Posted on September 17, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Surely most of you have signed the petition “End the Cage Age”.
For non-EU citizens and readers: This European Citizens’ Initiative aims to end the use of cages in EU agriculture by calling on the European Commission to consider new legislation in this area.
With 1 million signatures alone, the European Commission would be asked to propose legislation prohibiting the use of:
• Cages for laying hens, rabbits, pullets, chickens for fattening, laying hens, quails, ducks and geese; • farrowing crates for sows; • Sections, if not already prohibited; • Individual calf pens, if not already prohibited.
The petition ended with a great result: instead of the one million needed, over 1.5 million people signed the European Citizens’ Initiative against livestock caging. Now the European Commission has to deal with that: what’s next?
The collected signatures are checked first. Subsequently, the citizens’ initiative will be submitted to the European Commission. The Commission must then deal with the demands to abolish cages.
In addition, the initiators of the petition will be invited to a public hearing in the European Parliament.
This does not mean, however, that the caging ban automatically comes. Although the European Citizens’ Initiative fulfills all the criteria, the European Commission has the choice: it can accept the proposals of the initiative, change them or do nothing.
The last seems to me the most likely.
Not because I am a pessimistic person or because I have seen so much bad in my long-standing fight for the rights of animals and expect nothing positive.
But, from experience.
Because the 8hours campaign of 2013, with the requirement of 1.2 million people to limit animal transports to 8 hours, never came true. The animal transports became even worse, the controls weaker, the times longer, the victims more.
Instead of realistic improvements by the EU Commission for more humane animal transports, we got animated films with instructions on how have to be transported the animals. And blood still flows from the trucks to the streets and the ships.
Irresponsible, unethical, unprofessional has the EU Commission reacted.
On September 12, 2019, we read on the official website of Eurogroups for Animals: “With the largest European petition ever for farm animal welfare ending at 23:59 last night, today is one of the most significant days for farm animals….
…With more than 1.5 million signatures so far, End the Cage Age’s success should be more than enough to persuade the European Commission to start the legislative procedure to end the use of cages for farm animals across the continent.
…“Today we have crossed the finish line in the biggest political push in farm animal welfare history. But the fight to get animals out of cages isn’t over yet,” says Reineke Hameleers. “Now it’s time for the Commission to make the changes that the citizens demand and bring us closer to the day when cages are relegated to the history books.” (https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/more-than-a-million-people-want-to-see-the-end-of-cages-for-farmed-animals)
Eurogroup and all those who render their services to the European Community for high salaries, all these must now mobilize theirselves strategically and actively so that the 1.5 million will not become bankrupt again, as they did then.
Now diplomacy, media work and commitment is announced.
If they really want to experience the day, like other 1.5 million citizens too, that “the cages are banned to the history books”, they must do everything so that the commission decides against the cages. Without compromise and consideration.
They are the ones who work closely and confidently with the commissioners, and that is why they know best that their bosses are the strongest agrarian lobyists, who not only allow painful mass animal husbandry, but demand and protect it by law.
Therefore, the question arises, what will they do if the European Commission does nothing?
In that case, we would demand of them that they give up their jobs, they leave that mendacious institution and, like us, fight on the streets for the abolition of the cages.
This is an effective and honest job.
Posted on September 15, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
A bullfight in August in honor of the women of the city of Esquivias, Spain, resulted in cruel scenes. In a video you can see, among other things, a 15-year-old girl mercilessly stabbing a calf.
When she succeeds after many cruel attempts to kill the animal, the young calf’s ears are immediately cut off as a trophy.
The young bullfighter girl can be seen shortly after, as she proudly laughs after her bloody fight in the crowd and holds two children by the hands. One of the children presents to the audience the ear previously cut off from the defeated calf.
Not the only ears that were cut off that day. Another will be presented to a woman in the audience. She looks forward to the bloody memory.
The frightening video has since been removed by YouTube for its brutal content.
