…We can’t imagine a world without birdsong, can we?
Never cage them, then you’re on the right side.

Regards and good night, Venus

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Cruelty to animals, the destruction of nature, and climate change will continue in the EU for the next seven years!

In total, there are almost two thousand amendments to the European Commission’s draft for agrarian reform.

This shows how little agreements could be made in advance. There is pure chaos, so to speak, and ideological battles are waged, regardless of democracy or ethics.

IMAGE-GREECE/

And of course, the excruciating slaughter of animals is also involved because the minimal changes to the new seven-year agricultural budget do not provide for any improvements in animal welfare. Everything goes on as before!

It is possible that bullfighting subsidies will continue to be granted and instead of promoting plant-based agriculture, terms such as “veggie burger” or “with cheese flavor” will be banned.

The EU’s agricultural policy has no concept, is lobby-sensitive, anti-democratic, and despises people, animals, and nature.

Not even the official climate targets are taken into account, but rather simulated arithmetically.
Abolition of factory farming, reduction of methane gas, prevention of animal diseases, a ban on arable toxins?

Nothing!

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/22/eu-agricultural-reform-greenwashing-of-the-worst-kind/

And I mean… The direction is clear: there will be no fundamental realignment of EU agricultural policy in the 2021-2027 budget period.

According to the decision of the heads of state and government, 345 billion euros are to flow into agricultural policy from July 2021 to 2027. That is almost a third of the total budget.

The basic principle for the distribution of the funds remains unchanged after the resolutions: a large part of the money, around three quarters, goes directly to the farmers.
But not to the little farmers.

WWF, BUND, and Greenpeace, like the Greens, have called for a completely new agricultural policy from the start.

One approach would have been to decouple the allocation of subsidies from the area. Farmers in Germany receive around 300 euros per hectare.
The suggestion was that the money should no longer be linked to the size of the farms, but to the award of eco-points.
Then farmers who ignore environmental protection would no longer receive any money.

But that was never on the agenda.

Factory farming with up to 80,000 pigs on a single farm and the constant demand from consumers for their cheap schnitzel have created an agricultural mafia that lives on completely nonsensical subsidies and cheap workers.

This agrarian mafia will continue to exist as before.

Agricultural companies do an incredible amount of lobbying. They have a massive presence in Brussels and millions are used to exert influence.

EUROPE needs politicians who will liberate us from the EU.

My best regards to everyone, Venus

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Do you remember the sudden deaths of these two circus elephants, Mambo and Betty?

Our previous report: https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/18/germany-circus-elephant-mambo-and-his-companion-die-painfully-in-the-truck/

We didn’t know Betty’s name yet, now we know what her name was.

And we don’t just know that! we also know a lot of other things about the cause of death for both of them.
A report from an informant from Hungary (where both animals died) shows that circuses that make money with animals work according to Mafia methods.

Like every industry that makes money with animal exploitation.

Here is the report from the Facebook page of the organization “Action Alliance – Animals do not belong to the circus”

“Obviously, the Cassellys managed to hide the death of their two elephants from the public for weeks.

Betty and Mambo died on the night of August 17th, reports an informant on the Hungarian online platform “Allatierdekessegek”, which means: “The Cassellys had transported their five elephants – spread over two trucks – within Hungary.

After arriving at Szada Safari Park, they were left in the van overnight in stormy weather; an insufficient air supply in the larger container is said to have led to the disaster. “

Unbearable to imagine the scenery. 💔

Three elephants were pulled out lifeless the next morning, according to the report.
Mambo and Betty were dead, Tonga could still be rescued by a veterinarian who was called in.
Severely beaten and traumatized, she survived.

The two other elephants of the Cassellys, Kimba and Nanda, spent the unlucky night in a separate van and are also alive.

An official government agency has also confirmed this version of the events including the date via a comment on social media.
The veterinarian could not determine anything about an infection.

The rumor that a virus caused the death of the elephants is obviously a lie so that the Cassellys wanted to protect themselves.

According to the informant’s report, Mambo and Betty were immediately buried!

It was only on October 21st today that René Casselly jr. the death of the two elephants announced on social media – more than 9 weeks after the tragedy.

Apparently the processes are being investigated by the Ministry of Agriculture – with how much honesty it remains to be seen. We stay tuned”!

Aktionsbündnis – Tiere gehören nicht zum Circus

Please sign the petition, it goes to Hungary’s Minister for Rural Development, Dr. Fazekas Sándor, and has until now 28,000 votes!
Mambo and Betty will at least get justice after their death if we manage to get the Casselly Gang a fair punishment.

And maybe that will be a reason, with the help of the second corona wave too, to shut down the Casselly business.

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/ungarns-minister-f%C3%BCr-l%C3%A4ndliche-entwicklung-dr-fazekas-s%C3%A1ndor-mysteri%C3%B6ser-tod-zweier-zirkuselefanten-muss-aufgekl%C3%A4rt-werden

My best regards to all, Venus

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We meet them everywhere, every day.

They are abandoned, homeless house pigeons, the strays in our cities.
The way we deal with them is a scandal, a shame.

We take the right to domesticate, breed, exploit, abandon, scare, torture, starve, and kill these animals because we mean that their existence harms us.

Pigeons used to be on the rocks, we humans caught and bred them.

Because of the excessive expansion of the human population, pigeons have lost their houses and are therefore settled in the cities.
That is where their misery began.

They eat our waste to avoid starvation, they get sick, they are injured and die in agony because of our traps
People constantly blaspheme against their excrement, but no one blasphemes against the plastic waste by the sea and in barbecue areas

We accuse pigeons of transmitting diseases to us humans, but the Robert Koch Institute has proven the opposite

You don’t have to speculate for long as to who instigated the “arguments” against the pigeons … those responsible always refer to the so-called experts, such as hunters, falconers, and scare-off companies who fill their pockets with the suffering of the animals!

They are peaceful, harm no one.

They recognize faces, at least my face, as soon as I go to the train station in my city to feed them under strict discretion.

For most people, animal welfare ends when pigeons are fed.
That is why they are hunted, kicked, and arbitrarily harassed.

The only animal-friendly solution is dovecotes, which are built where pigeons live: in the city centers.

Animal rights activists (who are not paid for it) would provide them with species-appropriate feed and water as well as suitable breeding sites.

By exchanging pigeon eggs with gypsum eggs, an animal welfare-friendly and sustainable control of the population takes place.

Some cities have already started to successfully control pigeon populations in this way – but most of them still treat pigeons like strays in southerners.

We have to finally stop waging war against the pigeons, we have to make peace with them by helping them and giving back what we took from them: A roof over their head and appropriate food!

They love wheat, lentils, flax seeds, birdseed.

It is finally time to take responsibility for these animals.
Please feed the pigeons.

My best regards to all, Venus

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The animal agriculture industry is feeling extremely threatened by the growth in the numbers of people going vegan and consuming a plant only diet, and, in response, is calling for a ban on the use of terms such as burger, sausage, cheese, milk, ice cream etc for plant based equivalents. The Irish Farmers Union is attempting to persuade Irish MEP’s to vote to ban words traditionally used by the animal agriculture industry such as burger, steak, milk, cheese etc.

Interview on Newstalk

Sandra Higgins was interviewed by Mark Cagney, along with IFA President Tim Cullinanon on this morning’s Newstalk Breakfast.

You can listen to the interview here.

Food terminology

The production of plant based equivalents of animal foods has a history that is thousands of years old, dating to Chinese Buddhist monk’s use of seitan (made from wheat gluten) and tofu (made from soya beans). There has been an enormous growth in the production and supply of plant based substitutes for animal foods which meets the demand by people for more ethical food production which necessitates the use of plants instead of animals. Many vegans would prefer to dissociate from terms which have been used to associate living, sentient animals with food, because they are not food, they are feeling beings with rights. It is perfectly feasible to eat a wholefoods, plant diet without these substitutes. Indeed, it is cheaper and in many cases healthier to do so. However, people buying and consuming plant based substitutes, for the most part, live in countries where we have all grown up consuming animal products such as burgers, cheese, milk and ice cream. It is a matter of convenience to have plant based substitutes replace dietary patterns and recipes based on animal products. Many of these products are a very useful way of meeting our nutritional needs. They ease the transition to a plant diet and to veganism for many people and that can only be a good thing. Most terms such as burger, sausage, etc refer to the shapes of food. Many animal versions of these products already contain more plant ingredients than animals’ bodies. It is the right of the plant based foods industry to label their products in a manner that facilites their sale.

Is this threatened Ban something Vegans should Be Concerned About?

The cost to the plant based food industry of changing it’s labelling and packaging would be harmful to a growing, ethical, and sustainable method of food production which, in every way, is better than using the lives and bodies of other animals who share our capacity to feel and have an interest in staying alive. Interestingly, there are two cases in the US that we are aware of, that have won their right to use dairy terminology (Miyoko’s Butter and Plant Based Milk in Virginia).

The EU has already banned the use of dairy terms such as milk on plant milks. The ban has done little to halt the rapid expansion of the market for plant substitutes for dairy products. Most people do not even notice the label. The Gestalt principles of perception operate even when most of an object is missing. Our minds are programmed to logically make sense of the world in terms of our understanding. That is why a carton of a product made from oats or soy does not have to be labelled ‘milk’ for the consumer to purchase it on the understanding that it is milk. The main concern in the consumer’s mind is that the milk did not violate the rights of other animals to their lives; that it is not harmful to the environment; and that it contributes to a diet that is nutritionally adequate, healthy, tasty, and affordable.

Misplaced Perception of Threat

The perception of threat by the animal agriculture industry is completely misplaced. The future of food production must, necessarily, be plant based and farmers will be necessary for the production of that plant food and are entitled to earn a living and be supported to transition in other ways to a more ethical, sustainable way of farming that excludes the use of other animals. The industry itself has seen the potential for expansion into the production of plant based foods; many of the vegan substitutes on our supermarket shelves are produced by the industry as it cashes in on this growing market. Given the current crises facing us in terms of a pandemic that has its origins in our oppression and use of other animals, combined with the loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis, which are caused, to a significant extent, by animal agriculture, surely it is in our interests to find solutions to halt disaster and ensure the sustainability of human life, than to argue over the terminology of the food we consume.

Misleading? The Kettle Calling the Pot Black

The argument that plant based substitutes for animal foods are misleading is ironic. The most misleading products of all on our shop shelves are those made from the bodies of other animals. The lengths to which the industry goes to to hide the standard legal practices on farms and in slaughterhouses, to fight against the science that explains the damage that animal agriculture inflicts on the environment and on other life, and to attempt to dispute the facts on the health benefits of a plant diet, are evidence  that it is an industry based on misleading consumers. There isn’t a single producer of animal products that would sanction putting the facts of animal agriculture on its food packaging.

Milking It

Why the furore over plant based foods and not a similar reaction to the use by the cosmetic industry of the term ‘cleansing milk’, the fruit and veg industry’s use of terms ‘coconut milk’ and the ‘flesh’ of fruit, or the pharmaceutical industry’s reference to ‘milk of magnesia’ or the medical phrase ‘milking’ referring to the expression of the contents of a tube or duct to obtain a specimen or to test for tenderness? Has anyone ever reacted to the term ‘milking it’? It is a derogatory phrase referring to the unjust taking advantage of another; a term which aptly derives from the dairy industry’s unjust process of breeding mammals so that they can be impregnated and lactate milk for their babies which is then taken from them for human consumption; the atrocious breeding of animals to give birth and lactate even though they are prevented from this natural right to feed their babies who are separated from them after birth; the exploitative and violent process of selectively breeding animals so that their bodies can be exploited for dairy products that humans do not need, until the burden of metabolic stress, continual lactation and pregnancy, combine to reduce their production of milk and their lives are ended in slaughterhouses.

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Idaho opens first-ever swan hunting season.

In August, 50 tags were issued first-come, first-serve for Idaho’s first ever swan hunting season; those who were early to the draw will get to participate when the season opens October 19.

Swan hunting will only be available in Benewah, Bonner, Boundary and Kootenai counties, and runs until December 1.

Hunters will be limited to one swan bagged per day and one swan possession per day; they are also encouraged to take the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s swan orientation course to get familiar with identifying the bird.

