was caught by methods that kill dolphins,  despite the tiny “dolphin safe” logo on the can,  and in violation of the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act.

The three comparably worded lawsuits target Bumble Bee Foods,  Starkist,  and the Nestle Purina PetCare Company for alleged consumer fraud and racketeering.  These three companies together sell an estimated 95% of all the tuna bought by U.S. consumers.

(Pew Trust photo)

Defendants allegedly source tuna “from fishers using illegal methods”

All three lawsuits were filed in San Francisco,  in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Each lawsuit alleges that the defendant company sources tuna from “from fishers using illegal methods,”  summarized Christina Davis for the online legal newsletter Top Class Actions.

Specifically,  the tuna suppliers to Bumble Bee Foods,  Starkist,  and the Nestle Purina PetCare Company are said to net tuna “on dolphin,”  and/or using “Fish Aggregating Devices,”  which also kill dolphins as well as sea turtles and many other species drawn to them.  While neither method is entirely “illegal,”  both are allegedly in violation of the intention of the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act.

(Beth Clifton collage)

What netting “on dolphin” means

Netting tuna “on dolphin” is the better known of the two techniques.

Because dolphin and tuna often feed together,  with dolphins frequently breaching the ocean surface to breathe while the tuna remain submerged,  tuna fishers learned decades ago that they could catch tuna most efficiently by spotting breaching dolphins first,  then drawing seine nets around the dolphins.

In theory the dolphins can jump out of the nets to safety,  but tuna netting in practice  killed many as 150,000 panic-stricken dolphins per year in the 1980s.  Most of the dolphins drowned in the nets;  some were crushed in the winches used to draw the nets closed.

Earth Island Institute founder David Brower, executive director David Phillips, Sam LaBudde, and CEO John Knox circa 1990. (EII photo)

Sam LaBudde

Finally,  summarized Tom Turner in A History of Earth Island Institute’s 25 Years (2008),  “A volunteer named Sam LaBudde [now a noted climate scientist] went to Mexico,  landed a job as cook on a Panamanian tuna boat,  and [in 1988] managed to shoot a gruesome videotape of the carnage.  The film was given to network television and shown to Congress.  It caused immediate outrage.

“A boycott of tuna was launched,”  Turner recalled.  “A lawsuit was filed that resulted in court orders to slow the killing.  Finally,  in 1990,  Starkist Tuna,  the largest tuna company in the world,  announced it would go dolphin safe.  The other tuna companies quickly fell into line.  The slaughter of Pacific dolphins that once killed 150,000 animals annually now takes about 1,000,”  or was believed to.

But netting “on dolphin” secretly continued

In 2011-2012,  however,  the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace separately began gathering and publishing documentation that some supposedly “dolphin safe” fishers were in truth netting tuna “on dolphin.”

Earth Island Institute,  having brokered the original “dolphin safe” agreement,  took no visible action against Starkist,  Bumble Bee Foods,  and Nestle for allegedly violating it.

(Greenpeace photo)

Fish Aggregating Devices

Fish Aggregating Devices,  called FADS for short,  are defined by Wikipedia as,  “a man-made object used to attract ocean-going pelagic fish such as marlin, tuna and mahi-mahi,”  used  to “catch over one million tons of tuna per year, nearly a third of the global tuna total, and over 100,000 tons of by-catch [fish of no commercial value] as of 2005.”

Like netting tuna “on dolphin,”  FADS help to entrap and kill dolphins too,  in great numbers,  as the dolphins converge along with tuna to feed on smaller fish gathering beneath FADS.

Ric O’Barry (Facebook photo)

Ric O’Barry

Frustrated that Earth Island Institute had not amended the original “dolphin safe” definition to cover the use of FADS too,  and had not responded effectively to the allegations of continued tuna netting “on dolphin” either,  Dolphin Project founder Ric O’Barry,  on September 30, 2014 left the fundraising umbrella of the Earth Island Institute after an eight-year partnership which, for a time, had seemed as natural as the tendency of tuna to swim with dolphins.

O’Barry originally incorporated the Dolphin Project in 1982.  For about 10 years O’Barry and the Dolphin Project worked in partnership with the World Society for the Protection of Animals,  now called World Animal Protection,  and then for three years with the French animal charity One Voice. But working with the Earth Island Institute’s Marine Mammal Project appeared to be a more comfortable fit,  until O’Barry felt that the money the Earth Island Institute received through the “dolphin sale” labeling scheme had trumped actually saving dolphins.

“Resigning from Earth Island cost my family our free life insurance policy,”  O’Barry posted to his web site on May 16,  2019.  “It’s something I can’t even buy any more because of my age. But I had no choice.  I couldn’t go on knowing my paycheck was probably coming from big tuna.”

(United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization diagram)

(See Fundraising, FADS, “dolphin safe,” & why Ric O’Barry left Earth Island Institute.)

“Process standards”

Allegations that “dolphin safe” tuna labeling requirements were routinely ignored by the major canned tuna vendors simmered for years while the government of Mexico fought a series of lawsuits alleging that the 1990 Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act and “dolphin safe” labeling are “process standards,”  a type of regulation based on how a product is made,  rather than on what the product is.

“Process standards,”  typically used by nations to protect industries using obsolete technology against foreign competition,  are forbidden by the international General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs,  brokered by the United Nations.  The GATT treaty,  however,  includes some exemptions for “process standards” adopted to protect the environment or the health and safety of workers.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Lo siento, Charlie”

Had Mexico won the case,  the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act and “dolphin safe” labeling might have been dismantled to avoid global trade sanctions against U.S. products.  But the World Trade Organization ruled in December 2018 that “The U.S. had justly denied Mexican tuna the use of the ‘dolphin safe’ label,”  summarized Colin Dwyer for National Public Radio.

“Though the label is not mandatory for tuna products to be sold in the U.S.,”  Dwyer explained,  “denying Mexico the label,  as the World Trade Organization itself observes,  “constitutes an ‘advantage’ on the U.S. market for tuna products.”

The World Trade Organization ruling cleared the way for the newly filed class action lawsuits.

The three cases are brought on behalf of different but overlapping sets of individual plaintiffs,  by the same legal teams,  drawn from four firms.

Among them are five lawyers from Bonnet Fairbourn Friedman & Balint,  of Phoenix,  Arizona;   Brian D. Penny of Goldman Scarlato & Penny PC,  in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania;  Brian M. Brown of Zaremba Brown PLLC,  in New York City;  and three lawyers from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP,  of San Diego,  California.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Fancy Feast

Summarizes the case against Nestle Purina PetCare Company,  setting forth the basic arguments in all three cases:  “Defendant markets,  sells,  and distributes tuna cat food products under its Fancy Feast brand.  Nestle is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, and is the second largest pet food company in the world and the largest in the United States.

“Recognizing that consumers expect its products to be responsibly sourced, Defendant promises consumers that its Fancy Feast tuna products are ‘Dolphin Safe’ by displaying a dolphin safe logo on every product label. Since the introduction of Defendant’s dolphin safe policy,  including the last four years,  however, Defendant’s Fancy Feast tuna products have not been ‘Dolphin Safe.’”

The basis of the consumer fraud allegation is that “U.S. tuna sellers,  including Defendant, initiated and implemented a widespread and long-term advertising and marketing campaign that continues to this day – representing to consumers that no dolphins were killed or harmed in capturing their tuna, as well as expressing their commitment to sustainably sourcing tuna.

98% of canned tuna is labeled “dolphin safe”

“In fact,”  the allegation continues,  “98% of the prepackaged tuna sold today in the U.S. for human consumption is labeled with some ‘dolphin safe’ representation.”

The filing against Nestle cites relevant product sourcing policy statements from Petco,  PetSmart,  Whole Foods Market,  the Giant Eagle grocery store chain, and Wegmans Food Markets.

The Nestle Purina PetCare Company,  however,  “elected not to utilize the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act official dolphin safe logo,”  instead using a different image incorporating the words “Dolphin Safe.”

“Alternative ‘dolphin safe’ logo”

“By placing an alternative ‘dolphin safe’ logo on Fancy Feast tuna products,  rather than the official mark,”  the filing against Nestle contends,  “Defendant voluntarily assumed the heightened dolphin safety requirements under the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act,  applicable to all locations where Defendant captures its tuna.

“Pursuant to the regulations,  Defendant must ensure that (1) ‘no dolphins were killed or seriously injured in the sets or other gear deployments in which the tuna were caught’;  and (2) ‘the label is supported by a tracking and verification program’ throughout the fishing,  transshipment and canning process,  ‘periodic audits and spot checks’ are conducted,  and Defendant must provide ‘timely access to data required.’”

Brands that actually are “dolphin safe”

Acknowledges the lawsuit,  “Several cat food tuna companies and companies that manufacture tuna products for human consumption use traditional pole-and-line and trolling methods of catching tuna,”  which are considered dolphin safe.

“These companies include American Tuna (for its Deck Hand Premium Cat Food and The Cat’s Fish brands) and Fish4Ever (for its tuna cat food sold in the U.K.),  Safe Catch,  Ocean Naturals (for its Albacore tuna),  Wild Planet,  Whole Foods 365 Everyday Value brand (for its skipjack and albacore tuna),  and Trader Joe’s.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Nestle Purina PetCare “is not among them”

The Nestle Purina PetCare Company “is not among the tuna companies that use only dolphin safe pole-and-line or trolling techniques to capture the tuna in its Fancy Feast tuna products,”  the complaint alleges.  “Nor does Defendant identify the dolphin-harming fishing methods it does use on product labels or on its website,  simply stating ‘our fish and seafood come from a variety of sources,  including wild fisheries in oceans around the world…’”

Contends the lawsuit,  “The unspecified ‘variety of sources’ principally include Thai Union Group, which is based in Thailand and known for its illegal,  unreported,  and unregulated fishing practices,  and its indiscriminate use of purse seine nets and longlines to capture tuna.”

What the lawsuits ask for

The cases against Bumble Bee Foods,  Starkist,  and the Nestle Purina PetCare Company each seek to establish a class action on behalf of all U.S. consumers who bought non-“dolphin safe” tuna in the belief that it was “dolphin safe.”

Each lawsuit also asks for “an order [from the court] declaring that Defendant has engaged in unlawful,  unfair,  and deceptive acts and practices in violation of [state] consumer fraud laws”;  an order “enjoining Defendant’s conduct and ordering Defendant to engage in a corrective advertising campaign”;  an order “Awarding restitution of Defendant’s revenues to plaintiffs and the proposed Class members;  an award of damages,  both statutory and punitive,  to the plaintiffs;  an award of “attorneys’ fees and costs”;  and “such further relief as may be just and proper.”

Campaign for Eco-Safe Tuna logo.

Starkist “doesn’t comment”

Elaborating on the case against Starkist in particular,  CBS Moneywatch correspondent Kate Gibson mentioned that “StarKist is also accused of violating federal racketeering law by knowingly doing business with foreign fishing companies whose practices don’t meet national dolphin-safe standards.”

A Starkist spokesperson emailed to CBS Moneywatch that while Starkist “doesn’t comment on pending legal matters,  the company is ‘committed’ to protecting dolphins and adopted a dolphin-safe policy in April 1990,”  Gibson said.

“Owned by South Korea’s Dongwon Industries,”  Gibson continued, “StarKist doesn’t buy tuna caught with gill nets or drift nets,”  according to the spokesperson,  and “’condemns the use of these indiscriminate fishing methods that trap dolphins,  whales and other marine life along with intended catch,’ the spokesperson added.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Chicken of the Sea

“Thai Union-owned Chicken of the Sea issued a similar statement,”  Gibson added,  “saying it ‘is committed to supporting the conservation of all marine species and ensures all our products are certified ‘Dolphin Safe.’

“Lion Capital-owned Bumble Bee did not immediately return requests for comment.”
Recalled Gibson,  “StarKist late last year agreed to plead guilty to felony price fixing as part of a broad collusion investigation of the canned tuna industry that also had Bumble Bee’s CEO and other executives facing charges.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tuna are sentient & suffering too

Focused as they are on the “dolphin safe” tuna issue,  the lawsuits against Bumble Bee Foods,  Starkist,  and the Nestle Purina PetCare Company make no mention of increasing concern that most tuna species themselves are overfished,  in some instances to commercial endangerment,  and increasing awareness that tuna––who are among the few warm-blooded fish––are as much sentient,  suffering creatures as dolphins.

“Tuna is the second biggest canned good product sold in the U.S.,  according to recent data from the Canned Food Alliance,”  reported Kat Smith for LiveKindly in February 2019,  profiling “vegan tuna” chefs and developers Chad and Derek Sarno,  co-founders of Good Catch Foods.

World Wildlife Fund poster.

Will plant-based “vegan tuna” help?

“On average,”  Smith recited,  “Americans eat about one billion pounds of canned and pouched tuna a year,  a figure only exceeded by coffee and sugar in sales per foot of supermarket shelf space.  The U.S. is the second largest consumer of canned tuna in the world.  Nearly half of all American households serve canned tuna at least once a month;  but many homes consume it weekly.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

The Sarnos believe their “proprietary six-legume blend” of chick peas,  soy,  green peas,  lentils,  fava and navy beans,  plus sea algae oil,  can displace a big chunk of the canned tuna market,  thereby saving dolphins,  sea turtles,  other “by-catch,”  much of which is wasted,  and tuna too.

But,  will cats eat it?

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Bait dogs” are docile victims to some pit bull  advocates, but “urban legend” to others

What is a “bait dog”?

First of all,  learn to distinguish a bona fide “bait dog” from a “click bait” dog, known to rescue insiders as a “donor bait” dog.

Fill in the blanks

This is the generic description of a “click bait” or “donor bait” dog,  as typically introduced to the public by a local television news broadcast,  or Facebook page,  or on YouTube:

“Law enforcement is investigating after a pit bull named (fill in the blank) by rescuers was found with severe injuries that are believed to have come from being a ‘bait dog’ by dogfighters.  

“He was lying beside the road up in the woods,”  the rescuer told X-TV.  “When I saw him I knew right away he was some kind of bait dog,” the rescuer said.

“The dog is now in the care of veterinarians at [insert name of clinic or shelter]. Donations to help the pit bull are being accepted.”

The ASPCA did not claim this severely neglected pit bull was a bait dog––but many rescues make “bait dog” claims about dogs found in similar condition.(ASPCA photo)

“Bait dogs” draw more donations than dumped dogs

Most likely that pit bull was never a “bait dog.”  More likely the pit bull got into a fight with another animal at his former home,  was taken out and dumped,  and was hit by a car as a wandering stray.

But the claim that a pit bull was a “bait dog” tends to attract much more public sympathy and support,  as rescuers have learned through long experience,  than acknowledging that the pit bull may have been dumped by irresponsible owners due to dangerous behavior.

“Brought to Calaveras County Animal Services by a good Samaritan,” according to text accompanying this Facebook photo,  this pit bull was clearly in a fight,  but there is no verification offered that it was as an alleged bait dog.

Fictitious history

Later,  when the ostensible “bait dog” is physically healed enough to rehome, the rescue or shelter trying to place the dog will speculate that the dog was too gentle,  too docile,  too good-natured to fight back when pitted against a more aggressive pit bull.

This pit bull who almost certainly was never fought at all,  or formally trained to fight,  may acquire a fictitious history as an allegedly successfully rehabilitated former fighting dog who ended up as a bait dog.

Then the pit bull will be adopted by someone in whose home he will repeat the same behavior that led to his being out beside the road where he was found by the rescuer who turned him into “click bait” or “donor bait.”

And of course more donations will be solicited to help the rescue or shelter recycle more “bait dogs.”

(Philippine Animal Welfare Society photo.)

Variations in the script

Sometimes there is a variation in the story.  Sometimes the purported “bait dogs” have actually been impounded in a raid on a dogfighting operation,  like many of the 216 pit bulls seized in a December 2,  2011 dogfighting raid in Indang,  Cavite province,  the Philippines.

Those dogs were “not in need of rehabbing,  as they were bait dogs,”  Island Rescue Organization founder Nena Hernandez asserted in an April 4,  2012 e-mail to 25 other dog rescuers.  To Hernandez,  the term “bait dog” appeared to connote a non-threatening victim,  who could be safely rehomed immediately.

Pit bull attacks smaller dog. (YouTube)

“Urban legend”

But to the Animal Farm Foundation,  of rural Dutchess County,  New York,  a pit bull advocacy organization founded in 1985 and long funded chiefly by literary agent Jane Rotrosen Berkey,   the term “bait dog” connotes instability and risk.

The Animal Farm Foundation on January 16,  2012 had appealed to pit bull advocates to “stop using the term ‘bait dog.'”  Said the Animal Farm Foundation statement,  “The dogfighting investigators we’ve consulted overwhelmingly agree that ‘bait dogs’ are mostly an urban legend.”

This appears to be still the Animal Farm Foundation position.

(ASPCA photo)

“Not commonly found”

On a “myth busting” page,  the Animal Farm Foundation elaborates,  “Bait dog” is a term that is used to label dogs that have been used in dog fighting. Sadly, bait dogs do exist,  but they are not commonly found in shelters.  Law enforcement professionals have taught us that bait dogs are very rarely found alive in their investigations;  however,  an unusually large number of dogs are being labeled as ‘bait dogs,’  based on nothing more than speculation about the dog’s past,”  mostly because the dogs in question bear scars indicative of having survived one or more serious fights.

The 2012 Animal Farm Foundation statement noted “many possible explanations why a shelter dog might present with injuries:  getting hit by a car,  mange,  having a scuffle with another animal, birth defects,  etc.  When we label these dogs as ‘bait dogs,'”  the posting reminded,  “we’re implying more than we actually know.”

Alleged dogfighter’s premises. Dogfighters customarily chain pit bulls just out of reach of each other, believing this will whet their instinct to fight.  (ASPCA photo)

“Demonizing the fighting dog”

“The ‘bait dog’ label carries baggage,”  the 2012 Animal Farm Foundation statement continued,   “and people make assumptions about how ‘bait dogs’ will behave…Every time you use the ‘bait dog’ label,  you demonize the ‘fighting dog’ who supposedly caused those injuries.”

Ubiquitous as the term “bait dog” has become,  it appears to be of surprisingly recent origin.  Using the search engines NewsLibrary,  NewspaperArchive,  Culturomics,  and the archives of the New York Times,  ANIMALS 24-7 has discovered no mention of “bait dogs” in mainstream media predating January 13,  1996.

Pit bulls were used in rat-killing contest at Kit Burns’ Tavern in mid-19th century New York City.

Term came from “baiting dogs”

But that first mention,  in an Albany Times Union item headlined “Pit Bull is More Victim Than Criminal,”  linked the concept of “bait dog” to the centuries-old use of “baiting dogs” to torment tethered animals as a cruel amusement.

“Baiting dogs” could be either the dogs used to attack tethered bulls,  bears,  or other species including other dogs,  or might be tethered for other dogs to kill.

The term “baiting dog” was not used consistently.  The same dog who was set against tied victims when young and healthy,  or used to kill rats in a pit,  often became the tethered victim later,  after suffering a disabling injury or showing a lack of interest in killing a baiting opponent.

Dogfighting when the Ku Klux Klan dominated Southern law enforcement.

Setting closely matched dogs against each other as a gambling pursuit gained popularity in the fast-growing waterfront cities of the 19th century,  where bulls and wildlife for traditional baiting were relatively inaccessible.

“Cajun rules”

After the U.S. Civil War,  however,  the intertwined rise of societies for the suppression of vice,  including gambling,  and the early humane movement combined to drive dogfighting out of most of the North and West.

Dogfighting survived mainly in the South,  where fighting conducted according to “Cajun rules” became the predominant style.  Most of what is commonly believed about dogfighting by people other than “dogmen” is based on literary and film depictions of Cajun rules dogfighting.

But even within the conventions of Cajun rules dogfighting,  dog training regimens vary.

Dogfight in progress.  (Historical image, source,  place,  & date unknown.)

Sadists & gamblers

Moreover,  as dogfighting spread back out of the South to the rest of the U.S. and the world in recent decades,  the emphasis shifted from matched events held to entertain bettors,  back toward setting dogs on other animals as sadistic entertainment apart from gambling interest,  with no pretense that the victim animals have any chance to “win.”

The contemporary concept of a “bait dog” appears to have evolved from common traditional practices of Cajun rules dogfighters–which have changed over time.

Kittens are often used to “train” fighting dogs.

Helpless victims

Classically,  in the early stages of training,  a prospective fighting dog is offered the opportunity to attack several relatively helpless victims,  such as stray dogs,  puppies,  kittens,  or crudely declawed cats.  These “bait” animals do not survive the encounters.

For many “dogmen,”  this is the extent of the “sport,”  but for those participating in serious gambling matches,  a prospective fighting dog who demonstrates the instinct and ability to rip harmless animals apart may next be introduced to one or more “sparring partners” whose behavior and abilities will more nearly approximate what the dog will later encounter in a gambling fight.

The purpose is not only to prepare the fighting dog to win in a fight for money,  but also to reassure the trainers that they will not lose their investment.

Actual “bait dogs”

Many dogfighters these days skip this second phase of traditional fighting dog training,  and sometimes the first phase too.  Some test their fighting dogs only in muzzled “rolls” with related dogs,  to avoid injury to the fighting dogs which might inhibit their success in a gambling match.

But among dogmen who still follow the traditional training regimen,  the second-stage “bait dogs” will usually be other pit bulls.  Submissive pit bulls who whimper and cringe,  roll over,  or run away will not give the fighting dog adequate training.

This was a bona fide fighting dog.(ASPCA photo)

Which pit bulls become “bait dogs”?

The “bait dog” at the second stage of training is a dog who will respond to aggression with aggression,  and will put up at least the semblance of a fight.  This “bait dog” may be a stolen pit bull who has not actually been trained to fight,  or a pit bull who has flunked out of fighting training at an earlier stage,  or a fighting pit bull who has been injured beyond having a good prognosis for winning a gambling fight.

To ensure that the future fighting dog wins and the “bait dog” loses,  “bait dogs” are often starved and dehydrated,  as were the dogs seized in Laguna,  the Philippines,  in December 2011.

This pit bull puppy grew up to kill a child.

Armed & dangerous

But a second-level “bait dog” has to be willing to fight–to retain the trait of “gameness.”  And promoters of televised dogfighting spectacles,  such as those that were conducted at Laguna,  may be more interested in the “show” of a fight,  however one-sided,   than in staging an actual contest.

Since the promoters in the Laguna case owned the dogs on either side of each fight,  the outcomes may have been rigged to reap maximum profit from gamblers in South Korea who had no ownership stake in the dogs.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Every dog in such a situation may,  in short,  be both a “bait dog” and a “fighting dog,”  depending on the match,  and––like any so-called “bait dog”––must be considered “armed and dangerous.”

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Doug Rae.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Humane Society of Fremont County director Rae was would-be savior of Pueblo no-kill experiment while his own shelter allegedly went to hell

            CANON CITY,  Colorado––Five weeks after Humane Society of Fremont County executive director Doug Rae told Pueblo Chieftan reporter Tracy Harmon that he knew how to “turn around” the Pueblo Animal Services shelter,  following three months of mismanagement by the no-kill Community Animal Services of Pueblo,  Rae and the Humane Society of Fremont County are in similar deep excrement themselves.

Reported Tony Kovaleski of “the Denver Channel,”  KMGH-Channel 7,  “Accusations against the Humane Society of Fremont County include warehousing dogs [in a manner] that creates unnecessary suffering,  using expired euthanizing medications,  allowing dogs with bite histories to go to a home with a child,  and poorly managing dogs who go crazy from prolonged stays in a caged environment.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Five staff resigned

Five Humane Society of Fremont County staff resigned in mid-April 2019 and took their complaints to the humane society board,  just two weeks after Rae suggested that the Humane Society of Fremont County might be able to bail out the mess at the Pueblo Animal Services shelter.

Rae on March 28,  2019 wrote to the Pueblo city and county governments that he and Humane Society of Fremont County shelter manager Kelly Ramos “logged a combined 152 hours in just one week” trying to help Community Animal Services of Pueblo,  just before the organization surrendered the shelter management contract.

The Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region,  which previously managed the Pueblo Animal Services shelter,  returned to managing it on April 9,  2019.

(See “No-kill” debacle: will Pueblo bring “responsible sheltering” into vogue?)

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Suffering,  going crazy”

“We are drowning in dogs who shouldn’t be in kennels, who are suffering, who are going crazy,”  Humane Society of Fremont County volunteer Kathy McGregor told Kovaleski.  “We are not allowed to tell anybody about it.”

Said Kovaleski,  “An example of the problems at the shelter is a dog named Toy Man,”  a black Labrador mix.  “The dog was recently allowed to go home with a couple who had a young child.  Insiders said Toy Man had a bite history and should not have been allowed into a home with a young child.

“Within days of leaving the shelter,  Toy Man bit again,”  Kovaleski continued.  “Former employees and the shelter have confirmed he bit the young child in the face,  causing more than 40 stitches.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Expired euthanasia drugs

On the rare occasions when Rae authorized euthanasia,  former Humane Society of Fremont County employee Taylor Staton told Kovaleski,  “We only had expired euthanizing drugs––expired by like three or four years.”

The drugs in question,  two bottles of Fatal Plus,  are rated by the manufacturer as having a shelf life of two years.  While Fatal Plus may remain lethal indefinitely,  anecdotally it gradually becomes inconsistent as it ages past the rated shelf life.

