I have just watched all the videos for the first time; then I checked out our visitor tally on the Clustrmap – https://clustrmaps.com/site/1a9kn . It is a humbling feeling to know that our site and our work is starting to be watched the world over; tonight visitors from Malaysia, Sweden, Egypt, the USA, Italy, Nepal, Macedonia (Hi friends we have there from old days with Serbian stray campaigns !); Germany, Uruguay, China, South Africa, Poland, Serbia and good ol Blighty – here in the UK !
Venus and I are really happy to see you all with us and we welcome very much your support. I am especially happy to see visitor friends from Nepal today; an area of the world that needs animal support and help in getting up and running.
Thanks to you all – enjoy your visit;
Regards
For the Voiceless;
Mark.
We still also operate ‘Serbian Animals Voice’ as a back up to this site WAV
Thank you for steadying our hearts with your determination to help the lives of animals, and to let this help be a profound purpose of your life journey. Every one of us who helps animals is given courage by the others who are doing it too.
Wherever you live, conflict looms and great surges of negativity fill the press and present the terrifying realities of suffering and war. As these political plates shift, we steady ourselves when we serve kindness to the most vulnerable. Maybe, especially in those moments when we feel “what difference does it make?”, we need only look into the eyes–even in a photograph–of an animal trying so hard to heal, to be happy again, and we once more find our compass pointing to love.
A hopeless puppy proves amazing things can happen!
Rizu lay unconscious with blood oozing from his nose after being hit by a passing vehicle. Our rescue team mustered up a shred of hope that he would live, but we were very worried he could not survive. We treated the tiny sweetheart with IV drips to stabilize his blood pressure and help replace lost blood. He was so disoriented, we feared he might have permanent brain damage, but by the next morning, Rizu was absolutely transformed. We’ve hardly seen anything like this–see if you agree.
After double fractures of her hind legs watch Meetika run again!
This is one of the most delightful patients we have EVER treated. Meetika (which means soft and gentle in Hindi) was spotted in a roadside gutter after her hind legs were both fractured in a car accident. Despite her pain, she was the gentlest, most cooperative young lady, and helped her medical team by keeping perfectly still during her many splint wraps–except for her tail that wouldn’t stop wagging. 6 weeks of bed rest later, Meetika couldn’t wait to run to the caregivers who had come to love her so much.
For medical emergencies, kindness needs to come fast. Please donate.
This little charmer wasted no time in healing, and lapping up love…
It was just a sprained leg but this little flirt had his neighbors very worried. We treated him for inflammation and pain, and he felt so much better within just hours. Sometimes pain relief and cuddles are the most important medicine of all.
The word “gentleman” is something Mahendra Gameti lives. Serving animals currently as one of the on-the-road rescue team, Mahendra’s extraordinary empathy sends a beautiful message of compassion to anyone who is witnessing his work. Rescue takes courage, coordination and technique, and to achieve it with such kindness and sensitivity is an art. And Mahendra is, simply, a virtuoso.
Dozens of captive elephants in Thailand are finally free to roam.
The Maesa Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai has decided to unshackle the pachyderms at its park. Animal rights activists accused camp owners of inflicting “psychological anguish” on the elephants by forcing them to perform for tourists.
The activists, who called the practice “cruel,” shed light on the attraction in November, and claimed that baby elephants had been “ripped from their mothers” and forced to learn tricks, such as painting, kicking soccer balls and throwing darts.
Maesa’s managers now allow several of their elephants to wander the grounds freely, with plans to do the same for all 77 of the animals at their park, according to executive officer Anchalee Kalamaphichit.
“The center has been criticized for a long time about how we chain the animals in here, so we decided to free them,” she said in a statement to Vital Press. “We are glad that they appeared to be happier living without chains and their mahouts, so hopefully we can free the rest of them soon.
“However, living freely is a new thing to these elephants,” she continued. “They need time to adapt into their new way of living, so we chose to start with the eldest and friendliest of the elephants.”
British animal rights organization Moving Animals, who called out Maesa’s treatment of the elephants, said the news is “incredible.”
“Their compassionate decision sends a powerful message to the elephant tourism industry and sets a clear precedent for change,” said its founder Amy Jones.
Last year, Moving Animals shared a video of elephants at the camp swaying and moving uneasily, a “clear sign of the psychological anguish they face,” it said. The video shows them being dragged by their ears and disciplined with sharp bullhooks — a tool used by elephant handlers that resembles a sharp, metal spear.
They further decried the practice of separating calves from their mothers, forced to endure “the traditional and brutal, days or weeks long, process of breaking a young elephant’s spirit.”
Jones added that new ethics guidelines from ABTA, the UK’s predominant travel association, concerning animal abuse at tourist attractions was a step in the right direction.
“We are hopeful that more and more tourist attractions will make positive changes, so that no animals have to suffer for tourists’ entertainment,” she said.
