Hunt saboteurs stop wealthy snobs from tearing foxes apart

Ruth Eisenbud, Ecoanimal Correspondent

Behind the fancy attire and rituals, there's only sadism against animals.

Behind the fancy attire and rituals, there’s only cold-blooded sadism against animals.

Editor’s Note:
In Britain fox hunts are often a class issue, with working and middle class youths battling the paid goons of the “master class”, the game wardens and their hirelings, mindlessly serving bloodthirsty snobs and decadents that need to be denounced, opposed at every juncture, and seen for the moral depravity they represent. These self-fashioned aristocrats are not fit to be ruling anyone, and their “elegant” customs, such as fox hunting, speak clearly to the reality of their base instincts. Long live the hunt saboteurs!—PG

Hunt Saboteurs Association News Release 30/12/2013

http://sheffieldsaboteurs.wordpress.com/news/fox-saved/

On Saturday December 28th hunt saboteurs from Yorkshire attended a Pony Club meet of the York & Ainsty South Foxhounds at Escrick Park.
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Three foxes that were deliberately hunted were aided in their escape by the sabs through the course of the day and, as the sun was going down, three terrier men were found just as they were about to finish digging the second fox out of an active badger sett.

The sabs began to obstruct the men from continuing this illegal activity and the situation began to escalate, with about 8-10 more men with spades soon arriving at the scene. One sab was smashed in the head with the pistol the men planned to shoot the fox with and was also knocked down in a field by the men’s pickup truck. The sabs were not deterred by this, fought off the attackers and stood their ground.
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On stopping the dig-out the sabs had to prize a terrier from the fox as it had locked on to the fox’s face. Sabs then had to help the fox free from the earth as the earth around it had been caved in, leaving only its head exposed. The fox escaped with little visable injury, the terrier’s face was badly wounded from fighting the fox.
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The group are now preparing to prosecute the hunt for their actions and ask Escrick Park to stop facilitating these criminal activities. Anyone concerned by the activities of the Y&AS hunt should contact Escrick Park ( http://www.escrick.com/contact-us) to ask that they refuse the hunt access from now on.
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Lee Moon, spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association, stated: “Only two days after Boxing Day we see the real face of fox hunting. Boxing Day is the sanitized, media friendly press stunt that the hunting community use each year to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public. This is the grim reality of what occurs the rest of the time when the media spotlight is elsewhere. Escrick Park are a major supporter of the York and Ainsty South Hunt and are just as guilty as they allow these illegal acts to take place on their land. We call on them to ban the hunt from their estate before they become embroiled in any legal action taken against the hunt.”

OpEds: Examining the odds for an end to horse slaughter

Special From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

Editorial feature:
Examining the odds for an end to horse slaughter
KIM BARTLETT & MERRITT CLIFTON

Either pending legislation or ongoing litigation could bring the resumption of horse slaughter within the U.S. for human consumption this winter, or close off the possibility. Which might happen is anyone’s bet. It is even possible that court decisions will allow horse slaughter to resume for a time, only to be again stopped by Congress, as it was in 2007.

For example, the final reconciled version of the 2014 Farm Bill may include language already approved as part of both the House and Senate drafts that would defund USDA inspections of horse slaughterhouses. USDA inspection is required if the meat of any animal is to be sold across state lines or internationally for human consumption. Congress did not allow the USDA to inspect horse slaughtering plants from 2007 to 2011, but the past two Farm Bills have not prevented horse slaughterhouse inspections. This allowed the horse industry an opening to try to jump back into horsemeat production for export.

Pending legislation might also halt the export of horses to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. This, however, is betting against the odds. Bills meant to end horse exports for slaughter have remained stalled in Congress since mid-2007, when the USDA stopped inspecting horse slaughterhouses, forcing the closure of what were the last three in the U.S.. The current version of the anti-horse export legislation, the Safeguard American Food Exports Act, was introduced in March 2013 as HR 1094/S 541, with 159 House cosponsors and 27 cosponsors in the Senate. The House cosponsors include only 30 members of the Republican majority. Based on statistical criteria, GovTrack.us rates the Safeguard American Food Exports Act as having at best a 17% chance of clearing committee and a 2% chance of passage.

Perhaps the highest hurdle to passage of the Safeguard American Food Exports Act, or any legislation against exporting horses to slaughter, is the insistence of the horse industry that without some way to slaughter horses, the industry has no way to dispose of old, injured, or simply surplus stock. Backed by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the industry has tried, so far successfully, to leverage resumption of horse slaughter in the U.S. against cutting off exports.

But while animal advocates may hope that the resumption of horse slaughter in the U.S. could lead to prohibition of exporting horses for slaughter, there are two reasons to believe that it would not. First, the horse industry can be expected to balk at anything that might hold down the price of horseflesh, such as eliminating the possibility of U.S. and foreign killer-buyers bidding against each other at horse auctions.

Second, any legislation forbidding commerce with Canada and Mexico that is legal within the U.S. is almost certain to be taken before a North American Free Trade Agreement tribunal, which would be very likely to find it in violation of NAFTA principles.

Realistically, Congress must close the possibility of horse slaughter resuming here before it can move successfully against exports.

Sprinting toward a photo finish

How rapidly the horse slaughter issue can pirouette was illustrated between Friday morning, November 1, 2013, and Monday afternoon, November 4. And then it changed again on December 13.

An Oklahoma state law authorizing the construction of a horse slaughterhouse took effect on November 1, but required that a prospective operator must get a USDA permit first. Currently there appear to be no applicants to kill horses for human consumption in Oklahoma. However, the law issues an invitation to investors.

