[Cet] capturing wild animal (Was: more on harvesting acorns)

[Pacdoc]

Brains (New York Times  Sep 2007)
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: August 29, 1997
Doctors in Kentucky have issued a warning that people should not eat
squirrel brains, a regional delicacy, because squirrels may carry a variant
of mad cow disease that can be transmitted to humans and is fatal.
Although no squirrels have been tested for mad squirrel disease, there is
reason to believe that they could be infected, said Dr. Joseph Berger,
chairman of the neurology department at the University of Kentucky in
Lexington. Elk, deer, mink, rodents and other wild animals are known to
develop variants of mad cow disease that collectively are called
transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.
In the last four years, 11 cases of a human form of transmissible spongiform
encephalopathy, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, have been diagnosed in
rural western Kentucky, said Dr. Erick Weisman, clinical director of the
Neurobehavioral Institute in Hartford, Ky., where the patients were treated.
''All of them were squirrel-brain eaters,'' Dr. Weisman said. Of the 11
patients, at least 6 have died
___________
Maybe enlightened self-interest makes some demands on any "judgement call"?

Wild animals are reservoirs of many very serious diseases,
one must be careful about trusting the "judgement call" that arises in one's
interior consciousness - not all spirits are of God - intuition is often a
guess based on prompting from a source which does not have our well-being in
mind.

Phillip Chalmers

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Allen W Thrasher
To: cet at justpeace.org
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 2:15 AM
Subject: [Cet] capturing wild animal (Was: more on harvesting acorns)


"If a law is unjust, then it is no law at all."

But if a law against capturing or fattening wild animals (if one exists) is 
a judgment call instead of clearly wrong,  perhaps one's obliged to conform 
to it though it's against one's own judgment.  Especially if we are 
ourselves inclined to request various legal restrictions on other people's 
behavior for the sake of conservation and related values.

My impression is that in general in the US the cases where one may capture a 
wild animal and keep it either for food or as a pet are stringently limited 
and perhaps getting more so all the time.  E.g. older books I've inherited 
recommend the merits of native flying squirrels, chipmunks, and crows as 
pets.  What are other people's impressions?  I'm pretty sure that in most 
places one can't en-pet any wild bird, even ones that are considered vermin 
and can be shot at will.

Allen Thrasher