Victory! Rachel Gilbert Goes Fur-Free!
Source: PETA Asia-Pacific
In what can only be described as another victory for the little guy, Rachel Gilbert has decided to remove all fur from her collection.
Gilbert joins other designers—including Alannah Hill, Camilla Franks, and Gail Elliott—in refusing to support an industry that confines animals to barren cages for their entire lives before killing them by anal electrocution, strangulation, or bludgeoning.
From http://www.rachelgilbert.com/ – “Rachel Gilbert is proud to confirm that our label is now completely fur free. Myself and The Team work extremely hard to ensure our creations are made from cruelty-free materials, for our own peace of mind and that of our loyal clients”.
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Military Ending Use of Live Monkeys for Nerve Agent Exercises
Background: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)
Congressman Confirms Army Will Stop Poisoning Monkeys in Chemical Weapons Training
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Army will soon stop poisoning live vervet monkeys in chemical weapons training exercises, the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has learned from the office of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, an outspoken Congressional opponent of the practice.
At Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, the Army currently uses live vervet monkeys in exercises meant to teach trainees how to treat patients exposed to nerve agents. In August PCRM filed a legal complaint against this use of animals, urging the Department of Defense to halt the shipment of additional monkeys for use in these demonstrations. Despite the complaint, 20 more monkeys were recently shipped to Aberdeen.
But in a recent meeting with Rep. Bartlett, generals from Ft. Detrick and Aberdeen Proving Ground confirmed that the Department of Defense will soon end the use of monkeys in these exercises.
“I congratulate the military on moving away from the cruel, ineffective method of poisoning monkeys to try to teach medical personnel about nerve agent exposure,“ says John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., director of academic affairs for PCRM. “Military medical professionals should be fully prepared to cope with a chemical weapons attack, and the best training involves human-patient simulators and other high-tech methods.”
A military chemical casualty training video obtained by PCRM through the Freedom of Information Act shows a vervet monkey spasming violently after being given a toxic dose of physostigmine, a drug that can cause seizures, difficulty breathing, and sometimes death. The video can be watched here:
Nonanimal methods are more effective. Researchers with the Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps and Israel’s Carmel Medical Center, for example, have developed a nonanimal training curriculum for the medical management of patients exposed to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
For an interview with a medical expert or a copy of the legal complaint, contact Jeanne McVey at 202-527-7316 or jeannem@pcrm.org.
Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research,and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.
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World Wide Legal Action 4 Animal Rights
Lots of info, links and petitions at:
http://legalaction4animalrights.net/
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CAP Fails to Consider Animal Welfare
http://www.thepigsite.com/swinenews/27736/cap-fails-to-consider-animal-welfare
EU – Eurogroup for Animals is extremely disappointed that the Commission in
the proposals published today has missed the opportunity to address the
animal welfare problems caused by very intensive systems of agricultural
production.
The group says that these systems cause distress to millions of farm animals
and go against the concerns of Europe’s citizens who expect their food to be
produced without animal suffering.
The legislative proposals despite repeated calls by both stakeholders and
the general public do not recognise in their objectives animal welfare as a
public good. Instead the objectives are limited to delivering viable food
production, sustainable management of natural resources and climate action,
and balanced territorial development.
The improvement of animal welfare could well be promoted through these
broader objectives, but it remains to be seen how in practice this will be
taken into account as well as other public goods such as biodiversity
conservation.
“No basic payment is foreseen to be given to farmers to improve animal
welfare and in fact animal welfare is no longer stated clearly as an
objective of the Common Agriculture Policy as it was previously in 2003,”
said Véronique Schmit, Executive Officer Policy of Eurogroup for Animals.
This is disappointing as the reform doesn’t include any instruments to
reward farmers who correctly apply animal welfare related directives and
provides no sanction that is sufficiently dissuasive to those who fail to
respect the European law.
“The European Commission is failing to adopt measures according to Article
13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which states that
agriculture legislation must pay full regard to the welfare requirements of
animals. The majority of the CAP budget will also still be spent on
intensive production and this is totally unacceptable,” she added.
“The future CAP will also continue to subsidise the export of live cattle to
third countries, with the associated problems caused by long distance
transport. The European Commission has missed the opportunity of standing
firm and leading the way in ending export refunds,” she concluded.
Eurogroup for Animals will work with the European Parliament and the Council
to ensure animal welfare is incorporated more robustly in the CAP and the
proposals are debated over the coming months. We hope that policy makers
will recognise animal welfare as a public good and support the demands of
Europe’s citizens.
ThePigSite News Desk
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Free the Dolphins !!
Hotel room at a Singapore resort: $253.
Discounted tickets to watch wild dolphins suffer in captivity: Priceless.
