Posted on October 16, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
In the first-ever undercover investigation into a fish hatchery in the United States, an investigator from animal advocacy nonprofit Compassion Over Killing worked at Cooke Aquaculture in Bingham, Maine. This hatchery raises millions of salmon each year and supplies Martha Stewart’s True North Seafood line. The investigator documented horrific treatment of salmon, including fish being thrown, stomped on, suffocated in barrels, stuck with needles, and left to die.
For salmon at the hatchery, life begins in giant metal tanks stuffed with thousands of tiny pink eggs. The dirty conditions are perfect for fungi and parasites, which grow in clumps on many of the eggs. Some babies hatch with severe deformities, while others develop them after being handled, as one worker explains: “Spinal deformity. Happens when they’re babies in B building. If you’re too rough with them, you’ll break their back and they’ll grow back like that.”
During vaccination procedures, many salmon are not properly anesthetized and thrash as workers inject them with needles. One worker says, “Once the needle’s in them and they flop, that tears a f**king huge hole in them.” Another worker describes the psychological effects of the process:
The vaccinating stresses them out, takes its toll on them. Some of them die off. Once you vaccinate them, it takes them like a week before they start eating again.
Salmon considered unprofitable are thrown away like trash. The video shows a worker tossing a fish into a giant barrel and raising his arms in triumph. Once in the barrels, salmon are left to slowly suffocate or are crushed by the weight of other fish. One worker seems to acknowledge the brutality of this treatment. “They just suffocate,” he says. “It’s so rough. Over the years you kinda get desensitized.”
Some of the fish die from infections with parasites and fungi that thrive in the filthy environment. A worker says, “They get, like, lesions and stuff from the fungus, and it kinda eats away at them and they start bleeding from that.” The undercover investigator captured footage of salmon whose faces were partially eaten away.
The fish who manage to survive are kept in overcrowded, stressful conditions and often underfed, which can have tragic consequences. “If the fish aren’t fed enough, they’ll actually think the little pupil on the other fish is food, and they’ll come after it and they’ll peck the eye out,” one worker explains. “You happen to see some missing eyeballs, that’s the reason.”
After going through all this horror, adolescent salmon are usually transported to cages in the ocean to be fattened up for slaughter. In these cages, salmon often suffer sea lice infestations and are fed a diet that includes ingredients from wild-caught fish, who are taken from increasingly depleted oceans. And because these cages are stationary, the salmon cannot flee certain dangers. Harmful algal blooms can suffocate and kill millions of fish at a time.
Although the aquaculture industry treats these animals like unfeeling objects, fish are complex, sensitive beings, many of whom use tools and recognize themselves in mirrors and all of whom feel pain.
You can make a difference for fish and other animals by choosing more plant-based meals. Get started by ordering your FREE Vegetarian Starter Guide today.
Posted on October 15, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
from Venus
The EU Commission’s right-hand man is the Eurogroup for Animals.
On their website states: We create a favorable political environment!
and further … “it is of the utmost importance to show that as a membership organization we keep our promises”.
The 8hour campaign (1.2 million votes) in 2012 failed because of the rejection of the then corrupt Commissioner John Dali.
Has the Eurogroup contemplated how to honor its promises to EU-Citisens if the Commission now ignores the 1.5 million votes in the “End of Cage Age” Campaign?
The “case John Dalli” may have forgotten the employees of the Eurogroup, they like to suppress sad defeats.
This case should always be a warning sign of how easy it is to betray the animals and those who want a better world for them.
But in this game are also involved those who make big promises, even though they know that they have no power to make big changes in animal suffering under the EU Commission. And by that I mean the Eurogroup for Animals!
The 36 employees of Eurogroup working for the Commission for good money should be sparing with their promises and nice words.
The Eurogroup can not make any promise, because they do not take any decision.
They preach visions and missions into their web site but the thing is very simple: if the commission (even now like under Dalli back then) does not abolish caging, in spite of 1.5 million votes, then they should not give us lectures on trust or active animal welfare, but they have only to answer one simple question: what is their right of existence?
Those who participate in the moral and political EU format are cheated and betrayed, so like the animals are.
The Eurogroup is just as weak as we are, the citizens of the EU, the Groupe is powerless, as we are, with the only difference that they are paid to sell illusions, campaigns, visions and hopes in an area, this of animal welfare, which the EU does not care at all.
