IDA e-news: 3/29/06

IDA ACTION ALERTS
1. IDA Accuses Philly Zoo of Violating Endangered Species Act
2. Animal Advocates Declare Victory Over Starbucks
3. Korean Dogs Rescued from Abusive Meat Rancher
NEWS & CAMPAIGN UPDATES
1. IDA Honors Labor Leader Cesar Chávez
2. Victory: Boulder County Ends Deer Culls
3. Attend Animal Rights National Conference 2006

IDA ACTION ALERTS

1. IDA Accuses Philly Zoo of Violating Endangered Species Act
IDA Submits Legal Notification for Transfer of Off-Exhibit Elephant to Sanctuary

IDA and Marianne Bessey of Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants notified the Philadelphia Zoo by letter this week it is in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) for its mistreatment of Dulary, an endangered Asian elephant. IDA and Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants charge the Zoo with breaching the ESA's prohibition on the "take" of endangered species, which is defined not only as killing, but also "harming" and/or "harassing" a species of animal protected under the Act. IDA and Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants base the charges on two unacceptable housing conditions:

1) For over six months, the Zoo has restricted Dulary to an isolated stall in a concrete-floored barn, severely limiting her access to fresh air and outdoor exercise. According to eyewitness reports, Dulary is frequently only allowed outside for approximately 45 minutes a day, when the Zoo brings the African elephants into the barn. Zoo caretakers have stated on several occasions that Dulary was not allowed to exercise outdoors at all.

2) Dulary spends her evenings in the concrete barn with three African elephants despite American Zoo and Aquarium (AZA) accreditation guidelines that advise against keeping Asian and African elephants together. This arrangement not only increases the risk of disease transmission and physical assault against Dulary by the more aggressive African elephants, but denies Dulary the opportunity to socialize with Asian elephants.

While the Zoo has acknowledged that its elephant exhibit is substandard, its Board of Directors rejected a proposed expansion plan last year, and no concrete plans to improve Dulary's condition have been announced. Therefore, IDA and Friends of Philly Zoo Elephants have urged the Philadelphia Zoo to send Dulary to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, which has offered to transport and accept Dulary at no cost to the Zoo. The Sanctuary would provide Dulary with acres of land on which to roam and allow her to live as a member of an established Asian elephant herd. These conditions would provide a much better quality of life for Dulary than the Philadelphia Zoo could.

What You Can Do:

Join IDA's Elephant Task Force. IDA is looking for activists living in cities with zoos to get involved at various levels, from simply visiting your local zoo and documenting conditions with your camera to making phone calls and organizing demonstrations. If you are interested in joining IDA's Elephant Task Force or would like more information about the ways you can get involved, please send an email to zoos [at] idausa.org today with your full name, city, telephone number, and the name of the zoo nearest you.

To learn more about IDA's campaign to help elephants in zoos, visit http://www.helpelephants.com .


2. Animal Advocates Declare Victory Over Starbucks
Coffee Giant Agrees to End Financial Sponsorship of Rodeos

After taking hits from a national anti-cruelty campaign spearheaded by Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), coffee conglomerate Starbucks has agreed to create a corporate policy that will end their direct financial support for rodeos. This comes as great news to animal advocates and animal protection groups everywhere. IDA is proud to have played a supportive role in the struggle to hold Starbucks accountable for promoting animal cruelty. As part of our joint campaign, IDA and SHARK co-coordinated several successful San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Oregon demonstrations against the coffee giant's rodeo support. We would like to congratulate SHARK and everyone involved in the campaign on a job well done.

While agreeing to no longer take out ads that financially support rodeos, Starbucks still plans to give away free beverages at these inhumane events. This decision lends their tacit support to the rodeo, and amounts to a de facto form of advertising that will continue to taint their self-styled image as a responsible corporation. Nonetheless, because Starbucks has agreed to withdraw direct financial support from the rodeo industry, SHARK will discontinue actively campaigning against the company. The group has agreed to recall from the campaign trail its "Tiger" video truck, which is equipped with four large-screen TVs. SHARK has used the truck to bring graphic rodeo video footage to Starbucks shops in fifteen different metropolitan areas between Chicago and Seattle over the past four months.