Hunters also have to follow these rules:

• Have a swan tag
• Have a migratory bird permit
• Have a federal migratory bird stamp
• Have a shotgun that holds no more than three shells
• Have non-toxic shot

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Wild boar family killed by police in Rome children’s playground

The mayor of Rome has ordered an investigation after a family of wild boar were shot and killed by police in a children’s playground.

A female boar and her six piglets wandered into the playground near the Vatican last week, and crowds of children soon came to feed the animals.

But when police arrived on Friday, they shot the boar with tranquiliser darts and gave them lethal injections.

Their killing prompted anger from residents and animal rights groups.

“It was decided to hastily kill [the animals] who had found shelter in the Aurelio play area, instead of saving their lives given the alternative solutions that had been offered,” a statement from the International Organization for Animal Protection said.

“I was offering to capture, transfer and host [the] wild boars,” Michela Brambilla, an MP who heads an animal rights group, told the Corriere della Serra newspaper. “I was proposing a non-bloody choice.”

But, in a statement, one local official said the decision to kill the boar was taken because there were no cages available to capture them.

“The preferred choice is to capture them with special cages,” councillor Laura Fiorini wrote on Facebook. But the regional authorities had not prepared them, she said.

The city’s investigation is expected to examine why the decision to kill the animals was made and whether official protocol was followed, local media report.

What happened?

The boar are believed to have entered the Mario Moderni park in the west of the city after they were attracted by overflowing rubbish bins.

Police closed off the area on Thursday, but children continued to feed the animals through gaps in the fencing.

Animal rights groups say they offered to assist with the relocation of the boar but their suggestions were ignored.

On Friday, there were scuffles with riot police near the park. Some officers arrived with rifles and people reportedly shouted “Assassins!” as the incident unfolded.

Vets were on hand to provide the lethal injections before the boar were removed from the park.

Protesters gathered in the area over the weekend, and flowers and hand-painted signs have been left at the scene.

Wild boar are commonplace in Rome and much of Italy, but their presence is controversial. They are believed to be responsible for thousands of traffic accidents a year and people have been injured or killed in attacks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54599913

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Sea Shepherd Germany

Sea Shepherd is currently back in action in Italian waters to protect the Mediterranean Sea.
OPERATION SISO is a campaign by Sea Shepherd Italy to protect the Aeolian Islands from illegal, unregulated, and undocumented fishing (IUU), in particular the illegal use of fish aggregating devices (FADs).

The Aeolian Islands were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 and form an archipelago of seven inhabited islands. They are located in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, north of Sicily – only 12 nautical miles from Cape Milazzo.

They are all volcanic in origin, and their rich biodiversity provides the perfect environment for breeding grounds for many migratory species and for sperm whales, common dolphins, beaked whales, striped dolphins, round-headed dolphins, and pilot whales.

The illegal decoy buoys, referred to as “cannizzi” by the locals, pose a threat to life in the Mediterranean and to local, legal fishing. They are illegal in Aeolian waters at this time of year and must be used at the beginning of the season regulated by the local management plan of the Aeolian Islands.

What is decoy buoys?

Decoy buoys are anchored hollow plastic bodies floating on the surface of the water, to which palm branches or similar materials are attached, which act as a magnet for deep-sea fish, as they serve as a refuge for them.

Each buoy consists of 4-6 plastic canisters with palm leaves as a floating part and a line up to 3000 meters long with a diameter of approx. 3.5 mm, which is anchored to the seabed.

The pictures were taken at the beginning of October and show the dramatic consequences of IUU fishing.

For more…https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/21/italy-1500-illegally-decoy-buoys-each-year-on-sea/

And I mean…There is only one thing to do here to get the illegal fishing under control: high fines from the EU to Italy. And not only in Italy!

But the EU is currently busy with more important issues.

Not with the abolition of animal cages
Not with the cruel animal transports from the EU to third countries
Not with the advancing climate catastrophe on our planet
rather…

The EU is currently working on the new name of the vegan “burger”, “sausage” or “schnitzel” because that has bothered the meat mafia for a long time.

It even goes very quickly with the meeting of the officials in the EU Parliament to convert the godless child “Veggie Meat” with a new name into the new religion of the carnivores

For such trivial matters, the EU is always very quick.

My best regards to all, Venus

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In search of that special kick, hobby killers like to travel to South Africa to murder animals like cowards.
Almost 50,000 Germans travel abroad every year to hunt big game.

The militant hobby hunters even go so far that they praise trophy hunting as a contribution to “species protection” and development aid.
To justify the hunt with all the cruelty to animals as a contribution to species protection is a sign of madness.

Violence and lies go hand in hand.

The providers of hunting trips are numerous and leave nothing to be desired for their financially strong customers because even shooting permits for lions threatened with extinction can be acquired for a lot of money.

Often the animals are then hunted for days, shot, and flee with the most severe injuries, while they run for their lives in complete fear of death, the animals are still shot at by the insane assassins and hunted through the wilderness.

After the obligatory trophy photo, on which the serial perpetrators present themselves with the murdered bodies of the animals, the animal corpses are then mutilated.

Heads are cut off or the fur is peeled off so that the serial perpetrators can take their victims home as hunting trophies. Import bans are circumvented by giving them small change.

The trophies are then stuffed and hung in the living room. And not always legally.

A whole industry lives from this grueling business.

Our time is increasingly shaped by brutality and violence, and the hunters and their pseudo-science are heavily involved in this.

These negative energies of the culture of violence, terror, disrespect, destruction, exploitation, and discomfort, which the hunters leave behind in nature, is undignified and even a great danger for civilized cultural landscapes.

Here is a nice comment on the photo above (from Animal Peace):

“Would it be a criminal offense if we expose € 10,000 to grabbing the head of the guy?
if not, then bring us his head, also because the rest seems very immobile”

My best regards to all, Venus

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JUSTICE FOR PORCUPINES BEATEN TO DEATH WITH POLICE BATONS

Posted by Colleen Jaskot

WAV Comment:  So Cox ‘estimated’ he killed 3.  Does not sound much of a cop if he cant even count that – 3 is not a massive number is it – he did kill 3 or he did not.  I estimate I shot 13 people; or was it 102 ? – that’s estimating ! – the main question is ‘why ?’ – to pepper spray innocent animals before you beat them to death.  No doubt trying to be hard men – wonder they did not draw their guns; we see so much of it.  Fortunately we are in the UK; and to us, this action sounds like everything that is wrong with the police in the USA.  Punish them hard; real hard.

Petition Link – https://ladyfreethinker.org/sign-justice-for-porcupines-beaten-to-death-with-police-batons/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email

PETITION TARGET: Sagadahoc County District Attorney Natasha Irving

More than 10 porcupines suffered violent deaths at the hands of two former Rockland police officers, who pepper-sprayed and beat them to death with their batons while on duty. A third officer is accused of filming and posting videos of this needless cruelty on social media, according to WGME.

Michael Rolerson admitted to killing about eight porcupines, and Addison Cox estimated he killed three, according to a report by a Maine Game Warden investigator.

In one Snapchat video, Rolerson could reportedly be seen beating something on the ground and saying, “I got him,” after returning to the police car. A picture was then posted of a dead porcupine.

In another incident, an officer said Rolerson suddenly braked in the police car while they were on duty together, running out to beat a helpless porcupine.

Rolerson and Cox were fired from the Rockland police department and charged with aggravated animal cruelty; Kenneth Smith, the officer who allegedly took the videos, is on administrative leave, according to the Portland Press Herald.

These innocent animals deserve justice.

Please sign this petition urging Sagadahoc County District Attorney Natasha Irving to fully prosecute and sentence these former police officers, showing that animal cruelty will not be tolerated in Rockland, Maine.

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How much is enough? New evidence shows the suffering of animals exported from Spain to Middle East for slaughter

The investigation carried out by Eurogroup for Animals’ members Animals International and Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF) in collaboration with Igualdad Animal and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), reveals the suffering of Spanish animals exported to the Middle East. This is the umpteenth evidence showing the cruelty linked with this trade: Eurogroup for Animals urges the EU to bring an end to the needless suffering and to take a step toward meat/ carcasses only trade.

This summer more than 346,800 cattle and sheep have been exported from Spain to the Middle East and North Africa – just to be slaughtered. Libya, despite the ongoing conflict, remains one of the main importers of live animals from Spain, together with Lebanon, Algeria, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco being the main destinations. 

As shown by countless footage and images collected in the past 10 years by NGOs, EU animals exported to non-EU countries travel for many hours, even days, in critical conditions, and face brutal slaughter practices at arrival which are not even in line with the standards set by World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) to guarantee a minimum level of animal welfare at the time of slaughter.

The evidence collected in Spain by Animals International and AWF this summer, in collaboration with Igualdad Animal and CIWF, shows livestock consignments that should have never been approved because of the high temperatures exceeding the maximum range set by the Council Regulation 1/2005 (EU Transport Regulation) for the authorisation of such journeys.

Indeed, with more than 34 degrees at the port of Cartagena, the investigators recorded signs of heat stress in the animals that remained confined into the trucks for many hours before being loaded into the vessels. Scared and exhausted, the footage released today shows animals at the ports of Cartagena and Tarragona being moved with violent methods explicitly forbidden by the EU Transport Regulation (i.e  by lifting or dragging the animals by their heads, ears, legs or horns or manipulating them in a way that causes them unnecessary pain or suffering).

Some of these animals were also clearly unfit to travel as severely injured and for them the continuation of the journey should have never been allowed. In some cases, in a desperate attempt to escape, some animals fell into the sea without being noticed by the port operators and the authority appointed to ensure the welfare of the animals transported.

Eurogroup for Animals’ members documented for the first time ever the presence of Spanish animals in a Lebanese slaughterhouses, where untrained operators were filmed while putting their hands in the eyes of the animals to move them. Given the high volume of farmed animals exported to non-EU countries by Spain (Spain is the first and the second EU exporter of, respectively, cattle and sheep), it is likely that the same fate befell many other sentient beings departing from the Spanish ports. In 2019 the exports of live animals increased by 28% compared to 2018, that year 901,392 animals (cattle and sheep) were sent by sea. The first EU exporter for sheep is Romania.

Spain also imports calves from all over the EU to fatten them: these animals are very often unweaned and once fattened are slaughtered either in Spain or in Third Countries with practices that are not allowed by the Council Regulation 1099/2009 (EU Slaughter Regulation).

Read more at source

El Mundo

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Minks with mutated virus can destroy the effect of COVID-19 vaccine

Mink farms can develop into “virus factories” that can inhibit vaccines, explains the chief physician.

The virus mutations that have developed in infected mink in the North Jutland Danish region may risk ruining the work of developing a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Statens Serum Institut confirms this after it criticism emerged against the authorities currently cracking down and killing both sick and healthy mink animals.

The minks in North Jutland are infected with a special variation of COVID-19, and the same mutation has been found in infected people in the area, says chief physician Anders Fomsgaard, responsible for virus research and development at the Statens Serum Institut.

“The concern is that viruses mutated in these mink spread in the community and infect people with a virus strain that is insensitive to the vaccines that are being developed,” he says.

Read more at source

DR

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A temporary, heartwarming antidote to the seething cauldron of hatred and violence that currently envelops us.

(To see the video click on the picture)

They say animals feel like we do, but that’s not entirely true.

Animals feel more intensely, more honestly, more alive than we humans.
Animals have the ability to create feelings and to convey them.

And always give us back three times more of love and loyalty.

We have a lot to learn from animals.
If we don’t close our eyes, ears, and our heart

Regards and good night, Venus

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After the scandal ruling by the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court, according to which the Hamburg animal testing laboratory is allowed to reopen the Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology (LPT), Doctors Against Animal Experiments filed a criminal complaint against the LPT on suspicion of cruelty to animals.

The nationwide association wants to underline the urgency that the people responsible for the animal suffering documented on film must be brought to justice.

In October last year, covert recordings by SOKO Animal welfare from the LPT laboratory in the Lower Saxony district of Mienenbüttel brought scandalous conditions to the public: dogs lying in their own blood and monkeys writhing in primate chairs.
LPT manipulated studies.

