It’s Knut fair: German zoo suing for polar bear profits

A custody battle is raging over Germany’s celebrity polar bear Knut, between the zoo that legally owns him and the zoo that has hand-reared him from birth.

(Picture of Knut by Reuters via Der Seigel)

Berlin Zoo may have reaped an estimated 10 million euros, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, in increased visitor attendance and merchandising, since the cub hit the headlines in 2007 as an orphan that was rescued by keepers.

Now the legal owners, Neumunster zoo, are demanding a share of the profits, or else they want Knut back.

The zoo first wants to know exactly how much the crowd-pulling bear has made for the Berlin Zoo, a spokeswoman for the Berlin regional court told AFP. “The second stage could be a demand for payment,” she said.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle has reported that Neumunster has asked for 700,000 euros for an outright purchase, but Berlin has countered with half the amount, the standard price for a polar bear according to the court spokeswoman.

Knut was born in Berlin zoo after his father was loaned out by Neumunster in a breeding deal that gave the latter ownership to the first born cub.

Ironically, Knut, and the Berlin zoo’s, success began after the cub was rejected by his mother and his life was endangered. Zoo staff intervened in a controversial move that angered conservationists who said he should be left to die. He had a twin brother who was also rejected and didn’t survive.

“If truth be told, the zoo should have killed the baby bear,” one campaigner was quoted by the BBC as saying.

But photogenic Knut quickly became an animal celebrity, attracting thousands of fans and lucrative deals including documentaries and fashion shoots. He has inspired an array of merchandising including cuddly toys, jigsaws, mobile phone ring tones, windscreen cleaners and books.

His early development has been avidly followed in the media including high-brow publications such as Der Spiegel, who reported in 2007 that his equally famous keeper, Thomas Dorflein, was having problems adjusting after he had been ordered to cut down on contact with the growing cub.

44-year-old Dorflein, who nursed the polar bear cub in his most helpless days, died of a heart-attack last September.

Last year the magazine reported that Knut was pining for human companionship during an enforced period of weaning-off people. “He has become so used to the attention of people that he cries when no one is standing in front of his enclosure watching him,” Der Spiegel reported.

Knut has also been seen mimicking tourists taking photos, according to AFP.

Last month a woman jumped into the polar bear enclosure to try to make contact with Knut, the Guardian reported. She was seriously injured after another bear attacked her.

Now the Berlin court has ordered the feuding zoos to settle their dispute by June 13, if they want to avoid legal intervention.

Berlin zoo director Bernhard Blaskiewitz had hoped to settle the matter with Neumunster a lot earlier, “give them a few penguins and let that be an end to it,” he said.

Care for some pandemic with your cut-price pork?

Swine flu has infected more than 9,800 people and killed 79 since it raised its snout on the global stage at the beginning of May, according to the World Heath Organization.

As soon as word spread like a virus in the global media, the meat industry piped up, saying that, as the problem was primarily in the human population, the name was misleading.

The WHO concurred soon after, announcing that we should all call the bug by the unpromising name of influenza A(H1N1) virus.

But for many scientists there are good reasons to keep the name swine flu.

Writing in the New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie explains, “This type of virus emerged in the US in 1998 and has since become endemic on hog farms across North America.”

Until then a normally mild form of swine flu existed in pigs, which didn’t show much sign of evolving. But in 1998 the virus “swine H1N1” mixed with human and bird strains, resulting in “triple reassortants,” first detected in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas.

It was a potent mix, with pig virus proteins making it a fast evolver, and the avian portion giving it quick replicating powers and therefore added virulence.

It is now entrenched in the North American pig population and there is evidence that thousands of farm workers have been infected with mild forms. “One in five US pig workers has been found to have antibodies to swine flu, showing they have been infected,” writes MacKenzie.

The current strain of A(H1N1) was first detected in humans in Mexico this year. Reports surfaced in early April that residents of a town called La Gloria, east of Mexico city, were hit by a surge in respiratory disease. After Easter week, when millions of Mexicans travel, new reports of the disease emerged across the country.

Residents of La Gloria blamed pig farms in nearby Perote owned by Granjas Carrol, a subsidiary of US hot giant Smithfield Foods, Mackenzie wrote.

Smithfield Foods denied any wrongdoing, citing its vaccination programme and monthly tests for influenza. But according to Mackenzie, “all the evidence suggests that swine flu was a disaster waiting to happen.”

The problem is that the virus has been evolving rapidly in a microscopic arms-race against the hog immune system.

When pig mortality started affecting profits after 1998, the meat industry went into vaccinating overdrive. But inoculation hasn’t stemmed the flow of new flu strains, writes Peter Aldhous in a separate New Scientist article.

The virus has been mutating and evolving faster than the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the US Department of Agriculture, has been able to keep up.

“We only chased this virus with vaccine rather than confront it,” said Rodney Baker who was formerly a vet for major US pork producer Premium Standard Farms.

While small drug companies would compound batches of vaccine for specific strains affecting a particular herd of pigs, it takes months or years for those vaccines to get USDA approval for the mass market. By then the dominant virus strain would have already evolved to beat the vaccine.

“Under some circumstances, the vaccines may even have made the disease worse,” Aldhous writes.

In one test on the effectiveness of the vaccines Baker inoculated 20,000 pigs with a mass-produced vaccine and left another 20,000 untouched. Twice as many pigs died in the vaccinated group than in the control. In theory a vaccine can make a virus more potent if there is a slight difference between the vaccine strain and a new mutation.

