Animal

Publié le 01 juin 2010 Biodiversité, un mot qui ne rime à rien Jean-Marie Bergeron Le Droit Le mot «biodiversité» est un de ces beaux mots qui s'insèrent bien dans les conversations. Mais, dans les faits, peu de gens se préoccupent vraiment de la réalité à laquelle il réfère. Le mot demeure abstrait pour la majorité d'entre nous dont les préoccupations premières consistent à boucler notre budget en fin de mois. Ici comme partout dans le monde. Faut-il alors se surprendre que la plupart des programmes locaux et mondiaux pour la promouvoir et la protéger sont des échecs? Moi, en tout cas, ça ne me surprend pas! Incompréhension Il faut dire que cette fameuse biodiversité a toujours été malmenée et incomprise par les humains. Les peuples de chasseurs-cueilleurs qui ont envahi le Nouveau Monde il y a 13400 ans de cela n'ont eu besoin que d'un siècle pour faire disparaître la mégafaune d'alors. Plus récemment, entre le début du XXe et du xxiesiècle, 1 milliard d'hectares de forêts (10 millions de km, un peu plus grand que le Canada) ont été perdus, soit 20% de la superficie forestière originale qui est estimée à 5 milliards d'hectares. La disparition de grandes parties de ces écosystèmes entraîne celle des plantes, des animaux et des peuples autochtones qui en dépendent. Ainsi, 1400 langues parlées du monde sur 6900 comptent moins de 1000 locuteurs. Ceci fait aussi partie des problèmes de biodiversité. À vrai dire, la biodiversité n'intéresse que ceux qui l'étudient, qui en vivent et qui doivent faire rapport à son sujet. Les autres lisent superficiellement les rapports et en oublient les recommandations rapidement. Et alors que l'année internationale de la biodiversité bat son plein, l'ONU fait dans ce domaine un constat d'échec sur toute la ligne (Perspectives mondiales de la biodiversité-3). Trois phénomènes particuliers lui font peur: le dépérissement de vastes zones de la forêt amazonienne, l'eutrophisation généralisée de lacs d'eau douce menant à la domination des algues et l'effondrement de plusieurs écosystèmes de récifs coralliens. Rien de rassurant pour un monde qui comptera bientôt 9 milliards de bouches à nourrir. L'ONU précise qu'il est décevant qu'aucun des 21 objectifs de cette année particulière n'ait été atteint par aucun de ses pays membres: les habitats continuent à se dégrader, les ressources sont surexploitées, la pollution augmente, les espèces exotiques s'implantent partout sans politiques d'éradication précises et moyens financiers pour les freiner et les changements climatiques font apparaître de nouvelles menaces à l'agriculture et à la foresterie. D'ailleurs, la conférence de la CITES (Convention sur le commerce international des espèces de faune et de flore sauvages menacées d'extinction) à Doha en mars dernier fut un échec, car les espèces menacées ayant un grand intérêt économique n'ont pu être mieux protégées. C'est le cas des requins qui sont particulièrement prisés par le Japon et les autres pays asiatiques ainsi que celui du thon rouge qui fait les délices des gourmets amateurs de suchis. Sue Lieberman du Pew Environment Group, croit que la CITES (www.cites.org) qui refrénait autrefois le commerce pour sauver les espèces a modifié sa raison d'être en délaissant la conservation au profit du commerce. Un échec sur toute la ligne. L'exemple du lac Beauchamp Les mêmes phénomènes se reproduisent à plus petite échelle au niveau local. Les zones habitées du Canada sont tellement fragmentées que les plantes et les animaux ne peuvent plus y vivre et se reproduire. Même si les MRC du Québec peuvent le faire, plusieurs se refusent à imposer sur leur territoire des bandes riveraines de 10 mètres près des cours d'eau, ce qui pourrait mieux protéger les plantes et animaux sauvages qui ont de la difficulté à survivre présentement. Dans le même ordre d'idées, Gatineau a fait récemment la manchette des journaux locaux parce qu'elle n'a même pas suivi sa propre réglementation sur les parcs urbains en intervenant assez gauchement dans le boisé du lac Beauchamp et elle a même contrevenu aux lois du Québec en s'attaquant à un marais local. Pensez-vous qu'elle a été punie par le Ministère du développement durable, de l'environnement et des parcs ou par le gouvernement?.... Personne ne s'intéresse à la biodiversité, je vous le répète. Pour votre information, 54962 espèces se sont éteintes sur la planète depuis le début de 2010. Qui s'en soucie? http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-droit/mode-de-vie/201006/01/01-4285665-biodiversite-un-mot-qui-ne-rime-a-rien.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_lire_aussi_4291323_article_POS3

Publié le 29 juin 2010 ... Feux de forêt: la situation s'améliore Sur les 510 feux allumés cette année au Québec, seulement 23 étaient toujours en activité hier. Sur ce nombre, neuf brûlaient sur le territoire de La Tuque. Trois sont contenus alors que les autres sont maîtrisés. http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-nouvelliste/actualites/201006/29/01-4294046-feux-de-foret-la-situation-sameliore.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_B13b_actualites_442_section_POS3

Mercredi 23 juin 2010 Pour que BP soit accusé de cruauté envers la faune (PETA) http://spendeursauvage.over-blog.com/article-pour-que-bp-soit-accuse-de-cruaute-\ envers-la-faune-peta-52827581.html

Pour un barbecue écologique dans votre cour Agence QMI Suzanne Elston 27/06/2010 C'est l'été et c'est agréable de faire des grillades. Mais avant d'empiler les biftecks, les hamburgers et autres plats carnivores traditionnels, songez à des alternatives végétariennes. L'adoption d'un régime végétarien ne constitue pas seulement un mode de vie plus sain. En raison des ressources disproportionnées requises pour produire de la viande, un rapport de l'ONU publié en juin a appelé à un virage végétarien à l'échelle internationale. Selon le rapport intitulé Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production, l'agriculture requiert 70% de la consommation mondiale d'eau douce et 38% de l'utilisation des terres. Et la grande majorité des impacts environnementaux sont associés à la production de viande et de produits laitiers. De plus, la consommation de viande et de produits laitiers a un lien avec les changements climatiques. D'après le rapport de l'ONU, les produits d'origine animale requièrent plus de ressources et produisent plus d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre que les alternatives végétariennes. Plus de la moitié des récoltes mondiales servent actuellement à nourrir les animaux et non les humains. L'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture confirme que la consommation de viande a quintuplé au cours des 40 dernières années et que ce rythme doublera encore d'ici 2050, lorsque la population mondiale atteindra 9,1 milliards de personnes. Toutefois, la diminution de notre consommation de produits d'origine animale peut aider à relever les plus importants défis écologiques de la planète, comme les changements climatiques, de même que les pénuries d'eau et de carburant, selon le rapport de l'ONU. Plutôt que d'arrêter complètement de consommer de la viande, certains consommateurs sensibilisés à l'environnement et socialement responsables ont adopté un régime «flexitarien» -ce qui signifie qu'ils mangent principalement des mets végétariens, ne consommant de la viande qu'une ou deux fois par mois. Ancien végétarien et père d'un enfant, Cambell Steuart est un architecte paysagiste et un agriculteur biologique. Sa femme et lui ont récemment adopté un régime «flexitarien», car ils voulaient s'assurer que leur fils ait une dose suffisante de fer. «Nous avons décidé de recommencer à manger de la viande parce que nous avions la possibilité de trouver des produits d'animaux élevés et tués de façon humaine», admet M. Steuart. Il conseille aux consommateurs de connaître l'origine de leurs produits d'origine animale et de se concentrer, autant que possible, sur les races patrimoniales. «Historiquement, ce sont ces races qui ont soutenu les populations locales, rappelle-t-il. Elles ont été les plus efficaces à convertir ce que nous ne pouvons pas manger en aliments comestibles.» Si le fait d'arrêter de manger de la viande vous paraît être une tâche herculéenne, commencez par vous servir de plus petites portions de viande et achetez de la viande biologique provenant d'animaux élevés localement, si possible. Même si vous décidez de ne manger de la viande qu'un jour par semaine, cela aura un énorme impact, soutient M. Steuart. SUGGESTIONS ALIMENTAIRES Cuire au BBQ de consistantes portions de légumes d'hiver enveloppées dans du papier d'aluminium et arrosées d'huile d'olive et d'ail haché (carottes, patates, par exemple); Faire griller les délicats légumes d'été gorgés d'eau directement sur le BBQ (tranches d'aubergines, courgettes et champignons); Falafels ou croquettes de pois chiches (faites maison ou achetées au magasin); Brochettes de tofu; Pommes de terre au four farcies au fromage fondu ou/et à la purée de haricots frits; Pizzas ou autres pains garnis (pain à l'ail avec fromage, bruschetta, pain pita); Poivrons, courgettes ou tomates farcis; Grillades de tranches épaisses de tofu mariné; Grillades de ramequins de poivrons avec champignons portobello et fromage ricotta; CONSEILS POUR LES METS VÉGÉTARIENS/ VÉGÉTALIENS CUITS AU BARBECUE Ne vous limitez pas aux hamburgers végétariens et aux substituts de viande; Lorsque vous faites des grillades, séparez les légumes des produits ou du jus de viande; Faire cuire légèrement; Contrairement à la viande, la plupart des légumes n'ont besoin que d'être chauds à l'intérieur et croustillants à l'extérieur. LES LIENS AVEC LE CLIMAT 19% des gaz à effet de serre proviennent de l'agriculture. 14% des gaz à effet de serre proviennent de l'industrie du transport. 44% des émissions de carbone associées à la viande pourraient être éliminées si l'on réduisait notre consommation de viande de 90 kg à 53 kg par année. 80 millions de tonnes métriques de méthane sont produites annuellement par les ruminants d'élevage. Au Canada: 72% des émissions de méthane proviennent des bovins. 23% des émissions de gaz à effet de serre liées à l'alimentation sont produites par la production de viande fraîche et congelée. LES LIENS AVEC L'EAU 70% de la consommation d'eau douce mondiale est accaparée par l'agriculture, particulièrement la viande et les produits laitiers. 2 271 litres d'eau sont nécessaires pour produire une croquette de viande à hamburger. 1,4 milliard de tonnes de déchets animaux ont été générées par les fermes industrielles américaines en 1996, qui ont pollué ainsi plus de cours d'eau que toutes les autres sources de déchets industriels combinées. LES LIENS AVEC LA TERRE 70% des forêts du bassin de l'Amazonie ont été coupées pour permettre l'élevage du bétail, selon les estimations. La production de viande est la façon la moins efficace d'utiliser les terres agricoles. La production de viande est la façon la moins efficace d'utiliser les terres agricoles. Une ferme de 10 acres peut produire: Assez de fèves de soya pour nourrir 60 personnes Assez de blé pour nourrir 24 personnes Assez de maïs pour nourrir 10 personnes Assez de bouffe pour nourrir 2 personnes http://fr.canoe.ca/infos/environnement/archives/2010/06/20100627-114146.html

