Posted on October 12, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
“An angry speech: Peoples of the world, finally listen: Julian Assange is a political prisoner. The Julian Assange case is not a trial. It’s a fuck-up. If Assange is shipped to the US, investigative journalism will be dead”.
(Berlin, October 1, 2020. The picture shows a protester in orange overalls and a Julian Assange mask in front of the British embassy in Berlin)
Julian Assange, he’s already become a symbol of freedom of the press. And the truth in general.
When rulers commit crimes and take refuge under the protection of state secrecy, the bond between the ruled and rulers is severed.
In a democracy, there can be no legitimate secrecy protection for crimes committed by individuals. A justice system that goes along with this becomes an accomplice.
And a public that is silent about it did not understand democracy and ultimately did not deserve it.
In a world full of lies, someone who operates a truth machine is dangerous for the system – because this system lives on the secret, only acts secretly!
“Punish one, raise a hundred,” said Mao Tse-Tung.
This is the educational spectacle and signal to all who want to reveal and publish the truth about crimes against human and non-human animals.
It affects us animal rights activists too because we are putting this system at risk.
In 1997, animal liberators in the US were sentenced to 82 years in prison. The FBI is dealing with the animal liberators today.
Everyone who drives this system to bankruptcy will feel its power. We remember the death of animal rights activist Reagan Russel- whose death was never cleared as murder.
Therefore this process has to burst. Assange has to be released. If this does not happen, there is a direct risk to everyone’s freedom of thought and expression
Posted on October 12, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
How are climate and health crises driven by factory farms?
12 October 2020
The European Commission’s Farm to Fork strategy pledges to reduce the environmental and climate impact of animal production.
However, no concrete actions are suggested to tackle the root causes of the problem.
Factory-farmed meat production in the EU is on the rise, and is putting the climate and human health at risk according to a new report released today from Food & Water Action Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe.
A rise in industrial meat production in the European Union has been accompanied by a rapid decline in the number of small farms. This has led to a dangerous rise of “factory farms”, characterised by large numbers of animals confined in crowded spaces.
The COVID-19 crisis has proved the fragility and inhumanity of the system which makes cheap meat possible, and how much it depends on unethical and unfair conditions for workers. We need urgent action from EU and national policy makers to change this.
Stanka Becheva, food and farming campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe
The report reveals that:
Unsafe working conditions on factory farms and slaughterhouses put workers in danger and increase the spread of diseases including COVID-19;
Global production of soybeans for animal feed, and the resulting deforestation, are exacerbating the climate crisis, constituting around 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions originating from human activity;
The European meat sector is dominated by a few large corporations who are increasing in size through mergers and acquisitions. Vertical integration threatens the existence of small-scale farmers, drops the prices for producers and leaves all the profits with agribusiness;
The routine dosing of antibiotics to factory farmed animals is increasing the risk of antibiotic resistant bacteria ending up in meat;
Manure from livestock farming severely contributes to air pollution (namely via ammonia emissions) and water pollution (via nitrate outputs) – a serious health risk for people living near factory farms.
Posted on October 12, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Scotland University develops alternative to animal testing
8 October 2020
Researchers at the University of Dundee have proposed an alternative to animal testing by developing a “skin culture” which mimics living skin.
Founders Dr Robyn Hickerson and Dr Michael Conneely have secured funding for their ‘TenSkin™’ product, where human skin is stretched to an optimal tension to mimic the mechanobiology that exists in intact, living skin on the body.
This provides a state-of-the-art tool for skin biology research by allowing scientists to generate reliable and safe data without the need for animals.
Dr Conneely said: “The skin that covers our body is under tension, this has been known for a long time. “Other models don’t incorporate this tension, and this is why our product is more effective. When skin is removed from the body it contracts as the tension relaxes.
Animal testing is often a subject of ethical controversy, with many raising concerns about the reliability of the method. Ten Bio’s new approach aims to significantly reduce animal usage for skin related research.
Dr Hickerson added: “There is a disconnect between animals and humans when you’re trying to develop therapeutics.
“While animals can serve as good analogues to study general principles, they often fail when it comes to specific details due to animal/human species differences. These details matter when it comes to developing safe and effective drugs for humans.
“Upwards of 90% of drugs that are proven safe and effective in animals fail during clinical trials. Our model will help reduce this costly failure rate.”
Posted on October 12, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
There were plenty of livestock trucks at Rosslare Port yesterday evening boarding the Stena Line Horizon – you can hear the calves bawling, already hungry and tired. Over 24 hours with no feed is not only inhumane it is illegal
There were plenty of livestock trucks at Rosslare Port yesterday evening boarding the Stena Line Horizon – you can hear the calves bawling, already hungry and tired. Over 24 hours with no feed is not only inhumane it is illegal @StenaLine@McConalogue#BanLiveExportpic.twitter.com/Xtg7Cp1flY
In the immortal words of Jim Morrison of the doors. “The time for hesitation’s through. There’s no time to wallow in the mire. We can only lose….& our love become a funeral pyre”. #BanLiveExports it’s time to act, be brave & stand up to the bad guys once & for all.
