Animal
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Newsletter - Animal Writes � sm
From 31 December 2000 Issue
HSUS Legislative Update

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State and local lawmakers also acted to improve the lives of animals.
Highlights include:
* Thirty-one states now impose felony penalties for animal cruelty perpetrators.
* Tennessee lawmakers recognized that the value of a companion animal exceeds a person�s monetary investment in the animal by passing legislation that awards non-economic damages to a person whose pet is killed or injured by an intentional or negligent act.
* Georgia made abandoning a domestic animal a crime.
* New Jersey made it illegal to leave animals unattended in a vehicle under inhumane conditions.
* Iowa and Michigan narrowly rejected efforts to enact mourning dove seasons.
* Illinois passed a dissection choice bill that allows students to refuse to participate in or observe dissection without suffering any academic penalty.
* Michigan banned ownership of wolf-hybrid dogs and large carnivores, such as lions, tigers, cheetahs, panthers and bears.

Voters sided with animal protection in the majority of state ballot measures related to animal issues, continuing a trend from the 1990s:
* Washington restricted the use of steel-jawed leghold traps and other body-gripping traps.
* Montana banned so-called �canned hunts.�
* Alaska restored that state�s ban on land-and-shoot wolf hunting.

Other important victories for animal came as a result of action in the U.S. courts:
* A federal judge overturned a Clinton Administration initiative that would have allowed dolphin-deadly tuna from Mexico to be labeled �dolphin safe.�
* A federal appeals court put a temporary halt to a whale hunt by the Makah tribe of Washington State, finding that the necessary environmental impact assessment had not been completed objectively by the
federal government.
* A settlement of a lawsuit seeking to force the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide minimal protection for mice, rats and birds used in medical research would have offered protection for millions of animals, but an eleventh hour maneuver by researchers halted implementation of the settlement for one year.

Reforms in wildlife management have been slow to come, but animal protection forces scored some victories in 2000:
* New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman refused to allow a bear hunt in that state, despite strong lobbying by hunters. Instead, the state will implement a program designed to reduce human-bear conflicts.
* Maryland has formed a Non-Lethal Wildlife Management Task Force to recommend non-lethal approaches to handling conflicts between humans and wildlife. Maryland Governor Parris Glendening affirmed his opposition to the hunting of that state�s population of several hundred black bears.

Major corporations are also increasingly recognizing the public�s concern for animals, as witnessed by McDonald�s landmark announcement that the fast-food giant will refuse to purchase eggs from producers who do not meet minimum standards for animal care.

On the national front....the United Kingdom imposed a nationwide ban on fur farming, becoming the first nation to take this bold step for the welfare of animals. The U.K. will soon consider a ban on fox hunting.

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