Wildhorses and Canned Hunts
Hi All!
Below are the articles I tried to post yesterday. Please pass on the information to everyone you know so that this inhumane treatment to animals can be stopped!
Take care,
Allie;)
http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/pay_per_view_slaughter.html
The Latest Fad in Internet Animal Cruelty: Pay-Per-View Hunting
In late January, entrepreneur John Lockwood let a friend become the first "hunter" to kill a confined animal via computer. The friend, Howard Giles, sitting in his home office 45 miles from Lockwood's canned hunting ranch in the Texas Hill Country, squarely lined up the animal in his computer sights and clicked the mouse. A rifle mounted in a blind back on Lockwood's ranch then fired a bullet at a wild hog hunched over a feeding station.At that point a page should have popped up on Giles' computer screen: Fatality Not Found. According to news reports, Giles' remote-control shot hit the hog in the neck, wounding the animal. Lockwood, on site at the ranch, shot the animal two more times to kill him.Welcome to the whacked-out world of Live-Shot.com, where you can kill a captive exotic animal from the comfort of your living room. By turning a computer into a deadly weapon, Live-Shot.com has created trophy hunting without the fuss and muss of having to hunt at all. A March report by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that more than 350 people are already members of Live-Shot.com, each paying $14.95 a month (plus $5.95 per ten rounds of ammunition) to fire at inanimate targets. Joystick hunting costs considerably more-$300 per two hours, which doesn't include the price of the animal killed, the meat processing, taxidermy, and shipping. Live-Shot.com expects the second computer-assisted "hunt" to take place on April 9, by an Indiana man paralyzed from the neck down.
Just the possibility of desktop killing has united two groups that usually eyeball each other warily-humane advocates and hunters. State legislators are also setting their sights on Internet hunting. Virginia has just banned it, Tennessee has a bill awaiting the governor's signature, and 13 other states are considering prohibitions.
The Live-Shot Heard 'Round the World
Live-Shot works like this: The prospective armchair sportsman signs up on the web site and pays a deposit and fees of more than $1,500 to schedule a session. (The final cost depends on the species and size of the animal killed and the cost of having the trophy mounted.) The hunter logs on again at the scheduled time and watches the feeding station on his computer screen. The animal ordered is present in the area, and when the creature approaches the food, the 'Net "hunter" uses his mouse to line the victim up in the on-screen crosshairs. A click of the mouse fires the rifle.
As with canned hunting in general, Live-Shot does not require the so-called hunter to possess any shooting skills, so the animal's death may be a drawn-out, agonizing one. Furthermore, there is no indication on the web site that the client must have a hunting license either in his or her own state or in Texas.
Animal advocates and hunters alike are outraged by this hi-tech atrocity. The National Rifle Association has come out strongly against Internet hunting. "The NRA believes the element of a fair chase is a vital part of the American hunting heritage," said spokesperson Kelly Hobbs. "Shooting an animal from three states away would not be considered a fair chase."According to Kirby Brown, executive director of the pro-hunting Texas Wildlife Association, "The idea of sitting at a computer screen playing a video game and activating a remote-controlled firearm to shoot an animal is not hunting. It's off the ethical charts."
Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, was speaking for everyone who cares about animals when he said, "This is a snuff film scenario in which animals will be senselessly killed for the voyeuristic pleasure of someone sitting at a keyboard. It is pay-per-view slaughter. This remotely delivered cruelty should be shut down and outlawed immediately."
A number of state lawmakers agree. According to a story in the Holland, Michigan, Sentinel, Texas state Rep. Todd Smith (R-Euless), calls Internet hunting, "unnatural, unfair, and immoral." Even better, Smith has introduced a bill to ban Internet hunting in Texas.
Legislators in other states are following suit. Lawmakers in Alabama, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have also introduced bills to stop Internet hunting before it takes hold. A Virginia bill was recently signed into law by the governor, and lawmakers in Tennessee recently passed their own ban.
The federal government hasn't lagged too far behind in moving to block Internet hunts. Tom Davis (R-VA) recently introduced H.R. 1558, "because gun owners, hunters, animal rights organizations and more than a dozen state legislatures oppose online, computer-assisted hunting." H.R. 1558 would make participation in Internet hunting a felony. Pacelle sees federal legislation as essential: "The HSUS backs the bills at the state level, but the Congress must speak on this issue, since remote hunting involves the Internet and is therefore a matter of interstate commerce."
