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| ‘World’s Smallest Pony’ Needs Your Help!!!
In a display that harks back to the exploitative “carny” shows of old, an exhibitor is charging visitors one dollar to view the “World’s Smallest Horse” on the Seaside Park, New Jersey, boardwalk. The pony stands all day in a tiny pit while people gawk at him. Everyone who has contacted PETA with concerns about this pony has mentioned the scorching heat and humidity and said that the animal looks depressed and lethargic.
Please contact the mayor of Seaside Park, as the park is operated by the borough. Politely, but firmly, voice your objections to this display, and ask the mayor to ban animal displays from Seaside Park. Ask your friends and family to speak out for this suffering pony as well:
The Honorable Robert W. Matthies
1701 N. Ocean Ave.
Seaside Park, NJ 08752
732-793-3700
732-793-3737 (fax)
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| EPA: Back to the Drawing Board With Pesticide Testing Scheme
Comments needed by September 7, 2005.
As if it's not enough that at least 12,000 rats, fish, birds, and even dogs have already been poisoned in crude and cruel toxicity tests for every chemical pesticide sold in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) is now proposing to expand its "data requirements" for these substances, which will drive up the animal body count even further. A number of the tests being proposed consume hundreds or thousands of animals at a time, including some where essentially the same test procedure is duplicated in two or more species (e.g., 90-day repeated dosing studies in rats and dogs, 2-year cancer tests in rats and mice, birth-defects testing in rats and rabbits, lethal poisoning studies in two or more species of birds and fish, etc.). In fact, the only progressive element in OPP's proposal is the elimination of a 1-year repeated dosing study in dogs.
Your help is urgently needed to pressure OPP to go back to the drawing board with its proposed amendments to Title 40, Part 158 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Here are some specific points that you should include in your letter:
OPP is to be commended for its proposal to eliminate the 1-year dog study from Part 158.
In all other respects, OPP's proposed rule fails to reflect the EPA's stated commitments to sound science, the minimization of animal testing, or a realistic assessment and balancing of costs versus benefits and should be revised extensively to reflect more thoughtful testing strategies, such as that proposed by the International Life Sciences Institute.
Most of the proposed new and newly codified data requirements are politically rather than scientifically driven, and they are based on toxicity test methods that have not been formally or adequately validated to demonstrate their reliability and relevance to human beings. They are therefore unlikely to alter the existing risk assessments or the levels of pesticides to which human beings and the environment are exposed.
The following OPP proposals are particularly objectionable and should be abandoned:
> Expanding eye and skin irritation testing in rabbits, and skin sensitization in mice or guinea pigs, from final formulations alone to formulations and individual "active ingredients"
> Creating a new testing requirement for short-term toxicity to the nervous system (80 rats)
> Expanding 90-day repeated-dosing studies from two to three species (120 rats + 32 dogs + now 120 mice)
> Changing 21- and 90-day dermal dosing studies (40 rats) from conditional to absolute requirements for all food and nonfood chemical pesticides, respectively
> Changing the 90-day nervous system toxicity testing (80 rats) from conditional to absolute requirements
> Expanding birth-defects testing from one to two species (1,300 rats + 900 rabbits)
> Changing two-generation reproduction studies (2,600 rats) from a conditional to an absolute requirement
> Creating a new conditional testing requirement for toxicity to the developing nervous system (2,600 rats)
> Creating a new testing requirement for toxicity to the immune system (32 rats)
> Expanding lethal poisoning testing in birds from two to three species (60 mallard ducks + 60 bobwhite quail + now 60 red-winged blackbirds) and expanding this testing from pesticide ingredients alone to ingredients and final formulations
> Expanding testing requirements for reproductive toxicity to birds (1,450 ducks/quail) for virtually all outdoor uses
> Expanding testing requirements for dietary toxicity to birds
> Expanding requirements for simulated or actual field testing of pesticides involving birds and mammals
> Expanding lethal poisoning testing in freshwater fish from one to two species (60 fish of each species) for greenhouse and indoor uses
> Expanding lethal poisoning testing in saltwater fish to up to five different species (60 fish of each species) for all outdoor uses
> Creating a new testing requirement for long-term toxicity to freshwater fish for all outdoor uses
Please send polite letters to:
Public Information and Records Integrity Branch
Office of Pesticide Programs
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20460
opp-docket@epa.gov
Be sure to reference Docket Number OPP-2004-0387 in the subject line.
