Month: September 2020

General News

Solidarity with Malabo

 

We expect Malabo’s immediate release.
It was a human error indeed, the arrest of the innocent Malabo 29 years ago and his life imprisonment.
This mistake needs to be corrected.
The only innocent man is Malabo, the prisoner of the Madrid Zoo.
We show solidarity with him

Regards and good night, Venus

Farm Animals, General News, Live Transport

EU: EP Animal Transport Committee meet for the first time.

Photon – Serbian sheep being exported to Israel.

Read more about our work here under the ‘Serbian Animal Voice’ label. After the exports were exposed, the Serbian government denied it all; and issued threats to all those involved with the expose. Serbian animal shelters were even threatened with closure !. We stuck our ground and in the end proved that the sheep exported to Isreal had originated with approval in Serbia. Read the following (SAV) links below for more. Note – we (WAV) still operate SAV in conjunction to WAV, which is now the prime site.

See more about Serbian strays at https://serbiananimalsvoice.com/about-serbian-animals/ and more about our other campaign work at https://serbiananimalsvoice.com/about-us/

United for the animals ! – Ragards Mark.

Serbia: It Now Appears The Sheep Exported Live To Israel WERE From Serbia; Despite The Threats.
England: SAV Now Write TO EU Commissioner Hahn Regarding Serbia – Israeli Live Animal Transport.
Serbia: Breaking News – Serbia Exports Live Sheep To Israel.

EP Animal Transport Committee meet for the first time

28 September 2020

The ANIT-Committee has not yet published a timetable for upcoming activities but among the important next steps to take will be the appointment of the rapporteur and the shadow rapporteurs of the investigation report.

During its constitutive meeting on 23 September, the Committee of Inquiry on the protection of animals during transport (ANIT) elected Tilly METZ (Greens/EFA) as its Chairwoman. The competing candidate for chairperson was Sylvia Limmer (ID, DE). 

Marlene Mortler (EPP, DE), Anja Hazekamp (GUE/NGL, NL), Mohammed Chahim (S&D, NL) and Martin Hojsik (Renew, SK) were appointed as Vice-Chairs. Together, the Chairwoman and Vice-Chairs will make up the bureau of the Committee, elected for the whole mandate of one year.

Photo – Calves being exported – Mark

Almost half of ANIT’s 30 Members and 25 substitutes are also Members of the EP Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals which was a driving force in calling for its creation. The Committee of Inquiry was established by a very large majority during the EP’s plenary session in July 2020 upon a request presented by 181 MEPs to the Conference of Presidents (EP President and leaders of political groups in the House).

The Committee’s main objective will be to look into alleged violations in the application of European Union law governing live animal transport both within and outside the Union.  For this, they can consult experts and stakeholders and invite them for public hearings or carry out themselves study trips (COVID-19 pandemic allowing) to see the situation on the ground.  The results of the inquiries and assessments will be the basis for an investigation report which will be adopted at the end of ANIT’s one-year mandate. This report can be used as a  source document for the urgently needed revision of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2005 on the protection of animals during transport and related operations.

Photo – Sheep being exported – Mark

The ANIT-Committee has not yet published a timetable for upcoming activities but among the important next steps to take will be the appointment of the rapporteur and the shadow rapporteurs of the investigation report.

A first attempt to create an EP Committee of Inquiry on animal transport dates back to 2017. At the time, it was supported by 223 MEPs from all parties and political groups. However, the EP Conference of Presidents, upon request from the Agriculture Committee,  rejected this request opting for a less costly solution with an EP report on the implementation of Council Regulation No 1/2005 on the protection of animals during transport within and outside the EU, (2018/2110(INI))

This report, drafted by Animal Welfare Intergroup Member Jørn Dohrmann MEP (ECR, DK), was adopted at the end of the last Parliamentary term. It specifically recommends in its article 22 that the “Parliament establishes a committee of inquiry on the welfare of animals during transport within and outside the EU as from the beginning of the next parliamentary term in order to properly investigate and monitor alleged contraventions and maladministration in the application of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2005 on the protection of animals during transport. The current ANIT Committee is therefore also a consequence of this recommendation expressed by the EP during the former term.

