In an unconscionable move, Anna Seidman — a former lawyer for the trophy hunting group Safari Club International (SCI) — has been appointed assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) International Affairs program.
Seidman has sued the FWS a number of times during her 20-year tenure as litigator for SCI, an organization which successfully lobbied to revoke the ban on importing elephant body parts as hunting “trophies” from Africa.
In her new role, Seidman, who replaced Eric Alvarez, will head a team focused on protecting endangered wildlife and enforcing conservation pacts worldwide. This is in sharp contrast to her lengthy employment at SCI, where, as Director of Legal Advocacy and International Affairs, Seidman fought against legislation aimed at protecting wildlife, including a 2015 regulation that banned aggressive methods of predator control in national preserves and refuges — specifically in Alaska.
A spokesperson from the FWS confirmed the engagement to HuffPost, citing Seidman as “an effective, innovative leader with 20 years of legal and policy experience, including expertise in international environment and natural resource management.”
This appointment could potentially have far-reaching negative implications for the protection of wildlife.
To voice your concern, contact Chief Officer of Public Affairs for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Gavin Shire at Gavin_Shire@fws.gov.
Posted on April 14, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Coronavirus closes meat plants in Canada and the United States as world’s largest pork producer warns of shortages.
CHICAGO — Major meat companies in the United States and Canada have closed plants temporarily due to cases of the new coronavirus and concerns about its spread.
Here are some facilities that have shut or reduced production:
• An Olymel pork plant in Yamachiche, Quebec, shut on March 29 for two weeks, after nine workers tested positive for the coronavirus.
• Maple Leaf Foods suspended operationson April 8 at its Brampton, Ontario poultry plant, following three COVID cases among workers at that facility.
• Harmony Beef in Alberta, Canada, shut its cattle slaughter operations on March 27 for two days, after a worker tested positive for the new coronavirus, prompting some federal inspectors to stay away from the site.
• Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, on Sunday said it is shutting a pork plant indefinitely and warned that plant shutdowns are pushing the United States “perilously close to the edge” in meat supplies for grocers.
• JBS USA shut a beef plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, until April 16, after previously cutting production.
• JBS reduced production a beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, due to high absences among workers, according to the local United Food and Commercial Workers union.
The company said high absenteeism led slaughter rates to outpace the process of cutting carcasses into pieces.
• National Beef Packing Co suspended cattle slaughtering at a beef plant in Tama, Iowa, for a cleaning and planned to resume on April 13.
• Aurora Packing Company closed a beef plant in Aurora, Illinois, said Brad Lyle, chief financial officer for U.S. commodity firm Kerns and Associates. A security officer at the plant said it was closed due to the pandemic. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
• Cargill Inc closed a plant in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, that produces meat for U.S. grocery stores.
• Tyson Foods Inc shut a hog slaughterhouse in Columbus Junction, Iowa, the week of April 6 after more than 24 cases of COVID-19 involving employees at the facility.
• Sanderson Farms Inc reduced chicken production to 1 million birds a week from 1.3 million at a plant in Moultrie, Georgia.
My comment: The USA is the second largest pig producer in the world after China.
Germany comes third.
35 million chickens, 424,000 pigs, 130,000 cattle. So many animals are slaughtered, cut into pieces, packed in Tyson Foods companies every week (!!!) – and then offered for consumption in supermarkets such as Walmart or fast food outlets like McDonalds in over 100 countries.
Every second person in the world eats meat from Tyson Foods, a meat producer who is considered to be the world’s largest polluter.
We are particularly pleased with the consequences of coronavirus on Tyson’s businesses.
And we wish Tyson and the rest of the meat mafia around the world the biggest losses the economy has ever seen.
Posted on April 14, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Famous whistleblower Edward Snowden has a dire warning for everyone grappling with the coronavirus pandemic: don’t let authoritarians exploit the crisis to claim more power.
Snowden told Vice that he sees the rise of emergency laws, increased surveillance, and other ways that governments have suspended civil rights to combat the pandemic as a disturbing power grab.
And, he added, he doesn’t expect the leaders behind it to relinquish the newfound power when the coronavirus outbreak finally recedes.
Snowden argued that a global pandemic was readily predictable, and that scientists and intelligence agencies had long been sounding alarm bells. Imposing new emergency surveillance, he argues, is a particularly disturbing play.
“As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world,” Snowden told Vice.