Launched last year, Live-Shot.com is the brainchild of Lockwood, a San Antonio body-shop estimator who claims he just wants to provide people with disabilities a chance to hunt. His altruistic talk conveniently sidesteps the ethical and moral issues of Internet hunting: Lockwood's real-life video game has real-life consequences for animals-and perhaps for people, if the remote-control rifle software lands in the wrong hands. But Live-Shot.com also lacks any sense of fair chase, and it does not impose any hardship on the hunter who can fire shot after shot with all the burden of booking airline tickets. This is disembodied killing in which the hunter experiences no consequences: He sees no blood, hears no cries, feels nothing but the joy of the kill, like a kid with a violent video game.
Remote-control hunting, after all, is not hunting at all. Like the video game Grand Theft Auto, Live-Shot.com turns the joystick into a deadly weapon. Unfortunately, the web site's victims are not cartoons.
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2005_horse_slaughter?source=gac4cc
Beloved Companion and American Icon-or Dinner on the Table?
Throughout history, horses have brought grace, beauty, strength, and companionship to humans, and have loyally served us in countless ways. No betrayal of that loyalty can match the shameful killing of these magnificent animals in U.S. slaughterhouses to satisfy the palates of diners in Italy, France, Belgium, and Japan.
The horrors these horses suffer at the slaughterhouse is compounded by the misery they are forced to endure on the way to this brutal end. Only three facilities in the entire country serve the foreign horsemeat markets. Thus horses destined for the killing floors-approximately 78,000 went to slaughter in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada last year-are often crammed together and transported across thousands of miles to slaughter in double-deck trucks designed for cattle and pigs. Even wild horses removed from public lands can legally be sold to slaughter for the first time since 1971, thanks to a Senate rider attached last year to an omnibus spending bill with no public hearing or discussion.
Representatives John Sweeney (R-NY) , John Spratt (D-SC) and Ed Whitfield (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, to ban horse slaughter and the international transport of live horses or horseflesh for human consumption. Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) are expected to introduce a companion bill in the Senate soon.And Representatives Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Ed Whitfield (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 297 to restore the federal protections to wild horses and burros, with a Senate companion bill, S. 576, introduced by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV)."This inhumane and disgusting practice, which only serves to promote animal cruelty, needs to be brought to an end," said Representative Sweeney when commenting on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. "Support for this legislation is stronger than ever, and I look forward to the day when the American horse no longer ends up on a dinner plate overseas."
To date, 77 House members have signed on as cosponsors of H.R. 503.ยป Please ask your federal legislators to end the slaughter of horses for human consumption and to restore the federal protections for wild horses.
FIRST BLOOD HAS BEEN SHED
6 WILD HORSES SLAUGHTERED UNDER NEW BURNS LEGISLATION
Multiple sources have confirmed that on Monday, April 18th, 2005, 6 wild horses were slaughtered at the Cavel International facility in DeKalb, Il. The horses, adopted from the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Wild Horse Adoption program on Friday, April 15th, were purchased for $50 each from Dustin Herbert of Oklahoma. Mr. Herbert claimed that the horses would be used for a church youth program, and would not be sold for slaughter. But by Monday, less than 3 days after he purchased the animals, all 6 were slaughtered so that their meat could be shipped overseas to end up on foreign dinner tables where horsemeat is served as a delicacy.
Despite that massive public outcry that resulted in the passage of the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, in November of 2004 Senator Conrad Burns attached a rider to the 3300 page budget bill that eviscerated the federal protections that prohibited the slaughter of America's wild horses. The Burns rider, introduced on the eve of Thanksgiving weekend, amended the line in the 1971 act that prohibited the commercial processing of our wild horses, and required the BLM to sell "excess" wild horses "without limitation".
This rider not only completely undermined the spirit of the 1971 act and the will of the American people, but it was literally slipped in at the 11th hour with absolutely no opportunity for public debate.Neda DeMayo, founder of Return to Freedom, American Wild Horse Sanctuary, states that "Burns Sale Authority was not only unethical in the way it was slipped through, but in the ongoing and devastating repercussions it will have on the American Wild Horse. The Burns sale authority opens the floodgates of slaughter for potentially thousands of America's wild horses.