For example, animals that have died in a series of experiments are said to have been swapped for living ones without having to properly note this or to take it into account in the further course of the study – with corresponding risks also for human health.

After the undercover investigation, the authorities withdrew the operator’s permission to keep animals because his reliability is not given –

This was done in January 2020 first at the Mienenbüttel location and in February at the headquarters in Hamburg-Neugraben.

Only the 3rd laboratory in Schleswig-Holstein remained unmolested.

In August of this year, the Hamburg Higher Administrative Court overturned the decision of the authorities and allowed animals to be kept at the headquarters in Hamburg-Neugraben again.

The nationwide association Doctors Against Animal Experiments considers the decision to be incomprehensible.

“Even if personnel changes have been made, this does not change the irresponsible behavior of the operator,” said Dr. med. vet. Corina Gericke, Vice Chairwoman of Doctors Against Animal Experiments.

In the opinion of the association, those responsible, especially the managing director Jost Leuschner, must at least be punished.

“The filmed evidence shows very clearly that the crime of cruelty to animals is present.
So the severity of the law has to take effect, otherwise, the animal welfare law degenerates into a laughing stock, ”explains Gericke.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/19/german-animal-experiments-researchers-frankensteins-out-of-passion/

And I mean…Three animal testing laboratories in three federal states – and one person in charge: Jost Leuschner! he is the sole managing director of the LPT Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology GmbH & Co. KG. (Annual profit 2017: around 5.8 million euros)

Moral and animal welfare laws play no role in the animal laboratory economy! This shows the suffering of the animals in the death laboratory in Hamburg.

There have been horror experiments on animals behind closed laboratory doors. With our tax money.

Dogs bled and died, monkeys were routinely abused, all in the name of regulatory testing. Animals that end up in this facility will not come out alive. Almost nobody gets any insight.

Not only do thousands of primates suffer for research in Germany, but the beagle is also used as an experimental animal.

It was even “Laboratory Animal of the Year 2019”!

Around 2,000 dogs are poisoned, burned, operated on, infected, and, for the most part, killed in Germany every year!

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is an institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany.
In 2015 it had a funding budget of 2.84 billion euros.

The DFG not only finances animal experiments but also supports the “Understanding Animal Experiments” campaign.

“Understanding Animal Experiments” is an initiative of German science, coordinated by the Alliance of Science Organizations.
This campaign costs 250,000 euros annually.

Covance Inc. is one of the world’s largest contract research organizations with offices in 20 countries.

The branch in Münster, Germany, specializes in reproductive toxicity tests on monkeys, and Covance has been operating one of the largest animal testing laboratories for monkeys in Europe for many years.

Medicines or chemicals are often pumped into the stomach or injected into the bloodstream of pregnant monkeys by tube on a daily basis to observe the effect on their offspring.
The consequences can be stillbirths or deformities. The substances are also given to male monkeys to test their fertility.
For monkeys, it’s hell on earth.

Covance was sued several times for violations of animal welfare law and the laboratory was eventually closed.

Germany is slowly developing into the world’s animal testing laboratory.

It was formerly the land of thinkers and poets.
Today we are world champions in the export of weapons and animal corpses.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Environmental groups campaign against EU’s potential ‘veggie burger’ name ban

19 October 2020

Policy director at Greenpeace says proposals come from ‘prehistoric age’.

Environmental groups across Europe have hit out at an EU proposal to ban plant-based products from using terms such as “veggie burger”, saying it contradicts the bloc’s objective to encourage sustainability. 

The organisations’ grievance concerns two amendments proposed by Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) which would restrict the naming of meat and dairy alternatives to avoid consumer confusion.

Under the measures, plant-based products would be banned from being advertised using words such as “burger”, “sausage”, “yoghurt style” and “cheese alternative”.  

Critics say this will favour the meat and dairy industries and will unfairly affect the growing plant-based food sector, which provides more sustainable products. 

If MEPs vote in favour of the amendments next week, they could become part of the Common Agricultural Policy that would come into effect at the start of January 2023.

In a letter sent by 13 leading environmental organisations to MEPS on 8 October, the proposals were criticised for contravening the European Green Deal, which seeks to reduce the agricultural sector’s environmental footprint.

The groups argue that the move goes in the “completely opposite direction” to scientific evidence showing the harmful effects of the meat and dairy industries, and against growing demand for plant-based products.

Marco Contiero, the EU agriculture policy director at Greenpeace who was one of the letter’s signatories, told The Independent that there was “no justification” for amendments which go against environmental, health and economic considerations.

Mr Contiero added that they constituted an “attempt to prevent a new, very important business from actually conquering the market”.

Read more at source

The Independent

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WAV Comment (Mark):  Despite the overwhelming wishes of the Australian people to stop live exports; the government seems to ignore them and continue to bow and make excuses for support of the trade.  If I lived in Freemantle and heard this news I don’t think I would be very impressed with this situation.

Sems that the Health Minster and the WA Premier have now got a bit of a problem here.

The authorities want to ‘remove the ship so that it can be cleaned’ !

If Australia did not have the live animal export trade then there would be no (live export ship) crew infections; no risk to the people of Freemantle (Health Minister Roger Cook said authorities were working to get as many people as possible off the ship and into hotel quarantine) – so sick crew now being taken ashore into a hotel reduces the risk, does it ?

We say Karma to the government – sadly, people may die as a result of all this; livestock ship crew being taken ashore ? – increasing the chances of infection to other land based folk no doubt.  If the government has to keep on dreaming up excuses for the vile trade to continue; them let them dream up excuses for this new situation.

If the citizens of Australia don’t like it – then get them out !

Further to our very recent post re Covid on a livestock ship docked in Freemantle:

It now seems to be getting much larger within a day – 24 crew now seem to have tested positive.

Source:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-19/another-24-cases-of-coronavirus-on-al-messilah-at-fremantle-port/12782686

Coronavirus outbreak on Al Messilah livestock carrier at Fremantle Port sees 24 more crew members test positive

Another 24 crew members on board a livestock carrier docked at Fremantle Port in Western Australia have tested positive for coronavirus, as a move to phase 5 of eased COVID-19 restrictions has again been delayed in the state.

Key points:

• The 24 infected crew members remain on the Al Messilah in Fremantle
• Authorities want to remove people from the ship so it can be cleaned
• WA’s phase 5 restrictions have been delayed but there is relief for venues

One crew member from the Al Messilah ship had already been diagnosed and brought onshore to quarantine in a hotel.

The other 51 crew from a number of countries remain on the ship, which was scheduled to be loading stock but has now been delayed.

Health Minister Roger Cook said authorities were working to get as many people as possible off the ship and into hotel quarantine to allow for deep cleaning of the vessel.

WA Premier Mark McGowan said it was possible there could be “further positive results in coming days”.

“It is becoming clear that ships arriving with COVID-19 on board is one of the weakest links and the biggest risk to our way of life in Western Australia,” he said.

Mr McGowan demanded the Commonwealth “step up” and work with other jurisdictions on the issue, saying WA received around 30 vessels to its ports every day.

“We need a coordinated, international approach to this and we need our Federal Government to take international action,” he said.

Move to phase 5 restrictions delayed

WA’s tentative date to move to phase 5 of eased COVID-19 restrictions had been pencilled in to begin this weekend.

It would have seen the 2-square-metre-per-person rule abolished along with the 50 per cent capacity limit at major venues.

Mr McGowan said WA would extend phase 4 restrictions for now, but the 2-square-metre rule would be modified.

Regards Mark

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WARNING – click on the link below to see the reality of this industry.  This is why your action is needed NOW !

https://koreandogs.org/

Go here to see videos and More:

A few minutes of your time,

may help save a life!

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

The e-People petition is the South Korean government’s official petition site and your petition will receive a response from the Korean government.

Anyone from all countries can file a petition using the e-People petition.  It’s quite simple to file e-People petitions, but you can find help on (1) how to file e-People petition and (2) how to check the status of your e-People petitions on our website.

Please help save millions of Korean animals from horrific cruelty by taking this action today.  Click below Take Action buttons to file e-People petitions for each cities in South Korea.

Click HERE to see the list of cities we are campaigning.

Then you will see a large table – on the right side in RED is the call for action.

Where it says ‘Click’ on the right side you can do just that – you will then be taken to a further page giving you actions you can take info on the specific region / dog farm you have selected.  There are ghastly videos; local government contact e mails to write to, as well as a sample letter for you to copy and send (to the contact address list given).

There are many action links – about 290 to be precise; so please add this to your favourites and return to it to take more action when you have time.

Despite the fact that dog and cat meat consumption is an everyday occurrence and is being carried out all over South Korea, it is NOT LEGAL in that country.

Their Government does nothing to stop this illegal practice and they seem happy to ignore it; many Korean citizens are just as apathetic and must also be held accountable.

This is the 21st Century, and it is high time that all South Koreans, leaders and general public alike, stand up and take responsibility to enforce their own country’s laws. South Korea and South Koreans cannot continue to ignore these brutal and unethical trades, so let us campaign to urge each of South Korea’s cities to enforce their laws and to put an immediate end to these illegal dog and cat meat trades.

Below are the most populous cities in South Korea. Please sign our petitions and send postal letters to these cities calling for an end to these illegal trades. Postal addresses for the Mayors are shown in the change.org petition. You can use our petition as sample letter (just copy and paste) or use your own words.

Please note: We will be adding more petitions so please check back with us often. Thank you!

Please help us to help the wonderful South Korean activists with their massive campaign to shut down the dog meat in South Korea.

Regards Mark

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On top of the new cases confirmed from tests overnight, Health Minister Roger Cook today confirmed a crew member from the Al Messilah livestock carrier docked in Fremantle has tested positive for COVID-19.

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/deeply-concerning-pattern-covid-outbreaks-detected-in-two-livestock-ships-docked-off-wa-20201017-p5661p.html

https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-crew-on-key-integrity-in-geraldton-and-al-messilah-ships-in-fremantle-infected-with-covid-19-ng-b881696059z

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-17/crew-member-on-bulk-carrier-in-geraldton-tested-for-covid-19/12777364

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Here are a few different sites – each with many animal welfare petitions.

Due to the huge amount, we (WAV) cannot provide individual links.  So ….

…… Please scroll through the links below and give your support to the petitions on them as you desire.

Remember – the more signatures; and the more international signatures on anything; the more chance of achieving success.  Don’t leave issues to ‘locals’; please make these issues international and get an international voice for them.

https://ladyfreethinker.org/category/speakout-petitions/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2KrqwNm-7AIVz-J3Ch1o3wFgEAAYASAAEgJf-vD_BwE

https://www.thepetitionsite.com/en-gb/animal-rights/

https://www.change.org/t/animal-rights-11

https://www.four-paws.org/get-involved/petitions

https://animalpetitions.org/

Regards Mark

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… it is absurd that we eat pigs, lambs, chickens, cows … and love cats.
What’s even more absurd is that we don’t even know why.

We only regard this as normal, but it is nothing more than the sum of the convictions and the moral rule of the social majority.

It is a fascist ideology that is adopted by most and therefore taken for granted.

We are not caught up in this violent ideology.

We know the truth and therefore we fight against this ideology with every means.

Regards and good night, Venus

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For years, mainly in Asia, it has been observed that brightly colored chicks are given away to children.

But anyone who thinks it’s just a trend from Asia is wrong.

The coloration of the animals is a perversity that has already arrived in Austria from Asia via Turkey.

At Easter, in particular, the business with colorful chicks is booming in the USA and, as already mentioned, in Europe. If you search for colorful chicks on Twitter, you will also find something in markets in Spain.

By far the cruelest images of this practice come from the holiday paradise of Thailand.

In the scorching heat of Thailand, the chicks are packaged for sale in plastic – but since the plastic bags are airtight and contain neither water nor food, the birds suffer terrible agony.

As you can see in the video: the staining method is pretty brutal. Dozens of chicks are thrown into a pot, colored over it, and then stirred in the pot for minutes as if they were objects and not living beings.

Another way to color the chicks is to squirt food coloring directly into the eggs.

The animals are then packed in plastic bags for sale.

Normal “common sense” will tell you that this cannot be healthy for the animals.

But the main issue is not whether the chemicals cause direct harm to the animals.
The much bigger problem is selling the chicks to children as a present.