Please send a copy of your letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which has the power to force OPP to scale back its monster proposal:
Dr. John D. Graham, Administrator
Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget
725 17th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20503
202-395-3888 (fax) | | |
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Special Delivery… Kittens survive two-day shipping!
Updated: 12:55 p.m. ET July 29, 2005
VEGENNES, Va. - A worker in the returns department at Country Home Products got a surprise when he opened a brush trimmer sent back from South Carolina.
Inside the box was the trimmer — and five kittens.
The three-week-old kittens survived the two-day trip to Vermont and are doing fine.
The South Carolina customer who returned the trimmer had stored it in a barn, and apparently sealed the box without looking inside.
The kittens were taken to a Humane Society shelter in Middlebury, where they met Hazel, a black cat whose kittens had just been weaned. Hazel is a now a surrogate mother to the kittens.
The shelter says the kittens should be available for adoption in about three weeks.
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Read the entire report here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8755085/ | | |
| ***Basic Outline of the Actions Against KFC as described at http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com***
Why KFC?
The more than 850 million chickens raised each year for KFC’s restaurants aren’t able to do any of these things. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of ammonia fumes from accumulated waste and given barely enough room to move (each bird lives in a space about the size of a sheet of paper). They routinely suffer broken bones from being bred to be top-heavy, being subjected to callous handling (workers roughly grab birds by their legs and stuff them into crates), and being shackled upside-down at slaughterhouses. Chickens are often still fully conscious when their throats are cut and when they are dumped into tanks of scalding-hot water to remove their feathers. When they’re killed, chickens are still babies, not yet 2 months old out of a natural life span of more than 10 years.
What KFC Needs to Improve…
Chickens are probably the most abused animals on the face of the planet—they are treated in ways that would warrant felony cruelty-to-animals charges were they dogs, cats, or even cows or pigs. Because federal laws exempt chickens from the Animal Welfare and Humane Slaughter acts, sadistic and routine cruelty go unpunished, and it is up to companies like KFC to ensure that the chickens who end up in their buckets and boxes are not grossly abused. KFC has ignored this responsibility almost entirely, and its suppliers continue to abuse chickens—who are remarkable animals with distinct personalities, social orders, systems of communication, and intelligence as advanced as that of many other animals—in ways that would be illegal if dogs and cats were the victims.
KFC’s breeding birds have their sensitive beaks seared off with hot blades soon after they are born. "Broilers," or chickens raised for their flesh, are bred and drugged in order to make them gain weight quickly, which often causes their hearts and lungs to fail and their legs to become crippled under their own heavy bodies. Archaic slaughter methods and faulty machinery, combined with an absence of laws to protect chickens, cause millions of them to be scalded alive in feather-removal tanks or have their throats slit while they are still conscious.
PETA’s recommended animal welfare program was developed by members of KFC’s own animal welfare board and sent to KFC’s chief operating officer on March 11, 2005. KFC has yet to adopt any of the recommendations. Several members of KFC's animal welfare panel have resigned, after having been used by the company as a shield for years, during which time none of their (and PETA's) recommendations were adopted
The following is a basic outline of PETA's recommended animal welfare program for KFC:
--Adopt the “Animal Care Standards” program. This program creates guidelines to protect chickens on factory farms and covers issues such as ammonia concentration, lighting conditions, and living space in chicken sheds. It also prohibits intentional starvation of breeding birds and states that birds must be provided with mental and physical stimulation.
--Replace electrical stunning and throat-slitting with controlled-atmosphere killing. Experts agree that controlled-atmosphere killing causes much less suffering than KFC’s present method of snapping chickens’ legs into metal shackles and slitting their throats, often while they are still conscious.
--Switch to less cruel mechanized chicken gathering. Studies have shown that using manual methods results in four times as many broken legs, more than eight times as much bruising, and increased stress on the chickens.
--Breed for health rather than forcing rapid growth, and stop feeding drugs to chickens. Breed leaner, healthier, less aggressive birds instead of breeding the biggest, fattest birds possible, and stop feeding chickens antibiotics and other drugs for nontherapeutic purposes.
--Make all welfare standards transparent and verifiable. Any meaningful animal welfare program must be verified by announced and unannounced independent third-party audits, the guidelines for and results of which must be made available to the public through KFC’s Web site.
Peace, animal rights, and http://www.peta2.com! | | |
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