Posted on March 21, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
I don’t have a “good night” post for you today, dear friends.
But for that, a brilliant article about Corona that has to be read by everyone.
From everyone who wants to be informed.
It is factual, scientific and does exactly what our incompetent governments cannot do: namely it gives solutions and starting points.
Posted on March 21, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Czech Republic: Targeted Strike Against Animal Torture and Puppy Mafia!
At the beginning of March 2020, the Czech parliament voted in favor of a harsher punishment for torturers, puppy dealers and illegal breeders. With the support of the President, cruelty to animals will soon face severe punishments. With the change in the law, the Czech Republic is taking a role model for other European countries!
After the law has come into force, cruelty to animals is expected to be imprisoned for up to six years.
This can also be pronounced without probation if there were no other crimes before.
Illegal breeding facilities were redefined as criminal offenses in order to be able to deal with their handling of dogs and cats in a way that is contrary to animal welfare.
Anyone who still operates such illegal breeding facilities can face up to ten years in prison or a fine of up to 200,000 euros.
My comment: If you enter the word “dog puppy” in Google, over 100,000 results appear. First place: eBay classifieds.
Yes! the platform has long since not only sold second-hand goods, but also living beings.
The business with puppies on the Internet is booming: it is estimated that over a million dogs are offered each year, making eBay classified ads one of the largest trading centers for the pet trade in Germany.
A study that has now been published shows that the total sales value is projected to be over one billion euros per year – mostly it is criminal traders who sell puppies via the platform.
More than ever the animal shelters are overcrowded today, up to 70,000 pets came to a shelter in Germany during the summer vacation season alone.
We are a consumer society, just as we consume meat and eggs, so we “consume” pet animals. If a purchased item does not work, we order the next one online.
Do not buy animals on the Internet or from breeders!
Go to an animal shelter and spend a day there, you will surely find your future friend.
Thanks to the corona virus, we’re all on holidays now!
The meat and dairy industries, especially those that sell live animals directly to consumers, are breeding grounds for deadly diseases and illnesses. Cows, chickens, pigs, birds, and others are crammed into small buildings and cells, bringing together thousands of animals in very tight spaces. If one animal is sick, the rest of the population is immediately at risk.
Such disregard for these creatures’ health and wellbeing is both abusive to animals and dangerous to humans. From dirty air and water to the overuse of antibiotics, the meat and dairy industries are perpetuating the spread of bacterial infections, especially antibiotic-resistant strains, viruses, and other zoonotic diseases.
With the recent COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, the world is starting to realize the dangers of animal agriculture, and it’s about time. Fortunately, changing the way we treat animals can help avoid these pandemics in the future.
Here are 5 deadly diseases linked to the meat and dairy industries:
1. COVID-19 (2019 Novel Coronavirus)
While the jury is still out on which animal is ultimately responsible for COVID-19’s jump to humans, scientists and other experts are confident the virus originated in bats and spread to humans through a Chinese wet market.
At these wet markets, animals, both alive and dead, and people are put into close proximity, creating an ideal environment for viruses and other diseases to spread from host to host.
“Poorly-regulated, live-animal markets mixed with illegal wildlife trade,” the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement, “offer a unique opportunity for viruses to spillover from wildlife hosts into the human population.”
Fortunately, China and other Asian countries are starting to crack down on wildlife trading. Proposals to ban the dog and cat meat trade are being considered, China has outlawed eating wildlife, and Vietnam might permanently ban their wildlife meat trade. Hopefully, this pandemic shows the importance of animal welfare for both animals and humans.
2. H1N1 (Swine Flu)
Before the recent COVID-19 outbreak, the last time the World Health Organization declared a pandemic was for the swine influenza. H1N1, which is the term given to the variant virus that eventually jumped from pigs to humans, was first discovered in April 2009. By April 2010, the CDC estimated that anywhere from 151,000 to 575,000 people died globally as a result of the H1N1 pandemic.
Swine flu likely originated due to frequent contact between farm workers and pigs combined with unsanitary factory-farming conditions and a lack of concern for animal welfare. Unfortunately, once the genie is let out of the bottle, there isn’t much we can do to put it back. To this day, H1N1 circulates as a seasonal flu virus.
3. H5N1 (Bird Flu)
Also called avian influenza, bird flu can jump from chickens and other poultry livestock to humans. Though never as severe as swine flu, avian influenza A viruses H5, H7, and H9 have infected people, with the H5N1 and H7N9 strains being the most common.
