From Lesley; activist campaigner and friend at ‘Eyes on Animals’ in the Netherlands.
Dear donors and friends,
Carola Schouten, the Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, wants a ban on the long-distance transport of unweaned calves. She is committed to a European ban and will therefore urge the EU Agriculture Council to amend the European Transport Regulation. She also wants the ban to apply to animals destined for slaughter.
A ban would mean, among other things, that The Netherlands can no longer import unweaned calves from Ireland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states. There are tens of thousands of them on the roads every year.
The Minister is of the opinion that the welfare of unweaned calves suffers when they are transported over long journeys because they cannot be properly fed. At this age their diet consists only of milk, something that cannot be offered to them on board.
We can only agree with her. Eyes on Animals has trailed many trucks carrying unweaned calves from Ireland, Latvia and Lithuania in the past 10 years. Our investigations proved that animal-welfare laws were structurally violated: calves were on the road for too long and were not given any milk.
We also exposed, in collaboration with the French organization L214, serious physical abuse of young calves at a frequently used control post in France where Irish calves on their way to the Netherlands were unloaded to rest.
Eyes on Animals also revealed the poor condition Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian calves were in once they arrived at veal farms in The Netherlands, many of which were too weak and dehydrated to walk out of the trucks on their own and were instead dragged.
The footage from our inspections made it on the major international news channels and sites, such as Swedish news, The Times, Le Parisien, BBC, Hart van Nederland, RTE Prime Time (Ireland), and The Guardian. After each inspection, we also sent an extensive report of our observations and the violations documented by our teams to the responsible authorities, including the Dutch minister of Agriculture.
We are very pleased that the Minister is insisting that long-journeys for unweaned calves and animals destined for slaughter be phased out and wish her every success. We will continue to carry out our inspections unabated so that the authorities of other countries also push for an EU-wide ban.
Lesley Moffat director Eyes on Animals
In the past, we also presented a big report to the EU regarding the live transportation of live calves between Ireland and mainland Europe; which as expected and proven, documented that calves were not being given the rest times and food required of them by EU laws.
WAV Comment: A wonderful story that shows the very best in people and what they will do to save an animal from death. We give credit and solidarity to our amazing Italian rescuer friends. Check out the video and link below for more information.
Poor wolf was nearly frozen to death when he was found unable to move in an icy river in Italy.
A group of kind men waded out in the frigid waters to carry the ailing wolf to shore, a video posted to YouTube shows. As rescuers carry the wolf’s limp body up the embankment, it almost seems as though all hope for his survival is lost.
Wolf isn’t breathing, and they can’t find a heartbeat. People surround the wolf, trying to resuscitate him. A man stands over Navarre, with his hands over the wolf’s heart, trying to get it pumping again. A woman leans close to the wolf to see if there’s any sign of breath. She even tries to breathe life back into the wolf’s mouth.
Watching the footage, the attempt seems hopeless — until a miracle seems to happen: Wolf starts to breathe again. Rescuers set to work warming Navarre, putting him under a blanket and drying his fur with a hair dryer, as they transport him to a recovery centre. Wolf’s back legs were paralyzed from the cold. Along with the other strides he needed to make in recovery, he would need to relearn how to walk.
Many claims that the Danes, and after the new virus attack from the mink factories, will finally learn something.
Do we expect the Danes to learn something?
They are the champion of fur production worldwide.
That means professional animal abusers, professional animal killers, business people who view the massacre as a work process.
Danes are gonna learn a shit!
And now we come to the point:
Why is the media only now interested in the fact that Denmark should execute 17 million innocent animals?
The Danes would do that anyway, they do that every year to 19 million mink that are locked in tiny, dirty cages on over 1,500 fur farms, where they have to lead a miserable life under unbearable conditions and are ultimately gassed.
The only difference is that it has now also caught the so-called breeding animals, which are usually killed and replaced every few years.
The fur industry means torment, misery, and slavery! And it carries a high risk of infection and other diseases!
We, the animal rights activists, have presented factory farming as an acute threat to viruses, as a virus factory, right from the start of Corona.
The fur industry is also factory farming.
Now the press is suddenly interested in the massacre to make headlines.
The reports justify the massacre in the name of the safety of those who caused the problem.
In the past the subject of fur factories was unsavory, nobody cared about how many fur animals were to leave their lives in Dachau around the world.
Now everything is different just because WE are in danger.
It’s about us, not the animals.
