today at 3:00 at the (civic center) xl center

(what a stupid name by the way, the xl center) - a protest against animals in the circus will be going on. specifically ringling brothers circus. their show is packing up, it's their last day in hartford. i personally have NOT been to a circus with animals since i was a teenager. (and that was LONG ago)

the following is an email i received:

Animal Advocates HOLD SPECIAL MOTHER'S DAY PROTEST of Ringling Circus
Appeal asks families to boycott circus

HARTFORD— Activists from around Connecticut will converge in Hartford Sunday afternoon to protest the Ringling Brothers cruelty to animals and urge families to boycott the closing night of the circus.

WHEN: Sunday, May 11, 3 p.m.WHERE: The XL Center (formerly Hartford Civic Center) at Church St. Entrance, Hartford

Protestors will distribute special Mother's Day cards that read "What would you do if your child was taken away from you and you could never see her again?" referring to Ringling's practice of ripping baby elephants away from their mothers so that they can train them to perform.

Elephants naturally form strong family bonds. In the wild, female elephants stay with their families for life and males do not leave the herd until they are in their teens. The entire herd helps to love and nurture the babies.

Ringling is currently being sued in federal court by animal welfare groups for violating the Endangered Species Act with its routine mistreatment of elephants. The plaintiffs include former Ringling employee Tom Rider, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), The Fund for Animals, the Animal Welfare Institute, and the Animal Protection Institute.

This year, Ringling is bringing its Blue Unit to Hartford for the Mother's Day weekend. All of the circus's elephants were torn from their mothers as babies, whether they were wild-born in Asia or from circus breeding facilities in this country. Four of Ringling's baby elephants have died since 1998, and Ringling has been fined by the federal government for injuring babies in the process of separating them from their mothers .

Ringling's elephants crisscross the country on the circus's trains 11 months of the year, logging more than 25,000 miles. They travel in cramped cars without climate control, eating and sleeping in their own excrement;, when not performing, they are chained or in tiny pens. Circus trainers use bullhooks and electric shock to train them, and they perform out of fear that they will be subjected to more pain. The combination of boredom, confinement and extreme stress causes many of the Ringling elephants to develop disease and show signs of neurotic behavior, such as swaying and head-bobbing.

"The natural needs of wild animals cannot be met in traveling shows," said protest organizer Deb Robinson of West Hartford. "Circus elephants lead miserable lives of constant travel and abuse. It is important for people to understand that animals don't belong in circuses and that the price of their ticket funds this cruelty."

this is NOT right

and i hope hamden really does look into this AND make changes immediately. let's just say you don't care about animals at all (which of course isn't true in my case. but let's just say that). IT'S DANGEROUS TO HUMANS to dump the carcass of a dead animal over a cliff. it would bring disease and perhaps other predatory animals into the area.

Dead animals dumped off cliff
by News Channel 8's Annie Rourke
Hamden (WTNH) _ There is a gruesome site at the bottom of a cliff in Hamden. The remains of several dogs have literally been dumped at a transfer station.
"I wasn't expecting what I saw, to be honest," said Sharon Bass, editor of the cyber paper the Hamden Daily News.
As editor, Bass gets a lot of tips from readers. So when she came out to the Hamden transfer station, she wasn't sure what she'd find.
"This person told me that they had seen the animal Hamden control officer take a dead dog, what appeared to be a dead dog, out of his truck and throw it down the cliff," Bass said.
When she looked down the cliff she saw four or five recently deceased dogs among the bones of older carcasses.
News Channel 8 has confirmed, this is the new policy in Hamden of how to dispose of dead animals, wild or domesticated. It is a cost-saving measure, the town used to pay for mass burials or cremations of unclaimed pets who had been hit by a car, or strays that had to be put down. ...........

if you're in the new haven area tomorrow

from: justin goodman
Foxes in the Henhouse: Animals, Agribusiness, and the Law
Thursday, December 13, 6:10 PM , Room 122, Yale Law School , 127 Wall St .
Free and open to all. Refreshments will be served.
David Wolfson will present a lecture on the state of legal protection for farmed animals in the United States . Most state anti-cruelty laws exempt "customary farming practices." Wolfson will examine how these exemptions made it into the statutes and the dampening effect they have on courts' ability to hear even cases of egregious animal cruelty.
Wolfson is a partner in the Global Corporate Group at Milbank, Tweed , Hadley & McCloy LLP. He teaches animal law at Columbia Law School and NYU Law School , where he is currently an adjunct professor. He has represented several animal protection organizations—including the Humane Society of the United States , Farm Sanctuary, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund—and has written extensively in the area. Recent works include a chapter in Animal Rights (edited by Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein) and a forthcoming article in Law and Contemporary Problems.

