Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)

Although there were 3,500 native bee species of bees pollinating the flowers and food crops of North America when European settlers landed on its shores in the 17th century, the colonists were interested only in their Old World honeybees’ wax and honey.

Bees heads are CRUSHED so workers can steal their semen and use it to forcibly impregnate queen bees.

They imported the insects, and by the mid-1800s, both feral and domesticated colonies of honeybees were scattered all over the United States.

As a result of disease, pesticides, and climate changes, the honeybee population has been nearly decimated, but since the demand for the bees’ honey and other products remains high, these tiny animals are raised by industries, much like chickens, pigs, and cows are.

Industrial beekeepers want consumers to believe that honey is just a byproduct of the necessary pollination provided by honeybees, but honeybees are not as good at pollinating as many truly wild bees, such as bumblebees and carpenter and digger bees.

Native bees are active earlier in the spring, both males and females pollinate, and they are not affected by stressors such as colony collapse disorder.

But because most species of native bees hibernate for as many as 11 months out of the year and do not live in large colonies, they do not produce massive amounts of honey, and the little that they do produce is not worth the effort required to steal it from them.

Avoid honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, and other products that come from bees. Vegan lip balms and candles are readily available.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/06/15/there-is-nothing-sweet-about-honey/

And I mean…As a food, honey can easily be identified on supermarket shelves.

But many cosmetic companies- that claim to be vegan- use beeswax for their products, which we often overlook or fail to declare.

So be careful when buying cosmetics too.

The same applies to palm oil, which is used massively in food, but also in cosmetic products, and it is therefore very difficult to find some companies that do not use it.

Nowadays you have to train your eyes very well.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Hi Mark,

This is just a quick note as I know that over the past 48 hours your mind, like ours, will have been with the 50,000 Australian sheep who inconceivably are now scheduled to be shipped to Kuwait this week.

Like me, you may ask yourself, ‘How can this be? Surely there is something fundamentally wrong here?’ And yes, you would be right, there is.

We were not going to allow this shipment to proceed without doing everything in our power to prevent it.

Yesterday afternoon, after working day and night, our legal team filed an urgent application in the Federal Court seeking to challenge the Department of Agriculture’s decision to grant the exemption. Our case will be based on the fact that the decisionmaker was obliged to afford Animals Australia an opportunity to be heard in relation to this application. We are seeking an urgent trial on this matter as the window to overturn this decision is so limited.

There is much to play out in coming hours and days. No doubt the Department and exporter will rigorously defend this decision, but be reassured that our brilliant legal team will be in the Federal Court this morning doing all things humanly possible on behalf of these sheep, and us — the community who care so deeply about them.

Mark, know that we are only able to take this swift action to defend these animals because of you. Thank you so much for supporting these critical efforts as always.

I will keep you updated on developments.

For the animals (and especially for each one of these sheep),

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Bullfighting returns to Spain with strict new rules for the sport

There has been no bullfighting since Spain declared its State of Emergency on March 14th and the industry had voiced its “grave concerns” over whether the tradition could survive

https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/bullfighting-returns-spain-strict-new-22173387?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

Bullfighting is back in Spain despite the hopes of animal rights’ campaigners that the coronavirus pandemic would end the tradition.

The Spanish government has published a new decree that allows bullrings to reopen for the first time in three months.

There are conditions, including regions needing to be in either phase two or phase three of the COVID-10 de-escalation period which most of the country is already in.

Those areas in phase two can only fill their bullrings to a third capacity or a maximum of 400 people.

Once in phase three, this increases to 50 per cent or 800 spectators.

These bullrings have to be outdoors and all the seats have to be allocated in advance.

Any equipment used and anything shared must be completely disinfected after use.

There has been no bullfighting since Spain declared its State of Emergency on March 14th and the industry had voiced its “grave concerns” over whether the tradition could survive.

Thousands of bullfights and fiestas were cancelled, as well as bull running festivals, the most famous being the San Fermin in Pamplona which should have been held from July 6th to 14th and would have attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators from all over Spain and beyond.

Animal rights groups said the coronavirus pandemic should have been the death knell for the sport and that it was part of Spanish culture only enjoyed by the minority.

During the pandemic, bullfighting organisations and unions called for extensive aid and compensation for breeders, bullrings and bullfighters, saying losses would amount to more than 700 million euros in ticket and sponsorship revenue.

Despite the government’s decision to give the go-ahead for bullfights to restart, the industry says it is still furious about the lack of financial help and supporters are planning to launch protests at the weekend in various locations.

They claim the government has shown them “utter contempt”. Marches are planned in Seville, Valencia, Albacete and Guadalajara.

The party for the defence of animals, Pacma had hoped there woud be no more bullfights this year because of the coronavirus and that more than 12,000 bulls would have been saved.

AnimaNaturalis also launched a petition calling for “not one euro of help” and received more than 150,000 signatures.

