You could visit the Animal Welfare Club's horrific website or you can read my random notes and summary. The forum ran from 9:30 to 4:30 and featured 5 speakers. There was the OSPCA's chief inspector, Connie Mallory, on "Animal Cruelty Investigations." There was the co-founder of a primate sanctuary, Storybook Farm, discussing "The Plight of Exotic Animals in Canada." Dr. Ed Pajor from the University of Calgary discussed "Animal Welfare at the Calgary Stampede." Dr. Michael Noonan from Canisius College (from Buffalo) discussed "The Behaviour and Welfare of Killer Whales in Captivity", and the Detroit Zoo's executive director Ron Kagan discussed "The Challenges of Zoo Animal Welfare." And, most importantly, lunch was provided.
I heard about it through GSETA and sat with two GSETA members during it. The presentations were mostly engaging, and here are some fun notes
- Dr. Georgia Mason, Guelph, who introduced the forum, raised the connection of pet ownership and meat production with cruelty. Subversive agenda? :) I'll note the forum had a prominent supply of vegan food at the lunch.
- The Ontario SPCA formerly concerned itself with pets and children: children aren't pets? The Children's Aid Society was spun off because, apparently, children are not pets.
- With greater knowledge of the OSPCA's enforcement activities, I now think of them more as a paramilitary organisation
- At one point, there was a vegan cookie I wanted to eat, but I ate the vegetarian one, so a vegan could enjoy the vegan cookie, but perhaps vegans would be happier if I had opted to eat no cookie at all?
- The OSPCA also concern themselves with animals in emergency situations, like power outages, highway accidents, etc.
- OSCPA doesn't necessarily require a warrant for its officers to intervene. Gestapo!
- Legal protection for animals explicitly exempts activities like wildlife (like fishing and hunting), agriculture (slaughter), and veterinary medicine.
- The OSPCA opposes animal fighting (dogs, roosters, horses) but doesn't seem to have an issue with Pokémon.
- They're mostly funded by fund raising and not public funding.
- Puppies and kittens sold in pet stores can no longer come from mills. Yay!
- Apparently St. Jacob's market outside of K-W sometimes holds exotic animal auctions. Get your lemurs while you still can.
- Storybook Farm rehabilitates and cares for primates that have come to Canada by various means and need a better home.
- Enrichment activities sometimes involve giving a primate a paper bag filled with seeds: must try this on kids.
- Some people do tiger pelting in Canada
- This primate sanctuary requires a lot of heat which can be expensive. My proposed solution? Add a grow op, and use the proceeds to cover the primates' heating expenses.
- The stampede seems to go to great lengths to control the danger to animals, outside of its feature activities. I'm not sure how well that satisfies those concerned about animal welfare.
- They try to do extensive data collection: I like data.
- I stopped paying attention for a while once I realised that most equipment for kendo has leather components, and I'd like to find synthetic alternatives.
- A cow that escaped at an event in California apparently was shot by police because no one knew what to do about it.
- Attempts have been made to measure animals' states before participating, if they're stressed out, reluctant, etc. Apparently, they're pretty neutral. There was discussion about possible causes, like they're somehow fine and willing, or learned helplessness, since they've been trained and practised to compete for a while by the time they're in the stampede.
- A kendo forum poster said that cattle liked being turned into leather, his bogu told him so. This makes me curious about our future ability to measure animals' states of mind, their feelings and etc.
- Orcas are awesome! To the GSETA member that I sat next to, I suggested this would be the presenter's argument for having orcas in captivity, and it sort of was, with a five minute slide and video show of proving that orcas are indeed awesome!
- Orcas are worth $2 million a head, roughly, the most valuable traded creature on Earth.
- Low salinity in their pools results in horrifying skin peeling
- I don't really like the presentation technique where you ask an audience a question that experts have trouble with to demonstrate how hard the question is or the experts. That seems backwards.
- Orcas apparently get truly bored, have short attention spans, and ignore enrichment activities after brief whiles of entertainment.
- Orcas in captivity have developed and shared techniques for hunting gulls. Gulp. Apparently cultural transmission like that is a Big Thing :)
- Orcas do echelon swimming
- Apparently if a whale has been removed from its community for a while, its community will reject it.
- Given an animal in captivity, the presenter's interest is in how to design captive environments that are best for it. Comparison of sickeningly small pools for orcas versus a large netted natural cove.
- Presentation was largely read off a script and wasn't as engaging.
- Apparently the Detroit Zoo spends a lot more money for fewer exhibits or less exotic exhibits, and they're not really suffering in attendance for it. Hooray!
- For instance, they won't keep elephants anymore.
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