AnimalNet March 11/09
CANADA:
Backyard chicken coops ruffle feathers in Chinese community
Third H7
strain of avian flu found in JAPAN
CAMBODIA uses
karaoke to spread bird flu message
PHILIPPINES:
Contaminated pork seized in Angeles City
VIETNAM:
People’s Council grills City officials over food safety
US: A more
sustainable tuna?
CALIFORNIA:
L.A.'s animal terrorists
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CANADA:
Backyard chicken coops ruffle feathers in Chinese community
11.mar.09
CBC.ca News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/03/10/bc-chicken-coops-vancouver.html
Some members of the Chinese community are upset that
Vancouver residents may soon be able to build chicken coops
in residential backyards.
News that Vancouver city councillors voted unanimously last
week to direct staff to study the issue and draft a bylaw
amendment caused an uproar in the Chinese community, with
many citizens calling local radio stations to voice their
protests.
"People were concerned about hygiene, the noise and the
smell," said Wallace Chan, a host for Fairchild Radio.
Social commentator K.K. Wan believes the dissent comes from
Chinese Vancouverites' belief that the city should be
dealing with more important issues.
"We wish city hall could focus more attention to those
bread-and-butter issues," he said.
In Hong Kong, health officials have been trying to phase out
the sale of live chickens in the city centre because of
fears of avian influenza outbreaks.
Avian flu was detected on a commercial turkey farm in the
Fraser Valley as recently as the end of January.
Third H7
strain of avian flu found in JAPAN
11.mar.09
Xinhua News Agency
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/11/content_10992721.htm
TOKYO -- A third Aichi Prefecture farm has been tested
positive for the H7 strain of bird flu virus, the Japanese
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said Wednesday.
The government departments are trying to identify what
N-subtype the virus belongs to, the ministry said in a press
release.
The third case of avian flu virus was also found on a quail
farm in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, where two weak-virulent
H7N6 subtype of bird flu virus were identified since the end
of February.
CAMBODIA uses
karaoke to spread bird flu message
11.mar.09
Radio Australia News
http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/200903/2513173.htm?desktop
Cambodian authorities will use a karaoke video starring a
popular local singer to try to raise awareness of bird flu.
The video is part of a United Nations-sponsored health
program, to alert people to the dangers of transporting
poultry in the lead-up to the Khmer New Year holiday in
mid-April.
During the celebrations Cambodians traditionally serve
chicken and duck dishes.
The video encourages farmers to wash their hands and keep
their poultry pens clean.
It urges them to keep children away from poultry, and report
sick and dead birds to local authorities.
PHILIPPINES:
Contaminated pork seized in Angeles City
11.mar.09
ABS-CBN News
Jess Malabanan
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/03/11/09/contaminated-pork-seized-angeles-city
ANGELES CITY -- Some 70 kilos of pork meat believed
contaminated with hog cholera disease were seized by
personnel from the city veterinary office before it was sold
to the public, authorities here said.
The owner of the "hot" meat was not mentioned in the report,
but veterinary officials immediately separated the
contaminated meat from the rest of newly-slaughtered hogs to
avoid spread of the disease.
Rolando Espino, meat inspector ll, initially discovered the
contaminated meat at the slaughter house. He noticed red
dots on the hog skin that prompoted him to call the
attention of his superior.
VIETNAM:
People’s Council grills City officials over food safety
11.mar.09
VietNamNet
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/Health/2009/03/835359/
The HCM City People's Council yesterday called on
agricultural authorities to improve food safety and hygiene
and continue the fight against epidemics.
Legislators blamed them for allowing many backyard farms and
abattoirs to operate outside the our view of official
agencies.
Nguyen Van Minh, deputy director of the council's Culture
and Society Department, said there are thousands of backyard
farms and many unsafe slaughterhouses in the city.
Many cattle and poultry raised by household farms are not
even vaccinated, he said.
Only 2,000 out of 11.000ha on which vegetables are grown in
the city are suitable for farming hygienically.
US: A more
sustainable tuna?
11.mar.09
Washington Post
Juliet Eilperin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031000677.html
For years sushi aficionados have reserved their most lavish
praise -- and their spare cash -- for bluefin tuna, the
fatty, pinkish fish featured at high-end restaurants across
the globe. But as wild stocks of the fish have plummeted,
ordering bluefin has become as socially unacceptable as
consuming the once-ubiquitous Chilean sea bass.
Now, Virginia's Monterey Bay Fish Grotto restaurant has
joined a small group of U.S. restaurants selling a bluefin
tuna dubbed Kindai, farmed from hatched eggs in Japan as the
result of a university laboratory's efforts to ease diners'
consciences. Though the product is not fully sustainable, it
underscores how fish suppliers and academic innovators are
seeking to satisfy consumer demand without wiping out wild
populations altogether.
It's no mystery why bluefin tuna has earned such coveted
sushi-bar status. Its buttery texture lends itself to raw
preparation, and the tuna's inherent meatiness particularly
suits Americans' appetites.