Lundi 28. Juin 2010 Pour une poursuite judiciaire des personnes responsables de la mort par la faim de 500 cochons dans une ferme du Manitoba près de Winnipeg au Canada ( Contrairement aux apparences, cette pétition a une cible et sera envoyée à des responsables politiques) http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/500-pigs-starved-to-death--those-involved-need-to-be-prosecuted

Suite à cet article, des commentaires parus dans le Sunday Magazine (27 juin 2010) Letters: The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome Published: June 25, 2010 Charles Siebert discusses empathy and how children’s capacity for it can be impacted by their own maltreatment and by witnessing the abuse of animals. While it is critical to implement therapies to“heal” people who have been thus affected, prevention strategies, like educating children about the humane treatment of animals, can help protect even more people and animals from harm. Teaching empathy and nurturing that quality from an early age is invaluable in helping children develop into humane adults. The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome (June 13, 2010) By educating the public and helping government agencies, we acknowledge the link of violence and encourage empathy and compassion in our children. People and animals alike will reap the benefits. GEORGE C. CASEY Interim President and C.E.O.American Humane Association Englewood, Colo. Siebert deftly explores the connection between violence against animals and other forms of violence, but he avoids the implications. The article mentions that children who witness violence toward their family pet “suppress their own feelings of kindness and tenderness toward a pet because they can’t bear the pain caused by their own empathy for the abused animal.” That would appear to be exactly what people do whenever they sit down to eat. No matter how hard people pretend not to, we all know what happens to the animals who end up on our plates. What does our willing ignorance of this violence toward billions of animals do to us as a culture? MARIANN SULLIVAN New York As someone who deals with dozens of animal-cruelty cases every week, it’s encouraging that awareness of the link between cruelty to animals and violence to humans is growing and that more law-enforcement officials are treating cruelty to animals with the seriousness it deserves. PETA is leading this effort by pushing for aggressive prosecution and strong sentences for people accused of or convicted for animal abuse and providing officials with informational booklets detailing the animal-human cruelty link. I urge readers to help us protect animals from abuse by reporting any known or suspected cruelty to animals to the police and animal-control officials immediately. Protecting animals protects us all. MARTIN MERSEREAU Director, Emergency Response TeamCruelty Investigations DepartmentPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Norfolk, Va. As a veterinarian in clinical practice and as the president of an animal-protection organization, I have witnessed the indifference and cruelty that many people have toward their animal companions. Not only the obviously abusive and cruel individuals whose family members brought in the neglected and victimized dog but also those who brought their dogs to my office asking me to put them “to sleep,” not because they were aggressive or ill but because they “shed too much” or “bark too much.” For me, this attitude is due in part to their seeing pets as no more than disposable property. Until more people come to view themselves not as “owners” of their pets but as “guardians” of their animal companions’ well-being, the current cycle of violence, neglect, abuse and abandonment will continue to increase, passed on from one generation to the next. ELLIOT M. KATZ, D.V.M. Founder, In Defense of AnimalsSan Rafael, Calif.

“What I have the most trouble relating to,” Lockwood told me, “and the Phoenix kids might be indicative of this sort of thing, is the kind of cruelty that happens just out of boredom. I’ve had quite a few cases where I ask a kid, Why did you blow up that frog or set fire to that cat? and they don’t respond with answers like ‘I hate cats’ or ‘I didn’t see that as a living thing.’ Their answer is ‘We were bored.’ And then you have to ask yourself, Well, what about alternative pathways to alleviating this boredom? I have difficulty grasping what would be the payoff for setting fire to a dog.” Neuroscientists are now beginning to get a fix on the physical underpinnings of empathy. A research team at the University of Chicago headed by Jean Decety, a neuroscientist who specializes in the mechanisms behind empathy and emotional self-regulation, has performed fMRI scans on 16-to-18-year-old boys with aggressive-conduct disorder and on another group of similarly aged boys who exhibited no unusual signs of aggression. Each group was shown videos of people enduring both accidental pain, like stubbing a toe, and intentionally inflicted pain, like being punched in the arm. In the scans, both groups displayed a similar activation of their empathic neural circuitry, and in some cases, the boys with conduct disorder exhibited considerably more activity than those in the control group. But what really caught the attention of the researchers was the fact that when viewing the videos of intentionally inflicted pain, the aggressive-disorder teenagers displayed extremely heightened activity in the part of our brain known as the reward center, which is activated when we feel sensations of pleasure. They also displayed, unlike the control group, no activity at all in those neuronal regions involved in moral reasoning and self-regulation. “We’re really just beginning to have an inkling of the neurophysiology of empathy,” Lockwood told me. “I think empathy is essentially innate, but I also think empathy can be learned, and I know it can be destroyed. That’s why having a better understanding of the neurophysiology will really help us. Just doing a social intervention on a person doesn’t do any good if you’re not aware of certain physiological deficits. As I heard someone put it at a recent lecture I attended, that would be like an orthopedist telling someone with a broken arm to lift weights. It won’t do anything until the arm is set, and it actually might make things worse. I try to understand who the kids are who seem beyond reach, who seem to have truly impaired systems of empathy. And then I ask, Can that be restored?” It turns out that just as recent brain-imaging studies have begun to reveal the physical evidence of empathy’s erosion, they are now also beginning to show definitive signs of its cultivation as well. A group of researchers led by Richard Davidson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published a study in a March 2008 edition of the Public Library of Science One, showing that the mere act of thinking compassionate thoughts caused significant activity and physical changes in the brain’s empathic pathways. “People are not just stuck at their respective set points,” Davidson has said of the study’s results. “We can take advantage of our brain’s plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities. . . . I think this can be one of the tools we use to teach emotional regulation to kids who are at an age where they’re vulnerable to going seriously off track.” To date, one of the most promising methods for healing those whose empathic pathways have been stunted by things like repeated exposure to animal cruelty is, poetically enough, having such victims work with animals. Kids who tend to be completely unresponsive to human counselors and who generally shun physical and emotional closeness with people often find themselves talking openly to, often crying in front of, a horse — a creature that can often be just as strong-willed and unpredictable as they are and yet in no way judgmental, except, of course, for a natural aversion to loud, aggressive human behaviors. Equine-therapy programs, for example, are now helping an increasing number of teenagers who have severe emotional and behavioral issues, as well as children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. At Aspen Ranch in Loa, Utah, troubled teenagers are being paired off with wild mustangs that have been adopted from the Bureau of Land Management, each species ultimately managing to temper the other, a dynamic that has also proved very effective in teaching patience and empathy to prisoners in correctional facilities. In the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, there is a youth equestrian program called the Compton Junior Posse. Teenagers clean stables, groom horses and then ride them in amateur equestrian events across Southern California. There are now bovine- and elephant-assisted therapy programs as well. For Lockwood, animal-therapy programs draw on the same issues of power and control that can give rise to animal cruelty, but elegantly reverse them to more enlightened ends. “When you get an 80-pound kid controlling a 1,000-pound horse,” he said, “or a kid teaching a dog to obey you and to do tricks, that’s getting a sense of power and control in a positive way. We all have within us the agents of entropy, especially as kids. It’s easier to delight in knocking things down and blowing stuff up. Watch kids in a park and you see them throw rocks at birds to get a whole cloud of them to scatter. But to lure animals in and teach them to take food from your hand or to obey commands, that’s a slower process. Part of the whole enculturation and socialization process is learning that it’s also cool and empowering to build something. To do something constructive.” Charles Siebert, a contributing writer, is the author, most recently, of “The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/magazine/13dogfighting-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine

