Florida: Animal activists mount protests of UF researcher Animal rights activists are targeting a University of Florida researcher for his role in experiments on primates — even though he says he doesn't personally conduct animal research. Wildwood-based activist Camille Marino runs the “Negotiation is Over!” website, where she posted the researcher's address and a picture of his home. She's accusing him of being a “monkey mutilator” and plans protests with other animal-rights activists at the UF football game today and at the researcher's neighborhood in the coming weeks. UF and other universities have long been protested by animal-rights groups, but the current situation represents its introduction to a new trend. Activists have shifted tactics away from protesting entities involved in research to targeting specific researchers, said Liz Hodge, a spokeswoman for the Foundation for Biomedical Research. US: Tea Party Opposes Puppy Mill Law Tea Party activists in Missouri are fighting against a bill to outlaw the most cruel practices of the puppy mill industry. Puppy mills are commercial breeding enterprises that take the same approach to breeding companion animals that factory farms take to raising animals for food: cramming them into cages, breeding them constantly with no rest, and neglecting their nutrition and veterinary needs. Puppy mills are so heinous, and their victims so universally loved that even the most militant anti-animal rights, meat-loving conservatives will still rail against them. Even Dean Koontz – a writer who has spoken out loudly against animal rights initiatives – feels activism is important when puppy mills are concerned. US: Group slams use of live pigs in training Animal rights activists say the use of live pigs in trauma training by non-profit health system UPMC in Pennsylvania violates the federal Animal Welfare Act. A complaint filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine with the U.S. Department of Agriculture says UPMC is one of only 11 medical facilities left in North America, out of 225 that offer trauma training, that still uses live animals in the training, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Thursday. “We believe that this animal use is a violation of the Animal Welfare Act because there are non-animal training methods available that are educationally equivalent or superior,” the complaint sent to the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Services said. UK: ‘Animal Aid are after you' warns solicitor Jamie Foster The meat industry has to be on its guard as further covert surveillance break-ins by animal rights group Animal Aid are under way, solicitor Jamie Foster warned AIMS delegates at its annual confererence at the weekend. The solicitor-advocate to lawyers Clarke Willmott said Animal Aid will not relent in its campaign. The message comes as Animal Aid activist Thomas Frampton has recently been caught out installing cameras in a south west abattoir according to Foster. “If I have one message to the entire meat industry it is this: don't look at the people that have been picked on so far and think, ‘Well, at least it's them, not us', because Animal Aid or some other version are going to come.” Israel: Leading rabbi joins animal rights group's campaign against kaparot Ahead of the Yom Kippur holiday, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Israel last week launched its annual information campaign against the ritual slaughter of chickens. That campaign just received a boost from an unexpected source, as one of religious Zionism's most influential rabbis joined the call against the practice of kaparot, in which an individual's transgressions are ceremonially transferred to an animal or inanimate object. Shlomo Aviner, head of Jerusalem's Ateret Yeshiva and rabbi of the settlement of Beit El, has spoken out in the past against the contentious rite. This time, however, he acceded to the SPCA's request and issued a religious ruling that, rather than slaughtering an animal, giving money to the poor is a better method of absolving oneself of transgressions. BM