No fundamental debate, why are there still fur farms at all?
Why are we still doing industrial factory farming and massive animal exploitation despite Corona?
The Minister of Agriculture of Denmark Mette Frederiksen emphasized that there is now no ban on mink breeding.
Although actually now and immediately, Cina, Denmark, and Poland should ban mink breeding and production.
The Danes will learn nothing from it.
The farm owners are well compensated, and in two years the same concentration camps as mushrooms will arise overnight.
We have ALL learned nothing of the life-threatening dangers that our fascist behavior causes the “other” animals for the most part.
Instead of learning from our mistakes, we compensate for this inability with executions.
WAV Comment – I stumbled across this today; it is from UK press back in April 2020, and is by Juliet – founder of Viva!
Regards Mark
If more of us were vegan, there would be less chance of a pandemic in the future
As our excessive demand for meat and animal products grows, we destroy ever more wildernesses for animal fodder and grazing, bringing wildlife into closer contact with people. And we put ourselves at greater risk
Animals transmit infections. Who knew? We did, a long time ago.
In the mid-19th century German pathologist Rudolf Virchow was the first to discover that infectious diseases can be transmitted between animals and humans – coining the term “zoonoses” in 1855.
A century later, in August 1958, the World Health Organisation Expert Committee on Zoonoses met at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The outcome of the meeting was a stark warning: the prevention, control and eradication of these diseases were “responsibilities of considerable magnitude in every country”.
Fast forward to today and the world is in the grips of the worst global pandemic for generations. Covid-19 – like SARS, bird flu, swine flu and Ebola – originated in animals.
Three in four of the world’s new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. These diseases are responsible for some 2.7 million deaths per year and are largely transmitted through the wildlife trade and factory farming. Despite knowing the dangers for over 150 years, we continue to put ourselves at risk of devastating outbreaks.
Cramming animals together in markets and subjecting them to intensive farming practices creates a breeding ground for disease. Today some two thirds of all farm animals are kept in factory farms where infections can spread with ease between animals, mutate and become infectious to humans.
As our excessive demand for meat and animal products grows, we destroy ever more wildernesses for animal fodder and grazing, bringing wildlife into closer contact with people. And we put ourselves at greater risk. This is no longer just a matter of animal welfare, it’s a global public health crisis too.
The coronavirus pandemic has inspired thousands to speak up against the unregulated movement of wild animals, ignited calls for stricter controls at airports and brought global attention to the barbaric cruelty of wet markets, all in a bid to prevent future outbreaks. But the most impactful solution is to stop the spread of these diseases at their source by putting an end to our consumption of meat and dairy.
Cramming animals together in markets and subjecting them to intensive farming practices creates a breeding ground for disease. Today some two thirds of all farm animals are kept in factory farms where infections can spread with ease between animals, mutate and become infectious to humans.
As our excessive demand for meat and animal products grows, we destroy ever more wildernesses for animal fodder and grazing, bringing wildlife into closer contact with people. And we put ourselves at greater risk. This is no longer just a matter of animal welfare, it’s a global public health crisis too.
The coronavirus pandemic has inspired thousands to speak up against the unregulated movement of wild animals, ignited calls for stricter controls at airports and brought global attention to the barbaric cruelty of wet markets, all in a bid to prevent future outbreaks. But the most impactful solution is to stop the spread of these diseases at their source by putting an end to our consumption of meat and dairy.
But the most important lesson doesn’t stem from this outbreak alone. It’s the culmination of our history, which has been blighted by preventable outbreaks of lethal diseases spread from animals to humans, and our collective decision not to act.
We’ve known the risks for almost two centuries. Too many lives have been lost. The solution is at our fingertips: it’s time to go vegan now.
Juliet Gellatley is director of Viva! a charity campaigning for a vegan world
With a six-week lockdown in force in Ireland, the Irish Coursing Club has been ordered to halt the hare-coursing season and release wild-caught hares back into the countryside
While it’s great news that no coursing meetings will take place while lockdown restrictions are in place, the Irish government must take action to protect hares exploited for coursing in the long run.
If coursing is allowed to resume, many more terrified hares will be taken from their homes and forced to race for their lives.
Hares deserve to live in peace in the countryside – they’re not ours to abuse and kill in the name of entertainment. We’re demanding that Taoiseach Micheál Martin (the Irish prime minister) ban hare coursing altogether.