“Yep,” Merck nodded. “Most likely a hawk. These two breaks are where the bird’s talons grabbed hold of the dog. This is why forensic osteology is so important, and yet there’s nothing in our standard veterinary training that teaches us how to look at bones properly.” Merck soon proceeded to the case of the puppy found four years ago in the oven of a ransacked community center in Atlanta. An outraged local prosecutor called Merck about the case and then showed up at her vet clinic one day with the dog’s remains. “She brings me the puppy, and this . . . ,” Merck said, the slide behind her now sapping the room’s air, “is what she brings me.” Step by step, from the outer paint to the unraveled layers of duct tape to the dog’s abraded nails and paws to the hem of an old T-shirt that was used as a leash, Merck’s detailed forensic analysis of the victim and of the crime scene would be used to assemble a timeline of events. Ultimately, her analysis would help seal the conviction of two teenage brothers on multiple charges, including burglary, animal cruelty and — because the brothers had shown a number of children at the community center what they had done and then threatened them with their lives if they told anyone — additional charges of child abuse and terroristic threats. The most common dynamic behind the cases cited that morning was that of a man abusing a family pet to gain control over, or exact revenge against, other family members. Merck told of one puppy found buried in the backyard of a house. As Merck tells it, the dog belonged to the female friend of a woman who had recently left the man with whom she and her two children from a previous marriage were living. She and her children had moved in with the friend, someone who the man decided was keeping him and his estranged partner from reuniting. The girlfriend’s pet, therefore, became for him the optimum vehicle for expressing his rage against both women. “He tortured the puppy when the two women weren’t home,” Merck told me after her lecture that day. “He also tried to make two of the kids participate just to make it more heinous. So along with the animal cruelty, of course, we had child abuse.” Merck has made it her mission to urge other vets to report and investigate suspected cases of animal abuse, incorporating a few cautionary tales of her own into her lectures to point up the often dire consequences of failing to do so. One involved a man from Hillsborough County in Florida who was arrested for murdering his girlfriend, her daughter and son and their German shepherd. He had previously been arrested (but not convicted) for killing cats. In another story Merck tells, one related to her by a New York City prosecutor, a woman reported coming home to find her boyfriend sexually molesting her Labrador retriever, but the case never went to trial. “My point on that one,” Merck told me, “is that no one took precautions to preserve the evidence on the dog. And once it comes down to a he-said-she-said type of situation, you’re lost. These types of cases are difficult enough even when we have all the evidence, in part because it’s very hard for investigators and prosecutors to even consider that someone would do things like this. It’s so disturbing and offensive, they don’t know what to do about it. A lot of the work I do involves not just talking to vets but reaching out to law enforcement to make them more knowledgeable on these matters, to make them understand, for example, that things like sexual assault of children and animals are linked. They are similar victims.” On our way back to the hotel for an afternoon lecture on forensic entomology, Merck made a little detour to show me the A.S.P.C.A.’s new mobile C.S.I. unit, parked in a side lot of the vet school’s farm-animal compound. Twenty-six-feet long, with its own climate-control, generator, examination room and surgical suite, digital microscope, X-ray machine, sexual-assault kit and anesthesia-oxygen machine, it is essentially a giant emergency room on wheels, allowing Merck and her crew to examine and care for animals at suspected crime scenes and to efficiently analyze and process evidence to ensure its integrity. The van was an important part of the largest dog-fighting raid in American history last year, in which more than 400 dogs were rescued and 26 people from six states arrested. “We had two forensic teams on board for that,” Merck said. “We had to hit 25 different crime scenes in one day. We hit the first one at 7 a.m., and we finished up at around 6 a.m. the following morning.” When I asked Merck if she thought incidents of animal cruelty were on the rise or if it was that we are now being more vigilant about them, she said that it is probably more the latter. “We’re more aware now,” she said, “but there is also more of a support system for responding to these incidents. When I started out as a vet 20 years ago, I was one of the few who would call if I got a suspicious case, and that was when such things were still a misdemeanor and it wasn’t law enforcement involved. It was animal control taking care of nuisance animals. Now with veterinarians I tell them you cannot not report, because you don’t know if what you’re seeing on the animal isn’t the proverbial tip of the iceberg.” Merck then recalled for me a personal experience she most likes to relate in classes and seminars, what she’s dubbed “the tale of the good Samaritan and the savvy vet.” An Atlanta contractor pulled up to a house one morning where he was to perform some work. As he got out of his truck, he heard a dog screaming from the house next door, went over to investigate and saw through an open garage door a dog dragging its back legs and a woman standing beside it. The woman instantly began pleading to the contractor that the dog needed to be euthanized, but she said she couldn’t afford the vet bills. The contractor offered to take the dog to his vet, who, upon examining the dog, agreed that it was too debilitated to be saved. He then told the contractor that there was something suspicious about the case and that he was going to report it to animal services for whom Merck worked at the time as a consultant outside of her daily vet practice. “They asked me to perform a necropsy,” Merck told me. “It turns out the dog was paralyzed from having been beaten so often. I reported what I found. Police went to the woman’s house to make an arrest. They found a badly bruised boy. And just like that both parents are being hauled off for child abuse. So there was a classic case of the system working like it should.” Last November, Lockwoodwas asked to testify at the pretrial hearing in which a judge ruled that Tremayne and Travers Johnson would be tried as adults for the burning of Phoenix in Baltimore last year. Lockwood looked at dozens of pictures of Phoenix in order to select which images to present to A.S.P.C.A. staff members. “I could only find one that wasn’t overwhelmingly disturbing,” he told me. “It’s where she’s so bundled up in gauze and bandages you can’t really see anything. It’s easy to empathize with burns because we’ve all been burned, and even if it’s only minor, you realize how painful that is.” The matter of empathy, of course, goes to the heart of most of our inquiries into the nature of cruel acts and their possible causes. There seems to be little doubt anymore about the notion that a person’s capacity for empathy can be eroded; that someone can have, as Lockwood put it to me, “their empathy beaten or starved out of them.” To date, little is known about the Johnson twins’ background beyond the fact that they both reportedly have chronic truancy issues and previous probation violations and were recently involved with a gang. Along with possible early abuse or genetic and biological components, Lockwood also spoke of the frequent association between environment and acts of violence, how poverty often creates the sense of persecution and injustice that makes some people feel justified in striking back in order to gain the sense of power and control they otherwise lack. ...

Veterinary forensic students at the University of Florida are being trained in the same way that traditional crime-scene investigators are, taking courses in a wide range of topics: crime-scene processing; forensic entomology (determining the time of an animal’s injury or death by the types of insects around them); bloodstain-pattern and bite-mark analysis; buried-remains excavation; and forensic osteology (the study of bones and bone fragments). “I love being around bones,” Merck proclaimed as she led me into the university’s C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, a sprawling, brashly lighted array of human skeletal remains arranged in meticulous piecemeal patterns on rows of shiny metal tables. “I find bones fascinating. There is a lot of information in them.” Merck, who testifies at animal-cruelty trials across the country, conducted the forensic osteology on the dog remains recovered from the mass graves on Michael Vick’s Virginia property in 2007. The lab is one of the busiest of its kind in the world, enlisted for countless crime-scene investigations and archaeological digs and to help identify the victims of disasters, including those of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina. The fact that one of the examining tables and adjacent bone-boiling and cleansing units have now been assigned to Merck for her own animal-forensic work and course instruction speaks volumes about the shifting perspective toward animal-cruelty crimes. “We have a really cool thing going on here,” Merck told me. “We have the collaborative effort of a lot of big-wig forensic specialists down here with years of experience.” She led me over to her examining table. Set at one end was what she called “my box of evidence,” a picnic-cooler-size plastic container that held the excavated remains from a mass grave, part of an investigation she is conducting into a suspected dog-fighting operation in Georgia. “In most of our cases of animal cruelty, the bodies are not fresh,” she said. “They’re decomposed. They’re discarded. They’re hidden. And so the advanced post-mortem stage is where we really need to be experts.” Merck’s 2006 book, “Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for Veterinary and Law Enforcement Professionals,” which she wrote with Randall Lockwood and Leslie Sinclair of Shelter Veterinary Services in Columbia, Md., contains a daunting list of the grisly things human beings do to animals: thermal injuries (immolation, baking, microwaving); blunt-force trauma; sharp-force and projectile injuries; asphyxiation; drowning; poisoning; ritual murders; and sexual assault. Merck spared no details in discussing such horrors over the course of a veterinary-forensics lecture I attended earlier that day, held in a conference room at a hotel near the university as part of a four-day seminar. Even Merck’s seasoned audience of out-of-town vets, A.S.P.C.A. disaster-response and investigative-team workers, community-outreach personnel and the chief legal counsel for New York City’s Humane Law Enforcement department could be heard gasping into their coffee mugs as Merck annotated, one after the next, screen-projected slides of stark brutality: blood-drenched dog-fighting pits; bludgeoned, internally hemorrhaging pets; bruised and mutilated canine sexual organs; a heavily duct-taped, paint-coated puppy and the fur-lined, nail-scraped oven walls from which the puppy struggled vainly to escape. Those whose compassion compels them to confront and combat daily its utter absence are, of necessity, often forced to affect a passionless pose. Merck proceeded through her seminar with clinical speed and precision through a series of signature forensic cases. One of the first pivoted around the mystery of a missing Pomeranian whose owners were convinced had been stolen from their backyard. Merck called up the slide of a tiny skeleton she had rendered in her corner of the lab from remains found in a vacant lot not far from the Pomeranian owners’ home. It looked like a wingless bat, the delicate brace of ribs bearing tiny symmetrical snaps on each side. “What could have caused these,” Merck asked, pointing her red laser at the breaks. “What could make a dog disappear so fast?” “Man!” someone called out to bursts of laughter. “What else,” Merck said, smiling. “A bird of prey!” ...