Animals are not there to be given to children.

They cannot treat the chicks responsibly, because as soon as they get their natural color on the feathers again, children are bored.

If the chicks get their normal plumage, then they are of no interest, and the animals either end up in the trash or in the animal shelter.

And because the boom is so popular with colored chicks, bunnies are also colored for Easter!

Christmas is at our door, and every year the same thing happens again: fun at the expense of the animals.

Don’t take part.
Teach your children to be responsible for animals and to respect their dignity and freedom.

Never buy animals as gifts.
If we don’t do that with people, then we shouldn’t do it with animals either!

My best regards to all, Venus

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‼ ️ UPDATE: VIRUS OR CHOKING DEATH? 💔 🐘🌈🐘💔
Mambo and his fellow-sufferer are dead

Two agonizing lives have come to an agonizing end: Mambo, who was born around 1983 in the wild and has been abused as a circus clown since his capture, suffocated miserably in a van about 2 weeks ago together with a fellow sufferer whose name was not yet known to us.

This can be seen from current entries in the Elephant database.

Mambo and the elephant cows Tonga, Nanda, Betty, and Kimba (also caught in the wild) have been at the “mercy” of the Casselly family of tamers for years, who force them to perform disgusting tricks in the arena: unforgettable the unspeakable pictures, taken in 2017 in the Karlsruhe Christmas Circus when Mambo pull

Furthermore, he and his fellow sufferers were repeatedly abused during the breaks as mounts and also as springboards.

During the engagement in Reutlinger Christmas Circus 2018/19 Mambo made headlines when he had to pull children on a sled through the snow.

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UPDATE: California’s Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act

October 15, 2020

WHAT IS PROP 12: In 2018 California voters passed the “Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act,” also known as Proposition 12, and is set to be fully effective by 2022.

The law establishes new minimum requirements for farms to provide more space for hens raised for eggs, pigs in the pork industry, and calves raised for veal.

In addition, California businesses are banned from selling eggs or uncooked pork or veal that came from animals housed in ways that do not meet these requirements.

THE MEAT INDUSTRY IS TRYING TO SABOTAGE PROP 12: Although voters passed Proposition 12 overwhelmingly with over 62 percent of votes in favor, the meat industry doesn’t want to comply, and is working hard to undermine the new law.

Last year, the North American Meat Institute (NAMI) filed a lawsuit against Proposition 12 so that out-of-state farms that violate the law’s minimum housing standards for animals could still sell products in California.

HOW WE’RE FIGHTING BACK: Animal Equality’s legal team, along with other animal protection groups, is working on the case to help the state of California defend and uphold the sales ban provisions of Proposition 12.

Today, we received some great news—although NAMI had requested a preliminary injunction which would’ve blocked the law from taking effect until the court case was over, their request was denied by the court of appeals.

This means that the court determined that NAMI is unlikely to win its case.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/17/usa-the-meat-mafia-sabotages-proposition-12/

And I mean…There has never been a real will to rethink in the meat industry, as any alternatives are life-threatening for the whole meat mafia.
But in the case of California, the political will for it is there, and so the meat system itself sees itself as endangered.

The meat industry is a huge climate killer, multi-resistant germs are the greatest health threat of the 21st century and Corona, like practically every pandemic, came from animal exploitation. The meat industry is out of date and threatens the future of humanity on this planet.

Our daily decisions to consume meat are the engine of this industry that kills 10 billion animals annually in the US alone – the billions of marine animals that are also slaughtered in the US are not included.

If we voluntarily support this murderous industry and cannot provide any reason for it, except “because it simply tastes good”, then we are nothing more than pathetic monsters and do not deserve anything like human rights.

We are the ones who enable and maintain this factory of violence, slavery, and fascism against other animals.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Photo – The Guardian; London.

Listen ! – Dutch animal NGOs call on Parliament for better fish protection

The Netherlands must pay much more attention to the welfare of fish when caught and when killed say Dutch animal advocates.  

In a joint letter, Eurogroup for Animals’ members Dierenbescherming, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and Vissenbescherming, together with many other animal welfare organisations, call on Members of the Dutch House of Representatives to place fish welfare at the heart of fisheries policy.

Fish suffer en masse in capture and killing.

Animals are oppressed in the nets, injured and often endure long, painful agony. While the House of Representatives will meet on fisheries this week, fish welfare is not on the agenda.

In a joint letter, Dierenbescherming, Vissenbescherming, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and other NGOs are calling for more research into new methods of catching and killing fish, whereby the animals have as little stress and pain as possible. 

Currently there is only one ship in service that stuns plaice before they are killed.

The majority of Dutch citizens believe that the welfare of fish should be better protected and they deserve the same protection as other animals. However, it is currently impossible to buy fish in the supermarket, where the fish welfare is sufficiently guaranteed.

Dierenbescherming recently showed in a new study that some supermarkets do want improvement for the fish, but that the options are limited.

Also with fish with a quality mark, such as MSC and ASC, welfare is hardly taken into account and the animals suffer on a large scale which prompted CIWF to start an international campaign where they call on the biggest fish labels to put an end to fishing suffering.

The government must now also take responsibility and commit to better treatment of fish. Among other things, by giving fish welfare an important place in the fisheries policy and investing in improvements for the animals.

Read more at source

FOK!

Regards Mark

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WAV Comment – “breeders who have non-infected animals on a farm within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of an infected farm must put them to sleep themselves”, said Flemming Kure Marker of the government agency.

So Danish authorities go from mass murderers to people who ‘put them to sleep’. Sounds so ok when said quickly. We are talking millions of deaths here – just so thhat ugly tarts can think they look better. Shame on the Danes for still doing the farming – shame on anyone who thinks they look better in a dead animal skin than the living animal themselves. Pathetic Denmark.

All info and images rom ‘Respect for Animals’ – Nottingham, England.

Slaughter on Denmark’s covid-hit fur farms

Photos depicting long lines of killing boxes being marched to fur farms have caused shock and anger in recent days. The devices are being used to gas mink after more coronavirus outbreaks on fur factory farms in Denmark.

Danish authorities have confirmed that veterinarians and farmers have begun slaughtering at least 2.5 million mink in northern Denmark after Covid-19 was reported on at least 63 farms.

Campaign Director of Respect for Animals, Mark Glover, said:

“This is shocking news and these images are greatly distressing. It should be clear to all that keeping animals in tiny, cramped, barren cages – and in appalling conditions- creates an environment for diseases to spread rapidly.

“I’ve seen many awful scenes on fur farms during my decades of campaigning, with terribly high levels of early mortality . Now we have major coronavirus outbreaks among factory farmed mink across Europe and in Utah, USA.

“Fur factory farming is a disaster for animal welfare. It must be banned.”

Full Coverage:

Photos depicting long lines of killing boxes being marched to fur farms have caused shock and anger around Europe. The devices are being used to gas mink after more Covid outbreaks on fur factory farms in Denmark.

Danish veterinarians and farmers have begun slaughtering at least 2.5 million mink in northern Denmark, authorities have confirmed, after coronavirus was reported in at least 63 farms.

The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration is handling the culling of the infected animals while breeders who have non-infected animals on a farm within 8 kilometers (5 miles) of an infected farm must put them to sleep themselves, said Flemming Kure Marker of the government agency.

Campaign Director of Respect for Animals, Mark Glover, said: “This is shocking news and these images greatly distressing. It should be clear to all that keeping animals in tiny, cramped, barren cages – and in terrible conditions- creates an environment for diseases to spread rapidly.

“I’ve seen many awful scenes on fur farms during my decades of campaigning, with terribly high levels of early mortality . Now we have major coronavirus outbreaks among factory farmed mink across Europe and in Utah, USA.

“Fur factory farming is a disaster for animal welfare. It must be banned.”

Scientists are exploring how the mink got infected and the extent to which they spread it to people. Some may have received the virus from infected workers. Dutch authorities say some farm workers later caught the virus back from the animals.

In August, the Netherlands brought forward the mandatory end of mink farming by three years to 2021 amid a huge outbreak f coronavirus infections at fur farms.

Regards Mark

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…because animals only have us

regards and good night, Venus

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Three stranded Beluga whales saved in remote Russian Far East after a dramatic solo rescue operation by hero local inspector

An inspector from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has been hailed as a hero, after he saved a family of three Beluga whales – two adults and a young calf – left stranded on a Far Eastern beach on Thursday when the tide went out.

Alexey Paramonov said that when he arrived at the scene he saw the animals about 1.5 kilometers from the coast. One of the adults was in a dangerous position, lying on its side, so he dug a hole under the beluga and turned it over to the correct position, while also trying to protect the family from predators.

In order to prevent dehydration, he watered their skin and eyes, and, with nighttime temperatures below freezing, Paramonov also swaddled the baby to keep it warm.

Beluga whale

The dramatic incident occurred in the Khabarovsk region, a vast territory that borders China by land and is close to Japan by sea, over 6,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

A local resident told the Emergencies Ministry at about 4.30 pm local time that the animals were stuck at the mouth of the Uda river, which flows into the Sea of Okhotsk, near the village of Chumikan.

The settlement, home to about 1,000 people, is so remote that it has never been connected to the national road network. Thus, access is possible only by sea (which is frozen for close to half the year), helicopter, or small plane. It is 480 kilometers from the nearest train station and almost 700 kilometers away from the city of Khabarovsk.

Paramonov remained with the stricken creatures long after it got dark, mindful of the threat from other animals and poachers.

At about midnight, when the high tide arrived, the whales safely returned to sea on their own.

Last year, Paramonov also rescued three belugas.

Back then three adults found themselves stranded in shallow water and came under attack from crows and gulls before the hero inspector came to their rescue.

https://www.rt.com/russia/503626-russia-beluga-whales-stranded/

And we say...Yay !! Finally some good news instead of the constant horror reports we read every day about animal suffering, caused by direct animal abuse, or by those who do nothing against it.

The systematic indifference of the authorities to animal suffering leads us to regard an inspector as a hero, simply because he has conscientiously done his duty to the three animals.

And it is actually a hero who saves animals today.

But most of the officials who get paid for it don’t even give a shit when it comes to an animal’s life.

In the name of the animals, we say thank you to Inspector Paramonov!

My best regards to all, Venus

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In Baden-Württemberg, south Germany, a slaughterhouse had to close due to severe animal welfare deficiencies.

According to media reports, the Minister of Agriculture, Peter Hauk, intervened personally to suspend the fine against the operator.

A bitter article about this scandal from the SOKO animal welfare association
(for those who don’t remember: https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/08/germany-slaughterhouse-scandal-turns-into-a-political-thriller/)

“…. a pig breeding business that was reported months ago, and where nothing happened.

A slaughterhouse whose shortcomings were known for years and which was last personally protected by the Minister of Agriculture.

A slaughterhouse where the vets just watch how we do brutal force to the animals,

And: A Minister Hauk who does not see himself in any responsibility here.

Actually, he’s not far removed from tradition. Animal welfare – that has always been politically irrelevant.

And the Ministry of Agriculture in particular is traditionally trying to make it easier for animal exploiters; animal welfare is systematically ignored and prevented.

The real scandal: people have become so accustomed to the fact that the interests of animals are trampled underfoot that even Minister Hauk creates the trick of not feeling responsible even in these entanglements.

Ministries of Agriculture and their associated ministers have consistently campaigned AGAINST animals.
They prevent the smallest concessions in animal welfare, enforce perpetual extension periods, and play into the hands of the animal exploitation industry.

These people act on behalf of animal exploitation and they do the job well”.

And I mean…The district office had levied a fine against the slaughterhouse (which was closed in March 2020), which Minister Hauk suspended shortly thereafter.

After SOKO’s undercover investigation, pigs were brutally beaten and kicked, electric shock devices were used and the animals were stunned in an unprofessional and incorrect manner. The public prosecutor’s office is informed and determined.

Nevertheless: three days ago, in front of the Agriculture Committee, where he had to give an account of this corrupt and illegal act, Hauk said: He was not aware of any animal welfare violations at the time!!!

Such system structures are not normal but can be described as psychopathic. Mentally, morally, socially healthy people with decency do not engage in such disgusting, exploitative business.