As Burns and his allies grasp to put a positive face on this atrocious situation, we are distracted from the truth which is that these horses were unnecessarily removed from the public lands in the first place. Overpopulation is a myth." An anonymous acquaintance of Mr. Herbert's was not surprised. "It's horrible that he did this to those horses, it's a sad reflection on legitimate western horsemen. But I know he'll do it again". And the Burns amendment makes that possible.
Congressmen Nick Rahall and Ed Whitfield are trying to stop this before thousands of wild horses end up on the butcher block. H.R. 297, introduced by Rahall and Whitfield, and S. 576 introduced by Senator Robert Byrd, reinstate the federal protections that prohibit the slaughter of America's wild horses. This legislation, which is only the first step on a long road to finding permanent solutions, is urgently needed as evidenced by the recent bloodshed.
When she learned of the incident, actress and avid horsewoman Nicollette Sheridan responded passionately, "I am disheartened with Senator Burns for undermining the will of the American people when he amended the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act. That was as good as giving these wild horses a death sentence. This recent bloodshed may only be a preview of what's to come as a result of this irresponsible legislation if we don't reverse it now".
Just prior to the Burns legislation, in the fall of 2004, Return to Freedom spearheaded the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC). This coalition, which includes such national organizations as U.S. PIRG, Gene Autry Museum, HSUS, and others, represents over 9 million Americans nationwide. Put in place to address the management problems that persist in the BLM, and to address policy initiatives that threaten the wild horse, the AWHPC is supporting this legislation. For updates on the legislation visit the campaign website at www.wildhorsepreservation.org. For more information on the American Wild Horse Sanctuary and background on the American Wild Horse visit www.returntofreedom.org.
Carrie Kitley
Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary
P.O. Box 926Lompoc, CA 93436
(805) 737-9246
programs@returntofreedom.org
www.returntofreedom.org
Below are the articles I tried to post yesterday. Please pass on the information to everyone you know so that this inhumane treatment to animals can be stopped!
Take care,
Allie;)
http://www.hsus.org/wildlife/wildlife_news/pay_per_view_slaughter.html
The Latest Fad in Internet Animal Cruelty: Pay-Per-View Hunting
In late January, entrepreneur John Lockwood let a friend become the first "hunter" to kill a confined animal via computer. The friend, Howard Giles, sitting in his home office 45 miles from Lockwood's canned hunting ranch in the Texas Hill Country, squarely lined up the animal in his computer sights and clicked the mouse. A rifle mounted in a blind back on Lockwood's ranch then fired a bullet at a wild hog hunched over a feeding station.At that point a page should have popped up on Giles' computer screen: Fatality Not Found. According to news reports, Giles' remote-control shot hit the hog in the neck, wounding the animal. Lockwood, on site at the ranch, shot the animal two more times to kill him.Welcome to the whacked-out world of Live-Shot.com, where you can kill a captive exotic animal from the comfort of your living room. By turning a computer into a deadly weapon, Live-Shot.com has created trophy hunting without the fuss and muss of having to hunt at all. A March report by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that more than 350 people are already members of Live-Shot.com, each paying $14.95 a month (plus $5.95 per ten rounds of ammunition) to fire at inanimate targets. Joystick hunting costs considerably more-$300 per two hours, which doesn't include the price of the animal killed, the meat processing, taxidermy, and shipping. Live-Shot.com expects the second computer-assisted "hunt" to take place on April 9, by an Indiana man paralyzed from the neck down.
Just the possibility of desktop killing has united two groups that usually eyeball each other warily-humane advocates and hunters. State legislators are also setting their sights on Internet hunting. Virginia has just banned it, Tennessee has a bill awaiting the governor's signature, and 13 other states are considering prohibitions.
The Live-Shot Heard 'Round the World
Live-Shot works like this: The prospective armchair sportsman signs up on the web site and pays a deposit and fees of more than $1,500 to schedule a session. (The final cost depends on the species and size of the animal killed and the cost of having the trophy mounted.) The hunter logs on again at the scheduled time and watches the feeding station on his computer screen. The animal ordered is present in the area, and when the creature approaches the food, the 'Net "hunter" uses his mouse to line the victim up in the on-screen crosshairs. A click of the mouse fires the rifle.