Mastercard is offering discounted tickets to the infamous Resorts World Sentosa, a resort in Singapore that recently kidnapped 27 wild dolphins for an exhibit. Two of those dolphins have already died, and the 25 other dolphins are being held in brutal conditions until construction of the exhibit is complete. The surviving dolphins’ risks of illness and death increase with each day of captivity.
100,000 Change.org members have already called on Resorts World Sentosa to release its captive dolphins. If Mastercard cancels its ticket discount promotion, it will put big financial pressure on the resort to finally set the dolphins free.
Please sign dolphin activist Barbara Napoles’s petition on Change.org calling for Mastercard to stop offering discounted tickets to Resorts World Sentosa.
Statistics for captive dolphins are bleak. While dolphins in the wild usually live for 45 years, more than half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity.
In tanks, dolphins swim around in circles. They can’t hunt. They’re exposed to bacteria that have been known to cause blindness and death.
Resorts World Sentosa has canceled ocean animal exhibits from public pressure in the past. With 100,000 Change.org members already calling for the resort to free its captive dolphins, financial pressure from Mastercard could push the resort to finally take action.
Please sign the petition to ask Mastercard to cancel its ticket promotion to Resorts World Sentosa:
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-mastercard-stop-supporting-the-live-dolphin-trade
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EUROPEAN VEGETARIAN UNION PRESS RELEASE:
The French Government Outlaws Vegetarianism in Schools
Whoever believes that animals are not ours to eat is now in France a
second-class citizen.
A governmental order issued on October 2, 2011(1) has determined that all
meals served in school canteens in France must contain animal products, and
that meat and fish will be served at a certain minimum frequency. This
implies that by law from now on no vegetarian can eat at any public or
private school in France.
Six million schoolchildren are now forced to eat animal flesh, whether they
wish to or not. For many families lunch at home is not an option. At best, a
vegetarian student will be allowed to leave the meat on the plate, and
consequently suffer from inadequate and imbalanced meals.
Following a law voted last year by the French Parliament(2), similar decrees
will be taken shortly regarding almost all forms of catering from
kindergarten to hospital, prisons and retirement homes. Vegetarianism will
then have effectively been banned for a large part of the population.
These measures ostensibly aim at ensuring the nutritional quality of the
meals. Animal flesh is imposed as the only source of good quality protein
and iron and dairy products as the only sources of calcium, in disregard of
the fact that all these nutrients can be obtained in adequate quantity and
quality from plant and mineral sources. The internationally recognized fact
that: appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or
vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health
benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases [and that]
well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all
stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy,
childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes(3) is flatly ignored.
No practical considerations warrant a blanket prohibition of vegetarianism
even in those canteens where the management is willing to offer vegetarian
or vegan alternatives. These decrees are thus an arbitrary violation of the
rights of the vegetarian citizens of France.
The European Vegetarian Union wishes to point out that the decision that
many citizens have taken not to eat animals is not a mere dietary whim or a
nonconsequential choice of lifestyle, but follows, for many of them, from
deeply held beliefs about the way animals should be treated. A democratic
government cannot arbitrarily restrict the beliefs of its citizens nor the
practice thereof. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union,
which is binding on member states including France, holds that: Everyone has
the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right
includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or
in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion
or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.(4)
The public debate regarding animal rights and the moral status of animals is
active in France as in many other countries. Citizens are entitled to choose
freely where they stand on these issues, and those who believe that they
cannot, in conscience, accept to eat animals must not be discriminated
against.
A government cannot settle a philosophical, ethical and political debate by
restricting the rights of those who disagree with its own positions. For
years, the official policy of the French government has been openly hostile
to vegetarianism.(5) The French agriculture minister, Bruno Lemaire,
declared in January 2010 that the government’s aim in determining its public
nutritional policy was to defend the French agricultural model and
specifically to counter initiatives such as those of Paul McCartney calling
for a reduced consumption of meat.(6)
The European Vegetarian Union demands that the recent governmental orders
outlawing vegetarianism in school canteens be rescinded and that the French
government respect the civil rights of its vegetarian citizens.
Renato Pichler
President of the European Vegetarian Union (EVU)
Footnotes:
1. Décret n° 2011-1227 du 30 septembre 2011; arrêté du 30 septembre 2011.
2. “Law for the modernization of agriculture and fisheries”, published on
July 27, 2010.
3. Position statement of the American Dietetic Association
4. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, article 10.1
5.An example is the site mangerbouger.fr, where the only nutritional advice
given to a teenager contemplating becoming a vegan is “By all means, do not
follow that diet!” (www.mangerbouger.fr/pro/IMG/pdf/guide_adolescents-2.pdf,
page 11).
6. http://tinyurl.com/FlashLeFigaro
European Vegetarian Union
Niederfeldstrasse 92, CH-8408 Winterthur
Fax: +41 (0)71 477 33 78
http://www.euroveg.eu / president@euroveg.eu
You can read this press release online at:
http://www.euroveg.eu/lang/en/news/press/20101014.php
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