Nevertheless: this system is firmly established, it is an established ideology of violence, has the authority, and is supported by all-important social institutions.

Our parents, school, church, media, or other educational institutions persuade us that eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary.
So we go on with it from childhood; without us, the animal holocaust would not exist.
No meat consumption – no slaughterhouse!

What exacerbates the whole matter is the fact that an animal is a “thing” by law, so cruelty to animals is often punished as property damage – if at all.

Black smokers’ lungs are depicted on cigarette packets; How about dead pork or beef in an animal transport or a cow with its throat cut on the meat packaging?

But the meat mafia would never allow that.
Everything indicates that the meat mafia is stronger than the tobacco mafia.

My best regards to all, Venus

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…then hunters are added to the list of threatened species and the prices of the trophies are traded in the black market

regards and good night, Venus

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Gerlingen / Vienna – The controversially discussed “Holocaust on your plate” campaign by PETA-Deutschland e.V. is lawful – this has now been ruled by the Austrian Supreme Court in the last instance and all previous court decisions as unlawful.

The legal dispute between Jewish citizens and the animal rights organization is discussed on 19 pages and PETA-Germany eV is completely right: The striking juxtaposition of pictures from concentration camps showing emaciated people and of various animal species from the usual factory farming is legal and is under one to subsume of the highest democratic fundamental rights: Freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

PETA attaches particular importance to the finding that the Supreme Court has also emphatically rejected the allegations of anti-Semitism alleged by the Jewish plaintiffs:

“The contempt of a race or a people, as relevant by the plaintiffs, is not brought about by the advertising campaign: (…) The statement only goes to the fact that Jews were treated like animals.

In any case, the comparison does not lead to the conclusion (that it is a Nazi-like content) drawn by the plaintiffs for the relevant, intelligent average observer. “

“This is a good day for animals and the right to freedom of expression”, says Harald Ullmann, 2nd chairman of PETA-Deutschland eV.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/15/the-holocaust-on-your-plate-campaign-is-lawful/

And I mean…In March 2004, PETA started a campaign in Germany.
Animal cruelty is compared to the Holocaust on posters.

Children behind barbed wire. Next to it, piglets behind bars. One was a Nazi concentration camp. The other is a slaughterhouse.

It’s the same for Peta’s animal rights activists. For us too!

But the implementation of the campaign was then banned by the Berlin district court.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany had sued because the pictures played down the fate of the Holocaust victims.
Peta went to the next instance, but the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the decision.

In the USA, however, a similar campaign had actually run, one of the pictures showed children in concentration camp prison clothes standing behind a barbed wire fence and pigs crammed together behind bars.

Between the two motifs, it translates as follows: “Open your eyes to the Holocaust of the present.”

And sentences like: “One day our grandchildren will ask us: What did you do against the Holocaust of the animals? We cannot apologize for the second time that we did not know anything. “

PETA is right, the Holocaust never ended, it just changed species. In all of the wars and genocides in our entire record history, 619 million people have been killed.

We kill the same number of animals every 5 days.

“For animals, all people are Nazis and life is an eternal Auschwitz”, said the Jew Isaak Bashevis Singer.

Pigs are thrown into gas chambers and burned alive. Male chicks that are born have practically no purpose in the egg industry, so they are separated from the females and ground on the same day they are born.

Humans have victimized animals to such a degree that they are not even considered victims. They are not even considered at all.

They are nothing. They don’t count; they don’t matter; they’re commodities like TV sets and cell phones.

We have actually turned animals into inanimate objects like sandwiches and shoes.

Why do we find it so horrible to harm a child? It’s because they’re voiceless and defenseless, just like these animals.

Those with a voice must speak for the voiceless.

150 years ago anyone would have thought it absurd for people to advocate the end of slavery.

100 years ago everyone would have laughed at you for suggesting that women should have the right to vote.

50 years ago, the rulers would have objected to the idea that Africans have equal rights under the law.

Most people laugh at us now because we are fighting for the abolition of animal slavery because we want to end the holocaust of animals.
One day they won’t laugh.

We welcome every step towards education and awareness-raising in society, and we see the recognition of the campaign as legitimate as a big step.

My best regards to all, Venus

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62 bears killed on 1st day of N.J. bear hunt; opponents plan new lawsuit

New Jersey’s controversial bear hunt opened 30 minutes before sunrise on Monday, with hunters heading into the woods on a dreary October day as the remnants of Hurricane Delta drenched the Garden State.

Those hunters killed 62 black bears, down from the 108 bears were killed on the first day of bear season last year.

Sussex County saw the most bears bagged on Monday, with 29. Elsewhere, 17 bears were killed in Morris County, 11 bears in Warren County, three bears in Passaic County, and one bear each in Bergen and Hunterdon counties.

Hunters killed 315 black bears in the state during the entire 2019 season. New Jersey’s highest bear hunt totals were recorded in the 2016 season, when hunters killed 636 of the animals.

The bear hunt is open for bowhunting only through Wednesday. Muzzleloaders will also be allowed Thursday through Saturday. A second segment of bear season, for firearms only, will open Dec. 7.

Though black bears are found throughout the state, the hunt is restricted to Sussex, Warren, Passaic, Morris, Bergen, Hunterdon, Somerset and Mercer counties. Bear hunting is prohibited on state lands thanks to an executive order issued by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2018.

The coronavirus has had one major impact on this year’s bear hunt: In an effort to promote social distancing, the state’s traditional weigh stations are not being used. Instead, successful hunters must call and report their kills to the state Division of Fish and Wildlife. A state biologist will then contact the hunter to legally check the bear and collect biological data.

New Jersey’s bear hunt was restarted in 2003 and being dormant for decades, following a crash in bear numbers in the 1970s. Advocates for the hunt say it is the most effective method of controlling the bear population and preventing threats to human safety and property.

A 2018 report from state wildlife officials warned that ending the bear hunt could cause New Jersey’s bear population to double by 2022.

Murphy, who campaigned on a promise to close bear season, announced a plan last week to stop any future bear hunts under his watch. That plan calls for an amendment to the state’s game code that removes the current bear management policy from the regulations.

The New Jersey Fish and Game Council, which has the final say on the state’s game code and has been Murphy’s biggest obstacle in cancelling the bear hunt, is scheduled to meet telephonically on Tuesday morning. Murphy’s proposed changes are on the agenda.

Opponents pledge to sue

While hunters spent the day in forests and fields, animal rights activists went online to voice their displeasure.

Raymond Lesniak, the former Democratic state senator from Union County, used a Zoom press conference to announce that a coalition of animal rights activists plans to sue the state over the statutory makeup of the state fish and game council.

The council currently consists of 11 members: Six sportsmen, recommended by the New Jersey State Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, three farmers recommended by the state agriculture convention, the chair of the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Advisory Committee and one person with expertise in land management and soil conservation.

Brian Hackett, the state director of the Humane Society of the United States’s New Jersey branch, argued its unfair that a council with such a make-up gets to decide how wildlife is managed in the Garden State.

“Nobody is allowed on this fish and game council except for pro-hunting hunters, and pro-hunting farmers and some mysterious person who needs to know about soil,” Hackett said.

Lesniak echoed that sentiment, and said the council should include scientists, hikers, bird watchers and other people who use New Jersey’s outdoors for activities beyond hunting. He also argued the state’s bear population belongs to all residents, and should be protected by the public trust doctrine in the same way that access to waterways and beaches is protected.

Jeff Tittel, the director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, supported those points.

“It really has to be a council that manages public lands for the public benefit,” Tittel said.

The planned lawsuit, Lesniak said, is similar to Humane Society of the U.S. v. N.J. State Fish and Game Council, a 1976 case in which the Humane Society claimed the structure of the state fish and game council was unconstitutional.

That effort failed, with the state Supreme Court issuing a 6-1 ruling in favor of the state.

“The governmental interest in establishing regulations to ensure a plentiful supply of game animals for consumption and sport is suitably furthered by placing a degree of regulatory control in the hands of a Fish and Game Council composed of sportsmen, farmers, and commercial fishermen,” Associate Justice Robert Clifford wrote in the majority opinion. “Opening the Council’s membership to persons with differing philosophies might reflect the art of public relations, but it is not a constitutional necessity.”

Clifford’s decision acknowledges the council’s make-up is may be “less than ideal” to the general public, but left it to state lawmakers to handle any changes to who sits on the council.

Associate Justice Morris Pashman was the one dissenter in the 1976 case. He argued there was no good reason why membership to the fish and game council should be tied to sportsmen’s clubs and the agriculture convention.

“I especially cannot sanction this practice where its practical effect will deprive an organization, whose interests are intimately affected by the decisions of the Fish and Game Council, of any chance to achieve the representation which it needs to protect those interests,” Pashman wrote in his dissent, referring to groups like the Humane Society and the Sierra Club.

Lesniak said the planned lawsuit will rely on Pashman’s dissent, and “additional evidence” that was not presented in 1976.

“It’s an old case,” Lesniak said. “A lot of things that need to be presented to the court were not presented at that time.”

Lesniak said he expects the lawsuit to be filed early next year. Until then, he said he and his fellow activists are working to persuade Murphy to halt the bear hunt that is currently underway.

“We don’t have many options,” Lesniak acknowledged. He said that bear hunt opponents had urged Murphy to cancel this year’s hunt out of COVID-19 concerns — he noted a concern about hunters traveling to New Jersey from hotspot states — but the governor declined to do so.

Lesniak also called on hunters to just go home, and not participate in the bear hunt.

“Be content that you have made a positive contribution to the moral fabric of our society by not contributing to the slaughter of our bear population,” Lesniak said.

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Will the European Parliament make the Future of CAP animal welfare-friendly?

14 October 2020

On 20 October 2020, the European Parliament will vote on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2021-2027. With a lot at stake, MEPs will also vote on whether the new CAP will finally be able to deliver toward its objective of ‘promoting animal welfare’.

An overwhelming majority (94%) of EU citizens believe it is important to protect the welfare of farmed animals. Additionally,  in the most recent EU wide survey on European, Agriculture and the CAP in the latest Eurobarometer, citizens listed animal welfare as the second most important responsibility farmers should have in today’s society.

The reform of the CAP provides numerous opportunities to take into consideration these citizens’ demands on animal welfare. 

On 20/10/20, Members of the European Parliament will vote on what the future CAP will look like and whether animal welfare will be an integral part of the programme from 2021 to 2027.

Eurogroup for Animals and its members call on the MEPs’ support of improving enforcement of animal welfare legislation (conditionality measures), and promote best practices on farm animal welfare (in the newly created eco-schemes and under the in Pillar II listed measures for rural development plans). 

What is the CAP ?

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the first, biggest, and one of the few pieces of legislation entirely decided at the EU level. The CAP accounts for almost half of the EU’s entire budget – around 58 billion euros yearly. In paying European farmers in exchange for producing food in a certain way, the CAP determines which type of farming practices are likely to thrive in the EU. 

What we call the “CAP” is in fact a series of regulations: four regulations under the current CAP; reduced to three for the next CAP reform. The Regulation on Strategic Plans, which determines rules for payments to farmers (so called “Pillar I”) and the measures for rural development plans, which are essentially bonuses afforded to producers who undertake good practices (so-called “Pillar II”). The Common Market Organisation (CMO) Regulation relates to technical measures supporting production and consumption, such as promotional measures, regulation on denomination of food products, and all the measures actionable during crisis (surplus stocking for instance). Unlike the CAP Strategic Plans Regulation, the CMO regulation is not regulating payments, but technical measures to regulate the agri-food market. Finally, the Horizontal Regulation mostly provides for penalty measures. All three regulations have tremendous effects on the number of animals produced, and the ways in which they are treated.

Does the present CAP take animal welfare into account ?

Yes. The EU is the only  jurisdiction in the world to include an animal welfare component in its agricultural policy. This, more than the enactment of animal welfare legislation, contributes to the exceptionalism of the EU when it comes to the taking into account of  animal welfare in policies. The articulation between the CAP and animal welfare is instrumental to achieve the objectives set in EU animal welfare laws, since the CAP is  the one piece of legislation which most affects the lives of the seven billion farm animals raised and slaughtered each year in the EU.

