NABA favors kids killing a half million classroom reared Painted Ladies

[Paul Cherubini]

Insect Lore, Shafter, California sells about a half million Painted Lady
caterpillars to schools each year in rearing kits like this:
http://www.mindspring.com/~cherubini/kit.JPG

Schools have been buying these kits for the past 20-30 years.
When the butterflies emerge the children have been
releasing the butterflies.

Now Jeffrey Glassberg is urging USDA to stop these school
releases. So if USDA adopts NABA's policy, the children will have to
to start killing about a half million Painted Ladies a year.

Below are the specific comments Jeffrey Glassberg and Bob Pyle
made about the kits in yesturday's Wall Street Journal Article:
http://interactive.wsj.com/fr/emailthis/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1010964326633546440.djm
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"And using butterflies in school projects doesn't sit
well with him [Jeffrey Glassberg] or with Mr. Pyle, either. Both 
would preferfor schools to scour vacant lots for butterfly eggs and
raise those, or plant milkweed to attract their own Monarchs."

Otherwise, says Mr. Pyle, "the butterfly appears in a box 
in the mail, you feed it something that looks like Jell-O -- it
gives an awfully watered-down experience." At the very 
least, urges Mr. Glassberg, don't release commercially 
raised butterflies into the environment. "You take chickens
to school, but you don't release chickens into the woods," 
he reasons. And he says he has told the USDA as much.

 
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