As with canned hunting in general, Live-Shot does not require the so-called hunter to possess any shooting skills, so the animal's death may be a drawn-out, agonizing one. Furthermore, there is no indication on the web site that the client must have a hunting license either in his or her own state or in Texas.
Animal advocates and hunters alike are outraged by this hi-tech atrocity. The National Rifle Association has come out strongly against Internet hunting. "The NRA believes the element of a fair chase is a vital part of the American hunting heritage," said spokesperson Kelly Hobbs. "Shooting an animal from three states away would not be considered a fair chase."According to Kirby Brown, executive director of the pro-hunting Texas Wildlife Association, "The idea of sitting at a computer screen playing a video game and activating a remote-controlled firearm to shoot an animal is not hunting. It's off the ethical charts."
Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, was speaking for everyone who cares about animals when he said, "This is a snuff film scenario in which animals will be senselessly killed for the voyeuristic pleasure of someone sitting at a keyboard. It is pay-per-view slaughter. This remotely delivered cruelty should be shut down and outlawed immediately."
A number of state lawmakers agree. According to a story in the Holland, Michigan, Sentinel, Texas state Rep. Todd Smith (R-Euless), calls Internet hunting, "unnatural, unfair, and immoral." Even better, Smith has introduced a bill to ban Internet hunting in Texas.
Legislators in other states are following suit. Lawmakers in Alabama, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin have also introduced bills to stop Internet hunting before it takes hold. A Virginia bill was recently signed into law by the governor, and lawmakers in Tennessee recently passed their own ban.
The federal government hasn't lagged too far behind in moving to block Internet hunts. Tom Davis (R-VA) recently introduced H.R. 1558, "because gun owners, hunters, animal rights organizations and more than a dozen state legislatures oppose online, computer-assisted hunting." H.R. 1558 would make participation in Internet hunting a felony. Pacelle sees federal legislation as essential: "The HSUS backs the bills at the state level, but the Congress must speak on this issue, since remote hunting involves the Internet and is therefore a matter of interstate commerce."
Launched last year, Live-Shot.com is the brainchild of Lockwood, a San Antonio body-shop estimator who claims he just wants to provide people with disabilities a chance to hunt. His altruistic talk conveniently sidesteps the ethical and moral issues of Internet hunting: Lockwood's real-life video game has real-life consequences for animals-and perhaps for people, if the remote-control rifle software lands in the wrong hands. But Live-Shot.com also lacks any sense of fair chase, and it does not impose any hardship on the hunter who can fire shot after shot with all the burden of booking airline tickets. This is disembodied killing in which the hunter experiences no consequences: He sees no blood, hears no cries, feels nothing but the joy of the kill, like a kid with a violent video game.
Remote-control hunting, after all, is not hunting at all. Like the video game Grand Theft Auto, Live-Shot.com turns the joystick into a deadly weapon. Unfortunately, the web site's victims are not cartoons.
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/FED_2005_horse_slaughter?source=gac4cc
Beloved Companion and American Icon-or Dinner on the Table?
Throughout history, horses have brought grace, beauty, strength, and companionship to humans, and have loyally served us in countless ways. No betrayal of that loyalty can match the shameful killing of these magnificent animals in U.S. slaughterhouses to satisfy the palates of diners in Italy, France, Belgium, and Japan.
The horrors these horses suffer at the slaughterhouse is compounded by the misery they are forced to endure on the way to this brutal end. Only three facilities in the entire country serve the foreign horsemeat markets. Thus horses destined for the killing floors-approximately 78,000 went to slaughter in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada last year-are often crammed together and transported across thousands of miles to slaughter in double-deck trucks designed for cattle and pigs. Even wild horses removed from public lands can legally be sold to slaughter for the first time since 1971, thanks to a Senate rider attached last year to an omnibus spending bill with no public hearing or discussion.