Even though the CAP contains only a few provisions on animal welfare, these provisions affect greatly the treatment of farm animals in our union.

To understand the extent to which CAP and animal welfare intersects, it is important to know how it is structured. The CAP is divided into two main “pillars”, with:

• Pillar I, which grants farmers subsidies in exchange for producing agricultural products: crops for human or animal consumption, and livestock. Under Pillar One, EU law requires that all farmers receiving payments should be submitted to additional inspection to ensure they comply with minimal legislation on animal welfare. A livestock producer who fails to comply with certain minimal requirements – such as providing enrichment materials for pigs – will receive a reduced amount of subsidies. This measure is popular among EU citizens, with 82% in favor of reducing subsidy payments for noncompliance (Eurobarometer, 2016). 
   
• Pillar II provides additional funding for good practices that go beyond legal requirements. Member States have the possibility to offer a series of financial aids to those farmers who commit to improve animal welfare beyond legal requirements, by providing them support to help them transition to or maintain more humane production models. For example, to farmers who raise free range chickens. 

The CAP as. In fact, animal welfare requirements as an eligibility criterion for subsidies were included in the CAP in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the proliferation of intensive farming. 

As a result, cruel practices are becoming increasingly common on European farms – in France, the UK, Poland and Spain, to name a few countries. The present CAP will expire in 2020 and a new one is being discussed in the European Parliament and Council. 

The EU’s subsidy scheme is in need of reform to ensure it meets our societies’ biggest challenges and expectations concerning our food system. Yet the reforms addressed so far are limited to the administrative intricacies of payment redistribution by the European Commission and the Member States: a shame, given the considerable effect the CAP has on animal welfare and its potential to improve food policies.

What are the limits to the inclusion of animal welfare into the CAP ?

Circling back to the compliance requirements on animal welfare under Pillar I, the CAP doesn’t cover all species – poultry welfare requirements are still excluded, for instance, despite the fact that there are two specific pieces of EU legislation imposing minimum welfare standards for laying hens and for broilers. Even for animals which are included in the CAP’s welfare provisions, compliance is not always guaranteed. For example, the EU Court of Auditors recently found that not all farms receiving money from Pillar I were being checked for adherence to the CAP’s welfare provisions, with some Member States’ inspection systems leaving farms – sometimes those most in risk of violations – outside their scope.

As for Pillar II, even though some Member States may have specifically chosen to fund animal welfare practices that go the extra mile, not all of them actually spent according to that express intention under the current CAP – 16 out of 28 Member States only, and for an amount totalling only 1.5% of the entire pillar. Secondly, while you would think if a farmer is getting Pillar II subsidies for the extra animal welfare measures, he or she would also be complying with the legal requirements of Pillar One, the EU Court of Auditors has revealed that this is not the case. Examples include farmers who are providing more space per pig than is required by EU law while not complying with minimal legal requirements in other areas, such as painful tail docking. An additional issue is that in listing the best practices they choose to fund under Pillar Two, Member States often incentivise those that are detrimental to animal welfare. Funding for modernisation could lead to the building of a state-of-the-art intensive farm, for example. 

In fact, the issue of animal welfare in the CAP goes beyond gaps in enforcement, and has more to do with the general objectives of the CAP itself. 

Since its creation in the early 1960s, the CAP has incentivised the increase in production of animal-based food products; first as a way to ensure EU’s food security, and more recently to gain global market share. By doing so, it has undermined an already weak animal welfare policy objective. At its current level, the CAP gives revenue to farmers for raising animals for consumption purposes to such an extent that animal agriculture accounts for 40% of the EU’s agricultural production, according to Eurostat’s Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery statistics from 2018. As a result, production methods have been further industrialised, making extreme confinement and painful mutilations the norm in EU animal agriculture. By incentivising the production of animals for food, the CAP also influences consumer patterns. Firstly, the more animals are produced for food, the more consumers will find animal products in supermarkets, and the cheaper those products will be. Secondly, to maintain consumption levels of animal products, certain intensive producers benefit from opportunities available under the CAP such as the EU’s marketing campaigns to promote and sell their products. For instance, certain Italian PDO pork producers have continued to benefit from these opportunities despite repeatedly violating minimal EU animal welfare standards. Similarly, the CAP gives privileged access to specific markets with programmes such as the EU “School Scheme,” providing milk to school kids across the EU, but also enabling producers to use European schools as a dumping ground for an overproduced commodity while influencing young Europeans’ food habits. 

What can MEP’s do to make sure the new CAP will be fairer for all; including animals

Not only has the CAP neglected to properly take animal sentience into account, it has led to a broken food system which fails animals, farmers, consumers and citizens alike. The CAP reform is a unique opportunity to reverse the trend of industrial farm animal production. To further the EU’s mandate to respect animal sentience, we must demand that the cruelest forms of animal exploitation must be ineligible for any type of public funding (subsidies and market measures), higher welfare systems rewarded and inspection systems in EU States strengthened throughout the Union. Only this would make the CAP consistent with the EU Treaty, and the EU a credible role model for animal welfare for the rest of the world.

The European Parliament, therefore, needs to (1) support enhanced conditionality on animal welfare; all directives on animal welfare should be included in conditionality, and conditionality should be extended to both pillars; (2) support funding to incentivise producers to transition towards more humane systems; under Pillar I with the newly-created eco-schemes; under Pillar II by making Animal Welfare Measure (“Measure 14”) mandatory in all national  rural development plan.

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Sri Lanka bans cow slaughter, but has yet to pass animal welfare bill

13 October 2020

The Sri Lankan government will be amending the Animal Act after the Cabinet approved a proposal by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to ban the slaughter of cows in this predominantly Buddhist country.

However, animal rights activists point out that there are no animal welfare laws in the country, and a bill to enact an Animal Welfare Act has been blocked in parliament since 2006.

After the Cabinet approved the proposal on September 28th the government released a statement presenting it as a rural economic self-reliance measure.

“As a country with an economy based on agriculture, the contribution of the cattle resource to develop the livelihood of the rural people of Sri Lanka is immense,” the government said in a statement. “Various parties have pointed out that the livestock resource that are required for traditional farming purposes is insufficient due to the rise of cattle slaughter and the insufficiency of livestock resource is an obstacle to uplift the local dairy industry”.

The statement further said that this decision would help to uplift the rural economy by developing a dairy industry, as well as saving a  substantial amount of foreign exchange, that is now spent on importing milk and milk powder. Immediate steps are to be taken to amend the Animal Act of 1958 and the Cow Slaughter Ordinance of 1893.

“The ban on cattle slaughter is part of the tradition of Dharmic religions” argues animal rights activist and lawyer Senaka Weeraratne. “Once these countries became colonies the ban was lifted and all three European powers Portuguese, Dutch and British freely encouraged the locals to flout tradition and Buddhist precepts by eating meat and drinking alcohol”.

Read more at source

Eurasia Review

Regards Mark

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Rainforest Rescue

Palm oil production in Nigeria is a destructive and violent business. Companies like Okomu Oil Palm Plantation Plc (OOPC) are clearing forests with breathtaking speed and leaving destroyed livelihoods and human rights violations in their wake.

Please support the struggle of local communities for their rights and for nature.

On May 20, 2020, the village Ijaw-Gbene in southern Nigeria was burnt to the ground.

Witnesses identified the Okomu Oil Palm Plantation Plc (OOPC) security force and members of the Nigerian army as the attackers.

Previously, three other villages had been torched under similar circumstances.

The attack in May 2020 left local farmers and fisherfolk homeless and their properties destroyed.

More than 80 villagers had no choice but to seek shelter in neighboring communities and in churches, rendering social distancing impossible and increasing their risk of COVID infection.

OOPC denies the allegations.

OOPC is a subsidiary of SOCFIN, a group controlled by French corporate titan Vincent Bolloré and the Belgian businessman Hubert Fabri.
SOCFIN operates rubber and palm oil plantations in ten countries in Africa and Asia.

Europeans have a bad reputation: whether in Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, or Cambodia, wherever Socfin works, the local population complains about brutal methods.

In a joint letter dated September 4, local communities asked the Nigerian president to take steps against OOPC. The struggle against the company is not an isolated case – it’s symptomatic for the palm oil business around the world.

Please support the affected communities in fighting for their rights and for the forests with your signature.

Petition: https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/petitions/1224/stop-nigerias-lawless-palm-oil-juggernaut

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/14/palm-oil-and-the-european-fascism-in-africa/

And I mean…To clarify once again: First, there is practically no sustainable palm oil. The oil palm cultivation and processing is a highly polluting and dirty industry because it involves a lot of money.

But with the “help” of the Europeans, people are brutally driven from their countries, even with the help of the military.

The thousands of hectares of monoculture plantations in Asia and Africa are mostly the result of deforestation in the rainforest or the displacement of small farmers.

They leach out the soil, are very water-intensive, and require large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

They also prevent smallholder agriculture, are known for the miserable working conditions and wages of palm oil workers, and thus contribute to increased land conflicts, impoverishment, and hunger.

After all, German chemical companies are also among the main buyers of this increasingly important raw material.

Palm oil has been linked to human rights abuses and violence.
Palm oil is forest destruction, human and animal life destruction.

Never buy products that contain palm oil.

With our purchase, we can also resist the big multinational oligarchs and save people and animals.

My best regards to all, Venus

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“American slavery was legal. Human genocide was legal. Eating dog meat is legal.

Abusing and murdering non-human animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, and fish is currently legal.

But as we know legality doesn’t dictate morality.

What side of history do you want to stand on when it comes to stamping out this injustice?”

Anonymous for the Voiceless

And I mean…if resistance is to become a reality, then people have to know what injustice is.
And that injustice has the same weight for all living beings, does not depend on color, race, or species.

But we know that people are purposely brought up in a racist manner in their morals, in their selections, in their thinking.
The system leads people to factory behavior – standardized, dependent, systematically managed, and monitored until they are disempowered

Almost everyone sells their soul to the meat industry and is given the freedom to eat meat in return.

That answers the question – that’s all!

Regards and good night, Venus

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Following talks with PETA, the Columbia Sportswear Company—one of the largest active-lifestyle apparel and footwear companies in the world—is all packing up its alpaca-derived items and has become the latest company to ban alpaca.

The ban will apply across its Columbia, PrAna, Sorel, and Mountain Hardwear brands!

Here’s Why Companies Are Banning Alpaca

Columbia’s ethical and environmentally responsible decision comes on the heels of a PETA exposé of the world’s largest privately-owned alpaca farm, in Peru, that documented workers violently hitting, kicking, and slamming alpacas (some pregnant) onto tables and strapping them tightly by the legs into a restraining device resembling a medieval torture rack.

Their legs were then stretched in opposite directions, nearly wrenching them out of their sockets.

Workers sheared the animals roughly and carelessly, leaving them with gaping, bloody wounds that they crudely sewed shut.

The animals cried out, spit (a typical response to distress), and vomited in fear as workers grabbed them by the ears.

Now, alpacas will no longer be used for profit by Columbia.

But some companies are still knowingly profiting from the torment, mutilation, and slaughter of these gentle animals.

Please urge Anthropologie to stop selling alpaca fleece immediately.

PETA Persuades Columbia Sportswear Company to Ban Alpaca Fleece

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/13/columbia-sportswear-company-will-no-longer-use-alpaca/

And I mean…That gives us hope, this is very positive news.
The list of companies banning alpaca, fur, and exotic leather is growing every year.

We achieved this through the media, with systematic education and war against the criminal industries of animal exploitation.

Animal welfare needs patience, which you get with the years and experience.
We have patience and fighting spirit, we keep fighting and it will stay that way.

My best regards to all, Venus

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WAV Comment – as a reminder for the giving day for apes; we have just donated to one of our favourite rescue centres; the Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) Foundation.  Please support them with a donation today if you are able.

Thanks

Mark (WAV).

https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/08/12/indonesia-orangutan-jungle-school/

Dear Mark

Today is one of the biggest days of the year to show how much you care about the orangutans in our centres.

In honour of #GivingDayforApes, I want to share some important numbers with you:

Our orangutans require a lot of care, while our 38 surrogate mothers work tirelessly in the tropical heat to teach our forest school students how to survive in the wild.

