Facts are not removed from the world by ignoring them.
A murder you don’t see is still murder.
Regards and good night, Venus
Day: November 4, 2020
A Dutch zoo shot two chimpanzees after they broke out of the enclosure.
The monkeys behaved aggressively (!!!), the Amersfoort Zoo announced on Tuesday.
“We very much regret this incident.”
According to the information, visitors and employees of the zoo were not harmed.
Presumably, a zookeeper had not properly locked the gate to the enclosure so the Chimpanzees named Mike and Karibuna were able to escape.
As soon as the outbreak of the two monkeys was discovered, the visitors were warned (!!!).
The zoo explains that male monkeys’ imposing behavior can be dangerous for people.
“To prevent further escalation, these two male chimpanzees were shot.”
Anesthesia was not an alternative.
The zoo spoke of a “black day”.
https://www.berliner-kurier.de/panorama/schimpansen-nach-flucht-aus-zoo-erschossen-li.116325
…And we call it a murder day!!
What right does someone have to murder two beings who have harmed no one?
With the same “right” with which they were locked up in prison for life, even though they were innocent!
With the fascist “right” of the stronger.
The zoo boss will not be locked up for this murder.
He belongs to the human species, that has rights.
Whoever has rights is respected
Whoever has no rights is despised.
R.I.P Mike and Karibuna…
You weren’t aggressive enough to drag some to their deaths, some of those who paid for your imprisonment and death
Venus
Bowhunting Couple Charged in Nebraska’s Largest Poaching Case Ever.
https://gearjunkie.com/bowmars-poaching-case
The famous bowhunting couple will appear in federal court, where they face a laundry list of charges.
Josh and Sarah Bowmar are no strangers to the spotlight.
The Ohio couple is well-known for their collective bowhunting success, online videos, and physical fitness training programs.
But they’re now set to go to federal court. Together, they face charges that allege hunting turkeys without a valid permit, illegally transporting game across state lines, and illegal baiting of wildlife, among others.
Bowmar Charges
Among violations of numerous Nebraska state laws, the Bowmars are also charged with violating the federal Lacey Act through interstate commerce of wildlife.
Filed by United States Attorney Joseph P. Kelly in July, a 20-page indictment lists all charges. The document requests the forfeiture of three whitetail bucks killed in 2016 and 2017 by the couple, a compound bow, and monetary reparations equal to the value of the property involved. However, no amount is yet disclosed.
In a public statement, the Bowmars’ lawyer stated that the couple has pled not guilty and remains innocent until proven otherwise. They intend to fight the charges and go to a jury trial. The Bowmars’ case moves to a pretrial motion deadline on Nov. 2, 2020.
Hidden Hills Outfitters Sting
The case is part of a much larger sting involving Hidden Hills Outfitters (HHO) of Broken Bow, Nebraska. Co-owner and lead guide, Joshua Hueftle, received 30 months in federal prison and a $214,375 fine — restitution set to be paid to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. He also faces a 15-year ban from obtaining hunting licenses.
More than 30 defendants pled guilty in the case, resulting in more than $500,000 in fines and 53 years of revoked hunting and fishing privileges. In all, 97 animals were found to be taken illegally.
HHO also regularly killed non-game migratory birds, meaning birds like red-tailed hawks and American kestrels. The latter is a violation of the federal Migratory Bird Act.
Bowmars Under Scrutiny Once More
This is not the first time the Bowmars have found themselves facing public scrutiny.
In 2016, Josh Bowmar killed a black bear in Canada using a spear with a GoPro attached, causing an international backlash.
Although Bowmar wasn’t charged with wrongdoing at the time, Alberta subsequently changed its hunting laws to ban spears as a legal method of take in 2018 as a result of the outcry.
The penalty for hunting with a prohibited weapon in Alberta now comes with a maximum $50,000 fine and up to a year in jail.
OPERATION DOLPHIN BYCATCH
Sea Shepherd threatened and attacked by fishermen
“This video shows local fishermen threatening and attacking our team”.
The recordings were made in Brittany, France, at the end of September.
OPERATION DOLPHIN BYCATCH is documenting legal, non-selective fishing methods that kill 10,000 dolphins in the Bay of Biscay each year.
Sea Shepherd has been patrolling the area since 2017 to alert the global public to this problem, which is not confined to large industrial factory vessels. So-called small fishers, who also use non-selective fishing methods, can be found by the hundreds at the dolphin grounds.
Together they lay a total of 45,000 km of nets in the Bay of Biscay every 24 hours, enough to reach around the equator once.
And they do it quite legally.
To put an end to this, we have to stop or drastically reduce our fish consumption.
Because more than global warming, more than environmental pollution, it is simply our limitless appetite for fish that is destroying the ocean. Dolphins are only the visible messengers of this invisible and massive destruction of life. ”
Lamya Essemlali
President Sea Shepherd France
And I mean… More fish is eaten around the world than ever before. In the last three decades alone, fish consumption has more than doubled.
Up to 40 percent of the global catch is bycatch.
These include sharks, sea birds, and sea turtles, but also dolphins and whales.
Most animals are thrown overboard again and often die a painful death. In addition, the most huge trawls damage the flora and fauna on the seafloor.
Unwanted bycatch was estimated at 1.7 million tons of fish per year in 2011.
The overfishing of the European seas should come to an end by 2020 – this is what the EU has set out in its Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
But the EU is “far away” from its 2020 target.
It is worst in the Mediterranean, where around 90 percent of fish stocks are overfished and some species are on the verge of collapse.
In September 2020, more than 300 scientists called for an end to overfishing to protect the climate.
German environmental aid and the “Our Fish” initiative are calling on the EU Commission, the EU Parliament, and all EU member states to adhere to the definition of catch quotas for 2021 THIS YEAR without exception.