Ultimately, Snowden fears that the world leaders claiming new emergency authority will hold onto them well after the pandemic ends.
“Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept?” Snowden said.
“That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what is being built is the architecture of oppression.”
And I mean … All governments, at least in Europe, continue to be tough on the Corona virus, and that’s right.
However, no one is willing to ban meat consumption – at least during the blackout period.
And no one talks about the main cause of virus formation.
Even the conservative media warn of viruses and bacteria in factory farming and point this out every day.
Nevertheless: The animal transports go beyond the borders with even looser regulations than before, hunting in Germany is allowed without restrictions, feeding pigeons remains forbidden, with a fine of 1000 euros for non-obedient citizens
The stupid government in Germany wants to introduce the app warning system in mobile phones that send a signal as soon as a registered corona infected person appears.
That’s not all.
The German government expects 40 to 50 million volunteers of the app system !!!
In the first place it is voluntary, then it is mandatory.
The majority of the population does not understand what is really happening. And it doesn’t even understand that it doesn’t understand.
This makes the surveillance system easier than ever.
Animal rights activists will not be spared the future harmful consequences of the current corona measures.
Animal transport, undercover investigations in slaughterhouses, demonstrations against animal exploitation … It seems that more and more means are right to end the fight for the animals.
Our struggle has long become a political issue. We have to stay on the side of animals and fight against systems and governments that want to prevent our fight.
Posted on April 13, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Jane Goodall calls for global ban on wildlife trade and end to ‘destructive and greedy period of human history’
Stop the Wildlife Trade: The renowned conservationist says we are putting economic growth ahead of environmental protections and destroying our children’s future
Read the entire article from the ‘Independent’ (London) by clicking on the following link:
Posted on April 13, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Swing and Doll have not forgotten what happened many years ago.
The only 23-year-old Koebner came as a student to the experimental laboratories, where the two were kept together with four other chimpanzees in miserable conditions.
As babies, they had been locked in tight boxes without natural light. Hepatitis medication was tested on them for six years. At that time it was common to kill chimpanzees after their time as experimental animals.
But it was decided to release them into the wild, which they still had to get used to.
That is why Lisa Koebner spent the following years in close community with the monkeys.
Swing and Doll got used to life outside the cage, but Koebner had to leave them at some point so that the animals also learned to become independent.
When she came back, Doll and Swing showed that they remembered their savior very well.
They receive her with a touching greeting.
Unlike humans, feelings like gratitude and loyalty are highly developed in animals.
Posted on April 13, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Imagine if this process happens with human animals…
Today we know, and it’s even scientifically proven, that fish feel stress and pain and therefore should be treated and protected as sensitive beings.
Only they cannot scream.
Fish in aquaculture are crammed together in a confined space and “swim” in the cloudy water of their own excrement. Diseases can only be combated by antibiotics and chemical cocktails.
But we still consume animal corpses here and now, even though we’re locked up at home because of a pandemic caused by factory farming!
970-2.700 billion fish are killed each year.
Some may not be able to write the number, but they have no difficulty in being one of the culprits in this mass crime!
Posted on April 13, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
China unveils new list of animals that can be farmed for meat
COVID-19 is thought to have originated at a Wuhan wet market
The Chinese government released a new list of animals that can be farmed for meat as the country begins to reopen to a new normal following the novel coronavirus outbreak that is thought to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan.
The draft list was released Thursday by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and is available online for a public comment period.
The list of acceptable livestock and poultry includes 18 species of traditional staples such as pig, cow, chicken, sheep, goat and more.
The government document also designates 13 species of “special livestock” such as deer, reindeer, alpaca and others.
It also includes a special category of livestock that can be raised for fur but not for food including mink, foxes and raccoons.
China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs noted in a statement accompanying the list that dogs “have been ‘specialized’ from traditional domestic animals to companion animals” and should not be included as “livestock” for food.
Chinese officials had initially linked the COVID-19 outbreak to large, live animal markets in Wuhan where many of the cases originated.
Ebola, SARS, bird flu and now COVID-19 are all believed to have started as pathogens crossing from animals to humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about three-quarters of new human diseases originate in animals.
In late February, Chinese lawmakers adopted a decision to prohibit the trading of wildlife and eliminate the trade and consumption of wild animals after the outbreak emerged, according to the nation’s state-run news organization Xinhua.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 