Every aspect of this ordeal is terrifying for the hares, who are gentle, solitary animals. They often die or are injured as a result of the netting process and during transport.
Those who survive are held in captivity and put through training sessions to get them used to the field where coursing meetings take place and to teach them to run up the centre of it. During training, they’re kept crammed together in an enclosure. This is completely unnatural and extremely stressful for them.
At course meetings, dogs are made to compete against each other in pursuit of each hare. The petrified hares run for their lives, desperate to evade the dogs. The dogs are muzzled, but this does little to reduce injuries and fatalities, as they can still forcibly strike the hares, pin them to the ground, and toss them in the air – breaking brittle bones, dislocating hips, fracturing spines, rupturing organs, and causing internal bleeding. Hares are extremely sensitive animals, and the fear and stress of the chase can also cause heart failure. If they can’t find the escape holes or routes at the end of the field, they may be chased for so long that they die from stress or exhaustion if they’re not caught and mauled to death first.
The dogs involved are also victims of the “sport”. Often subjected to intense training, they’re treated not as cherished members of the family but as money-making machines. They’re usually kept in concrete outdoor kennels, repeatedly used for breeding, and abandoned when they get injured or are deemed too slow for coursing and therefore are no longer profitable.
Hare coursing is cruel, outdated, and deadly. Take action to end this blood sport!
The government granted hare-coursing licences for the 2020/21 season despite the cruelty involved and the potential environmental impact. A private members’ bill, the Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Hare Coursing) Bill, has been introduced by Paul Murphy TD and will be debated in the Irish Parliament in due course. This bill would make hare coursing a crime punishable by a €1,000 fine and up to six months in prison.
The situation is urgent – hare coursing must be stopped. Tell Taoiseach Micheál Martin (the Irish prime minister) to support this bill banning hare coursing altogether.
Demand that the Irish government end hare coursing by sending the taoiseach a message
Many animal experimental establishments, such as pharmaceutical companies and universities, breed their animals themselves. Others order animal breeding from commercial “experimental” animals.
Just as one selects books or clothing from a catalog at a mail-order company, live animals are offered for sale at breeding companies.
On the Internet or in the catalog, experimenters can choose from a large selection of different species and breeds. Animals that have been operated on are even offered, e.g. Rats and mice with tied blood vessels or nerves, with the spleen or kidney removed, etc.
Or genetically modified animals in a wide variety of ways, e.g.
“Humanized mice” that have been “implanted” with a specific human gene.
There is no longer even talk of animals, but of “products” and “research models”.
The American Jackson Laboratoryoffers thousands of different strains of mice whose genome has been manipulated in such a way that the animals develop certain diseases such as cancer, diabetes, or obesity.
The world’s largest “experimental” animal breeder, the American company Charles River Laboratories, has a rodent and rabbit breeding facility in Sulzfeld in the Karlsruhe (Germany) district.
In Cologne, there is a branch of the American company Taconic, which breeds genetically modified mice.
Monkeys are partly bred for research in the German Primate Center (DPZ) in Göttingen (Germany).
Around 95% of the monkeys come from outside the EU. The largest exporter is China, followed by Mauritius.
There wild monkeys are caught and reproduced in breeding facilities under unspeakable conditions.
The boys are sent to Europe and America to die in the laboratory. AirFrance is the main carrier of monkeys.
Animal experiments are carried out in the following areas:
Award-winning vegan filmmaker Shaun Monson’s new film, There Was A Killing, tells the story of Canadian animal rights activist Regan Russell, who was struck and killed by a pig transport truck while attending a Toronto Pig Save vigil in June. But the documentary is about more than just this tragedy; it’s about starting a conversation.
Russell, a decades-long fighter for animal rights, spent her last moments giving compassion to baby pigs on their way to slaughter. Footage from that day shows her—full head of white hair, black shirt, and blue jeans—carrying a spray bottle, which she used to give water to the pigs.
More than a month after Russell’s death, the police cited the truck driver with a non-criminal charge of Careless Driving Causing Death. The charge drew outrage among the animal rights community. “I just felt there was this cover-up. Or they were brushing it aside or dismissing it. And that began to nag at me,” Monson tells LIVEKINDLY about his initial desire to make the film.
After watching the cell phone footage, taken by activists attending the vigil, Monson says he was left feeling even more confused. “I’m thinking, how do we only have four minutes from this event? There was very little footage from the day,” he explains. “And it just felt like this haunting mystery. There’s something off. And I felt a little bit like a detective and I had to explore.”