Spanish animal and child protectors go to the barricades
Marta Esteban of the “Animal Guardians” and the “Independent Committee for the Protection of Children” lead the way: “Would it be a kind of entertainment for boys and girls to torture dogs and cats or even sheep? Why is it in cattle? It’s obviously not, “said the activist in a report by the Animal Guardians.
Not only was the event an animal cruelty, it was also a crime on the psyche of the children who would attend and watch. “Allowing children to torture and kill animals and cause them so much suffering, especially during a public spectacle, is abnormal from the point of view of their physical and mental integrity, destroying their empathy for the suffering of others and opening the door to further violence “, the activist continues.
Carmen Ibarlucea, President of “La Tortura No Es Cultura” (torture is no culture) also commented on the perfidious bullfight that was held in honor of women.
“Tributes to women, such as bullfighting in this case, are a tradition to end”, and continued: “The exhibition of female minors who use violence against animals is not a means to promote equality, and violates the protection of children.
My comment: If the “butcher girl” would rather have taken careful of a bit more at school and enjoyed a school system that is on a European level, then surely a good person would have become her too.
Unfortunately, Spain is a country that has and spends very little money on education. This is also noticeable at every point and also on bypass with animals.
It is known, that millions are wasted by this “tradition” of the primitives, while the schools in Spain are completely polluted and decayed.
Every year, Spain holds its hand and begs like a small child from other European countries for help, so that their “culture”, the mindless, can continue to exist. Education and the future of Spanish children are not worth a penny in and for Spain.
This is also evident from the fact that traditions from the Middle Ages are perceived with enthusiasm, which only scare and disgust every other educated person.
Posted on September 15, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
Here is a nice article by Peter Singer.
Peter Singer, (born July 6, 1946, Melbourne, Australia), is an ethical and political philosopher best known for his work in bioethics and his role as one of the intellectual founders of the modern animal rights movement.
He is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.
When Animal Liberation was published, I hoped that, 40 years on, there would be no more slaughterhouses – and therefore no more newspaper stories about atrocities like the one at an abattoir in the north of England. The arguments against our oppression of animals seemed to me so clear and irrefutable that surely a powerful movement would arise, consigning these abuses to history, as the anti-slavery movement had put an end to the African slave trade.
At least, that is what I thought in my more optimistic (or naive) moments. In my more pessimistic (or realistic) moments, I understood the vastness of the task of changing habits as deeply ingrained as eating meat, and transforming philosophical outlooks as fundamental as speciesism.
More than 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade, racism is still with us, and even slavery, though everywhere illegal, still exists.
How could I expect ending speciesism and animal slavery to be easier or more swift than ending racism and human slavery?
“slavery in the 3rd millennium: there have been more, otherwise nothing has changed-“
Against the background of those more realistic assumptions we can deplore the fact that animals are still being mistreated on a vast scale, but we should not despair. In many parts of the world, including Europe and the US, there has been tremendous progress in changing attitudes to animals.
A powerful animal advocacy movement has emerged, and it has made a difference for billions of animals.
In 1971, when a few other students and I set up a display in Oxford to show passers-by how their eggs and veal were produced, people asked if we really imagined that we could win against the political and financial might of the agribusiness industry.
But the animal movement has challenged that industry with success, achieving reforms across the entire European Union that require farm animals to have more space and better living conditions, and similar changes have now become law in California as well. Admittedly, these changes are still far from giving factory-farmed animals decent lives, but they are a significant improvement on what was standard practice before the reforms came into effect.
Perhaps even more satisfying is the number of people who have abandoned eating animals entirely, and the others who have cut down their meat consumption for ethical reasons. In the 1970s, to be a vegetarian was to be a crank – a thought reflected in the self-mocking name of what was then London’s best vegetarian restaurant, Cranks.
If you used the term “vegan” you invariably got a blank look and had to explain what it meant.
Despite all this, it is probably still true that there are more animals suffering at the hands of humans now than ever before. That is because there are more affluent people in the world than ever before, and satisfying their demand for meat has meant a vast expansion of factory farming, especially in China.