Staton quit after seven months at the Humane Society of Fremont County.

Kelly Ramos (top left); Taylor Staton (top right); all five resignees, bottom.

“I would go home & just lose it”

Another of Kovaleski’s sources,  Kelly Ramos,  the shelter manager throughout Rae’s tenure,  told Kovaleski on camera,  “I would go home at night and just lose it. I mean,  the job is hard enough without having to be made to use expired drugs to euthanize animals and watch them suffer and die.”

Reported Kovaleski,  “Ramos and others said shelter director Doug Rae was responsible for the decision to use the expired medications and not replace them with current meds.”

Ramos,  Rae’s first hire after he became executive director of the Humane Society of Fremont County,  had been his most trusted employee.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Rae:  “I could not be prouder of Kelly”

Posted Rae to Facebook on March 22,  2019,  of his attempted intervention at the Pueblo Animal Shelter,  with Ramos at his side,  “I instructed Kelly to take the operational lead for the entire shelter and to start making wholesale improvements and changes. I gave Kelly full authority to do whatever she wanted to do. And boy did she.

“As I was moving quickly from one end of the shelter to the other with a note pad in hand,”  Rae wrote,  “I noticed that Kelly seemed to be in her zone more than usual. It was quite something to see Kelly directing  employees she  just met minutes earlier,  getting dirty with every aspect of operations.

“I could not be any prouder of Kelly for the job she did. Kelly was remarkable.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Flunked state inspection

Ramos’ criticisms of Rae’s management were affirmed by a surprise inspection from investigators with Colorado’s Department of Agriculture,   Kovaleski said.

The inspection “uncovered more than a half dozen violations” of state laws and regulations,  Kovaleski summarized.

“Many in the group [of current and former Humane Society of Fremont County personnel who came forward] said the heart of the issue is the shelter’s focus on its ‘no kill’ philosophy,”  specifically trying to maintain a 90% “live release” rate.

Nathan Winograd.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Winograd said Rae ran one of two best shelters

Maintaining a 90% “live release rate” is the definition of “no kill” propounded by the Best Friends Animal Society,  Maddie’s Fund,  and the No Kill Advocacy Center.

Rae,  a former Hickory Farms operations manager,  in a 2009 interview credited his interest in humane work to having met No Kill Advocacy Center founder Nathan Winograd at a Best Friends No More Homeless Pets conference in 2002.  Rae has said he attended the conference after having had to euthanize his own dog after the dog mauled a child and he could not find a no-kill shelter to accept the dog.

Winograd in 2017 honored the Humane Society of Fremont County under Rae’s management as purportedly one of the two best in the country.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why 90% “live release” rate is 100% nuts

But using a “90% live release rate” as a measure of animal shelter performance is that it fails to take into account that far more than 10% of the animals a shelter receives may be inappropriate for rehoming,  especially if successful spay/neuter programs minimize intake of accidental and unwanted puppies and kittens.

As the number of heathy and recoverable animals a shelter receives drops,  the number of dangerous dogs the shelter receives may hold steady,  for instance,  yet become an ever higher percentage of the animals in the shelter.  This in turn means the shelter cannot continue to have a 90% “live release” rate without taking ever more chances in rehoming dangerous dogs.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“I didn’t see this coming”

“During a 25-minute on-camera interview,”  Kovaleski said,  “Rae took personal responsibility and accountability for everything addressed by his former employees and volunteers.  At the end of the interview, Rae started tearing up and said,  ‘It just hurts, it just hurts.  I should have never let this happen.  But it’s not going to happen again.  You have my word on that.  I think I’ve learned a wicked big lesson here.’”

Rae,  who has lost several previous shelter management jobs for similar reasons,  also insisted to Kovaleski,  “I didn’t see this coming for the life of me.”

Current and former Humane Society of Fremont County staff and volunteers wondered on social media how Rae could have walked through the kennels for the four and a half years since he was hired without seeing the severity of the problems that the Colorado’s Department of Agriculture inspections confirmed.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Rae claimed he could teach Pueblo how

An equally obvious question is why Rae believed he could resolve the problems at the Pueblo Animal Services shelter while similar problems festered at the Humane Society of Fremont County,  literally right under his nose.

Wrote Rae on March 28,  2019 to the city council and county commissioners of Pueblo,  “There is no reason why the Pueblo Animal Shelter cannot have the same success,  the same prestige,  the same trust of the community,  elected officials, and the media,”  as he claimed for the Humane Society of Fremont Count.

“In fact, in order to see that happen,”  Rae said,  “I reached out to several people at Community Animal Services of Pueblo after it was awarded the contract [to manage the Pueblo Animal Shelter] and asked how Fremont Humane could help.  I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to make sure this transition was as smooth as possible.  I was also ready to welcome Community Animal Services of Pueblo employees to Fremont to be trained and/or send my staff up to Community Animal Services of Pueblo to make sure that CASP employees were adequately trained and followed progressive,  professional protocols that exceed industry standards.  None of that happened.”

Pueblo also followed the Winograd formula

Community Animal Services of Pueblo was established by the 40-year-old Pueblo no-kill organization PAWS for Life,  which––like Rae––promotes the 90% “live release” rate,  and promised to get the city and county of Pueblo to that goal.

Said Rae,  “I can confidently say that Community Animal Services of Pueblo failed because of a dysfunctional PAWS board that has no idea how to manage the Pueblo facility.”

After Community Animal Services of Pueblo surrendered the Pueblo Animal Shelter management contract,  Rae hired at least three former CASP employees to replace the five Humane Society of Fremont County personnel who resigned,  reported Tracy Harmon for the Pueblo Chieftan.

Doug Rae

“It absolutely worked out”

“I would have really been in trouble had I not worked in Pueblo and got to know some of the Community Animal Services of Pueblo staff there.  The stars must have been aligned because it absolutely worked out,”  Rae told Harmon.

Rae said then,  on April 26,  2019,  that the resignees had, “Done everything they can to try to get me fired or to resign,  but I didn’t fire anybody;  they all quit.”

The new staff,  Rae said,  “are wicked nice, and because of Pueblo we are okay.”

Rae arrived at the Humane Society of Fremont County after brief and often controversial animal shelter management stints in Phoenix, Maryland,  where he lasted two and a half years;  Philadelphia,  where a no-kill animal control agency formed with Nathan Winograd’s guidance lost the animal control contract 13 months after Rae was hired;  Indianapolis,  where he lasted less than a year as animal control chief;  and Warren, Rhode Island.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Dangerous dogs

Much of the controversy surrounding Rae at each stop has been associated with dangerous dogs,  especially pit bulls,  who were reportedly about 80% of the dog intake Rae handled in Philadelphia and about a third of the dog intake in Indianapolis,  but 50% of the dogs who were killed because they could not be rehomed.

Despite the numbers, Rae prominently opposed then-Indianapolis city council member Mike Speedy’s 2009 attempt to pass an ordinance requiring that pit bulls be sterilized.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

The Speedy draft ordinance was modeled on legislation in effect in San Francisco since 2006 that within two years cut pit bull intake at the city shelter by more than half.

Speedy was soon afterward elected to the Indiana state legislature,  where he has served since 2010.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Frustration at lack of help fuels defense of cockfighting against U.S. federal “meddling” 

            SAN JUAN,  Puerto Rico––Puerto Rican cockfighters and politicians who boast of standing beside them may have been the only winners when U.S. Representative Chip Roy on May 24,  2019 blocked more than $900 million in disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Maria.

Roy,  a Republican representing the hill country between Austin and San Antonio,  Texas,  cast the only vote against a $19 billion disaster relief package,  which would have helped communities hit by hurricanes,  flooding,  earthquakes,  and wildfires throughout the U.S. and U.S.-held territories.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Aid bill was backed by both Republicans & Democrats

The disaster relief bill had already cleared the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate by an 85-8 margin,  but had to win unanimous consent from the House of Representatives to take effect,  since so many members of the House had already left for the week-long Memorial Day recess that a quorum could not be obtained for a roll call vote.

Passage of the bill is now stalled until early June.

A two-week delay is therefore expected in apportioning relief for Puerto Rico,  still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria.  Hitting in the last days of September/October 2017,  Hurricane Maria killed at least 3,057 people,  2,975 of them in Puerto Rico,  and destroyed or damaged most of the roads and electric power grid on the island.

(Greg Robbins photo)

Cockfighting banned by 2018 Farm Bill

The disaster relief bill has nothing directly to do with cockfighting,  but––on top of 20 months’ worth of insults to Puerto Ricans issued by U.S. President Donald Trump,  while hurricane recovery aid has repeatedly been delayed––can be expected to feed simmering anger toward the U.S. government.

The pro-cockfighting Puerto Rican political regime has enlisted that anger and frustration in a culture-based defense of the cockfighting industry against a provision of the 2018 Farm Bill that extended a 2012 U.S. federal law prohibiting attendance at cockfights to all U.S.-held territories,  effective on January 1,  2020.

Cockfighting visibly persists in all five self-governing U.S. territories,  among them Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean region,  plus Guam,  the Mariana Islands,  and American Samoa in the Pacific region.  Among them,  cockfighting has the largest economic presence,  albeit often exaggerated by cockfighting defenders,  in Puerto Rico.

Ricardo Rosselló, Ricardo Llerandi, and Jenniffer González-Colón standing beside cockfighters.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Puerto Rican government sues to overturn ban

Only one day before Texas Representative Chip Roy delayed the disaster relief package,  Puerto Rico chief of staff Ricardo Llerandi on May 23,  2019 announced that the Puerto Rican government had filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit against enforcement of the cockfighting ban brought by the Club Gallístico de Puerto Rico in San Juan federal court.

Declared Llerandi in a prepared statement,  “We have been and we will be beside the cockfighters.”

Puerto Rican governor Ricardo Rosselló,  a Democrat,  and resident commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón,  a Repubican,  both actively lobbied Congress to try to get the cockfighting ban removed from the 2018 Farm Bill.

Rosselló,  however,  flew to Washington D.C. to lobby in person a day too late:  the 2018 Farm Bill passed before his flight landed.

Cockfighting stadium.  (Greg Robbins photo)

Police prohibited from busting cockfights

Since then,  Rosselló,  González-Colón,   and other Puerto Rican politicians have waged a rear-guard defense of cockfighting at the local level.

Gonzalez-Colon has alleged that “prohibition of cockfighting will likely force the highly regulated industry in Puerto Rico to become an underground industry,  without the safeguards or the oversight of the local government,  bringing cockfights back to our streets,  absent of local control or government oversight,  resulting in risks that could,  overall,  hurt the community health or public safety.”

And Rosselló,  González-Colón,  and their allies have worked to ensure that this will happen.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz,  for instance,  in January 2019 signed an ordinance prohibiting city police from arresting cockfighters and cockfight attendees.

Explained Making Sen$e correspondent Gabriela Martinez,  “Federal authorities could still work to shut down the matches,  but they would likely not receive help from local law enforcement,  at least in San Juan.”

(Greg Robbins photo)

Cockfighting claimed as “cultural right”

Days earlier,  the Puerto Rico’s Chamber of Representatives approved a resolution asking Congress to either repeal the cockfighting ban “or allow a five-year transitional period before implementation of the ban,”  Martinez wrote.

“The resolution argues,”  Martinez summarized,  “that cockfighting was established as a cultural right under a 2007 law,  in the context of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,  which declares that ‘everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community,  to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

“Not all Puerto Ricans consider cockfighting an intrinsic aspect of the culture,”  Martinez acknowledged.

(Greg Robbins photo)

Only a third of Puerto Rican voters have been to a cockfight

Martinez cited a survey of 1,000 Puerto Rican registered voters conducted for the Humane Society of the U.S.

According the HSUS president Kitty Block,  the survey found that 43% of Puerto Ricans supported prohibition of cockfighting,  21% favored legal cockfighting,  and 36% were undecided.

Perhaps more telling,  blogged Block,  “Only about a third had ever attended a cockfight.”

Bad Bunny (Facebook photo)

Bad Bunny against government defense of cockfights

Observed Martinez,  “Women’s rights organizations,  such as Colectiva Feminista en Acción, columnists for the island’s main newspapers,  and even musical artist Bad Bunny [the reggae singer Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio] have criticized the government for focusing on saving cockfights while ignoring the increasing rates of gender violence on the island.”

Chantal Benet, an economist at the independent consulting firm Inteligencia Económica, told Martinez that,  as Martinez paraphrased,  “If the ban is enacted,  entire communities will have to transition from an informal economy that relied on the cockfighting industry,  including animal feed stores and restaurants that serve the clientele of cockfighting venues,  to an economy that relies more heavily on traditional businesses,  such as selling chicken for food production.  The loss [of cockfighting income] will be particularly acute in rural areas,”  Benet predicted,  “which are considerably poorer than the island’s cities.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Economic claims at odds with reality

But Benet’s statements,  as well as the economic claims of the defenders of cockfighting in the Puerto Rican government,  were at odds with the reality that only one cockfighting venue on the island,  the tourist-oriented Coliseo Isla Verde stadium in San Juan,  actually brings money into Puerto Rico.

All the rest merely recycle the wages of workers who bet on cockfights into the hands of those who run the cockpits and ancillary businesses,  helping to keep poor people poor.

Puerto Rico currently claims “nearly 80” licensed cockfighting clubs,   down from 86 in 2012,  103 in 2007,  and 110 in 2003.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting employment plummets

Gonzalez-Colon told media that cockfighting in Puerto Rico currently “accounts for $18 million in economic activity and provides jobs to nearly 27,000 people.”

As recently as 2007,  however,  the Puerto Rico Sports & Recreation Department told Associated Press reporter David McFadden that cockfighting employed about 50,000 people “in a direct or indirect manner.”

Circa 2000 the Puerto Rican cockfighting industry was said to employ 100,000 people.

At that time cockfighting was said to generate nearly $400 million per year in ticket sales,  with total cockfighting attendance of 1.25 million.  More recent estimates have fallen steadily,  from $100 million to $30 million to the present $18 million.

Roberto Clemente  (Beth Clifton collage)

Baseball interest & income dwarf cockfighting

The Puerto Rico Sports & Recreation Department has claimed that more Puerto Ricans attend cockfights than watch baseball,  but the only year in which that ever appears to have been true was 2007,   when the Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente, formerly known as Liga de Béisbol Profesional de Puerto Rico,  suspended play for the first and only time since the league formed in 1938.

Searching NewsPaperArchive.com and NewsLibrary.com,  and counting only articles published in Spanish,  ANIMALS 24-7 found that baseball coverage has easily exceeded cockfighting coverage by Puerto Rican media in every decade since 1950,  by a margin of about 40% until the 1980s.

Then,  as the number of Puerto Ricans playing in the U.S. major leagues soared,  baseball coverage rose to eclipse cockfighting coverage by a current ratio of about ten-to-one,  according to NewspaperArchive.com,  which includes only print media,  and more than 140-to-one according to NewsLibrary.com,  which includes both print and electronic media.

If cockfighting is currently worth about $18 million per year to the Puerto Rican economy,  it is worth about $2 million less per year than the top-paid four Puerto Rican major league players,  among 28 on current major league rosters.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cockfighting came with slavery

Like baseball,  cockfighting is a cultural transplant to Puerto Rico.  Spanish invaders are believed to have introduced cockfighting to Puerto Rico,  along with human slavery,  in the 16th century.  The first governmental recognition of cockfighting came in April 1770.

Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico in 1873.

Cockfighting was abolished as well,  after the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico in 1898,  one year after the introduction of baseball.

While baseball soon caught on as the Puerto Rican national sport,  cockfighting all but vanished from the public record until August 1933.

Entering 1933,  cockfighting was illegal in all 48 states and most U.S. territories.

(Southern Poverty Law Center photo)

How the KKK brought cockfighting back to Puerto Rico

Within the U.S.,  however,  the Ku Klux Klan had great influence among Southern elected officials,  then mostly Democrats,  and within Southern law enforcement.

The KKK funded itself in large part by protecting moonshiners,  cockfighters,  and dogfighters from arrest.

Of these criminal activities,  moonshining was by far the most lucrative for the KKK,  since the sale of alcoholic beverages had been federally prohibited since 1919.  This made the entire alcoholic beverage industry a monopoly controlled by organized crime,  the KKK as much as the mafia organized crime families.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt,  a Democrat,  ran for the U.S. presidency in 1932,  on a platform that included ending the federal prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages,  the KKK responded to the potential loss of payoffs from moonshiners by trying to make lifting prohibition of cockfighting a part of the deal––while remaining in control of it.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Robert Hayes Gore

To win Democratic support in the South and Midwest,  needed to secure his nomination,  the Roosevelt campaign helped several cockfighting enthusiasts to get elected to Congress at the same time Roosevelt himself was elected  and and appointed several others to politically influential positions.

This was not because Roosevelt favored cockfighting,  but because he was apparently oblivious to it in his quest to find allies for abolishing prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

Ironically,  Roosevelt expected abolishing prohibition of alcoholic beverages to break organized crime,  including the KKK as well as the mafia crime families.

Most notoriously,  Roosevelt appointed Kentucky-born cockfighting enthusiast Robert Hayes Gore (1886-1972),  then a newspaper publisher in Terre Haute,  Indiana,  a KKK bastion,  to become Governor of Puerto Rico.

Robert Hayes Gore

Gore’s legacy

James R. Beverley,  a Texan who had served two terms as Governor of Puerto Rico,  undid the Puerto Rican ban on cockfighting as one of his last acts before leaving office,  and then Robert Hayes Gore in his July 1, 1933 inauguration speech declared his intent to boost the Puerto Rican economy by reintroducing and promoting cockfighting,  35 years––a full generation plus––after it had virtually disappeared.

Gore less than a week later attended a cockfight organized in his honor.

Gore was removed from office due to corruption and incompetence within less than eight months.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Unfortunately, Hayes’ legacy and that of the other cockfighting enthusiasts who came to power with Roosevelt was that much of 50 years of legislative progress toward abolishing cockfighting was undone,  especially in the Southern and Southwestern states,  and has had to be redone in our own time.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

“Or,  are you a big kid?”

            LOS ANGELES––“Tux wants to know if you have a kid he can play with?  Or,  are you a big kid?  Meet him at #AkitaRanch,  28930 Ellis Ave, Romoland, CA,”  Passion for Paws Akita Rescue posted to Facebook on May 25,  2019.

Responding to the posting,  the most recent of many that have solicited a home for Tux since Valentine’s Day 2019,  a seven-year-old girl and her parents visited Tux at the Passion for Paws Akita Ranch at about noon the following day.  Their introduction,  according to a Riverside County Animal Services media release,  was supervised by Akita Ranch staff members.

1,000 sutures––but “The dog is not aggressive”

The two-year-old male Akita “lunged at the girl and bit her on the right side of her face.  She suffered puncture wounds and the injuries required three hours of surgery.  Doctors used approximately 1,000 sutures in caring for her wounds,”  the Riverside County Animal Services media release summarized.

Tux,  the release continued,  “was from a Los Angeles-area shelter and had been in that shelter for about a month before he was rescued by the Romoland-based group in early February.

“Animal Services Officer Carra Mathewson retrieved the dog for a quarantine period,”  the release said.  “Officer Mathewson asked [rescue founder and president Cheryl Weatherford] if she would like to surrender the dog for euthanasia.  The owner declined and said that the dog is not aggressive,  nor had he illustrated any aggressive behavior in the past.

Euthanasia hearing

“Due to the severity of the attack,”  the Riverside County Animal Services media release explained,  “Officer Mathewson and her supervisor,  Sergeant Lesley Huennekens,  sought a destruction order at a public hearing.  The victim’s father provided testimony,  via telephone,  as did a representative of the rescue organization.  That individual did not witness the attack,  but she testified that the girl reportedly put her face to the dog’s face and the parents were advised against such actions.”

The Riverside County hearing office,  who is “independent of Animal Services,”  the release said,  is expected to render a verdict on June 3,  2019.

Four dogs identified by Riverside Animal Services as having come from Passion for Paws Akita Rescue and having been involved in previous attacks.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Five priors involving dogs “at or from” the same rescue

Meanwhile,  Riverside County Animal Services said,  “The investigation includes looking into a handful of other serious bites involving dogs from the kennel,”  which is “home base for a rescue organization specializing in saving Akitas from Southern California-based shelters,  including Riverside County Animal Services.  At least five other serious bites involving dogs at or from this kennel have occurred,  dating to 2013 – and two as recently as 2018.”

Specifically,  Riverside County Animal Services mentioned,  “In November 2017 a man adopted a dog from the rescue but returned the dog after he was attacked and suffered bite wounds to both arms.  A similar incident happened in February 2018,  when a man adopted a dog,  but was bitten on his hands and arms.  Both adopters returned the dogs.  Animal Services issued dangerous dog restraining orders for both.”

Robert Steven Kahn

Accepted Akita who had already attacked three children

Passion for Paws Akita Rescue has also accepted Akitas who already had attack history for attempted rehabilitation and rehoming.

Most notoriously,  Passion for Paws Akita Rescue in January 2014 took in a 90-pound Akita named Chester,  who had attacked children on at least three occasions.

On December 28,  2013,  Robert Steven Kahn,  then 63,  of Murietta,  California,  took Chester,  leashed,  into the garden center of the Lowe’s Home Improvement store in Murietta “and allowed a 3-year-old boy to pet Chester, even though the dog had shown aggression toward children twice before,”  detailed Sarah Burge of the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

“After the dog bit and seriously injured the boy,  Kahn apologized to the child’s father,  but hurried out of the store without leaving his name or contact information.  The toddler required 50 sutures for injuries to his face and neck.  Police tracked down Kahn and arrested him a few days later.

Chester

Pleaded guilty to felony negligence

“Prosecutors said the previous incidents of aggression occurred in October and November 2013,”  Burge continued.  “In the first,  Chester was in his front yard when he tried to bite a 5-year-old boy who reached out to pet him,  leaving a scrape on the child’s hand.  In the second, Kahn was at a Home Depot store with Chester when the dog bit a child on the elbow.  The bite didn’t break the skin.  Neither incident was reported to authorities.”

Kahn of Murrieta, California,  then 63,  pleaded guilty to felony negligence at the Southwest Justice Center in French Valley,  California.

Judge Judith Clark sentenced Kahn to six months’ work release or house arrest,  plus three years’ probation,  during which time Kahn was not allowed to have a dog.

Passion for Paws Akita Rescue vice president Lysette Tidwell.
(Jeopardy contestant photo)

“We have to take particular care”

“Akitas are a breed that we have to take particular care in placing if they are placeable at all,”  Passsion for Paws Akita Rescue founder Cheryl Weatherfold told Riverside Press-Enterprise reporter Aaron Claverie then.

“In my personal opinion,”  Weatherford added,  “Chester should not be a dog who is allowed out in public and he should not be in any household where there is a chance of any kind of interaction with a child,” she said.

Weatherford has not commented on the attack by Tux.

But Tux was still listed as available for adoption six days after the attack.

Cheryl Weatherford.
(Facebook)

“Tux was not a threat when evaluated”

Asked Akita enthusiast Rachel Benson on the Passionate for Paws Akita Rescue page on Facebook,  “This dog attacked a child’s face requiring extensive surgery.  Why is he on here as suitable for a home with children?  Why is he on here at all?”

Responded Kassandra Peterson,  apparently representing Passionate for Paws Akita Rescue,  “The dog was not a threat when evaluated,”  a comment giving more weight to a pre-attack assessment than to the reality that Tux disfigured a child for life.

“He should not have been left with a strange family unsupervised,”  Peterson continued,  disregarding the Riverside County Animal Services report that “staff members,”  plural,  were present.

Tux “also shouldn’t have been wrestled with by the father,”  Peterson went on,  failing to cite any evidence that any such thing occurred,  “and the little girl shouldn’t have been in the dog’s space while he was still learning/meeting strangers.”

Refer back to the Passionate for Paws Akita Rescue promotional posting:  “Tux wants to know if you have a kid he can play with?”

“New rules should be put in place,”  Peterson finished,  “and we will all strive to do better.”

“Dogs who need space are good dogs”––until they aren’t

Passionate for Paws Akita Rescue vice president Lysette Tidwell on May 30,  2019 reposted a May 22,  2019 comment by one Sarah Gagnon,  who alleged that “Dogs who wear muzzles are good dogs.  Dogs who aren’t dog friendly are good dogs.  Dogs who are leash reactive are good dogs.  Dogs who need space are good dogs.”

The law in California,  a “strict liability” state,  does not agree.  A dog owner is liable in California for any damage the dog does,  meaning that the onus is on dog owners,  including rescues,  to prevent dangerous situations from occurring.

Cheryl Weatherford founded Passion for Paws Akita Rescue in 2004 in memory of her son Paxton David Weatherford,  1971-2004,   “who passed away from a rare form of cancer after only a nine-day battle,”  according to the Passion for Paws web site.

Continues the web site,  “Paxton loved animals,  and brought Cheryl her first Akita,  an extra large white male named Zeus,”  who was among the 85 survivors of a January 2001 fire that razed the Escondido Humane Society shelter in Kit Carson Park,  killing more than 115 animals.

(Passion for Paws Akita Rescue photo)

The numbers

           “Since our beginning,”  the web site says,  “we have saved the lives of over 2,000 Akitas and other large-breed dogs.  In 2010 we established the #AkitaRanch facility to provide for the temporary housing and care of dogs in need.  We have the capacity for 25 dogs at a time,  and when space is unavailable, dogs are placed in foster care.  The average stay is 140 days per dog.  We do not turn away dogs based on sickness, injury,  age,  or attitude.”