Moving Animals has called for a full ban on “unethical” elephant tours to “places like Maesa Elephant Nursery.”
As Australia burns, the media shows harrowing scenes of indigenous species like koalas and kangaroos, injured, burned and dying. We see so many human interest stories, individual koala mothers with infants clutching at their fur being rescued and cared for; we are invited to feel the personal tragedy of a single kangaroo joey tangled in the fence where he was incinerated. Whether mourned or rescued, they are viewed as individuals, and we are united in hope for their survival, watching with bated breath as we are shown desperate creatures under an orange sky, fleeing through the smoke with the inferno roaring at their heels. The estimated number of 500,000,000 deaths has remained static for well over a week and has no doubt been wildly exceeded by now – possibly by several orders of magnitude – and will continue to climb.
I see occasional comments that wonder why no count is being publicised of those individuals who, as the defenceless victims of nonveganism, were always destined to be slaughtered; those innocent creatures whose lives and bodies were being ‘farmed’. Their plight is consistently downplayed and they are referred to sweepingly, only as ‘livestock‘. Live. Stock.
There are no human interest stories about them, no pitiful images of burned and desperate mothers seeking water from passers-by, no heroic bystanders pouring water on their burned fur and bleeding feet. No heartwarming tales of rescue and medical care.
We are not being shown videos of their desperate flight from the cracking, howling flames. Because they can’t flee. They are sitting targets. They are dying en masse. We see the occasional distance shot of cooked, bloated and unrecognisable bodies fallen in the paddocks where they were burned alive; the occasional image of sheep with their coats frizzled by flames. But even the ‘personal interest’ stories that I’ve seen, notably one where a heatbroken animal farmer was shooting cows individually in his fields, are focussed on his tragedy, his loss of livelihood. It was not a story about the tragedy of those unique individuals who were looking down the barrel of his gun, those sentient creatures who had faced hell and terror and were now injured and suffering unbearably.
There is no mention of the fact that the hell and terror of a slaughterhouse was the only route out of their situation in any case. The real tragedy from the perspective of their exploiter was that as damaged resources, they had no monetary value, and the fire-ravaged land may be unable to support the continuation of his profitable trade. Because before any individual can be exploited as a resource for our species, we must first disregard their every entitlement to consideration as living, feeling, autonomous beings. They become resources, livestock, property. They are then discussed in terms of property loss and damage.
The unfolding catastrophe is referred to a ‘humanitarian crisis’. This focus on the human exploiters and the disregarding of the torment of the individuals they exploit on behalf of nonvegan consumers, is a perfect illustration of the mindset with which we are all indoctrinated from childhood. Almost every single one of us will claim to care about members of other animal species to some extent or another. Few of us will openly claim that causing needless harm to the defenceless, the innocent, and the vulnerable is in any way acceptable. None of us would ever admit to being the sort of person that would do that.
And yet here we are, glancing impassively over anonymous corpse-littered farmland and feeling for those whose trade trapped them there, while pouring out concern and sympathy for the wild creatures with whose suffering we allow ourselves to empathise.
Here is our species, continuing to globally slaughter over 1.5 BILLION land based individuals per WEEK to indulge an unnecessary dietary preference, while watching the results of the planetary destruction this is causing, lay waste to a land that may never recover. Surely the irony can’t be lost on everyone?
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Put MEP’s and Commissioners in a Cage for 24 hours; and then see how quickly things would change !
Mark – WAV.
WAV Comment: I (Mark) am getting on my soapbox here about this; sorry if I have different views to others, but knowing the EU and how it operates; I don’t think we will see that much in the way of change. Nice words and PR’s; and a pile of EU ‘officials’ working day and night to dress it all up; for basically nothing – which means nothing being done in the way of progress for the welfare of animals in Europe.
Have animal welfare / rights organisations across the EU been saying this for years – that ‘conventional rabbit cages have worst welfare score’; and have they not supported this attitude with vast amounts of evidence / proof of the cruelties involved ?. We note that this report says that ‘conventional cages have the worst overall welfare impact score’ – it says nothing about banning them, just simply that ‘it includes recommendations to improve the welfare of these animals in all the systems currently available in the EU’.
In other words; and in my opinion only for this article, the EU ‘policy’ has basically no intention of ‘ending the cage’ as proposed by campaigns by animal welfare groups across Europe. At best, it is regarded by us as a kind of ‘tinkering round the edges’ strategy; which largely keeps current systems; whilst saying to citizens and the welfare groups that ‘improvements have been made’ !. Oh yeah, like what ? – Rabbits; the most farmed animal throughout Europe, we suggest, rabbits we still be kept in cages throughout the EU, and really the EU will have masses of new ‘yukspeak’ legislation that does very little, changes very little; but keeps the farmers and their lobbyists happy – and that for them is the main thing.