But to see this as an indication that animal advocates have made no progress would be like saying that because there are more slaves in the world now than there were in 1800, the anti-slavery movement has made no progress. With the world’s population now more than seven times what it was in 1800, numbers do not tell the whole story.
Progress is not steady. There will always be periods in which we seem to be treading water, or even going backwards. Periodically articles appear about the resurgence of fur, for example, but I doubt that fur will ever be as uncontroversially accepted as it was 40 years ago.
The fact that newspapers give extensive coverage to stories about the abuse of animals being slaughtered for food (not only about abused dogs, cats or horses) is itself a sign of progress.
Meanwhile, there is a simple lesson to draw from the videos released by Animal Aid investigators: if you turn animals into things to use, and give workers complete control over them, it will never be possible to stop the occurrence of the kind of abuse allegedly shown in the videos.
Sacking one or two workers merely makes a scapegoat out of them. (Think about what that word tells us about our traditional attitude to animals.)
The problem is not one or two workers, nor the practice of halal slaughter, but the system, and the system will not change until people stop buying meat.
Posted on September 14, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
A few days ago, the following report appeared on the website of the Animals Angels Organization, Germany, known for its excellent work against animal transports.
Great success: Lower Saxony prohibits long animal transports of cattle to Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan!
This was announced by Agriculture Minister Barbara Otte-Kinast(Christian Democratic Union, CDU) on Friday. The Minister acknowledges that the animals on these routes are not adequately cared for.
Our stakes on the route to Uzbekistan in February contributed to this decision.
Three Animals’ Angels teams followed 66 pregnant cows from Germany over 6,000 kilometers to their destination for nine days. Locally, it became clear to us: The animals can not be so supplied – and get rest breaks – as required by EU law. In addition came extreme weather. Freezing cold and frozen potions, snowdrifts and slippery roads. Animal transports on certain routes will no longer be approved in the future.
“I have current information on the official side, that certain unloading and supply stations in the Russian Federation do not exist or only in insufficient condition,” said the Minister of Agriculture. “Therefore, I have arranged that the processing of cattle transports on the main route Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Southeast Russia will be stopped.”
Last year, about 3,600 cattle were transported from Lower Saxony to Uzbekistan and around 630 cattle to Kazakhstan.
In total, living animals worth just under € 42 million were transported to countries outside the EU in 2018. There was criticism, as the routes are often extremely long and can be difficult to check how well the animals are supplied with water and food on the way.
Animals Angels:“We welcome the Minister’s decision and hope that it sets an example nationwide and beyond, and we ask all authorities involved to take the next steps now”.
The turnaround of the minister surprised!
In the spring of 2019, Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria and Hesse had already temporarily banned transport of animals to several countries outside the EU.
The background was information from the animal welfare organization “Animal Angels” about a livestock transport in Lower Saxony to non-EU countries where apparently animals were tormented. Corresponding information from the animal welfare organization “Animal Angels” about this transport has been available on the Minister of Agriculture’s table since the end of February.
Nevertheless: Otte-Kinast had still refused a ban of these transports.
The minister said at the time: “We simply do not have the legal basis to ban animal transports to third countries” !!
My comment: every step in the direction of “no animal suffering, no animal transports” makes us all happy and of course we also welcome such decisions.
We have demanded the same ban from the EU Commission against animal transports from EU countries to the Arab countries.
Without success, only with many victims.
Therefore, some questions arise openly: why did the Minister of Lower Saxony banned animal transports to Russia so quickly?
And six months ago, when it came to transports to North Africa, she rejected this prohibition on the grounds that it lacked the legal basis for this?
Under what reason is this basis now existing?
I have a guess: because the whole German policy is currently directed against Russia.
Forced by Trump’s anti-Russian strategy.
The move is good, but if this is only politically motivated, it will stay there and the animal transports in the “other” third countries will continue as they did before.