The orphans drink a total of about 15,000 litres of milk and use 10,000 diapers per year. And eat more food than you can imagine Mark, such as yams, melons, eggplants, rambutans, watermelons, and a mountain’s worth of bananas.

All in all, that’s 1,000 tonnes of food per year.

If just 1 in 10 of those reading this email – people like YOU, Mark – gave $25 we could reach our goal to raise $20,000 by midnight tonight to provide milk and nutritious food for all of our orangutans.

So will you help us reach our goal?

Click the donation button below to donate $25 or more right now and help us meet our goal before the midnight deadline.

https://givingdayforapes.mightycause.com/organization/Bosfoundation

You have my word, Mark, that 100% of the donations will support our orangutan care and conservation activities in East and Central Kalimantan.

For the orangutans we all love,



Dr. Ir. Jamartin Sihite
CEO of BOS Foundation

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Survey: Support for banning fur farming in Estonia is greater than ever before

Loomus

According to a survey commissioned by animal advocacy organisation Loomus, 83% of women and 66% of men are not in favour of fur farming. 73% of Estonians and 77% of people from other nationalities are against fur farming.

73% of Keskerakond (Estonian Centre Party) voters are against fur farming. Same goes to 72% of Reformierakond (Estonian Reform Party) voters, 51% of Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond (Conservative People’s Party of Estonia) voters, 85% of Sotsiaaldemokraatlik Erakond (Social Democratic Party) voters, 74% of Eesti 200 (Estonia 200) voters and 93% of the voters of other parties. 79% of the people without a party preference are against fur farming.

The percentage of supporters of closing fur farms is not only high in urban areas, but also in rural areas. 74% of the people living in Tallinn do not support fur farming, same goes to 78% of the people living in other towns and 72% of people living in rural areas.
Compared to a study conducted at the end of December of 2016, the number of people who are against fur farming has grown from 69% to 75%.

Martin Garbuz, the board member of Loomus, says that it is a wonderful result. “The support for banning fur farming is great and it’s constantly growing. The majority of society don’t support an industry where animals are tortured and killed for luxury items. It’s also important information for politicians who are considering the ban of fur farming again,” he added.

In summer, 23 members of Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament) initiated the draft Act for the amendment of Animal Protection and Nature Conservation Act which seeks to ban fur farming in Estonia. The draft was compiled in co-operation of politicians and Loomus. The first reading of it is taking place on the 15th of October in Riigikogu.

718 residents of Estonia, aged 18–60, took part in the Kantar Emor national survey and they were asked whether they are in favour of raising and killing animals such as foxes and minks for their fur. The survey was conducted in the middle of September.

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Inside the industrial turkey machine

Additional WAV article:

We also know that Canadians waste an astounding 40% of our food.

A few weeks ago I visited one of Canada’s 523 regulated turkey farms. Despite the current global pandemic, I’m staying carefully mobile in my own country with investigative work.

In 2019, Canadians ate 6.3 million whole turkeys. In 2019, U.S. consumption of turkey was 5.3 billion pounds. And this number floors me: 656,309,000 turkeys were slaughtered worldwide in 2018.

I’ve met rescued turkeys and I absolutely revel in their curious and funny natures. They come running to you for company. They like to talk at you – a lot. If only we knew precisely what they were saying! We do know they have easily distinctive and understood calls: the gobble, the spit and drum, the cackle, the warning yelp, the purr.

My favourite interactions with turkeys are when they let me stroke the feathers on their abdomen and under their wings. They love it, and start to preen themselves with pleasure.

Read more at source

WeAnimals Media

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‘Real and imminent’ extinction risk to whales

12 October 2020

More than 350 scientists and conservationists from 40 countries have signed a letter calling for global action to protect whales, dolphins and porpoises from extinction.

They say more than half of all species are of conservation concern, with two on the “knife-edge” of extinction.

Lack of action over polluted and over-exploited seas means that many will be declared extinct within our lifetimes, the letter says.

Even large iconic whales are not safe.

“Let this be a historic moment when realising that whales are in danger sparks a powerful wave of action from everyone: regulators, scientists, politicians and the public to save our oceans,” said Mark Simmonds.

The visiting research fellow at the University of Bristol, UK, and senior marine scientist with Humane Society International, has coordinated the letter, which has been signed by experts across the world.

Read more at source

BBC News

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“An angry speech: Peoples of the world, finally listen: Julian Assange is a political prisoner.
The Julian Assange case is not a trial. It’s a fuck-up.
If Assange is shipped to the US, investigative journalism will be dead”.

(Berlin, October 1, 2020.
The picture shows a protester in orange overalls and a Julian Assange mask in front of the British embassy in Berlin)

Julian Assange, he’s already become a symbol of freedom of the press. And the truth in general.

When rulers commit crimes and take refuge under the protection of state secrecy, the bond between the ruled and rulers is severed.
In a democracy, there can be no legitimate secrecy protection for crimes committed by individuals. A justice system that goes along with this becomes an accomplice.

And a public that is silent about it did not understand democracy and ultimately did not deserve it.

In a world full of lies, someone who operates a truth machine is dangerous for the system – because this system lives on the secret, only acts secretly!

“Punish one, raise a hundred,” said Mao Tse-Tung.

This is the educational spectacle and signal to all who want to reveal and publish the truth about crimes against human and non-human animals.
It affects us animal rights activists too because we are putting this system at risk.

In 1997, animal liberators in the US were sentenced to 82 years in prison. The FBI is dealing with the animal liberators today.

Everyone who drives this system to bankruptcy will feel its power. We remember the death of animal rights activist Reagan Russel- whose death was never cleared as murder.

Therefore this process has to burst. Assange has to be released. If this does not happen, there is a direct risk to everyone’s freedom of thought and expression

Your turn is next.

http://archive.is/gu2dB#selection-1199.348-1199.398

My best regards to all, Venus

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How are climate and health crises driven by factory farms?

12 October 2020

The European Commission’s Farm to Fork strategy pledges to reduce the environmental and climate impact of animal production.

However, no concrete actions are suggested to tackle the root causes of the problem.

Factory-farmed meat production in the EU is on the rise, and is putting the climate and human health at risk according to a new report released today from Food & Water Action Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe.

A rise in industrial meat production in the European Union has been accompanied by a rapid decline in the number of small farms. This has led to a dangerous rise of “factory farms”, characterised by large numbers of animals confined in crowded spaces.

The COVID-19 crisis has proved the fragility and inhumanity of the system which makes cheap meat possible, and how much it depends on unethical and unfair conditions for workers. We need urgent action from EU and national policy makers to change this.

Stanka Becheva, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe

The report reveals that:

• Unsafe working conditions on factory farms and slaughterhouses put workers in danger and increase the spread of diseases including COVID-19;
• Global production of soybeans for animal feed, and the resulting deforestation, are exacerbating the climate crisis, constituting around 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions originating from human activity;
• The European meat sector is dominated by a few large corporations who are increasing in size through mergers and acquisitions. Vertical integration threatens the existence of small-scale farmers, drops the prices for producers and leaves all the profits with agribusiness;
• The routine dosing of antibiotics to factory farmed animals is increasing the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria ending up in meat;
• Manure from livestock farming severely contributes to air pollution (namely via ammonia emissions) and water pollution (via nitrate outputs) – a serious health risk for people living near factory farms.

Read more at source

Friends of the Earth Europe

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Scotland University develops alternative to animal testing

8 October 2020

Researchers at the University of Dundee have proposed an alternative to animal testing by developing a “skin culture” which mimics living skin.

Founders Dr Robyn Hickerson and Dr Michael Conneely have secured funding for their ‘TenSkin™’ product, where human skin is stretched to an optimal tension to mimic the mechanobiology that exists in intact, living skin on the body.

This provides a state-of-the-art tool for skin biology research by allowing scientists to generate reliable and safe data without the need for animals.

Dr Conneely said: “The skin that covers our body is under tension, this has been known for a long time. “Other models don’t incorporate this tension, and this is why our product is more effective. When skin is removed from the body it contracts as the tension relaxes.

Animal testing is often a subject of ethical controversy, with many raising concerns about the reliability of the method. Ten Bio’s new approach aims to significantly reduce animal usage for skin related research.

Dr Hickerson added: “There is a disconnect between animals and humans when you’re trying to develop therapeutics. 

“While animals can serve as good analogues to study general principles, they often fail when it comes to specific details due to animal/human species differences. These details matter when it comes to developing safe and effective drugs for humans.

“Upwards of 90% of drugs that are proven safe and effective in animals fail during clinical trials. Our model will help reduce this costly failure rate.”

Read more at source

Deadline News

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There were plenty of livestock trucks at Rosslare Port yesterday evening boarding the Stena Line Horizon – you can hear the calves bawling, already hungry and tired. Over 24 hours with no feed is not only inhumane it is illegal

@StenaLine

@McConalogue

#BanLiveExport

In the immortal words of Jim Morrison of the doors. “The time for hesitation’s through. There’s no time to wallow in the mire. We can only lose….& our love become a funeral pyre”. #BanLiveExports it’s time to act, be brave & stand up to the bad guys once & for all.

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Bye for now, sleep well…Venus

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From the Animal Liberation Press Office website, received anonymously:

Late this summer animal liberation activists carried out two raids on fur farms in Idaho and Utah. Fencing was ripped down and nearly 2,000 mink were released allowing them to clamor toward freedom.

Both farms sat near the edges of mostly undeveloped public lands, allowing plenty of habitat for the newly freed native predators.

Walking through a large field, quietly climbing a barbed-wire cattle fence, and crossing the road in clear view of the house associated with the first farm proved easy. It became clear there was no visible electronic security, and the activists bet heavily that the faint barking was from a neighbor’s property, or at least from a dog contained within the fur farmer’s house.

Cage after cage, row after row, shed after shed, latches were opened and nesting boxes removed allowing the mink to escape to their rightful home.

They spaced out the releases in order to disperse the noise from disturbing mink away from a singular location. The surreal and beautiful moment where the mink explored in the moonlight will be carried in the hearts of those that gazed upon them for a lifetime.

The approving chorus from coyotes in the nearby hills still echoes in their ears.

Days later, these activists found themselves before another sprawling fur farm complex.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/10/11/idaho-utah-usa-2000-captured-minks-freed/

Bigger liberations and more of them.
Until the bloody business is over.
We are on the right track, one country after another is abolishing the fur industry.

There is nothing more to say, except many thanks to the activists.

My best regards to all, Venus

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New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and Punishes Critics

A respected Bay Area veterinarian endures widespread attacks following an industry “alert” about her criticisms of factory farms.

This week’s SYSTEM UPDATE on this topic — with Dr. Crystal Heath, one of the veterinarians targeted by these industry campaigns for retaliation — can be viewed on The Intercept’s YouTube channel, or on the player below.

ANIMAL AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY GROUPS defending factory farms engage in campaigns of surveillance, reputation destruction, and other forms of retaliation against industry critics and animal rights activists, documents obtained through a FOIA request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal. That the USDA possesses these emails and other documents demonstrates the federal government’s knowledge of, if not participation in, these industry campaigns.

These documents detail ongoing monitoring of the social media of news outlets, including The Intercept, which report critically on factory farms. They reveal private surveillance activities aimed at animal rights groups and their members. They include discussions of how to create a climate of intimidation for activists who work against industry abuses, including by photographing the activists and publishing the photos online. And they describe a coordinated ostracization campaign that specifically targets veterinarians who criticize industry practices, out of concern that veterinarians are uniquely well-positioned to persuasively and powerfully denounce industry abuses.

One of the industry groups central to these activities is the Animal Agriculture Alliance, which represents factory farms and other animal agriculture companies — or, as they playfully put it, they work for corporations “involved in getting food from the farm to our forks!” The group boasts that one of its prime functions is “Monitoring Activism,” by which they mean: “We identify emerging threats and provide insightful resources on animal rights and other activist groups by attending their events, monitoring traditional and social media and engaging our national network.”