LIVE EXPORT

Today is “Ban Live Exports” International Awareness Day, an opportunity to speak up for the hundreds of thousands of animals who are forced to make long, harrowing journeys to their deaths.

Live animals, including babies and pregnant females, are transported hundreds or even thousands of miles from the UK to the EU and beyond in dangerous conditions and all weather extremes, causing them distress, injury, and disease. They can be in transit for days, often without sufficient food, water, or rest. Many die as a result.

Now that the UK has left the EU and its trade restrictions no longer apply, we have a realistic chance of securing a ban on live exports. Please write to environment secretary George Eustice – and ask all your friends to do the same – to urge him to prevent thousands of animals from suffering and dying on lorries and ships every year.

Take Action:

https://secure.peta.org.uk/page/62085/action/1?utm_source=PETA%20UK::E-Mail&utm_medium=Alert&utm_campaign=0620::veg::PETA%20UK::E-Mail::Live%20Export%20Awareness%20Day::::aa%20em&ea.url.id=4765410&forwarded=true

THE DANGERS OF THE LIVE EXPORT TRADE

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/21/live-animals-are-the-largest-source-of-infection-dangers-of-the-export-trade

‘Live animals are the largest source of infection’: dangers of the export trade

Transporting more livestock will increase transmission of diseases, including some that could also threaten humans

The growth of the live animal export trade will make the spread of diseases more likely, experts have warned.

Almost 30% more pigs, goats, cows and sheep were shipped, flown and driven across the world in 2017 than a decade earlier, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The figure is set to rise further, partly because it is still often cheaper to move live animals than use refrigerated transport, despite advances in technology.

Consumer demand for fresh meat is also rising as the global population approaches 8 billion, including many who are increasingly adopting diets rich in meat.

But transporting live animals around the world increases the risk of disease transmission, according to veterinarians and epidemiologists who fear the growing industry may have already caused viruses to spread.

Jeroen Dewulf, a veterinarian at Ghent University in Belgium, said the introduction of the African swine fever virus (ASF) into Belgium had almost certainly been caused by human interference: either through imported contaminated animal products or by illegal movements of wild boar.

“There are several drivers of spreading diseases, but live animals are the largest source of infection,” Dewulf said. “The more you are going to move animals, the more you run the risk that diseases will be spread through these animals. There are other routes, the virus can be transmitted in meat products for example, but it’s much more efficient to transmit via live animals.”

David McIver, a senior scientist and epidemiologist at biotech company Metabiota, said the rise in live animal exports was a growing issue for many other diseases, such as avian influenza virus, mad cow disease and Nipah virus, while he warned that ASF could one day feasibly threaten humans in some form.

“The first case of Nipah virus in 1998 came after an outbreak in Malaysia following the expansion of pig farming in pristine rainforest areas,” he said.

“Bats were eating fruit, they dropped it with their saliva on it, it was eaten by pigs, then it gets into humans and there were 105 deaths. Tons of swine had to be culled to get the outbreak under control. If we’re exporting those animals around the world we’re potentially moving unknown pathogens to new places.”

In another well-known case, British live cattle exports, as well as those of beef products, were banned in the 1990s due to the fear of spreading bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.

It is believed that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, fatal brain disorder, is likely to be caused by people ingesting meat contaminated with mad cow disease.

The authors of a study in journal BioMed warned in 2015: “Animal trade is an effective way of introducing, maintaining and spreading animal diseases, as observed with the spread of different strains of foot and mouth disease in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), for example, into Oman and Canada through the importation of infected cattle.”

McIver added: “Even though ASF doesn’t affect humans now, pigs and people are not so different biologically and immunologically, so it is conceivable that a few small changes in the genetics of the virus can allow that to hop into people and then we’ve got ourselves a serious problem.”

Prof Dirk Pfeiffer, from City University in Hong Kong and the Royal Veterinary College in London, said the risk depends on where you are in the world. “It’s very regulated in high-income countries with fairly effective measures in place protecting their livestock populations from spread of infectious diseases,” he said.

“The real issue is in many of the low- to medium-income countries where there are new opportunities for money to be made, and that includes increased meat demand. Movements of live animals in these parts of the world play a role in spreading animal disease.” In China, for example, live animals are regularly moved around the country in order to supply the ‘wet markets’ where butchers serve up freshly slaughtered meat. These places have long been connected with disease risk – and, indeed, the recent outbreak of coronavirus has been traced back to a wet market in Wuhan.

A system managed by the World Organisation for Animal Health monitors disease outbreaks and provides information based on the reporting of affected countries. While it is praised for its role, it has to rely on prompt and honest reporting from states to be fully effective.

“One of the perverse incentives about the surveillance system is that the harder you research the more likely you’ll find something, and then the country will be a victim of finding something,” Dewulf said.

“In Belgium, for example, with the recent ASF outbreak, we were carefully monitoring, we notified all the responsible agencies, and then we faced all the consequences, such as trade restrictions, etc. In consequence, our animal industry has been hit very hard.”