The web site numbers suggest that Passion for Paws Akita Rescue rehomes an average of 133 dogs per year,  who would require 18,620 days of kennel time,  or more than twice the actual capacity of the shelter (9,125 kennel days).  Presumably fostering accounts for the balance.

Raising an average of just over $100,000 per year through 2015,  according to the most recent available Passion for Paws filing of IRS Form 990,  Akita Rescue is based in La Jolla,  where Weatherford lives,  just north of San Diego.

Passion for Paws Akita Rescue is,  however,  a member of No-Kill Los Angeles,  a 140-plus-member coalition formed by the Best Friends Animal Society to try to turn Los Angeles into a no-kill city.  The Akita Ranch rescue shelter in Romoland is about 90 minutes by car,  in normal traffic,  from either La Jolla or Los Angeles.

Helicopter photo of Akita, possibly the one who killed Carol Harris in 2017 (see below), shows markings similar to those on this Akita (two views of one dog) on the Facebook page of Akita Advocates.

More Akita mayhem

As well as the Akita-related incidents known to have involved Passion for Paws Akita Rescue in some manner,  the Los Angeles/San Diego region has experienced many others.

Among the most serious were three attacks that in March 2015 brought felony charges for “negligence of owner of mischievous animal causing injury” against Cheryl Hargrove Hooks,  56,  variously identified as a resident of Los Angeles,  North Hollywood,  and Studio City.

Hooks pleaded “not guilty” in September 2015,  after which the case seems to have disappeared from the public record.

“The felony charges came in the wake of an NBC4 I-Team investigation,  which revealed how Hooks’ Akita,  named Brody,  viciously attacked a woman in April 2013,  then mauled a 7-year-old boy the next year,  and then ripped off part of a man’s face,”  reported NBC4 I-Team members Joel Grover and Matt Schrader.

“After each instance,”  Grover and Schrader added,  “the I-Team learned that the city of Los Angeles failed to impound the dog.”

Carol Harris

Phoenix rescue fatality

The most recent Akita-inflicted fatality,  the ninth since ANIMALS 24-7 began logging fatal and disfiguring dog attacks in 1982,  was Carol Harris,  69,  a 12-year volunteer for Akita Advocates Relocation Team Arizona,  killed on December 20,  2017 when an Akita of as yet undisclosed history mauled her during a socialization session at the Canine Country Club & Feline Inn in Phoenix,  where Akita Advocates rented kennel space.

Carol Harris had reportedly handled as many as 500 Akitas since becoming involved in rescue.

(See Akita rescuer Carol Harris is record 5th fatality of 2017 by shelter dogs.)

            Insisted Kenneth Harris,  her husband of only 12 days short of 50 years,  “Akitas are not aggressive.  Just like pit bulls, people think that they’re all aggressive.  They’re not.”

Merritt & Beth Clifton

However,  the nine people killed by Akitas in the U.S. and Canada since 1982 are exceeded only by pit bulls and pit mixes (457),  Rottweilers (111),  German shepherds (36),  huskies (30),  bull mastiffs (22),  wolf hybrids (20),  boxers (14),  Dobermans (11),  and chows and chow mixes (10).

This makes up 92% of the total dog attack fatalities over the past 37 years,  inflicted by 20% of the dog population.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

National Institutes of Health finding in 2013 presaged Wellcome Foundation decision to close the Sanger Institute genetically modified mouse lab by 2022

WASHINGTON D.C. (March 2013)–– Bluntly stated the headline in the February 11,  2013 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  “Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases.”

Echoing an article of faith prevailing among anti-vivisectionists for several centuries, though not validated to biomedical researchers’ satisfaction by mouse studies,  the report in this instance came from 10 years of investigation by 39 leading biomedical researchers,  funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health––long the world’s leading sponsor and at times the leading defender of animal-based research.

Francis Collins  (Wikipedia photo)

150 successes in mice failed in humans

Blogged NIH director Francis Collins,  “If it works in mice,  so we thought,  it should work in humans.  But,”  Collins recounted,  “150 drugs that successfully treated sepsis in mice later failed in human clinical trials.  Sepsis,  a life-threatening systemic infection,   can be caused by a variety of pathogens,  including bacteria,  viruses, and fungi.  Serious consequences occur when tissues damaged by infection produce proteins sometimes called ‘alarmins’ that send the immune system into overdrive.  Traumatic injuries involving extreme blood loss or burns can set off the same dangerous response.

“To probe the molecular response to all of these triggers,” Collins explained,  “the authors [of the study] took periodic blood samples from 167 trauma patients;  244 patients with burns over at least 20% of their body;  and four healthy volunteers who had been injected with a low-dose bacterial toxin.  Then they studied the activity of the genes in the white blood cells. They found that of the 5,500 or so genes that responded to traumatic injury,  91% also played a role in burn response and recovery.  About 45% of these same genes were involved in recovery from the bacterial toxin exposure.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Mice use different genes to fight sepsis

“Mice,  however,  apparently use distinct sets of genes to tackle trauma,  burns, and bacterial toxins,”  Collins continued.  “When the authors compared the activity of the human sepsis-trauma-burn genes with that of the equivalent mouse genes,  there was very little overlap.  No wonder drugs designed for the mice failed in humans:  they were,  in fact, treating different conditions!

“But that doesn’t mean studying mice is useless,”  Collins added. “Mice are more resilient to infection and mount a much more regulated immune response to pathogens than humans. Perhaps this is because mice nose around in some filthy places and can’t afford to overreact to every microbe.  If we knew how these rodents limit the drama of their immune response,  it might be useful for us humans.

“But this study’s implications may well go beyond mice and sepsis,”  Collins allowed. “It provides more reason to develop better and more sophisticated models of human disease.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“30% of all drugs successfully tested in animals fail in humans”

“More than 30 percent of all drugs successfully tested in animals fail in human trials.  The NIH plans to commit $70 million over the next five years,”  Collins announced,  “to develop miniature 3-D organs made with living human cells to help predict drug safety and efficacy.  Though this is high-risk research,”  Collins acknowledged,   “these ‘tissue chips’ may ultimately provide better models of human disease and biology than the use of animals.”

            Reported New York Times science writer Gina Kolata,  “Sepsis afflicts 750,000 patients a year in the United States,  kills one-fourth to one-half of them,  and costs the nation $17 billion a year.  It is the leading cause of death in intensive-care units.”

Skeptics

            Despite the importance of the “Genomic responses” finding,  however,  co-author Ronald W. Davis of Stanford University told Kolata that the team tried for more than a year to publish their paper.  “They submitted it to the publications Science and Nature, hoping to reach a wide audience.  It was rejected from both,”  Kolata wrote.

            Scientific journal peer reviewers,  said Davis,  “were so used to doing mouse studies that they thought that was how you validate things.  They are so ingrained in trying to cure mice that they forget we are trying to cure humans.”

“When I read the paper,  I was stunned by just how bad the mouse data are,”  University of California at Los Angeles sepsis expert Mitchell Fink told Kolata.  “I think funding agencies are going to take note,”  Fink predicted.  “Until now,  to get funding,  you had to propose experiments using the mouse model.”

Charles Calisher & friend

“I would not consider the mouse as first choice model”

            Two leading biomedical researchers told ANIMALS 24-7 that they had already questioned the applicability of mouse studies to sepsis,  burns,  and trauma in human patients.

“I can only say that I would not consider the mouse as first choice model for the study of burns,  since the anatomy of the mouse skin,  and the gross physiology of the mouse have less similarities to humans then,  for instance,  the pig,  and in particular the miniature hairless pig,”  offered Gad Simon,  past editor of the Israel Journal of Veterinary Medicine and for more than 20 years a member of the Animal Experimentation Review Committee at the Israel Institute for Biological Research.

            “At least as far back as 1959 people were using mice for such studies,  dropping them in boiling water and then examining them for blisters and toxins and God knows what.  I saw such work with my own eyes,”  recalled Colorado State University at Fort Collins virologist Charles Calisher,  who said he had explosively disapproved of it even then,  when animal studies were much less often questioned.

            “As to what the findings will mean for the future of mouse studies in general,  I do not know,  of course.  Mice are small and inexpensive,  which I presume are the reasons anyone uses them as models in the first place,”  Calisher said.

Cartoon from VADLO.com, “brought to you by Life in Research, LLC., a company founded by two biology scientists who wish to make it easier to locate biology research related information.”

Millions of mice

            Even if the findings in the “Genomic responses” paper influence only studies of bacterial infection involving mice,  mice are used in experiments so often compared to all other animals that eliminating just 10% of mouse use would spare as many animals as if all use of other species stopped entirely.

“Clearly ‘Genomic responses’  is very significant,  and the New York Times was right to report it on the front page,”  American Anti-Vivisection Society and Alternatives Research & Development Foundation president Sue Leary told ANIMALS 24-7.

“This paper represents a trend,” Leary continued.  “Similar studies have looked at animal research methods for particular diseases and have found problems almost as dramatic as the complete failure in inflammatory disease research.

Sue Leary.  (Facebook photo)

Forgot findings from Alzheimer’s research?

“The predominant mouse types used in Alzheimer’s research were shown to be useless to the point that leading researchers were sent ‘back to the drawing board.’  Comparable situations have been exposed recently in research on stroke,  multiple sclerosis,  and asthma.

“At the Eighth World Congress on Alternatives & Animal Use in the Life Sciences in 2011,”  Leary recalled,  “nearly 1,000 attendees agreed to the ‘Montreal Declaration,’  which is designed to examine the validity of individual research proposals using animals and is gaining momentum.

“The important lesson [from ‘Genomic responses’] is that everyone needs to challenge the assumptions behind routine approval of funding for research and testing that uses animals. We saw that done successfully with the publication in 2007 of the National Academy of Sciences report ‘Toxicity Testing in the Twenty-first Century:  A Vision and A Strategy.’

(Beth Clifton collage)

More investment in alternatives

“That comprehensive examination of the problems of the current, animal-based methods in chemical safety assessment was commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Since then,”  Leary said,  “the EPA and other federal agencies have invested much more in alternative technologies to be used instead of animals.

“When AAVS and the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation conducted our push in 1999 to ban the use of mice to produce monoclonal antibodies,  which are widely used in all kinds of research,”  Leary recounted,   “we drew upon a growing scientific consensus about the benefits of alternative methods.  NIH ultimately declared that researchers should use in vitro methods to produce monoclonal antibodies,  unless they could provide a detailed justification. Our understanding is that this development has prevented the use of up to one million mice a year.”

Longtime ProMED infectious diseases moderator Martin Hugh-Jones, DVM, Ph.D., MPH

Other medical fields

Researchers in some areas relatively far removed from sepsis,  trauma,  and burns took immediate note of “Genomic responses.”

“A very interesting paper and I suspect sound. Of course it has to be tested and validated by other researchers, but it smells correct,”  Louisiana State University epidemiology professor emeritus Martin Hugh Jones told ANIMALS 24-7.

“Really mind-blowing!” said Jack Woodall,  a cofounder of the International Society for Infectious Diseases’ Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.  Woodall recalled that for decades virologists injected extracts of blood and tissues from humans,  livestock  and wildlife directly into the brains of baby mice to isolate viruses,  before tissue cultures were developed in the 1990s that produced faster and more accurate results.  “Baby mice were before that [believed to be] the most sensitive system––it had nothing to do with whether they reacted like people,”  Woodall explained.

Jack Woodall.  (FAPERJ photo, collaged by Beth Clifton)

Vaccine research

The “Genomic responses” paper did not study mouse response to viruses,  but the much less sensitive response of mice to bacteria calls into question whether mice might also be less sensitive than humans to viral infection.

Mice are still used extensively in vaccine research,  including in findings reported on February 19,  2013 by University of Georgia professor Biao He which may lead to much more effective control of rabies.

Explained University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine publicist Kat Gilmore, Biao He and team “used a common dog disease—canine parainfluenza—to build a new [anti-rabies] vaccine,”  which can be administered nasally,  orally,  or as a conventional injection.  As detailed in the Journal of Virology,  Gilmore wrote,  “The study tested the efficacy of the drug on a mouse model.  When the mice were administered a lethal dose of rabies,  survival was 100% when they had received the vaccine nasally or into muscle.  Survival was 50% when the vaccine was administered orally.”

A rabies vaccine that can be administered nasally could potentially be sprayed into caves to immunize bats,  the major reservoir of rabies in wildlife.

Wayne Pacelle testing chemical in 2015.

Alternatives

“The Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society International have urged similar critiques of other areas of animal research,”  said HSUS president Wayne Pacelle.  “For example, we have argued that there are major problems with chimpanzee research and this was finally confirmed by the Institute of Medicine last year.  Leading research journals have published studies.  However,”  Pacelle added,  “it is important that we not simply focus on the failures of the current animal research paradigm,  but that we also encourage the development of non-animal alternatives.  We have launched the Human Toxicology Project Consortium to make this vision a reality,”  Pacelle said.

Commented Procter & Gamble toxicologist Harald Schlatter,  “The ‘Genomic responses’ finding is interesting,  and needs to be verified over the coming years in terms of its relevance and impact––primarily for drug development.

Nick Jukes. (Facebook photo)

“However,  I don’t think this impacts or relates directly to P&G,  as we do not test on sepsis,  trauma, and burns,”  Schlatter added. “We only explore testing for very selected endpoints for which no alternatives exist yet.  Even for these,  we are working to develop non-animal alternatives.  We have spent the last few decades investing over $300 million in the development of over 50 alternative tests that are now used throughout the industry,  resulting in where we are today, with over 99% of our safety assessments worldwide being conducted without animals.”

Education

Interniche representative Nick Jukes has for more than 10 years traveled the world introducing non-animal teaching methods.  The “Genomic responses” findings,  Jukes told ANIMALS 24-7,  are “about pure research and the testing of drugs,  not a pedagogical issue.  So it doesn’t directly correspond to our work.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

“However, there are of course connections between these fields,”  Jukes said.  “The findings are another reminder that within human medicine we should be focusing on human bodies and human tissue,  and that is also true within university-level education of medical students and within professional training of doctors.”

The findings also “makes very clear that a lazy acceptance of convention is far from scientific,”  Jukes added.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Three-week silence howls for answers

            NEW YORK CITY––Twenty dogs died on May 15,  2019 aboard an American SPCA vehicle that was hauling them from one or more Mississippi shelters to Wisconsin to be offered for adoption.

That could be called just a really bad accident,  except that three weeks after Emily Jacobs and Ben Feuerherd of the New York Post disclosed the dog deaths,  on May 16,  2019,  the ASPCA continues to stonewall about what killed the dogs,  where,  when,  on what make and model of vehicle,  and why whatever happened was not discovered by the transport team before the dogs died.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Was law enforcement notified?

The ASPCA is stonewalling,  in short,  about all of the information that would normally be made available by law enforcement to both media and the public within hours of a similar incident involving either a small nonprofit rescue or a commercial transporter.

Unclear in the case of the dogs hauled by the ASPCA is whether law enforcement was ever even notified,  and if so,  in which jurisdiction within what state.

Information on how and why the 20 dogs died might be used,  if available,  by other animal haulers to avoid deaths in transit––for example,  if the deaths occurred in part due to delays caused by flooding afflicting much of the Midwest since mid-March 2019.

Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat, by Simon de Myle (1570).

Was flooding involved?  Or carbon monoxide?

Flooding might have led to animals becoming overheated and/or dehydrated because scheduled stops could not be made.

Livestock haulers throughout the spring have helped each other find out about road and bridge closures,  off ramps that are unexpectedly underwater,  and inaccessible rest areas.  Such cooperation among livestock truckers has been routine since the advent of CB radio more than 60 years ago.

Promptly sharing information about a vehicular defect can also save lives,  for instance if an air conditioner failed,  an electrical system caught fire,  or an exhaust pipe leaked fumes into a carrying compartment.  The latter,  ironically,  could have resulted in animals who were supposedly being rescued from gassing with carbon monoxide at a pound being gassed instead by the rescuers.

Fully informed,  anyone transporting animals in a similar vehicle can easily stop at the nearest dealer service center to have the equipment in question checked,  and repaired if necessary.

(ASPCA photo)

Disease?  Dog violence?

Transporters at times also experience animal deaths aboard vehicles due to unexpected disease outbreaks that rapidly spread among stressed and crowded animals,  including dogs and cats.  Sharing this information helps to contain outbreaks before they spread from community to community,  state to state,  and even across international borders.

In one recent instance,  a three-way pit bull fight aboard a private rescue vehicle led to two of the pit bulls being shot by a third-party intervenor,  when police response was delayed.  Local media coverage of the incident might at least have encouraged other rescue transporters to keep a fire extinguisher within quick reach of the driver and/or a front seat passenger.

(Beth Clifton collage)

ASPCA produced webinar on safe transport

The ASPCA in 2016-2017 promoted a seven-part webinar on safe rescue transport.  Whether the ASPCA webinar addressed the causes of the dog deaths on the ASPCA vehicle cannot be known,  because the ASPCA has withheld the essential details.

Thus,  if anything useful might be learned from the May 15,  2019 dog deaths,  from whatever cause,  it presently remains a mystery.

Reported Jacobs and Feuerherd,  “The ASPCA is investigating its safety protocols after 20 dogs died while the nonprofit was transporting them from a site in Mississippi to one in Wisconsin, a spokesperson said.  It’s not clear where along the trip the dogs died, the ASPCA said.  The nonprofit is investigating what led to their deaths,  but added it was not the result of a car crash.”

The ASPCA pledged to be “thoroughly investigating this situation to fully understand all the facts and make any necessary changes to our existing safety protocols and practices to help ensure that we prevent any similar incident in the future.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Info to be released on “need-to-know” basis

Wrote Jacobs and Feuerherd,  “The deaths were announced to staff by ASPCA president and CEO Matt Bershadker in an email.”

Said Bershadker,  “We are communicating with our source and destination transport partners, as well as other partners and external groups as needed.”

In other words,  Bershadker anticipated releasing information on a “need-to-know” basis,  determining for himself who might need to know.

This was not received well on social media.

What if the dogs had been hauled by a breeder?

“Had it not been the ASPCA whose animals died in transport,”  observed the pro-animal use industry organization HumaneWatch on May 21,  2019,  “but rather a farmer or dog breeder, animal activists would be screaming bloody murder.  Will PETA be calling for a roadside memorial to honor these victims of the ASPCA? We doubt it.

“We’ll be curious if the ASPCA releases any public details about the incident,”  HumaneWatch continued.  “That will go a long way to determining if the organization is transparent and regretful,  or prefers the incident get swept under the carpet.”

(thegoldenhammer.net photo)

“No one checked on the dogs” during trip

Blogged No Kill Advocacy Center founder Nathan Winograd on May 30,  2019,  “The ASPCA took in roughly $263 million in 2017. That same year,  ASPCA CEO Matt Bershadker had take-home compensation totaling $852,231 (approximately twice the compensation paid to then-Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle.)

“Yet according to transporters,”  Winograd continued,  “the ASPCA did not spend $15,000 to protect dogs by equipping each transport van with a heating,  ventilation,  and air conditioning system.”

Winograd cited one transporter by name,  Tom Vaccarella,  owner/operator of Safe K9 Transports,  of Pipe Creek,  Texas,  near San Antonio.

“The ASPCA does not know ‘where along the trip the dogs died,’  Winograd pointed out.  “That means no one checked on the dogs on the 1,000-mile trip between the time they left Mississippi and arrived,  dead,  in Wisconsin,  roughly 14 hours later,  assuming no delays and no ‘pit stops.’”

The route could have been as short as 700 miles,  if the transporters took the most direct possible route and made no detours to leave animals at shelters other than the destination shelter.  Either way,  though,  the dogs do not appear to have been closely monitored.

The Humane Society of Cedar Creek Lake, Texas, is among the ASPCA transport “source” shelters.

Waiting for answers got us nowhere

Believing that the ASPCA would clarify the location and cause(s) of the 20 dog deaths,  following investigation,  ANIMALS 24-7 waited until May 28,  2019 before asking overdue questions directly of Bershadker and other ASPCA spokespersons,  via email.

ANIMALS 24-7 also took into consideration that the ASPCA might have been preoccupied during the preceding week by having helped local authorities in Morgan and Owen counties,  Indiana,  to transport and accommodate 550 alleged gamefowl and nine pit bulls from facilities that an ASPCA media release said were “consistent with dog fighting” and “commonly associated with cockfighting.”

Indiana Gaming Commission Superintendent for Law Enforcement Rob Townsend told WXIN-Fox 59 of Indianapolis that the ASPCA “provided two semi-tractor trailers to haul the animals to an undisclosed location for safekeeping and veterinary examination.”

Stars indicate approximate start & finish of the ASPCA trip during which 20 dogs died.

Bershadker continues six-year silence

When ANIMALS 24-7 finally did send our inquiry to the ASPCA about the 20 dogs who died in transport,  we pointed out that as well as having investigated many similar cases,  both members of our editorial team have personally transported animals for thousands of miles,  in summer heat,  without ever losing an animal en route.

From our own experiences,  we explained,  we do understand that much can go wrong.

“Therefore,”  we wrote,  “we have patiently awaited the ASPCA findings,  while receiving inquiries from as far away as Japan about just what happened,  and not joining or contributing to the ongoing frenzy of speculation about the incident on social media.”

But Bershadker,  the ASPCA president since 2013,  and his communication staff,  only continued their six-year record of never even once responding to an ANIMALS 24-7 inquiry.

Previous ASPCA chief executives Ed Sayres (2003-2013),  Larry Hawk (1999-2003),  and John Kullberg (1977-1991),  usually responded helpfully to questions the same day.  Roger Caras (1991-1998) typically delegated someone else to relay the requested information.

(Angel Hueca Facebook photo)

Why did pit bull escape from mobile clinic?

ANIMALS 24-7 also requested clarification from the ASPCA pertaining to an incident which was conflated on social media to some extent with the deaths of the 20 dogs, apparently because it also involved an ASPCA truck,  albeit a different type of truck,  six weeks earlier.

In that incident a pit bull named Nyla,  belonging to a young woman named Angel Hueca,  was according to Hueca left at an ASPCA mobile clinic for spaying on March 28,  2019,  but somehow escaped the next day,  was hit by two cars,  suffered a broken spine,  and was euthanized.

Asked ANIMALS 24-7,  “How exactly did that incident occur?  Why was Nyla not under sedation and/or restraint?”

We received no explanation from the ASPCA.  According to Hueca’s Facebook postings,  she didn’t get much of an explanation either.

WaterShed Animal Fund Rescue Ride vehicle.
(ASPCA photo)

“WaterShed Animal Fund Rescue Ride”

ANIMALS 24-7 did,  however,  learn from combing a blizzard of previous ASPCA media releases that the vehicle involved in the deaths of the 20 dogs was apparently the “WaterShed Animal Fund Rescue Ride,”  which “is made possible by and named for the WaterShed Animal Fund.”

This is a dedicated fund within the $17.8 million Arnall Family Foundation,  of Oklahoma City,  Oklahoma.  The WaterShed Animal Fund in 2016 granted $750,000 to the ASPCA to finance the “WaterShed Animal Fund Rescue Ride,”  a bit less than Bershadker’s pay for 2017.

On April 4,  2019 the ASPCA celebrated having transported 100,000 animals from “overcrowded shelters in under-resourced areas of the country,  most often in the South,  to relocate their animals to other shelters,  most often in the North, where those animals have greater chances of being adopted.”

The numbers

“Since the program launched in 2014,”  the ASPCA media release said,  “the ASPCA has made 4,461 trips,  3,644 by transport vehicle, 814 by plane,  working with 45 source shelters,  86 destination shelters and five waystations to move 76,550 dogs,  22,855 cats and 595 other types of animal.  In 2018 alone,  the ASPCA moved 40,314 animals across the country to help them find new homes.”

The animals came from 16 states,  and were moved to shelters in 32 states.

The 100,000th animal the ASPCA transported was said to have been “Apple,  a three-month-old female Dachshund mix,”  who arrived at the ASPCA Adoption Center in New York City via the “Nancy Silverman Rescue Ride.”

Apple the Dachshund mix came from the Oktibbeha County Humane Society in Starkville, Mississippi,  probably not far from the point of departure for the 20 dead dogs.

Alexander and Elisabeth Lewyt

North Shore Animal League America did it all,  successfully,  much sooner

The ASPCA accomplishment,  impressive though it may sound in isolation,  came just about exactly 50 years after longtime North Shore Animal League America chief executive Elisabeth Lewyt,  who died in 2012,  pioneered adoption transport.

By 1992,  when the North Shore Animal League America funded similar programs by 31 other shelters around the U.S.,  North Shore had long since eclipsed the ASPCA record of 100,000 animals transported from “overcrowded shelters in under-resourced areas of the country,  most often in the South.”

The North Shore program at peak transported more than 20,000 animals per year from animal control shelters in the greater New York City “Tri-State” region,  plus as many as 20,000 more from the South,  chiefly Tennessee,  Virginia,  and the Carolinas.

PetSmart Charities’ Rescue Waggin’ van.

PetSmart Charities safely moved 75,000 animals

PetSmart Charities,  after building adoption boutiques in PetSmart stores nationwide that were originally modeled after the North Shore facilities in Port Washington,  New York,  in 2004 introduced the nationwide “Rescue Waggin’” adoption transport program.

