Posted on March 24, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
We are providing the following as many of you (EU and non EU citizens) may wish to make your views known to the EU authorities in this consultation. There is really only one opportunity to say how you feel at the end of the consultation; so please do it, and consider what we say in the following.
Live animal transport is an issue that we have many years of campaigning experience with. It is our general opinion that the EU does not need to have yet another consultation on the issue of live transport. We consider that this (consultation) is solely to give the impression that EU citizens can have a say in the issue, and that their views will count regarding an end result.
Lets look quickly at a few points:
The EU Regulation 1/2005 on the ‘protection’ of animals during transport, was created as it says; to provide ‘protection’ to animals during transport. Hauliers and exporters have never complied with the regulation since the day it came into being. Have a look at a few investigations which we were involved with back in – go to the following https://serbiananimalsvoice.com/about-us/ and then further scroll down until you see the heading: ‘EU Papers, Official Investigations and the Rest’.
In summary – During 2010 – Mark worked with animal transport investigation teams within the EU, specifically concentrating on live calves being exported from Ireland (EU) to mainland EU. As a result of the investigations, Mark produced a 125 page official investigation report which was sent to both EU Parliamentarians and UK parliamentarians showing failures of Regulation 1/2005. You can read one investigation report; showing all the failures, when you go to the links and titles shown above.
The system was failing the animals in transport way before 2010 and when the report was produced; it has failed them ever since, and it will continue to fail them as long as animals are transported; regardless of what the EU says and yet another ‘consultation’ which we are informed will make things better.
The EU has always failed animals in transport, and it always will. Consultations are simple ‘veils’ to make the common man think that something is being done and changes will result. In compliance with Reg 1/2005, all livestock transporter drivers are supposed to be certified so that they can give animals in their care the best of attention. The system of certifying drivers has never worked from its inception. Animals always suffer – that is the result.
We have slightly different views on another EU consultation within WAV. Some do not want to become involved at all, as they see the delay and tactics of the EU in this policy. Yes agree 100%, it is another delaying tactic when all the clear evidence of abuses have been constantly provided to the EU for years. But with a consultation; which is underway now, regardless of our views; is there not an alternative way of viewing the consultation ? – send in your information as required and simply declare that EU policy has always failed the animals in transport; and it will continue to fail the animals in transport regardless of what is submitted. You could mention the 8 hours petition, which was undertaken in the past (2012); and further represented in Brussels to the EU on 16/9/2013 – here is the AA release on this: https://www.animals-angels.de/en/news/news-detail/16092013-belgium-brussels.html which will provide you with information:
Wording:
16.09.2013 | Belgium, Brussels
Animals’ Angels addressed the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament in the presence of MEPS and Commissioners in Brussels, to speak on the issue of animal welfare in transport. Animals’ Angels addressed its petition of 1,103,248 signatures, delivered in June 2012, from European citizens calling for an end to long distance animal transport, and to impose a maximum 8 hour limit.
We asked why the Commission had done nothing to properly address the democratic voices of European citizens and the European Parliament, which also supports the 8 hour transport limit. Animals’ Angels has asked the Petitions Committee to look into this, and to take any action considered just and appropriate to resolve the issue, and to get a proper response to the democratic voices calling for change.
So, 2012, 2013; well over 1 million EU citizens calling for an 8 hours (one off) maximum journey time; and here we are now in March 2020 having a consultation by the EU on the issue of live animal transport legislation !!
As we say, delaying tactics by the EU which just go on, and on, and on; and the animals suffer as a result for many more years.
Here below is the official wording of the new EU consultation which citizens are being invited to participate in. You did participate in the past, calling for 8 hours maximum journey time; so why now do we need more delay ?
As we say, the choice to get involved in this consultation is entirely down to individuals. I (Mark) see it as an opportunity to ask the EU formally why the 8 hour ruling of 2012/13 was never adopted by the Commission; despite the huge number of signatures in a petition at the time calling for an 8 hour max.
If you say nothing else in the consultation response; remind the EU that their regulation 1/2005 has always failed the animals in transport; that you signed the petition way back calling for an 8 hour maximum journey time; and the EU never listed or acted on this. So what is the point of a new consultation now, when we see the EU failing citizens who wish to make change for the better and for the animals.