It isn’t clear whether Phoenix was used for dog fighting. Subsequent examinations of her body did find — along with evidence that gasoline had been poured down her throat — a number of bite wounds. Veterinarians, however, said that those could have been self-inflicted in the course of Phoenix’s frenzied attempts to fight off the flames. But prosecutors also later claimed that Phoenix’s accused assailants, 17-year-old twin brothers named Tremayne and Travers Johnson, of a nearby block of Pulaski Street, were using a vacant neighborhood home for the keeping of pit bulls and other ganglike activities. The Johnson twins have pleaded not guilty. According to court documents, both suspects, said to be members of the 1600 Boys gang, were identified by a witness as running out of the alley where the dog was set alight. “There was some gang-style graffiti found in that abandoned building,” Randall Lockwood, the A.S.P.C.A.’s senior vice president for forensic sciences and anticruelty projects, and a member of the new Anti-Animal-Abuse Task Force in Baltimore, told me at the A.S.P.C.A.’s Midtown Manhattan offices in December. “There was also dog feces on the premises. Unfortunately, nobody bothered collecting the feces to see if it was from Phoenix.” Along with the need to track the physical evidence of animal cruelty there is the deeper and more complex challenge of trying to parse its underlying causes and ultimate ramifications. As a graduate student in psychology, Lockwood had an interest in human-animal interactions and the role of animals and education in the development of empathy in children. This inevitably led him to consider the flip side of the equation: the origins of cruelty to animals and what such behavior might indicate about an individual’s capacity for empathy and his or her possible future behavior. Back in the early 1980s, Lockwood was asked to work on behalf of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services with a team of investigators looking into the treatment of animals in middle-class American households that had been identified as having issues of child abuse. They interviewed all the members of each family as well as the social workers who were assigned to them. The researchers’ expectation going in was that such families would have relatively few pets given their unstable and volatile environments. They found, however, not only that these families owned far more pets than other households in the same community but also that few of the animals were older than 2. “There was a very high turnover of pets in these families,” Lockwood told me. “Pets dying or being discarded or running away. We discovered that in homes where there was domestic violence or physical abuse of children, the incidence of animal cruelty was close to 90 percent. The most common pattern was that the abusive parent had used animal cruelty as a way of controlling the behaviors of others in the home. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what links things like animal cruelty and child abuse and domestic violence. And one of the things is the need for power and control. Animal abuse is basically a power-and-control crime.” The dynamic of animal abuse in the context of domestic violence is a particularly insidious one. As a pet becomes an increasingly vital member of the family, the threat of violence to that pet becomes a strikingly powerful intimidating force for the abuser: an effective way for a petty potentate to keep the subjects of his perceived realm in his thrall. In 2005, Lockwood wrote a paper, “Cruelty Toward Cats: Changing Perspectives,” which underscores this dynamic of animal cruelty as a means to overcome powerlessness and gain control over others. Cats, Lockwood found, are more commonly victims of abuse than dogs because dogs are, by their very nature, more obedient and eager to please, whereas cats are nearly impossible to control. “You can get a dog to obey you even if you’re not particularly nice to it,” Lockwood told me. “With a cat you can be very nice, and it’s probably going to ignore you, and if you’re mean to it, it may retaliate.” Whatever the particular intimidation tactics used, their effectiveness is indisputable. In an often-cited 1997 survey of 48 of the largest shelters in the United States for victims of domestic violence and child abuse, more than 85 percent of the shelters said that women who came in reported incidents of animal abuse; 63 percent of the shelters said that children who came in reported the same. In a separate study, a quarter of battered women reported that they had delayed leaving abusive relationships for the shelter out of fear for the well-being of the family pet. In response, a number of shelters across the country have developed “safe haven” programs that offer refuges for abused pets as well as people, in order that both can be freed from the cycle of intimidation and violence. What cannot be so easily monitored or ameliorated, however, is the corrosive effect that witnessing such acts has on children and their development. More than 70 percent of U.S. households with young children have pets. In a study from the 1980s, 7-to-10-year-old children named on average two pets when listing the 10 most important individuals in their lives. When asked to “whom do you turn to when you are feeling sad, angry, happy or wanting to share a secret,” nearly half of 5-year-old children in another study mentioned their pets. One way to think of what animal abuse does to a child might simply be to consider all the positive associations and life lessons that come from a child’s closeness to a pet — right down to eventually receiving their first and perhaps most gentle experiences of death as a natural part of life — and then flipping them so that all those lessons and associations turn negative. In a 2000 article for AV Magazine, a publication of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, titled, “Wounded Hearts: Animal Abuse and Child Abuse,” Lockwood recounts an interview he conducted for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services in the early 1980s. He describes showing to “a perky 7-year-old boy” a simple drawing of a boy and a dog, playing ball inside a house and a broken lamp on the floor beside them. Lockwood asked the 7-year-old — a child who had witnessed his brother being beaten by their father, who was “reportedly responsible for the ‘disappearance’ of several family pets” — to describe what would happen next in the story of the boy in the picture. “He grew still and sullen,” Lockwood writes, “and shook his head slowly. ‘That’s it,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘They’re all going to die.’ ” Children who have witnessed such abuse or been victimized themselves frequently engage in what are known as “abuse reactive” behaviors, Lockwood said, re-enacting what has been done to them either with younger siblings or with pets. Such children are also often driven to suppress their own feelings of kindness and tenderness toward a pet because they can’t bear the pain caused by their own empathy for the abused animal. In an even further perversion of an individual’s healthy empathic development, children who witness the family pet being abused have been known to kill the pet themselves in order to at least have some control over what they see as the animal’s inevitable fate. Those caught in such a vicious abuse-reactive cycle will not only continue to expose the animals they love to suffering merely to prove that they themselves can no longer be hurt, but they are also given to testing the boundaries of their own desensitization through various acts of self-mutilation. In short, such children can only achieve a sense of safety and empowerment by inflicting pain and suffering on themselves and others. In March I paid a visit to the newly established Veterinary Forensics Medicine Sciences program at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Directed by Melinda Merck, a veterinarian who serves as the A.S.P.C.A.’s senior director of veterinary forensics and as the “captain” of its new mobile C.S.I. unit, the program is the first of its kind at a major U.S. university. As animal abuse has become an increasingly recognized fixture in the context of other crimes and their prosecution, it is also starting to require the same kinds of sophisticated investigative techniques brought to bear on those other crimes. ...

The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome Charlotte Dumas/Julie Saul GalleryBy CHARLES SIEBERT Published: June 7, 2010 On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, subsequently named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but soon began to succumb to kidney failure and had to be euthanized. It was only a matter of hours before the story, made vivid by harrowing video footage of the wounded dog, was disseminated nationwide in newspapers, TV and radio newscasts and countless Web sites. An initial $1,000 reward for the capture of the culprits would soon climb to $26,000 as people around the country followed Phoenix’s struggle for life. A gathering of people in Venice Beach, Calif., held a candlelight vigil for her. A month later, the mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, announced the creation of the Anti-Animal-Abuse Task Force to work in concert with city officials, local law enforcement and animal rights and animal-control groups to find ways to better prevent, investigate and prosecute such crimes. The scale, speed and intensity of the response were striking. The subject of animal abuse, especially the abuse of pit bulls in dog-fighting activities, has achieved a higher profile after the 2007 arrest of the N.F.L. star Michael Vick for operating an illegal interstate dog-fighting operation in Surry County, Va. But the beleaguered pit bull is merely the most publicized victim of a phenomenon that a growing number of professionals — including police officers, prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, animal-control officers, veterinarians and dogcatchers — are now addressing with a newfound vigor: wanton cruelty toward animals. Before 1990, only six states had felony provisions in their animal-­cruelty laws; now 46 do. Two years ago, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals formed the nation’s first Mobile Animal Crime Scene Investigation Unit, a rolling veterinary hospital and forensic lab that travels around the country helping traditional law-enforcement agencies follow the evidentiary trails of wounded or dead animals back to their abusers. In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. In the world of law enforcement — and in the larger world that our laws were designed to shape — animal-cruelty issues were long considered a peripheral concern and the province of local A.S.P.C.A. and Humane Society organizations; offenses as removed and distinct from the work of enforcing the human penal code as we humans have deemed ourselves to be from animals. But that illusory distinction is rapidly fading. “With traditional law enforcement,” Sgt. David Hunt, a dog-fighting expert with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Columbus, Ohio, told me, “the attitude has been that we have enough stuff on our plate, let the others worry about Fluffy and Muffy. But I’m starting to see a shift in that mentality now.” Hunt has traveled to 24 states around the country in order to teach law-enforcement personnel about the dog-fighting underworld, often stressing the link between activities like dog fighting and domestic violence. “You have to sell it to them in such a way that it’s not a Fluffy-Muffy issue,” he said of teaching police officers about animal-abuse issues. “It’s part of a larger nexus of crimes and the psyche behind them.” The connection between animal abuse and other criminal behaviors was recognized, of course, long before the evolution of the social sciences and institutions with which we now address such behaviors. In his famous series of 1751 engravings, “The Four Stages of Cruelty,” William Hogarth traced the life path of the fictional Tom Nero: Stage 1 depicts Tom as a boy, torturing a dog; Stage 4 shows Tom’s body, fresh from the gallows where he was hanged for murder, being dissected in an anatomical theater. And animal cruelty has long been recognized as a signature pathology of the most serious violent offenders. As a boy, Jeffrey Dahmer impaled the heads of cats and dogs on sticks; Theodore Bundy, implicated in the murders of some three dozen people, told of watching his grandfather torture animals; David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam,” poisoned his mother’s parakeet. But the intuitions that informed the narrative arc of Tom Nero are now being borne out by empirical research. A paper published in a psychiatry journal in 2004, “A Study of Firesetting and Animal Cruelty in Children: Family Influences and Adolescent Outcomes,” found that over a 10-year period, 6-to-12-year-old children who were described as being cruel to animals were more than twice as likely as other children in the study to be reported to juvenile authorities for a violent offense. In an October 2005 paper published in Journal of Community Health, a team of researchers conducting a study over seven years in 11 metropolitan areas determined that pet abuse was one of five factors that predicted who would begin other abusive behaviors. In a 1995 study, nearly a third of pet-owning victims of domestic abuse, meanwhile, reported that one or more of their children had killed or harmed a pet. The link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is becoming so well established that many U.S. communities now cross-train social-service and animal-control agencies in how to recognize signs of animal abuse as possible indicators of other abusive behaviors. In Illinois and several other states, new laws mandate that veterinarians notify the police if their suspicions are aroused by the condition of the animals they treat. The state of California recently added Humane Society and animal-control officers to the list of professionals bound by law to report suspected child abuse and is now considering a bill in the State Legislature that would list animal abusers on the same type of online registry as sex offenders and arsonists. When I spoke recently with Stacy Wolf, vice president and chief legal counsel of the A.S.P.C.A.’s Humane Law Enforcement department, which focuses on the criminal investigation of animal-cruelty cases in New York City, she drew a comparison between the emerging mindfulness about animal cruelty and the changing attitudes toward domestic abuse in the 1980s. “It really has only been in recent years that there’s been more free and accurate reporting with respect to animal cruelty, just like 30 years ago domestic violence was not something that was commonly reported,” she said. “Clearly every act of violence committed against an animal is not a sign that somebody is going to hurt a person. But when there’s a pattern of abusive behavior in a family scenario, then everyone from animal-control to family advocates to the court system needs to consider all vulnerable victims, including animals, and understand that violence is violence.” ...