The “Rescue Waggin’,”  developed through extensive consultation with then-North Shore Animal League America operations director Perry Fina (1949-2008),  transported about 75,000 animals before PetSmart Charities shut it down in August 2016.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

PetSmart Charities then granted $7.6 million to “more than 85 animal welfare organizations to support animal transport efforts,”  the organization announced.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fair Oaks Farms’ Dairy Adventure was recently profiled as “One Farm’s Quest to Save Industrial Agriculture”

            FAIR OAKS,  Indiana––Undercover video from Fair Oaks Farm in Fair Oaks,  Indiana,  has exposed extensive abuse of young calves at a facility widely billed as exemplifying a new,  humane approach to factory farming.

Animal Recovery Mission,  of Miami Beach,  Florida,  on June 4, 2019 posted to social media what it called “video evidence documenting systemic and illegal abuse at Fair Oaks Farm,”  showing employees “slapping,  kicking,  punching,  pushing, throwing and slamming calves.”

Some calves were “stabbed and beaten with steel rebars,  hit in the mouth and face with hard plastic milking bottles,  kneed in the spine,  [and] burned in the face with hot branding irons,”  Animal Recovery Mission said.

(From Animal Rescue Mission video)

Video showed calves delivered to vealers

In addition,  the Animal Recovery Mission video “confirmed that male calves from Fair Oaks Farms are in fact transported to veal farms,”  specifically Midwest Veal and Calf Start,  Animal Recovery Mission said,  “despite the corporation’s claims that it does not send its male calves to veal farms.”

Further,  Animal Recovery Mission alleged,  the investigator “captured footage of drug use and illegal marijuana cultivation by Fair Oaks employees and supervisors.”

As Animal Recovery Mission summarized,  “Fair Oaks Farms is one of the largest dairies in the U.S.,”  with a milking herd of 36,000 cows,  “and produces dairy products for the Fairlife milk brand,  produced,  marketed,  and distributed by the Coca-Cola Corporation.”

Fairlife products are sold nationwide by more than 70 grocery store chains, among them Walmart,  Target,  Kroger,  Publix,  Safeway,  Meijer and Shop n’ Save.

From “Steamboat Willie,” 1928, the screen debut of Mickey Mouse.

“Dairy Disneyland”

The Animal Recovery Mission video was posted just two weeks after Pacific Standard reporter Emily Moon published “Dairy Disneyland:  One Farm’s Quest to Save Industrial Agriculture,”  an extensive exposé of how Fair Oaks Farm has evolved over the past 20 years from an unusually big but conventional factory-scale dairy into one of the first lines of defense for almost the whole of animal agribusiness.

Moon described Fair Oaks Farms as “a sprawling agricultural theme park—and,  yes,  a bit like Disneyland,  if Disneyland were sadder and grayer.  The museum and admission buildings, painted a pristine red,  look like a toy farm set.”

About 450 people visited on the day that Moon did.

“To see what the animals look like before they become burgers,”  Moon wrote,  “you board the bus to a large-scale dairy and pig farm,  both modeled after the co-op’s real operations,  which are located off-site.  On the dairy side,  employees guide you through a feeding operation,  a top-of-the-line manure recycling system,  free-stall barns,  and a milking parlor.”

(From Animal Rescue Mission video)

“We’ve got to go on the offense”

Born in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania,  but raised mostly in Puerto Rico and Mexico,  cofounder Mike McCloskey earned a veterinary degree from the University of California at Davis,  then went into dairy farming in New Mexico with his wife Sue in 1984.  After building that operation up from 300 cows to 5,000,  they relocated to Indiana,  where they formed Select Milk Producers,  Inc.,  in partnership with nine other dairy farmers.

Select Milk Products is now “the sixth-largest dairy co-op in the country,  producing about $2 billion in dairy products each year,”  according to Moon.

Concerned about public response to video exposés of abuses on other dairy farms,  Moon recounted,  “Select Milk commissioned a white paper on potential risks from ‘anti-agriculture’ activists.

“Our initial reaction was that we’ve got to go on the offense,”  Select Farms general manager Gary Corbett told Moon.

Temple Grandin

Took Temple Grandin’s advice

“Prominent reformers in the industry,  like celebrated animal scientist Temple Grandin,  had already suggested that farms turn the metaphorical ‘high walls of industrial agriculture’ into glass,”  Moon summarized.

Taking Grandin’s suggestion literally,  Corbett and the McCloskeys “began to design a tour that would allow visitors to physically walk through their workplace—behind biosecure panes of glass,”  Moon explained.  “They updated their practices in anticipation of pushback,”  for example by quitting tail-docking.

“They visited nearby museums,  consulted with an ad agency,  and reached out to Indiana’s branch of the national dairy checkoff,  a semi-public organization that promotes dairy products through research and marketing,  funded through a government-mandated tax on producers,”  Moon continued.”

(Pig Adventure promotional photos)

Pigs & poultry

Fair Oaks Farms opened their Dairy Adventure location in 2004,  with a separate nonprofit incorporation.  The feed-and-pig producer Belstra Milling Co. then funded a similar facility called the Pig Adventure,  opened in 2015.

Then-Indiana governor Mike Pence,  now U.S. vice president,  attended the 2016 grand opening of the next attraction,  the Crop Adventure,  sponsored by Land O’Lakes, Inc.

“Now,”  Moon reported,  “Corbett says the co-op is in talks with the poultry industry.”

For 15 years the Fair Oaks approach won accolades from most observers.

Wayne Pacelle.

Praise from Pacelle

For instance,  blogged then-Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle on August 17,  2012,  “It’s a mega-dairy for sure,  but the charismatic owner of this farm,  Michael McCloskey, has been an innovator within the industry.  For years, he’s been a dissenter when it comes to the once-standard practice of tail docking,”  actually never standard,  though common,  “and every one of the cows on his farm has a tail,  as she was meant to have.  The cows bed on sand,  which is more comfortable for the animals than concrete,  and I didn’t see the animals exhibiting any lameness as they walked back and forth between their living area and the milking facility.

“His cows all go to slaughter,  for ground beef for fast-food companies,”  Pacelle acknowledged,  “so no one should be under the illusion that there’s a retirement home for them.”

The Dairy Adventure rotating milking parlor.
(Fair Oaks Farms photo)

Grandin:  “Doing some really great things”

Two years later,  on October 21,  2014,  Temple Grandin herself visited Fair Oaks Farms.

“Grandin heaped praise upon Fair Oaks Farms,”  wrote Vanessa Renderman for the Northwest Indiana Times.  ‘They’re doing some really,  really great things here,’  she said.  ‘Doing stuff right.  I watched those cows coming into the rotary all by themselves,  completely calmly.  That’s beautiful animal handling.’

“She was pleased with the conditions of the animals as well,”  continued Randerman.
“These cows I saw today,  I never saw so much cud-chewing going on,”   Grandin told her Fair Oaks audience.  “That is a very,  very good sign.”

Grandin,  a Colorado State University professor of psychology and animal science,  began warning agribusiness about the potential of undercover video to transform public perception of livestock rearing and slaughter in May 1991.  Minneapolis cocktail waitress Becky Sandstedt had just released to media selected clips from 40 hours of video she covertly made of the handling of downed cattle and pigs at United Stockyards Inc. in South St. Paul.

(From Animal Rescue Mission video)

“The public is forming attitudes from the Internet”

“On farms in Europe,”  Grandin told readers of Meat & Poultry in 2008,   “you can look at a cow cam on a dairy farm and watch calves being born and cows being milked on the Internet. Many people on both the farm side and the meat plant side [of agribusiness] are overly cautious about showing what we do.  A common comment is ‘people will not understand.’

“What many industry managers do not realize,”  Grandin emphasized,  “is that the public is forming attitudes from negative propaganda on the Internet.  We need to post the good stuff.   In every phase of agriculture and the meat industry,”   Grandin wrote,   “we need to say to ourselves,  ‘Would I be proud to show what I am doing to my out-of-town holiday or wedding guests?’

“If you are squirming and cringing,  you need to improve your practices.  Hacking horns off of large cattle,  beating up animals,  or shoving them around with a forklift does not pass this test.”

Fair Oaks Farms cofounder Mike McCloskey

Grandin urged farms to use cameras themselves

Grandin urged farms and slaughterhouses to use cameras themselves to continuously monitor animal care and handling.

But that lesson still has not been heeded by most of animal agribusiness,  including Fair Oaks Farms founder Mike McCloskey,  who pledged in a response to the Animal Recovery Mission video that he would now have cameras installed to monitor every area in which humans are in contact with animals.

“It is with great disappointment to find,  after closely reviewing the released Animal Recovery Mission video,”  McCloskey said,  “that there were five individuals committing multiple instances of animal cruelty and despicable judgement.  Of the five,  four were our employees and one was a third party truck driver who was picking up calves.  Of the four who were our employees,  three had already been terminated prior to us being made aware,  months ago,  of the undercover Animal Recovery Mission operation.

Fair Oaks Farms calf hutches.
(From Animal Rescue Mission video)

“Our policy worked”

“They were identified by their co-workers as being abusive of our animals and reported to management,” said McCloskey.  “So,  in this instance our policy of cow care training – ‘see something, say something’ – worked.

“Unfortunately, the fourth employee’s animal abuse was not caught at that same time,”  McCloskey continued.  “Although he underwent another training session in animal care when we discovered there was an undercover Animal Recovery Mission operation on our farm,  after viewing the extent of his animal abuse,  he is being terminated today.

“As to the individual who worked for the transportation company,  we will notify the company that he works for and he will not be allowed on our farms again,”  McCloskey pledged.

Fair Oaks Farms ditch weed.
(From Animal Rescue Mission video)

Potential prosecution?

McCloskey also said Fair Oaks Farms “will institute more thorough monitoring and training so that this abuse can never happen again. This video and any future videos will be immediately handed over to the authorities for review and potential prosecution.”

But McCloskey was able to deny only one of the Animal Recovery Mission allegations.

“The statement that we grow and sell drugs on our farms is false,”  McCloskey said.  “The plants featured in the video are an invasive perennial species,”  a feral form of hemp commonly called ditch weed,  “that is rampant on farms all over the Midwest.

“With that said,”  McCloskey added,  “Months ago, the individual seen smoking by the barn and doing drugs in a truck was turned in by his co-workers to one of our managers.  That manager notified local law enforcement about the drug use and,  accordingly,  a police report is on file.”

(Fair Oaks Farms/Facebook photo)

Damage control won’t save agribiz

“At least three retailers — Strack & Van Til, Jewel-Osco and Family Express — began pulling Fairlife products from their shelves  in response to the video,”  the Northwest Indiana Times reported.

But after the initial negative public reaction,  Fair Oaks Farms was widely praised for doing prompt damage control.

But as LiveKindly editor-in-chief Jill Ettinger reported on April 7,  2019,  “Sales of milk continue to drop – recent data released by the Dairy Farmers of America showed a $1.1 billion loss in revenue for the dairy industry in 2018 — an 8% drop over 2017,”  after milk sales had already fallen by 22% between 2000 and 2016.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Fair Oaks Farms may save itself,  in short,  but putting a Disneyland face on a brutal industry does not appear to be enough to save anyone’s bacon.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate

Fair Oaks Farms chief executive Mike McCloskey.
(Beth & Merritt Clifton collage)

Cell phone videocams open factory farms to public view

Ignoring 30 years of warnings by leading U.S. agribusiness educators and pundits has at last visibly begun to cost the livestock industry consumer confidence,  as evidenced by the explosive growth in sales of plant-based protein foods and steeply declining dairy,  meat,  and poultry consumption among younger Americans.

Fair Oaks Farms,  of Fair Oaks,  Indiana,  a self-anointed exemplar of humane animal agribusiness,  operating a purported “Dairy Disneyland, ” is only the most recent of dozens of agribusiness conglomerates to learn the hard way that trying to gloss over abusive practices in an inherently exploitative industry is foredoomed to failure.

Temple Grandin & people who should be listening.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Ignoring Temple Grandin

Had Fair Oaks Farms really taken the advice of agribusiness reformers,  including the renowned Colorado State University professor of psychology and animal science Temple Grandin,  the continuous video monitoring of animal handling that she has long recommended would have been in place since the Fair Oaks facilities were built.

Then,  maybe,  exposing egregiously rough handling of calves might not have been left to Animal Recovery Mission,  of Miami Beach,  Florida­­,  a relatively new and small organization whose previous undercover video exposés have targeted dairy farms and slaughterhouses much closer to home.

Increasingly often obtained and effective undercover videos are acquainting ever more of the public with the realities of meat,  egg,  and dairy production,  including the apparent inability of agribusiness to lastingly improve animal welfare despite years of promises.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Videos bring criminal convictions

More than three dozen people employed in agribusiness,  including half a dozen farm managers and some farm owners,  have now been criminally convicted as result of undercover video gathered by more than 300 people,  who have cumulatively gathered thousands of hours of visual evidence from factory farms and slaughterhouses.

Hundreds of other agribusiness workers have been fired for abuses of animals shown on video that were not criminally prosecuted.

About half of the undercover documentarians are believed to have been staff or volunteers for animal advocacy organizations,  who took jobs in animal agribusiness after receiving some training in videography and how to gather evidence that can be legally admitted in court proceedings.

Veal calf.  (Humane Farming Association photo)

Agribiz workers take video to animal advocates

But the others were already working in animal agribusiness before observing appalling conditions that moved them to action,  usually before having any contact at all with anti-animal use industry activists.  After gathering cell phone documentation,  and often after employers failed to act upon the evidence,  these people went looking for animal advocacy organizations to help them.

Of course the videographers who had previously worked in agribusiness were able to document what they had already seen.  But of perhaps greater significance,  none of the 150-odd investigators who went looking for abuses as outsiders to agribusiness are known to have failed to find conditions and practices that are just as shocking to mainstream consumers of meat, eggs,  and dairy products.

(Beth Clifton collage)

No activist ever convicted as accessory to abuses

Animal agribusiness spokespersons have often alleged that at least some of the video exposés are staged,  showing abuse or negligence that was arranged or incited by the videographers themselves.

Yet only one undercover videographer has ever been charged,  and none convicted,  as an accessory to the practices they have exposed.

The case against the one investigator who was charged,  which pertained only to alleged failure to promptly report cruelty to farm management,  was thrown out of court in 2013.

(See Whistleblower exposé of livestock research fuels ag-gag debate.)

“Ag gag” laws

Instead of reforming industry practices,  the animal use industries,  including dog breeders as well as dairy,  pig,  and poultry producers,  have focused since 2011 on passing so-called “ag gag” laws that attempt to criminalize making and distributing undercover videos.

Those laws have now been struck down as violations of First Amendment rights in Idaho,  Iowa,  Utah,  and Wyoming––all four of them politically conservative states where agriculture is the biggest industry.

Stan Curtis.  (Carbondaleveneer photo)

Stan Curtis

University of Illinois agriculture professor emeritus Stan Curtis,  68,  who spent his career researching ways to make factory pig farming more profitable,  died on April 25,  2010,  two years and four days after warning readers of the agribusiness trade journal  Feedstuffs that “Animal agriculture will have to become more transparent,”  and “People distrust secretiveness,  but they value openness.”

If agribusiness failed to maintain animal welfare standards capable of withstanding public scrutiny,   and failed to show the public good examples,  Curtis cautioned,  animal advocates would continue to produce a seemingly endless series of exposés of conditions and practices that no one could defend.

Curtis lived long enough to see it,  including exposés of alleged animal welfare violations at four Iowa egg farms released by HSUS just three weeks before his death.

(Beth Clifton photo)

“The 9/11 event in the swine industry”

As of Curtis’ death,  more than half of all the undercover video exposés of factory farms and slaughterhouses that had ever been broadcast or posted to web sites had been aired in the two years since a 2008 PETA exposé of a MowMar Farms pig breeding facility near Bayard,  Iowa.

This was just a fraction of the undercover video that has now been obtained and made public,  but MowMar co-owner Lynn Becker nonetheless presciently called the PETA exposé “the 9/11 event in the swine industry.”

“This is a wakeup call for the industry,”  agreed American Association of Swine Veterinarians executive director Tom Burkgren.

The video showed staff beating pigs with metal rods and urging others to do likewise,  live piglets in a dead pile,  and castration and tail-docking being done without anesthesia.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“PETA did animal agriculture a favor”

MowMar Farms,  headquartered in Fairmont,  Minnesota,  had only bought the 6,000-sow site in Iowa 28 days before the PETA video was released.  The video images were collected by PETA undercover operatives for three months before MowMar acquired the facility and changed the management.

MowMar subsequently fired six employees who eventually pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals.  PETA asked that 12 more employees be fired  and the Iowa Farm Bureau endorsed the PETA call for prosecutions.

“PETA did animal agriculture a favor,”  opined Faces of Farming founder Trent Loos.  “I have to wonder,  though,”  Loos asked,  “why it took the assistance of an organization with a vegan agenda to stop this ongoing display of disrespect toward animals?”

PETA asked MowMar to install cameras in all animal housing,  to monitor employee conduct.  Perhaps MowMar did,  as well as changing names to Fair Creek LLP,  since the company has avoided further video exposés.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Catching videographers will not stop exposure

Cell telephones that can transmit live video to web sites mean agribusiness can no longer keep how animals are treated out of public view.  The only question is who uses the video images,  for what purpose.

Even if factory farm or slaughterhouse security guards quickly capture an activist clandestinely taking and transmitting video,  persuasive evidence of animal abuse and neglect might already be reaching an international audience.  Use of offshore web hosts can mean the evidence is beyond the reach of corporate lawyers before the videographer is removed from the premises.

No matter how the videographer is punished,  images transmitted into the public domain might circulate for decades.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cameras in the barns

Colorado State University professor of psychology and animal science Temple Grandin began warning agribusiness about the potential of undercover video to transform public perception of livestock rearing and slaughter in May 1991.

Since then Grandin has repeatedly advised lecture audiences of factory farm and slaughterhouse executives to learn to use closed-circuit video cameras to monitor animal welfare,  and show the world positive images of routine animal treatment,  or continue to be exposed with increasing frequency.

Grandin began recommending that farms and slaughterhouses use video surveillance soon after Minneapolis cocktail waitress Becky Sandstedt released to news media selected clips from 40 hours of video she covertly made of the handling of downed cattle and pigs at United Stockyards Inc. in South St. Paul.  United Stockyards agreed,  after five weeks of protest and public pressure,  to stop accepting deliveries of cattle and pigs who could not walk to slaughter.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Clumsy technology gave agribiz time to clean up

Sandstedt soon afterward took a full-time job with Farm Sanctuary,  but the video technology of the time was not easily used to produce further exposés of an industry that had been put on guard.  The equipment was expensive,  hard to use covertly,  and required activists to enter agribusiness facilities with items easily recognized as out of the ordinary.

Seven years passed before SHARK undercover investigators Steve Wong and Dug Hanbicki documented inside procedures at the Concord Meat Processing Company and Long Chen Hmong Livestock Inc.,  both of South St. Paul,  Minnesota.  The images they captured,  especially of pig slaughter,  were so disturbing that no mainstream media would air them (but ANIMALS 24-7 viewed them in entirety.)

The World Wide Web had debuted five years earlier,  but most users lacked the connection speed needed to view videos online.

Gail Eisnitz

Gail Eisnitz exposed slaughter

Video clips of abusive practices obtained by Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association from inside workers at an Iowa Beef Packers plant in Wallula,  Washington,  finally gave the public an up-close view of slaughter in May 2000.  The Wallula clips were broadcast by leading Seattle and San Francisco television news stations.

A week later a North Carolina TV station accidentally aired a PETA undercover video that brought the convictions of several Belcross Farms personnel for cruelty to a pig.

PETA followed up with other undercover video investigations.  The poultry processing firm Pilgrim’s Pride in July 2004 fired three managers and eight hourly workers at a slaughterhouse in Moorfield,  West Virginia,  where a PETA undercover videographer documented workers killing chickens by stomping them and beating them against walls.

In December 2004 AgriProcessors Inc. of Postville,  Iowa,  then the only U.S. slaughterhouse authorized to export meat to Israel,  agreed to amend their slaughtering procedures after a seven-week PETA undercover operation produced 30 minutes of damning video that called into question whether AgriProcessors  meat could even be considered kosher.

(Mercy for Animals/YouTube image)

YouTube changed the picture

But all of the elements needed for animal advocates to fully and repeatedly expose factory farming and slaughter were not yet in place until the February 2005 debut of YouTube. Suddenly anyone could post brief video clips and compete for public notice.

The introduction of cell telephones capable of capturing video meanwhile gave anyone the ability to document anything.  The mostly young and highly transient farm and slaughterhouse labor force,  including many illegal aliens of no fixed address,  had already made cell telephones ubiquitous and inconspicuous at agribusiness workplaces.  A worker receiving or making a brief cell phone call had become so routine as to barely be noticed by supervisors,  if at all.

Undercover video exposés of animal agriculture entered the YouTube era after Compassion Over Killing investigator John Brothers documented conditions at Esbenshade Farms in Mount Joy,  Pennsylvania during the first week of December 2005.

(Mercy for Animals meme)

Public rejects”normal”

Esbenshade Farms chief executive H. Glenn Esbenshade was acquitted of cruelty charges in June 2007,  after successfully contending that the video showed only standard agricultural practices.  The anti-cruelty laws of Pennsylvania and 30 other states exempt standard agricultural practices from prosecution as cruelty.

But while Esbenshade won in the court of law,  he did not appear to win in the court of public opinion.  More than 10,000 people saw the Compassion Over Killing video on YouTube.  Thousands more saw it on other web sites.

Farm animal advocates have always believed that the public would reject the routine mistreatment of livestock,  if they saw it.  The Esbenshade case proved the point:  the more Esbenshade argued that what the Compassion Over Killing video showed was normal,  the less the animal suffering it showed seemed to be pardoned.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Michael rowed the boat into deep dookey

The Humane Society of the U.S. did the first of several hidden video exposés of Michael Foods Egg Products Co. facilities in June 2006,  finding similar “normal” conditions,  including live hens confined in cages with dead hens in advanced decomposition,  hens caught in the cage wire,  sick and injured hens,  and immobilized hens who were allegedly dying from starvation and dehydration,  inches from food and water.

A Compassion Over Killing undercover video investigation found similar conditions at a Michael Foods egg barn at an unspecified location in August 2009.  Then HSUS a month later distributed video from a Michael Foods egg barn in LeSeuer,  Minnesota.

Michael Foods told Tom Webb of the St. Paul Pioneer Press that “Some or all of the scenes showing dead birds being removed from cages were staged.”

Webb never documented his claim,  though.  Meanwhile,  the 2006 video helped to persuade one of Michael Foods’ biggest customers,  the ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s,  to begin transitioning to the use of free range eggs.

Butterball abuse videotaped by Mercy for Animals (YouTube image)

Turkeys

Between investigations of Michael Foods,  PETA placed two undercover investigators inside an Ozark Butterball turkey hatchery in Arkansas for 40 days between April and June 2006.  Compassion Over Killing placed one investigator in a Goldsboro Milling turkey hatchery in North Carolina,  also a Butterball brand supplier,  for three weeks in June and July 2006.

Video from both operations aired as Thanksgiving 2006 approached.

The Compassion Over Killing video showed culled hatchlings being stuffed into plastic bags and pulverized in macerating machines.

Not learning from the then ongoing Esbenshade fiasco,  Sleepy Creek Farms general manager Nick Weaver,  who also oversaw the Goldsboro Milling turkey hatcheries, objected to Leigh Dyer of the Charlotte Observer that this is accepted under industry guidelines.

“To portray it as this horrible,  sinister situation is just not fair,  just not accurate,”  Weaver protested.

Again the defense that the exposed procedures are normal and accepted appeared to amplify the impact of the undercover videos on the public.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Jesus didn’t starve hens

No such defense was possible after a Mercy for Animals undercover investigator in May 2007 produced video of House of Raeford Farms turkey production workers “using live turkeys as punching bags,  ripping their heads off,  and slaughtering conscious birds,”  as a Mercy for Animals media release summarized.

Mercy for Animals unsuccessfully sought felony charges against the alleged abusers.

House of Raeford management insisted that the investigator instigated the abuses,  but the Denny’s restaurant chain changed turkey suppliers.

2007 closed with a pre-Christmas announcement by Mepkin Abbey,  of Monck’s Corner, South Carolina,  that it would begin an 18-month transition out of the egg business. Selling eggs and chicken manure had provided 60% of the income for the Trappist monastery.

PETA in January 2007 had collected undercover video in which a monk compared the practice of starving hens,  done to induce a “forced molt” and a new egg-laying cycle,  to fasting for religious reasons.

(From Mercy for Animals video)

HSUS & Mercy for Animals

The Humane Society of the U.S. produced what may still be the most publicized undercover video exposé to date in January 2008 at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company in Chino,  California.  More than 120 newspaper and magazine articles and 14,600 web sites amplified the findings of the lone HSUS investigator,  who documented extensive abuse of downed cattle at one of the 18 slaughterhouses that supplied meat to the USDA school lunch program.

The USDA withdrew inspection of Hallmark/Westland,  forcing it to close for nine months,  before reopening under a different name and new management.  Two workers were criminally prosecuted.  One was sentenced to serve 270 days in jail;  the other was deported to Mexico.

