Animal Rights

Imagine you are an anti-fur activist. It's a sunny day sometime during the mid-1980s, and you're speaking at an outdoor press conference in downtown Toronto. Indignation flows assuredly through your polemic. Sure, grubby businessmen still peddle furs, and the gaudy rich still wear them, but they're an unsympathetic bunch and the fur industry is in a tailspin. The ambiguity and self-doubt that sap other movements of the left have left you unscathed. Unfortunately, you're about to meet Bob Stevenson.

Janet Romano has refocused her life on one issue: animal rights. She has given up meat, fish, seafood, all dairy products. She will not wear wool, leather or silk. She has even postponed her plan to move to Nashville to pursue a singing career to work full time as an organizer and fund-raiser for the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance. Romano, 29, is typical of some animal-rights activists who view their cause as a 24-hour commitment, a commitment they cannot leave at the office.

Michael Winikoff, an animal-rights "mole" in the psychology lab of the University of Pennsylvania, was convicted yesterday of stealing two rats that had undergone experimental brain surgery. Winikoff, a Washington lawyer, was found guilty of theft charges by Municipal Judge Lydia Y. Kirkland. He was ordered to make restitution of $60 to Penn and to work 100 hours in community service. Testimony showed that Winikoff was working undercover for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a Rockville, Md., group, when he took a job with the psychology department to spy on its animal research.

The people who brought you blood-splashed furs and liberated lobsters have trained their sights on a new target. The fishing rod. And the hands and hearts behind it. The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals this summer will hit Cape May and other coastal spots, lakes and fishing holes around the country, beating the waters for a ban on sport fishing. PETA fish campaign coordinator Tracy Reiman promised that protesters, accompanied by 6-foot mascot "Gill the Fish," will maneuver their boats among fishing craft.

Reporting of shooting victims is not equitable Page B1 of the Jan. 16 Inquirer had an article headlined "Penn student, 2 others shot. " At the bottom of page B8 were these headlines: "Gunman wounds 3 people at Southwest Phila. dance" and "Two men killed in shootings in Wynnefield and S. Phila. " It is tragic that a University of Pennsylvania student was wounded by gunfire; it is tragic that there were other handgun-related injuries and deaths. Yet the story of the wounded student was headlined on page B1 and the others were relegated to the bottom of page B8. Shouldn't the reporting of all gun violence victims be equitable, or are some victims considered less "newsworthy" due to issues of race and class?

Priscilla Cohn is an animal-rights activist. She is not a wide-eyed little old lady in tennis shoes. She is not an emotional, overwrought "Bambi lover. " She is not a terroristic zealot who raids laboratories in the night. Cohn is a professor of philosophy at Penn State's Ogontz Campus who defies the stereotypical images that many say have been foisted upon animal-rights activists. "She is a symbol of the middle ground," said Cleveland Amory of New York, president and founder of the Fund for Animals, an animal-protection organization.

For sweet scents and horror stories, one may enter the Peaceable Kingdom. There, Polly Benson waves aromatic lotions under visitors' noses while telling them tales of laboratory dogs pumped full of shampoo and geese plucked bald for down coats. In 1987, Benson opened the boutique to sell cosmetics, soap and cleansers that were developed without animal testing and contain no animal byproducts. Those products she and other animal-rights activists refer to as "cruelty- free. " The shop in Wilmington is one of a tiny number of stores nationwide specializing in non-animal-tested products for shoppers who are concerned about animal rights.

HER FIRST ALBUM appeared six years ago. Yet people are still pondering who is this character Nellie McKay, and why does she so confound and astonish? At first glance, this slight, strawberry-blond 28-year-old comes off as winsome and shy, a bit "kooky" and old-fashioned. Largely that's because she sings in a light, dreamy voice and with old school arrangements, some featuring ukulele. The sort of stuff that hasn't been in pop vogue since the 1950s. True to that nature, too, McKay - pronounced McKye - devoted a recent album ("Normal as Blueberry Pie")

THE MEDIA world is jumping like jackals over the latest assault on press freedom and common-sense. The Washington Post recently put in a request for the medical records of Ryma, a popular giraffe who died while under the care of the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. But zoo director Lucy Spelman refused to turn over the documents, saying doing so would violate the giraffe's right of privacy and the doctor-animal relationship. There is nothing in the law that says animals have a right to privacy or that there is a doctor-animal privilege, so the media mavens are heaping scorn on the National Zoo. But just for the record, this newspaper - famous for its pet obits - backs the animals on this one. It's obvious to us that Ryma has a right of privacy.

