Posted on May 29, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
As Yulin festival approaches, crowdsourced reporting of dog and cat meat illegality has saved dog lives across China
Thousands of dogs in cities all over China are estimated to have been saved as public outrage over illegality puts pressure on dog meat sellers.
China’s infamous Yulin dog meat festival will once again coincide with the summer solstice on June 21. Historically, the festival was believed to see the deaths of an estimated 10,000 dogs annually, and in recent years the number was reported to have dropped significantly to an estimated 1,000 canines losing their lives. However, throughout China, an estimated 10,000,000 dogs are killed annually as part of the dog meat industry.
In an effort to combat the massive number of dogs lost to the meat industry throughout China, global animal welfare non-profit Animals Asia has turned its focus to combatting the larger year-round dog meat industry that sees millions of dogs killed, rather than the isolated Yulin event that lasts just a couple of days and is responsible for a fraction of that number. The organisation’s philosophy is to empower concerned Chinese citizens to act against the illegality prevalent in the dog meat industry.
Only four months after Animals Asia launched an online platform empowering the Chinese public to report suspected illegal activities by restaurants serving dog and cat meat in their communities, the impact has potentially saved thousands of lives.
200 dog meat restaurants in 101 cities reported to local government
19 restaurants closed down
16 given official warnings from the government
Thousands of dogs estimated to have been saved
Animals Asia’s Cat and Dog Welfare Director, Irene Feng said:
“Not only has the public been given a tool with which to defend their communities from the cruelty, theft and health risks associated with dog meat, the government has been given a helping hand in identifying the criminals, too. Whole communities have been empowered and animal lives have been saved.
“Now we want this to be a model for how the authorities in Yulin can deal with illegality during the summer solstice period of increased dog meat consumption. While the authorities have no power to stop the public from eating dog meat, they have a duty to apprehend those bringing illegally sourced dogs into the city without the required paperwork and health certificates, and they must also ensure all slaughter is carried out according to Chinese laws.”
Animals Asia’s online reporting service is available to users all over the country, including Yulin and surrounding areas. In the build up to the festival period, the platform will be pushed on Chinese social media while Animals Asia has once again written to the Yulin authorities urging them to crack down on dog meat-related illegality.
Animals Asia began reporting dog and cat meat restaurants suspected of operating illegally via a network of volunteers in 2016, before launching the online portal for public reports at the start of 2018.
Since 2016, the reports have resulted in a total of 204 restaurants either closing, ending dog meat sales or being given an official warning.
Feng said:
“While the Yulin event is deeply upsetting to all animal lovers, it nevertheless represents a tiny fraction of the annual dog meat consumption in China. Yet it takes up the vast majority of media attention and international concern. The success of our campaign shows how much more can be achieved when we redirect our resources strategically to the wider trade”
The city of Yulin authorities withdrew their endorsement of the Yulin festival in 2014 and today, no official event takes place in the city during the summer solstice. However increased levels of dog meat consumption continue as the public gathers to eat dog meat.
Animals Asia Founder and CEO, Jill Robinson MBE said:
“Vital campaign work has been done in previous years to reduce consumption of dog meat during the festival and key strategic lobbying has also seen local authorities remove their backing. Now it continues unofficially – without government sanction – as friends come together to eat dog meat. The images of dogs crammed into cages are utterly horrifying, but it is happening every day of the year all over the country in hundreds of cities.
“Animals Asia will continue to focus holistically on the year-round trade: working with government, local charities and the public to increase awareness of the illegality and brutality inherent to the industry.
“To those who do continue to focus solely on Yulin, we say please do so without engaging in behaviours which damage the wider movement to end the dog meat trade country-wide.”
Targeting illegality
An in-depth report compiled in 2015 by Animals Asia, revealed illegality at every stage of the dog meat supply chain including widespread theft of dogs, flouting of the vaccinations requirement, a lack of health and proof of origin certificates, illegal transports and unsanitary slaughter.
The country has a recent and growing history of opposition to the dog meat trade, with the keeping of companion dogs gaining in popularity. As of 2017, there were reportedly 62 million registered dogs kept as companion animals in China.
Even in the areas where dog meat eating is most common – such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou and various locations in the northeast – an Animals Asia survey further revealed almost half of respondents had not eaten cats or dogs in the past two years. Of those who had, half again had eaten it only once or twice a year.
Outside of these “hotspots”, just 20% of people had eaten dogs in the last two years, with just 1.7% admitting to eating cats.
In 2016, proposed legislation to outlaw the industry received overwhelming support, with nearly nine million people voting for the proposal online, while an online poll in 2017 by China National Radio revealed 69% agree the dog and cat meat industries should be banned.