Posted on October 11, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
From the Animal Liberation Press Officewebsite, received anonymously:
Late this summer animal liberation activists carried out two raids on fur farms in Idaho and Utah. Fencing was ripped down and nearly 2,000 mink were released allowing them to clamor toward freedom.
Both farms sat near the edges of mostly undeveloped public lands, allowing plenty of habitat for the newly freed native predators.
Walking through a large field, quietly climbing a barbed-wire cattle fence, and crossing the road in clear view of the house associated with the first farm proved easy. It became clear there was no visible electronic security, and the activists bet heavily that the faint barking was from a neighbor’s property, or at least from a dog contained within the fur farmer’s house.
Cage after cage, row after row, shed after shed, latches were opened and nesting boxes removed allowing the mink to escape to their rightful home.
They spaced out the releases in order to disperse the noise from disturbing mink away from a singular location. The surreal and beautiful moment where the mink explored in the moonlight will be carried in the hearts of those that gazed upon them for a lifetime.
The approving chorus from coyotes in the nearby hills still echoes in their ears.
Days later, these activists found themselves before another sprawling fur farm complex.
Bigger liberations and more of them.
Until the bloody business is over.
We are on the right track, one country after another is abolishing the fur industry.
There is nothing more to say, except many thanks to the activists.
Posted on October 11, 2020 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and Punishes Critics
A respected Bay Area veterinarian endures widespread attacks following an industry “alert” about her criticisms of factory farms.
This week’s SYSTEM UPDATE on this topic — with Dr. Crystal Heath, one of the veterinarians targeted by these industry campaigns for retaliation — can be viewed on The Intercept’s YouTube channel, or on the player below.
ANIMAL AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY GROUPS defending factory farms engage in campaigns of surveillance, reputation destruction, and other forms of retaliation against industry critics and animal rights activists, documents obtained through a FOIA request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal. That the USDA possesses these emails and other documents demonstrates the federal government’s knowledge of, if not participation in, these industry campaigns.
These documents detail ongoing monitoring of the social media of news outlets, including The Intercept, which report critically on factory farms. They reveal private surveillance activities aimed at animal rights groups and their members. They include discussions of how to create a climate of intimidation for activists who work against industry abuses, including by photographing the activists and publishing the photos online. And they describe a coordinated ostracization campaign that specifically targets veterinarians who criticize industry practices, out of concern that veterinarians are uniquely well-positioned to persuasively and powerfully denounce industry abuses.
One of the industry groups central to these activities is the Animal Agriculture Alliance, which represents factory farms and other animal agriculture companies — or, as they playfully put it, they work for corporations “involved in getting food from the farm to our forks!” The group boasts that one of its prime functions is “Monitoring Activism,” by which they mean: “We identify emerging threats and provide insightful resources on animal rights and other activist groups by attending their events, monitoring traditional and social media and engaging our national network.”
Indeed, the Alliance frequently monitors and infiltrates conferences of industry critics and activists, then provides reports to their corporate members on what was discussed. As The Intercept previously noted when reporting on felony charges brought against animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, for peaceful filming and symbolic animal rescues inside one Utah farm that supplies Whole Foods and another owned by Smithfield — an action that showed how wildly at odds with reality is the bucolic branding of those farms — the Animal Agriculture Alliance issued a statement denouncing the activists for (ironically) harming their animals and urging law enforcement and “policymakers” to intervene on behalf of the industry against the activists.
In the emails obtained by the FOIA request, the Alliance and its allies frequently encourage their members to alert the FBI and Department of Homeland Security regarding actions by activists. In response to a project by DxE to create a map tracking factory farms, Lyle Orwig — chair of the agricultural company Charleston/Orwig, Inc. and a member of the Alliance board — proposed the retaliatory step of “taking photos of every DXE [sic] member” and posting them to the internet while accusing them of being “opposed to feeding the hungry.”
ONE PERSON SINGLED OUT for retaliation in these discussions was a popular, respected Bay Area veterinarian, Dr. Crystal Heath. As a local CBS affiliate television profile of her explained, Dr. Heath is the kind of veterinarian who we all as children are taught to admire.
Rather than working for corporations or state agencies engaged in cruel animal experimentation, or for factory farms making a large salary to provide the veneer of medical justification for their barbaric, torturous practices, Dr. Heath has devoted herself to shelter medicine, working for years with the Berkeley Humane Society and other nonprofit animal rescue groups, where she “has spayed and neutered more than 20,000 animals.” The CBS broadcast report provides a full picture of the humanitarian and self-sacrificing nature of her work.
But to the Animal Agriculture Alliance and its industry allies, Dr. Heath somehow became a grave danger, an “extremist” whose name needed to be circulated within her profession as someone to be aggressively shunned. And that is exactly what they did. What prompted this targeted campaign against her was nothing more than her use of her veterinarian expertise to express criticisms of industry abuses and excesses.