Since 2013, at least 1,500 people fell victim to H7N9 and over 600 died as a result of their illnesses. While these statistics pale in comparison to both the COVID-19 and H1N1 pandemics, they do show how increased exposure to sick birds is a dangerous game to play. With over 9 billion chickens slaughtered every year in the United States alone, the opportunity for zoonotic spillover is concerning.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is not a virus like the novel coronavirus, swine flu, or bird flu. Rather, it’s a bacterial infection – a staph infection to be more specific. Staphylococcus aureus is a dangerous bacteria that can cause pneumonia, heart valve infections, and bone infections, though it is typically treated with methicillin. Unfortunately, likely due to a severe overuse of antibiotics, Staphylococcus aureus became resistant to methicillin, and MRSA was born.
How is all of this related to the meat and dairy industry? The FDA currently allows farmers to administer antibiotics to their livestock as a “disease prevention” tactic, leaving meat- and dairy-consuming humans to massively and unknowingly overuse these important drugs.
“To keep these miracle drugs working when sick people and animals need them,” Interim Director of Food and Agriculture at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Lena Brook, said, “[the] FDA must end the widespread practice of using these drugs for so-called ‘disease prevention’ and set clear targets for antibiotics reduction in [the meat and dairy industries].”
If we don’t drastically change our current food system, a U.N. report estimates that over 10 million people per year will die from drug-resistant infections by 2050. The easiest way to ensure you’re not ingesting unnecessary antibiotics is to adopt a plant-based diet.
5. Salmonella
Salmonella is the most frequently reported foodborne bacterial infection in the United States. It’s typically transmitted from contaminated animal meat, eggs, or dairy and infects the intestinal tract. If it happens to move beyond the intestinal tract, salmonella is deadly, though most typically recover within 48 to 72 hours.
Unfortunately, like MRSA, salmonella is starting to develop immunities to certain antibiotics, which makes treating severe cases much more difficult for health professionals. As more animals are forced to live in closer proximity to others, factory farms ignore animal welfare standards, and environmental protections aren’t awarded to those that live near these facilities, salmonella outbreaks could increase in frequency.
We must start working toward a cruelty-free food system. Our lives, and the lives of billions of animals around the world, depend on it.
Posted on March 21, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Celebrities Ricky Gervais and Peter Egan join campaigners in calls for Indonesia to close down its Live Animal Markets
Wednesday, 18 March 2020
As the coronavirus COVID-19 continues to cause global chaos, sickness and fatalities, and Indonesia reports its first human infections, international and Indonesian celebrities join forces with campaigners from the Dog Meat Free Indonesia coalition to call on the Indonesian government to take action to close its cruel and filthy live animal markets to safeguard human and animal health and welfare.
18th March, Jakarta: Celebrities Ricky Gervais and Peter Egan have joined the Dog Meat Free Indonesia (DMFI) coalition in their calls on President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) to take action to close the country’s macabre live animal markets amidst the growing global health crisis.
Whilst the virus is now known to have originated from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where a huge variety of wildlife species were being sold alongside dogs and other domesticated animals destined for human consumption, campaigners warn that these types of gruesome markets are still rife in many parts of the region, including Indonesia.
The DMFI’s latest campaign supported by international and Indonesian celebrity ambassadors is committed to raising public and political awareness of the unsanitary conditions in these markets, that, together with the contamination risks of having so many animal species caged and killed alongside one another, present the perfect breeding ground for new and deadly diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that 70 per cent of global disease-causing pathogens discovered in the past 50 years came from animals, and COVID-19 is no different.
In the video released by the DMFI coalition today, actor and comedian Ricky Gervais warns, “It’s not the first time a terrible disease has started because of people eating things they shouldn’t. I mean this one comes from eating pangolins. Pangolins! Stop eating everything that moves! It’s going to kill us all!.”
Campaigners warned President Jokowi in an open letter in January of the grave dangers of the country’s live animal markets and unregulated trade in wildlife, and called for “preventative and proactive measures to make sure Indonesia is not the next point of origin of a deadly virus.” The authorities in Indonesia are finally starting to feel the pressure after announcing the country’s first cases of the deadly disease on the 2nd March, with the numbers of infections on the archipelago steadily rising in the world’s fourth most populous country, and with the French Prime Minister calling it the “biggest health crisis in a century”.
Other countries affected by the deadly outbreak have already started to adopt landmark measures to tackle the source of the virus. Following a temporary ban in January, on the 24th February, China approved a landmark proposal which prohibits “the illegal wildlife trade, abolishes the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and effectively protects the lives and health of the people”; and on the 26th February, China’s fifth largest city, Shenzhen, proposed legislation with the additional measure of a city-wide ban on the consumption of dogs and cats, to reflect the special relationship between people and domesticated companion animals, which it has called the “consensus of all human civilisation”. On the 9th March, the Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc of Vietnam ordered the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to submit a directive for a ban on wildlife trade and consumption by the 1st of April. The DMFI campaigners hope that Indonesia will follow their example.