Indeed, the Alliance frequently monitors and infiltrates conferences of industry critics and activists, then provides reports to their corporate members on what was discussed. As The Intercept previously noted when reporting on felony charges brought against animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, for peaceful filming and symbolic animal rescues inside one Utah farm that supplies Whole Foods and another owned by Smithfield — an action that showed how wildly at odds with reality is the bucolic branding of those farms — the Animal Agriculture Alliance issued a statement denouncing the activists for (ironically) harming their animals and urging law enforcement and “policymakers” to intervene on behalf of the industry against the activists.

In the emails obtained by the FOIA request, the Alliance and its allies frequently encourage their members to alert the FBI and Department of Homeland Security regarding actions by activists. In response to a project by DxE to create a map tracking factory farms, Lyle Orwig — chair of the agricultural company Charleston/Orwig, Inc. and a member of the Alliance board — proposed the retaliatory step of “taking photos of every DXE [sic] member” and posting them to the internet while accusing them of being “opposed to feeding the hungry.”

ONE PERSON SINGLED OUT for retaliation in these discussions was a popular, respected Bay Area veterinarian, Dr. Crystal Heath. As a local CBS affiliate television profile of her explained, Dr. Heath is the kind of veterinarian who we all as children are taught to admire.

Rather than working for corporations or state agencies engaged in cruel animal experimentation, or for factory farms making a large salary to provide the veneer of medical justification for their barbaric, torturous practices, Dr. Heath has devoted herself to shelter medicine, working for years with the Berkeley Humane Society and other nonprofit animal rescue groups, where she “has spayed and neutered more than 20,000 animals.” The CBS broadcast report provides a full picture of the humanitarian and self-sacrificing nature of her work.

But to the Animal Agriculture Alliance and its industry allies, Dr. Heath somehow became a grave danger, an “extremist” whose name needed to be circulated within her profession as someone to be aggressively shunned. And that is exactly what they did. What prompted this targeted campaign against her was nothing more than her use of her veterinarian expertise to express criticisms of industry abuses and excesses.

In May, The Intercept reported on a gruesome mass-extermination technique being used by Iowa’s largest pork producer, Iowa Select Farms, to kill large numbers of pigs which were deemed unnecessary and in need of “depopulation” due to the pandemic. The technique, called “ventilation shutdown,” or VSD, involves cutting off the air supply in barns and turning up the heat to intense levels so that “most pigs — though not all — die after hours of suffering from a combination of being suffocated and roasted to death.” The pigs who survive this excruciating ordeal are then shot in the head in the morning by farm employees. A video report produced by The Intercept and the video documentarian Leighton Woodhouse — based on footage obtained inside an Iowa Select barn by DxE as the pigs were slowly dying — was viewed by more than 150,000 people.

Numerous veterinarians were shocked by the use of this unspeakably cruel and gratuitous mass-extermination tactic, which imposes extreme, protracted suffering on highly intelligent, socially complex, sentient animals. And it created serious problems for the industry, with McDonald’s demanding an explanation it could use publicly, and even discussions — from the National Pork Producers Council — to invent a new, more pleasant and euphemistic name for the extermination technique:

One of the veterinarians indignant about ventilation shutdown extermination programs was Dr. Heath. She was part of a group of hundreds of her veterinarian colleagues to launch a campaign urging the American Veterinarian Medical Association to withdraw its approval of the use of this technique in limited, proscribed circumstances. Though the AVMA says it was not involved in the specific use of the extermination technique by Iowa Select, its guidelines approving of VSD were, as The Intercept documented, cited as justification by the company and its allies.

Dr. Heath was quoted in one news report on the controversy as saying: “I believe the majority of AVMA members do not approve of VSD except as a ‘last resort’ depopulation method and AVMA intended VSD to be used only in extreme conditions of infectious or zoonotic disease outbreaks or natural disasters. AVMA approval has allowed pig and poultry producers to use VSD as a cost-savings procedure to cheaply destroy unprofitable or excess animals.”

Due to her criticisms of these factory farm practices and her work with DxE in advocating industry reform, industry groups focused on her. In one email from April, a vice president of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, revealed that an “alert” had been sent about Dr. Heath to California members, accusing her of engaging in “extreme activism” and encouraging groups to “spread the word to your veterinarian contacts in California” — where Dr. Heath practices — “using private, members only channels.”

Following that “alert,” Dr. Heath began experiencing targeted campaigns against her online and within her profession. Though it cannot be proven that this was the result of the Alliance’s “alert,” what began happening to her for the first time in the wake of that alert tracked the language used against her by these industry groups. (The Alliance and Thompson-Weeman did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comments. Thompson-Weeman locked her Twitter account yesterday after we previewed this article and the SYSTEM UPDATE episode. The AVMA has denied that it was involved in Iowa Select’s use of VSD.)

What perhaps alerted the Alliance was one veterinarian group that accused her of being “part of an active campaign to cause as much harm as possible to our clients and ourselves,” announcing that they had alerted the Alliance about her. Veterinarian groups on Facebook posted their own warnings about her, and she was banned from some groups. Comments began appearing on her own Facebook page, purportedly from other veterinarians, accusing her of “deranged activism,” being “a liar who makes up stories,” “bastardizing our profession through every available method,” and claiming that she is “literally, by name, a topic of conversation in board rooms from Ag business to organized veterinarian medicine across the nation. Your name is literally toxic.”

What alarmed Dr. Heath most was the emergence online of anonymous flyers which contained a “BEWARE” warning at the top, along with her photo and a string of accusations, some of which were false, that claimed she harbors “an agenda that doesn’t include anything positive for our profession” and “expresses fondness” for “domestic terrorist organizations.” It warned that even allowing her access to the social media pages of veterinarians could be dangerous, and thus urged that she be blocked from all online forums, personal profiles, and social media groups.

It goes without saying that this sort of a campaign could be devastating to the career opportunities or ability to earn a livelihood of any veterinarian. Fortunately for Dr. Heath, she believes her hard-earned reputation with area clinics developed over many years will enable her to continue to work, but she believes, for very good reason, that “alerts” and campaigns of this sort would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for her to find work anywhere else. For a younger or less-established veterinarian seeing what was done to her, they would obviously think twice about speaking out or working against the factory farm industry, the obvious goal of such campaigns.

That the U.S. Department of Agriculture was in possession of the emails and other documents circulated by industry groups, and thus produced them as part of the FOIA request, indicates that, at the very least, government officials are being included in these discussions (the flyer about Dr. Heath and other social media postings regarding her were obtained by The Intercept from Dr. Heath, not by the FOIA request). What is clear is that the animal agricultural industry essentially operates their own private surveillance and “warning” networks, and uses their extensive influence within the halls of government power to aid their efforts to punish and retaliate against its critics and activists.

Dr. Heath is my guest on this week’s SYSTEM UPDATE. The episode, which can be viewed on The Intercept’s YouTube channel or on the player below, first reviews these new documents in detail obtained by the FOIA request, and I then speak to Dr. Heath about what she has endured as a result of her speaking out against this very powerful industry.

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/new-documents-reveal-how-the-animal-agriculture-industry-surveils-and-punishes-critics/

Regards Mark

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The law requires animals in the EU to be effectively stunned before slaughter. However, exceptions are made which permit some religious communities to slaughter without pre-stunning. This applies to slaughter by the Jewish method (Shechita) or by the Muslim method (Halal).

Compassion believes there should be no exemptions, and the law should be changed to require all animals to be effectively stunned before slaughter, regardless of the slaughter method that is then used (this also applies to mis-stunning in conventional abattoirs). We also believe that all slaughterhouses should have CCTV installed in order to assist with the monitoring of slaughter and to help prevent cruelty.

Loop-holes, poor enforcement, and a lack of suitable legislations can all impact the welfare of animals at the time of slaughter. There are a range of serious welfare concerns currently affecting vast numbers of animals across Europe.

1. Derogations to EU law allow animals to be slaughtered without pre-stunning for consumption by the Jewish and Muslim community. Slaughter without effective pre-stunning causes unacceptable suffering.
2. In the EU around 1 billion chickens a year are ineffectively stunned prior to slaughter. They experience an agonising electric shock that fails to properly stun them followed by the full pain and fear of being slaughtered while fully conscious.
3. It is becoming increasingly common across Europe to use high concentrations of CO2 gas to make pigs unconscious prior to slaughter. CO2 gas results in a burning and then drowning-like sensation and can cause around 15-30 seconds of very severe suffering prior to the pigs losing consciousness.
4. Every year over 2 million animals are exported live out of the EU. They are sent to countries where they receive no legal protection at the time of slaughter. Many face agonising, drawn out slaughter.
5. Roughly 1 billion fish are farmed and slaughtered in the EU each year. Most are slaughtered in ways that are inhumane and illegal. EU law requires fish to be spared avoidable suffering at slaughter. The technology exists to make fish unconscious prior to slaughter, but instead the vast majority are left to suffocate or killed while fully conscious in ways that cause immense suffering.
6. It has become apparent that huge numbers of animals in the EU – roughly 18% of all sheep, and 27% of all goats – are not killed in official slaughter houses. This means that their slaughter goes entirely unregulated, and much of this is likely to be inhumane.

https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/other-campaigns/slaughter/

Nine out of 10 EU citizens oppose animal slaughter without stunning, poll finds

Survey comes as ‘ritual slaughter’ legal case moves through European courts and Polish government proposes restrictions

Nine out of 10 EU citizens want their governments to ban the slaughter of animals that have not been stunned, according to a poll published today.

The results of the survey, carried out for the animal welfare campaign group Eurogroup for Animals, will feed into a cross-Europe debate about so-called “ritual slaughter” – the killing of animals in line with rules of religions such as Judaism and Islam for kosher and halal meat, respectively.

Some countries, including Slovenia, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, as well as the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia, have already adopted stricter rules, with no exceptions to the mandatory stunning of animals before slaughter.

In Poland, the rightwing coalition government led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party has proposed limiting the practice to the needs of religious communities within the country. That would put an end to Poland’s large halal and kosher meat exports industry.

A legal case over the compatibility of the Flemish ban on slaughtering without stunning with EU law is proceeding through the European courts. An opinion published in September by the advocate general Gerard Hogan of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) rejects the ability of member states to prohibit slaughter without stunning and implement reversible stunning (which disrupts brain function for a short time). The CJEU’s final decision is due at the end of this year.

In the poll, carried out by UK-based Savanta ComRes, 89% of 23,000 EU citizens surveyed said it should be mandatory to make animals unconscious before they are slaughtered. About as many, 88%, said that animals should be made unconscious before being slaughtered even for religious practices. And 90% of respondents believed that EU countries should retain the right to introduce stricter measures to better protect animals during slaughter.

“EU citizens want animals to be properly stunned before being slaughtered and clearly want member states to be able to introduce stricter legislative measures to protect animal welfare,” said Reineke Hameleers, chief executive of Eurogroup for Animals.

New Zealand banned slaughter without stunning in 2010 and made reversible stunning mandatory. Reversible stunning, or electronarcosis, is a way of stunning animals via electric shock that makes them unconscious for a short period of time, regaining consciousness if they are not slaughtered. The meat produced is certified as halal by religious communities within New Zealand, and recognised as such by communities in Malaysia, India, the Middle East, Canada and China.

Some religious groups have voiced concerns about the proposed changes in law in Europe. Mufti Tomasz Miśkiewicz, head of the Muslim Religious Union in Poland, said: “Halal isn’t just about food, it’s also about religion. The main problem with the proposed bill is that it effectively curbs Polish Muslims’ religious freedoms. The bill proposes that ritual slaughter will be allowed if it serves the community only. But how are you going to know exactly what the needs of the community are at any given time? That’s not anything veterinary inspectorates will know.”

“The law should protect and care for everyone regardless of their nationality or religion. Democracy is about protecting one’s rights.”

Jonathan Ornstein of the Jewish Community Centre in Kraków, Poland, said that if export of kosher or halal meat was made impossible, producers might stop producing it because doing so would not make economic sense, as the economy of scale would be gone. “Without kosher meat sourced locally, we would need to buy imported meat, which would dramatically increase the cost.”

He is a vegetarian, but stressed the cultural importance of kosher meat for the Jewish community.

Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the best farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at animalsfarmed@theguardian.com

Source – The Guardian – UK Press; London.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/09/nine-out-of-10-eu-citizens-oppose-animal-slaughter-without-stunning-poll-finds

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