Because Starbucks continues to condone animal cruelty by giving rodeo spectators free coffee, SHARK will maintain its anti-Starbucks website, http://www.buckstarbucks.com , and discourage compassionate people from buying their coffee for as long as the company associates itself with the rodeo. "We think Starbucks' customers deserve to know what Starbucks considers acceptable treatment of animals," explains SHARK president Steve Hindi. "A truly ethical and socially responsible company would not be involved with rodeos or any form of animal abuse in any way whatsoever."

What You Can Do:

- Please write a short, polite letter to Starbucks thanking them for no longer financially supporting rodeos and urging them not to donate its products to rodeos.

Howard Schultz, Chairman
Jim Donald, CEO
Starbucks Corp.
P.O. Box 3717
Seattle, WA 98124
Tel: (206) 447-1575
Fax: (206) 447-0828
Email webform: http://www.starbucks.com/customer/contact_forms.asp?nav=3f&cookie%5Ftest=1E-mail&fav%5Ftest=1


3. Korean Dogs Rescued from Abusive Meat Rancher
Human Organizations Seek to Strengthen Animal Protection Law

IDA has long protested South Korea's notorious dog and cat meat trade, working with local groups to bring the practice to an end and urging the government to enforce existing laws that ban dog and cat consumption. Our efforts have been reinforced recently by two exposés of dog farms broadcast on Korean television which showed hundreds of dogs crammed together in tiny cages where they couldn't even move or stretch their limbs. The dogs suffered unimaginable cruelty before being loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.

In recent months, a land dispute led to a large number of dogs being deliberately neglected, abused and starved so that the animals' "owner" could claim compensation from the government. He raised the dogs on property that he didn't own, then left them to suffer when authorities tried to reclaim the land so that he could blame them for his financial losses. Dogs were found on this meat ranch without any shelter from freezing rain and other harsh winter elements. They were covered in their own feces, their skin infested with scabies and infected sores. Literally starving to death, the hungry dogs resorted to cannibalism. Tragically, some adult dogs became so ravenous that they ate their own newborn pups. Many suffered serious injuries such as missing ears or tails but received no medical attention.

Working alongside other animal rights organizations, IDA's colleagues, Animal Freedom Korea (AFK), were able to rescue 50 of these mistreated dogs. The groups also held a protest focused not on opposing dog meat, but rather on securing the right to seek shelter for dogs under the Animal Protection Law. While the groups see banning dog meat as a long-term plan, they are working on laying the foundation by advocating for amendments to South Korea's Animal Protection Law. The first step would be to ensure that abused animals are removed from cruel "owners" and immediately given refuge by reputable animal rescue organizations, which is not possible under current animal protection laws. Currently, animal protection organizations cannot even take custody of abused animals to ensure their safety without the "owner's" permission, no matter what kind of abuse the animal has suffered. Secondly, the groups want people convicted of aggravated cruelty to animals to be punished with heavy fines and/or imprisonment. At present, the penalty for animal cruelty is a mere $200, not nearly enough money to deter dog meat profiteers from abusing their canine cash cows.

Animal protection groups working in South Korea believe that without a proper Animal Protection Law, the dog and cat meat trade will be impossible to stop. Amendments could be submitted to the National Assembly as soon as June of this year. We will keep our readers up to date on any developments in future e-news reports.

What You Can Do:

Write to the South Korean government and ask that they amend the Animal Protection Law as described above.

Ambassador Lee, Tae-Sik
Embassy of the Republic of Korea
2450 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
Tel: (202)939-5600
Fax: (202)797-0595
E-mail: korinfo [at] koreaemb.org


NEWS & CAMPAIGN UPDATES

1. IDA Honors Labor Leader Cesar Chávez
IDA Web Feature and PSA Highlight Organizer's Animal Advocacy

Legendary social justice icon Cesar Chávez, founder and longtime President of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), spent his life fighting for justice and brought hope for a better life to millions of people around the world. He was also a passionate animal rights advocate and vegetarian for the last 25 years of his life, and embodied these values as a model for others to emulate, urging union members to eat a plant-based diet out of respect and concern for animals. Chávez's personal motto, sí se peude (it can be done), remains a rousing call to action for everyone fighting for justice, whether on behalf of people or animals.

