Advocacy for Animals

by Michael Markarian

— Our thanks to Michael Markarian for permission to republish this post, which originally appeared on his blog Animals & Politics on October 9, 2014.

On February 18, 1958, then-Senator John F. Kennedy told an audience of Loyola College alumni in Baltimore that we should “not seek the Republican answer or the Democrat answer but the right answer.”

Today, 56 years later and just 26 days shy of a crucial election, we at the Humane Society Legislative Fund are also after the right answers. The right answers for animals are the lawmakers who will fight animal cruelty and abuse, and stand up for the values of kindness and compassion.

This week we released our Animal Protection Voter Guide—a list of those humane-minded candidates endorsed by HSLF who need your support in three and a half weeks. You’ll see Democrats, Republicans, and Independents on the list—we make endorsements based on candidates’ records or positions on animal issues rather than on political party or affiliation.

We hope you’ll take the Voter Guide with you to the polls. Election Day is November 4, but early voting is already open in many places throughout the country. Check the guide to see if voting is open where you live. continue reading…

— Each week the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) sends out an e-mail alert called Take Action Thursday, which tells subscribers about current actions they can take to help animals. NAVS is a national, not-for-profit educational organization incorporated in the State of Illinois. NAVS promotes greater compassion, respect, and justice for animals through educational programs based on respected ethical and scientific theory and supported by extensive documentation of the cruelty and waste of vivisection. You can register to receive these action alerts and more at the NAVS Web site.

This week, Take Action Thursday discusses the NIH’s implementation of its plan to end funding for dogs from Class B animal dealers and urges you to take action to stop the NIH’s use of all dogs in research.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ended its use of random source (Class B) dogs for research. According to the NIH, as of October 1, 2014, researchers are prohibited from using NIH funds to procure or support the use of dogs from Class B or “random source” dealers, which sell animals that they obtain from shelters, pounds, small breeders, and other sources. Animals used in research must be obtained from a licensed dealer—either Class B or Class A. Class A dealers are generally large breeding facilities that only sell purpose-bred animals that they raise themselves.

While the NIH announced in 2013 that it intended to implement a plan to stop funding dogs from Class B dealers, it also reported that it had “implemented an aggressive acquisition plan for a limited pilot project to develop a USDA licensed commercial Class A vendor to breed dogs possessing the same characteristics” as those dogs previously acquired from Class B dealers—”mature, large, socialized, out-bred hounds or mongrels.” The NIH contracted with a Class A dealer to provide up to 1,000 dogs to be used in research by the time this change went into effect.

Rather than simply replace one source of dogs with another, we urge the NIH to develop and implement a plan to replace its use of dogs with human-relevant models. Tens of thousands of dogs are used for a variety of experiments each year in the U.S. It is time for the NIH to stop exploiting man’s best friend as a model for human disease. continue reading…

by Kelsey Eberly, ALDF Litigation Fellow

— Our thanks to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) for permission to republish this post, which originally appeared on the ALDF Blog on October 7, 2014.

When ALDF and online petitioners trained a spotlight on the maternal deprivation research being conducted on newborn rhesus monkeys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), the University defended the studies and alleged that these critiques contained “falsehoods and exaggerations.”

The University contends that Dr. Ned Kalin’s current study “bears no meaningful resemblance” to Harry Harlow’s infamous research subjecting baby monkeys to psychological torture. Today, UW says, “young monkeys are raised by human caretakers and alongside monkeys of a similar age.” Dean Robert Golden of the School of Medicine and Public Health says that “maternal deprivation” is an “intentionally shocking catch-phrase of the animal rights movement.”

ALDF believes the facts speak for themselves. According to Dr. Kalin’s research protocol, 20 infant macaques will be permanently removed from their mothers on their first day of life and kept in an incubator box for roughly six weeks with only a stuffed “surrogate” for comfort. Twenty additional mother-raised primates will act as the control group. The maternally-deprived monkeys are not “raised by human caretakers,” but removed from their incubators only for feeding and to clean the incubator. The University’s Standard Operating Procedures specify that “infant monkeys should not be handled unnecessarily to minimize the possibility of inappropriate attachments to humans.” Indeed, the protocol is designed to induce acute stress through maternal deprivation—not, as the University disingenuously suggests, to pair human-reared monkeys with playmates. continue reading…

by Gregory McNamee

Humans are too clever by half—not wise, but clever. There are twice as many humans as the world can support, and certainly twice as many Americans and their voracious appetites. It’s all about the “halves” and “halve-nots”: According to the World Wildlife Fund and its annual Living Planet Report, the world’s vertebrate species have lost fully half (52 percent, to be exact) of their members in just the last 40 years.

The thought staggers: we have lost every other animal that drew breath in the time since Nixon left office and disco reigned supreme. In light of that statistic, E.O. Wilson’s proposal to set half the world aside for the exclusive use of animals seems almost understated. The idea, Wilson says, has been with him for a long time, but the WWF report lends it new urgency, and it’s certainly worth talking and thinking about.
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by Stephen Wells, ALDF Executive Director

— Our thanks to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) for permission to republish this post, which originally appeared on the ALDF Blog on September 25, 2014.

At the Animal Legal Defense Fund, we are often asked for statistics about animal cruelty crimes—which for too long have been unavailable: until now. Animal cruelty will now be tracked and recorded by the FBI in the National Incident Based Reporting System as a separate offense. This important development will allow the FBI to better allocate resources to solve animal cruelty cases and provide valuable insight into the scope of animal abuse nationally. With this new inclusion in the Uniform Crime Report—the most comprehensive source of crime statistics—law enforcement is given the tools to allocate resources to fight animal cruelty and an incentive to prosecute animal cruelty to the full extent of the law.
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