“The coronavirus outbreak has not only exposed the huge public health risks associated with live animal markets, it has also shone the global spotlight on the horrors of these animal markets and trades.Finally, governments are realising that they cannot keep these cruel and unregulated trades and practices alive and also keep their citizens safe, and we urge Indonesia to take similar urgent actions. Populations of protected species of wildlife are being decimated, companion animals are being stolen, and every month, tens of thousands of animals are illegally transported into, and slaughtered in, densely populated cities to supply the demand for dog, cat and “exotic” meat,” explains Lola Webber, co-founder of Change For Animals Foundation and co-ordinator for the Dog Meat Free Indonesia coalition.
Posted on March 21, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) inspectors found numerous troubling animal welfare violations, including housing monkeys separately in barren cages and allowing them to suffer from untreated medical conditions.
This monkey is overweight and has severe alopecia. Inspectors noted that JHU had no plan to treat either problem—she was simply left to suffer with her baby in a barren cage.
Monkeys, normally gentle, social animals, were kept separated, alone in empty metal cages barely large enough for them to turn around in, with nothing to make their lives worth living.
The gentle monkey pictured above, who doesn’t even have a toy to play with as a distraction from the unrelenting loneliness, suffers from alopecia, a condition that results in hair loss.
The monkey may also be tearing his or her own hair out as a result of the stress of confinement and the absence of peers with whom to engage in mutual grooming, which is what monkeys do in exchange for food, sex, and friendship.
Hair loss is seen in many of the photographs of monkeys in laboratories at JHU.
Their stress levels skyrocket in laboratory settings, where extreme isolation and deprivation are interrupted only by unpredictable humans, who frequently inflict pain on them during experiments.
Monkeys caged alone, as USDA inspectors have photographed in JHU labs, tend to exhibit “stereotypic behavior,”such as repetitive movements like pacing, circling, swinging, and rocking, to alleviate their mental anguish and to try to cope with their inadequate environment.
This is another gentle monkey at JHU whose hair has almost completely fallen out. The only hair left is on the head and wrists.
Kept in these austere settings, monkeys may suffer from psychological trauma.
They often pace, pull out their own hair, and bite themselves in a desperate attempt to experience any kind of stimulation in their utterly deprived lives.
The public deserves to know what takes place behind the locked doors of JHU’s laboratories, where experimenters conduct crude animal tests, often receiving taxpayer funds for them.
PETA is fighting to shine the bright light of public scrutiny on these experiments. We have known for decades that monkeys need companionship, access to outdoor spaces, and much more than a laboratory can provide.
This is another shot of the monkey and her baby, both suffering from severe alopecia, which JHU apparently ignored. There was no treatment plan for either monkey.
JHU’s repeated failure to comply with the AWA is shameful.
Below are just some of JHU’s violations of federal animal welfare regulations as noted by the USDA:
June 10, 2019: A marmoset died after a laboratory worker closed the cage door on him or her, causing hemorrhaging and trauma to the neck.
February 15, 2017: A young macaque was found dead in the outdoor portion of her enclosure. Her head had become caught inside a ball used for enrichment, which had a hole chewed into it sufficient to allow her entire head to become entrapped. Although the necropsy was not conclusive, the facility determined that the cause of death was likely prolonged exposure to the cold combined with the stress of not being able to free her head.
July 12, 2016: Two baboon cages had loops of water lines entering from the top, creating a possible strangulation hazard; two racks of rabbit enclosures had water nipples that did not fully reach into the cages, making it difficult for the animals to access fresh water; three primates were singly housed and had no visual contact with peers; and there were 17 instances of expired medications.
March 31, 2016:Johns Hopkins received an Official Warning Letter for its failure to ensure the psychological well-being of primates. Eight primates were noted to have significant hair loss at the time of inspection. Some of them were not given adequate treatment.
January 28, 2015:A rabbit died of asphyxiation after being left in a cage that was sent through a high temperature disinfecting machine prior to regular cage washing.
An I mean…It doesn’t take long to think about what all these high-paying Mengele are capable of, when they use senseless violence and torture against these defenseless animals without the slightest scruple.
Being aware that all these is just for career and money and nothing more.
The worst experience about animal experiments has hit us all recently: These worldwide laboratory mafia has been experimenting with all types of animal diseases for years and cannot even defeat a poor virus today!
That just shows how much trust we can have in animal experiments.
It is a crime that the state uses our money to support a murder machinery.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 