Posted on May 29, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Huge abscess drained to save mother dog’s life
We got a call that a dog was suffering from a huge bulge on her neck-and discovered that it was an enormous abscess-an infection beneath the skin near her throat filled with pus. She was skinny and haggard, suffering with weakness as her body attempted to fight the terrible infection, all the while tending to young puppies. We gathered her up and took her back to our hospital and her eyes watched us trustingly as we prepared to drain the pus. Within just hours of the procedure she was eating and on the road to recovery. Now spayed and vaccinated and busy raising her babies, meet Molly today..
Please donate for precious animals like Molly who need help today.
Slum-dwellers help rescue injured cow
Angels are living at the city garbage dump. These poor kids’ compassion welled up like a spring, rising out of the filth, the smoke of dangerous toxins, the smell and the buzzing of flies. They spend all day picking through garbage under a blistering sun, looking for bits of scrap metal and glass that might fetch a few rupees from a recycler. They live in squalor but their compassion and help were acts of pure beauty. Watch the rescue of Mabel, a little cow who had become injured and unable to stand in a sea of garbage. We are grateful to those children and to you, our donors, who that day had formed a partnership that Animal Aid could serve. And for Mabel who, on a scorching day, that might have otherwise been her last on earth, was transported to safety.
Compassion lies somewhere within each of us. Please donate within your means.
Drowning puppy sobbing and terrified, rescued
At the bottom of the well was not only water and garbage, but a little soul paddling for his life and losing part of his last remaining strength to cry for help. Every perch his feet touched sank under his weight, but from rags to plastic, he kept trying and trying to gain a foothold. We hurried to lower our Rescuer into the well and as the little sweetheart was pulled out of that terrifying ordeal, happiness took over.
Please donate for the little ones who need big help now.
Live transports are a lucrative business. Almost twice the cattle in Turkey or Egypt. But exports from the EU are systematically undermining animal welfare.
Blue tiles cover the walls of the slaughterhouse; huge fresh pools of blood cover the floor. A dozen men in rubber boots are standing around a black ox. Suddenly, one of the men approaches the animal with the blade in his hand. Blood splatters. Manholes is a brutal craft.
The pictures are from the animal rights organization “Animals International“, taken somewhere in the Middle East. What is considered in this country animal cruelty, there is an Islamic custom, even if there are now ways to numb the animals before.
Cruel scenes are not an isolated case.
In their research, animal rights activists repeatedly come across cattle from the EU. Their meat is sought after in the Middle East for their quality. Thanks to European agricultural policy, there is an abundance of cattle for which customers are urgently sought.
The animals in the slaughterhouse should come from Romania and Germany. At first glance, this is not recognizable, because the ear tags were removed to disguise the origin. Which dealer or exporter would like to be associated with bloody battle scenes?
Export of live animals is worthwhile
Living animals in Turkey are in particular demand, with nearly a third of exports – a total of 30,346 cattle – going there last year. The reasons why it must be live animals: The slaughter should be made according to Islamic custom and the entire animal can be recycled. A profitable business for everyone involved: While in Germany a cow contributes around 1500 euros, the dealer in Turkey, Lebanon or Egypt can demand double that.
EU Animal Protection Ordinance does not end at the EU’s external borders
For almost a decade, Iris Baumgärtner from the animal welfare organization “Animal Welfare Foundation” has been following up on the question, whether livestock exports comply with European animal welfare standards. Because the European animal welfare regulations apply from the place of departure to the destination – no matter where.
There are strict rules for thousands of miles of transport: animals must be unloaded for feeding and watering for a full day after 29 hours of driving. But beyond the EU borders, there is often a lack of appropriate care facilities and stables.
If this is not possible then the transports should not be approved. So far the theory. In practice, the veterinary offices of the districts are responsible for this. But after contrasts research, the transports are often waved after a superficial check.
Transport difficult to check
A veterinarian reports contrasts from common practice: she often receives only place names, no exact addresses. With the help of Google Maps, she tries to check if there are stables or the like there. “If there is no stable at the given location, but because there are only residential buildings or only a large playground, then of course I can prevent that.” But only then. The vet can, of course, also stick to a list of the EU with an overview of stables in third countries where the animals can allegedly be cared for. The problem: The list is from 2009 and is largely worthless, my animal rights activists.
Contraste has followed a normal cattle transport: starting point is the Bavarian Ohrbach. Here 62 pregnant young cattle (!!!) are transported away on a morning in May. Contrasts wanted to know where these cows are brought to. The competent Landratsamt calls on repeated demand the target: Gissar in Tajikistan. Nine days should take the ride there, it goes over 6,500 kilometers. Can the animals rest? The District Office Amberg-Sulzbach states: “At present, we only have the data for the transport planning, in which only the locations and not the exact addresses of the control, supply or collection points must be entered.”
