70 years of missing the link

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:

 

 

70 years of missing the link

 

CHENNAI--Non-recognition of the

relationship between Indian street dog purges and

monkey invasions is no new phenomenon--and not

only Indians have failed to observe it.

Separate articles on page 22 of the July

1938 edition of the National Humane Review,

published by the American Humane Association,

detailed both a dog pogrom in Chennai, then

called Madras, and the industry of shipping

monkeys to U.S. laboratories that had emerged in

several leading Indian cities. Neither the

British correspondents who furnished the

information nor the Americans who wrote the

articles appeared to be aware that one practice

might be fueling the other.

" Stray dogs are a problem in India, as

in our own country, " the editors observed, " and

city handling in India is as revolting as in many

American cities. Through the endeavors of the

Madras SPCA, electrocution has taken the place

of clubbing dogs to deathŠThat the practices of

city dog catchers are much the same the world

over is indicated by a complaint that the dog

catchers were taking only healthy dogs and

passing up the diseased ones. "

Trying to stop the monkey export trade

was the special concern of a Miss Howard Rice,

of Pune. In 1937 she won a temporary suspension

of the traffic during the summer months. The

trade was finally stopped entirely in 1978,

through the combined efforts of the Blue Cross of

India and the International Primate Protection

League, but as urban monkeys have proliferated

in recent years, political arguments for

reviving it have resurfaced.

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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