Mercy for Animals,  however,  conducted more successful undercover video investigations of farms and slaughterhouses between 2008 and 2016 than all other animal advocacy organizations combined.  At least a dozen of the Mercy for Animals videos were amplified by nationally distributed mass media.  The Mercy for Animals videos also brought the most criminal convictions of farm personnel.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Agribiz uses video mostly to prevent theft

Video surveillance systems to that point,  and still today,  have been marketed to agribusiness chiefly for preventing theft and substance abuse.

Video security cameras are now common at factory farms and slaughterhouses,  but tend to be focused more on entrances and corridors than on the animals.

Video surveillance as now practiced by many companies in agribusiness has caught thousands of employees sneaking calls on their cell phones.  But it has not stopped some of those calls from transmitting the evidence that factory farming and slaughter are ugly businesses,  no less cruel today than when Becky Sandstedt introduced the undercover video era in 1991.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Could agribiz ever really clean up?

Stopping calls that embarrass agribusiness will require eliminating any animal welfare problems that cell phone video can document––and it is not clear that this can even be done with a poorly paid,  barely trained,  highly transient work force,  many of whom are much more likely to be deported than to ever collect Social Security.

Even if any and all visible abuses can be prevented,  animal agriculture will remain the same cruel and exploitative industry it always was,  beginning with life in confinement and ending with slashed throats.  Vegans,  most vegetarians,  most animal rights activists,  and ANIMALS 24-7 will all still oppose it.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

But that is no excuse for the animal use industries to continue to balk at eliminating cruelty in every way that they can,  while squawking––without offering a shred of evidence that has stood up in court anywhere––that amply and relatively easily obtained documentation of abuse are “staged”  and “fake news.”

The authentically “fake news,”  as the Fair Oaks Farms debacle illustrates,  is that anyone anywhere has really cleaned up much of anything in animal agribusiness despite nearly 30 years of warnings and opportunities to do so.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

No-kill failure leaves city without an animal shelter

            FORT SMITH,  Arkansas––As of July 17,  2019,  just over a month from now and maybe sooner,  the second-biggest city in Arkansas is likely to be without a functional animal shelter and humane society for the first time in 81 years.

Anticipating the loss of the shelter,  Fort Smith animal control officers reportedly quit impounding animals on June 1,  2019.

Flooding along the Arkansas River has hit Fort Smith hard in 2019,  but that is not what put the HOPE Humane Society underwater,  in foreclosure,  drowning in pit bulls and now without the contract to operate the Fort Smith Animal Shelter which for 81 years kept the society afloat.

HOPE Humane Society
(Facebook photo)

Accountability,  maintenance,  & management issues

Accountability issues are part of the HOPE Humane Society morass.  The HOPE Humane Society has yet to post either audited financial statements or IRS Form 990 for either 2017 or 2018.

Years of neglecting maintenance of the Fort Smith Animal Shelter are another part of the crisis.  Almost every visible surface needs pressure washing and paint.

Administrative instability has contributed,  along with apparently excessive reliance on volunteers to do work that most successful humane societies reserve for trained professional staff.

HOPE Humane Society
(Facebook photo)

Distilled mission down to saving pit bulls

But the biggest problem,  contributing to all the rest,  including chronic overcrowding to the point that animals have allegedly suffered,  may have been that the HOPE Humane Society condensed the mission of the organization down to just preserving the lives of behaviorally problematic pit bulls,  in an all-out attempt to go “no kill.”

This appears to have been done at any cost to everything else that the community funded the HOPE Humane Society to be doing,  through donations,  bequests,  and the animal control housing contract,  and in disregard of why the HOPE Humane Society itself said it existed.

Mission statements

            “The purpose of this society is the prevention of cruelty to animals,  the relief of suffering among animals,  the placement of animals in responsible homes,  and the extension of humane education,”  says the mission statement of the HOPE Humane Society,  incorporated in 1937 as the Sebastian County Humane Society.

Elaborates the HOPE Humane Society web site,  “We promote the notion that human and animal life are interdependent and that all animals,  human and non-human alike,  have needs and rights;  most importantly,  the right not to be abused but to be loved and respected for who they are.”

On April 1,  2016––April Fool’s Day,  appropriately enough–– the then newly renamed HOPE Humane Society embarked upon a two-year plan to transition the Fort Smith Animal Shelter,  which it had operated since 1940,  to no-kill.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tried to do 10 years worth of work in just two years

There was never any realistic chance,  based on the accomplishments of other shelters which have either made or attempted similar transitions,  that the goal could be achieved.

As recently as 2011 the Fort Smith Animal Shelter euthanized 5,725 dogs and cats,  a rate of 45.4 per 1,000 human residents of the service radius,  which includes Sebastian and Crawford counties in Arkansas,  parts of two other Arkansas counties,  and a bit of neighboring Oklahoma.

This was about four times as many animals per thousand people as the U.S. national average,  and ten times as many animals per thousand people as are euthanized at all the shelters combined that serve the major metropolitan areas––both in the U.S. and worldwide––in which anything approaching “no kill” animal control sheltering has actually been achieved.

To get Fort Smith Animal Shelter intake down to where “no kill” might have been a reasonable goal,  based on real-world achievements,  would have taken a decade-plus of intensive spay/neuter outreach and education to reduce the numbers of animals in need.

Puppies dumped at the Hope Humane Society.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Ordinance mandating s/n for pit bulls might have helped

While puppies are seldom surrendered to animal shelters in communities with successful spay/neuter programs,  seven puppies were abandoned at the HOPE Humane Society door as recently as May 15,  2019.  The abandonment was reportedly captured by a security camera,  but the puppies were there for twelve hours before being discovered.

This suggests that the security camera was not monitored,  and therefore was essentially useless for ensuring either humane care of animals or prompt response to any sort of emergency.

Legislation requiring sterilization of pit bulls––and strict enforcement of the legislation––could have helped.  Almost all of the dogs the HOPE Humane Society was left with after losing the Fort Smith animal sheltering contract were pit bulls,  many of whom had been there,  or in fostering,  for many months.  Among the last dozen pit bulls in the kennels,  after many dozens were transferred elsewhere,  was one whom the HOPE Humane Society management said had been kenneled for 471 days.

“Crawfish boil”

Predictably,  in the three years since April Fool’s Day 2016,  the HOPE Humane Society mission as practiced day-to-day appears to have narrowed to the slogan that was eventually emblazoned beside the shelter door,  alongside a 10-foot-high pit bull painted by University of Arkansas communication director Rachel Rodemann Putman:

“Be kind.  Work hard.  Rescue dogs.”

Even those six words were ignored for several weeks preceding May 31 and June 1,  2019.

Forgetting “the relief of suffering among animals” and that “human and animal life are interdependent,”  and forgetting especially that “all animals,  human and non-human alike,  have needs and rights,”  even forgetting “Be kind” to sentient animals other than pit bulls,  the HOPE Humane Society promoted a fundraising “Hooters Crawfish Boil” that ran for six hours each day.

The HOPE Humane Society promoted boiling crawfish alive to help fund efforts to rehome an inventory of as many as 100 pit bulls before “handing over the keys and closing its doors for good,”  as KFTA television news put it five days later.

Margaret D. Ravenscroft

Some might say the HOPE Humane Society is closing for very good,  as it long ago ceased serving the animals and the 126,000-plus residents of Fort Smith and suburbs in a manner consistent with either the original Sebastian County Humane Society mission statement or the version posted to the web.

For that matter,  the HOPE Humane Society in recent years also operated in apparent disregard of the November 11,  1940 verdict of the Arkansas Supreme Court that allowed the Fort Smith Animal Shelter to be built in the first place.

The first $8,500 toward the construction of the shelter,  equivalent to $155,154 in 2019 dollars,  was donated in 1938 by Margaret D. Ravenscroft,  of Santa Barbara,  California,  who at about the same time endowed several other funds for “unfortunate dogs” around the U.S. and Australia.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Anti-vaxxers

Then-Sebastian County Humane Society president Della Carr Bailey,  who opposed a Fort Smith ordinance requiring that dogs be vaccinated against rabies,  sought to freeze the funding with a lawsuit.  Bailey contended,  as Associated Press summarized,  that “the society had failed to meet some of the conditions of Mrs. Ravenscroft’s donation,  including the requirement that the city repeal its ordinance requiring compulsory vaccination of dogs.”

The Arkansas Supreme Court held that complying with Ravenscroft’s conditions did not require enforcing policies which did not actually benefit “unfortunate dogs,”  were contrary to maintaining public health and safety,  and contradicted the intent of the donor that Fort Smith should have an animal shelter.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Great strides” had shelter at double capacity in just six months

From out of the ruins of the failure and foreclosure soon to shutter the HOPE Humane Society may come a new humane society,  genuinely founded on the understanding that all animals suffer,  including the understandings that none should ever be boiled alive,  and that rehoming pit bulls who have already killed or injured other animals and humans,  or whose behavior otherwise indicates that they cannot safely share homes with other animals and children,  is not “the placement of animals in responsible homes.”

The Fort Smith Animal Shelter,  after several expansions,  had a maximum capacity of 300 animals.  Six months after the April Fool’s Day 2016 decision to go no-kill,  the HOPE Humane Society claimed to be “making great strides,”  but acknowledged that “There are 400 to 500 animals in the shelter at any given time.”

HOPE Humane Society mobile adoption vehicle.

Mobile adoption vehicle

At the same time,  the HOPE Humane Society told donors,  “The shelter spays or neuters and microchips every adoptable animal who comes through the shelter.”

Also,  the HOPE Humane Society announced,  “A free range cat room and kitten room have been completed,  repairs to our air conditioning have been done,  and puppy boxes have been added to the lobby.”

An adoption advertising campaign had begun.

“We are also excited to say that thanks to a national foundation,  we have received funding to help purchase a mobile adoption vehicle,”  the HOPE Humane Society said.

(Beth Clifton photo)

More “great strides”

But the HOPE Humane Society still needed $45,000,  a reasonable donation target,  to “begin repair and replacement of” 200 dog kennels.

Two years into the attempted conversion to no-kill,  in April 2018,  the HOPE Humane Society boasted that “Since 2013,”  three years before the no-kill plan became policy,  “we have adopted out over 2,000 cats and over 4,800 dogs into loving homes and to loving families.

“Since we started our no-kill plan in April 2016,”  the HOPE Humane Society claimed,  “we have decreased the number of cats put down by 93%,  the number of dogs put down by 87%,  and the plan is not complete yet. We have increased cat adoptions by 144% and dog adoptions by 232%.”

Fox 24 News reporter Haley Hughey,  however,   on July 18,  2018 mentioned that the HOPE Humane Society had “130 people on a wait list to surrender their animals,”  a bottleneck believed to have been contributing to animal abandonments.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Saved 16 animals & sent 119 to other shelters

Countered the HOPE Humane Society,  “In June 2018,  Fort Smith animal control officers took 261 animals to HOPE Humane Society.  Of those,  only 62 animals were able to be reunited with their owners and only 46 of the 62 animals returned to owners were claimed within the city’s imposed ‘5-day stray hold.’  This means that 16 animals with owners would have been euthanized,”  if the HOPE Humane Society had not continued to hold them beyond the city-funded mandate.

“HOPE was able to transfer 119 animals out to other no-kill shelters to be adopted and HOPE was able to get 54 adopted out to new owners,”  the humane society statement added.

By then the average number of animals housed per day,  the HOPE Humane Society said,  had increased to “450-500 animals on any given day,”  but critics alleged that the society was housing substantially more.

HOPE Humane Society
(Facebook photo)

800 animals in space for 250

At a September 4,  2018 town hall meeting called to discuss the Fort Smith Animal Shelter overcrowding problem,  shelter personnel acknowledged having “almost 800” animals on the premises,  according to KFSM reporter Casey Frizzell.

“They say they will have to start euthanizing animals if they don’t find a solution soon,”  Frizzell told KFSM viewers.

The town hall meeting brought a $10,000 donation from the First Presbyterian Church,”  Frizzell mentioned,  but the overcrowding problem remained far from solved.

Jarrod Ricketts

New director lasted six weeks

In February 2019 the HOPE Humane Society hired a new executive director,  Jarrod Ricketts,  an 11-year U.S. Air Force military police dog handler from Van Buren,  Arkansas,  who had subsequently served as an animal control officer in Greenwood,  Arkansas.

Ricketts and HOPE Humane Society board president Sam Terry on March 23,  2019 welcomed Fort Smith city director Neal Martin to tour the shelter.

Reported Martin,  “There are still 405 dogs at the facility.  The maximum capacity [for dogs] is 250.  Many dogs never get out of their cages because there are not enough volunteers to take them out and walk them,  and there are just too many dogs.  Many cages have feces and urine [in them] because the dogs don’t ever get out of their cages.  Because of the over capacity,  there are [temporary] cages all over the facility to house these dogs.  The roof is leaking and they have duct problems.”

Ricketts was fired in the first week of April.

“Set expectations”

“I was caught off guard,  I was blindsided,  I’m shocked,  and I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’ve seen a lot more change in the six weeks that I’ve been there then they have had in the past three years,”  Ricketts told Veronica Ortega of KFSM News 5.

Ricketts,  summarized Ortega,  said “There are only two reasons why he can see for the sudden dismissal.  The first setting was expectations and holding employees accountable,  and second was his beliefs on euthanasia.  Ricketts says HOPE is a no-kill shelter,  but that doesn’t mean there isn’t euthanasia.  He says that can happen at any shelter for various reasons like health or behavioral issues.”

The HOPE Humane Society told media only that it had “elected to recruit and hire a new executive director.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fort Smith pulled the plug

The beginning of the end came,  the HOPE Humane Society announced,  when “At a special study session held on May 20,  2019,  the City of Fort Smith Board of Directors declined to renew its contract with the HOPE Humane Society to impound animals from Fort Smith Animal Control,”  essentially because the city board was unwilling to increase the $640,000-a-year contract amount to enable the society to continue to indefinitely house several hundred more pit bulls than the rated capacity of the shelter.

One former volunteer alleged that the HOPE Humane Society at the time had,  besides the several hundred pit bulls in the building,  nearly 400 more in fostering.  There was no way for ANIMALS 24-7 to verify the claim,  but almost every photo and video posted by the HOPE Humane Society itself and by active volunteers in 2018 and 2019 showed pit bulls.  Few images showed cats or dogs of other breed types.

Continued the May 21,  2019 HOPE Humane Society statement,  “A central point of disagreement between HOPE and the city is HOPE’s no-kill philosophy,  which holds that dogs and cats should not be euthanized for make space for other dogs and cats.  As contract negotiations progressed,  it became apparent that HOPE’s no-kill philosophy is incompatible with the views of several of our city directors,  whose decision reflects the view that animals should be killed after a few days of being unclaimed by their owners.”

(HOPE Humane Society photo.)

“Small-scale animal rescue”

The HOPE Humane Society statement went on to rip the Fort Smith city management for having “failed to adopt a spay and neuter ordinance seven years ago,”  five years before the HOPE Humane Society decided to go no-kill,  and for having rejected a dog licensing ordinance in 2018,  despite a mountain of data showing that there is no intrinsic relationship between dog licensing and overpopulation.

(See Pit mix fatality spotlights failure of so-called “Calgary model”)

Concluded the HOPE Humane Society statement,  “It is the goal of HOPE’s board of directors to continue as a small-scale animal rescue organization,”  much as the Sebastian County Humane Society was before Margaret D. Ravenscroft sent her $8,500 to fund building the shelter,  “possibly continuing some transport operations,  and to continue efforts to persuade city leadership to adopt ordinances that address the very real problems that our city faces.”

Harry West & wife, changing his bandages.
(5 News Facebook photo)

Pit bull proliferation brings attacks

First among those problems,  as regards animal control,  would be the pit bull proliferation which not only filled the Fort Smith Animal shelter to more than three times the rated capacity for dogs within two years of the HOPE Humane Society introducing the no-kill policy,  but also is contributing to ever more frequent and serious dog attacks.

Among those of note,  Fort Smith residents Joanna Brewer,  42,  and Albert Macdade,  74,  in May 2016 suffered bites and head and back injuries from an attack by free-roaming pit bulls just six weeks after the HOPE Humane Society no-kill policy came into effect.  Macdade,  who responded to Brewer’s screams and was knocked down by one of the pit bulls,  wounded that pit bull with a handgun.  Both pit bulls then ran away.

Harry West,  66,  was mauled by four free-roaming pit bulls and his own small dog was pulled from his arms and killed in February 2018.  The HOPE Humane Society euthanized those four pit bulls,  by agreement of the owner.

In March 2019 a free-roaming pit bull who reportedly already had a history of attacking other animals killed a chihuahua.

HOPE Humane Society volunteers.
(Facebook photo)

Pit bulls evacuated

Following the May 21,  2019 announcement of impending closure,  the HOPE Humane Society focused on transporting as many pit bulls as possible to other no-kill organizations,  few if any of which were publicly identified.

Spay Arkansas was thanked for providing free spay/neuter to low-income pit bull adopters,  leading to the question what became of the in-house spay/neuter program the HOPE Humane Society touted just a year earlier,  and why any animals,  especially pit bulls, were offered for adoption before being fixed.

The American SPCA disaster response team was “on the ground in Arkansas to assist animals impacted by historic flooding,”  according to an ASPCA electronic appeal,  but the appeal made no mention of anything done to help bail out the HOPE Humane Society,  despite the long ASPCA history of aggressive pit bull advocacy.

Wings of Rescue,  sponsored by the International Fund for Animal Welfare,  on June 8,  2019 flew 300 animals from Arkansas to Washington state,  collected from the Conway Animal Welfare Unit,  Little Rock Animal Village,  the Saline County Humane Society,  and the Northeast Arkansas Humane Society.  No mention was made of any animals from Fort Smith.

From June 5,  2019 to June 12,  2019 the Fort Smith Animal Shelter population gradually declined from 45 pit bulls to 23,  according to Facebook postings.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fort Smith seeks new shelter contractor

The Fort Smith city board of directors meanwhile authorized city administrator Carl Geffken to prepare specifications for a new animal control shelter contractor.

The new contractor is to be “qualified in the fields of municipal animal control, impoundment,  and managing a dog licensing program that would incentivize residents to sterilize their pets,”  deputy city administrator Jeff Dingman told Southwest Times-Record reporter Jadyn Watson-Fisher.

Fort Smith city director Neal Martin meanwhile scrambled to counter rumors inflamed by HOPE Humane Society volunteers that the pet cemetery the society had maintained for about sixty years might become a parking lot.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

“You’re free to come any time,  gather your loved one’s headstone,  gather your loved ones remains if that’s what you wish to do,”  HOPE Humane Society spokesperson Elizabeth Johnson had told a television audience.

Martin said the city had made no decision about what to do with the property,  and had not heard from anyone interested in it.

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Ndume.

The Gorilla Foundation reluctantly returns Ndume to the Cincinnati Zoo.  King still sits alone at Monkey Jungle.

            CINCINNATI,  Ohio––Sprung from solitary confinement after 28 years at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside,  California,  Ndume the gorilla,  age 38,  is back among old friends and family at the Cincinnati Zoo,  reportedly settling in well.

King performs for Monkey Jungle visitors.

King the gorilla,  however,  age 50,  remains in solitary confinement at Monkey Jungle in Miami,  Florida,  where he has now done time for 40 years,  having committed no offense other than being a gorilla,  with no parole date in sight and little hope of ever being among other gorillas,  anywhere.

Ndume flies back to Cinci

A long anticipated possible happy ending to the Ndume saga began on June 13,  2019 when he crawled into a crate he had been trained to enter voluntarily during his last weeks at the Gorilla Foundation,  was trucked 15 miles to the San Francisco International Airport,  was loaded aboard a Boeing 737-300 freighter,  and was flown by the DHL package delivery company from San Francisco to Cincinnati,  with one of his keepers from the Gorilla Foundation and Cincinnati Zoo head gorilla keeper Ron Evans aboard.

“The zoo has worked with DHL on at least 11 other ape transfers and transfers of other large species,”  reported WCPO-9 of Cincinnati.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Quarantine

The Gorilla Foundation keeper is to remain in Cincinnati for up to two months while Ndume becomes acclimated to his new habitat.

“Ndume will be quarantined from the zoo’s other gorillas for between a month and 45 days to allow him to get comfortable with the setting,  staff, and routines.  An outdoor space away from visitors will be available for him,”  summarized a report by WCPO-9 staff.

“Once Ndume is out of quarantine,  he will be introduced to the rest of the gorilla bedroom areas and outdoor habitat.  He will be eased into socializing with two 24-year-old female gorillas who are on birth control.  Ndume won’t be exposed to other silverbacks or their families ‘until he has made significant progress with his integration,’”  according to the transfer protocol to which both the Gorilla Foundation and the Cincinnati Zoo eventually agreed.

“Going forward, caregivers from The Gorilla Foundation will be able to visit Ndume twice a year,”  WCPO-9 added.  “If the zoo eventually decides to euthanize Ndume at the end of his life,  the zoo will notify the foundation in advance so their caregivers can be present,  if possible.”

Willie B. before & after the Atlanta Zoo was renovated into Zoo Atlanta.

Willie B.

The Cincinnati Zoo is hoping to reprise the success that Zoo Atlanta accomplished decades ago with Willie B.,  another middleaged silverback gorilla who had long been housed alone,  and partially accomplished with yet another middleaged silverback,  Ivan.

Willie B.,  “named for former Atlanta mayor William B. Hartsfield, was captured in the Congo in the 1960s at age two,”  recalled Associated Press writer Dorie Turner in 2008.  “Send to the Atlanta Zoo,  Willie B. “lived in a cage of concrete and steel bars.  His only companion was his zookeeper,  Charles Horton.”

His only amusements were “a tire swing and a TV set.”

After Willie B. became an animal rights cause celebré in 1984,  then-Atlanta mayor Andrew Young appointed animal behaviorist Terry Maple,  then 38,  to turn the zoo around,  and pushed a $20 million bond issue to passage to fund the work.  Maple rebuilt the zoo,  renamed Zoo Atlanta,  around a wooded natural habitat for Willie B.,  the star attraction.
“Willie went outside for the first time since his capture in May 1988,”  continued Turner.  “Soon,  the zoo began allowing Willie B. to socialize with females.”

Willie B. eventually fathered five offspring.

Ivan (Zoo Atlanta)

“When the 439-pound patriarch of Zoo Atlanta’s gorilla clan died in 2000 after complications from pneumonia, more than 8,000 mourners packed Zoo Atlanta for a tearful memorial,”  Turner remembered.

Ivan

Ivan,  born in 1962,  was captured as a baby in 1964 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ivan lived for several years with the family of B&I Circus Store pet shop manager Ruben Seibert Johnston in Tacoma,  Washington,  then spent 27 years caged at the B&I Circus Store itself.  Only in 1994,  more than a year after the store went bankrupt,  was Ivan released to the custody of the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.

The Woodland Park Zoo transferred Ivan to Zoo Atlanta in October 1994.  Although Ivan accepted the friendship of a female named Kinyani,  he never mated.  He died at age 50 during a medical examination in August 2012.

Michael.  (Gorilla Foundation photo)

Michael

The Cincinnati Zoo sent Ndume to the Gorilla Foundation on loan in 1991.  Then a difficult 10-year-old,  Ndume had become a feces-flinger,  unsuitable for exhibit,  during a two-year stint at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago,  and had not returned to normal behavior after being returned to Cincinnati.

The Gorilla Foundation welcomed Ndume as a potential mate for the signing gorilla Koko,  1971-2018.

Her original intended mate had been Michael,  acquired along with his infant sister in 1976 after having been imported from Cameroon.  The sister,  named B.B. after French actress and animal advocate Brigitte Bardot,  died from pneumonia within a month of arrival.

Michael,  whom Koko accepted as a friend but rejected as a mate,  lived on at the Gorilla Foundation until his death in 2000 at age 27.

Harambe swings the fallen four-year-old, from video by Kim O’Connor.

Harambe

Koko also rejected Ndume.

The Cincinnati Zoo lent Ndume to the Gorilla Foundation under a contract which stipulated that if Koko died before he did,  Ndume would either be returned to Cincinnati or be transferred to another gorilla facility approved by the zoo.

The Cincinnati Zoo in early 2018 opened a new gorilla pavilion,  housing 10 other gorillas,  including Ndume’s aunt,  Samantha,  and four cousins,  M’linzi,  Muke,  Mara,  and Chewie.

There was room for another silverback.  Harambe,  a 17-year-old western gorilla,  had in May 2016 grabbed a three-year-old boy who fell into the moat at the old Cincinnati Zoo gorilla exhibit,  and violently swung the boy by one leg with his head only inches from the concrete moat wall.  Harambe was shot dead so that the boy could be rescued.

The new Cincinnati Zoo gorilla exhibit had already been designed and funded at the time,  but actual construction had not yet started.

Penny Patterson & Koko.
(Gorilla Foundation photo)

Gorilla Foundation resisted transfer

Soon after Koko’s death,  on June 19,  2018,  the Cincinnati Zoo asked the Gorilla Foundation to return Ndume.

But Gorilla Foundation founder Francine “Penny” Patterson,  71, struggling since Koko’s death to maintain a mission,  identity,  and revenue stream for her organization,  signed “No” in response,  touching off a multi-round legal battle.

Asked to play Solomon between the claimants,  Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court of Northern California ruled on February 1,  2019 that Ndume was to be returned to Cincinnati.

When the Gorilla Foundation balked,  Seeborg in May 2019 ordered the Gorilla Foundation “to cooperate in good faith and in all respects to effectuate the transfer of Ndume from California to Ohio on June 13,  2019,”  as was done.