Photo – Livestock transporter – Mark
 

USEFUL LINKS:

Live video of the meeting


Parliamentary Magazine’s article

Regards Mark.

General News, Stray Animals

Dubai UAE: Dogs and cats killed in Dubai for the Expo: LNDC writes to the Ambassador

Dogs and cats killed in Dubai for the Expo: LNDC writes to the Ambassador

28 September 2020

LNDC

Removing strays animals from the streets of Dubai to take them to the desert to die: this is the decision of the Government of the United Arab Emirates which sparked protests from local and global animal rights activists.

Next year the city of Dubai will host the Expo, postponed to the next year due to the pandemic. In view of this important event, the government of the United Arab Emirates has begun a real round-up of all stray animals in order to “clean up the streets”. The captured animals are transferred to facilities that however have problems of capacity and therefore leave the animals in excess in the desert to die of hunger and thirst. This is what some local activists have denounced in recent days, even launching a petition to try to stop this massacre.

“I wrote a letter to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in Italy to express my indignation for this decision” says Piera Rosati – President of our Italian member LNDC Animal Protection. “The UAE has a serious stray problem and I have pointed out that this is not the correct way to handle it. Abandoning cats and dogs in the desert to make them die will certainly not give an image of an efficient and clean country as it is in their intentions, but only of incivility and cruelty. The only right way to combat stray dogs is to activate serious and concrete sterilization programs, to encourage adoptions and to educate the population”. 

“Unfortunately, the practice of culling stray animals is also common to several European countries although it is carried out by euthanasia. In this, it must be said that – thanks to the battles carried out in recent decades by LNDC and other animal welfare associations – Italy is a model of ethics given that euthanasia is only allowed in cases in which animals are incurable or proven danger. In this regard, we launched a debate on this topic within the Eurogroup for Animals, an organization that brings together the main European protectionist associations, in the hope of being able to lead the Italian example throughout Europe and put an end to the unjustified killing of animals. company at least in our continent ”, concludes Rosati.

The only right way to combat stray dogs is to activate serious and concrete sterilization programs, to encourage adoptions and to educate the population.

Piera Rosati, President of LNDC Animal Protection

The post ‘Dogs and cats killed in Dubai for the Expo: LNDC writes to the Ambassador’ is modified from an article published by Lega Nazionale per la Difesa del Cane in their original language.

Read more at source

LNDC Animal Protection

Hunting

Switzerland says “no” to the hunting law – we say thank you!

Wolf protection in Switzerland is not being relaxed. The electorate rejected the revision of the hunting law with 51.9 percent.

A new hunting law should have come in Switzerland that puts the wolf and the ibex on the list of huntable animals and enables wolves to be shot, even if the wolf has not caused any damage (i.e. tearing livestock).

There was a referendum on September 27th. And the majority of 51.9% of the Swiss have rejected this hunting law. Great!

All in all, the arguments of Left-Green and the animal and environmental associations, which had launched the referendum against the bill, were more convincing in the voting campaign.
There was always talk of a “shooting law for the wolf”, of “a failed law that harasses wild animals”.

Above all, it was the newly permitted preventive killing of individual wolves as well as the intended legitimate regulation of packs of wolves that heated the minds of the opponents.

It is a contradiction to kill a protected animal without it having caused any damage, was the tenor. The revised hunting law makes it possible to shoot “in advance”!!

The opponents did not only see the wolf endangered in the new hunting law but also other protected animal species.

In the voting campaign, it was almost forgotten that the regulatory rules should apply not only to the wolf but also to the ibex.

Environmentalists warned that the beaver or the lynx could soon be on this hit list.

