Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)

With thanks to good friend Sue at the SP here in England:

Direct SP link:

http://www.shoreham-protester.org.uk/

The Shoreham Protester was first issued during the live export protests at Shoreham Harbour in 1995. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/1000-police-drafted-to-animal-port-1566585.html

It now covers a whole range of animal rights issues, national and international, and is produced as a monthly newsletter, available by post for £12 (cheques made payable to SPAAA) for 10 issues and sent to 7 Stoneham Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 5HJ

For FREE trial edition, click on button on leftside column.

The small profit made from the sale of the paper goes directly to help animals.
The Shoreham Protester online edition reports a few of the main items from the newspaper

Veganism is taking off in Israel, where few people had even heard of the term a few years ago. Animal-rights organisations such as Anonymous and Let the Animals Live have operated for more than 2 decades, and there have always been vegetarians in Israel.  But while vegetarians are pretty common, abstaining from eggs and dairy products has been perceived here as an esoteric practice adopted by health-freaks or high-school radicals. So, how did the vegan craze hit Israel’s shores?  By most accounts, it all started in April of last year, when Daniel Erlich and Hovav Amir, 2 animal-rights activists who run the online TV show Animal Log, added Hebrew subtitles to an American lecture about veganism and posted it on YouTube under the title “the best speech you’ll ever hear.” The lecturer is a Jewish American animal-rights activist named Gary Yourofsky, who usually speaks to high-school and college students in the United States. He is considered a criminal or even a terrorist by many, is banned from entering Canada and the U.K., and has a long history of arrests. He even spent 77 days in a Canadian maximum-security prison once, after raiding a fur farm. Yourofsky doesn’t hesitate to use shock-tactics: He calls eggs “chicken period” and honey “bee vomit,” and frequently advocates violence. His angry speech would probably cause any hamburger-eater to feel terribly guilty. In it, he combines statistics, nutrition information, and discussions of morality, interspersed with shocking films of slaughterhouses. News of the eye-opening lecture spread virally and with the help of activists handing out leaflets. Erlich and Amir even got a leading tofu manufacturer to print a QR code on tofu packages linking to the Israeli Yourofsky site. More than half a million Israelis have watched the YouTube video. Many others attended, and keep attending, screenings at universities, schools, and various public places around the country, and last September Yourofsky himself held a successful lecture tour in Israel—his first outside the United States—which was accompanied by much media coverage. Erlich and Amir can now boast that more than 700,000 Israelis, close to 10% of the country’s population, have heard Yourofsky’s gospel.  “I think that experts on the Israeli vegan scene will agree to the estimate that at least a few thousands have become vegan after watching Gary’s speech,” Amir told said in an interview. Now the signs of Israel’s vegan revolution are everywhere. There are vegan cooking courses and workshops, vegan blogs, online vegan cooking programmes, a new smartphone app called Vegan Spotting that locates vegan dishes served in your area, and a slew of new businesses that cater to vegans, like an online vegan shop  selling everything from vegan pet food to condoms. Vegan Friendly is a new initiative making the vegan lifestyle in Israel easier and more accessible by identifying vegan restaurants, cafés, hotels, and other establishments. There even is a Facebook page for Israeli vegan parents looking for help figuring out what to feed their kids.

Australia’s largest supermarket chain, Coles, will as of January 1 stop selling company branded pork and eggs from animals kept in factory farms. As an immediate result, 34,000 mother pigs will no longer be kept in stalls for long periods of their lives, and 350,000 hens will be freed from cages. Not to be outdone, the nation’s other dominant supermarket chain, Woolworths, has already begun phasing out factory farmed animal products. In fact all of Woolworth’s house brand eggs are now cage-free, and by mid-2013 all of their pork will come from farmers who operate stall-free farms. Coles and Woolworths together account for a dominant 80% of all supermarket sales in Australia. The move to open up the cages was fuelled by “consumer sentiment,” and it has been synchronous with a major campaign against factory farming of animals led by Animals Australia. The campaign features a TV ad, titled “When Pigs Fly,” in which an adorable piglet tells the story of animals sentenced to life in cramped cages, and then flies to freedom.  http://vimeo.com/51967590

Brazil has notified international animal health regulators of its first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, commonly called mad cow disease. The cow died 2 years ago, but the test confirming the deadly brain disease was not done until 18 months later, and the results not made public until Thursday. This time lag allowed Brazil to export roughly 67m pounds of beef to the United States since the suspect Brazilian cow was identified.