(John Safkow photo)

“LIfe in a sanctuary”?

“It has always been our opinion,”  the Gorilla Foundation said in a media release,  reluctantly accepting the verdict,  “that transferring Ndume back to a zoo after life in a sanctuary for over 27 years — an unprecedented move that has never been done before — presents risks that may outweigh the perceived benefits.”

But Ndume had lived at the Gorilla Foundation in conditions more resembling those that Willie B. and Ivan endured than “life in a sanctuary” as most animal advocates would imagine it,  alleged critics including former Gorilla Foundation caregiver John Safkow,  who curates the “Ndume Deserves Better” Facebook page and web site,  International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal,  and PETA Foundation vice president and deputy general counsel Delcianna Winders.

All rejoiced when Ndume was safely returned to the Cincinnati Zoo to spend however many more years he may have left.

King. (Chris Crawford/Flickr photo)

Did King see Ndume on television?

King may have seen something about the transfer on the television set that sometimes occupies his attention.

Acquired in 1979 from a circus,  King lived alone at Monkey Jungle for 20 years in a barred cement cell about the size of a small mobile home.  Demonstrations led by the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida and critical comments by visitors including Jane Goodall and Doris Day eventually persuaded Monkey Jungle to build King a somewhat more comfortable and natural-appearing new home,  which he has occupied since early 2001,  visited by about 100,000 people per year.

Among the oldest animal-focused tourist attractions in Florida,  Monkey Jungle originated when Connecticut commercial artist Joseph DuMond and his wife Grace Staton DuMond bought the original 10-acre site in 1932,  released several monkeys into it,  and began charging visitors 10¢ apiece for a tour.

Three generations have run tourist trap

Joseph and Grace Staton DuMond turned Monkey Jungle over to son Frank and retired to Cuba in 1956.  Leaving Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power,  Joseph and Grace Station DuMond ran a hunting goods store in Costa Rica for a time,  but returned to Monkey Jungle in 1965.

Joseph DuMond died in 1967 and Frank DuMond died in 1977.  His wife Mary headed the operation until her death in 1987,  when Sharon DuMond,  daughter of Frank and Mary,  became the third generation of DuMonds to run Monkey Jungle,  now expanded to 15 acres.  Grace Staton DuMond assisted until her death at age 95 in 2003.

Hitting Monkey Jungle hard in September 2017,  Hurricane Irma obliged the DuMond family to close the facility for eight months while making $400,000 worth of repairs and upgrades.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Former keeper protests conditions

While Monkey Jungle was closed,  former keeper Melanie Lustig posted 28 photos illustrating critical commentary about the resident animals’ conditions to an Imgur social media page.

Described Miami New Times staff writer Brittany Shammas,  “Below a photo of King with wounds on his stomach,  the poster wrote that management ‘virtually ignores’ the injuries.

“Below a picture of a ratty blanket on a concrete floor,  the text read,  ‘We give King a single small throw blanket at night to nest/sleep with.  Otherwise he is on concrete.’

“Another image showed King behind bars in what the description said is his ‘very small night house.’

Snow White. (Walt Disney Inc.)

“No evidence of Ellen”

“The Imgur user [Lustig] wrote that a presentation about King at Monkey Jungle talks about how he controls the TV set in the enclosure and how The Ellen DeGeneres Show is his favorite.  In reality,  the Imgur post said, the TV set plays two Disney movies on loop and ‘He does not seem to enjoy it much at all.  There is no evidence of Ellen anywhere.’”

Lustig’s account was partially contradicted by Alan Gomez of USA Today,  who reported just before Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida that “King was relaxed,  sitting back and watching Snow White on a flatscreen TV.  Park staff set up a button for him to press to swap between DVDs. His favorites are Moana, Tarzan and The Lion King.”

But “Lustig’s accusations were corroborated by more than half a dozen former employees,  some of whom worked at the park years prior to the 2017 allegations,”  reported Miami Herald writers Matias J. Ocner and Chabeli Herrera in July 2018.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Sharon Dumond responded to Ocner and Herrera,  they wrote,  “that King’s sores have emerged over years of him picking at the area out of anxiety and that the park has tried creams and sprays to alleviate the issue. “

Sharon Dumond and Monkey Jungle director Steve Jacques denied the other allegations.

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Mary Max
(Beth Clifton collage, based on Peter Max design)

Suicide by nitrogen asphixiation

            NEW YORK,  N.Y.––Animal advocate and philanthropist Mary Max,  52,  wife of pop artist Peter Max,  was on June 9,  2019 found dead in their apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City from allegedly self-induced nitrogen asphyxiation,  a bag-over-the-head method described by Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphrey in his 1991 book Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying.

“Mary Max left a lengthy voice mail message for a friend in London with instructions for what to do after she passed away,”  reported Sharon Otterman of The New York Times,  citing a statement by Mary Max’s longtime attorney,  John Markham.

“She left farewell messages for people she loved:  her husband;  her closest friends;  her brother Daniel;  and her 94-year-old mother,  Ruth,”  wrote Otterman.

Mary Balkin before she became Mary Max

Born Mary Balkin on October 20, 1966,  raised in Buffalo,  New York,  the future Mary Max attended Nardin Academy,  a noted female-only private school in Buffalo,  where she was salutorian,  and Canisius College,  a Jesuit institution,  graduating in 1984.

Later she modeled in New York City,  and appears to have played the lead female role,  a character named Lynn,  in the obscure 1993 suspense film Dangerous Affairs,  written by J. Gregory Smith,  directed by John Brenkus.

Photos indicate that Mary Balkin/Max had a long history of anorexia,  she had an acknowledged history of depression,  and several tabloid accounts of her death have mentioned a previous suicide attempt.

“In 1996,”  recounted Otterman,  “she was walking on a Manhattan sidewalk,  when Peter Max,  already an internationally renowned artist and 30 years her senior,  walked up and said,  ‘Hi, I’m Peter Max, and I’ve been painting your profile my entire life.’”

Peter Max:  longtime veg & animal philanthropist

Mary Balkin worked for Peter Max “on various conceptual artistic and media projects,”  according to a Buffalo News account,  for about a year before they were married on July 14, 1997 aboard the yacht Cloud Nine.  The ceremony was performed by then-New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

A vegetarian since taking up yoga circa 1966 as a pupil of the Indian guru C. K. Ramaswamy Gounder,  better known as Swami Satchinanda (1914-2002),   Peter Max had also long endorsed and financially contributed to animal advocacy,  making celebrity gala guest appearances for PETA,  for example,  without becoming deeply personally involved.

Mary Max at first did not become deeply involved,  either.

(Beth Clifton collage)

In Defense of Animals,  30 cats,  & North Shore Animal League America

In August 2001,  however,  Mary and Peter responded to an appeal from Barbara Stagno,  the New York City representative for In Defense of Animals,  that mentioned “a surge of mother cats and their kittens awaiting the probable fate of too many animals” at the city Center for Animal Care & Control,  Stagno summarized a week later.  “Peter Max intervened in this matter by arranging for all 30 cats (and two beagles) to be transported to the North Shore Animal League,”  of Port Washington,  on Long Island,  “where they will stay until they are adopted,”  Stagno wrote.

“When I spoke with Mary Max,”  Stagno continued,  “she said that by way of a thank you,  Peter would be pleased if would-be adopters could be directed to North Shore, to adopt not simply the kittens and puppies there,  but also the many adult animals awaiting homes at North Shore.”

Cinci Freedom.  (Farm Sanctuary photo)

Farm Sanctuary

In February 2002 a Charolais cow escaped from a slaughterhouse in the Camp Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati,  fled into the Clifton neighborhood bordering the University of Cincinnati,  and hid out for 11 days in Mount Storm Park,  a few blocks northwest of the Cincinnati Zoo.  Mary and Peter Max funded transporting the cow,  by then dubbed Cinci Freedom,  to the Farm Sanctuary location at Watkins Glen,  New York.  Cinci Freedom lived there until she was euthanized due to incurable painful conditions of age on December 29,  2008.

In September 2007,  meanwhile,  took in an Angus cow who had “likely just escaped from a live market or slaughterhouse in Queens,  and was literally running for her life” when captured by police and firefighters,  Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur emailed.

Farm Sanctuary named that cow Maxine,  Bauer said,  “in honor of artist Peter Max and his wife and activist Mary Max.”

Mary and Peter Max attended the March 2008 launch party for Baur’s book Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food,  the April 2008 Farm Sanctuary “Gala for Farm Animals,”  and a December 2008 benefit for Farm Sanctuary,  as well.

Humane USA PAC & Voters for Animal Rights

By then Mary Max had long since made animal issues a focus of her life,  working at first mostly behind the scenes.

Counting themselves “among the activists whose lives have been forever impacted by Mary Max’s influence are Jasmin Singer,  digital director of VegNews,  and Marisa Miller Wolfson, writer/director of 2011 documentary film Vegucated.

Singer and Wolfson in a joint memorial statement recalled that “Max co-founded Humane USA-PAC [in February 2004] to elect humane-minded legislators nationwide,  and later helped launch Voters for Animal Rights,  an organization that seeks to elect humane-minded legislators in New York City.”

Initially called Empire State Humane Voters,  Voters for Animal Rights debuted in May 2017.  “Our launch party at Peter Max’s studio was a success,”  emailed cofounder Allie Feldman Taylor afterward.  “Over 200 animal advocates attended,  including many elected officials and candidates running for office.  We also received kudos from [New York City] Mayor Bill de Blasio, who sent a video message in support of our first campaign,  to end the use of wild animals in the circus.”

On HSUS board

Continued Singer and Wolfson,  “For years,  Mary Max produced an action alert email list, encouraging her many readers to contact legislators about various animal-friendly bills.  [She was] executive producer of Vegucated.  She was a founding board member of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.  She also served on the board of the Humane Society of the United States,”  from 2005 until her death.”

Recalled a statement from the Humane Society of the U.S.,  “She backed the Safety Net Program,  a pet surrender prevention initiative that eventually morphed into our Pets for Life program.  The initiative kept thousands of animals in homes all over New York by providing support and resources to those of limited income who were struggling to keep their pets.”

Peter Max,  the HSUS statement added,  “usually accompanied Mary to HSUS board meetings in Washington D.C. and elsewhere.  He was a consistent presence at associated social gatherings.  Invariably,  he would introduce himself to others with the words,  ‘I’m Peter, Mary Max’s husband.’”

Despite the prominence of Mary Max’s participation in pro-animal campaigns,  Singer and Wolfson lamented,  news coverage of her suicide often “failed to mention the tireless work of this relentless ambassador of animal rights.”

Peter and Mary Max

Fundraising parties

The ANIMALS 24-7 archives include media releases mentioning that Mary and Peter Max attended the League of Humane Voters fifth anniversary party in October 2006,   another League of Humane Voters party on November 15, 2006,  to “celebrate the victory of every LOHV-NYC endorsed candidate in yesterday’s election,”  and yet another party on November 29,  2006 to announce that the League of Humane Voters,  Farm Sanctuary,  and the Humane Society of the U.S. were “forming a coalition to ban the sale of foie gras in New York City.”

Then in April 2007 Mary and Peter Max were among the celebrity guests at yet another League of Humane Voters fundraiser.

Mary and Peter Max kept up a busy social calendar raising money for animal causes through 2010,  when they attended a Mercy for Animals gala in January,  and helped Alley Cat Allies to initiate an awareness campaign in March.

“Peter and I share our home with seven rescued cats,”  Mary Max told media.  “We have a special place in our hearts for all felines.”

Mary and Peter Max in September 2010 hosted a benefit for United Poultry Concerns and the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos.

Peter & Mary Max

Dementia

By then,  however,  Peter Max,  who rose to art world superstardom before Mary was born,  was visibly slowing down.

“By 2012,  Mr. Max’s mental faculties were beginning to wane,”  reported Amy Chozick of the New York Times on May 28,  2019.  “He would sign books,  squiggle designs on cocktail napkins for dinner companions,  or hold a brush and put some paint on canvas for public appearances,  but he struggled to truly create.  In the next couple of years,  Mr. Max stopped painting almost entirely.

“Several years ago,  he received a diagnosis of symptoms related to Alzheimer’s,  and he now suffers from advanced dementia,”  Chozick said.

“His estranged son,  Adam,  and three business associates took over Mr. Max’s studio,”  Chozick continued,  “drastically increasing production for a never-ending series of art auctions on cruise ships,  even as the artist himself could hardly paint.”

(Norwegian Cruise Line photo)

Cruise ships

Earlier,  Chozick wrote,  “Mr. Max was so prolific — and Park West,”  the cruise ship art auctioneering firm,  “was such a voracious buyer — that like many popular artists,  he often relied on assistant painters to stretch canvases, paint backgrounds and apply templates. But Mr. Max always did the creating, according to individuals familiar with his work in this period.”

Later,  though,  according to Chozick,  Peter Max would be taken into his studio,  “be instructed to hold out his hand,  and for hours,  would sign the art as if it were his own,  grasping a brush and scrawling Max.  The arrangement, which continued until earlier this year,  was described to The New York Times by seven people who witnessed it.”

“Mary and Libra Max,”  daughter of Peter Max,  also involved in animal advocacy,  “would later allege in separate court proceedings that they were both barred from the studio,”  Chozick summarized.

Mary Max

Mary sought guardian for Peter

Mary Max in 2015 petitioned the Supreme Court of the State of New York “to appoint a guardian to oversee her husband’s business,”  Chozick continued.  “Ms. Max told the court that Adam had taken custody of his father and concealed his whereabouts from friends and family — that he had effectively ‘kidnapped’ Mr. Max,  according to court filings. Adam said he was protecting his father from his stepmother’s verbal and physical abuse.

Ultimately,”  however,  “a judge ordered Mr. Max to be returned to his wife’s care at their Riverside Drive home,  appointing a guardian to oversee both his business and personal matters.”

Yet another of at least five lawsuits pertaining to the $93-million-a-year Peter Max art franchise was filed,  according to Chozick,  barely two weeks before Mary Max killed herself.

Paul Shapiro (Beth Clifton photo)

Paul Shapiro

Among the last people involved in animal advocacy to hear from Mary Max was apparently Paul Shapiro,  who founded Compassion Over Killing in 1995,  was director of farmed animal campaigns for the Humane Society of the U.S. from 2005 to 2016,  and is now cofounder of The Better Meat Co.,  promoting plant-based meat alternatives.

“She’d regularly email or call me to talk about strategies,”  Shapiro posted to Facebook,  “to commiserate over similar health issues we both were having,  or often just to offer kind words about my work,  including both in my best days and during my worst.  Her last email to me was just this past May 28,  and was solely an out-of-the-blue message of kindness and support,  something very typical of Mary.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton, with African friend.

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Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham & his Carnegie Medal for Civilian Valor.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Severely injured Duane Eddie Vanlanham won a medal & a lawsuit,  but no payout

            SAGINAW,  Michigan––Duane Eddie Vanlanham,  a 2009 recipient of the Carnegie Medal for Civilian Valor for fighting off three pit bulls to rescue neighbor Bridgetta Hadley,  at huge cost to himself,  died on June 14,  2019 as quietly as he had always lived,  in the neighborhood where he spent most of his 59 years,  on the block where Saginaw and Buena Vista Township meet.

Several Carnegie Medals for Civilian Heroism have been presented each year since 1904 by the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission,  one of several philanthropic funds endowed by Scots-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie.  The founder of the United States Steel Corporation,  Carnegie is best known for funding the construction of libraries.

“Wayne” to family & friends

Vanlanham,  born on May 31, 1960,  appears to have been named,  perhaps inadvertently,  after rock-and-roll guitarist Dwayne Eddy,  then 22 and at the peak of his career after recently recording the Top 10 hits Rebel Rouser,  Because They’re Young,  and Peter Gunn.

Vanlanham’s son,  Duane Eddie Banks-Vanlanham,  a youth baseball coach,  now 35,  active in his church and known for his positive,  encouraging outlook,  kept the name “Duane” in the family.

Duane Eddie Vanlanham the Carnegie Medal winner,  however,  appears to have been “Wayne” to family and friends.

Bobbie G. Vanlanham

“Just went to take the garbage out”

On March 5,  2009,  Wayne Vanlanham told Saginaw News reporters Paul Wyche and Brian Brunner,  “I just went to take the garbage out and the dogs met me at the door.”

Wayne Vanlanham,  identified by Wyche and Brunner as “a part-time auto supplier employee who was out of work on disability with a bad back,”  sharing his home with his mother Bobbie G. Vanlanham,  recognized that the three pit bulls might be dangerous.

All females,  the three pit bulls had often run at large in recent days,  accosting others.  Hadley,  then 41,  had thrown rocks at the pit bulls to keep them away from her,  she later testified in court.

Said Wayne Vanlanham,  “I pushed them off of the door and they ran.”

Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham with younger family member.

Called animal control before the attack

“Vanlanham quickly was able to get back in his house,”  summarized Saginaw News reporter Andy Hoag,  who covered the ensuing criminal case.  “He called emergency personnel, who referred him to the Saginaw County Animal Care Center. Minutes after calling animal control,  he heard Hadley ‘hollering for help,’  he testified,  yelling,  ‘Somebody please help me.’”

“About 10 minutes later,  I heard screams,” confirmed Vanlanham to Wyche and Brunner.

Hadley,  a counsellor at Wolverine Human Services,  was on her way to work.  She saw one of the pit bulls on her lawn and the other two on Vanlanham’s lawn,  two doors away,  but thought she could slip past them to her car.

Instead they attacked immediately,  biting her arms and legs.

One of the pit bulls who attacked Brigetta Hadley and Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham.

Stick broke

“I told my mother to call 911,”  Wayne Vanlanham told the court,  and ran outside to help Hadley,  whom he had known her entire life.

“I grabbed a stick,  but as soon as I hit one of them with it,  the thing broke,”  testified Wayne Vanlanham,  who did not know the technique of luring dogs away from a victim by getting them to bite a stick instead of the person or animal under attack.

(See 15 real-life tips for surviving a dog attack (2019 edition)

            “Somebody drove up and opened the door for her to get in,”  Wayne Vanlanham continued.  He helped Hadley into the car.

“Once she got in the car,  the next thing I knew they were on me,  ripping off my shoes,  my socks and my pants.  I don’t know how they did that,”  Wayne Vanlanham said.  “I tried to get on the hood,  but they grabbed me by the legs and I slid off the hood.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Dogs were just going crazy”

Wrote Hoag,  “He stood up and backed away from the dogs,  but tripped over the curb and fell,  he testified.  One dog began biting his left leg,  ‘tearing away my muscles,’  Wayne Vanlanham remembered,  “while the other two bit his right leg and one of his arms.”

“The dogs were just going crazy,”  a witness told the Saginaw News,  declining to be identified from fear of retaliation by the pit bulls’ owners.

Other men in the neighborhood tried to help.  “One of the men was swinging a knife,  trying to defend himself,”  the witness said,  but effectively stabbing or slashing a lunging pit bull is approximately as difficult as hitting a major league slider.  The knife was ineffective.

Shamorrow Amos & Anthony D. “Poodle” Hunt

“They were all over him”

“They were all over him,”  the witness concluded.  “Those dogs needed to be shot.  If those were children out there,  they’d be dead. The dogs would have torn them up.”

Buena Vista Township police officer Shawntina Austin,  the first to the scene,  “was able to prevent the dogs from getting back at Vanlanham,”  VanLanHam testified.

The pit bulls retreated to a nearby rental home occupied by then-24-year-old Shamorrow Amos and her then-33-year-old boyfriend,  Anthony D. “Poodle” Hunt.

Buena Vista Township police officer Jason Hendricks shot one of the three
pit bulls.

“The officer used extreme caution in the direction of his fire because of the many
bystanders around,”  Buena Vista Township police detective Kevin Kratz told media.

Carnegie Medal for Civilian Valor

“That guy deserves an award”

Altogether,  three Buena Vista police officers,  three detectives,  police chief Brian Booker,  several Buena Vista Fire Department personnel,  and “three or four” Saginaw police officers converged to help Hadley and Vanlanham,  and to keep the pit bulls contained until the two pit bulls who were not shot could be captured by animal control officers and impounded at the Saginaw County Animal Care Center.

“That guy deserves an award,  if you ask me,”  Hendricks told Wyche and Brunner.

Booker agreed that Vanlanham was “the hero in all this,”  because “He went to [Hadley’s] rescue.”

Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham in hospital.

Lost five toes & four fingers

Vanlanham “lost all five toes on his right foot and four fingers as a result of the attack and has since had several infections that hospitalized him other times,” wrote Hoag.

After more than two hours of emergency surgery at the St. Mary’s of Michigan Covenant Medical Center in Saginaw,  Vanlanham was hospitalized for five months,  Saginaw News reporter Gus Burns detailed in an October 2009 follow-up.

“Doctors released him,”  wrote Burns,  “but infection from the saliva of the dogs entered his bloodstream.  One day he collapsed,  he said.  When he awakened,  or ‘came back alive,’  as he described it,  a week later,  he was filled with tubes,  back in a bed at St. Mary’s of Michigan.  Slowly, doctors fought back the blood infection,  and he moved to a Heartland Health Center in Bridgeport Township.

Shirley J. Vanlanham

Lost sister & stepfather

“More tragedy struck,”  Burns related.  “One day [August 18,  2009] he planned to visit his sister,  Shirley J. Vanlanham,  52,  but was unable because of a medical complication.  The next day,  she died unexpectedly after a brief illness stemming from a prior stroke,  said their sister, Baston.

“His 93-year-old stepfather,  Walter Cureton Sr.,  who raised Vanlanham from age 7,  died days later.

“After that,”  Burns wrote,  “Vanlanham went into a “fiercely deep depression,” said Baston.  “His medical bills surpassed his Medicaid coverage for treatment by $25,000,  Baston said.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Stood up in court

Though unable to stand for extended periods,  Vanlanham did manage to stand up in court to testify against Shamorrow Amos and Anthony D. “Poodle” Hunt at their May 2010 trial on multiple related counts.

Contending that he and Amos were not guilty because the pit bulls who mauled Hadley and Vanlanham were not theirs,  Hunt testified that he and Amos formerly owned Ma,  the mother of the three pit bulls,  but gave them away after Hunt was cited,  two months before the attack,  for keeping them without a license.  Hunt and Amos later gave away Ma,  Hunt added,  in compliance with a court order that forbade him from keeping dogs.

The jury nonetheless convicted Hunt and Amos on four of six counts of possessing a dangerous animal causing serious injury.

From Shamorrow Amos’ Facebook page, 2015.

Perp again has a pit?

Saginaw County Circuit Judge Janet M. Boes sentenced Hunt to serve from five to eight years in prison,  as a “habitual offender” with multiple prior convictions.  Boes sentenced Amos to spend three months under house arrest,  plus three years on probation,  ordered her to not own or be in the care of a dog,  and further ordered her to complete an adult education program to earn her high school diploma.

Amos,  while Vanlanham was still hospitalized,  had a brush with random violence herself when her cousin Barnell Amos,  41,  and his nephew,  Devin Elliott,  nine,  were in September 2009 fatally shot during a home invasion robbery.  The killings remain unsolved.

As of September 2015,  Amos apparently again had a pit bull,  according to photos she posted to Facebook.

Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham.

Won lawsuit but not $2 million award

Fifteen months elapsed before Judge Boes finally allowed Saginaw County Animal Care Center director Valerie McCullough to euthanize Amos and Hunt’s two pit bulls who were captured alive at the scene after Hadley and Vanlanham were attacked.

Hadley and Vanlanham sued Amos and Hunt.

Saginaw County, Michigan Circuit Judge Fred L. Borchard appears to have issued the second highest award for dog attack damages then on public record when on July 17, 2011 he signed default judgments against Amos and Hunt,  ordering them to pay $2 million each to Hadley and Vananham.

“They are unlikely to ever see money,”  wrote Andy Hoag,  “because Hunt is imprisoned until 2015 for possessing the dogs who attacked Hadley and Vanlanham.  Amos is on probation until 2013 for the same crime and receives disability payments from the federal Social Security Administration because,  the administration states in court documents,  she has “anxiety-related disorders and schizophrenia,  paranoia,  or other functional psychotic disorders.”

Duane Eddie “Wayne” Vanlanham

“I have faith.  Something good will come out of it.”

Amos through her attorney filed an affidavit saying she could not respond to the civil suit because of her “state of illiteracy coupled with my total understanding of matters borders on incompetency,”  according to Hoag.

“VanLanHam and Hadley also sued Eldred Rentals,  the company that owned Amos’ home,”  Hoag reported.  But Borchard dismissed that case,  ruling that “The landlord did not have a duty to protect third parties from injuries inflicted by a tenant’s pet that occur away from the leased premises.”

Explained Hoag,  “The only other avenue for VanLanHam and Hadley to collect from Hunt and Amos would have been through restitution ordered after their criminal case,  but the county prosecutor’s office did not pursue that avenue.  County Assistant Prosecutor Norm Donker,  who tried the case,  said his office didn’t request restitution because of the pending civil case.”

“I have faith.  Something good will come out of it,”  Vanlanham told Hoag.

Presa Canario  (Wikipedia photo)

2001 Saginaw fatality

Concern about dangerous dogs had been building in Saginaw since January 15,  2001,  when Kelly Sue Jaime,  22,  was killed just inside the door of her apartment by two Presa Canarios allegedly owned by relatives who lived downstairs.