Regards Mark.
Official EU consultation wording:
Target audience
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Competent authorities responsible for animal welfare;
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Business and professional organisations;
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EU citizens and consumers and organisation;
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Organisations from the civil society;
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Independent experts from academic and research institutes;
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European bodies, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA);
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International intergovernmental organisations active on animal welfare;
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Third countries;
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Other relevant bodies.
All targeted stakeholders are invited to give their feedback during the 12-week consultation period.
Animal Welfare: launch of the public consultation on the EU Strategy
The European Commission published a 12 weeks open consultation on the EU Strategy for Protection and Welfare of Animals 2012-2015. This public consultation, available into all EU languages, is part of a one-year external study supporting the evaluation of the EU Strategy. Launched in 2019, this evaluation aims to assess if the EU Strategy delivered its initial objectives and whether they are still relevant today. The results of the evaluation will inform future EU initiatives on animal welfare as well as actions under the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy. Citizens, experts and stakeholders are invited to give their feedback before 15 June 2020.
Here is the link to the consultation:
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Posted on March 24, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Baby wombat and baby kangaroo are obsessed with each other…
Regards and a good night from Venus
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Posted on March 24, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Posted on March 24, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Nest guarding in Sicily: In order to monitor the nests of the endangered hawk eagle, the members of the Italian conservation group Gruppo Tutela Rapaci started their work in Sicily with the support of the Committee against Bird Murder.
Hawk eagles do not breed in captivity and therefore cannot be bred. This is why nest predators target eggs and young birds of the strictly protected bird – with them they can get the highest prices for some unscrupulous animal collectors or falconers.
Since we have been consistently guarding the nests in Sicily, the number of broods robbed has decreased by more than 90%.
Since curfews apply across Italy due to the corona crisis, the teams have regulatory approval for their work.
Without our presence, poachers would have a very easy game in the current situation, because the police are now entrusted with more urgent tasks than ever.
Thanks to Angelo Scuderi for the great eagle photo!
Committee Against Bird Murder e.V.
My comment: In Germany, rifles, poison and traps are the usual methods used by the perpetrators. We speak about really professional methods here, for example live bait.
They release pigeons whose back feathers are prepared with poison.
These animals are released in the middle of a hawk territory – with the aim that the raptor grabs them from above and dies from the poison on their back feathers.
Poachers of raptors in Germany are among hunters.
Because someone has to know very well which trees they are sitting in, where they are going to catch prey and other things.
The hunters know that.
A further indication is that hunting ammunition is always discovered in the carcasses of the raptors, which are usually only used by hunters.
So far, it has usually been the case that most investigations are ended without result and the perpetrators get away unscathed.
At least in my district, I don’t know of any judgment that has been posted for illegal wildlife killings.
“In the past, the insane, murderers, sex offenders or addicts were in institutions.
Today they are in hunting associations “.
My best regards to all, Venus
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Posted on March 24, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
The case has already been reported to the European Animal Disease Notification System. The first suspicion arose on March 18, then confirmation on Saturday, reports the trade magazine http://www.topagrar.com.
The company is located in western Poland, around 65 km from the German border near the city of Grünberg.
More than 23,700 pigs are affected, including almost 8,000 sows. 135 pigs are said to have died at the ASP.
The authorities have ordered the immediate ” culling” of the stock and set up protection and surveillance zones.
After the last press releases, bird flu (avian influenza) has now reached its first large-stable in Germany.
For all birds caught in it, including the healthy ones, this means the death sentence.
My comment: African swine fever (ASP) has now arrived on a farm in western Poland. Not yet in Germany, but hysteria against wild boars has broken out like a pandemic, and tens of thousands of animals are at risk of “culling”.
Imagine that you would currently do the same with the Corona infected?
There were 599,855 wild boars shot in Germany in the 2018/19 season. Preventive only!
Innocent victims for a man-made illness.
All point a finger at the wild boar. The pathogen only migrates through wild boars about 20 kilometers a year. The government does not speak of hunting, but of disease control !!!