CONNECTICUT FOR ANIMALS
connecticut for animals

www.uchckillsmonkeys.com

mark your calendars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please cross-post.
2nd Annual Maple Farm Sanctuary Picnic Fundraiser
October 21, 2007 12p-5p 101 North Avenue Mendon, MA $10 admission fee includes:
Vegan food prepared by Dawn Herbele and Ken Yukimura of Fusion Cafe
Live music from vegan artists Joshua English, 27 and others
Special presentations by MFS founder Cheri Ezell and former political prisoner Peter Young
Silent auction
Guided sanctuary tours
and more...Maple Farm Sanctuary is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We are a farm animal sanctuary providing lifelong homes for abused, abandoned and unwanted farmed animals while promoting veganism and respect for all life through public information. Maple Farm Sanctuary has taken in a fraction of the billions of farmed animals that are bought, sold, tormented and slaughtered by the meat, dairy and fur industries. They live the remainder of their lives in peace, free to roam and meander the land.
www.maplefarmsanctuary.org www.myspace.com/maplefarmsanctuary

a new website

connecticut for animals

justin, your protest worked (well it worked so far as being brought to peoples attention)

you got coverage in the courant

perhaps someday, when we all decide to not practice violence and torture each other we can decide at the VERY same time, to NOT practice violence or torture animals as well

Pigs As `Patients' Draws Protest Animal Rights Activists Decry Surgical Training Program



By WILLIAM HATHAWAY, And HILARY WALDMAN Courant Staff Writers

Surgical trainees at Hartford Hospital on Thursday took a course that called for them to plunge their hands into a gory mess on an operating table and try to repair injuries designed to simulate gunshot or stab wounds. Outside the hospital's front entrance, fewer than 10 protesters held placards assailing the damage inflicted upon the "patients" - five, anesthetized, 100-pound pigs used in the regularly scheduled training course."When we tell them they cut open and stab pigs, people gasp," said Justin Goodman, an animal-rights activist who organized Thursday's protest. "They ask for our literature."Although Goodman said his ultimate goal is to stop the use of all animals in research and medical education, the pig protest sheds light on a medical dilemma - how best to prepare doctors to deal with a situation few in the United States will ever face - the need to repair someone severely damaged by trauma..........

.....However, Dr. John J. Pippin, a Dallas cardiologist and research adviser for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says the great majority of courses to train surgeons do not use live animals.Most surgical training programs, Pippin said, use a combination of simulators, closely supervised practice on human patients and practice on dead human bodies. "The momentum and the trend in modern medical education is not to use live animals because it is not necessary to do so," Pippin said.........

hartford hospital thursday 5/24 4:15 to 6:15

Medical professionals, activists decry live animal trauma lab at Hartford Hospital

Hartford – Local animal rights campaigners will lead a demonstration at Hartford Hospital on Thursday afternoon to denounce the use of live pigs in surgical training exercises.

Date: Thursday, May 24, 2007
Time: 4:15-6:15pm
Place: Main entrance to Hartford Hospital, 80 Seymour Street, Hartford, CT

Hartford Hospital, in concert with the UConn School of Medicine, administers a monthly program called the Advanced Trauma Operative Management course (ATOM). ATOM includes a 3-hour lab session during which surgery trainees and practitioners pay $1,500 each to manage fourteen different traumatic injuries that are intentionally inflicted in live adult pigs. The animals must suffer through penetrating injuries such as stab wounds to numerous organs in the abdomen and chest, including the kidney, pancreas, stomach, diaphragm, and heart.

Hartford Hospital uses five pigs per month in this series of highly invasive surgical procedures. Those pigs who survive the traumas and surgeries are killed at the end of the exercises. According to documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the facility regularly confines over 100 pigs for use in this program.

Justin Goodman, a local animal rights campaigner, stated, "Pigs are highly intelligent, sensitive individuals who are very easily stressed. Studies at US and UK universities show pigs to be more intelligent than three-year-old children. And confining, mutilating and killing them for these kinds of exercises is not only morally wrong, but scientifically unjustifiable. We want these exercises ended immediately."

He continued, "Regardless of how many pigs these doctors operate on, some human patient in the ER is still going to have to be their first. Why waste the state's resources and the lives of these animals training surgeons on anatomically incorrect models, especially when there are so many promising ethical alternatives that could be used instead?"

Added John Pippin, M.D., Senior Medical and Research Adviser for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: "The surgery training paradigm has moved beyond the use of live animals. More than 95 percent of American medical schools have eliminated the use of animals to teach surgery skills, the majority of Advanced Trauma Life Support courses do not use animals, and the American College of Surgeons no longer uses animals in its own courses or in its revised surgery curriculum."

Goodman added, “An overwhelming majority of trauma surgeons worldwide have never conducted such barbaric exercises on nonhuman animals of any kind and the available research suggests that surgical knowledge and competency are not improved by doing so. In the interest of upholding their duty to practice ethical medicine, these doctors and researchers should be abandoning these superfluous animal studies in favor of pursuing human-relevant, humane alternatives," Goodman said.

only one more step

the governor has to approve it and it PASSES!
House approves bill on helping pets in family violence cases

(Hartford-AP)_A bill that would protect pets in family violence cases has cleared the state House of Representatives and now moves to Governor Rell for final approval. The proposed law would allow a judge to issue protective and restraining orders for animals owned or kept by victims of domestic violence, stalking and harassment. North Stonington Representative Diana Urban told fellow lawmakers about an abused woman who went to a safe house to escape her abuser. While she was there, the abuser cut off the ears of the woman's dog and mailed them to her family...............