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City Weekly (Salt Lake City) May 12, 2010 Animal Activists Fight for Their Own Rights Some Utah animal advocates fear being put in a legal cage. By Jesse Fruhwirth In June 2008, Jeremy Beckham took a day trip from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his girlfriend and brother to visit famed Capilano Suspension Bridge. The longtime Salt Lake City animal-rights activist had no problem entering Canada, but his name was flagged by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection when he returned. "They brought me in a separate room, so it was clear they were singling me out," he said. He gave the agent his name, told him he was a student at the University of Utah and that he was just visiting Canada as a tourist. "Then [the agent] said, 'What student groups or political organizations do you belong to?' " Nervous already, Beckham was now alarmed. Why should his political beliefs have any bearing on his re-entry? Beckham, 25, refused to answer the question, and all others. The agent asked if he was refusing to cooperate with a "national security investigation." Beckham's answer was not what the agent wanted to hear: "I'm not refusing to [explain] why I was in Canada, [but] I'm not going to answer questions about my political beliefs." Beckham was cuffed, and he recalls the agent saying, "You can sit there until you're ready to answer some questions." He sat handcuffed for an hour or more. Eventually, a "good cop" with a kind demeanor-to contrast the previous brusque "bad cop"-came into the room and uncuffed Beckham. He asked the same questions as the first agent and Beckham explained, for a second time, his trip to the Capilano bridge. "Let me tell you a bit about why you were stopped," Beckham says he was told. "We looked into you, and we know that you are an animal-rights activist. Å That's your right. You might not be aware of it, but Canada is a hotbed of violent animal-rights extremism. Å We don't think you're a violent animal-rights activist necessarily, but we have to ask these questions. Did you speak with any animal-rights activists [in Canada]'" Beckham remained silent. Twenty minutes later, he was free to go. Agree with them or not, understanding their motivation is key to understanding tactics that some find unsavory: picketing at animal researchers' homes, for example, or publicly praising illegal mink releases. While some activists have purposely violated the law in defense of animal rights, those who are not willing to cross legal lines face anxiety-inducing quandaries: When does free speech become illegal support of others' crimes, and what are the consequences of being an "eco-terrorist" sympathizer? Law enforcers from the FBI down to Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill remind these activists that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it, and yet refuse to issue legal opinions that clearly distinguish illegal behavior and free speech. An FBI official recently told City Weekly that the activists have nothing to worry about if they "don't push the envelope." But activists are almost sure to keep pushing. In which case, they may face more detentions at the border, FBI informants in their midst and more revisions to the legal understandings of free speech and assembly. Animal-Rights "Rock Star" Peter Daniel Young, 32, is certainly the most prominent animal liberator/convicted "eco-terrorist" in Utah. The son of a radio disc jockey, Young was born in California and mostly raised in the Seattle-area community of Mercer Island. Already a hardcore music fan and Straight Edge kid-meaning he loved aggressive, angry music but disdained drugs and alcohol- Young became only the second vegan in his high school and hasn't eaten meat or dairy since, not even in prison. The roots of his radical respect for animals can be traced to John Robbins' markedly unradical Diet For a New America television special from 1992, which Young saw in a high school class. The 60-minute film barely mentions animal rights and focuses on Americans' unusual levels of meat and dairy consumption relative to other countries. There's just a brief scene about the conditions of animals on factory farms, but it's presented as more of a gross-out to eaters than an argument that animals deserve better treatment. Nevertheless, those images stuck with Young. Young graduated from high school in 1995 and continued his practices of picketing businesses that exploited animals. He quickly grew intolerant, however, of the slow pace of progress and moved on to criminal acts of activism, often referred to as "direct actions." "We were under the illusion that this [picketing] was building up toward some crescendo where all the animals were free, and it just wasn't working." His first illegal direct action was to smash the windows of a Seattle ham store and paint "Meat is Murder" on the walls. That made the news, as did other crimes he committed anonymously. Before long, though, both cops and news crews recognized him as an activist. He felt "marked" and needed anonymity to continue his illegal work, so he headed for the Upper Midwest in 1997. "The road trip that lead to my indictment was to be my last stop before college," he said. "I wanted to do one last, great thing." That thing was to assist in the release of thousands of mink from their cages at six ranches in South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin, sort of an epicenter of mink farming. Wisconsin is the top producer of mink pelts with 71 farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Utah is the second highest, with 65 farms. It's not clear whether Beckham was listed in the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, or "watch list" as it's frequently called. Beckham has never been charged with any so-called "eco-terrorism," but people he knows have, and activist associates of his have been convicted of picketing-related charges. Beckham believes the government hypes the threat of animal-activist crimes in order to disrupt the entire movement and that merely being an animal activist can make you guilty by association. Beckham and others believe animal exploitation is the moral equivalent of human torture or murder, and they're incredibly earnest and uncompromising in their beliefs that breaking the laws to free animals is similar to the Underground Railroad. Mink are among the best animals to liberate, Young says, because they're scrappy survivors who have the instincts for life in the wild. The fur industry disagrees about minks' chances of survival after a lifetime in a small cage-which is usually only months long-never having time to run around, much less hunt or swim. Each side has anecdotes and scientific research to back their mortality/survival claims. Young and a co-defendant were caught-their red Geo Metro with Washington plates had been spotted at mink farms and was seized by a Wisconsin officer-but he was not indicted until the next year. Young went underground and stayed on the lam until 2005, when he was arrested in San Jose, Calif. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison and $254,000 in restitution, most of which went unpaid because he stopped making payments after his one-year probation expired. Young became a convicted eco-terrorist, though he never intended to nor actually did hurt anyone-except financially. He sees mink releases as akin to interrupting a rape in progress, so he doesn't have any mixed emotions about harming animal-exploitation businesses. He says he's now engaged only in above-ground, legal activism because, as a "marked" man, he attracts a lot of law-enforcement attention. Young also drew attention of animal-rights activists, becoming a "rock star" among local groups, at least according to a woman who once dated Young and is now suspected of working as an informant for the FBI. Spooky Gal Sarah Bobbitt was 26 when Young first met her in the spring of 2008. Attractive, blond, a conservative Republican, she was a photographer who worked for the University of Utah's Daily Utah Chronicle and offered to arrange for photos from protests to appear in the student newspaper. "She was strange but disarming at the same time," Young said. Young was not yet a Utah resident, but on a speaking tour passing through the state. Bobbitt approached him about helping her with "a campaign to rescue Guatemala street dogs, or something," Young said. She asked to go out for dinner after the conference, then asked if she could stay with Young's hosts who were putting him up for the night. He obliged. "She was very forward," Young said, but never answered whether he was sexually or romantically interested in her. Bobbitt says she briefly dated Young. Young's Utah comrades, he says, quickly pegged her as a snitch. She dressed conservatively and asked inappropriate questions about illegal activities-most activists are leery of informants and adhere to "security culture" (pdf) (in which information on illegal activities is discussed only on a need-to-know basis). He defended her, saying "snitch jacketing" someone prematurely is unfair and counterproductive. Young continued on his speaking tour but returned to Utah shortly after two fur farms-one in South Jordan in August 2008, another in Kaysville a month later-had been sabotaged by activists, who released thousands of mink. The Animal Liberation Front, a nom de guerre frequently adopted by activists who anonymously take credit for illegal actions against animal enterprises, took credit for the incidents. ALF is listed as a domestic terrorism group by the FBI. When Young and Bobbitt met again, she invited him to Moab for the weekend. The trip got weird before they even got to Price. Young and Bobbitt were stuck in a car together for hours, and she asked several questions about the recent mink releases, Young says, questions which hung in the air like flatulence. The weekend ended worse than it started. They fought, Bobbitt left him, and Young was deserted in downtown Moab, where he knew no one and had no transportation. Why is Bobbitt suspected of being an informant, or a confidential human source (CHS), as the FBI calls them? An FBI reporting document (pdf) describes the trip this way: "CHS reported that Peter Young arrived in Utah about two weeks ago. Å CHS traveled with Young to Moab, Utah, on Thursday, September 25, 2008. CHS returned to Salt Lake City on Sunday without Young and hasn't talked to him since." When City Weekly contacted Bobbitt, she denied being an informant. The Facebook conversation she had with City Weekly went silent after she was asked about the seemingly incriminating FBI document, which was provided by the government to defense attorneys for William "BJ" Viehl, 23, and Alex Hall, 21, two men who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to releasing the mink at the South Jordan ranch in August 2008. Other documents suggest Bobbitt may have had repeated contacts with the FBI that summer about other activists. Of the trip to Moab, Bobbitt wrote: "I am not an FBI informant and yes this is starting to have an unfortunate effect on my life. ... I briefly dated Peter nearly two years ago and haven't talked to him since. It ended with me leaving him a long way from home, I know I pissed him off, but he was unstable, manipulative and honestly scared me. Å And as for the 'several people' [activists who believe Bobbitt was an informant], I can only imagine they are the snobby elitists with whom I actually tried to be friends with in fighting for a similar cause. All I can guess is that they pegged the girl that didn't fit in and who didn't buy into their rock star's manipulative ego." Beckham is disturbed by informants. He thinks it keeps people from supporting animal rights and other social-justice movements. People think, "if the government is monitoring it, there must be something wrong with it," Beckham said. Bobbitt is not the first individual thought to be an FBI informant by animal rights activists, so they're always on alert. In 2001, City Weekly investigated Richard Stone, who activists complain acted more like a provocateur than an informant as he sat in on meetings to arrange protests against the 2002 Olympic Rodeo. "He was the type that was always [saying], 'When are we going to stop talking and go blow up something?' " says David Berg, a Salt Lake City man involved in the pre-Olympic protest planning. According to Berg, Stone even accompanied the activists to a meeting with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah organized to discuss protesters' rights. Busy Litigants Though some complain about being treated like terrorists, there are some stark contrasts between them and suspected terrorist jihadis. Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, for example, have been detained for nearly a decade without being charged with a crime. The closest local situation with any similarity-remote though it may be-is that of Jordan Halliday, 22, principle organizer of a local Animal Defense League chapter, who spent four months in civil detention for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury about the local mink releases. Halliday says that he endorses mink releases and believes he's being targeted for his speech. "[Federal prosecutors] are trying to view me on the same terms as any ALF member because I'm vocally supportive of it," he said. He was freed at the expiration of the grand jury but soon after was charged criminally with contempt, which could send him back to prison for years. Often, the activists are in court as litigants, not defendants, and have successfully argued multiple times that their rights have been violated. The most recent example involved a protest at a mink farm in Morgan County. Members of the Salt Lake Animal Advocacy Movement argued in a federal lawsuit that Morgan County and the Utah Department of Public Safety violated their rights to protest near a mink farm in November 2008. In February, the case was settled, which netted civil rights attorney Brian Barnard nearly $40,000 in legal fees from the state and county. The criminal penalties they suffer have also been rather modest, compared to other convicted terrorists or even to drug convicts, despite complaints that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2005 lumps them together with other terrorists. Viehl, for example, was sentenced to two years in prison in February but expects to be released from prison in just five months, he wrote to City Weekly in a letter. He was given credit for time served pretrial. In 1997, the most destructive act of eco-terrorism in Utah history was committed against the Fur Breeders Agriculture Co-op in Sandy, a farmer-owned co-op that provides livestock food, when an incendiary device started a fire that caused about $1 million in damage. Brothers Douglas Joshua Ellerman, then 21, and Clinton Colby Ellerman, then 22, later pleaded guilty to explosives charges and served seven years and five years each in prison, while a federal jury acquitted three others charged in the incident. None are currently active in local animal rights groups. Recently, five activists were acquitted after being charged with violating Salt Lake City's targeted-residential picketing ordinance, passed in July 2007, to manage animal rights protests at the homes of University of Utah researchers who use animals in their experiments [see "Residential Picketing Case Ends in Acquittals," May 6, City Weekly]. At least six residential demonstrations were held after the ordinance passed without arrests, says acquitted picketer Thomas Risk, but at the seventh demonstration, 16 picketers were cited. Others were convicted, four of whom are appealing. But another case local activists have no direct relationship to has them worried. The so-called SHAC-7 case, upheld by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in December, charged six activists and their organization-Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty-with animal-enterprise terrorism and stalking. The group coordinated protests at the homes of officials from Huntingdon Life Sciences, an animal-testing agency based in New Jersey. No one was charged with actually vandalizing property, issuing violent threats or trespassing, though prosecutors presented unproven evidence of those crimes and others. The SHAC-7 were nevertheless convicted of encouraging and supporting illegal activities, in part, by posting addresses on its Website and cheering on illegal acts that they say were committed exclusively by others. The Center for Constitutional Rights has asked for an en banc review of the 3rd Circuit panel's decision, stating Americans have long been allowed to condone illegal behavior. CCR argues that what the SHAC-7 did with their Website was "menacing public speech," which has been protected by the courts in the past, not a "true threat," which is not protected. The case deeply concerns Young. He's the closest thing to a SHAC-like entity in Utah. Since his release from prison, he's compiled The Blueprint, a national directory of hundreds of mink farms across the country and distributes it on his Website. Previous to Hall and Viehl being arrested, he offered a $2,500 defense fund to anyone arrested in connection with the mink release. He repeats ALF communiques posted on other Websites. He publicly endorses illegal actions like mink releases. Could he be investigated for supporting illegal activities based on those facts alone? Industry spokeswoman Teresa Platt is curious about that very question. As the executive director of Fur Commission USA, she knows Young by name, as well as Viehl, Hall and others. Indeed, she thinks the "terrorist" label is appropriate for them and says ranchers who use animals are a persecuted minority. "They're just ordinary, hard-working people trying to figure out how to deal with these crimes of special-interest domestic terrorism," she says. She says the roughly 40-year history of illegal animal-rights actions has contained many violent threats and some actual violence against ranchers and animal researchers, and thus, many animal rights actions now carry an implicit threat and encouragement of violence. "If you read some of [Young's] statements, they're borderline incitement, right? He does offer people money should they get caught breaking the law. Is that incitement? Å He's probably had legal advice on what he can and can not say, but he is close." The FBI won't say how close he is, but it seems the FBI already associates Young with at least one of the 150 eco-terrorism investigations the FBI acknowledges are ongoing. The Feds In March, Young moved to Salt Lake City, where most of his eight roommates are animal-rights activists, vegan and Straight Edge. The entire household was served a search warrant by the FBI on March 15 that authorized the agents to seize any materials that may contain information about Young's travels, associates, or communications that may be connected to "animal enterprise terrorism." Cell phones, iPods, pictures and computers were taken, not just from Young, but from some of his roommates. The warrant was issued out of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of Iowa where Scott DeMuth, 22, of Minneapolis, is on trial, accused of vandalizing a University of Iowa animal research laboratory in 2004. Young says he doesn't even know DeMuth, nor did he have anything to do with the Iowa incident, but he blogged critically of the prosecution on multiple occasions, both before and after the raid. He believes federal law enforcement is trying not just to hassle and make people distrust him, but to do that to the entire household of activists. Young's roommate, Matt Bruce, and others in the house believe the FBI purposefully waited for Young to move in-only four days prior to the raid-in order to instill fear and gather possessions from all of them. "It's definitely been an activist house for years," Bruce said. Many of the activists want to utilize all legal means in pursuit of their goals, and they want clear direction from law enforcement on what, for example, prompted the FBI to sic an informant on them. How can they avoid being investigated in the future but still fully flex their constitutional rights? Is that even possible? On the municipal level, they have on multiple occasions asked Salt Lake City officials for clear guidance on the residential targeted picketing ordinance and have gotten nothing-no advice and no guidance. Salt Lake City Prosecutor Sim Gill told City Weekly, "My job is not to give legal advice." Especially in the face of the SHAC-7 case and what it represents to them, the activists complain, that's not good enough. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Kenneth Porter, of the FBI field office in Salt Lake City, compares that sentiment to "children asking their parents how far they can go without being spanked." He has parentlike advice as well: "Don't push the envelope." Local FBI officials say the line between free speech and illegal support of others' crimes is determined on a case-by-case basis, so they can't provide a detailed guide on how to approach the line of legality without crossing it. FBI Chief Division Legal Counsel Trent Pedersen said that if activists are spotted in the middle of the night near a mink farm-as Viehl and Hall once were-they might be investigated for genuine concerns that they are planning to commit a crime-which is itself a crime under federal law. But what if the activists are in a researcher's neighborhood late at night holding candles, which local activists have done during vigils? Does that justify a full-blown terrorism investigation involving informants, search warrants and all? The FBI won't say. The FBI also declined to discuss the local mink releases from 2008, because even though both Hall and Viehl have pleaded guilty, Hall has yet to be sentenced, and the bureau rarely comments on active cases. Likewise, the FBI wouldn't comment on FBI informants past or present the search warrant at Young's home or whether Beckham is listed on a terrorist watch list. Pedersen says no group is targeted because of its political beliefs and says the bureau does not intimidate political groups with investigation tools like search warrants. "That happened in the '70s Å but the Attorney General's guidance on that is very clear, we're not authorized to do that." If a political group is to be investigated for suspected criminal activity of its members, he said, "the First Amendment is our guide" and extra precautions are taken to ensure the investigation won't violate anyone's constitutional rights. Which may not be an easy task. Like Young, Viehl and Hall started as above-ground activists and hung around people from local animal-rights activist groups. That doesn't mean anyone else in those groups encouraged Viehl and Hall to free mink or even knew they planned to do so, but it could explain-and, for some, justify-the use of informants and other investigation techniques that intimidate, scare and aggravate law-abiding activists even as they help determine the identities of guilty vandals. Beckham, for one, worries government obstruction of legal actions is part of the inspiration for illegal actions like ecoterrorism. He quotes John F. Kennedy, who said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-11191-animal-activists-fight-for-their-ow\ n-rights.html