Whether there are appropriate stables at the specified locations, was obviously not checked before the approval of the transport. A clear disregard for the European animal welfare regulations, judge legal experts – but unfortunately everyday life in the EU.
Translation: Venus
About this theme reported the first program (ARD) in the TV- Broadcast “Contrasts” on May 24, 2018 at 9:45 pm
Posted on May 27, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Hamburg, Germany: No new animal laboratory at the University Hospital We demand: 32 million euros for animal-free research!
Hamburg wants to build a new building for the laboratory keeping of animals at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and provides around 32 million euros for this purpose. The construction works are planned from 2019 – 2021. Allegedly, the building will replace the existing animal husbandry and modernize it, but there are several indications that the number of animals suffering from experiments should be increased.
Cruel and useless
Animal experiments at UKE are neither ethically nor scientifically justifiable. Animals are artificially made ill to mimic the symptoms of human diseases as an “animal model”. Subsequently, an attempt is made to heal these artificial symptoms. Since these have absolutely nothing in common with the disease in humans, the therapy methods thus found do not work for the patient.
Population or patient studies, cell cultures, multi-organ chips and mini-organs such as mini heart or mini brain from human cells offer innovative ways to conduct animal-free research in the interest of humans.
While 32 million euros for the laboratory new construction are made easy, Hamburg praises only every two years, a research award in the amount of just € 20,000 and not even for purely animal-free research, but also for measures that “refine” or merely reduce animal testing.
10 examples of animal experiments from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE):
Document 1: Rabbits are drilled holes in the shins to test an osteoporotic drug >>
Document 2: Mice die from artificially induced meningitis >>
Document 3: Mice suffer from cardiac failure due to genetic engineering >>
Document 4: In sheep, a piece of aluminum foil is inserted into the brain, thus preventing the exchange of two endocrine glands to develop an “animal model” for the testing of dental implants in old people with bone loss >>
Document 5: In pigs, a small wire basket is pulled through a heart valve to damage it and simulate aortic valve weakness >>
Document 6: Ferrets are thirsty for certain behaviors >>
Document 7: Genetically Modified Mice Suffer from Malformed Bones, Joint Inflammation and Swollen Paws >>
Document 8: What happens in the brain of rats whose chatter hairs are all moved at the same time? >>
Document 9: Crushed spleen of BSE-prion infected mice is injected into the brain of other mice >>
Document 10: Intentional rejection reaction of transplanted kidneys in rats >>Doctors against animal experiments call on the Hamburg citizenship to invest the 32 million euros for animal-free research. In the new building, animals must not be tormented, but innovative human-relevant methods should be developed.
My Comment: Anyone who knows and studies the history of the Third Reich knows, how the animal experimenters tick. Their actions coincide 100% with the mass murderers of these time. In every detail. Even Zyklon B is still used for the killing of experimental animals, even if it is discouraged.
It is not possible to keep out of this area behaviorally disturbed people; otherwise no one would give in to it.
But we need to know public the names of those involved and make their actions public.
Especially in this area, the demanded transparency is important.
Best regards
Venus
P.S: In the link is also the petition against the new construction of the animal laboratory, please sign!
Posted on May 27, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Yesterday I found a very nice article about the “romantic” pigeon flights as a sport.
A cruel sport by the way. But this article should also open the eyes of everyone who wants to decorate his wedding with the flight of (mostly) white pigeons.
Today we have internet, we have information, and nobody can say “ah, I did not know it”.
Here is the article with the link at the end:
How do “pigeon races” work? Is not it astonishing how the breeders persuade the animals to travel enormous distances to exhaustion? Daily distances of 700 kilometers? The resolution is as simple as shocking: So that the pigeons perform at their best, but often exceed their powers, their owners use perfidious methods. For the racing flights, pigeon owners use the loyalty of the animals. Pigeons are very close to their home beat, their partner and their offspring.
Dove couples stay together all their lives and the connection is very close. So, what does a dove do that snatches her partner away from her offspring and finds herself far away from a safe home beat in completely unknown surroundings? Correct! She will try to go back to where she is, what she loves more than her own life. Yearning, lovesickness and concern for the offspring, serves the “performance increase” immensely.
The owners take advantage of the desperation of their animals to return as quickly as possible to their homes and their families. Who calls this sport as “romantic” may not have understood a crucial point:
In the “widower method” pigeon pairs are separated from each other.
This method has prevailed nationwide for the “normal flight program”, according to breeders. The “nesting method” describes the separation of a parent from the partner and the newly hatched offspring.
Both means enormous stress for the animals.