Given his stature as an inspirational leader, Chávez has left a lasting impression on the animal rights movement, which he viewed as inextricably linked to other social justice causes, from worker's rights to environmentalism. That is why IDA proudly recognized his contribution to both human and animal rights by awarding Cesar Chávez our Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992. Now, to commemorate Chávez's birthday on March 31st, IDA honors the great union organizer, civil rights leader and environmentalist with a public service announcement (PSA) and web feature highlighting his important role as an animal rights advocate within the labor movement.

Please visit the IDA homepage at http://www.idausa.org to read the feature article and view the PSA, which includes Chávez's acceptance speech of IDA's Lifetime Achievement Award.


2. Victory: Boulder County Ends Deer Culls
Officials Admit Policy Doesn't Stop Spread of Chronic Wasting Disease

As we have reported in previous editions of our e-news ( http://ga0.org/campaign/CWD/explanation ), Rita Anderson of the Committee for Research Accountability, a project of IDA, has been working with other animal allies in Colorado to stop Boulder County from killing hundreds of healthy wild deer every year. The Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) has "culled" the deer population for the past four years in an attempt to reduce the number of animals infected with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) disorder that is similar to BSE (i.e., mad cow disease). CWD is caused by prions, which are misfolded proteins that spread to different parts of the body and, over time, cause tiny holes in the brain, slowly killing their victims.

CDOW officials recently announced that they will discontinue the culls because they do not effectively reduce the number of deer infected with CWD. Rita and other concerned citizens have criticized the culls since they started, and last year were able to convince the Boulder County Commissioners that it was a highly questionable and ineffective way of curbing the disease. As a result, the Commissioners allowed the CDOW to kill deer in only one of three requested county locations in 2005, telling the agency that they would only allow them to continue culling deer if they presented concrete scientific data proving the effectiveness of this approach. In a meeting with the County Parks and Open Space Department last week, the CDOW admitted that culling does not stop the spread of CWD.

Instead of killing healthy deer, IDA advocates the more humane and scientific approach taken by the City of Boulder, which tests living deer for CWD and releases them back into the wild. This will allow them to study the effect of CWD on the herd as a whole, as it may be possible that some animals have a genetic immunity to the disease. After years of observation by local scientists, the herd has apparently remained healthy, so it is quite possible that CWD is one of nature's ways of keeping herd populations in check.


3. Attend Animal Rights National Conference 2006
Highly Discounted Registration Ends on Friday, March 31st

This year's Animal Rights 2006 National Conference, scheduled for August 10th to 14th in Washington D.C., promises to be a major event for those dedicated to helping animals. Register by Friday, March 31st to get the best admission price: just $120 for the five-day conference. Visit http://www.arconference.org/register.htm to register.

AR 2006 will be held at the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, a suburb of Washington D.C. (click http://tinyurl.com/s7a9u for a map). This is the conference's most attractive venue since Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM) started hosting this national animal rights conference in 1981. The Hilton Mark Center is located on a small lake and adjoins a botanic preserve with running trails. The building has lots of windows to let in sunlight, and an entire level has been reserved for the Conference.

This year's program will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the modern animal rights movement, and will include a special plenary session of reminiscences and progress reports by key figures in the animal rights field. Other traditional elements include 100 workshops, rap sessions and campaign reports, 80 video screenings, 90 literature and vegan product exhibits, a newcomer orientation, an employment clearinghouse, networking receptions, musical interludes, and the awards banquet. A number of post-conference activities are also planned for Monday, August 14th.

As in previous years, IDA is a proud co-sponsor of the Animal Rights 2006 National Conference. Visit http://www.arconference.org to see a program schedule and photos from last year's conference and hear selected talks in mp3 format.


IDA Job Opportunities

Have you ever fantasized about a career in animal rights? Well, now you can make that dream a reality, because IDA has several job openings at our new San Rafael headquarters in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. IDA is looking for highly motivated individuals to fill three exciting positions: Administrative Assistant, Graphic Designer and Graphic Production Artist. To learn more about the duties and qualifications for these positions and to apply, visit IDA's Job Opportunities webpage ( http://www.idausa.org/about/jobs.html ).