“We exist because European citizens believe animals deserve a voice” says the groupe.
Indeed! there are demonstrably 1.5 million EU citizens who want to give the voiceless, the suffering, the enslaved beings a voice, a better world.
But no one believes that this can be done with the Eurogroup.
With the employer of the Eurogroup anyway not.
I got this message from Compassion in World Farming today:
170 organisations, united by Compassion in World Farming, came together to make this happen. An unprecedented pan-European movement for farm animal welfare!
So what’s next? The UK Parliament (with 389,057 signatures ) is now expected to debate a ban on farm cages. And, to force the European Commission to act, at least 1 million ECI signatures must be validated.
This process could take three months, and then we’ll submit the petition.
We’ll keep you fully updated on progress and new ways you can get involved!”
After this message, I had the same bitter feeling as back then in the 8hours campaign.
Unfortunately, the bad sides of history are always repeating themselves.
The Dallis, the corrupt commissars and their naive servants.
I want to pick up again on some of our (SAV) past work in Serbia; not for any specific reason; just that it fits well into the recent post by Venus which deals with stray animals within the EU -here is the link: https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2019/10/14/stray-animals-abandoned-friends/ – I have also added some links and video footage at the end of this post.
Firstly, welcome to everyone and anyone who visits the site from around the globe – it is good to see you and I hope you and I hope you find our articles of interest.
Secondly, and very importantly; never judge the way of a nation by the actions of just a few folk that live there. Serbia has some brilliant animal campaigners, and it has been my pleasure over the last 15+ years to work with many of them – people who have my full respect and people that I can call friends. There are some great little private, individual shelters where people are doing everything they can for animals – check out this SAV Facebook site of ours to see what I mean: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SerbianAnimalsVoice/
Today I want to track back to an issue we dealt with many years ago – that of the welfare of animals on some Serbian farms. Please remember, Serbia is currently a nation which is a ‘Candidate Country’ to join the EU. To become a member state, it will supposedly enforce all the legislation required of it under EU rules. But we know these don’t work anyway, and the EU never enforces its own legislation; as we have proven so many times with animal transport breaches over the years regarding Regulation 1/2005.
So, the (EU) rules say that all farm animals must be kept to certain standards – which is a joke really considering how many times we have helped to expose EU wrong doings in the past:
Going back; we looked into specific farm animal welfare in the past. As part of the CIWF campaign team in the past; https://www.ciwf.org.uk/ I was able to call on their extensive experience to help me with regard a few things about EU / Serbian farm animal welfare legislation. Phil helped me a lot and contributed to one of the articles I did on SAV.
Have a look at these pictures that we published at the time – taken on a Serbian farm:
If you are / have been a meat eater in the past; would you want to eat meat that has been raised in this way ? – this is footage that was taken undercover on a Serbian farm a few years back. It is totally non compliant with EU standards; as detailed in the following links:
In the end, the Serbian authorities had to come clean and confirm that the sheep had been shipped live from Serbia. And just for the record, all the shelters threatened with closure by the authorities as part of this expose were left to carry on with their excellent work.
Remember – Serbia is a EUROPEAN NATION – we expect better animal welfare standards of it.
Still to come – out expose of Serbian Zoos and the terrible conditions which animals have to endure – fighting to survive daily whilst the authorities ignore meeting their legal requirements to undertake inspections.
Posted on October 15, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Great milestone for #SaddestBears in Albania!
Numerous demands and campaigns from several national and international NGOs, including FOUR PAWS, have forced Albania to tighten its action against environmental crime!
The Criminal Code of the Albanian Law ⚖️ has just been supplemented with a list of offenses falling into the field of environmental crime. This means that serious offenses such as killing, poaching or trafficking in protected animals can now be punished with several years in prison. So far, such crimes have been punished only with a low fine.
In addition, the “Law on the Protection and Conservation of Wild Animals” was added.
As a result, a “Wildlife National Council” will be set up whose main task is to oversee and support the implementation of the new law.
We sincerely hope that these legal changes will have a positive impact on Albanian flora and fauna, including the wild bear population🐻.
A great success, considering how the bears live in Albania.
Pashuk had been chained up so tight at a restaurant that the metal had gauged into his skin by the time he was rescued. Hertwig, FOUR PAWS: ‘I’ve seen many suffering bears, but I have never seen anything like this. The chain had grown in so deeply that the skin had already grown over it”.