Kelly Sue Jaime,  whose maiden name was Leonard,  had married Ryan N. Jaime,  a soldier stationed in Texas,  just three weeks before her death.  Originally from upstate New York,  she was not well known in Saginaw.

Stronger dangerous dog legislation was discussed after her death,  but nothing appears to have actually been drafted until in August 2008 two pit bulls dug under the fence surrounding the Children’s Zoo at Celebration Square,  killing two goats and a rooster,  injuring sheep,  goats and cattle.

Bridgetta Hadley

New ordinance cut dog attacks by more than half

The pit bull attack on Hadley and Vanlanham pushed through to passage a dangerous dog ordinance,  taking effect in June 2011,  which requires residents to register pit bulls,  Presa Canarios, bull mastiffs,  Rottweilers and German shepherds as “dangerous dogs,”  post a “Dog on premises” sign where the dogs are kept,  and either keep the dogs leashed or behind a four-foot fence when outdoors.

Saginaw issued 37 citations for violations of the ordinance during the first eighteen months it was in effect.  The number of reported dog bite injuries in Saginaw dropped from 24 in 2009 to just nine in 2011.

The ordinance remains in effect despite repeated attempts by pit bull advocates to repeal it.

Wayne Vanlanham,  meanwhile,  “found out he had Stage 4 throat cancer in September 2018,”  reported Bob Johnson of Michigan Live.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

“Even after he found out he had cancer,  we have pictures of him playing dominoes at our family Christmas celebration,”  his niece Crystal Clark told Johnson. “Overall,  he was the same Uncle Wayne.  Fun and energetic.”

The Vanlanham family set up a GoFundMe account called “Burial For Saginaw Hometown Hero” to help with funeral expenses.

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Kristjan Loftsson.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Iceland suspends whaling after ANIMALS 24-7 exposes how killing whales wounded a whale-watching industry that brings in twice as much money

            REYKJAVIK, Iceland––The two remaining Icelandic whaling companies,  Hvalur,  killing fin whales,  and IP Útgerð,  killing minke whales,  on the afternoon of June 27,  2019 jointly announced that they will not go whaling this year,  the first year since 2003 that there will be no Icelandic whaling season.

ANIMALS 24-7,  at 7:05 a.m.,  Icelandic time,  on June 27,  2019,  published the original edition of the exposé below,  “Whaling harpoons Icelandic tourism & the whole nation suffers,”  demonstrating date by date over the past two years how escalating whaling by Hvalur and IP Útgerð coincided with a collapse of tourism that now threatens to implode the whole Icelandic economy.

ANIMALS 24-7 within minutes posted links to “Whaling harpoons Icelandic tourism & the whole nation suffers” to as many Icelandic tourism and media web pages and social media sites as possible.  Many readers helped to amplify the exposé with cross-postings and “shares” among their own social media contacts.

The Captain Highliner brand quit buying fish from Kristjan Loftsson in 2014 in protest against his involvement in whaling.

“No whaling will take place in Icelandic waters this summer”

At 13:37 Icelandic time,  the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service –– Ríkisútvarpið,  called RÚV for short –– announced that “No whaling will take place in Icelandic waters this summer,  it has been confirmed.  The news is not the result of government intervention, but rather of commercial concerns.  This will be the first time in 17 years that there will be no whaling.

“It has been confirmed that no whales of any type will be hunted,”  RUV continued.  “Minke whale hunters are going to concentrate on sea cucumbers this summer and the CEO of Hvalur,  the only company that hunts great whales,  exclusively for export to Japan,  has said that market conditions in Japan are too difficult.”

According to RUV,  Hvalur owner Kristján Loftsson “announced this spring that his company would not catch great whales this summer because it has proven difficult to market the meat in Japan, where 100 percent of the catch is exported to.”  But Loftsson issued the same complaint in 2011-2012 and 2016-2017,  only to resume whaling in 2018 on a bigger scale than ever before.

Added RUV,  “Gunnar Bergmann Jónsson, CEO of IP útgerð,  which hunts minke whales for domestic consumption,  says his company is going to concentrate on sea cucumbers until 1st September.”

(Image from film Moby Dick, 1998, Hallmark Entertainment.)

Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block lost no time in declaring “victory” and claiming credit for the Icelandic suspension of whaling,  but it was not HSUS that assembled the data showing the relationship between whaling and the tourism collapse,  and then put it on desks all over Iceland first thing in the morning on the day the suspension was announced.

Reported ANIMALS 24-7

Tourism to Iceland is plunging faster than a harpooned great whale,  sinking the national economy––and vengeance-driven Icelandic whalers may be doing the damage on purpose,  with the help of isolationist conservative allies in government,  partly to maintain the political primacy of the whaling and fishing industries,  and partly just to weaken European cultural influence.

For the two remaining Icelandic whaling barons,  Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson and Kristján Loftsson,  the reputed “Captain Ahab” of the North Atlantic,  the possibility that Iceland might join the European Union and accept E.U. regulation of whaling and fishing looms as an existential threat.

Scenes from the Cod Wars.
(Wikipedia photos)

Cod’s wallop

Loftsson,  76,  who first went to sea in 1956 as a 13-year-old whale spotter aboard his father’s boat,  personally remembers the so-called cod wars of 1958-1961,  1972-1973,  and 1975-1976.  Iceland then repeatedly used the threat of withdrawing from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to force British fishers out of waters to which Iceland claims exclusive fishing rights.

Jonsson,  much younger,  has only heard about the cod wars.  But both Loftsson and Jonsson present themselves as standard bearers for the traditions of Viking self-sufficiency and defiance of international authority that,  in their view,  characterize Iceland.

Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson.

Meanwhile at the Keflavik International Airport,  near Reykjavik,  the Icelandic capital,  “Visitors plunged 24 percent in May 2019 from the same period last year,  and the all-important summer season is looking shaky,”  reported Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir for the Bloomberg Media Group on June 23,  2019.

“For all of 2019,  the number of visitors could drop 17%,”  Sigurdardottir said,  based on airline reservation data.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tourism industry & Icelandic government in denial

But Sigurdardottir wrote nothing about the influence of Icelandic whaling on tourism to Iceland,  and the Icelandic government has not acknowledged any relationship,  despite numbers suggesting a clear and strong linkage.

Loftsson’s company,  Hvalur,  operating the only fin whaling fleet in Iceland,  killing the largest and most easily seen whales native to Icelandic waters,  killed no whales in 2016 and 2017 due to lack of money and markets for whale meat.

Kristjan Loftsson.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Killing whales at any cost

Hvalur killed 134 fin whales in 2014,  and 155 in 2015,  but reportedly lost $12.5 million USD in the effort.

To refinance Hvalur,  Loftsson on April 19,  2018 sold 34% of his shares in the HB Grandi commercial fishing empire for $217.5 million.

While Loftsson might have feared being reduced to wearing a pickled herring barrel,  Iceland as a whole prospered during his whaling moratorium as never before.

Tourism to Iceland soared 38% in 2016 alone,  the first year since 2009 that Hvalur killed no whales.

Icelandic whale-watching revenue increased to more than $25 million in 2017,  reportedly almost twice the peak value of the entire Icelandic whaling industry,  according to University of Iceland data.

Kristjan Loftsson.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Tourism nearly passed fishing & whaling as leading employer

By the second quarter of 2018,  the Icelandic hospitality industry employed 8,428 people,  a 97% increase in 10 years,  while employment in fishing and whaling slipped 3% to 8,875.  These were the two largest industries in Iceland,  distantly trailed by the insurance and financial services sector,  employing 6,341,  down 28% largely due to increased online banking and automation.

But Loftsson killed 191 fin whales in 2018,  then secured permission from fisheries minister Kristjan Thor Juliusson to kill 209 fin whales per year through 2023.

Juliusson simultaneously authorized the only other Icelandic whaling company,  IP-Utgerd Ltd.,  owned by Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson,  to kill 217 minke whales per year through 2023.

Altogether,  Juliusson signed the death warrants for more than 2,000 whales,  and perhaps for the Icelandic whale-watching industry too.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tourism crashed immediately

“Iceland’s tourism boom that saw the island nation’s visitor numbers quadruple in just seven years could be over,”  warned Hugh Morris of The Telegraph on February 13,  2019––though without mentioning whales––soon after Juliusson issued the permits to kill whales.

But the decline in Icelandic tourism had actually begun in April 2018,  immediately after Juliusson allowed Hvalur to kill 191 fin whales.

Enthusiasm for visiting Iceland to see whales was briefly displaced in social media comments by furious appeals––especially in Europe––for a boycott of anything and everything Icelandic.

The initial flurry of boycott demands subsided,  but regained momentum after one of Loftsson’s ships on July 10,  2018 killed a hybrid fin/blue whale.

Photos and video of the dead whale were relayed to global media by the German organization Hard to Port,  incorporated in October 2014 specifically to oppose the Icelandic whaling industry,  and by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Spontaneous boycott

No major whale advocacy organization actually called for a boycott,  not even Hard to Port and the Sea Shepherds.  Indeed,  whale advocacy leaders mostly pointed out that a boycott could backfire,  undercutting Icelandic whale-watching and thereby reinforcing the whalers’ influence.

Polls commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and various Icelandic news organizations reportedly found that support from Icelanders for hunting fin whales fell from 80% in 2009 to 34% in 2018,  with an equal number opposed and 31% undecided.

But choices of tourism destinations tend to be emotionally driven,  and the very people who were most likely to choose Iceland were repelled by the images of bleeding whale carcasses that flooded electronic media.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Volcanic eruption

“In 2010,  fewer than 500,000 people made the trip to Iceland’s otherworldly shores,”  Morris continued.  “But after unprecedented publicity,  following the eruption of [the Icelandic volcano] Eyjafjallajokull and its subsequent ash cloud,  hundreds of thousands flocked to [Iceland] in search of remarkable natural landscapes and untouched volcanic vistas.”

Beginning as something else to do after viewing Eyjafjallajokull,  whale-watching grew to supplant volcano visits as the leading Icelandic tourist attraction.

“In 2018,  2.3 million people visited,”  Morris wrote.  “However,  according to new figures released by the Icelandic tourist board,  January 2019 registered a 5.8 per cent fall in arrivals compared to the same month last year. The decrease represents the first since April 2018,  and one of very few over the last seven years.

“The trend is easier to see in U.K. visitors,”  Morris added,  “for which there was a fall for every month of 2018 compared to 2017,  as high as a 17.9 per cent slip in April 2018.”

Bloggers “Justin plus Lauren”

“Whale meat is not a traditional dish”

Sigurdardottir and Morris are scarcely the only media pundits observing the Icelandic tourism meltdown without noting how closely the trends in tourism parallel the most publicized developments in whaling.

Indeed,  only one prominent travel journalist appears to have seen the whale in the room:  Canadian independent vegan travel blogger Lauren Yakiwchuk,  author of Justin Plus Lauren,  a site pitched at millennials –– who happen to be the age range to whom Icelandic adventures most appeal.

“Contrary to popular belief, whale meat is not a traditional dish in Iceland,”   Yakiwchuk explained in December 2017,  in her second column addressing Icelandic whale-watching and whaling.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Disconnect

“The amount of [Icelandic] restaurants serving whale meat doubled between 2007 and 2012,”  Yakiwchuk wrote,  “due to a rise in tourism.  In 2009,”  when most visitors were thrill-seekers attracted by the Eyjafjallajokull eruption,   “40% of tourists visiting Iceland tried whale meat.  Thankfully,  due to outreach programs,”  and due to the shift in visitor interest away from volcano-watching to whale-watching,  “this number was reduced to 18% by 2014,”   Yakiwchuk reported.

After describing the social media furor favoring a boycott of Iceland over whaling,  Yakiwchuk opined,  “I don’t think you should boycott traveling to Iceland.  The real issue is that tourists won’t stop eating whale meat.  Some travelers will take a whale watching tour, and walk right into a restaurant for a meal made of whale right after the tour is over.  How could there possibly be such a disconnect?

“When I attended a whale-watching tour in Husavik,”  Yakiwchuk continued,  “the tour operators were quite vocal about stopping the whale hunt.  They told everyone that tourists kept the whaling industry alive there.  Not only should we stop eating these gentle giants,  but we should boycott any restaurant that serves whale on its menu.  I agree with them.  If you see whale openly advertised or served on any menu,  please do not dine at those restaurants.”

Capelin collapse

But Yakiwchuk may be a bit naïve about what really drives Icelandic whaling.

Parallel to the Icelandic tourism collapse,  which is taking the money out of whale-watching,  the long overfished capelin fish stock has collapsed,  thirty years after the comparably overfished cod stock collapsed in Atlantic Canada.

Climate change driven by global warming suggests that the capelin stock may never recover to commercial abundance,  just as the Atlantic cod stock has not recovered.

But just as Atlantic Canadian fishers tend to blame harp seals,  and to a lesser extent grey seals,  for the loss and non-recovery of cod,  Icelandic fishers tend to blame minke and fin whales for the loss of capelin.

Reality is that minke and fin whales both mostly eat krill,  sieved through the baleen filters that they have instead of teeth.  Like other baleen whales,  minke and fin whales eat only incidental quantities of fish.  The fish they do eat,  however,  tend to be densely schooling species,  including all of those of most economic value to Iceland:  herring,  cod,  mackerel,  pollock,  sardines,  and capelin.

Marine mammal advocate Ric O’Barry protesting outside European Union headquarters in Brussels.

Keeping Iceland out of the European Union

Maintaining independence from European Union fisheries regulation,  including regulation of whaling,  remains of paramount importance to the politically conservative Independence Party of Iceland,  which ruled the country with little opposition from 1929 to 2009,  and remains the largest party within the coalition government that has ruled ever since.

That Iceland would join the European Union appeared imminent after the Independence Party lost the parliamentary majority in 2009,  but the Icelandic coalition government froze membership negotiations after the fishing industry––led by Loftsson among others––vehemently opposed the EU Common Fisheries Policy.

As his last official act before the previous ruling coalition collapsed,  then-fisheries minister Einar Gudfinnsson increased the Hvalur fin whaling quota to 150,  after only seven fin whales were killed in the preceding three years.

The European Union “would be likely to demand an end to whaling as a condition of membership,”  explained BBC News environment correspondent Richard Black.

By allowing Loftsson to expand Hvalur operations,  Gudfinnsson helped to entrench the Icelandic whaling and fishing industries as obstacles to EU membership.

Kristjan Loftsson.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Revenge

Finally,  for Loftsson,  there is the revenge factor.

Much as Captain Ahab lost a leg to the great white sperm whale Moby Dick and then pursued Moby Dick around the world,  at any and all cost,  Loftsson appears to be driven chiefly by enduring fury that in November 1986 the anti-whaling activists Rod Coronado and David Howitt trashed the Hvalur whale processing plant in Hvalfjörður fjord,  and scuttled two of his whaling ships in Reykjavík harbor,  in an operation sponsored by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The Hvalur 6 and Hvalur 7 were both refloated,  but were never repaired and returned to service.  Loftsson now kills whales with the Hvalur 8 and Hvalur 9,  of similar appearance but newer construction.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Coronado and Howitt escaped from Iceland before the damage was discovered.  The statute of limitations for prosecuting them expired more than 20 years ago.

But Loftsson has yet to satisfy the grudge he holds over the episode,  generalized to all who applauded the Sea Shepherd action,  and for that matter,  to everyone who opposes whaling.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/

(Beth Clifton collage)

54% of U.S. pit bulls are seeking homes,  up from 41% in 2018

Americans seeking to add a dog to their families had 17.2 million dogs to choose from in the first week of July 2019,  a third more than in July 2018,  according to the 10th annual ANIMALS 24-7 mid-summer survey of online classified ads offering dogs for sale or adoption.

The ANIMALS 24-7 surveys are timed each year to reflect the post-“puppy season” peak of dog acquisition,  after most of the dogs who will enter their first homes during the year will already have been born,  weaned,  and advertised.

The numbers of dogs offered for sale tends to represent dogs entering their first homes other than birth homes.  The numbers of dogs offered for adoption tends to reflect how many dogs of each breed once had a home,  other than a birth home,  but for some reason––usually behavioral––ended up with a shelter or rescue,  seeking a new home.

(Beth Clifton photo)

More dogs pushes U.S. farther from every dog having a home

The spectacular increase in dogs available may be good news for people seeking dogs from breeders,  but should be seen as catastrophically bad news for anyone trying to achieve a no-kill nation,  in which every dog finds a “forever home.”

The ANIMALS 24-7 survey numbers show that no currently popular approach to reducing “dog overpopulation” shows unequivocal success,  other than routine spay/neuter,  while many approaches much ballyhooed by humane organizations show unequivocal failure.

Promoting adoptions from shelters and shelterless rescues appears to have reduced the inventory of dogs available for adoption by about half a million since July 2018.

Yet despite ever-increasing expenditure on efforts to rehome pit bulls,  and an ongoing tendency for shelters and rescues to mislabel pit bulls and pit mixes as any other breed of dog that they may faintly resemble,  the total number of pit bulls and pit mixes advertised by shelters and rescues is up by more than 150,000.

Pekingese.  (Beth Clifton photo)

Shelter & rescue inventory of non-pits is depleted

Adopters between July 2018 and July 2019 more aggressively than ever before snatched up any and all non-pit bulls and pit mixes,  depleting the non-pit inventory at shelters and rescues,  while assiduously avoiding pits.

The net effect was to skew the U.S. shelter dog population even farther toward domination by pit bulls and pit mixes.

Twenty-two percent of the dogs offered for adoption by shelters and rescues in July 2018 were pit bulls and pit mixes.  This surged to 31% by July 2019:  approximately equal to total pit bull and pit mix intake by shelters and rescues circa 2013,  but total pit bull and pit mix intake now appears to be about 50%.  The difference between intake and pit bulls offered for adoption is approximately equal to euthanasias.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Backyard breeding

Because breeding pit bulls in high volume and raising them in group housing tends to lead to “dog-aggressive” puppies often killing each other,  major commercial breeders seldom produce either “purebred” pit bulls or pit mixes.

Instead,  practically all pit bulls are the products of backyard breeding.

Trends in pit bull advertising are therefore a convenient way to measure the success of efforts to legislate against backyard breeding.

Those numbers are not encouraging.  Pit bulls in July 2019 were 7.9% of the dogs advertised for sale,  down slightly from 8% in both 2017 and 2018.

However,  because so many more dogs were bred and put on the market,  the 8% in 2018 amounted to 925,000 pit bulls.  The 7.9% in 2019 came to more than 1.3 million pit bulls,  or 375,000 more pit bull puppies than a year earlier to compete for homes against the million-odd pit bulls at shelters and rescues after flunking out of homes.

Breed makeup of the total U.S. dog population

Each year the most complex part of the ANIMALS 24-7 mid-summer survey of online classified ads offering dogs for sale or adoption,  which took a full week to complete in 2019,  is projecting the breed makeup of the total U.S. dog population.  This is done by combining the newest survey data with the trends visible in the summer survey numbers from past years.

(Scroll to bottom for complete data on all breeds registering 1% or more.)

Among the estimated 78 million dogs in the U.S. as of July 2019,  about 5.8%,  or about 4.5 million,  appear to be pit bulls or pit mixes.  This is slightly more than one dog in twenty.

Observed ANIMALS 24-7 a year ago,  “Nearly 15% of the dogs available to the U.S. public for sale or adoption as of mid-June 2018 were pit bulls,  but that scarcely made pit bulls the most popular breed.  Rather,  the numbers indicate the magnitude of the pit bull glut afflicting animal shelters and rescues throughout the nation:  of a total of 4.4 million pit bulls alive in the U.S. as of June 2018,  1.8 million––41%––were seeking homes.  21% of U.S. pit bulls currently available are in first year of life;  19% have lost at least one home.”

600,000 more pit bulls without homes

Pit bulls in July 2019 are only 11.6% of the dogs available,  because of explosive surges in breeder offerings of popular small dogs,  but the available pit bull supply is up from 1.8 million to nearly 2.4 million.

Yet the total U.S. pit bull population is still “only” 4.5 million.

What this means is that 31% of the pit bulls in the U.S. are puppies in their first year of life,  seeking their first homes after their birth homes.

23% of the pit bulls in the U.S. are advertised for adoption,  having lost previous homes.

Altogether,  54% of the U.S. pit bull population are still seeking a “forever” home.

And of the pit bulls who have homes,  the numbers indicate that approximately half will flunk out of their homes within the next year.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Shelter killing = half of pit bull mortality

The only reason the total U.S. pit bull population has not mushroomed,  meanwhile,  appears to be that the pit bull mortality rate is also in the vicinity of 31% per year:  about triple the rate for all other dog breeds combined.

About half of U.S. pit bull mortality (circa 675,000) appears to be humane euthanasia by animal shelters,  chiefly for behavioral reasons,  while the rest die from a variety of other causes.

Animal advocates hoping to make the U.S. a “no kill nation” by rehoming more shelter dogs,  which translates into rehoming more pit bulls,  have pushed hard in recent years for legislation to end the sale of commercially bred puppies by pet stores.

The underlying strategy is to put so-called “puppy mills” out of business by cutting off their markets.

(Faye McBride photo)

Rather than take pit bulls from shelters whom they cannot rehome,  rescues buy small dogs from “puppy mills”

If puppies of popular breeds are unavailable from pet stores,  the thinking goes,  people who want dogs will be forced to adopt shelter and rescue dogs,  specifically the pit bulls and pit mixes which have accounted for more than 25% of the dogs admitted to animal shelters and more than half of total shelter killing for in excess of 15 years now.

But the 10th annual ANIMALS 24-7 mid-summer survey of online classified ads offering dogs for sale or adoption more clearly than ever shows the failure of that argument.

(Judy Lapidus photo)

Reality is that small dogs,  puppies of any breed except pit bulls and pit mixes,  and even medium-sized dogs of non-pit lineage long ago became scarce at shelters and reputable rescues.  This trend has continued to the point that many so-called rescues have been exposed in recent years for selling dogs––mostly of small and fluffy breeds––bought directly from commercial breeders.

“Adoption fees” for small dogs rival breeder prices for purebreds

These dogs are nominally “culls,”  said to be too big or too old for commercial sale through pet stores.  Advertised as “rescued,”  however,  they typically command “adoption” prices comparable to the prices paid for purebred and “designer breed” puppies.

Meanwhile,  most breeder marketing these days is done online,  directly from breeder or wholesaler to customer,  bypassing pet stores entirely.

The advent of online marketing coincides with an ever-increasing trend toward extreme polarization in promotion of dog breeds.  While pit bulls and other large,  dangerous breed types come mostly from backyard breeders,  small breeds come mostly from commercial breeders,  and mid-sized breeds,  weighing 25 to 50 pounds at maturity,  are less and less popular with anyone.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Small breed popularity surges

Mid-sized dogs dominated customer preference in retrospective ANIMALS 24-7 surveys covering the time frames 1900-1950,  1970-1979,  and 1980-1989.  Yet of the 26 breeds and breed types who together account for 76% of the dogs advertised for sale in July 2019,  only 5.4% are in the medium size range.

34%,  however,  are dogs of eleven small breeds who––except for beagles and Chihuahuas––have historically seldom amounted to more than 1% of the dogs advertised.

Nine of these small breeds rated so far below 1% in the 2014,  2015,  and 2016 ANIMALS 24-7 surveys that we failed to log their numbers,  before returning in 2017 to our present practice of logging the totals for every breed,  no matter how low.

The bottom line is that people who prefer small dogs for whatever reason,  including apartment living and aging,  are showing themselves unlikely to be coerced into adopting pit bulls,  no matter how much pressure is put on pet stores to help promote pit bulls.

Boxer & pit bull puppy.  (Beth Clifton photo)

Boxers & bull mastiffs

Meanwhile,  the 10th annual ANIMALS 24-7 mid-summer survey of online classified ads offering dogs for sale or adoption shows two other trends that should alarm the humane community.  More than six times as many boxers and bull mastiffs were offered for sale in 2019 as in 2016.  Boxers were,  in fact,  offered in greater numbers than any breed except pit bulls,  while bull mastiffs,  including Presa Canarios,  surged to 3.6% of the dogs offered for sale after never previously topping 1%.

Both boxers and bull mastiffs share most of their traits and ancestry with pit bulls.  Both also rate among the top 10 breeds in frequency of inflicting fatal and disfiguring injuries on humans,  according to the data logged by ANIMALS 24-7 since 1982.

Backyard breeders may be producing boxers and bull mastiffs in higher volume lately to supply customers who believe they want a large,  dangerous dog,  but prefer to avoid the pit bull reputation.  This suggests that boxers and bull mastiffs may soon also be over-represented in owner surrenders to animal shelters and impoundments for dangerous behavior,  if they are not already.

Rottweiler.  (Beth Clifton photo)

A conspiracy of dunces?

A conspiracy theorist might suggest that advocates for pit bulls and other dangerous dogs purposefully produce a glut of such dogs, many of whom will never find “forever homes.”

This in turn ensures that the humane community will keep pouring resources into boosting the image of pit bulls and other dangerous dogs,  in order to avoid having to euthanize the perpetual surplus.