Reference was made to an article of the law that states that the Federal Council can declare other protected animal species to be regulated without the consent of parliament or a referendum.

Conclusion: “What the revision actually entails is less species protection.”

The old law is now the new !!!

With the “NO” to the revised Hunting Act, the 1986 law remains in force.
Even before the vote, the opponents announced that after the rejection, work on a new bill would soon begin in order to have a law that would actually do justice to species protection.

https://www.srf.ch/news/abstimmung-27-september-2020/jagdgesetz/umgang-mit-dem-wolf-das-stimmvolk-schiesst-das-jagdgesetz-ab

 

And I mean…Cantonal representatives from Valais have made it clear that wolves do not belong in Valais. We have seen how this is practiced there with the lynx. The canton tolerates poachers and even has poachers as rangers.
We had already reported about this: https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/09/19/swiss-poaching-gamekeepers-in-valais/

The pressure against these species is great, the lobbies are ready.
In addition, I feel that the farmers’ concern for the sheep is hypocritical. Thousands of sheep die every year from disease, lightning strikes, falling rocks, falls, etc. No owner sleeps badly because of this. It doesn’t matter at all, it’s already calculated.

Every sheep that is killed is remunerated by the federal government and the canton.

Then again and again sheep are forgotten and starve to death in the snow.
All of this from the allegedly so “concerned sheep owners”.
The sheep are only there to collect subsidies.

All facts speak against the law, the Swiss got it and fought against the wolf hysteria with their voice.

Thank you!

My best regards to all, Venus

General News

UK: Meat-Free Giant Quorn Launches Vegan Pepperoni.

WAV Comment: we think this is UK only at present; but will no doubt expand globally; if any are left !

Meat-Free Giant Quorn Launches Vegan Pepperoni

The veggie brand says its latest product has a ‘delicious smokey flavor’ and is ‘perfect’ in wraps, sandwiches, and on pizza

SEP 27, 2020

The meat-free slices are available in select Sainsbury's stores (Photo: Quorn. Edited by PBN)

Meat-free giant Quorn has added vegan pepperoni to its deli range.

The plant-based slices, which are free-from gluten and soy, are available in select Sainsbury’s stores across the U.K – retailing at £2.20 for a 100g pack.

‘Delicious smokey flavor’

According to Quorn, its vegan pepperoni is ‘perfect’ in wraps, sandwiches, and on pizza due to its ‘delicious smokey flavor’.

The brand did use to offer a vegetarian pepperoni which contained egg and cow’s milk – but it is now ‘unavailable’ on Sainsbury’s website.

https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/quorn-launches-vegan-pepperoni

Environmental

First think, then ask!


We hear that so often:
“Why don’t you take care of the poor, starving children in the developing world before you worry about the ‘cattle’?”

In short:
Especially the people who do not do anything for others, neither for the animals nor for the people, tend to accuse others of forgetting the people in need because of all their commitment to the animals!

Around 690 MILLION people worldwide are currently suffering from hunger! Source: https://www.unicef.de/…/un-report…/221914

Every 10 seconds a child dies of hunger!
Whoever does not consume meat and other animal products such as milk, eggs … is doing something against world hunger.

Why is that?
Example: To ‘produce’ 1 kg of beef, 16 kg of grain and soy are fed to animals.
Giant amounts of grain and soy are necessary to fatten these animals.
Instead of using it to feed the hungry of this world, we take the food from them to feed tortured animals.

If this grain were directly available for human nutrition, the WORLD HUNGER PROBLEM would be solved!

Up to 7 kilograms of feed and 15,300 liters of water are required to “produce” just 1 kilogram of beef. Including drinking water for the animals and water for cleaning the stables, this results in an unbelievable sum of 15,500 liters of water for just 1 kilogram of beef!
The tragic thing is: 2.1 billion people have no access to clean and available drinking water.

So … eating meat is a crime, for humanity and for animals.
But the carnivores allow it.