Representatives John Sweeney (R-NY) , John Spratt (D-SC) and Ed Whitfield (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, to ban horse slaughter and the international transport of live horses or horseflesh for human consumption. Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) are expected to introduce a companion bill in the Senate soon.And Representatives Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Ed Whitfield (R-KY) have introduced H.R. 297 to restore the federal protections to wild horses and burros, with a Senate companion bill, S. 576, introduced by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV)."This inhumane and disgusting practice, which only serves to promote animal cruelty, needs to be brought to an end," said Representative Sweeney when commenting on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. "Support for this legislation is stronger than ever, and I look forward to the day when the American horse no longer ends up on a dinner plate overseas."
To date, 77 House members have signed on as cosponsors of H.R. 503.ยป Please ask your federal legislators to end the slaughter of horses for human consumption and to restore the federal protections for wild horses.
FIRST BLOOD HAS BEEN SHED
6 WILD HORSES SLAUGHTERED UNDER NEW BURNS LEGISLATION
Multiple sources have confirmed that on Monday, April 18th, 2005, 6 wild horses were slaughtered at the Cavel International facility in DeKalb, Il. The horses, adopted from the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Wild Horse Adoption program on Friday, April 15th, were purchased for $50 each from Dustin Herbert of Oklahoma. Mr. Herbert claimed that the horses would be used for a church youth program, and would not be sold for slaughter. But by Monday, less than 3 days after he purchased the animals, all 6 were slaughtered so that their meat could be shipped overseas to end up on foreign dinner tables where horsemeat is served as a delicacy.
Despite that massive public outcry that resulted in the passage of the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, in November of 2004 Senator Conrad Burns attached a rider to the 3300 page budget bill that eviscerated the federal protections that prohibited the slaughter of America's wild horses. The Burns rider, introduced on the eve of Thanksgiving weekend, amended the line in the 1971 act that prohibited the commercial processing of our wild horses, and required the BLM to sell "excess" wild horses "without limitation".
This rider not only completely undermined the spirit of the 1971 act and the will of the American people, but it was literally slipped in at the 11th hour with absolutely no opportunity for public debate.Neda DeMayo, founder of Return to Freedom, American Wild Horse Sanctuary, states that "Burns Sale Authority was not only unethical in the way it was slipped through, but in the ongoing and devastating repercussions it will have on the American Wild Horse. The Burns sale authority opens the floodgates of slaughter for potentially thousands of America's wild horses.
As Burns and his allies grasp to put a positive face on this atrocious situation, we are distracted from the truth which is that these horses were unnecessarily removed from the public lands in the first place. Overpopulation is a myth." An anonymous acquaintance of Mr. Herbert's was not surprised. "It's horrible that he did this to those horses, it's a sad reflection on legitimate western horsemen. But I know he'll do it again". And the Burns amendment makes that possible.
Congressmen Nick Rahall and Ed Whitfield are trying to stop this before thousands of wild horses end up on the butcher block. H.R. 297, introduced by Rahall and Whitfield, and S. 576 introduced by Senator Robert Byrd, reinstate the federal protections that prohibit the slaughter of America's wild horses. This legislation, which is only the first step on a long road to finding permanent solutions, is urgently needed as evidenced by the recent bloodshed.
When she learned of the incident, actress and avid horsewoman Nicollette Sheridan responded passionately, "I am disheartened with Senator Burns for undermining the will of the American people when he amended the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act. That was as good as giving these wild horses a death sentence. This recent bloodshed may only be a preview of what's to come as a result of this irresponsible legislation if we don't reverse it now".
Just prior to the Burns legislation, in the fall of 2004, Return to Freedom spearheaded the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC). This coalition, which includes such national organizations as U.S. PIRG, Gene Autry Museum, HSUS, and others, represents over 9 million Americans nationwide. Put in place to address the management problems that persist in the BLM, and to address policy initiatives that threaten the wild horse, the AWHPC is supporting this legislation. For updates on the legislation visit the campaign website at www.wildhorsepreservation.org. For more information on the American Wild Horse Sanctuary and background on the American Wild Horse visit www.returntofreedom.org.
Carrie Kitley
Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary
P.O. Box 926Lompoc, CA 93436
(805) 737-9246
programs@returntofreedom.org
www.returntofreedom.org
posted by Allie @ 1:47 PM
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