Savvy horseflesh brokers may be holding back because the global market for horsemeat has collapsed in recent years, leading to widespread illegal substitution of horsemeat in European “beef” products. But would-be horse slaughter entrepreneurs may also be holding back to see which way federal judges and the U.S. Congress jump.

Barbara Hoberock of the Tulsa World Capitol Bureau filed her report on the new Oklahoma law at 12:00 noon––just 15 minutes before Tim O’Neill of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke word that Albuquerque U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo had rejected a lawsuit by the Humane Society of the U.S. and other animal protection groups that alleged the USDA had improperly issued horse slaughtering permits to Valley Meat Company, of Roswell, New Mexico, and Rains Natural Meats, of Gallatin, Missouri, because they had not completed adequate environmental impact studies.

The Armijo ruling came as something of a surprise, since she had granted a temporary restraining order against either company slaughtering horses, based on the HSUS claim that the killing would violate their wastewater disposal permits. But Rains Natural Meats was reportedly ready to begin slaughtering horses on Monday morning, with Valley Meat to start a week later.

In Denver, however, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the USDA from doing slaughter inspection at either facility, pending review of the Armijo decision. On December 13, 2012 the injunction was lifted.

There the legal progress of the U.S. horse slaughter issue paused. Legislative motion on any aspect of horse slaughter before the end of 2013 appeared to be unlikely, since Congress, in a historical rarity, failed to reconcile and pass conflicting editions of the 2013 Farm Bill before Thanksgiving. Only after a reconciled Farm Bill is passed––and only if the language defunding inspection of horse slaughterhouses is included––is there likely to be another omnibus bill to which the Safeguard American Food Exports Act might be attached.

Foundering in Europe

Parallel issues are playing out in Europe, believed by U.S. would-be horse slaughter entrepreneurs to be hungry for horsemeat.

Irish agriculture minister Simon Coveney on October 3, 2013 told the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament) Committee on Agriculture that only 6,500 horses had been slaughtered in Ireland during the first nine months of 2013, down from 24,000 in 2012.

“We have really tightened up the rules since the horse meat scandal, which has resulted in a reduction of the number of factories slaughtering horses and also in a very, very tight system now in terms of micro-chipping, identification and passports and so on,” Coveney testified.

Coveney did not acknowledge that declining demand and lower prices paid for horsemeat were why the scandal occurred in the first place. Only four of the 28 European Union nations, according to Eurostat, now knowingly consume even as much as a pound of horsemeat per person per year––Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, all at just over two pounds, and Luxembourg, at about 1.3 pounds. France, once in the same bracket, now consumes half as much as Luxembourg, but remains in fifth place. Just four other EU member nations consume any discernable amount of horsemeat.

As well as eluding Coveney, the realities of the horsemeat trade seemed to elude Princess Anne of the United Kingdom, president of the World Horse Welfare charity, who endorsed expanding horse slaughter in a November 15, 2013 address to the WHW annual conference.

Unlike royalty who are mere titular heads of charities, Anne has significant equestrian credentials. She was a medalist at the European Eventing Championships in 1971 and 1975, and rode for Britain in the 1976 Olympic Games equestrian events at Bromont, Quebec. Anne later served from 1986 to 1994 as president of the Fédération Équestre Internationale. Her daughter Zara Phillips was a medalist at the 2005 European Eventing Championship and the 2006 World Equestrian Games, and helped to win a team silver medal at the 2012 Olympics in London.

But Anne reportedly had just heard equestrian industry claims that as many as 7,000 British horses might suffer neglect this winter because no one bought them to kill.

Rather than emphasize that speculators in horses have an obligation to look after the horses they breed or buy, Anne opined that “Our attitudes to the horsemeat trade and the value of horsemeat may have to change.”

Anne suggested that the slaughter of former Polish workhorses involves cruelty mainly because the horses are transported before they are killed, and that horses in France might better treated because many are eaten.

“If that’s true then,” Anne concluded, “that they value their horses, they look after them well, because they›re in the horsemeat trade, should we be considering a real market for horsemeat and would that reduce the number of welfare cases if there was a real value in the horsemeat sector?”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk was in November 2011 quoted as saying similar by Christian Science Monitor staff writer Patrik Jonsson. “There was a rush to pass a bill that said you can’t slaughter them [horses] any more in the United States,” Newkirk said. “But the reason we didn’t support it, which sets us almost alone, is the amount of suffering that it created,” by encouraging the export of horses for slaughter in Mexico and Canada, “exceeded the amount of suffering it was designed to stop.”

Newkirk supported the 2011 legislation that authorized the USDA to resume inspecting horse slaughterhouses, she explained, because while this “didn’t mean any horses were spared, it does mean the amount of suffering is now reduced again.”

But contrary to Newkirk’s reported statement to Jonsson, the ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate that PETA supported the 2007 legislation that suspended federal funding for inspection of horse slaughterhouses, and celebrated it, when passed, as a victory. PETA argued then that horse exports to slaughter should have been stopped too––as did every other prominent advocate of the 2007 bill.

Overlooked by practically everyone discussing horse slaughter, on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, is that no market pressure in Europe and no legislative or legal action in the U.S. has in any way inhibited horse slaughter for animal consumption. The only restriction on horse slaughter to feed animals is that the horses may not be killed by pentobarbital injection, which would make their flesh unsafe for another animal to eat. But horses are rarely killed by pentobarbital, since the required dose would be about 100 times the average dose for a dog and several hundred times the average dose for a cat. Rather, when horses are euthanized due to incurable illness or injury, whether in a stable, a field, a busy street, or alongside a trail or racetrack, the usual instrument of dispatch is a captive bolt gun, the same instrument used in a slaughterhouse. Since a captive bolt gun can be used safely almost anywhere, horses killed for animal food need not be transported alive at all. Their carcasses can be collected by renderers.