Just because the eyes of the starving children cannot be seen on the packaged meat in the supermarket.

My best regards to all, Venus

Environmental

Nestlé, the water mafia

The authorities have allowed one million cubic meters per year!!! Nestlé pumps this amount of water out of the ground in Vittel every year – and slowly but surely dries up the small community in eastern France.
The groundwater level cannot regenerate and drops dramatically by 30 centimeters every year. Once it was 10 meters higher than it is today.
The villagers are running out of drinking water.

At the public fountain they are allowed to fill “a maximum of 6 bottles per day”, and in summer the water is even brought into the village by tanker. Now a 12-kilometer pipeline is planned – for up to 50 million euros in tax money.

Nestlé fills the groundwater in bottles and earns hundreds of millions of euros with it.

The trade-in water is far more than a local problem: A large part of the mineral water is filled in plastic bottles, the production of which devours resources, which of course also applies to returnable bottles.

The bottles are then brought to the customer over long distances.
From Vittel to Sassnitz: 1,141 kilometers, from Vittel to Berchtesgaden: 701 kilometers.
The dimensions are more extreme in Canada, for example.
It is 3,147 kilometers from Nestlé’s Aberfoyle filling station to St. John’s.
Other popular types of water are still transported further.

So water from the Fijis itself can be had in Berlin!!!

But the residents do not give up without a fight: Vittel’s residents have come together as “Collectif Eau 88” to stand up to the large corporation. And you asked the “SumOfUs” community for help in their fight against Nestlé.

Continue reading “Nestlé, the water mafia” →

Farm Animals, General News

USA: NEW VIDEO: These Chickens Are So Calcium Deficient They Lay Eggs Without Shells !

A Mercy For Animals investigator went undercover at a U.S. egg factory and found live hens kept in tiny cages with decomposing birds, animals with open wounds, and chickens so calcium deficient they laid eggs without shells.

The investigator describes appalling conditions in dark, windowless sheds, which can be as long as a football field. Here, hundreds of thousands of chickens are forced to live for more than a year—nearly the entirety of their short lives. They are kept in cages so small that they cannot even spread their wings or move without stepping on other birds. In the United States, the vast majority of egg-laying hens are kept in tiny cages just like the ones in this video.

Hens like these have been bred to lay far more eggs than their wild ancestors ever would, laying one egg nearly every day. In fact, the average commercial egg-laying chicken in the United States lays 294 eggs a year, while their direct ancestors, the red junglefowl, lays just 10 to 15 a year.

Laying so many eggs depletes the hens’ bodies of calcium, needed to form eggshells. As a result, their bones often become brittle, and some birds have so little calcium left in their bodies they lay eggs without shells. The investigator said, “I witnessed many hens with broken bones or open wounds but saw none of them receive individual veterinary care.”

Many chickens do not survive the horrific conditions. Those who die are left to rot in the tiny cages, and live hens are forced to stand on or against the decomposing bodies.

At the end of their short lives, the birds are violently removed from their cages, carried upside down by their legs, and stuffed into cages for transport to slaughter. Chickens are sensitive, complex individuals capable of empathizing with their peers and creating strong friendships. Despite this, hens in factory farms are treated like unfeeling objects.

In addition to extreme neglect, disease prevention in the egg factory was not taken seriously. One of the most basic biosecurity measures in agriculture is to step through a tray of disinfectant before entering a building with live animals, yet the investigator “observed workers routinely bypassing the disinfectant tray.”

To make matters worse, the U.S. government recently announced it would stop requiring full-time government inspectors in plants that process egg products, meaning inspectors will visit a plant only once per shift. This decrease in oversight could pose serious risks to food safety.