In May, The Intercept reported on a gruesome mass-extermination technique being used by Iowa’s largest pork producer, Iowa Select Farms, to kill large numbers of pigs which were deemed unnecessary and in need of “depopulation” due to the pandemic. The technique, called “ventilation shutdown,” or VSD, involves cutting off the air supply in barns and turning up the heat to intense levels so that “most pigs — though not all — die after hours of suffering from a combination of being suffocated and roasted to death.” The pigs who survive this excruciating ordeal are then shot in the head in the morning by farm employees. A video report produced by The Intercept and the video documentarian Leighton Woodhouse — based on footage obtained inside an Iowa Select barn by DxE as the pigs were slowly dying — was viewed by more than 150,000 people.
Numerous veterinarians were shocked by the use of this unspeakably cruel and gratuitous mass-extermination tactic, which imposes extreme, protracted suffering on highly intelligent, socially complex, sentient animals. And it created serious problems for the industry, with McDonald’s demanding an explanation it could use publicly, and even discussions — from the National Pork Producers Council — to invent a new, more pleasant and euphemistic name for the extermination technique:
One of the veterinarians indignant about ventilation shutdown extermination programs was Dr. Heath. She was part of a group of hundreds of her veterinarian colleagues to launch a campaign urging the American Veterinarian Medical Association to withdraw its approval of the use of this technique in limited, proscribed circumstances. Though the AVMA says it was not involved in the specific use of the extermination technique by Iowa Select, its guidelines approving of VSD were, as The Intercept documented, cited as justification by the company and its allies.
Dr. Heath was quoted in one news report on the controversy as saying: “I believe the majority of AVMA members do not approve of VSD except as a ‘last resort’ depopulation method and AVMA intended VSD to be used only in extreme conditions of infectious or zoonotic disease outbreaks or natural disasters. AVMA approval has allowed pig and poultry producers to use VSD as a cost-savings procedure to cheaply destroy unprofitable or excess animals.”
Due to her criticisms of these factory farm practices and her work with DxE in advocating industry reform, industry groups focused on her. In one email from April, a vice president of the Animal Agriculture Alliance, Hannah Thompson-Weeman, revealed that an “alert” had been sent about Dr. Heath to California members, accusing her of engaging in “extreme activism” and encouraging groups to “spread the word to your veterinarian contacts in California” — where Dr. Heath practices — “using private, members only channels.”
Following that “alert,” Dr. Heath began experiencing targeted campaigns against her online and within her profession. Though it cannot be proven that this was the result of the Alliance’s “alert,” what began happening to her for the first time in the wake of that alert tracked the language used against her by these industry groups. (The Alliance and Thompson-Weeman did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comments. Thompson-Weeman locked her Twitter account yesterday after we previewed this article and the SYSTEM UPDATE episode. The AVMA has denied that it was involved in Iowa Select’s use of VSD.)
What perhaps alerted the Alliance was one veterinarian group that accused her of being “part of an active campaign to cause as much harm as possible to our clients and ourselves,” announcing that they had alerted the Alliance about her. Veterinarian groups on Facebook posted their own warnings about her, and she was banned from some groups. Comments began appearing on her own Facebook page, purportedly from other veterinarians, accusing her of “deranged activism,” being “a liar who makes up stories,” “bastardizing our profession through every available method,” and claiming that she is “literally, by name, a topic of conversation in board rooms from Ag business to organized veterinarian medicine across the nation. Your name is literally toxic.”
What alarmed Dr. Heath most was the emergence online of anonymous flyers which contained a “BEWARE” warning at the top, along with her photo and a string of accusations, some of which were false, that claimed she harbors “an agenda that doesn’t include anything positive for our profession” and “expresses fondness” for “domestic terrorist organizations.” It warned that even allowing her access to the social media pages of veterinarians could be dangerous, and thus urged that she be blocked from all online forums, personal profiles, and social media groups.
It goes without saying that this sort of a campaign could be devastating to the career opportunities or ability to earn a livelihood of any veterinarian. Fortunately for Dr. Heath, she believes her hard-earned reputation with area clinics developed over many years will enable her to continue to work, but she believes, for very good reason, that “alerts” and campaigns of this sort would make it extremely difficult if not impossible for her to find work anywhere else. For a younger or less-established veterinarian seeing what was done to her, they would obviously think twice about speaking out or working against the factory farm industry, the obvious goal of such campaigns.
That the U.S. Department of Agriculture was in possession of the emails and other documents circulated by industry groups, and thus produced them as part of the FOIA request, indicates that, at the very least, government officials are being included in these discussions (the flyer about Dr. Heath and other social media postings regarding her were obtained by The Intercept from Dr. Heath, not by the FOIA request). What is clear is that the animal agricultural industry essentially operates their own private surveillance and “warning” networks, and uses their extensive influence within the halls of government power to aid their efforts to punish and retaliate against its critics and activists.
Dr. Heath is my guest on this week’s SYSTEM UPDATE. The episode, which can be viewed on The Intercept’s YouTube channel or on the player below, first reviews these new documents in detail obtained by the FOIA request, and I then speak to Dr. Heath about what she has endured as a result of her speaking out against this very powerful industry.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 