Israeli dairy giant Tnuva faces criminal probe for alleged animal abuse. The Environmental Protection Ministry launched a criminal investigation against Tnuva following an exposé aired by the television investigative programme Kolbotek on mistreatment of animals at its Adom Adom slaughterhouse. About 300 animal rights activists gathered in Tel Aviv on Monday – International Animal Rights Day – to protest abuse. In response to the programme and the resultant investigation, Adom-Adom CEO Erez Wolf stressed that the company “unequivocally condemns this behaviour,” detailing a number of steps that had been taken against the employees involved. “Abuse is not kosher,” the protesters chanted, according to the group Anonymous for Animal Rights. “The Tnuva CEO must resign.” Actress Orna Banai likewise took part in the demonstration, calling for a consumer boycott of Tnuva products and stressing that the company must be held accountable for evading its responsibilities. Members from the Left and Right, meat-eaters and vegetarians, ultra-Orthodox and secular showed up to the protest and echoed Banai’s call. “We must remember that if these seem to be the procedures and guidelines at the largest and most advanced slaughterhouse in Israel, the grave abuse that we have seen in the Kolbotek investigation is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Hagai Cohen from Anonymous.

Turkey cruelty – no charges

The top prosecutor in Sampson, Duplin and Onslow counties said that there is insufficient evidence of animal abuse by workers at farms linked to Butterball LLC to pursue criminal charges. Mercy for Animals conducted an undercover investigation in October and collected hidden-camera video of what the animal rights group described as turkeys being kicked, stomped on, dragged by their wings or necks and thrown into crates on top of other birds.

E-coli contamination ignored

Federal beef inspectors at the XL Foods plant in southern Alberta whose E. coli crisis sparked the country’s largest meat recall were ordered to turn a blind eye to contamination on carcasses being processed for sale to Canadians, CTV News has learned, a directive that was imposed by the inspectors’ supervisors lasting 4 years. The 2008 memo written by a Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) meat hygiene supervisor at the Brooks, Alta., plant, obtained by CTV, instructed CFIA inspectors stationed at one of the plant’s final inspection stops to give extra scrutiny to carcasses shipped to Japan, but to ignore visible faecal and intestinal contamination on meat for Canadians. “Our number 1 priority is to ensure this standard is met with Japan eligible carcasses,” the memo said of the inspection station.  “Ensure that non-Japan-eligible carcasses are not inspected for spinal cord/dura-matter, OCD (other carcass defects) and minor ingesta,” the note continued. “Ignore them.” The union representing workers at the Brooks plant says this practice is “ridiculous.” “There’s one standard for beef being shipped to Japan and there’s another standard for beef being shipped elsewhere,” said Doug O’Halloran, president of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 401. “It is incredible that you could allow material to leave the plant that could have contamination on it just because it’s not going to Japan. “No disrespect to Japan, but what about the rest of the human beings in the world? It’s like we’re second class citizens,” he said. The memo – dated Sept. 12, 2008 – was sent to CFIA inspection staff at the Brooks, Alta., plant and was re-issued to them again in 2010 and 2011. The CFIA memo added that the contaminants can be detected later on in the meat-processing process, something with which the union representing CFIA inspectors disagree.

White lion cubs exported for Japanese circus

4 rare white lion cubs born in a UK safari park have been sent to perform in a Japanese circus after being trained in a British facility. The cubs were born at W. Midlands Safari Park, in Bewdley, Worcester, in 2008 but will spend their adult lives entertaining crowds in the Far East.

Animal rights charities have expressed outrage after discovering they were flown 6,000 miles to Japan’s Circus Kinoshita.   The animals were given to British businessman Jim Clubb who runs Amazing Animals, which also goes by the name Heythrop Zoological Gardens, in Chipping Norton, Oxon.  A Japanese investigator working for CAPS discovered one of the lions has been moved to a zoo in the west of the country after it was attacked by the other circus animals. The lion is reported to have developed a ‘nervous disease called autonomic ataxia’ causing his mane to completely fall out.  CAPS director Liz Tyson said: ‘The current Government has promised an outright ban on the use of wild animals in circuses as a result of overwhelming public, expert and parliamentary support.  ‘And yet here we have a zoo apparently providing lion cubs to this cruel and unethical trade via a middleman, whilst publicising their work to their paying visitors as based in conservation and welfare.  ‘It is an appalling betrayal of those people that trust the zoo to protect and care for the animals.  ‘But most importantly, it is an appalling betrayal of the lion cubs who appear to have been abandoned to this hopeless fate by W. Midland Safari Park.’  An investigation by CAPS claim the safari park has close ties with Clubb’s animal entertainment business. In 2007 Clubb appeared on the zoo’s own TV channel talking about his company which provides animals to the entertainment industry. Jim Clubb confirmed he had provided the lions to the circus – saying it was ‘business.’  He said: ‘We did receive the lion cubs from W. Midlands Safari Park and provided them to the circus in Japan.  ‘There is nothing illegal or underhand about this whatsoever. I will not discuss our financial arrangements but we are a business of course.  ‘I have no idea whether West Midlands Safari Park knew the lions would be going to the circus, that is a matter for them. I will not go into the arrangement we have with them.’  The safari park – which attracts 1.3m visitors each year – confirmed they had ‘sent’ white lions to Clubb ‘in good faith and were unaware of any subsequent moves.’   The Mail 27^th Nov

