The following advertisement by Pfizer Australia appeared in The Land newspaper on 22nd September 2011 in the ‘Livestock’ section on page 70.  It was promoting Pfizer’s pharmaceutical vaccine product Gudair® Vaccine for the control of Ovine Johnes Disease (OJD) infecting Australian sheep.

The ODJ Menace may well be a threat to sheep flocks,

but Wolves have got nothing to do with ODJ nor with Australian sheep!

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Wolves have got absolutely nothing to do with Ovine Johne’s Disease.

Wolves don’t even exist in Australia.  They are native to continental Europe and Northern America where in fact the Gray Wolf continues to be persecuted and where Pfizer is headquartered, in New York City.

Ovine Johne’s Disease is a serious wasting disease that affects a wide range of animals, including cattle, sheep and goats in Australia.  It is caused by bacteria (Mycobacterium paratuberculosis) that live mainly in animal intestines but can also survive in the outside environment for several months.

[Source:  Animal Health Australia  (a not-for-profit public company), ^http://www.animalhealthaustralia.com.au/programs/johnes-disease/what-is-johnes-disease/]

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Any effective vaccine is clearly welcome.

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This is the cause of Ovine Johne’s Disease, the bacteria ‘Mycobacterium paratuberculosis’

[Source: ‘Detection of Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis (Map) in samples of sheep paratuberculosis (Johne’s disease or JD) and human Crohn’s disease (CD) using liquid phase RT-PCR, in situ RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry’, by  S. Roccaemail, T. Cubeddu, A.M. Nieddu, S. Pirino, S. Appino, E. Antuofermo, F. Tanda, R. Verin, L.A. Sechi, E. Taccini, A. Leoni published online 20 January 2010, Small Ruminant Research, ^http://www.smallruminantresearch.com/article/S0921-4488%2809%2900292-2/abstract]

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Pfizer’s advertised image above of an angry Gray Wolf  is misleading, grossly inappropriate and unethical.  It wrongly and unfairly demonises the wolf species as a predatory threat to Australia sheep. Wolves are not a threat to Australia sheep.  They do not exist in Australia.

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Wolves have been persecuted since before Medieval times in Europe.  The feelings of disdain and condemnation they held toward the wolf came from England and other parts of Europe in the form of fables, fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood), and so-called true stories that sometimes reached mythological proportions.  The European hatred of the wolf was the result of much more than fantastical tales of the animal’s criminal nature.

Wolf Prejudice dates back to Little Red Riding Hood

A Grimms Brothers fairy tale inculcating the ‘Big Bad Wolf ‘ fear to impressionable children

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During European colonisation of northern Americas, European puritan Pilgrims thought they had a great moral, religious, and economic duty to subdue the wolf, along with taming the ‘wild west’ wilderness, wholesale deforestation of forests and popping off ‘tribal savages’, otherwise known as Native Americans.  The Puritans regarded the wilderness itself as a howling beast, a wolf inspired by the Devil.

So having established the wolf as a representative symbol of unkempt nature, evil, criminality, animalistic desires, and even cruelty, it was natural that America’s newcomers felt a strong moral duty to exterminate wolves. Wolfing, trapping, poisoning, denning, shooting has killed off thousands of wolves.  In 1905, cattle ranchers in Montana won passage of a law that required the state veterinarian to infect captive wolves with the sarcoptic mange and release them into wild wolf habitat (Williams 1990).

This irrational cultural hatred of wolves has perpetuated unchecked across northern American through three centuries, forcing the Gray Wolf to the brink of extinction, like the Bison.

The ultimate effect of these predator control campaigns virtually extirpated of the wolf in the United States. In May 1943, the last wolf killed in Yellowstone fell to the rifle of a local cattleman (Loomis 1995). By 1945, the only wolves left in the Western United States were stragglers (Lopez 1978) were all but gone. Except for a small population in northern Minnesota and a few on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, wolves no longer existed in the lower forty-eight states (Lopez 1978).

Gray wolves once roamed the United States from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wolves were intensively killed in staggering numbers, eradicating them from almost all of the lower-48 by the 1930s. Today, wolves have mounted a comeback, but their recovery is far from certain. Congress, for example, recently kicked wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered species list, which opens the door for hundreds of wolves to be killed.

[Source: ‘A History of Attitudes Toward Wolves: Why European-Americans Endlessly Persecuted the Wolf’, ^http://www.class.uidaho.edu/kpgeorge/issues/wolves_history/history_extermination.htm;  ‘Fighting for the Gray Wolf’s Recovery’, ^http://switchboard.nrdc.org/wolves.php]

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Alaska’s brutal ‘Predator Control Plan’
serving hunters at Nature’s expense – the Grey Wolf is native to Alaska.
The plan has already been in effect for three years, during which time aerial gunners have slain 564 wolves,

all of whom have faced horrors beyond the pale of traditional hunting methods.
[Source:  In Defense of Animals, USA’, Read More: ^http://www.idausa.org/campaigns/wildlife/alaskan_wolf.html]

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Pfizer’s wolf persecuting advertisement incites a public hate message against wolves.  It is symptomatic of a Baby Boomer attitude of domination over Nature inherited from ancestral ignorance and perpetuated in childhood by being read ‘Little Red Riding Hood‘ as children. Even in this fairy tale, the wolf was used a a metaphor for evil men. May this Grimms Brothers book be banned for children!

Pfizer management, its advertiser and the owners of The Land newspaper should withdraw the advertisement and make a public apology for denigrating wildlife and perpetuating a primitive fear against Wolves.    Pfizer claims that it:

  “incorporates protection of the environment, health and safety (EHS) into how we run our business. Environment, Health and Safety policy commitments set our direction and align with our company mission. Our policy is brought to life through strategic and operational decisions made daily by thousands of colleagues, guided by company values and effective management systems.”

[Source: Pfizer Inc. ^http://www.pfizer.com/responsibility/protecting_environment/ehs_governance.jsp]

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The above advertisement is inconsisent with this company mission.

 

Gray Wolves remain persecuted across America by irrational Baby Boomer attitudes

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