Rancher disputes CFIA fine over cattle ear tag violation Robert Arnason, Brandon bureau June 24, 2010 The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has verified that videotapes showing improper and inhumane methods of killing horses were taken at horse slaughter plants in Quebec and Alberta. It has not fined or penalized Bouvry Exports in Fort Macleod or Vandes Richelieu near Montreal, because the agency doesn’t issue fines for improper slaughter practices. “The enforcement tools available to the CFIA in federal slaughter establishments … include corrective action requests, education, prosecution, as well as the ability to halt plant operations,” CFIA spokesperson Lisa Gauthier wrote in an e-mail. Earlier this year, the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition released a hidden camera video that depicted animals struggling and thrashing after slaughter plant employees failed to kill horses with the first shot. When it made the tapes public in March, the Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada and other horse organizations questioned the validity of the images. “The CFIA has verified that the location of where the footage was taken is correct,” Gauthier said. The CFIA initiated an investigation into the allegations of abuse and the agency worked with the plants to shore up animal welfare, Gauthier added. The slaughter plants have since adopted humane handling measures and agency inspectors continue to monitor the facilities to ensure that animal welfare regulations are satisfied, Gauthier said. In May, the RCMP, which was also investigating the Bouvry plant, dropped the case because there wasn’t evidence of intentional cruelty to animals. Alex Atamanenko, an NDP MP from British Columbia, is not convinced the CFIA is doing everything necessary to prevent mistreatment of horses at slaughter plants in Canada. He remains skeptical because the CFIA pledged to improve horse slaughter practices following a Horse Defence Coalition video that showed animal welfare abuses at the Natural Valley Farms plant in Neudorf, Sask. “This issue was flagged a couple of years ago and all of a sudden we have footage of this happening again. That’s not right,” said Atamanenko. In addition, Atamanenko is worried about drugs like phenylbutazone that are administered to horses that end up at Canadian slaughter plants. He tabled a private member’s bill last week in Ottawa to ban horse meat for human consumption in Canada. “The fact is that drugs, which are prohibited for use during the life of any animals destined for the human food supply, are routinely being administered to horses,” said Atamanenko. “It is irresponsible for Canada to allow the sale of meat from horses as a food item when they have never been raised in accordance with the food safety practices required for all other animals.” http://www.producer.com/Livestock/Article.aspx?aid=23955