This popular appeal -- because of the high demand, a single
bluefin can sell for $100,000 or more -- has exacted a
serious environmental cost. Among the four bluefin
populations worldwide, the number of Mediterranean bluefin
has plummeted by more than half since the 1950s, and the
Gulf of Mexico population is less than 20 percent of its
1970 size. Continued fishing of bluefin in the Mediterranean
and incidental bycatch in the Gulf have raised the prospect
that the species could go commercially extinct.
Facing those declines, several years ago some entrepreneurs
pioneered tuna "ranching." These fish farmers capture
bluefin juveniles and raise them to maturity in net pens
before shipping them to market, rather than trolling for
them in the open ocean.
But conservationists have decried the practice, which the
Ocean Conservancy's aquaculture director George Leonard
calls "the least sustainable form of aquaculture on the
planet," for an array of reasons. Catching young bluefin to
fatten them up for sale doesn't help sustain wild tuna, they
say; it just kills off the next generation. Moreover,
because anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds of forage fish is
needed to produce a single pound of bluefin tuna, the
practice ends up depleting wild stocks beyond tuna. And
because ranching calls for holding tuna together in massive
coastal pens, the resultant fish waste and discarded food
alter the ocean's chemical balance.
The Kindai bluefin represent what a handful of researchers
say is a third way. Scientists at Japan's Kinki University
and Australia's Clean Seas Tuna Ltd., a commercial
operation, have produced the Kindai from hatched eggs rather
than captured juveniles. Clean Seas, which is consulting
with Kinki, has yet to start marketing its fish, but it
reported this month that its separate brood stock of bluefin
from the Southern Ocean have started spawning.
CALIFORNIA:
L.A.'s animal terrorists
11.mar.09
Los Angeles Times
Tim Rutten
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten11-2009mar11,0,6159403.column?track=rss
On Monday in Washington, President Obama heralded the return
of what he terms "sound science" to the administration of
federal policy.
At that moment in Los Angeles, a joint federal and local law
enforcement task force was investigating the latest incident
in a 3-year-old terrorist campaign being waged against UCLA
medical researchers. This time, a group that calls itself
the Animal Liberation Front firebombed a car on Saturday
belonging to a neuroscientist whose research into
psychiatric disorders involves primates.
This was the latest incident in a long-running war. Since
July 2006, extremists who oppose the use of animals in any
medical research have attacked UCLA scientists or their
property in five actual or attempted arsons and five acts of
criminal vandalism. Telephone threats have been made, and
researchers' children have been followed to and from school.
There also have been more than 40 demonstrations, many at
the scientists' homes -- often in the middle of the night by
people whose identity is concealed by hoods -- involving
intense harassment, including banging on windows and
chanting profanities.
As UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, himself the director of a
medical research lab, told me: "Imagine having protesters
outside your home on many weekends, screaming to your
children and neighbors that you are a murderer, or being
pointed to a website that describes you in the most vile
terms possible, lists your home address and encourages
people to do you harm, or going to bed wondering whether
this will be the night that someone tries to burn down your
house." (The university has spent more than $1 million in
extra security costs since 2006.)
Over the last 100 years, medical research has done more to
improve the lot of people around the world than any other
human activity. But the UCLA scientists working to extend
those benefits aren't the only targets. City officials who
deal with animal shelters have been harassed out of their
jobs, and their homes and those of their parents have been
the scenes of demonstrations. Deputy Chief Michael Downing,
who runs the LAPD's Counter-terrorism and Criminal
Intelligence Bureau, says the campaign "does seem to be
escalating," both in terms of the number of incidents and in
their violence.
No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals
as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an
advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an
irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum
masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical
pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and
willfulness for argument, all for the sake of
self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral
equivalence between the lives of humans and those of
animals.
Knowledgeable authorities believe a relative handful of
people are actually involved in the terrorist acts. A larger
group shows up for the marginally peaceful demonstrations,
and a slightly larger one provides various kinds of material
support. Behind them is a far larger group of individuals
who purport to be peacefully concerned with animal welfare,
but say they "understand" how some frustrated confreres can
be driven to extremes by society's indifference to what they
deem a moral imperative.
This sort of wink-and-nod morality is all too familiar to
anyone who's had contact with the fringe of the antiabortion
movement. The truth is that we here in L.A. are just one
psychotic sartori away from the night one of these goofballs
decides that a researcher's life is worth less than a white
rat's or a monkey's and decides to redress the imbalance.
Think that's an overstatement? Here's Jerry Vlasak, a
physician who is a frequent spokesman for militant animal
rights activists: "Force is a poor second choice, but if
that's the only thing that will work ... there's certainly
moral justification for that."
The LAPD backs legislation -- carried by Assemblyman Mike
Feuer (D-Los Angeles) -- that could give local authorities
new tools to investigate and prosecute those who provide
material assistance to terrorists. There are serious civil
liberties implications to such legislation, and every
provision needs to be weighed carefully. As Downing said:
"Free speech always should be protected, but when nonviolent
struggle turns violent, as this one has, that's terrorism."
At the end of the day, though, two things need to happen:
Law enforcement officials need to step up their attention to
this investigation, because there's a tragedy in the offing
if they don't. And L.A.'s extensive network of animal
welfare advocates need to make it clear that they repudiate
not only the terrorists but all who provide them material
and tacit support of any sort.
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