The potential market for horsemeat as dogfood and food for zoo carnivores is bigger than ever. But this option does not appeal to much of the the horse industry, because renderers pay relatively little for horse carcasses, compared to the prices historically paid for horses slaughtered for human consumption. In areas far from rendering facilities, renderers even charge to haul away dead stock.

Data collected in 2009 by The Unwanted Horse Coalition indicated that the average cost of euthanizing and disposing of a horse was $385. Yet the difference between this and the sum a horse might fetch at slaughter auction is typically less than the $600-$1,000 price of a saddle.

The horses sold to slaughter in 2006 yielded an average meat value of $619, according to the General Accounting Office. Subtracting from this the cuts going to transporters, auction yards, and slaughterhouses, the average return to people selling horses to be killed appears to have been under $250.

Of the $39 billion per year realized by the U.S. horse industry, just $65 million was realized through exporting horsemeat in 2006––about 1.6%. Depressed betting on a lackluster Kentucky Derby field can cost the industry more in any given year than the loss of this revenue. The Kentucky Derby alone generates 10 times more economic activity per year than the entire horse slaughter business has in any year since 1990.

Pyramid scheme

But being able to send horses to slaughter is important to the horse industry because it permits the horse industry to continue high-volume speculative breeding. The small-time gamblers lined up at parimutuel windows to place their bets are the economic foundation of the horse racing industry, but the economic structure of the horse industry as a whole more closely resembles a pyramid scheme than any other nominal branch of agriculture. Reality is that the way small fortunes are made in either breeding, showing, or racing horses is by starting with large fortunes. Those who prosper are those who persuade other people to make large speculative investments in breeding fees, on the gamble that the right combination of ancestry might produce a winning show horse or racer, whose reproductive potential will attract other people’s speculative investments.

The prosperity of almost two-thirds of the horse industry depends largely on luring money earned elsewhere into breeding, keeping, and training horses for whom there is no real market demand if they do not prove to be winners. Only the occasional winners ever recoup more for the investors than the money put into them.

If investors in racing and show horses were obligated to keep those horses throughout their natural lives, the horse industry would collapse. The upkeep of speculatively bred horses who fail to bring returns on investment would soon siphon so much money out of the deep pockets of speculative investors that little would be left to pour into further breeding and training.

Therefore the industry needs a way to unload losing horses as rapidly as they lose investment appeal. That means selling them into another use, most often as riding horses––or, since the riding horse market is perpetually glutted, selling them to slaughter.

Investors in racing and show horses are not like farmers who invest in planting crops, hoping that the soil, sun, and rain will produce high yields. The affluence of the horse industry is sustained not by successful production, since only one horse at a time can win each show division or race, but by the volume of turnover.

High yield or low, crops have food or fiber value, and produce a material benefit to the rest of society. Horse breeding, upkeep, and training by contrast generates so little material benefit to the rest of U.S. society that without the speculative input, the entire industry would operate at a substantial loss.

Yet horse breeders still enjoy many of the subsidies, incentives, tax breaks, and other privileges of farmers, as if horses still had the importance to society as transportation and work animals that they did 100 years ago.

The current U.S. horse population is 9.2 million, according to the American Horse Council Foundation, of whom only 3.6 million live at facilities even recognized by the USDA as “farms.” AHCF data indicates that about 2.7 million horses are kept by people involved in showing horses; 845,000 are kept by people involved in racing.

Though some show horses are exhibited into their twenties, most who fail to meet conformation standards, prove difficult to train, suffer injury, or are spoiled by bad riders are culled early. Thus the average career of a show horse is probably five years or less. The average duration of use of a racehorse is less than four years.

Unwanted Horse Coalition data suggests that while only about one horse in six is retired from use before age 3, horses in the age range of three to five years are more likely to be retired from use, whether through donation, sale to slaughter, or euthanasia, than to be sold to other users.

Of the horses in the three-to-five-year-old bracket who are sold, more than 80% are sold for further use, but apparently mostly not for the purpose for which they were bred. About 3.9 million horses are used for recreational riding, but Kentucky Equine Survey data indicates that about three million of them were bred originally for show or racing. The Unwanted Horse Coalition numbers tend to affirm this interpretation.

The Unwanted Horse Coalition found that 31% of the horses disposed of in some manner were quarter horses, chiefly bred for show and amateur competition; 12% were thoroughbreds, produced for racing; 33% were other breeds used mainly for show; and 3% were standardbreds, used for harness racing. In other words, 79% of the horses disposed of, including those sold for further use, were speculatively bred.

In hard numbers, of about six million horses (at most) who were bred for their current use, about 3.5 million were bred for racing or show: about 58%. This coincides with the 56% of horse keepers found by the Unwanted Horse Coalition to have sold horses either through auctions or directly to slaughter.

U.S. thoroughbred breeding fell 25% from 2008, when about 30,000 were foaled, to 2011, when the Jockey Club registered about 22,500 foals. Show horse breeding appears to have fallen from about 100,000 to circa 70,000 during the same years. The combined foaling numbers, declining from about 130,000 to about 100,000, parallel the numbers of horses exported for slaughter, which dropped during the same years from circa 137,000 to circa 105,000.