I see very little hope for an effective EU reaction to this good initiative.
Because the EU has long been the largest export market for fishery products. According to estimates, up to a third comes from illegal catches, which in turn are mainly made off the coast of West Africa.
Although 90 percent of European waters are overfished, European fishing groups are constantly reacting by expanding their fishing grounds.
The ships got bigger, the corporations negotiated fishing licenses with West African states, which the EU – according to Greenpeace – subsidized with around 140 million euros.
And so the EU will continue to sell the future of our marine ecosystems in the bazaar of the European fisheries lobby.
My best regards to all, Venus
How does one of the world’s biggest pork firms go bust during a boom?
A giant US player is quitting despite huge export hikes during the pandemic – the reasons why get to the heart of the industry
How does one of the largest pork companies in the US go out of business at the height of a crazy global pork boom? And what does this tell us about pig farming today? The answer to that question starts where most of the world’s pigs end up, in China.
China produces and consumes almost half the world’s pork. But when African swine fever was detected in the Chinese pig herd in August 2018, it led to millions of hogs being culled in an attempt to control the spread. The drop in China’s pork production has been precipitous. Since 2018, swine populations have fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s, eliminating decades of growth.
And so the huge magnetic pull of the Chinese market has only grown. A kilogram of pork that fetches about $3.30 in the US wholesale market is worth nearly $7 in China, creating huge incentives for processors to send pork abroad.
The Covid pork boom
US producers jumped on the opportunity, and in the first five months of 2020, the amount of pork exported to China from the US was up 531% on the previous year, with exports accounting for almost one-third of US pork production.
You may be wondering, at this point, about the famous meat shortages at the beginning of the pandemic; weren’t meat plants shutting down because of sick workers and pigs being culled? In fact, though US domestic hog processing declined in April, processing rates rebounded relatively quickly, rising back to well above 2019 levels by June. That was partly thanks to industry activism to gain government support. Meat processing giant Tyson chairman John Tyson published a full page ad in the Washington Post and elsewhere in April saying “there will be limited supplies of our product available in grocery stores”. A ProPublica investigation found that meat industry actors may have had a direct hand in drafting the executive order that was announced by President Donald Trump just days later, which provided cover for meat plants to remain open or reopen despite the fact that workers were still getting and spreading Covid-19.
Looking back, it’s clear that meat shortages never actually became a problem. Livestock processing fell by only about 15% even during the peak of closures, and on top of that, there were 661m pounds of pork products warehoused in the US at the start of the pandemic, representing record storage levels for multiple cuts.
Consumers may have experienced brief and small scale “selling out” at retail locations, but this was likely a factor of either an individual store’s ability to keep shelves stocked or the store’s storage capacity relative to the high volume of purchases.
So what happened to Maxwell?
So why did Maxwell Foods, one of the biggest pork processors in the US, announce earlier this year that it would be quitting the sector by the end of 2021? About the same time, the company also filed a lawsuit, asserting that its demise wasn’t due to natural causes, but the direct result of actions by another company, one that was both an important customer and competitor: Smithfield Foods
Maxwell Foods is one of the largest pork producers in the world, making the list of the top 31 global pork mega-producers for possessing 100,000 breeding sows. The company reported producing 1.1 million pigs for slaughter in 2019. A subsidiary of Goldboro Milling Company, Maxwell has contracts with about 120 farmers in North Carolina to supply its animals. In the statement announcing the end of operations by mid-2021, the company cited “low prices” for its products as a primary driver.
But Smithfield, against which Maxwell has now filed a lawsuit, is even bigger. The company, owned by China’s WH Group, tops the list of global mega-producers with 1.23 million breeding sows, producing more than 6bn pounds lb of pork in 2019. The $16bn company is the largest hog producer in the world, and critically, Maxwell’s primary customer.
According to the lawsuit, in 1994, the two companies entered into an agreement that Smithfield would purchase all of Maxwell’s pork produced in the Carolinas and Virginia. As part of the agreement, Smithfield gave Maxwell a sort of “most favoured nation” status, agreeing to extend Maxwell the best price it was offering to any of its other partners.
Since then, the lawsuit has continued, and Smithfield’s aggressive pursuit of vertical integration has consolidated the market and left Maxwell vulnerable to Smithfield’s whims.
“Smithfield represents approximately 25% of the total pork processing market nationwide, which, in turn, has left Maxwell with no bargaining strength in its dealings with Smithfield.” Maxwell claims its revenues have been declining in particular since 2016, and that it has been selling pork at unsustainable prices to Smithfield ever since. When Maxwell requested repeatedly to renegotiate pricing, Smithfield declined, but Maxwell reports finding out later that Smithfield had been offering better prices to other partners, violating the “most favoured nation” pricing provision, and providing a basis for the lawsuit.
Scale matters, even between very big and huge
Lee Miller, Duke University
“Scale matters, even between very big and huge,” writes Lee Miller, an agricultural law expert at Duke University. “The Maxwells of the world – while enormous by historical standards – do not wield anything approaching the power of Smithfield, in either market or political spheres.” Smithfield’s foreign ownership adds to the complexity, he says, because a company that might at least have some trickle-down benefits for local communities now sends profits to foreign stockholders, leaving communities near pork production facilities and workers at slaughter plants with significantly less access to company decision-makers.
Then, in April 2020, Smithfield stopped purchasing the full amount of Maxwell hogs, according to Maxwell, instead buying only half. The company pulls no punches in its summation of these actions, writing: “Smithfield has engaged in its course of conduct … for the express purpose of harming Maxwell’s business and with the objective of driving Maxwell out of hog production altogether so as to benefit Smithfield-owned competitors of Maxwell.”
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