But stopping the vaccinations is not an option because the viruses now circulating in North American pigs would, if left unchecked, keep spreading further.

New Scientist is careful to point out that pig vaccination programs cannot be blamed for the evolution of flu strains. Pig reassortants are notoriously promiscuous, Aldhous explains, readily swapping surface proteins to slip past immune systems. “Even if no vaccines had been used, natural pig immunity would probably have been enough to drive the emergence of new variants,” he writes.

More effective, genetically modified vaccines that stop virus strains from mutating may become available in the future. But research is expensive and the pork industry is under pressure from rising feed prices and low supermarket prices.

So, given the choice between bargain pork chops and lowering the risk of a global flu pandemic, what would you do?

(Photo of pig farm from magnusgas.com)

Cobra dazzles Hong Kong beach goers

A popular Hong Kong beach was visited by a two-metre king cobra last weekend, although most people who saw it had no idea that they were looking at one of the most lethal snakes in the world.

(Pictures by Martin Megino)

A large crowd of day trippers were spread across one of the territory’s longest and best beaches on Lantau island, when some people saw the reptile swim out of the water.

Concerned bathers on Pui O beach called the police, who soon arrived and cordoned off an area to give the snake a wide birth, although it was mistakenly identified as a python at the time.

When I arrived to take photographs, a policeman warned me against crossing the cordon, saying that I would scare it back into the sea. We assumed that they were waiting for an officer from the Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department to catch the snake, in line with its conservation policy of relocating pythons to designated sites.

Dozens of beach-goers, including mesmerised children and their awestruck parents, looked on at the enormous beast, which seemed alert, but mostly untroubled in its chosen resting spot on the grey sand.

According to an AFCD field-guide on poisonous snakes, the king cobra is “regarded by some experts as the most dangerous snake in the world.”

But when snake catchers hadn’t arrived by dark, the police threw sand at cobra to drive it back into the sea, as day trippers packed up, and campers at the back of the beach started preparing their evening meals.

Two days later we got a positive identification from a recommended snake expert.
“It’s a king cobra,” Michael Lau of local conservation NGO, Kadoorie farm, told us after looking at my colleague, Martin Megino’s excellent close-ups.

“The hood will only appear when it is threatened or about to strike,” he told us, noting that it had an unusual colour pattern, unlike any of the local cobras he had seen.

Although king cobras are endemic in Hong Kong, they are not common, and Lau said that the beach was an unusual place for it to be. He said one explanation could be that it was a “market snake” that had escaped a boat.

Nearly 6,000 snakes were legally imported into Hong Kong last year, according to a spokesperson from the AFCD, though this number is much lower than the 17,000 odd of the previous year and the 32,000 of 2006.

Lau said that king cobras would cost “thousands of dollars” on the local market, which wouldn’t be surprising considering their iconic status as well as the endangered listing within the territory.

Their import numbers are very low compared to the overall snake trade. Only thirteen were legally imported to Hong Kong in the years 2006 and 2007, all of them from Malaysia. None were registered last year.

That would make our mystery visitor on the Pui O beach a very rare and valuable commodity.

Polo horses were killed by accidental overdose

A wrongly mixed performance enhancing drug most likely caused the death of 21 horses that collapsed at the US Open polo championships in April, the US Food and Drug Administration announced.

The trace mineral selenium, one of the active ingredients in a drug cocktail designed to speed up recovery from exhaustion, was blamed for the sudden death of the two-million dollar team of horses.

“Signs exhibited by the horses and their rapid deaths were consistent with toxic doses,” Dr Holt, Florida State Veterinarian said.

According to Scientific American, Franck’s Pharmacy in Florida owned up to preparing the drug cocktail that was given to the horses in the Lechuzo Caracas team. The mineral was wrongly mixed for a generic version of Biodyl, a French made supplement banned in the U.S., according to FDA officials.

“The strength of an ingredient…was incorrect,” said pharmacy representative Jennifer Beckett.

Selenium is a mineral used in normal cell function, according to the FDA, and is commonly included in supplements fed to horses.

A Florida University vet who examined the carcasses of the 21 horses said that levels of the mineral were ten to 15 times higher than normal in the blood, and up to 20 times higher in their livers.

“If indeed it was injected, they must have gotten a whopping dose,” New York toxicologist Frederick Oehme told Scientific American.

He said that a selenium overdose could damage nerve cells, affecting muscle control including the heart. The safest use of the mineral, he says, is to supplement feed. But polo trainers and owners are known to use selenium injections to alleviate muscle cramping in horses, according to the Scientific American.

Several follow-up investigations are now underway, according to the FDA, but no furthers details were offered, “to prevent the investigation being compromised,” according to the FDA statement.

Following the announcement, the US polo association quickly ruled out foul play,

“The Florida Department of Agriculture report confirms that what happened to the Lechuza polo team was a tragic accident,” executive director Peter Rizzo said in a press release, adding that the association would look into new safety measures in the sport. He vowed to, “develop a stronger prohibited substance policy.”

According to US medical channel MedTV, selenium is also a dietary requirement for humans. The trace mineral, found in vegetables, helps to fight cell-damage and also plays a role in the regulation of thyroid hormones, with a possible knock-on benefit on the immune system.

An overdose in humans can also be fatal, with symptoms ranging from a metallic taste in the mouth, fatigue, irritability, vomiting, hair loss, cardiac arrest, heart failure and death.

In the US media the case has triggered a debate about the control and regulation of “compounding” pharmacists who create drug cocktails to order, ether for human or veterinary medicine.

Photo of selenium: Emporia State University website.

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