A trailer full of circus animals overturned on an interstate in Georgia, trapping several animals inside.   The driver of the truck was transporting llamas, ponies, camels and zebras to the UniverSoul Circus in Savannah when he lost control, hitting a sign, authorities said.   The trailer full of 8 circus animals detached and fell on its side as the truck came to a halt atop a guardrail.   Neither the driver nor the animals were seriously injured.   But several animals were stuck behind metal partitions after the accident. Firefighters arrived at the scene to help the animals escape from the trailer uninjured. NY Daily News Nov 20

Mumbai is now gearing up to fight for the rights of circus animals across the country. Members of an animal rights organisation protested outside a circus camp in Bandra. The protesters, chained and wearing masks of elephants, held signs that read, ‘Abolish Slavery: Ban Animal Circuses’. According to the animal rights activists, all circus animals are treated like slaves.

After decades of captivity inside America’s zoos, the elephants arrived broken in many different ways. Maggie barely survived the harsh winters of the tiny Alaska Zoo. Confined many days to a cramped, indoor pen, she developed crippling foot and joint disease, collapsing to the floor – lifted only by a crane. Zookeepers conceded that frigid Anchorage was no place for a 4-ton tropical beast. Annie spent much of her life in chains at the Milwaukee County Zoo until the public learned of brutal training sessions. Zookeepers routinely anchored the elephant’s feet with chains, then struck and gouged her with a bullhook, even videotaping sessions to teach others how to make an elephant perform on command. And there is Wanda, whose cracked feet and arthritic legs deteriorated with each bitter winter at the Detroit Zoo. Its officials concluded that captivity was unnecessarily cruel for the world’s largest land mammal. The 3 elephants now share a different life at a 2,300-acre compound nestled in the San Andreas foothills. Pat Derby, co-founder of the sanctuary, says, “This is where elephants come to die.” But if the zoo industry’s trade group had its way, their elephants would never come at all. The Northern California sanctuary, and another in Tennessee, could represent a welcome, zero-cost option for zoos with aging or ill elephants. Instead, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) opposes sanctuaries for a key reason: Sanctuaries refuse to breed more elephants into captivity. Privately-owned sanctuaries are not open to the public and “inhibit zoos’ efforts to preserve and study elephants,” says Bruce Bohmke, deputy director of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo and member of the AZA national committee that oversees elephant management inside accredited zoos. “We believe that breeding is essential to sustaining elephant populations in zoos,” Bohmke said. Despite repeatedly telling the public that elephants are thriving in captivity, the zoo industry knows otherwise and is desperate to breed more elephants. For every elephant born in a U.S. zoo, on average 2 others die, a Seattle Times analysis has found. Under current conditions, with just 288 elephants inside 78 accredited U.S. zoos, they could be “demographically extinct” within 50 years, studies show. Seattle Times 2 Dec

Jailed for abuse in Eire

In July 2011 a Dublin man, John Byrne, who had been living rough for over 20 years had his rabbit, Barney, thrown callously into the River Liffey by a passerby. The 37-year-old risked his life by jumping in after his beloved pet and saving him with the kiss of life before he himself had to be rescued by firefighters. Shortly afterwards the person responsible for abusing the rabbit was apprehended. Gary Kearney, who is currently serving a 6 year jail sentence, was given a 4 month sentence on top of what he is already doing, for throwing Barney into the river.  ARAN was delighted with the 4 month sentence handed down, the judge stated he was not going to be lenient and that it was a serious case. Most animal abuse cases rarely make it to court, let alone the offenders getting a fine, so 4 months is to be welcomed. Of course we also asked for a psychological evaluation of Kearney and a personal ban on owning animals for life. We did not get this however. Shortly after the case, media outlets nationwide began picking up on the story and all over Facebook it was causing a hugely positive mood for the many people speaking out against cruelty to animals.