This is no accident. Each foal displaces an older horse––either a horse nearing the end of a natural lifespan, or, much more often, a horse who no longer attracts speculative interest.

Ending horse slaughter might not completely end speculative breeding, but would significantly slow the pace. Thus the horse industry can be expected to whip furiously right to the finish of the issue.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett is a veteran of 30 years in humane work and vegetarian advocacy, with emphasis on humane education and communications. She earned humanitarian service awards from various humane organizations in Texas for animal rights efforts in the 1970s and ’80s. In 1986, Kim left Texas to become editor of The Animals’ Agenda magazine, a position she held until 1992, when she and Merritt Clifton began ANIMAL PEOPLE. Kim serves as publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE (she’s formally president of the organization) and is also its primary photographer. Kim’s interest in international affairs has brought ANIMAL PEOPLE into the forefront of humane outreach to the developing world due to her work fostering new animal groups around the world.

ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton, a second-generation lifelong vegetarian, has teamed with Kim Bartlett to provide information service to the humane community since 1986. His duties for ANIMAL PEOPLE include researching and writing more than 200 articles and filling more than 2,000 information requests per year. A reporter, editor, columnist, and foreign correspondent since 1968, specializing in animal and habitat-related coverage since 1978, Clifton was a founding member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is a four-time winner of national awards for investigative reporting.

Clifton and Bartlett are frequent contributors to The Greanville Post on animal issues.

_______________________________

Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960 | Clinton, WA 98236
Telephone: 360-579-2505
Cell: 360-969-0450
Fax: 360-579-2575
E-mail: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

ANIMAL PEOPLE

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Explaining global warming and other complex environmental problems to my kids

Special from EarthTalk®
E – The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Do you have any tips for explaining global warming and other complex environmental problems to my kids? — Peter Buckley, Pittsburgh, PA

Kids today may be more eco-savvy than we were at their age, but complex topics like global warming may still mystify them. Luckily there are many resources available to help parents teach their kids how to understand the issues and become better stewards for the planet.

A great place to start is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) “A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change” website. The site is divided into sections (Learn the Basics, See the Impacts, Think like a Scientist and Be Part of the Solution) so kids can get just the right amount of detail without feeling overwhelmed. One feature of the site is a virtual trip around the world to see the effects of climate change in different regions. An emissions calculator—with questions tailored to kids’ lifestyles—helps connect everyday actions (like running the water while brushing teeth) and climate change. And a FAQ page answers some of the most common questions about climate change in easy-to-read short paragraphs.

Another great online resource is NASA’s Climate Kids website, which engages kids with games, videos and craft activities and offers digestible info on what’s causing climate change and how kids can make a difference. A guided tour of the “Big Questions” (What does climate change mean? What is the greenhouse effect? How do we know the climate is changing? What is happening in the oceans? and others) uses cartoon characters and brightly colored designs to help kids come to grips with the basics.

Perhaps even more engaging for those eight and older is Cool It!, a card game from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The game, designed in collaboration with science educators, requires players to collect “solution” cards in the categories of energy, transportation and forests, while slowing opponents down by playing “problem” cards along the way. “The game enables teachers and parents to talk about global warming in a fun and hopeful way,” reports UCS. “Kids, meanwhile, will learn that all of us make choices that determine whether the world warms a little or a lot, and which of those choices reduce global warming emissions.” The game is available for purchase ($7.95) directly from the UCS website.

Younger kids curious about climate change can consult the Professor Sneeze website, which features online illustrated children’s stories that present global warming in a familiar context. The stories for five- to eight-year-olds follow a cartoon bunny on various warming related adventures. A few of the story titles include “The Earth Has a Fever,” “Where Are the Igloos of Iglooville?” and “Tears on the Other Side of the World.” The site also features stories geared toward 8- to 10-year-olds and 10- to 12-year-olds.

Of course, teachers can play a key role in making sure kids are well versed in the science of climate change. A recently launched initiative from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)—long respected for its work in defending and supporting the teaching of evolution in the public schools—aims to help teachers do a better job of teaching climate change in the classroom. The group’s Climate Change Education website points teachers to a treasure trove of resources they can use to demystify the science behind global warming, combat “climate change denial” and support “climate literacy.”

CONTACTS: EPA’s “A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change,” HYPERLINK “http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/” www.epa.gov/climatestudents; NASA Climate Kids, http:// HYPERLINK “http://climatekids.nasa.gov/” climatekids.nasa.gov; NCSE’s Climate Change Education Initiative, http:// HYPERLINK “http://ncse.com/climate” ncse.com/climate; Professor Sneeze, HYPERLINK “http://www.contespedagogiques.be/pages/accueil_angl.html” www.contespedagogiques.be/pages/accueil_angl.html.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine ( HYPERLINK “http://www.emagazine.com” www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: HYPERLINK “” earthtalk@emagazine.com.

All out war apparently declared on deer and other wildlife: what the hell is going on?

AN OPED BY RUTH EISENBUD
While major media in the United States and Britain are suddenly busy stoking up the fires against wildlife, in countries like India, where a non-Judeo-Christian tradition of respect for animals predominates, the treatment is often vastly different

In INDIA: A baby deer rescued by Karuna Society, now safe and sound, with nothing to fear!