Crashed animal transporters, burning animal factories and slaughterhouses, pigs suffocating in fattening rooms, agonizingly dying animals because they are not cared for, and countless victims of man-made animal diseases, that is the sad result of 2019: the animal industry not only produces victims in the slaughterhouse, but already the cruel way to get there.
At least 20 million pigs annually do not survive the torture of breeding and fattening.
What the agricultural industry and its lobbyists proclaim is false and criminal as anything and everywhere where corporations and large capital exercise their power. It’s all about maximizing profit, everything else is subordinate.
For this they go over corpses, not just animal corpses, they act against all of nature, against our planet in general, ultimately against all of us.
Let us remember this dramatic situation.
We need it for the next pandemic.
My best regards to all, Venus
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Posted on March 23, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
“How much should we learn from animals … Respect, love, solidarity.
We can be better people if we observe their behavior”.
(Cuánto debemos aprender de los animales… Respeto, amor, solidaridad.
Podemos ser mejores personas si observamos su comportamiento).
Regards and a good night from Venus
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Posted on March 23, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
We thank Stacey at Our Compass for sending this over – https://our-compass.org/2020/03/23/media-wont-talk-about-meat-market-origin-of-coronavirus/ – what a very true summary of the events mainly playing in the media. Media only ? – No; we wrote to our Member of Parliament (MP) the other week; the 13/3 to be precise; and in our mail entitled ‘China and the world now reaps non legislation’. we asked the following:
With this in mind; can I ask if the UK government has actually made any formal representation to the Chinese government re the current Coronavirus issue and the fact that they (the Chinese) currently have no animal welfare legislation; and the fact that they have now infected the entire planet with a virus as a result of their lack of legislation / animal welfare controls ?
How about the Chinese government being told by other governments that their lack of legislation in animal welfare is now the root cause of all the problems across the world ? – does the UK government have the guts to say anything to the Chinese, or are all these concerns going to be swept under the carpet as we want a good trade deal sometime in the future.
As the article by Jane says; there are very few people who really want to address the real problem about Coronavirus. We witness daily briefings every single day on the tv; we endure ‘expert’ after ‘expert’ telling us this and that from daybreak to moonrise; yet none of them ever dare to venture into the origins of the cause; why it was allowed to ferment; and what national governments are doing on an international basis to ask questions. We must not ask if ‘our’ government has even made a ‘formal representation’ to the Chinese government regarding the original source of this virus in Wuhan which is now affecting the planet.
We must not ask if ‘our’ government has made a ‘formal representation’ to the Chinese government stating that their lack of legislation in animal welfare; and their continual ignorance of introducing same legislation, is now the root cause of all the problems across the world ? – does the UK government not have the guts to say anything to the Chinese, or are all these concerns just going to be swept under the carpet as we want a good trade deal sometime in the future. Until the next virus starts up through similar origins, we can only assume.
As Jane says in her article; why are world governments and ‘our’ elected representatives in same parliaments; along with the oh so continual media – the ‘experts’ on this; simply ignoring the real issue that Coronavirus started in Chinese wet markets; where there was no enforcement of hygiene or controls of anything.
Now, as a result; the lack of both hygiene and basic controls, the worlds citizens suffer; innocent people die in their thousands due to an issue that basically, nobody wants to talk about. They tell us that ‘Washing your hands for a long time’ is one way to control disease spread; but to the real problem; and asking other governments about a lack of their legislation in such circumstances is completely taboo. Why ? – ask the experts who we endure every day now on the tv.
We in the animal rights movement have been showing the animal suffering and terrible conditions of places such as Wuhan wet market for years; attempting to share these issues for years with ‘elected’ people who can at least make some formal (governmental) margin of a representation. For all those years we have been ignored and treated like fools regarding what we say and expose.
So, who is the fool now ? – ask the city financiers; the airlines, the medics, the food distribution companies; ‘normal’ people who ride pushbikes and drive cars;
Jane’s article kind of shows who the real fools are !
Lying by omission is one way to define “fake news.” By that definition, virtually all the mainstream coronavirus news coverage you are watching is fake. The networks essentially refuse to discuss the origins of the catastrophic coronavirus! Sure, you may hear news hosts make oblique and passing references to “live markets” as they urge you to hunker down in your homes and whip out the Lysol. But, that – obviously – does not tell the full story. The real story is: the abuse of animals in the food system is at the heart of this global debacle that is fast destroying our economy, killing a growing number of people and forcing millions of others to live in miserable isolation! This is, indeed, mother nature’s revenge. Not my phrase. That’s how an expert in zoonotic diseases described it.