We can all make a difference in the lives of chickens by eating more plant-based foods. Check out these 10 delicious egg-less egg recipes to get started, and download our FREE Vegetarian Starter Guide for more tips and tricks.

https://mercyforanimals.org/new-video-these-chickens-are-so-calcium-deficien

Regards Mark

Environmental, General News, Hunting

USA: CBD ‘Saving Life on Earth’ Webinar. More, and Register Here.

  Hi Mark,

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s misleadingly named Wildlife Services program kills more than a million wild animals every year, typically at the request of Big Ag. Scattering public lands with cruel traps and indiscriminate poisons, the program targets carnivores like coyotes, bears, beavers, otters and foxes. Even rare species like grizzlies and wolves are caught in the crosshairs.

We’ve been working for years to shine a light on the feds’ wildlife-killing and have succeeded in gaining protections for wildlife in several states.

Join me on Thursday, Oct. 1, for the Center’s next Saving Life on Earth webinar to learn more about this work, as well as our other efforts to protect carnivores.

The presentation will feature our Carnivore Conservation Director Collette Adkins and Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney in our Northern Rockies office.

In addition to talking about Wildlife Services, we’ll discuss the latest news on grizzly bears and wolves, including the expected loss of wolf protections nationally and the importance of state-level wolf work if that does occur.

The hour-long webinar starts at 4 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. ET.

Register here and check your email for the link to join.
Brytnee Laurette
Saving Life on Earth Campaigner
Center for Biological Diversity
General News

USA: Petition – The Dickhead Dreadhead Cowboy.

WAV Comment:  Think he should be called the ‘Dickhead Cowboy’; as that is what he is.  Please sign and support the petition.

Petition Link:  https://www.animalvictory.org/_dreadhead_cowboy_rode_20-year-old_horse_to_exhaustion_on_expressway_during_rush_hour?utm_source=Animal+Victory&utm_campaign=c5ab650092-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_28_06_59_COPY_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d729f4e54c-c5ab650092-353576184&mc_cid=c5ab650092&mc_eid=90c110afe5

Adam Hollingsworth, Chicago’s so-called “Dreadhead Cowboy,” used a 20-year-old horse as a prop while staging a protest on the Dan Ryan Expressway during rush hour. The stunt, which went on for seven miles, left the senior horse so exhausted that she collapsed. Hollingsworth is facing felony animal cruelty charges because his horse, NuNu, was injured badly enough during the incident that it was initially believed that she would have to be euthanized.

This stunt is unacceptable and Hollingsworth needs to pay for the pain and suffering that he inflicted on this horse!

Please sign this petition asking for Adam Hollingsworth to receive the maximum sentence for his felony aggravated animal cruelty charge!

—————————————————-

Adam Hollingsworth chose to ride the 20-year-old horse, without oroper shoes, for seven agonizing miles on the expressway. By the time the publicity stunt was over, NuNu had collapsed on the pavement in utter exhaustion. Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Kevin Deboni described the horse’s condition in a Fox 32 News piece, stating that she was, “overheated, dehydrated, bleeding from the hooves, and with eyes so dilated they resembled ‘cartoon eyes.'”

Cook County prosecutors equated what Hollingsworth did to NuNu to forcing an 80-year-old woman run a full marathon.

Hollingsworth could have chosen a humane way to protest. He could have walked the Expressway on his own feet, but instead, he put an ill-fitting saddle on an old horse who wasn’t fitted with proper shoes. Witnesses have stated that he whipped NuNu when she was too tired to go on, and he continued riding her until she fell to the ground in utter exhaustion.

Animal Care workers initially believed that the ailing horse would not survive, but she is still alive and has been moved to an Illinois horse farm where she is recovering from the incident. Though she is reported to be out of critical condition, it has been stated that she was injured badly enough that she can never be ridden again.

Hollingsworth’s behaviour is unacceptable. Please sign the petition asking for maximum punishment for the felony aggravated animal cruelty charge, and an order for Hollingsworth to be prohibited from owning horses!

News:

ABC 7 Chicago

Fox 32 Chicago

WTTW News

Regards Mark