Ramping UP for the Great Deer Crusade of 2014

New information indicates that CBS TV has joined the merry band of crusaders, poised to wage an ethnic cleansing campaign of epic proportions, on deer who harm no one, as they forage through the forest, adding beauty and grace as they go:

“Earlier this week, CBS did a very biased and one-sided presentation of the up-coming deer slaughter… shame on CBS reporters for such poor investigative journalism, for listening only to the very voices that are backing the killing, and not checking “their” facts, or doing the proper reserach on alternatives. The USDA is in the wildlife killing business and has to keep thier “killers” busy, to justify their salaries. The bit about donating meat to pantires is a sham, since most of the that meat will never be eaten…” —Zelda Penzel

• As reported by Jennifer McLogan in Federal Sharpshooters May Move In On Long Island Deer, the die seems to be already cast.

To justify their rapacious hunger to dominate and destroy any living being, labeled as ‘trespasser’, the enforcers of dominion have contrived statistics that fail to portray a realistic assessment of deer as an integral part of forest ecology. They raise hysterical claims of disease and pestilence, destruction of the forest, destruction of crops, as they label the deer a plague on mankind. Every holy war must have its plagues. This is the way of the semitic religions in their never ending quest for supremacy over animal kind and nature, over human trespassers and over each other. These three religions have convinced themselves that survival depends on scapegoating enemies, especially when the number of followers is on the decline. What better way to rev up membership (i.e donations), than by rallying around a common enemy. This time the enemy is a friendly animal, that co-exists peacefully with its habitat and with mankind – the deer. Next time it might be another animal to justify increased funds for the morally bankrupt department of wilderness services or it might be the mosque down the street, the synagogue on the corner or a sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.Anyone who understands the vicious, duplicitous nature of this impending genocide, must look within, to decide if it is possible to remain in and provide moral or financial support to the animal phobic terrorist religions of dominion. These three religions combined: Judaism, Christianity and Islam are responsible for unspeakable, immeasurable animal suffering, since the mandate of dominion was first invoked five thousand years ago.

“Genesis 9:1-3 ‘The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.’”

This latest chapter in the never ending holy war against animalkind is fully backed by all the forces of dominion of a christian nation: hunters, wildlife services, government officials, the media, tyrannical religious doctrine and the sanctimonious religious leaders who raise a ruckus, when their tribe is threatened by verbal or real violence, yet show no empathy or compassion for the animals they condemn with the righteous fervor of a moral imperative. Some political leaders, such as Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, make light of the violence they support. While commenting on a goose call he ordered, he mocked it in a tone reminiscent of the sadism of nazi-speak::

“There is not a lot of cost involved in rounding up a couple thousand geese and letting them go to sleep with nice dreams” —Michael Bloomberg

No doubt he considers himself above the animals, as he glibly dismisses the terror of the geese and their desire to live. As a staunch, proud dominionite, fully impressed with his power over the animals, he is unable to understand the nature of his cruelty. How easy it is to bemoan the suffering of one’s own, while similar atrocities towards others elicit pitiless humor.

When reason fails…
Eloquent, articulate and intelligent rebuttals have been issued by those who have seen beyond the cruelty of the judeo.christian tradition. Despite the best effort of the the holy warriors of dominion to inculcate in them the fear and dread so cherished by this tradition, these individuals understand the nature of compassion, that it is based on respect for the lives of both animals and men:
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2013/12/09/time-magazine-weighs-in-on-the-hunting-issue-disgracefully/

Responses to the news of the upcoming holocaust, from locals in the affected area have attempted to reason with the merry band of killers with pleas for common sense and compassion., as indicated by this sample of responses:

Lyme disease carriers come from & are spread by numerous feral & domestic sources particularly dogs, cats, mice, raccoons, ground hogs, squirrels, possums, skunks, birds, moles, rabbits etc… If Lyme disease was as much a problem as proponents of this wreckless proposal make it out to be, no one would be living here.

Allowing the notorious Wildlife Services to perform this task is outrageous. One of the most corrupt, venal, savage & incompetent government agencies in American history. They get laws repealed with a mere wink & a handshake to local politicians who allow our neighborhoods to be turned into a war zone. Apparently Wildlife Services is now spreading their sick carnage to the east where they can fleece the public even more. Remember, if they aren’t killing they’re not making any money. They’ve been slaughtering our wildlife in the west for decades & now see a great opportunity to increase their savagery by jumping on the now popular deer killing bandwagon. This ruthless rogue agency should be disbanded & held accountable for its crimes, not invading our neighborhoods with lethal weapons maiming, torturing, killing & leaving a bloody trail all over the eastern portion of Long Island.

In closing, before you complain about deer being a nuisance, remember, you destroyed their habitat, to build your own. Long Island politicians do not allow this to happen…

Though much of the local public is against this upcoming celebration of the right to slaughter, the inheritors of dominion, are incapable of the rational thought required to understand any opposition to their quest. They are the good soldiers of dominion, marching onward in their latest adventure to establish once and for all their supremacy over nature and animal kind. Since the glory of such destruction fades quickly, after they have had their fill of deer slaughter, they will find a new victim, a new enemy, a new scapegoat: for they must fill the void in the spiritually impoverished existence, where the measure of a man is determined by the right to kill defenseless animals with gusto:

Hunters: What makes some men derive pleasure from killing a defenseless creature?
HUNTERSpermit-large

What if the measure of a man were instead based on protection, care and comfort for the weak
rather than the “divine right” to commit mayhem and violence against non-human beings?

WHAT IF…?
What if religion, political figures, government agencies such as wilderness services and religious leaders were on the side of the animals. What if it were against the law to order a cull of any animal? What if religion taught:

"For there is nothing inaccessible for death.
All beings are fond of life, hate pain, like pleasure,
shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life
is dear." —Jain Acharanga Sutra.