I’m not always a fan of the New York Post. But, I must give them props for telling it like it is in their investigative story about live meat markets just like the one in Wuhan, China, where this pandemic began. Here is their description of the average “live market,” aka meat market.
“In stall after stall, a mix of live and dead animals, which run the gamut from the known (pig, ox, duck, chicken) to the rare or unknown due to the condition of the carcass — stare back at you. In the wet areas of the market — usually reserved for fish and sea creatures and where the ground is slick with water and often blood — the stink is worse. The animals that have not yet been dispatched by the butcher’s knife make desperate bids to escape by climbing on top of each other and flopping or jumping out of their containers (to no avail). At least in the wet areas, the animals don’t make a sound. The screams from mammals and fowl are unbearable and heartbreaking.”
Thank you New York Post for actually acknowledging the suffering of the animals involved. My question is: why are we not hearing similar, accurate descriptions from news anchors at the major networks? To talk about a global pandemic without consistently discussing its origins is like holding a murder trial and rarely mentioning the defendant. It’s irresponsible.
Experts believe that the virus originated in bats in China, animals ripped from the wild, kept in horrific conditions and then killed to be eaten. Here’s how NPR describes the insidious process: “Patients who came down with disease at the end of December all had connections to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan China. The complex of stalls selling live fish, meat and wild animals is known in the region as a ‘wet market.’ Researchers believe the new virus probably mutated from a coronavirus common in animals and jumped over to humans in the Wuhan bazaar.”
OK, so props to NPR too. But, what about the more popular cable news networks? Why aren’t they consistently connecting the dots between this hideous virus and the killing of animals for food? One answer may lie in what you see and hear in between the news segments. I’m talking about the commercials. Watch them! They are overwhelmingly advertisements for meat, dairy and pharmaceuticals. These happen to be the very industries that would collapse if consumers starting thinking realistically about the cruelty and bloodshed that goes into producing the ribs, burgers, wings, eggs, milkshakes and bacon that they have been conditioned to consume. Are American slaughterhouses much better than Asia’s live markets? There is still lots of blood, faeces and body parts. No way around that. Meat doesn’t fall from the sky. The fact is: there is no nice way to kill someone who doesn’t want to die. Slaughter, by its very definition, is a nasty, grotesque business.
So, with the exception of some great special reports by NBC’s Richard Engel and 60 Minutes Australia, the news media continues to dance around the primal issue at the heart of this mind-boggling catastrophe, the likes of which we have never seen. News hosts question expert panel after expert panel, without ever having a full blown conversation about the horrific conditions at these markets and how meat markets are a global phenomenon and, therefore, a global problem. In case you didn’t know, there are dozens of live meat markets in New York City, for example. Some might argue… well, they don’t sell wild animals. But, is that really the point? And, do we really know that’s true? Frogs, turtles, rabbits… they’ve been spotted at some of New York City’s live markets. Could those be wild animals?
Now, it is time we ask ourselves: what is the cost of ignoring this essential aspect of the coronavirus story? If we do not learn from this monumental calamity, could we be bound to repeat it? Through our society’s willful ignorance, could we be setting the stage for something even deadlier? It’s not the first time a virus or disease linked to food animals has wreaked havoc. Remember mad cow disease? Remember swine flu, which is still ongoing in China, decimating millions of pigs before their body parts can be gobbled down someone’s throat? Remember the avian flu? The philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
That philosopher also said, “All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore…” Right now, we – as a culture – are still ignoring the truth staring us in the face: the killing of animals for food is having a devastating impact on our world. It’s a leading cause of human illness, meaning heart disease and cancer. It’s a leading cause of climate change, habitat destruction, wildlife extinction, water pollution and water scarcity. It’s a leading cause of human world hunger because animals eat so much more than they produce as meat or dairy. Now, add to the list, it is causing the most disruptive virus of our lifetimes.
When will the mainstream media have this conversation? Hopefully, before it’s too late.
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Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 