But imagining such a plot would require imagining that significant numbers of dangerous dog advocates are both cleverly diabolical and more far-sighted than their counterparts who run humane organizations––and that dangerous dog breeders,  especially of pit bulls,  are at the same time deliberately producing overpopulation which in turn results in thousands of animal shelters and rescues giving pit bulls away for free,  undercutting the paying market.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Imagining such a conspiracy theory also requires imagining that the humane community will never awaken to reality and pursue breed-specific legislation to stop the overpopulation of dangerous dogs as aggressively as it has pursued legislation against so-called “puppy mills,” most of which produce dogs of breeds that are genuinely in demand and rarely harm anyone.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/

(Beth Clifton collage)

2018 law raised penalties for dog attacks,  but also raised bars to preventing them

            FORT MITCHELL,  Alabama––“Vicious dog attack warrants misdemeanor charge,”  bannered Robbie Watson of WLTZ-38 First News on July 10,  2019,  but the story focus was on the shock and frustration of victim Sandy Vogts that the attack itself actually brought no charges at all.

Worse,  Vogts may be left footing the whole cost of treatment for more than 200 puncture wounds and scalp reattachment,  because of a critical defect in Emily’s Law,  an Alabama statute introduced to provide felony penalties for severe dog attacks that included a “one free bite” exemption.

Emily’s Law,  introduced in memory of December 2017 pit bull attack victim Emily Mae Colvin,  took effect on June 1,  2018.

Emma Mae Colvin, shown with husband Eric Colvin, on December 7, 2017 became the record-setting 50th dog attack death in the U.S. in 2017.

(See Emily Mae Colvin, 24, is record 35th U.S. pit bull fatality of 2017.)

ANIMALS 24-7 warning went ignored

ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out on March 26,  2018,  under the headline New Alabama law increases penalties for dog attacks but does little to prevent them,  that the “one free bite” exemption would render Emily’s Law ineffective,  but Alabama Governor Kay Ivey had already signed the bill into law a week earlier.

“For too long,  no one has been held responsible for the actions of their animals and we have had Alabamians who have been severely injured or killed,”  exulted Emily’s Law co-author Steve  Livingston,  a Republican state senator from Scottsboro.

The other co-authors were Republican state representatives Tommy Hanes of Scottsboro and Nathaniel Ledbetter of Rainsville––and among them they could scarcely have crafted a bill doing more to protect pit bull owners from the consequences of first known attacks.

Sandra Vogt

Latest victim lost scalp

Recounted Watson for WLTZ-38,  based in Columbus,  Georgia,  but also serving the Chattahoochee Valley of east-central Alabama,  “Sandy Vogts was taking an early morning stroll in her Fort Mitchell  neighborhood when a pack of dogs approached out of nowhere.  A pit bull and four other dogs [believed to be pit mixes] pounced on the victim as she fought for several minutes.  The dogs knocked her down repeatedly,  tearing into her flesh.”

Recalled Vogts,  “They were biting my arms,  my legs,  my back,  everything,  and I was screaming,  calling someone to come help me.  My scalp was torn off and had to be sewn back on.”

“Finally the dog owner came out of her house,” Vogts said.  “She did say ‘oh my God,  I’m so sorry,’  but sorry doesn’t quite cover this.”

Reported Watson,  “The dogs had escaped from their fenced back yard.  Even as the owner attempted to help,  a pit bill continued to attack,  causing permanent damage to Vogts.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“One free bite”

“Equally horrifying to the victim,”  Watson added,  “Alabama law allows ‘one free bite.’”

The dogs’ owner,  who has not yet been named,  “was cited for dogs roaming at large,  a mere misdemeanor,”  Watson said.  “Russell County district attorney Ken Davis explained the law ‘means essentially if you are a dog owner and your dog has never had any propensity to be vicious,  to be violent,  has never bitten anyone before,  you don’t have either civil or criminal liability if the dog does bite somebody.’”

Vogts may still be able to sue the dogs’ owner for damages,  but her burden of proof is higher than if the dogs’ owner had been cited for possession of vicious dogs.

“Vogts main concern was having the dogs return to the neighborhood where several children reside,”  Watson finished.  “The prosecutor was prepared to step in and have the dogs declared vicious, but the dogs owners voluntarily had the five animals euthanized.”

Emily Mae & Eric Colvin.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Why Emily’s Law did not help

Assessed ANIMALS 24-7 in March 2018,   “Emily’s Law does nothing at all to preclude the breeding,  sale,  transfer,  or adoption of pit bulls like the five who killed Emily Mae Colvin,  24,  of Section,  Alabama,  on December 7,  2017,  and the four who killed vegan blogger Tracey Patterson Cornelius,  46,  in nearby Guntersville,  Alabama just eight days earlier,  leaving fellow vegan blogger Valeria Hinojosa in critical condition.”

This is because the killer pit bulls in each case had no history of previous reported attacks––even though they did have previous history of menacing people and killing other animals,  according to witnesses who came forward after Colvin and Cornelius died.

“They never even used to snarl,  bark,  or nothing,”  a neighbor insisted of the pit bulls who killed Colvin to Sydney Martin of WAAY TV 31 News.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“They’d lick you to death”

“Those dogs were the most lovable of all dogs I’ve ever known,”  the neighbor claimed.  “If anything,  they’d lick you to death.”

What Emily’s Law did do,  summarized Alabama Media Group reporter Mike Cason,  as well as creating “new penalties for owners of dogs who cause injuries,”  is to “set up a process for people to file a sworn statement that a dog is dangerous,  prompting an investigation by an animal control or law enforcement officer.

“If the investigator finds that the dog is dangerous,”  Cason explained,  “the dog will be impounded pending a decision by a municipal or district court.

“If a court determines that a dog is dangerous and has seriously injured or killed a person,  the dog will be euthanized.

“If a court determines that a dog that has not seriously injured a person but is still dangerous,  the court could order the dog to be euthanized or to be returned to its owner under strict conditions,  including that the dog is microchipped, spayed or neutered and that the owner pay a $100 annual fee,  post a $100,000 surety bond and keep the dog in a secure enclosure.

“The law is not breed-specific.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Blueprint

Emily’s Law,  in short,  follows a blueprint pushed successfully by pit bull advocates in 21 other states to replace breed-specific state laws and community ordinances with legislation requiring protracted legal proceedings before any dog,  no matter how menacing,  can be impounded and euthanized for dangerous behavior.

Technically a dog could be impounded before a person is actually killed or injured,  but only with difficulty,  and only after the dog has had the opportunity to demonstrate dangerous behavior.  Excluding pit bulls from a community because of their long history of killing or disfiguring people and other animals in their first known attack is in effect prohibited.

Breed-specific legislation seeking to prevent pit bull attacks by excluding pit bulls was introduced by more than 400 U.S. cities and towns during the 20th century to update older laws based on the “one free bite” standard dating back to English Common Law,  which evolved during the Middle Ages.

Escaped slave fighting the dogs who killed him.
(Contemporary illustration of 1853 incident.)

Slave state legacy

That Alabama law in the early 21st century lacked even a procedure for dealing with dangerous dogs before they seriously injure someone appears to reflect the history of Alabama as a slave state,  where pit bull ancestors called “Cuban bloodhounds” were used to hunt fugitive slaves before the U.S. Civil War.

After the Civil War,  “Cuban bloodhounds” resembling bull mastiffs,  and eventually pit bulls as we know them today,  were used by the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate and sometimes lynch black citizens.

            (See Why the Second Amendment does not protect hunting animals,  SHARK fights pigeon shooters where black man was hunted for sport and A black-and-white issue that the humane community has yet to face.)

Brian & & Melody Graden

Convicted

            Brian Graden, 43, and Melody Graden, 45,  owners of the pit bulls who killed Emily Mae Colvin,  in August 2018 pleaded guilty to multiple related charges.

Brian Graden,  convicted of criminally negligent homicide,  was sentenced to serve 48 days in jail and two years on supervised probation.

Melody Graden,  convicted of four counts of failure to vaccinate her dogs against rabies,  was sentenced to 90 days suspended on each count,  and is also to serve two years on supervised probation.

Doyle Simpson Patterson Jr.,  & Amanda Dawn Albright

Indicted

Meanwhile,  on March 23,  2018,  Marshall County deputies arrested Doyle Simpson Patterson Jr.,  47,  and Amanda Dawn Albright,  40,   in connection with the pit bull death of Tracey Patterson Cornelius,  after a grand jury indicted both on charges of manslaughter and second-degree assault.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Doyle Simpson Patterson Jr. was the older brother of the victim.

“Both posted a $20,000 bond and have since been released,”  ABC affiliate WAAY-31 reported.

No further information on the progress of their cases appears to be available.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/

(Beth Clifton)

Dear friends & readers:

Do you ever feel as if you are fighting the same battles for animals over and over?

Thirty years ago we celebrated a global ban on commercial whaling, a ban on international sales of elephant ivory and rhino horn, and a 10-year suspension of the Atlantic Canada seal hunt. U.S. retail fur sales fell by half. Many leading personal care product makers pledged to quit animal testing.

We rejoiced that for the first time ever, more than 70% of all the owned cats and dogs in the U.S. were sterilized. Shelter intakes and killing fell like a rock.

Twenty years ago, you and fellow voters in state after state passed initiatives to stop horse slaughter, leghold trapping, and hunting bears and pumas with dogs.

Now, though, you are receiving frequent urgent appeals by direct mail and through social media, warning that most or all of the “victories” you won for animals are in urgent jeopardy of being erased, have been eroded, or maybe were never really won at all.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Were you fooled?!

Were you fooled all this time? Did you waste years of effort and emotional input––tabling, picketing, marching, circulating petitions, writing to media, and donating, donating, donating?

No. Your work and the heartache you felt over animal suffering were not wasted.

Some of your donations were squandered at times by bad leadership, but many of the “victories” you thought were won, that now seem to be slipping away on the political front, were in truth won in shaping the attitudes of the next generations.

Icelandic whaler Kristjan Loftsson.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Great gains for the greatest animals

Japan has resumed commercial whaling, but on a fraction of the scale of the “research whaling” done in the past, because Japanese young people no longer eat whales.

Iceland recently suspended commercial whaling,  in part because ANIMALS 24-7 pointed out in a timely manner several weeks ago that each escalation of whaling in recent years coincided with a slump in vacation visits by the adventurous young tourists whose spending has become a cornerstone of the Icelandic economy.

(See Whaling harpoons Icelandic tourism & the whole nation suffers.)

The bans on elephant ivory and rhino horn trafficking are again in jeopardy, yet have held up for nearly two generations, because younger people don’t use ivory or rhino horn.

(Beth Clifton collage)

A lot to celebrate

The Atlantic Canada seal hunt resumed, yet no one buys seal pelts. The token hunt today amounts to nose-thumbing at world opinion.

Adjusted for inflation, U.S. retail fur sales have never recovered. Few young people wear fur, or want to.

More animals are used now in biomedical research, but only because vastly more research is being done. Use of non-animal methods has sharply cut the numbers of animals used per experiment.

Animal shelters are now receiving less than a third as many dogs and cats as 30 years ago, killing less than a seventh as many.

The vegan food sector,  almost invisible 30 years ago,  is now shoving meat and dairy products aside in the main freezer cabinets of every supermarket.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Refighting old battles

You have, in short, a lot to celebrate. But you are also quite right that you are being asked to fight many of the same battles over and over again.

There are many reasons for this. One reason is that the current political environment has enabled animal use industries to undo animal protections by stealth that could not be undone by daylight.

Another reason is that some of the issues have expanded: we are making the same arguments to the whole public, not just a few friends. Thirty years ago we asked for vegan options at restaurants. Today vegan products are sold in every supermarket. The entire animal agriculture sector is beginning to contract, for perhaps the first time ever.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Who helps you sort it all out?

Unfortunately, some of the biggest “animal advocacy” charities saw donations slump when some of the abuses that moved you the most were no longer visible.

Some of these big “animal advocacy” charities therefore backed away from successful legislation, for example, and turned instead to “winning victories” in partnership with animal industries that in California turned some hard-won felony penalties for cruelty into misdemeanors, and in Vermont, cut the cage size for puppy mill puppies by as much as 75%.

Who helps you sort all of this out? Who do you turn to, to know which “victories” are really won, which battles must be refought, and which organizations and leaders you can trust?

You look to ANIMALS 24-7.  We are still on the job, 24-7,  doing everything we do to empower you to continue to make a lasting difference for animals.

But we need your help.  Your generous donations of $20, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 or more make ANIMALS 24-7 possible––and we never forget your trust.

With appreciation,

Merritt & Beth Clifton

P.S.–– Your gifts of $20, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 or more help ANIMALS 24-7 to help you win for animals the victories that endure.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/

(Beth Clifton collage)

The 1994 San Francisco “Adoption Pact” recast the roles of animal control & humane societies––but not as intended

Again,  in hundreds of cities and towns across the U.S.,  and indeed around the world,  factions are polarized in furious conflict over what their local animal control agencies,  humane societies and shelterless,  volunteer-run “rescues” should be doing.

Millions of animals’ lives and millions of dollars in tax money and donated resources are again at stake.

The ongoing cat-and-dog fight has now been going on for more than a quarter of a century,  having begun when the San Francisco SPCA and the San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control introduced an agreement called the Adoption Pact in 1994.

Animal control officer Fred Flintstone rushes to impound a pet rock.
(Merritt Clifton collage)

Defining jobs

The Adoption Pact,  as written,  simply defined and delineated the respective jobs of the two agencies.

The Department of Animal Care & Control,  formed 10 years earlier and funded entirely by taxpayers,  would have the lead role in ensuring public safety,  including impounding dangerous dogs and enforcing vaccination requirements.

The San Francisco SPCA had held the San Francisco animal control contract,  and had done those jobs,  for 100 years before it decided it no longer wanted to wear the black hat of the “dogcatcher.”

The Department of Animal Care & Control was then created as a stand-alone city agency to do law enforcement,  while the San Francisco SPCA,  now funded entirely through donations,  did all of the other animal care and advocacy work that it always had.

(Beth Clifton photo)

The Adoption Pact built on 18 years of s/n

Included in that role,  under the Adoption Pact,  was finding homes for any and all impounded dogs and cats whom the Department of Animal Care & Control deemed suitable for rehoming after quarantine and behavioral assessment.

Because the San Francisco SPCA had done an outstanding job of promoting and facilitating high-volume,  low-cost spay/neuter for the preceding 18 years,  the San Francisco SPCA and the Department of Animal Care & Control both enjoyed one of the lowest community rates of intake of unwanted puppies and kittens of any city in North America.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Breed-specific ordinance helped

Because the dangerous dog epidemic of today had not yet hit,  with pit bull proliferation still a few years in the future,  the San Francisco shelters received relatively few dogs who were unsafe to rehome.

Thus the Adoption Pact in effect made San Francisco the first “no kill” city in the U.S.––a status maintained post-pit bull proliferation by an ordinance requiring all pit bulls in the city to be spayed or neutered.

(See Author of San Francisco ordinance requiring pit bull sterilization appears to be victim of militant advocates.)

San Francisco became “no kill” through the combination of a successful and sustained spay/neuter drive with a division of duties that took the San Francisco SPCA out of deciding which dogs were safe to rehome.

The late Lynda Foro convened the first No Kill Conference in 1995. See No Kill Conference & No-Kill Directory founder Lynda Foro, 74.  (Beth Clifton collage)

“No kill” goal still distant for most of U.S.

But the achievement of “no kill” itself,  not how it was done,  was the aspect of the Adoption Pact that got most of the ensuring media attention,  caught on with the public,  and has made the lives of conscientious people in animal care and control miserable ever since.

Plainly put,  the “no kill” outcome of the Adoption Pact in San Francisco was not even remotely in sight as a reasonable goal for most of the rest of the U.S.,  and still is not,  because most of the rest of the U.S. has yet to accept the clear and distinct separation of animal control and humane services that the Adoption Pact was really all about.

(Beth Clifton collage)

What the Adoption Pact was not about

The Adoption Pact was not about saving every dangerous dog’s life,  at any cost to taxpayers and public safety.

The Adoption Pact was not about practicing neuter/return feral cat control,  a topic it did not even mention.  Nor was the Adoption Pact about extending the practice of neuter/return from reasonable use in appropriate locations,  to leaving large and problematic cat colonies in places where the cats themselves will suffer,  along with wildlife and,  sometimes,  humans.

The Adoption Pact was not about turning animal control agencies into humane societies.

The Adoption Pact was,  however,  about improving humane services by freeing humane societies of the obligation to try to do animal control too.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Doing animal control backfired for humane societies

Ironically,  many humane societies––including the San Francisco SPCA––had originally taken animal control contracts with the expectation that public contracts would ensure them financial stability,  and that handling impoundments would help them to keep animals away from for-profit suppliers of dogs and cats to laboratories.

By the mid-20th century,  though,  under pressure of having to underbid the laboratory animal suppliers to keep their animal control contracts,  most humane societies that did animal control were heavily subsidizing the work with donated funds.

Laboratory demand for dogs and cats had largely subsided by 1994,  but meanwhile dog and cat overpopulation had long since kept humane societies perpetually filled to capacity,  without the resources to do much more than hold impounded animals for a few days in hopes that they might be reclaimed or adopted,  before killing them to temporarily accommodate more animals.

This was soul-destroying work for people who came to humane work in the first place because they loved animals,  and killing animals tended to alienate donors and potential animal adopters as well.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Poorly understood

Had the Adoption Pact been well understood,  the U.S. might by now have achieved all the prerequisites to follow San Francisco to “no kill” status.  This would include having done enough free and subsidized spay/neuter of the right target animal populations to eliminate feral cats as a public issue,  and to sterilize the most dangerous dog breeds––all of them products of deliberate human manufacture––out of existence.

But the Adoption Pact was not well understood,  nor for that matter understood at all by most of those who took up the “no kill” mantra.

This includes the then-leadership of the San Francisco SPCA,  several of whom have spent much of the past 25 years promoting a popular but bastardized notion of what the Adoption Pact did,  with scant reference to the actual document and the context.

Vicky Crosetti.
(Ed Richardson photo)

When “no kill” rhetoric went to Knoxville

Among the early casualties of the ensuing series of local lynchings of animal control and humane society directors for simply doing their jobs was 19-year Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley executive director Vicki Crosetti,  later a founding member of the ANIMALS 24-7 board of directors.

Until mid-1996, Crosetti was best known as an early leader in borrowing proven adoption techniques from the North Shore Animal League America,  including opening a downtown adoption center that displayed animals more attractively and conveniently than the aging city shelter,   then situated in a World War II surplus Quonset hut.

Crosetti also routinely sent adoptable puppies for whom there was no local demand to the North Shore Animal League America adoption center at Port Washington,  New York,  next door to New York City.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Accused of being a “no kill” fanatic

Doing adoptions through satellite facilities and transporting animals to meet demand,  in lieu of killing them,  long since became standard procedure for almost every shelter, but in the early 1990s were so controversial that some conventional shelter operators derisively accused Crosetti of trying to turn the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley into a “no-kill shelter.”

At the time,  the term “no-kill shelter” was not a compliment.  In animal care and control jargon,  “no-kill shelter” was shorthand for either an overcrowded,  diseased hoarding situation,  or a what was also called a “turnaway,”  which would not help problem animals,  and is now––unfortunately––the standard model for shelters so fixated on achieving a high “live release” rate that they refuse to accept animals who may require euthanasia.

After having been derided as a supposed no-kill fanatic,  Crosetti just a few years later was routinely sizzled by Knoxville tabloids and talk shows as a purportedly needle-happy animal killer hellbent on an anti-no-kill vendetta,  and was sued for euthanizing animals whom she as a veterinary technician believed to have little or no chance of being recoverable within the limits of humane society resources.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“No kill” became cover for everyone with a grudge

Perhaps the trouble began when Crosetti cracked down on cockfighting,  technically illegal in Tennessee but openly practiced,  or when she called for stronger humane laws to protect livestock and animals in exhibition.  She made more enemies by impounding dogs for Knoxville animal control,  enforcing neutering requirements,  and refusing to adopt to people who did not pass standard adoption screening.

Crosetti also dropped veterinarians who did not comply with normal procedural and accountability requirements from the list of vets recommended by the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley.  She annoyed anti-vivisectionists by serving on the University of Tennessee Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee,  to see to it that the Animal Welfare Act was enforced. She irritated some people just by being assertive,  female,  and a “Yankee,”  albeit from the Pennsylvania coal country not far north,  differing from Tennessee more in accent than in prevailing culture.

Crosetti’s foes did not coalesce into a mob,  however,  calling her at midnight with death threats and from whom she eventually received police protection,  until she raided and prosecuted two alleged animal hoarders who called their facilities no-kill shelters,  one of whom had prior convictions for mass animal neglect.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Big trouble in the Big Apple

Crosetti and the Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley long since went their separate ways.  Knoxville has yet to approach becoming a bona fide “no kill” city.

In some respects the Knoxville situation paralleled the 1997 political lynching of Marty Kurtz,  who in 1994 became the first director of the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control,  then became the first in a now long line of agency directors to be fired or forced into resignation by militant “no kill” advocates.

Like Crosetti,  Kurtz was seen among peers during his three-year tenure as a leader in learning from “no kills.”  Kurtz modeled the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control after the San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control.  He envisioned a relationship with the American SPCA similar to the relationship that the San Francisco SPCA enjoyed with the San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“No kill” advocacy made “animal control director” a revolving door

Kurtz made enemies,  however,  by enforcing the New York City anti-vicious dog law;  by firing staff for various alleged offenses,  some of them drug-related,  that they apparently got away with during the 100 years that the ASPCA handled New York City animal control;  and by welcoming volunteer help from grassroots adoption/rescue groups if they followed rules intended to insure that none of them became animal hoarders.

When some volunteers broke the rules, Kurtz was obliged to dismiss them.  Together with disgruntled ex-employees and pit bull advocates who insisted Kurtz just wanted to kill dogs,  they became a deadly if unlikely-seeming coalition.

Their success against Kurtz,  who had been considered one of the most media-savvy and politically astute of all shelter administrators,  scared away some qualified potential successors,  a phenomenon now seen in many cities where the position of animal control director has become a revolving door.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Protecting animals & protecting humans are different mandates

The Adoption Pact recognized the potential value of becoming “no kill” to donor-funded humane societies,  whose job amounts to protecting animals from humans.

Yet the Adoption Pact did not seek to mandate “no kill” as an appropriate goal for an animal control agency,  either in San Francisco or anywhere else.

Animal control work centers on protecting humans,  and other animals,  from dangerous animals.  Only if this work is done effectively,  including removing dangerous dogs from the population,  can any whole community become “no kill.”

A community cannot be considered genuinely “no kill,”  no matter what the local shelters’ “live release” rates are,  if pit bulls and other dangerous dogs run amok,  killing other animals and sometimes humans,  or if deadly zoonotic diseases go unchecked through lack of vaccination law enforcement.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Humane societies & animal control are not competitors

The Adoption Pact authors,  then-San Francisco SPCA president Richard Avanzino and then-San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control executive director Carl Friedman,  recognized that a no-kill humane society and an animal control department are not in competition with each other, even though they represent opposite concepts.

The no-kill humane society wears the white hat and is the hero for doing popular things, while the animal control department wears the black hat and may be vilified,  but both are part of the essential cast of the same morality play.

Both benefit by the contrast:  the more menacing the black hat to scofflaws,  and the more enticing the white hat to donors,  the less animal catching and killing the black hat actually has to do. Neither benefits by muting stark black and white into blurred shades of grey.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Bullied into “no kill” advocacy

Animal control itself exists,  and is funded by taxpayers,  to provide one specialty:  protecting public health and welfare.

Humane societies,  no-kill and otherwise,  most effectively furnish “extras” that tax-funded animal control shelters cannot and do not.

Unfortunately,  after witnessing the lynchings of animal control directors like Kurtz,  who emphasized the animal control role,  and even open-admission humane society shelter directors like Crosetti,  who euthanized animals as necessary,  but at a fraction of the rate of most other shelters in the South at the time,  animal shelter leadership generally chose to espouse a “no kill” philosophy.

This continues,  whether or not the animal care institutions serving communities involved have done anywhere near the amount of spay/neuter work needed to reduce shelter intake enough that “no kill” can be achieved without causing more animal suffering,  not less.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Everyone wants to wear the white hat

Even as formerly open-admission humane societies became what used to be called “turnaways” in order to go “no kill,”  animal control agencies have tended to morph into entities emphasizing adoptions over public safety.

Everyone wants to wear the white hat,  while maintaining public safety has fallen so far from favor that the U.S. now has as many fatal and disfiguring attacks by dogs rehomed from shelters each year as it had in total,  by all dogs,  just 30 years ago.

The underlying problem may be that the white hat versus black hat metaphor no longer describes the realities of today.

Animal population control killing,  as it was practiced in the 20th century,  in most of the U.S. long since ceased to be a routine part of either humane work or animal control.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Authentic white hats put public health & safety first

The major ethical problem confronting the animal care and control community today is not killing too many animals,  too easily,  but rather having become afraid to kill any animals at all,  even those who have already killed others and are imminent threats to kill more,  or to kill humans.

The authentic white hats now are those who put public health and safety first,  including the health and safety of animals other than dangerous dogs.

The black hats include those who put canine killers back out to kill again;  those who leave feral cats out in places where they will soon be poisoned,  shot,  or hit by cars;  those who keep animals in hoarding conditions;  and those who pass animals on to “rescue” hoarders,  no questions asked and no inspections done of premises.

Beth & Merritt Clifton model white & black hats.

These are all frequent problems today that were rarely problems when the Adoption Pact came into being.  They need not have become problems,  had appropriate separation of services been maintained,  such that animal control agencies continued to emphasize animal control,  and humane societies continued to emphasize humane treatment of all animals,  not just avoiding killing any.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/