—Jain Acharanga Sutra

This is not a fantasy, but a realizable possibility where dominionist religious doctrine has not infiltrated the mainstream view of animals. How different it is in India, where ahimsa informs the prevailing view of man and his relation to nature and animal kind; where Wilderness Services cooperates with animal organizations to protect, rescue and rehabilitate wildlife The following is an example of a deer rescued by wilderness services, then given medical care and respect at the Karuna Society Sanctuary, then released to the wilderness, when fully recovered: http://www.karunasociety.org/spotted-deer-recoverss

Spotted Deer Recovers from a Leg Injury and is Released Back into the Wild

In July, a young spotted deer was brought in by the forest department. Her leg was deeply infected, inflamed and paralyzed. The chances of recovery at this stage were minimal. We started immediate treatment, and the infection seemed to heal, but the left foot was still not functioning.

With further exploration we found two deeper wounds that went down to the bone. These wounds took five months to heal. After one year, fully recovered, this beautiful spotted deer was released back to its original habitat with the help of the forest department officials. The wildlife doctor from Wildlife Trust of India is still amazed that the deer survived.

What if those of us who care for protection, rescue and compassion over culls, hunting and slaughter were to take a stand against the religions that encourage the latter. What if we were to say no more – We will not tolerate your desecration of the sanctity of life for the sake of preserving archaic, violent doctrine. What if we were to finally break the ties with religions that are in direct opposition to the values of the compassion we hold dear. What if we were to say we will not support your cruelty, no matter how you try to get around it with slick phrases such as ‘the dominion of love’. There can be no love where slaughter is a holy right. The myth of the good shepherd must finally be laid to rest and with it the cruelty of dominion.

“It is the essential characteristic of a wise person that he/she does not kill any living being.
One should know that non-killing and equality of all living beings are the main principles of [a good] religion”—Jain sutra

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ruth Eisenbud is a veteran animal rights activist.

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OpEds: Stop dogfighting by addressing supply side economics

SPECIAL FROM ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2013:
(Actually published on November 20, 2013.)

By Merritt Clifton & Kim Bartlett, Animal People

Police in Montgomery, Alabama on October 1, 2013 took custody of the last 16 of at least 386 pit bulls who were impounded after raids in August 2013 on an alleged multistate dogfighting ring. Thirteen defendants, from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, are facing related charges.

Initiated by the Auburn, Alabama police department, the investigation and impoundments were assisted by at least 15 humane organizations, both locally and nationwide.

Few dogfighting cases have ever apprehended either more dogs or more alleged dogfighting trainers and organizers. The pit bull impoundments in this case brought the 2013 total seized in connection with dogfighting, throughout the U.S., to 803––on a pace to approximately equal the average of about 950 per year since 2000.

The numbers of pit bulls seized in dogfighting raids have soared as high as 1,612 in 2002 and 1,589 in 2009.

Just how much more dogfighting is done than law enforcement agencies are able to interdict is difficult to assess. Estimating the frequency of commission of any type of crime that often goes undetected and unreported is problematic, but criminologists have developed formulas that usually put the incidence of unreported crime at anywhere from ten to 100 times the reported amount, depending on the type of offense. For crimes such as dogfighting, which involve multiple participants and the use of animals and facilities built or modified for the purpose, the volume of unreported incidents is believed to be much lower than for crimes such as rape and assault, which most often involve only one criminal and one victim at a time.

Thus the numbers of dogs actually used in dogfighting in the U.S. per year may be as low as about 16,000, or as high as 160,000, but is usually guesstimated by veteran dogfighting investigators to be in the range of 40,000––about double the number estimated by the American SPCA in April 1961, when humane investigators found themselves unable to do anything more about a dogfighting convention held openly at Ruston, Lousiana than to deplore it to the Ruston Daily Leader and United Press International.

To put the currently estimated numbers of fighting dogs into context, more dogs appear to have been used in dogfighting in the U.S. in each of the past 13 years than the annual total of dogs impounded in all but a few of the biggest U.S. cities, and in forty of the fifty states.

Worse, despite all the difficult and often very dangerous investigative work done to bust dogfighters, the few possible hints that dogfighting might be declining are ambiguous. The one verifiable fact about dogfighting is that the volume of related arrests and impoundments has hovered in the same all-time high range for 13 consecutive years––a fact which may reflect the limitations of the resources available to combat dogfighting more than the amount of dogfighting actually going on.

Dogfighting today appears to be more culturally prominent than at any time since British queen Elizabeth I openly attended dogfights and bear-baiting events, more than 400 years ago. Dogfighting imagery is used to sell trucks, tools, beer, brands of apparel, popular music, and even, in the case of Sarah Palin, a presidential candidate––albeit a candidate whose campaign failed early in the 2012 race.

Some observers were surprised that football player Michael Vick was caught in 2007 running a dogfighting ring in an upscale residential neighborhood in Surrey County, Virginia, but many other dogfighting busts in recent years have occurred in affluent suburbs, from New Hampshire to Southern California. This is a relatively recent development. Before circa 2000 there was little precedent for dogfighting in “good” neighborhoods since the Puritan regent Oliver Cromwell drove dogfighting and baiting underground in England a generation after Elizabeth I.

Taliban resurgece has brought back dogfighting and heavy gambling, old customs in Afghanistan.

Taliban resurgence has brought back dogfighting and heavy gambling, old customs in Afghanistan.

