By Mail Foreign Service

3rd February 2010

Metal protrudes from their little bodies, pierced through their ears and necks with a 14-gauge needle - usually reserved for the thick skin of cattle.

And at least one of these 'maimed and disfigured' kittens also had an elastic band tied around its tail - an attempt to stem the blood flow so that the tail eventually falls off.

The woman accused of turning three helpless kittens into 'gothic cats' by piercing them up to 10 times went on trial in the U.S. yesterday, charged with animal cruelty.

 

Cruel: One of the three kittens seized at Holly Crawford's house in Pennsylvania in 2008. Its ears have been pierced

 

'Maimed': Another of the kittens is held by an official, piercings clearly visible in its ears and the back of its neck

Dog groomer Holly Crawford, 35, was allegedly selling the pathetic animals online for hundreds of dollars.

Yesterday a vet told the court that the kittens had been maimed and disfigured, and could have died.

Melinda Merck, an animal cruelty investigator and veterinarian, said the ear piercings altered the cats’ hearing.

The piercings at the back of their necks and base of tails hampered balance and jumping, local media quoted her as saying. 

'They were maimed and disfigured,' she said, adding that if infections had become severe, the three-month-old kittens could have died. 

Dr Merck said piercing the kittens' necks produced a feeling of submission that would linger with the silver metal jewellery.

 

'Disfigured': An image of a piercing in the back of one of the kittens' necks.

 

'Not acting maliciously': Holly Crawford

Mother cats pick up their young from the scruff of the neck, she said, because pressure on the sensitive nerves there leads to submissive action.

'No matter what they tried, they could not escape from this,' she said. 'It would make them feel as if they were constantly being bitten.'

A worker from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), also testified how she was alerted by an anonymous caller.

Amanda Kyle said she pretended to be interested in buying a kitten. She took pictures, and asked how the procedure was done.

Ms Kyle told the court she was told the kittens were pierced with a 14-gauge needle, which veterinarians usually use for cattle because their skin is so thick.

She said she was also told a rubber band was used to dock the tail of one kitten, stemming the blood flow so the tail falls off.

Ms Kyle said Crawford told her one of the kittens had ripped out a piercing and Crawford was waiting for it to heal before she pierced it again.

She claimed Crawford said she had pierced the kittens because it was 'neat'.

Prosecutors are accusing Crawford of inflicting pain and suffering on the kittens in a cruel bid to make money.

Crawford's lawyers, however, are insisting that she was 'not acting maliciously'.

The woman's home outside the town of Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania was raided in December, 2008, after the Peta investigation.

Crawford has insisted that she used sterilised needles and made sure that the kittens were healing properly.

She said she wasn't trying to hurt them. 

Humane officer Carol Morrison testified the cost to rehabilitate the kittens was upwards of $1,000.

In an interview with The Associated Press a year ago, Crawford said she didn’t think there was a difference between piercing a cat or a human.

Similar charges against Crawford’s boyfriend, William Blansett, 37, of Sweet Valley, were withdrawn in February.

The trial is set to continue today.

 

 

 

 

Gino D'Acampo, pictured with Samantha Fox, faces charges of animal cruelty. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

Gino D'Acampo, the winner of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!, and his fellow contestant Stuart Manning face criminal charges for animal cruelty after cooking and eating a rat on the ITV programme, it emerged today.

The pair were part of a group in "exile" during part of the series, which meant they had meagre rations of rice and beans.

A lack of meat apparently prompted the contestants to catch, kill and eat a rat.

D'Acampo, a 33-year-old chef, said in the show's video diary, the Bush Telegraph: "I saw one of these rats running around. I got a knife, I got its throat, I picked it up."

The group, including 30-year-old actor Manning, ate the rat.

Chief Inspector David Oshannessy, of the New South Wales RSPCA, said it was not acceptable that an animal had been killed as part of a performance.

"The allegation is that an animal was cruelly treated on the set," he added. "It was a rat that was killed.

"There is a code of conduct in New South Wales that dictates how animals can be used. The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable."

The charity sends staff whenever animals are used for filmed or live performances, he said, and had been in contact with the programme's producers before the rat was killed.

When they were told what had happened, they decided to take action.

"Police from Murwillumbah ... issued field court attendance notices to two men aged 30 and 33 for the offence of animal cruelty," a spokesman for New South Wales police said.

"They are due to attend court at Murwillumbah local court on 3 February 2009."

ITV was unavailable for comment.