But despite the growing realisation of the need to control exports more robustly, experts warn that it would be impossible to screen all animals.

“In most cases where we look at the transmission of disease, whether in humans or livestock, we tend to see them move quicker and in more diverse ways than our surveillance systems are able to keep up with,” McIver said.

Nor are these systems designed to screen live animals or meat products entering or leaving countries, he said, before warning of diseases which have not yet been identified.

“Due to the sheer volume of animals that move around, the budgets that are allocated towards it are not always sufficient and in many cases we’re only able to look for things we know about. Animals may be coming or going with pathogens that are potentially really dangerous but we just haven’t dealt with them yet.”

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To the international animal transport day…

Around 3.8 million animals are transported every day in the EU alone.

That is 1.4 billion animals a year.

As in all sectors of the economy, animal transport is about money: animals are transported to where the greatest profits are: Pigs are born in Austria, fattened in Spain, and slaughtered in Lebanon.

Animal transports take place under cruel conditions. The longer an animal is transported, the more the animals suffer.

The usual journey time for international animal transports is between 50 and 90 hours.

Horses that are transported from Lithuania to Sardinia are 100 hours in the transporter, cattle that are shipped to the Middle East for a whole week.

It was also decided to end export subsidies for live animal transport to third countries. But due to countless exception rules, which are also laid down by the EU Commission, these laws are completely ineffective.

We have beautiful laws and tons of exceptions!! There are so many exceptions that export subsidies for cattle increased from 58 to 67 million euros between 2002 and 2003!

Until today,  instead of reducing long-distance transport, the EU is still promoting these live animal transports!

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/06/14/animal-transports-animal-cruelty-officially-approved/

Why they are animal transports so lucrative?
Because EU subsidies continue to flow and flow in favor of factory farming, the animal traders and the freight lobby …

This means that instead of reducing long-distance transports, the EU is promoting them until today because the commissioners in Brussels do the best lobby work for the meat industry.

And because, despite the information, despite videos from the hell of animal transports and animal farms, meat-eaters still want to eat dead animals and their products!

But we can change this murderous world order, it must be feasible to awaken conscience in this society. That must be our goal!

Our job is not to complain about, we need struggle and effectiveness.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Most people think that they are the owner, the ruler under the other animals.

That is an error.
We are all part of the whole. Our task is to act as protectors and caretakers of the weakest, not that of the exploiters.

Man has responsibility, not power.

Regards and a good night from Venus

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Camel fights (Turkish Deve güreşi) is the traditional camel fight in western Anatolia.

This originally probably Yörük (Nomadic) tradition was revived by tourism. And again there are old traditions that are supposed to justify such cruelty to animals.

After all, this is about profit and satisfying the entertainment addiction of tourists and locals.
And how could it be otherwise: Of course there is the right camel meat for the carnivores.

facebook.com/inthenow/

And I mean…When animals are tortured and end up involuntarily and painfully in death, it is no longer tradition, it is much more than that.

It is an industry that the profiteers operate out of greed for money and sell it to the handful of tourists as “culture” or “tradition”.

The main victims of “traditions” are mostly animals because animals cannot defend themselves and are therefore used as available means for every purpose.

Under the guise of tradition, the worst crimes are committed in the animal sector, which is justified as “social”, “normal”, “natural”, or “necessary”.

It is high time for the human species to evolve.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Dear Mark,

I’m sorry to have to bring you this news on a Saturday. Just hours ago, we learned that the live export ship at the centre of a COVID-19 outbreak has been granted an exemption to export 50,000 sheep to Kuwait, despite the summer shipment ban in place.

As recently as last week, the application by the exporter to ship these animals was denied, on the basis that doing so could be catastrophic for the animals on board. But today, we have learnt that a second application by the exporter RETWA has been approved, and the Al Kuwait ship will be loaded to leave within days.

In reading the details of the decision made by the industry regulator, it is very clear that the commercial interests of the exporter has been prioritised over animal welfare. Inconceivably, the Regulator sought to justify this in stating:

“I found that the Australian public would expect that in deciding whether or not to grant the exemption, the Secretary (or his delegate) would have due regard to the rationale underlying the prohibition and balance the impact on the exporter and industry against the risk to the health and welfare of livestock.”

As you know, the majority of the Australian public are appalled that live animal export even exists, and have no sympathy for an industry that has built its enormous profits on mass animal suffering. To suggest otherwise, and use the Australian public as one of the justifications to grant an exemption, is outrageous, and exactly why your MP needs to hear from you today.

Please spare a moment to take action now »

We have urgently gathered our legal team together this morning to examine whether any avenues exist to appeal this decision. I don’t want to get your hopes up, because when this legislation was written, limiting any ability to appeal decisions would have been front of mind. But, be assured that if an avenue does exist — we will do all things possible to explore it and protect these animals.

Thank you as always for your kind heart, and for providing these animals awaiting export with a voice today.

I will be in touch soon with more.

For the animals,
Lyn

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