Making Impact-Driven Films
Monson’s no stranger to making these kinds of documentaries. He wrote, produced, and directed 2005’s Earthlings and 2015’s Unity, among others. The former goes in-depth into the day-to-day practices of industrial factory farms around the world. The latter analyzes the destructive relationships humans have with each other, animals, and the planet.
But, according to Monson, making an impact-driven film that resonates with the audience isn’t easy. And a chance meeting with Academy Award-winning director James Cameron fueled Monson to tell harrowing stories like Russell’s in a way that makes people want to see them.
“I met him a couple of years ago here in L.A. at Crossroads—a vegan restaurant. I had on a t-shirt that said “Eat What Elephants Eat,” Monson explains. The shirt caught the attention of Cameron, who’s been plant-based for nearly a decade. “He says, ‘Hey, I like your shirt.’ And so we start talking,” Monson says.
He was blown away when Cameron told him he had seen Earthlings. Monson jokingly asked: “You saw it all the way through?” (The footage shown in the film of how factory farmed animals are treated is gruesome, to say the least.)
“He kind of puts his arm around me. And for a moment I thought: ‘Wow, I’m about to get the secrets of Hollywood filmmaking.’ He says: ‘Let me tell you something. Whenever I make a movie, I do two things. One: I make a movie that people want to see. Two: I put a message in it,” Monson recalls. “And then he pays me this really high praise. He says ‘The message in your film is probably one of the best messages I’ve ever seen.’ And then he leans in close and he goes: ‘But nobody wants to see it.’”
Monson continues: “And he’s right because it’s not like people are running out to get a bucket of popcorn to watch this kind of stuff. They just aren’t, you know?”
After spending more than 20 years making documentaries, Monson says he started to consider how to reach a larger audience. “I just had one of the biggest filmmakers in the world lean over and spend 20 minutes talking about how to reach more people.”
Gaining An Audience
So, how do you make a film about a tough topic that people actually want to see? According to the filmmaker, you’ve got to make it in a way that will get viewers emotionally invested.
“A film is such a powerful medium. Why can’t a film change something?” Monson continues: “It’s a classic statement of a picture’s worth 1,000 words. If you look at what happened with George Floyd, unlike other unjust, corrupt deaths, they weren’t being documented. But when someone films for 8.5 minutes straight—just films the whole thing, it creates this visceral emotional reality. It’s almost like it’s not secondhand information.”
And There Was A Killing certainly provides a wealth of information: It interweaves video evidence along with eyewitness testimony. It provides interviews with attorneys Robert Monson, Lisa Bloom, and David Simon. And it features a former animal truck driver’s perspective on the day’s tragic events. For all intents and purposes, the film appears to accomplish its goal: It makes people think.
Monson hopes his new film will help bring Russell’s case to the court of public opinion. | Provided by Shaun Monson
Raising Awareness For Animals
Monson explains that he believes people are, overall, basically decent—even though there are exceptions to this rule. “They’re just not informed,” he says. “And so it’s almost like you have people that are asleep. And then you have people whose eyes are sort of fluttering open a little. And then you have people that are sort of sleepwalking. And then you have awake people. And the idea is for all of us to be awake—not to be sleepwalking, not to be eyes fluttering, and certainly not to be asleep.”
Through his films, Monson wants to awaken people to the impact they have on animals and the planet.
And Monson hopes There Was A Killing will help bring Russell’s case to the court of public opinion. He also wants the film to raise awareness for ag-gag laws—which seek to silence whistleblowers from exposing the horrors of the animal agriculture industry.
On the day of her death, Russell had been protesting Canadian ag-gag Bill 156—which the government enacted into law just one day before she was killed. Monson says he thinks her case will be a case of first impression—one that has never been decided by a governing jurisdiction.
“It’ll be the first time that law is now being put to trial to see if it’s eventually constitutional. And so attorneys later study case laws. That’s why in the States we have Roe v. Wade,” he explains. “Roe v. Wade is a case study. It isn’t a statute. It’s a case study. Both are very important. So that’s the power of a documentary is that it might challenge a law statute. And then a case can come out of that. And then a case law may change the law.”
Monson also hopes the film will inspire others to be more compassionate.