Posted on September 12, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
For years, eyewitnesses have reported the neglect and deaths of horses used for packing tourist gear along the Havasupai trail in the Grand Canyon. The latest complaint describes a dead horse simply discarded in the middle of the trail in August 2019.
New PETA eyewitness footage shows that this is systemic abuse. Animals were seen being forced to carry heavy loads up and down steep trails—at as much as a 19-degree incline—in all weather extremes, sometimes slipping and even reportedly falling over the edge.
PETA eyewitnesses saw horses whipped and mules slipping on the icy, muddy trail, and many animals were left sweating and panting from the arduous journey.
And I mean...If you are looking for adventure and want to explore nature, you have to move your ass yourself and carry your own baggage.
That will be some fat nature lovers do well anyway, because only so can burn some calories. Enjoy nature on suffering and blood of other beings is not a nature adventure, it is bloody sport! That means a sports variety for brain-sick and mentally weak proletarians.
Posted on September 11, 2019 by Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)
The indignation and anger over the illegal arson in Amazon has shaken the humanity.
For weeks we had a hysterical coverage in various media about the theme “Amazon” and no Facebook page was to found, which did not report every day about it. Horror pictures, analysis, allegations, petitions everything has come into use.
But that all was a manifestation of outrage, not the solution of the problem.
Incidentally, the EU states have also been excited about the eradication of the Amazon rainforest, even though everyone secretly knew what the trade agreement would mean!
And Germany sees no reason to reject the Mercosur agreement with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, mainly because (apart from France, Ireland and Luxembourg) not a single EU member state has objected.
The collective anger over the fire was temporary, now it seems to be over, and everyone returns to his everyday lives, including his eating habits.
Despite the imposing bombing of the press with reports of the fire hell of Amazon, no one feels directly responsible to the climate catastrophe and no one wants to give up his steak or his pig roast, although everyone knows that meat consumption is the main cause of the loss of animals, nature, forests and human lives too.
Why are we behaving so idiotically?
Why do we avoid the confrontation with a truth, the destruction of the environment, which will have fatal consequences for the life of our grandchildren at the latest?
After the well-tried method of displacement, self-healing powers are activated, “all half as bad” we say, and we make as if the problem with the extinguishing aircraft is deleted!!
For a long time, we thought that these fires do not affect us up here, these are just nature events that have arisen because of the heat in the countries down there.
But every fire in Brazil and elsewhere, every additional felled tree, reverses the CO2 balance: more CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries, less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere at short notice. Does not look good overall.
After Amazonas is like before Amazon, the willingness to reduce or even eliminate meat eating, and thus eliminate one of the strongest factors for global warming, is minimal. The human animal is the only one that does not learn from its mistakes.
Bolsonaro is a criminal, EU Commission is his corrupt partner, the culprits are identified, and with these simple explanations we reassure the conscience that the Amazon is not burning because of us.
Not because 56 billion so-called farm animals are killed by humans every year for food.
Not because around the world grows on one third of the field’s animal feed.
Not because meat consumption is increasing and by 2050 meat production will double. Amazonas burns because we believe that we have the right to eat animals.
We produce meat for the dumpsters, we burn primeval forests for an overproduction of animal products, which we don`t need at all. And we are angry about Amazon’s illegal fires while we enjoy our beef steak at lunchtime.
What else should happen, so that the ordinary repression and indifference of the mass changes?
Unless a galloping destruction of the planet on all facets of animal and nature life ca not make people reduce or even give up their meat consumption, then how else can make it?
This question will be of great importance to animal rights activists in the future.
No one knows a safe method or an effective plan to change that society.
And by that is meant, make people stop eating meat and cooperate with a system of destruction, exploitation, crime against nature and animals!
Infantilism and the indifference of the human species is alarming.
But we remain active in the fight. Because without enlightenment and investigative work there are even fewer chances for a change of society.
And even less for animal rights.
Serbian Animals Voice (SAV) 