Lesley is a personal friend and we have worked together on live export issues in the past. Here is her Christmas message about the great work she has been doing (at Eyes on Animals – Netherlands) for animal welfare in Turkey; Regards Mark (WAV)     Dear donors and friends, I am writing from the airport in Istanbul, about to fly back home. I hope you don’t mind that I will only write in English. Five years ago we started our project in Turkey to change the way animals were being treated inside slaughterhouses. Since then we have visited many slaughterhouses and witnessed unspeakable horrors. I am often asked how we do this work, facing such animal suffering. The answer is that we care too much to be able to now look away. Focusing on achieving results keeps us driven. In 2019 we achieved a major breakthrough in Turkey. Who could have thought that two cattle slaughterhouses would now be stunning animals before slaughter? Who could have thought that we could now import captive bolt stunning pistols into Turkey? Putting stunning into practice in Turkey was a major step, and the most challenging one. It took dozens of meetings with religious authorities, giving numerous talks at Turkish universities and to officials of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture, editing hours of film material, visiting and inspecting Turkish slaughterhouses and educating their employees as well as organizing conferences for Turkish veterinarians and butchers. Now that the first major step has been taken, we just have to keep the ball rolling. In 2020, this will be one of our top priorities.

 

 

When I think back to the horrors of my first visit of a cattle slaughterhouse in Turkey in 2014, where French cattle were being chained by one leg, hoisted fully off the floor and left hanging like that for up to 2 minutes before having their throats cut open, I am so relieved to now know that change is possible.

 

 

 

Looking back at 2019 This year was a busy and intense year. Aside from Turkey, we were active in many other places to improve animal welfare and decrease suffering. In Ghana, together with WACPAW, we improved conditions inside 5 slaughterhouses by teaching the butchers how to use a captive bolt pistol and giving them one. In Poland we trained over 80 Official Road Inspectors and stopped and fined dozens of animals trucks together. In the Netherlands several major pig slaughterhouses invested in new equipment (industrial fans and roofed parking areas with shade) to help tackle heat stress in the summer. Two major egg companies in The Netherlands have fully abandoned the brutal commercial way of catching “spent” laying hens and switched over to the EonA upright method and now a UK company is also interested in it (we will be meeting with them in January). Together with the French organization L214 we exposed the horrible cruelty in the trade of unweaned calves from Ireland via French control posts to veal farms in the Netherlands. One of the employees in France was prosecuted and the story got in major international press. Our inspections were reported in Le Monde, Le Parisien, Het Parool, de Volkskrant, BBC World, The Guardian, the Irish Times, NPO Radio 1 and more.

 

 

 

THANK YOU! Dear donor, your generous support have made the improvements for all these animals possible. Thank you for believing in our efforts and for being patient with us. Your support gives me and my team the opportunity to spend our time and energy into what we all hold as being so important – to make this world a gentler place for animals. We still do hope for a day when society peacefully switches over to an agricultural system not dependent on killing animals, but as long as there are animals inside barren barns, overcrowded trucks or frightening slaughterhouses, we will do our very best to make sure animal-suffering is noticed and decreased. On behalf of everyone at Eyes on Animals, I wish you a joyous and peaceful winter holiday season. On behalf of myself, I wish all of the hard-working volunteers and freelancers of Eyes on Animals a time to rest and look back on the achievements. With warm wishes from us all at the Eyes on Animals office in Amsterdam,

 

 

Thank you for your support!

Lesley Moffat director of Eyes on Animals

 

Thanks Stacey (WAV) – https://our-compass.org/2019/12/23/i-feel-so-badly-for-those-turkeys-hauled-on-freezing-nights/

 

… has so many churches and so many Christmas decorations and so many people that claim to be Christians, and yet so much unnecessary horrific animal cruelty and no complaint of it, or effort to do anything to stop it …

 

Photo – Animals Angels

 

Source United Poultry Concerns (UPC)

The Letter to the Editor that follows this Introduction was written by Shane Zoglman and published Nov. 20, 2019 by The Dubois County Herald in Indiana, a mid-Western state with a large poultry and egg industry. In granting permission to UPC to share his letter with our readers, Shane added some information about his own evolution:

Howdy, sure, post away. For some history, back when I was a teenager, and didn’t have any good examples or guidance in the form of grownups, I worked for about 4 years on a chicken farm, that is, an egg farm, gathering eggs from the mega-sized houses, taking out the dead and crippled chickens and also taking out the old ones, loading them on semis and putting the new young birds in the cages.

I also did a few part-time jobs of working for a farm where I helped load turkeys into the semis. I have to say I didn’t think about the animals’ suffering, it just didn’t enter my mind. So I am someone who has seen both sides and has changed a lot over the years. The thing I do not understand is people that never wake up. I think a big help in my waking up to animal cruelty was stumbling onto the Shark Online YouTube channel years ago. I had been to a couple rodeos as a kid, but again, never was aware of the cruelty as I see it now after seeing their videos of rodeo cruelty.

These days I do not buy guns and ammo to kill animals with. I buy binoculars to enjoy watching them with, and instead of putting effort into killing, I put effort and money into taking in animals (who) need a home as well as trying to spread some of the message in my own way that things need to change.
– Shane Zoglman

 

The following is Shane’s letter in The Dubois County Herald, Nov. 20, 2019:

Protect turkeys in trucks from frigid temps

Dubois County Herald

November 20, 2019

To the editor:

Well, it is wintertime in Dubois County again, and once again the turkey manufacturing industry has done nothing to alleviate the suffering of turkeys being trucked down the highways at night in open cages, going 60-mph with no protection from the horrific freezing cold.

The profiteers of the turkey manufacturing industry cannot be bothered to spend a few bucks to lessen the cruelty they inflict on their product. After all, a healthy profit margin is what life is all about, right?

After their freezing cold, 18-wheeled torture trip, many of the turkeys are thrown still alive into boiling hot water. Then they are sold and shipped to China, where most turkeys “manufactured” in America end up. It’s so great that China gets the food and people in Dubois County get the pollution, the stink and the humanity-degrading, low-paying jobs of inflicting cruelty on animals while a few rich people at the top get the money.

What does it say that Dubois County has so many churches and so many Christmas decorations and so many people that claim to be Christians and yet so much unnecessary horrific animal cruelty and no complaint of it, or effort to do anything to stop it?

You cannot look at humans in middle America and convince me that monsters do not exist. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Shane Zoglman, Jasper

 

Order a FREE vegan kit: http://www.peta.org/living/food/free-vegan-starter-kit/

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA: https://www.petaliterature.com/

Vegan Outreach: https://veganoutreach.org/order-form/

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE