At a committee meeting on the 21/7/02 it was decided that it was important for the Federation to begin pushing itself more in the general media not just in the hobby magazines. To achieve this Jon Hollingsworth, our publicity officer has now been joined by Val Rowland. Val has a lot of experience in the publicity area and will be helping Jon to push our problems into as many high profile media situations as possible.
In recent months the FBH has been involved in articles appearing in the Pets international magazine and the Guardian. We have also been involved in a radio 4 program about large snakes, in which we argued against the views of the RSPCA who want them added to the dangerous wild animal licence list and a two hour long radio interview on BBC London in which the RSPCA officer was well and truly left speechless and unable to defend his groups current position against reptile keeping. We have also seen the RSPCA receiving bad press about their activities and the way they are using their funds in several national papers including the Sun and The Sunday Times.
FBH at shows
The FBH will be involved with three shows this year in conjunction with affiliated clubs. The first two, The  Eastern Herpetological Society show and the Portsmouth Reptile and Amphibian Society show have already taken place despite actions by Animal Aid (see below). The third and still to come will be the Essex Reptile and Amphibian Club show. Due to delaying tactics by an Animal Aid friendly local councilor the ERAC show suffered some delays but has now set a date for Sunday 10th November at the
Basildon Leisure Centre,
Nethermayne,
Basildon,
Essex.
10.30am-4.00pm.
Admission £1.50 adults and 75p concessions
Members of the committee will be at all the events and are looking forward to meeting everyone and answering any questions. It is important to turn the tide of cancelled shows. We now have a set formula by which shows can be kept totally legal and not even require a pet shop licence. We will of course give support to any affiliated clubs having problems with local councils when putting on such a show. We are eager to hear from any FBH affiliated clubs who are interested in holding members only events for 2003.
We have also been working in conjunction with the Cotswold Wildlife Park and Colchester Zoo through the summer on their reptile awareness days. These are designed to raise public awareness of reptiles and to highlight the current unfounded attacks against the reptile hobby. FBH literature is available at all these events and more are planned for next year.
Animal Aid and the EHS & PRAS shows
In the two week lead up to the EHS show at Hellesdon High School in Norwich, Animal Aid became increasingly active. Communications between AA and Broadland district council included AA's fear that children and staff attending the school following the event would be at risk from reptile related salmonella. This was backed up by a letter from Clifford Warwick who it seems is now a researcher at Leeds university. Ms Toland pointed out the danger that animals would be sold for profit and that the show would be used for selling illegal animals. There was also talk of the council breaking a mystery blanket ban by allowing this show to go ahead. Their icing on the cake was of course their interpretation of the animal welfare act which bans the sale of animals from public places such as street markets.
The Chairman of the EHS, Colin Ware and the chairman of the FBH, Chris Newman both worked together in the final week supplying the local council with true information to expose Animal Aids lies for what they were. In a final attempt to stop the show Ms Toland and some friends appeared outside the school dressed in full body bio hazard suits and masks at home time and began handing out leaflets to the children and parents containing exaggerations and lies about the risk of contracting salmonella from reptiles if the show went ahead. The school thankfully called in the police and had them moved on. Despite all this the show went ahead very successfully. One final act from Animal Aid was a press release on their web site stating that the event was shoddy and claiming that it was poorly attended by dealers. Though they rather blew this argument by then saying that as many as 3000 reptiles were available on the day. They also claim lack of hygiene despite everyone working strictly to the FBH hygiene code and that they are working with the police (though they don't seem to of told the police this yet) on evidence gathered at the show relating to violations of the animal welfare act and sales of threatened species. Given how well the show was run one has to wonder if they actually attended it, especially as the Police, an Environmental health officer and an RSPCA officer all attended and had no complaints. Things followed a similar pattern for the PRAS show with the venue pulling out just over a week before the show and the local council raising concerns, both incidents due to pressure from the AA mob. Joint FBH and PRAS talks with the local council and venue enabled the show to go ahead.
Interestingly a large number of bird shows have been effected by these tactics this year the worst being three thousand people being turned away from what should of been the Malvern bird show. The result of is that the FBH is seeing a number of pro bird groups emerging, who we will be working with in the fight to keep both our hobbies alive and well. The FBH have made many attempts to communicate with Animal Aid and Ms Toland this year but have yet to receive any form of reply.
RSPCA's Morbidity & Mortality report
Earlier this year the FBH exposed a report that the RSPCA had commissioned in to the reptile hobby and trade. Many thousands of pounds of donations had clearly gone on funding the German animal rights group "Pro-Wildlife" while they produced this despicable document. The Federation found that "Pro-Wildlife" was a similar set up to Animal Aid, in that it consisted of two German women with extremist views against keeping animals as pets. To produce this highly biased, massive report they sifted through hundreds of books and magazines on reptiles looking at the problem pages for anything that suggested a species of reptile was problematical or had some special requirement how ever minor. From all these out of context snippets they put together a 120 page report showing reptiles as impossible to keep and the reptile trade in the worst possible light. The highlight of the report was the dividing up of reptiles into four groups.
1) species not suitable for private husbandry
2) species suitable only for qualified keepers
3) species conditionally suitable for knowledgeable private individuals
4) data deficient
over 400 species are listed in these four groups and between them they put the keeping of reptiles out of reach of most reptile keepers. Fortunately The FBH with help from the German reptile group DGHT were able to put together a much more impressive document outlining the many errors within the RSPCA report and completely discredit it. As a result of this, we have now been informed that the European Scientific Review Committee have now dismissed it's findings. Hopefully this report has now been consigned to the waste paper bin and will never be heard of again. Interestingly while the Federation were researching the M&M report they came across a report commissioned by the RSPCA nine years ago. This was by two respected biologists, Dr A C Smart and Dr I G Bride from the prestigious and highly respected Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology who had produced a very fair report outlining were the reptile trade and hobby could be improved and generally giving a reasonable account of things. It seems this was not what the RSPCA wanted as they chose to hide it away and ignore it. The FBH contacted Dr I G Bride and given his knowledge on the reptile hobby from his report asked him for a comment on the RSPCA's new report. He replied
Quote
" It is a good example of using the scientific language and context but ignoring the scientifi method because the conclusions are predetermined"
The FBH attended a conference with the German group DGHT mentioned above on the 21st of September with a view to forming a joint European group with enough political power to be heard in Brussels. We will give more information on this in future news letters as things progress.
FBH Website
Our new web site is finally fully functional and can be found at www.f-b-h.co.uk/ . It contains all the latest news and press releases, transcripts from the two radio interviews and loads more. On top of this we also have an FBH forum at pub37.ezboard.com/bfbh where you can post questions and suggestions directly to the FBH Committee.
Concessions
It has been decided by the committee to drop the little used OAP and under 16 membership concession. In it's place we are introducing a £15.00 family membership to cover two adults and four children also the Retailer section has now been extended to cover Retailers, Traders and Breeders @ £50 pa.