“And that’s my hope: That more people will maybe see these kinds of messages. And they can have a positive effect. Because I don’t know how to write books. I don’t start organizations. I don’t have a sanctuary. I don’t know what else I have to offer except films,” Monson continues. “Ultimately, all you can do is provide the information to people, hope that they watch it, hope that they actually press play and look at it. And then it’s really up to them.”
“I always say we’re like gardeners, and we’re just casting seeds,” Monson says. “And sometimes those seeds fall in rich soil. And sometimes it’s stony ground. But we keep casting seeds out just to have a positive effect in this world.”
Allegedly, wet markets at Wuhan in China started it all. Animals under stress and passing the virus to each other, Denmark – mink living under stress on fur farms and passing the (new strain) virus onto others.
When will governments recognise and admit that they are the idiots they are, by allowing animals to suffer stresses in the conditions of wet markets and fur farms ? – why dont the governments actually take action to shut down the hell holes rather than opting for the current cull and then doing nothing more ?
An animal Karma one could quite readily say. The aniumals will strike revenge for their suffering at the hands of man for so long – now we have it and it is called Covid.
When are governments going to actually wake up and take action to stop the abuses ?
Danish Covid-19 mink variant could spark new pandemic, scientists warn
Mutations in mink herds and wildlife such as weasels, badgers, ferrets may pose risk to human health and vaccine development
A Danish vaccine specialist has warned that a new wave of coronavirus could be started by the Covid-19 mink variant.
“The worst-case scenario is that we would start off a new pandemic in Denmark. There’s a risk that this mutated virus is so different from the others that we’d have to put new things in a vaccine and therefore [the mutation] would slam us all in the whole world back to the start,” said Prof Kåre Mølbak, vaccine expert and director of infectious diseases at Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI).
He added, however, that the world was in a better place than when the Covid-19 outbreak began.“We know the virus, have measures in place including testing and infection control, and the outbreak will be contained, to the best of our knowledge.”
Announcing the cull, the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said 12 people were already infected with the mutated virus and mink are now considered a public health risk, based on advice from the SSI.
Prof Allan Randrup Thomsen, a virologist at the University of Copenhagen, went further, telling the Guardian on Thursday that while Denmarkwas not “on the verge of being the next Wuhan” there were risks.
“This variant can develop further, so that it becomes completely resistant, and then a vaccine does not matter. Therefore, we need to take [the mutation] out of the equation. So it’s serious.”
In interviews with Danish media, Thomsen advised shutting down northern Denmark due to the risks from mink farms, a task made easier by the Limfjord, which cuts across northern Jutland.
Although bridges across the fjord remain open, all restaurants, pubs, cafes and sports activities in the area will close shortly.
A Dutch virologist and zoonosis expert, Wim van der Poel, said more research was needed but that even without the mutation, a reservoir of the virus in mink or others of the mustelid family such as badgers and martens was to be avoided.
“It seems the mink-variant mutation is found in the spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, but we don’t really know. And we don’t know what kind of vaccine we are going to have. So a lot more research is needed,” said Van der Poel.
But even without a mutation, the continuing circulation within mink herds may pose a risk to humans. “We assume [this] is a risk too in the Netherlands, but our fur farming is being phased out already. There’s no more fur production now after the end of this year,” he said.
Van der Poel is currently looking at the effect of Covid-19 spreading to mustelids, a family of carnivorous mammals including weasels, badgers, otters, ferrets, martens and wolverines, among others. “ If that happened, then you have a reservoir in our local wildlife, and we could get reinfected before we even get a good quality vaccine.”
Prof Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said: “The idea that the virus mutates in a new species is not surprising as it must adapt to be able to use mink receptors to enter cells and so will modify the spike protein to enable this to happen efficiently.
“The danger is that the mutated virus could then spread back into man and evade any vaccine response which would have been designed to the original, non-mutated version of the spike protein, and not the mink-adapted version. Of course, the mink version may not transmit well to man, so it’s a theoretical risk but Denmark is clearly taking a precautionary stance in aiming to eradicate the mink version so that this possibility is avoided or made much less likely.”
Jussi Peura, research director of the Finnish Fur Breeders’ Association and animal geneticist, was more sanguine. He said he understood the worry in Denmark, but felt the decision to carry out a cull might have been too extreme.
Instead, he suggested continuing with the control measures that were working in Finland.
“Right now we have zero cases in fur farms in Finland. We have a total of about 700 fur farms and of those about 150 are mink, all Covid-19-free so far.”
World Animals Voice 