CBC lets animals down (Yukon News, Feb 20/09)

CBC coverage of nonhuman animal issues is so often one-sided in favour of animal exploiters.

Show host Al Foster was excited about having a unique opportunity to “skin a lynx” the next day (‘A New Day’ morning show, Monday Feb.16th). It was a relief to hear on Tuesday's show, that a lynx was not trapped and skinned for CBC to glorify

Animals are exploited and killed, yet CBC Yukon and CBC North condones (cheerleads) practices that any caring person would perceive as cruelty. Consider CBC's heavy promotion of trapping and lack of reporting on the suffering of man’s best friends who are forced to run in the Yukon Quest.

Thank you Genesee Keevil and Yukon News for telling some of the hard truths about the Yukon Quest--amongst all the media hype. The Wednesday News contained more real reporting in that one issue than CBC has done in the 26 years the Quest has been run.

The only way the real Quest athletes’ have to show how they suffer (other than outright dying, as many dogs have done in the race) is by leaving vomit and bloody diarrhea along the Quest trail. Thank you also to musher Jean-Denis Britten for bearing witness to this.

To the Yukon Quest race veterinarians – it is completely unethical for you to sanction an event in which dogs are injured and killed as a regular consequence of this and other races, including the Iditarod.

About head Quest veterinarian Kathleen McGill’s reply to Genesee Keevil’s questions regarding “sled dog myopathy” – “no comment” (she said she didn't have the time) is not acceptable to the Yukon public, whose tax dollars support this brutal race.

As a Federally funded news agency, CBC should be doing some real investigative journalism, instead of cheerleading for the animal exploiters.

Mike Grieco