An ice-skating bear from Russia has attacked and killed a circus director during rehearsals for a show in Kyrgyzstan.

Published: 4:00PM BST 22 Oct 2009

The Russian state circus often trains bears to ice-skate.

The five-year-old bear, part of a visiting troupe from the prestigious Russian state circus, was wearing ice skates when he lashed out at his handlers and circus staff before a performance of their "Bears on Ice" show in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

He dragged 25-year-old circus director Dmitry Potapov across the ice rink by his neck and nearly severed his victim's legs.

Mr Potapov died at the scene from his injuries.

Another circus employee who attempted to rescue Mr Potapov while he was being mauled was also severely injured during the attack.

"The victim has sustained serious injuries - deep scalp lacerations, bruising of the brain, lacerations on his body. His condition is considered critical," said Dr Gulnara Tashibekova, who was among the medical team who attended the scene.

The bear was later shot dead by police in the Central Asian republic.

The incident was not the first time a visiting Russian bear was involved in a deadly attack in Kyrgyzstan. In 2002 a bear on loan from Russia to the Bishkek city zoo attacked and killed a small child who had reached out to pet it.

In that incident, local experts blamed the animal's aggressive behaviour on its severe malnourishment.

But deadly attacks are surprisingly rare in the country's popular circuses, which often use trained bears for comedic effect.

Training bears to wear and use ice skates and even play ice hockey is a standard stunt for the Russian circus.

Can't say I blame it...

• 15:40 13 October 2009 by Andy Coghlan

Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane.

"I think our work is the best evidence yet that it's painful," says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Johnson summarised his results last week in London when receiving an award from the UK Humane Slaughter Association. His team also showed that if the animal is concussed through stunning, signals corresponding to pain disappear.

The findings increase pressure on religious groups that practice slaughter without stunning to reconsider. "It provides further evidence, if it was needed, that slaughtering an animal without stunning it first is painful," says Christopher Wathes of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council, which has long argued for the practice to end.

Stunning result

In most western countries, animals must be stunned before they are slaughtered, but there is an exemption for religious practice, most prominently Jewish shechita and Muslim dhabiha. Animal welfare groups have long argued that on welfare grounds, the exemptions should be lifted, as they have been in Norway.

Johnson's work, funded by the UK and New Zealand agriculture ministries, builds on findings in human volunteers of specific patterns of brain electrical activity when they feel pain. Recorded with electroencephalograms, the patterns were reproducible in at least eight other mammal species known to be experiencing pain.

Johnson developed a way of lightly anaesthetising animals so that although they experienced no pain, the same electrical pain signals could be reliably detected, showing they would have suffered pain if awake.

The team first cut calves' throats in a procedure matching that of Jewish and Muslim slaughter methods. They detected a pain signal lasting for up to 2 minutes after the incision. When their throats are cut, calves generally lose consciousness after 10 to 30 seconds, sometimes longer.

Cut-throat practice

The researchers then showed that the pain originates from cutting throat nerves, not from the loss of blood, suggesting the severed nerves send pain signals until the time of death. Finally, they stunned animals 5 seconds after incision and showed that this makes the pain signal disappear instantly.

"It wasn't a surprise to me, but in terms of the religious community, they are adamant animals don't experience any pain, so the results might be a surprise to them," says Johnson.

He praised Muslim dhabiha practitioners in New Zealand and elsewhere who have already adopted stunning prior to slaughter. They use a form of electrical stunning which animals quickly recover from if not slaughtered, proving that the stunned animal is "healthy", thereby qualifying as halal.

Pressure drop

Representatives for both faiths responded by claiming that stunning itself hurts animals. A spokesman for Shechita UK says that the throat cut is so rapid that it serves as its own "stun", adding that there is abundant evidence shechita is humane.

"Shechita is instantaneous, and due to the immediate drop in blood pressure and [oxygen starvation] of the brain, the animal loses consciousness within 2 seconds," he says. "It conforms to the statutory definition of stunning, in that it is a process which causes the immediate loss of consciousness which lasts until death."

Ahmed Ghanem, a halal slaughterman based in New Zealand, says that blood doesn't drain properly from stunned animals, although this has been countered by recent research at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Ghanem cites a 1978 study relying on EEG measurements led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Hanover, Germany, apparently concluding that halal slaughter was more humane than slaughter following stunning. But Schulze himself, who died in 2002, warned in his report that the stunning technique may not have functioned properly.

Journal reference: New Zealand Veterinary Journal, vol 57, p 77