In March 2016,FOUR PAWS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Albanian Ministry of Environment with the aim of working together to create a sustainable and animal welfare-friendly solution for the many, in catastrophic posture lived Albanian bears.
Tomi was given alcohol during years of captivity and had become known as ‘beer bear’ where he was caged in Albania
Since 2016FOUR PAWS and other animal welfare organizations have rescued more than 30 bears from pathetic captivity in Albania, and transferred to foreign wildlife camps in cooperation with the Albanian authorities and other animal welfare organizations.
Most of them were taken illegally out of the wild as young animals.
Ten of these bears now live in the FOUR PAWS bear conservation centers and partner projects in Kosovo, Switzerland, Germany and Bulgaria.
Carsten Hertwig from Four Paws,said: ‘We are happy that the Albanian Ministry of Environment is getting actively involved now”.
My comment: As long as there are brainless people who take selfies with wild animals as a holiday experience and even pay for it, then animals will be abused, enslaved, tortured.
There is very little hope to change this society in its perversity and indifference. Therefore, the solution must come from above, with laws and penalties.
If bear dancing and bear shows are banned, then finally, every stupid tourist will realize that the selfies with suffering animals from the last holiday belong in the garbage and in the history of Middle Ages.
Posted on October 14, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
In many European countries brutal mass murders are used against the high number of abandoned stray dogs. Through state subsidies and the establishment of killing stations, the killing of dogs has become a lucrative business that has to be stopped as soon as possible!
For each animal caught, the dog catchers commissioned by the towns receive a certain amount – to earn as much as possible, however beastly any means are right: The stray dogs are pursued and hunted, poisoned and abused, tortured and killed in a cruel manner.
Just before major international events, such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, tens of thousands of dogs are killed to clean up the streets of large cities.
With our petition we demand a ban on legal dog kills in Europe and the financial support of nationwide castrations by the countries. Killing stations are to be closed and abolished. No stray animals should be killed anymore for an international sports event. All collected signatures will be submitted to the European Parliament.
Please sign now, because your voice saves the dogs life!
My comment: Stray animals were once family members. They were faithful, happy, thankful for giving them a home.
Brainless people, without moral education, without any responsibility for the fate of the weaker ones, have put them on the street.
In Spain every 6 minutes an animal is abandoned on the street.
Then they starve, they suffer.
The accession of many southern European countries to the EU has brought no benefits for the animals.
On the contrary!
The introduction of state animal shelters has become a hell for the strays, and these homes in many EU countries are being commercialized and operators are getting money per day and per dog. The more dogs they catch and the less they spend on care, the more lucrative this business is.
In the streets they are poisoned, shot, burned, beaten to death, almost no one cares about the stray animals. In most southern countries, the strays dare not on the road during the day; they wait for the night, they run through the empty street emaciated, sick, injured, hungry and look for a piece of bread in each garbage container.
Only a consistent castration campaign across Europe could get the problem under control, at least so that it does not get bigger.
Many abandoned friends are waiting in the animal shelters.
And they demand nothing more than a little food, a little caring, and loyalty.
There is certainly enough love in the heart of a feeling person for a new friendship.
In general, nuts are good sources of fat, fibre and protein.
Most of the fat in nuts is monounsaturated fat, as well as omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fat. However, they do contain some saturated fat.
Nuts also pack a number of vitamins and minerals, including magnesium and vitamin E.
Many studies have investigated the health benefits of increased nut intake.
One meta-analysis of 33 studies found that diets high in nuts do not significantly affect weight gain or weight loss. Yet, despite having little effect on weight, many studies have shown that people who eat nuts live longer than those who don’t. This may be due to their ability to help prevent a number of chronic diseases.
For example, nuts may reduce risk factors for metabolic syndrome, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. In fact, one study in over 1,200 people found that eating a Mediterranean diet plus 30 grams of nuts per day decreased the prevalence of metabolic syndrome more than a low-fat diet or a Mediterranean diet with olive oil.
Furthermore, nuts may reduce your risk of other chronic diseases. For example, eating nuts may improve blood sugar levels and lower your risk of certain cancers
Summary Eating nuts may help reduce risk factors for many chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
But recent research shows that eating nuts daily offers a bounty of benefits. Here’s why you should aim for a handful a day. Really! People who ate at least 20 grams of nuts per day (about a handful) were 22 percent less likely to die prematurely, according to a 2016 review article published in BMC Medicine.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 