Have we not seen the ‘EU approach’ to all this in the past ? – ‘battery cages’ for chickens suddenly take on the new EU name of ‘enriched cages’ – and they move from each bird in an enriched cage now having at least 750 square centimetres of space rather than the old minimum for ‘battery’ cage systems, which was 550 square centimetres; or in other words, roughly the size of one A4 sheet of paper per bird, for their entire lives !
Read – Enriched cages condemned – CIWF – one of the UK’s leading farm animal welfare organisations:
Lets move on to another ‘farm animal welfare’ issue that the EU is involved with and ignores the wishes of its citizens on – Live Exports (live animal transports). Have a look at all the people in Europe calling for change:
Well, the reality is that despite the ‘demands’ of the European Parliament; the EU Commissioner(s) have the final say; and again in this case, they ignore the wishes of the EU citizens in favour of what is best for them; their own nation, and their lobbyists – and that in a nutshell means ‘NO Change’.
Here we are in January 2020 and nothing has changed regarding live animals being transported across / or from the EU to third countries since the Regulation (1/2005) of yes, 2005.. Reg 1/2005 is still the antiquated ‘bible’ which transporters never adhere to, and now we see the EU trying to invent new words and policies to make ‘live animal transport’ things a bit better, whatever that means ! – basically; the EU does not change to the wants of its citizens; it ignores them and does only what it wants at the demands of the un elected Commissioners.
Another example; Tell me about Monsanto / Bayer and the grip that lobbyists have within the EU – you can read a lot of this in our past posts in the subject. In Austria last month, we had:
Austrian leader blocks ban on weedkiller glyphosate, citing technicality
VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria’s caretaker leader on Monday made clear she would not sign into law the European Union’s first national ban on the weedkiller glyphosate due to a technicality,infuriating environmentalists while delighting farmers’ groups.
A large majority in parliament and, polls suggest, the public support banning the chemical because of fears it causes cancer. Austria, a popular tourist destination for its Alpine landscapes, also devotes the largest share of its farmland to organic agriculture of any EU member state.
We call the ‘technicality’ another name; and that is ‘lobbyists’. All the time the EU sucks up to them and the industry, there is no chance of change, despite what the citizens want. You could say that this is enough to make people want to wave goodbye to the EU; for all its inactions – and you know what, wow, yes, that is exactly what the UK will be doing at the end of January this year. Taking back control; away from all the EU cow poo.
Not a Happy Bunny – like most in the EU;
Regards Mark.
From the ‘Eurogroup for Animals’:
EFSA concludes conventional rabbit cages have worst welfare score
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published three scientific opinions on the welfare of rabbits kept in the EU for meat consumption. The conclusions show the need for the European Commission to use this scientific evidence to enact long overdue legislation for rabbits and end caged systems. At the same time, the opinions demonstrate the urgent need for better training of staff during stunning and slaughter of rabbits.
Rabbits are the second most farmed species in the EU in terms of numbers, but there is no species-specific legislation protecting their welfare in the EU. EFSA assessed and compared the welfare of rabbits in different production systems – organic, outdoor, floor pens, elevated pens, enriched cages and conventional cages – and concluded that conventional cages have the worst overall welfare impact score.
The overall welfare impact scores suggest that animal welfare in organic systems, on the other hand, is generally good. EFSA’s Opinion includes recommendations to improve the welfare of these animals in all the systems currently available in the EU. To facilitate the assessment of the welfare of rabbits kept in different systems it also recommends standardizing the use of validated welfare assessment protocols suitable for on-farm use throughout the EU.
Secondly, in response to two mandates, one from the European Parliament and one from the European Commission, EFSA also assessed the welfare problems like to occur in rabbits during slaughter and killing operations. In its Scientific Opinion ‘Stunning methods and slaughter of rabbits for human consumption’, the Authority identified ten welfare consequences resulting from 32 hazards that rabbits can be exposed to before and during slaughter (i.e. during pre-stunning, stunning and bleeding). These are consciousness, not being dead, thermal stress, prolonged thirst, prolonged hunger, restriction of movements, pain, fear, distress, and respiratory distress. 25 out of 32 of the hazards originated from staff, with most being attributed either to a lack of appropriate skills or to fatigue.
EFSA concluded that the preparedness and performance of staff also plays a crucial role in the case of on‐farm killing for purposes other than slaughter, such as disease control operations, and assessed this scenario in another dedicated Scientific Opinion. It identified 14 hazards which result in five welfare consequences: not being dead, consciousness, pain, fear and distress. Again, the staff were identified as the origin for all the hazards, either due to a lack of skills needed or due to the high kill rate that characterizes these operations and results in fatigue.
For both these opinions EFSA linked the hazards, welfare consequences, animal-based measures, origins and preventive and corrective measures, and also proposed mitigation measures to minimize welfare consequences. In assessing preventive measures, the crucial role played by the staff was also acknowledged.
World Animals Voice 