On this peaceful spring Saturday morning in the Philadelphia suburbs, Tina Sowicz and her husband, Bob Schiff, have a few chores and errands to do. Bob, a marketing analyst for Prudential, plans to water the grass behind their two-story Colonial in Hatfield. You know how hard it is, Bob says, to get new grass going. Tina, a tall former high-fashion model, hopes to get in some work on the new garden. The straw arrived yesterday, and she has tomatoes and herbs in mind. But first, around 10 a.m., Tina will hop into the Nissan Sentra and head into the city - loaded down with banners painted with slogans, pictures of dying animals, and red splatters and smears that resemble blood.

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - Pat Derby - a former Hollywood trainer for Flipper, Lassie and other performing animals who later devoted her life to protecting them from abuse - has died at age 69, her organization said Monday. Derby, who had throat cancer, died Friday at her home in the biggest of the animal sanctuaries run by her organization, the Performing Animal Welfare Society, or PAWS, in San Andreas, Calif., outside Sacramento. During the 1960s and '70s, Derby worked on television shows like "Flipper," "Daktari," "Gunsmoke" and "Lassie," and wrangled a pair of pumas, Chauncey and Christopher, that appeared with model-actress Farrah Fawcett in popular commercials for the Mercury Cougar.

By Ingrid E. Newkirk Hope springs eternal, no matter how slim the odds. You can see that in the long lines for Powerball tickets, despite the cold weather in most of the 42 states where the jackpot has climbed to hundreds of millions of dollars. No one can be blamed for wanting to win such a windfall. With more than $400 million in the bank, you could have a lot of fun, buy a lot of things you need - and a lot of stuff you don't - and do an enormous amount of good for those who weren't so lucky, like those poster children with cleft palates, the dogs in animal shelters, impoverished students who ache to go to college, the homeless man who needs a place to hang his hat and tattered coat, and a hopeful inventor in need of a little capital to kick-start her promising idea.

A pigeon is released or catapulted into the air and starts to takes flight. A few yards away, a gun club member quickly aims and fires a shotgun, usually striking the bird. Some of the hundreds of pigeons released in a typical daylong shoot die instantly. But as many as 70 percent are only wounded, animal-rights activists allege, and dying birds can languish for days. The result is "an animal-rights vs. sportsmen's-rights issue," said State Rep. Mike Tobash (R., Schuylkill)

HERE WE go again. According to a survey, Michael Vick has been deemed America's most disliked athlete by Forbes. It must be true because Forbes commissioned Nielsen and E-Poll Market Research to do the polling - the same pair that found Vick to be the most disliked player in the NFL in November. In the more recent survey, Vick finished tied for first with Tiger Woods. Sixty percent of those surveyed described Vick and Woods as an athlete they "dislike," "dislike somewhat" or "dislike a lot. " So why was Vick given the top spot?

EDWARD COFFIN said yesterday was "bittersweet," even though he ended it $15,000 richer. The city agreed to pay Coffin, an animal-rights activist, that sum as a settlement. He sued the city last year with the help of the state's branch of the American Civil Liberties Union after he was illegally arrested during a supermarket protest in 2009. "The money is appreciated, but my ultimate goal was to get better First Amendment training for Philadelphia police officers," he said. "I think I've made some progress, but it's still a major problem.

SEATTLE - Forty years after hunters lassoed a young killer whale off Whidbey Island, Wash., and sold it to a Florida theme park, whale advocates are turning to an unusual tactic to try to force the orca's release: the Endangered Species Act. In a move legal experts said could have significant implications for other zoos and aquariums, animal-rights activists recently sued the federal government, arguing that the law may require Lolita, the killer whale...

TRENTON - Animal-rights activists seeking to protest the state's black bear hunt will head to court Monday to try to persuade a judge to allow them to demonstrate at a bear check station. The advocates conceded Friday there wasn't enough time for them to challenge a court decision allowing the state's six-day bear hunt to begin Monday. They then got informal approval from a state Department of Environmental Protection official to demonstrate at the Franklin bear check station in Sussex County, according to Doris Lin, an attorney for the protesters.

It's hard enough for soldiers to head overseas and leave behind their spouses, children, parents, and friends, but saying goodbye to your blue-eyed husky can break a man. As soon as Andrew Chern, a young Navy recruit from Palisades Park, N.J., received his orders this summer to report for boot camp, he and his wife, Grace, made the rounds, hoping to find a friend or relative to take care of Mac. The puppy, a purebred, had been a gift to...

BARCELONA, Spain - Matadors drove the killing sword into bulls for the last time yesterday in Spain's powerful northeastern region of Catalonia. Three of Spain's top bullfighters, including No. 1 Jose Tomas, starred in the sold-out show at Barcelona's 20,000-seat Monumental ring. Many fans then invaded the ring to grab handfuls of sand to keep as souvenirs. The bullfighters were later carried shoulder high from the ring into the streets outside the bullring while the crowd chanted slogans in favor of freedom and against the prohibition.