British sailors and soldiers in the next few centuries introduced dogfighting to port cities worldwide, including in India, where the “bully khutta” pit bull variant emerged in the 19th century, and to Crete. The New York Times in 1857 “credited” British dogfighters with bringing rabies to Crete and perhaps to India.

Dogfighting in the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries occurred mostly in waterfront taverns. Eradicated from most of the U.S. by the rise of the humane movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dogfighting persisted chiefly in the rural South. Dogfighters, along with cockfighters, moonshiners, and promoters of other vices, donated heavily to fraternal lodges fronting for the Ku Klux Klan. Klan influence in turn ensured that relatively few dogfighters were ever raided.

There were exceptions. The Humane Society of Greater Birmingham broke up the World Series of Dogfighting in 1935, though the alleged dogfighters escaped. Carey H. Falwell, father of evangelist Jerry Falwell, was in 1938 twice convicted of hosting dogfights in Lynchburg, Virginia. But the inability of humane societies to raid the 1961 dogfighting convention in Louisiana was more the norm.

Following the break-up of the Klan by law enforcement pressure in the 1960s and 1970s, one might have expected dogfighting (and cockfighting) to disappear even from the South. Instead, motorcycle gangs, skinheads, drug dealers, and marijuana growers ––who documentedly began using pit bulls to guard their plots in California in the late 1970s ––re-introduced dogfighting to most of the rest of the country.

By the mid-1980s dogfighting had crossed over into inner city African-American and Hispanic street culture, via prison gangs, and had begun to be celebrated in “rap” music lyrics. Gradually thereafter U.S.-style dogfighting became visible in association with vice, especially the drug traffic, in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, eastern Europe, and much of Southeast Asia, India, and Pakistan. The Taliban suppressed the relatively non-lethal Central Asian version of dogfighting in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001, but over the past decade U.S. troops have helped to replace the traditional body-slamming matches between working sheep dogs with American-style pit bull fights to the death.

But with the resurging magnitude of dogfighting duly acknowledged, animal advocacy attention to dogfighting tends to invert the economic realities of the pit bull industry as it exists today––and, in so doing, fails both to suppress dogfighting and to effectively address the other consequences of pit bull proliferation.

The “status dog” market

The “blame-the-deed-not-the-breed” narrative often amplified by humane organizations holds that the many issues associated with pit bulls, beyond actual use in dogfighting, are primarily the result of misuse of pit bulls by dogfighters. Suppress dogfighting, the narrative goes, and pit bulls will become safe dogs, the pit bulls now flooding shelters will all find homes, and all will live happily ever after.

Indeed, dogfighters can be blamed for quite a lot. Pit bulls are the products of extensive line breeding in a multi-century arms race to develop the most deadly fighting dogs, dogs who will maim pigs in so-called hog/dog rodeo, bull-and-bear-baiting dogs, dogs who would kill rats in a pit in great numbers without pausing to eat any, dogs who would attack and kill Native Americans, and dogs who would dismember runaway slaves as a warning to others.

Reflecting the differing specialities for which pit bulls were bred, as well as the differing bloodlines developed by fighting breeders, diversity in pit bull appearance often confounds would-be regulators who seek to regulate by form, or breed standard. The multitude of names used by pit bull fanciers to distinguish among the range of pit bull types adds a further confounding factor

The common traits of pit bulls, regardless of other aspects of appearance and behavior, are that they are mesomorphic muscular dogs, disproportionately large-jawed, inclined to explode from calm demeanor to idiopathic rage without going through a long repertoire of warning signals first, and inclined to attack and continue attacking, without relent and regardless of injury to themselves, until their target is dead and dismembered.

With the role of fighting dog breeders in developing these traits acknowledged, the narrative that dogfighting underlies all present pit bull issues is at best a half-truth. Dogfighting provides imagery that helps to promote pit bulls, much as NASCAR auto racing provides imagery that helps to sell cars. Also, the big money in dogfighting, as in just about every other competitive pursuit that involves animals, is in breeding the winners and selling their offspring. But this is nothing new. As of 1961, dogfighting had been technically illegal in every state for 40 years, yet dogfighters still openly advertised their “champions” and “grand champions,” listing by name the dogs they had defeated.

What has changed are the proportions of the pit bull breeding industry. The 20,000 pit bulls per year believed to have used in dogfights in 1961 were about 10% of all the pit bulls in the U.S., then barely 200,000. This was a number low enough that practically the whole pit bull population could be traced back a generation to actual fighting dogs or culls sold as pets.

The 40,000 pit bulls per year believed to be used in dogfights today are about 1.2% of the present pit bull population. Breeders advertising “champions” and “grand champions” through electronic media have become ubiquitous, but unlike in 1961, they rarely post details that might lead to indictments. Relatively few pit bulls today can be verifiably traced to recent fighting ancestry.

Dogfights among high-priced pedigreed pit bulls may still be held. Certainly there is plenty of evidence of high-end speculative pit bull breeding––but those customers who can be identified tend to be affluent outsiders trying to buy their way into the inner circles of dogfighting, like Michael Vick. Reputed high-end fighting dog breeders, meanwhile, are rarely caught actually fighting their dogs. Several have been brought to a semblance of justice in recent years, but on charges other than dogfighting; the biggest names to be charged with dogfighting were acquitted.

Historically, pit bulls sold as pets were castoffs from fighting dog breeders. Today, however, most of the dogfighting industry thrives on the seemingly endless supply of low-end cast-off pit bulls bred to be pets.