Manitoba Hog-horror barn destroyed in fire‘Very surprising coincidence,’ says town’s mayor By ROSS ROMANIUK, Winnipeg Sun Last Updated: June 23, 2010 NOTRE DAME DE LOURDES — A vacant hog barn just outside this southern Manitoba town was destroyed by a fire on Wednesday, a few days after hundreds of dead, decomposing pigs were removed from the structure by authorities. While RCMP and the provincial government probed the earlier deaths of reportedly about 500 hogs in the barn, the blaze broke out late Tuesday night or very early Wednesday. Mayor Denis Bibault and several other residents in and around the town of about 600 said they don’t know what to make of the disturbing events at the property operated by Martin Grenier, though they said the timing is unsettling. “For the barn burning down, it looks like a very surprising coincidence. But that’s where we’re at,” Bibault said in the community, about 100 km southwest of Winnipeg. “It’s astounding. It’s very surprising,” he added of Grenier, who lives near the scene of the fire. “Because the family is an upright family, as far as I know. They’re very well-respected. It’s really beyond my capacity to understand what in the world happened here.” Grenier couldn’t be located for comment. Firefighters from four nearby town departments battled the blaze, which caused no injuries. Damage estimated by RCMP is about $1 million. While the Office of the Fire Commissioner continues to try to determine its cause, the dead hogs — some 500 decomposing carcasses pulled from the barn this past weekend — have been piled elsewhere in the area and are creating a strong stench. “Can you smell it? That’s the dead pigs — out back there, in a field,” nearby resident Derek Desrochers told the Winnipeg Sun. “It’s bad. That’s a lot of pigs out there, too.” There’s been little word from authorities on what might have led to the deaths of the hogs, which were reportedly owned by Hutterites and among about 2,000 other pigs in the barn in various states of health. “I don’t know what to believe,” Bibault said. “I don’t go to the coffee shop, so I don’t know what’s going on there in the way of rumours or anything like that.” Several dozen firefighters from Notre Dame de Lourdes, St. Leon, Somerset and Rathwell struggled through the night to save the largely metal barn structure and prevent the blaze from spreading. “It took all night,” one firefighter said, refusing to give his name. “It was all encased. It’s like your barbecue burning, basically.” The fire, so soon after the dead hogs were discovered, is what Desrochers called a “disaster” — and eerie timing. “It was just awful,” he said. “And now for the barn to burn up like this — mysterious, isn’t it?” http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/manitoba/2010/06/23/14495176.html

Aboriginal leaders demand right to kill eagles for ceremonial purposes Canwest News Service June 24, 2010 Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Aboriginal+leaders+demand+right+kill+eag les+ceremonial+purposes/3197897/story.html#ixzz0rsY5xUyG VANCOUVER - Canada's top native leader says it is time for governments to listen to aboriginal demands to legally kill a small number of eagles for ceremonial purposes. "The source of conflict isn't new, but we have an opportunity in this era - an era that I would suggest is one of reconciliation," Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo said Thursday. Doug White, of the First Nations Summit, added that Section 35 of the Constitution, which provides protection to the treaty rights of aboriginals, doesn't line up with Canadian laws that makes it illegal to kill eagles for any purpose. "So the difficult work that's in front of us is addressing that reality where Canadian society criminalizes our behaviour, our most sacred teachings," White said. Native leaders, who gathered Thursday in Vancouver at a news conference, argue First Nations people should not be penalized by modern laws for "harvesting" a few birds to follow ancient customs of making ceremonial items bearing eagle feathers. Atleo, wearing a woven hat with eagle feathers dangling from the back, said the courts are clogged with similar issues, and he thinks this would best be worked out by native leaders and government leaders sitting down together. "We want to participate with government looking at how we can practise our rights, including the harvesting of eagles if we require for our purposes, not for money to change hands," said Sto:lo Tribal Council Grand Chief Doug Kelly. "We want to make sure we can practise our rights without fear of prosecution." This showdown was sparked by the fallout from a B.C. government investigation into the slaughter of 50 eagles, whose carcasses were found in North Vancouver in 2005. The birds' feathers and talons were believed to have been sold on the black market, which is said to be a multi-million-dollar underground economy. The bald eagle is not a species at risk in Canada or the U.S. Eleven native men were charged, but Kelly and others argue the accused were not responsible for the eagle slaughter but were caught in a so-called sting operation by B.C. conservation officers. In a statement Thursday, the environment ministry maintained the investigation by the Conservation Officer Service was "appropriate and professional." It declined to provide anyone to be interviewed about the other issues raised during the news conference. The native leaders took a strong stand against the slaughter of the 50 birds and killing eagles for economic purposes, insisting they want to protect the birds for future generations but still have access to a few for making sacred regalia. "In 2005, when there was 50 carcasses found in this part of the world, everyone was horrified," White said. "That behaviour is something different than what these men are being prosecuted for." The 11 men charged in the eagle poaching case face a total of 105 charges for unlawful possession of dead wildlife, trafficking in dead wildlife and other related charges. Federal legislation covering the illegal export of eagle parts provides penalties up to $150,000 and five years in jail. Vancouver Sun http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Aboriginal+leaders+demand+right+kill+eag les+ceremonial+purposes/3197897/story.html

Calgary Stampede modifies steer wrestling Last Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 CBC News The Calgary Stampede has changed a steer-wrestling rule to make the event less risky for animals at this year's rodeo. Steer wrestling is a rodeo event in which a horse-riding cowboy catches up to a steer and then drops from the horse to wrestle the steer onto its back by grabbing its horns and twisting its neck. An official time is taken once all four legs of the steer are off the ground. The event has been criticized as cruel as it can break an animal's neck. If a steer falls with its legs under it or pointing away from the cowboy, a judge will now automatically end the run, Stampede officials announced Wednesday. The cowboy will be given a "no time." The Stampede is the first rodeo in North America to implement the rule, which came after a meeting with the Calgary Humane Society and the Alberta SPCA. "We are always looking for new opportunities to enhance how we care for our animals and after reviewing last year's incident, we felt this rule change eliminates an unnecessary risk," said Dr. David Chalack, Stampede president. A steer had to be put down after it suffered a spinal injury in last year's competition. Three chuckwagon horses also died at the 2009 Stampede. This year's annual Stampede runs July 9 to 18. Peace officers from the Calgary Humane Society attend the Stampede every day to ensure proper animal treatment, added Chalack.

