• The CLE met with government officials in Bangalore and shared with them the manner in which the BSPCA is cracking down on illegal transporters in Mumbai, but PETA has received no word from the Bangalore government.
• The CLE interacted with the secretary of animal husbandry in Trivandrum and the director of the Trivandrum municipal corporation and inspected the Trivandrum municipal abattoir. Select checkposts for transport were identified, and pledges were made that these posts would be staffed ‘day and night’, but PETA has received no report of actual action to improve transport and slaughter conditions in Kerala.
• PETA began a series of high-level meetings with its affiliated organisations in the US and Europe to discuss strategy and to review the efforts made since PETA announced its moratorium on the campaign against the Indian leather industry.
• Bollywood’s Anupam Kher wrote a letter to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)
protesting the treatment meted out to animals transported for slaughter at the Deonar abattoir. The letter was delivered to Mumbai’s municipal commissioner, K. Srivastava. In the letter, Kher said, ‘Undercover video documentation shot in December shows animals arriving in dismal conditions, with their bones broken and bodies wounded. Such animals suffer for hours until they are killed.’ Kher urged Srivastava to take immediate necessary action to put an end to cruelty toward animals.
• May is the last month PETA received any concrete reports on the CLE’s efforts to make leather production a legal and more humane affair.
• Manisha Koirala, Akshaye Khanna and Jackie Shroff were just three of the more than two dozen stars to sign PETA’s petition to Mr Arun Jaitley, the minister of law, justice and company affairs, urging that the much-needed amendments strengthening the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act be brought before Parliament and that he help encourage the prime minister to push the amendments forward. Other well-known personalities who signed the petition include Anupam Kher, Shyam Benegal, Hema Malini, Mahesh and Pooja Bhatt, Falguni Pathak, Shammi Kapoor and Javed Akhtar.
• PETA informed various state-level officials that it planned to bring Ms Miriam Parker, an expert in animal handling, transport and the most humane slaughter methods available, to India to speak and asked them to host her presentation in their states. Only Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa and Karnataka officials agreed; however, to date, most of Ms Parker’s recommendations have been ignored.
• The Deonar abattoir failed to meet any of the requirements of the CLE’s deadline of 1st June. Absolutely no permanent or sufficient improvements were made in Deonar regarding the transport or slaughter of animals.
• The DGP’s of approximately 10 states forwarded to their police training centres PETA’s instructional video on laws that require enforcement in order to improve transport conditions for animals. Letters were also written by some DGP’s to other police personnel regarding the need for the enforcement of animal protection, but actual stopping of overcrowded and ill-suited vehicles remained minimal and insufficient.
• European retail giant Marks and Spencer informed People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that it has phased out its use of leather from Indian cows and will not purchase these skins again until improvements in animal handling are met. Retail giant Nordstrom and Wolverine, maker of Hush Puppies, Caterpillar and Harley-Davidson footwear, also joined the boycott. Talks with American and European animal protection organisations resulted in plans for some steps to renew pressure on Indian officials, but without resorting to demonstrations.
• PETA put together new undercover video footage taken in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka showing animals in overloaded conditions in lorries and being killed in view of each other with dulled blades in slaughterhouses.
Late 1998-1999
2000
January-February
March-April
May-June
July-August
September-October
November-December
2001
January-February
March-April
May-June
July-August
September-October
November-December