Experts believe that between 10 and more than 50 percent of the pigeons that are transported away from their home for betting flights, do not return to their partner, their offspring. They strand as homeless animals on the streets of foreign cities, land in animal welfare, most of them die agonizingly.
Owners and organizers find this perfectly acceptable. They calculate these “losses”.
After all, this “romantic sport” is not about the animals, but about awards and prizes. There are hundreds of thousands of pigeons that suffer a painful death every year on the races. Dehydration, fatigue, injury … or starving to death in one of our inner cities. Pigeons that have just made it home are often broken in body and soul. “
But even if they have survived the ordeal, even if they have found their way back to their partner: Home-born pigeons are not safe in their lives, because the official breeding goal of the Association of German Pigeon Breeders aims at physical performance and the attainment of top speeds of 130 km / h. Animals that could not provide these services or show a lack of sense of direction that has fled are killed by the owners.
The killing of the rejected pigeons happens incidentally with full awareness. The pigeon’s neck is pulled long and the head is turned over. Execution for lack of performance is carried out by the breeder himself.
One may think of this sport as one likes: it has nothing to do with love of animals and romance. The sensitive and intelligent birds are degraded to the disposable.
But there are also some who plan the most beautiful day of their life, a wedding, with the use of white doves. They should symbolize peace and loyalty and complete the romantic staging.
Before you decide, you should know what this harmless custom can mean for the pigeons.
In fact, the birds who would never voluntarily abandon their home beat are exposed to it. They are torn from their homeland beat, transported to unknown places and often have to spend a very long time in confined spaces without food and water, before they are taken by strangers in the hand (which is extremely scary for the animals) and finally you leave they fly. There are many dubious providers, some even send the pigeons for this purpose and accept that the animals are left to themselves for days without any supply in the small cages.
Therefore, please: do not decorate a wedding or other celebration with the flight of white doves.
Pigeons are not balloons, but sensitive, intelligent animals. Like every animal.
Posted on May 22, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
We did not even notice but we can announce that we have now passed 4.000 posts on the site – 4,002 to be exact.
You can see all the months for the last 13 years or so on the left hand side of the page – just click on any month to read what was done at the time.
Nothing to celebrate really – as there is a lot of bad news. Would be great if everything was sorted positively for the animals and this site did not need to exist. But it does and we hope you find some of our posts of interest. Sadly we guess that there will always be cruelty and animal abuse; but we think it fair to say that even over the past 10 years or more, we have seen so many positives. There will always be that sector of the human race who get kicks out of cruelty; but we aim to expose and inform on them whenever we get the chance.
The reason that I created SAV all those years ago has still not achieved its aim – to provide compassion, respect and dignity to all the strays of Serbia. Politics has been the main brick wall that we have faced – and at the moment it is no better. All I can say is that today, 2018, a lot more people are aware of the suffering of Serbian strays than they were about 14 years ago when SAV was founded. People are power, and knowledge is more power – and the good people of Serbia will achieve their desired results eventually. The situation as it is cannot and will not go on.
Why the fuck does a beautiful girl like Tricia suffer ?
What I really want to say to people is that you do what you want to do. If I had taken the advice of many all that time ago; SAV would never have gotten off the ground; and who knows, Serbian strays may still have been suffering in silence. Now we also have a massive SAV Facebook grouphttps://www.facebook.com/groups/SerbianAnimalsVoice/with over 1200 dedicated animal welfare campaigners – it provides a window for Serbian shelters and campaigners to inform the world of the wonderful work they are doing; whilst at the same time getting help with funding for food, veterinary costs and all the other things that shelters need.
We took the chance all those years ago – and in the early days we rejoiced at getting 15 people visit the site each day. Now today, our daily visits go into the hundreds – each visit being someone who is being informed and educated about the suffering of animals around the world. So in that sense we are getting somewhere.
So, live the dream; take the chance and in many cases, do not listen to the well meaning advice of others !. You do what you want to do; suffer the good and bad times; but the main thing is do what you want to do.
Jill lived her dream – we still remember her courage for the baby calves exported in the live animal export trade.
Go where your dreams take you – it can be a very positive move !
Thanks for visiting the site and for having faith in what we do.
Posted on May 22, 2018 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
I had the real pleasure of working with Guy – founder of PICAS, here in England; in 2003, when we combined our efforts to submit a proposal to a local authority on non lethal methods of Pigeon control.
Guy is just one of the nicest blokes you could ever wish to meet; and his advice and ideas on humane pigeon control for the authority near to my home were just the best. PICAS – the Pigeon Control Advisory Service provide non lethal advice on bird control to authorities and organisations all over the UK; as well as international customers.
Check out their site via the following and learn more about pigeons – they are not the pest they are often accused of being. – Mark.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 