UVic unveils plan to rid campus of 1,400 feral rabbits Four "rabbit control" quadrants will exist for about 200 total rabbits. By Sandra McCulloch, timescolonist.com June 28, 2010 Victoria, B.C. - The University of Victoria announced plans Monday to cull, or sterilize and relocate 1,400 rabbits that have overrun the campus. About 200 rabbits will be allowed to stay on university grounds within Ring Road. The surplus rabbits are to be removed by a contractor using traps. The captured rabbits either will be sterilized and relocated or euthanized by undisclosed methods. Community members who wish to accommodate sterilized rabbits can apply for a permit from the Ministry of Environment. Details of UVic¹s feral rabbit management plan were released yesterday, evoking a mixed reaction from those who advocate for the rabbits. ³I feel positive in the sense that our success will be proportional to how the community responds,² said Susan Vickery of Common Ground, a Gulf Islands-based wildlife assistance organization. A pilot program last winter failed because rescue organizations were unwilling to have their property and cages inspected to ensure ministry specifications were met. Vickery is worried UVic¹s plans will prompt some people to grab rabbits and take them home to ³save² them. ³I¹m really hoping the university¹s response and our engagement will redirect some of that energy, so people will get on board and work toward a positive result.² Social-justice advocate Roslyn Cassells said she¹s disappointed at UVic¹s decision ³when there¹s a plethora of humane, non-lethal alternatives to them. ³We feel the university has lost their way and they need to catch up with the community, which is putting out really progressive, sustainable, economical and humane alternatives.² The university¹s plan sets out with military precision ³rabbit-free² zones for playing fields and other areas outside Ring Road. The core of the campus inside the road will be declared ³rabbit control zones,² with 50 rabbits allowed in each of four quadrants. The plan ³will resolve the university¹s concerns,² said Tom Smith, UVic¹s executive director of facilities management. ³It will reduce the population of rabbits in the short term to a number we consider sustainable Š it¹s a big reduction,² Smith said. Anyone in the community can apply through the Ministry of Environment to provide a sanctuary for the feral rabbits. ³Realistically, we hope there¹s a capacity in the community to go through the permitting process and receive rabbits,² Smith said. But there are far more rabbits on campus than prospective homes, he suggested. ³I don¹t think we¹re fooling ourselves ‹ I don¹t think there¹s the capacity out there for 1,000 rabbits.² The surplus rabbits will be trapped. Those that can¹t be accommodated in the community will be euthanized by a humane method recognized by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Smith would not elaborate on methods being considered. There are now about 400 rabbits living within the area circumscribed by Ring Road, Smith said, and removing half of them will improve conditions for survivors. ³The concept is the food supply will better, the rabbits will be healthier. They¹re still territorial, so generally we would expect them to stay where they are. And we¹re hoping there¹s a volunteer community who will come forward and create things like feeding stations.² The plan is a test, he said. ³If it¹s still too many [rabbits], we¹ll have to revisit it.² UVic sent out letters to the veterinary community seeking their involvement in the future care of rabbits within Ring Road. The rabbit population ³got out of hand² over the last few years, Smith said. ³We certainly didn¹t anticipate this increasing so fast.² The number of rabbits that need to be killed or removed is unfortunate, Smith added. ³We¹re not happy at having to deal with this, but we¹re also not prepared to wait for four or five years for a spay/neuter program to take effect. ³There¹s lots of people who disapprove of it and we don¹t like it ourselves, but it¹s a decision the university has made.² The plan will go into effect later in the summer and carry on through the winter months, Smith said. Keeping 200 rabbits inside Ring Road ³is probably a sustainable number,² Vickery said. Organizations like Common Ground don¹t have capacity to take on rabbits in the numbers UVic has to offer, so she applauds the university¹s decision to open up relocation offers to the community. The university¹s neighbours are applauding the plan. ³If people hadn¹t abandoned their pets on campus, we wouldn¹t be faced with this,² said Mike Wilmut, president of the North Henderson Residents¹ Association, in a release. ³UVic is having to deal with the aftermath. Hopefully, some rabbits can be relocated by community groups but the rabbit population has grown too large for that to be the sole solution to keeping rabbits from migrating into campus neighbourhoods and other nearby areas.² The B.C. SPCA is encouraging municipalities to pass laws prohibiting the sale of non-sterilized rabbits and abandonment of the animals. UVic Feral Rabbit Management Plan Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/UVic+unveils+plan+campus+feral+rabbi ts/3212773/story.html#ixzz0sD7qTjyQ

Totalement décourageant!

BP is burning endangered sea turtles alive. News has just emerged from the Gulf Coast that BP is burning endangered sea turtles alive. 1 A boat captain who has been leading efforts to rescue the endangered turtles says BP has blocked his crews from entering the areas where the animals are trapped, effectively shutting down the rescue operation. BP is using "controlled burns" to contain the oil spill. Shrimp boats create a corral of oil by dragging together fire-resistant booms and then lighting the enclosed "burn box" on fire. If turtles are not removed from the area before the fire is lit, they are literally burned alive. The sea turtle most affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the Kemp's Ridley2 which is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Parties responsible for killing the endangered turtles are liable for criminal penalties that include prison and civil fines of up to $25,000 per violation. As a result, BP perversely has a financial incentive to allow the endangered turtles to burn rather than allow rescue crews to cull them from the burn boxes before the containment fires are lit. "They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," said turtle rescuer Mike Ellis in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig that was posted on YouTube.com. 3 Tell BP: Stop burning endangered sea turtles alive. http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/bp_endangered_turtles/?r_by=9693-1032900

ils ont été retrouvés, sains et saufs

Publié le 23 juin 2010 Un veau mort au bureau de la ministre Boulet Des enquêteurs de la Sûreté du Québec ont mené des recherches hier toute la journée pour élucider l'abandon d'un veau mort au bureau de la ministre Julie Boulet. Photo: François Gervais Olivier Parent Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières) Le malfaiteur qui semble derrière l'abandon d'un veau mort tôt hier matin à l'entrée du bureau de comté de la ministre Julie Boulet, à Grand-Mère, aura réussi à faire parler de lui, à défaut d'avoir atteint complètement sa cible. Aussitôt découverte, la carcasse de la bête a disparu avant même l'ouverture du bureau. La présence de l'animal mort a été signalée à la Sûreté du Québec (SQ) vers 5 h 45 hier matin par Alain Brodeur, un arpenteur-géomètre qui travaille dans le bureau voisin de la ministre. À son arrivée sur la 6e avenue, il a constaté qu'un animal était couché devant la porte et qu'une boîte fermée et une pancarte étaient disposées à ses côtés. «Je n'ai pas osé entrer. Je ne savais pas s'il était vivant ou mort, donc je suis allé appeler la Sûreté. Sur la planche de bois, ça parlait de gouvernement, d'agriculture. C'était incohérent», rapporte-t-il. Les enquêteurs du bureau régional de la SQ ont fait du porte-à-porte dans le voisinage afin de glaner des informations qui pourraient mener à l'individu responsable de cette manoeuvre inusitée. Un appel a été logé tôt à la voirie de la Ville de Shawinigan et l'escouade canine a par la suite été envoyée sur les lieux pour procéder au nettoyage de la scène. «Tout a été dégagé avant que quelqu'un voit quoi que ce soit», a confié au Nouvelliste l'attachée politique de la ministre Boulet, Amina Chaffaï. Les premiers collègues arrivés vers 7 h au bureau lui ont rapporté que le veau n'était plus présent à cette heure. Julie Boulet a déclaré par le biais de son attachée de presse que «la cruauté envers les animaux n'est pas une façon de livrer ses messages et qu'il y a d'autres façons plus civilisées de faire ses revendications». ... http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-nouvelliste/actualites/201006/23/01-4292574-un-veau-mort-au-bureau-de-la-ministre-boulet.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_B4__2501_section_POS2

Publié le 24 juin 2010 à 11h17 | Mis à jour à 11h22 Un cochon modifié dans nos assiettes? Albert Bérubé La Tribune (Sherbrooke) La mise au point en Ontario d'un cochon génétiquement modifié qui pollue moins fait craindre le pire aux écologistes et aux producteurs de porcs du Québec. «On a déjà beaucoup de difficulté à garder nos marchés et à garder l'image du porc», fait valoir François Bourassa, président de la section estrienne de l'Union des producteurs agricoles. «Le porc transgénique serait une très bonne excuse à l'étranger pour mettre des restrictions aux importations de porc d'ici.» ... http://www.cyberpresse.ca/la-tribune/201006/24/01-4292917-un-cochon-modifie-dans-nos-assiettes.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_B4_en-manchette_375_section_POS4

Investissement de 22,4 M$ Un laboratoire pour permettre d’éviter les épidémies animales Jean-François Racine 22/06/2010 22h23 Construit au coût de 22,4 millions dans le parc technologique, le nouveau laboratoire d’expertise en pathologie animale devrait aider à faire face aux futures épidémies. Le ministre responsable de la région de la Capitale-Nationale, Sam Hamad, a inauguré, hier, le bâtiment ultra-moderne situé au 2650, rue Einstein, à Québec. Cette installation de pointe renforcera l’expertise en matière de pathologie animale au Québec et bonifiera également la vigie afin de répondre rapidement aux problèmes associés à l’apparition de nouvelles maladies. Près de 30 personnes y travaillent présentement dont cinq pathologistes, trois microbiologistes, dix-neuf techniciens de laboratoire et d’autopsie et deux employés de soutien administratif. En 2009, le LEPAQ a procédé à plus de 850 nécropsies relatives à quelque 1 500 animaux de plusieurs espèces, comme le porc ou la volaille. Détecter les maladies Les spécialistes peuvent ainsi détecter diverses maladies qui peuvent avoir une incidence sur la santé du cheptel, la santé humaine et qui comportent parfois des répercussions économiques importantes. Une surveillance particulière est effectuée à l’égard des zoonoses, des maladies infectieuses pouvant être transmises à l’être humain par les animaux (listériose, salmonellose, toxoplasmose, etc.). Le laboratoire est le premier à viser la certification LEED Canada. En 2006, Québec a alloué un budget de 77 millions pour la reconstruction de deux laboratoires de pathologie animale situés à Québec et à Saint-Hyacinthe. http://lejournaldequebec.canoe.ca/actualites/sante/archives/2010/06/20100622-222303.html