Unlike 50-odd years ago, when authentic fighting dogs were often identified with long pedigrees in dogfighting newsletters, most of the 10,000-odd pit bulls seized in raids over the past dozen years have been about as anonymous as dogs could be, often not even having names until names were assigned by rescuers. Frequently the dogs were stolen, acquired free-to-good-home after having failed as pets, or were bought cheaply from backyard breeders who had already sold their most impressive-looking pups to people who wanted them to guard drug-dealing operations, as adjuncts to other criminal activities, or just to show off.

Dogfighters have often been caught operating bogus “rescues” to obtain cast-off pit bulls. Dozens more may still be in the false-front “rescue” business.

While the numbers of pit bulls used in dogfighting appears to have doubled since 1961, shelter pit bull intake has soared from less than 1% of the dogs received to 37% in 2013, and from less than 2% of the dogs killed in shelters to upward of 60%. Shelters have since 2000 received more than a million pit bulls per year, killing an average of about 930,000: nearly 1,000 times more than the numbers seized from dogfighters.

Most of these dogs have been bred by suppliers of what the British call the “status dog” market, meaning people who want to show off possession of a scary dog, but usually do not want the dog to do anything actually scary––at least not spontaneously, independent of a command to attack.

Nearly a third of the total U.S. pit bull population are surrendered to animal shelters, or are impounded for dangerous behavior, each and every year. About a third of the pit bull population are under a year of age, while half of all adult pit bulls now in homes will not be in those homes a year later.

Typically these dogs lose their homes because of traits inculcated by dogfighting breeders, but usually several generations after actual fighting dogs were part of their ancestry. Often the people surrendering pit bulls to shelters had no intention that they should ever be fighters, and no expectation that they might ever become dangerous.

If treated well, people acquiring pit bulls tend to believe today, pit bulls will respond as if ancestrally bred as pets or as reliable working dogs. This is a very different set of expectations from those of 50-odd years ago when hardly anyone acquired a pit bull except to fight or keep chained as a guard dog.

Overwhelmed by the pit bull influx at the same time that public expectations have risen that shelters should be “no kill,” the humane community has made unprecedented efforts to avoid killing pit bulls, including promoting the very myths––such as the fiction that pit bulls were ever used as “nanny dogs”––that tend to lead to fatal and disfiguring accidents.

Shelter adopters have in recent years been persuaded to take home pit bulls at about three times the rate at which people who buy dogs from breeders choose pit bulls. But this has had consequences. Only two dogs rehomed by U.S. animal shelters had ever killed anyone as recently as 2000, a pair of wolf hybrids who were rehomed in 1988 and 1989. Thirty-one shelter dogs have participated in killing people since 2010, 18 of them pit bulls and nine of them mixes of pit bull with mastiff. Not surprisingly, a recent survey funded by the Best Friends Animal Society found that public confidence in shelters as a good place to get a dog has declined.

The shelter record in rehoming pit bulls is in microcosm the experience of the nation. As of 1961, pit bulls had killed nine of the fifteen Americans who had been killed by dogs in the preceding 30 years. The number of pit bulls in the U.S. is now about 12 times greater, but pit bulls since 2010 have killed an average of 27.5 people per year, a more than 60-fold increase in the rate of fatal attacks. Along with the rising fatalities, pit bulls disfigured more than 400 Americans in the first 10 months of 2013, twice as many as in any previous year. In all the 31 years that ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton has logged fatal and disfiguring dog attacks, only one of the 265 human fatalities inflicted by pit bulls and just a handful of the more than 3,000 disfigurements have involved dogs kept by people who were ever charged with dogfighting.

Of further concern to people who care about animals, there have been about 20 reported pit bull killings of other pets thus far in 2013 for every human fatality. If this attack ratio extends to disfigurements, and there is every reason to believe it does, pit bulls have in 2013 killed or disfigured at least 8,000 other pets––over and above whatever number have been killed in dogfighting and training fighting dogs.

Though the pit bull problem began with dogfighters, it is today mostly an exceptionally problematic aspect of pet overpopulation, perpetuated primarily by the low rate of sterilization among pet pit bulls––less than 25%––and by backyard breeding, not by people trying to produce “grand champions” so much as by people hoping to make a few hundred bucks selling “status dogs” around their neighborhoods.

Contrary to common belief, there is no documentation to support the notion that sterilization makes pit bulls, or any dogs, significantly safer. In 1960, when only 1% of all the dogs in the U.S. were sterilized, most pet dogs were not kept leashed or confined, and canine rabies had not yet been eradicated from the U.S., only 611,000 Americans required medical treatment for dog bites. Hardly any dogs run free today, no dog has contracted canine rabies in the U.S. in 15 years, and more than 70% of all dogs are sterilized, despite the low rate of pit bull sterilization. Yet 4.7 million Americans per year now seek medical attention for dog bites.

Serious bites have increased eightfold while the U.S. dog population has only doubled.

But though sterilization does not make dogs safer, it does make them less numerous. Mandatory pit bull sterilization, in effect in San Francisco since 2006, could prevent the impoundment and subsequent deaths of more than 900,000 pit bulls per year nationwide; end the desperation of shelter management to avoid killing pit bulls which has led to so many deaths and disfigurements by pit bulls who have been rehomed, eroding public trust of shelter adoption; and cut off the flow of cast-off pit bulls to dogfighters via bogus “rescues.”

With pit bull proliferation curbed, identifying and successfully prosecuting dogfighters should be considerably easier. And throwing the book at pit bull breeders would shut down those who trade on their reputations for producing “grand champions,” whether or not they can be caught at the pits.