Almost half of Gibraltar’s famous monkeys could be shipped off the Rock as they are considered ‘fearless’ of humans. Although friendly charming and inquisitive the wild Barbary Macaques are increasingly running riot through the town’s streets. ‘They’ve lost their fear of humans and regard them as a source of rich food,’ said Gibraltar’s Environment Minister Dr John Cortes. Almost 60 people needed hospital treatment this year after being bitten by one of the monkeys. A government led campaign, titled Get Our Monkeys Back To Nature, has since been launched to teach people not to feed the iconic primates. Feeding the Barbary Macaques is illegal and punishable by a fine but the law is routinely ignored, particularly by tourists who flock to the areas around Apes Den and the Siege Tunnels at the top of the Rock. The campaign is part of a wider action plan being developed by the colony’s government with the support of primate experts at the Born Free Foundation. A boost to a contraceptive programme forms part of the scheme as does ‘the possibility of relocating up to 120 monkeys to north Africa’, according to a government statement. Dr Cortes, an authority on the Barbary Macaques, said that the current population is around 230. He reiterated that culling was not supported by the government. Although the Barbary macaque is a much-loved national symbol of Gibraltar mystery surrounds its arrival on the Rock.  Their existence was noted by the first chronicler of Gibraltar in the early 17^th century. Gibraltar’s monkeys were under the often affectionate care of the British Army, and later the Gibraltar Regiment, from 1915 to 1991.  Sgt. Alfred Holmes was one well remembered Officer-in-Charge of the monkeys who cared for, fed, nursed and named the monkeys for almost 30 years from the mid-1950s.  Holmes described the monkeys as Gibraltar’s ‘greatest treasure’ and even ensured any sick animals were attended by the same doctors as soldiers at the Royal Naval Hospital. A belief that the Rock will stay British as long as the monkeys remain was behind a move by Sir Winston Churchill to import monkeys when the Gibraltar population plummeted to just 7 individuals during World War Two.  The species is commonly referred to as the ‘Barbary ape’ though the light brown animal is actually a stubby-tailed monkey.  Dr Cortes said the campaign would present challenges but would succeed with community support.

25 wild bottlenose dolphins that once roamed free in the Pacific are facing a life of boredom, stress, frustration and slow death, thanks to Resorts World, which plans to confine them at their attraction at Sentosa, Singapore.  You can complain to the resort via a a link at www.saddestdolphins.com  It’s worth posting a comment on Sentosa Resort’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/#!/TheSentosa?fref=ts

A dying rhino summoned the strength to save her calf as poachers went on a killing spree on a game reserve in South Africa, keepers said. The slaughter lasted between 3 and 4 days and left maggot-covered carcasses dotted across the landscape at the Finfoot Game Reserve near Sun City in North West province. Gamekeepers said after being shot at, the pride of the reserve named Longhorn realised she would die. But in a final act of bravery she led her 18-month-old calf to the reserve farm’s lodge, where she would be safe. Longhorn, who was 24-years-old, was then butchered for her 3ft-long horn. Rhino horn is highly sought after and is sold for around $60000 per kilo. Another calf found by gamekeepers did not escape the slaughter – it was found lying next to its mother, butchered for its tiny horn that measured just an inch.

Longhorn was the first animal Mr Lappeman bought from the Natal Parks Board, and the reason he spent 25 years caring for his breeding herd of White Rhino on his farm. Her calf has been taken to a place of safety. Since the slaying, a group of 7 men has been working around the clock to protect the remainder of the herd, with the help of Mark Prangley, an anti-poaching operator. Mr Lappeman says it is inevitable that the poachers will return. ‘Its not “if”, it’s “when”,’ he told Times Live.  ‘We are fighting a bush war against trained professionals, with people who are not trained for it,’ he says.  Pelham Jones, chairman of the SA Rhino Owners’ Association, said: ‘We are losing this war and people who think there is a quick fix are living in denial.’  Mr Prangley, however, proposes a practical solution: ‘Kill the poachers.’  5 men have been arrested in connection with the massacre and are due to appear at Brits Magistrates’ Court next week charged with illegal possession of a firearm and poaching.
Sales of fur reached record highs this year, the International Fur Trade Federation (IFTF) has said, as China’s growing appetite for luxury goods put the once-taboo material back on the catwalks. The value of the global fur market should exceed $15bn this year, compared with $9.1bn in 2000, driven by demand from the growing affluent classes of China and Russia, the industry body said.

Fur farming to continue in Ireland

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has said fur farming of mink will be allowed to continue in Ireland. He is reversing a decision by the last government to close down the industry on welfare grounds at the end of Nov. Mr Coveney said lots of people are uncomfortable with the industry but it is not that different from intensive farming in other sectors and if he was to close its down, significant compensation would have to be paid to the fur farmers that operate here. Mr Coveney has, however, pledged that while fur farming in Ireland will not be prohibited, more stringent conditions of inspection, veterinary attention and animal welfare will be introduced. Fur farm licences will be reviewed every 5 years, and any fur farm can be inspected, without prior notice.30 Nov RTE News

Filed under: CAMPAIGNS - Global Animal Welfare Issues, GENERAL NEWS - International / National / Regional | Leave a comment »