This is a 3 PAGE post:

Thanks as always to Stacey at ‘Our Compass’ for sending over this excellent article.

Stacey | Our Compass (our-compass.org)

Regards Mark

Source SAFE (Save Animals from Exploitation) Campaign “The Dark Side of the New Zealand Dairy Industry”

If animal farmers and industry executives weren’t so grossly deceptive, violent, and cowardly, they would just be embarrassing: people often attempt to validate abusing animals as being “intellectually superior” humans; the same people then claim thathumans are incapable of telling the difference between plant milks and cows’ milk.

And their cruel rhetoric also includes the belief that killing can be humane, that harming an animal is better for an animal than not harming an animal.

Intellectual superiority? No. Just entitled, privileged human supremacy.

WAV Comment – I want to touch on this ‘superiority’ issue here with the video to Oxford Uni by Dr Brain May – ‘Queen’ guitarist and doctor of astrophysics – see the video at or watch it below:

England: Setts, Drugs and Rock n Roll. Dr Brian May Speaks In Defence of Badgers at Oxford University. – World Animals Voice

Mark

Too, the USDA has included soy milk as a nutritionally-equivalent, healthy dairy alternative (for the plant activists, soy is predominantly grown for animals, who humans eat, a unarguably inefficient and immoral use of resources and lives), and that in the USA, most cows’ milk is fortified, meaning vitamin is added, it is NOT naturally present. Nevertheless, I am personally unconcerned with the nutrition provided by plant milks because it is for certain 100% healthier for the animals to not use and kill them. As such, why would ANYONE choose suffering over not suffering? More than 500,000 calves and greater than 3 million of their mothers are butchered yearly, just in the USA, so that a different species, beyond infancy and with teeth, can drink the calves’ naturally- and biologically-intended milk instead. That’s an ethical fail, not a demonstration of decency. Or intellect. SL

Source reason

By Rikki Schlott

On August 11, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of Miyoko’s Creamery in its lawsuit against the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), upholding the company’s First Amendment right to use terms like butter and cheese in marketing its vegan products.

Based in Sonoma County, California, Miyoko’s Creamery produces artisanal vegan alternatives to traditional dairy products. In just over five years, its popularity has exploded with distribution in Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and other major supermarket chains.

The company is known for its popular vegan butter made from cashews, coconut oil, and sunflower oil, as well as other high-end alternative products like vegan mozzarella, cream cheese, and cheese wheels—all of which I can attest are very good.

Last year, the company received a threatening letter from the CDFA demanding it alter its marketing in the state. Although its labels clearly read “cultured vegan butter,” the department requested the creamery stop using dairy-related terms on its packaging altogether, claiming Miyoko’s marketing was in violation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s labeling regulations.

California ordered the company to remove the terms butter and cheese and cease to refer to its products as “lactose-free,” “hormone-free,” or “cruelty-free.” Instead, the state suggested that Miyoko market its vegan butter as oh-so-appetizing “cashew cream fermented from live cultures.” To do so would require an inordinate investment to produce custom packaging for sale of the product in California.

The letter doubled down by also ordering the company to scrap its mission statement, “Revolutionizing Dairy with Plants,” and to remove an image of a woman hugging a cow from its website. The photo in question is that of a volunteer at a nonprofit refuge for farm animals, Rancho Compasión, which was started by the creamery’s founder Miyoko Schinner.

Continued on next page

No Animal Left Behind: Why every animal deserves protection and care

6 September 2021

News

Today, we are releasing our last demand as part of our campaign “No Animal Left Behind” focusing on the billions of animals left unprotected by our current EU legislation:

Fish, turkeys, dairy and beef cattle, sheep and goats, ducks and geese, quails and farmed rabbits… the list seems endless. The review of our animal welfare laws is long overdue, and we need to make sure that this time, no animal is left behind in the process.

Europe’s animal welfare laws were introduced piece by piece over the last 40 years, but they are rarely enforced correctly, and there are serious gaps that leave billions of animals unprotected. In the context of our campaign “No Animal Left Behind”, we are calling on the European Commission to make sure a full-scale review of the legislation takes place, that our demands for the best possible welfare standards are heard, and that no animal is left behind.

In the EU, over 90% of turkeys are reared in overcrowded, intensive, indoor farms that cause numerous welfare issues. When these birds are packed together in large numbers with no enrichment, they quickly become stressed and bored. As a result, they start to feather peck, pulling out feathers on each other, which quickly leads to cannibalism. Farmers try to stop this by keeping the turkeys in low light, and by trimming their beaks. The pain from beak trimming causes further suffering and is performed without anaesthesia. The continuous low light also causes eye problems, such as blindness. Turkeys are also bred to grow very fast, and they do so at a rate that causes high incidences of lameness and heart failure. Turkeys do not need to be farmed like this.

Over a billion fish are being farmed in the EU at any one time. These are undomesticated animals being raised in often intensive systems without a basic understanding of their needs, and commonly without implementing the best practices and knowledge generated especially in the last decade. Aquaculture production systems are typically barren environments and always involve a range of stressful and harmful practices including crowding and handling. There is little transparency on the welfare outcomes, but in the few cases where mortalities are reported we see mortality rates of 15% to 20%. The humane slaughter equipment developed for the sector has been adopted by only a few sectors and producers, and typically farmed fish today are being asphyxiated slowly to death. Aquatic invertebrates including decapod crustaceans are also finding themselves without protection, notably in terms of their live transport and slaughter.

The more we discover about animals and their complex, intriguing lives, the more shocked we should be at how we have treated them in the past. And the more determined we should be to ensure they live a good life. Our laws need to do more than protect the welfare of all farmed animals. They should promote health, wellbeing and compassion. Because animals deserve no less. Let’s leave none behind.

https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/campaigns/no-animal-left-behind

You can add your voice here to help us reach enough supporters to be heard by the European Commission.

https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/news/no-animal-left-behind-why-every-animal-deserves-protection-and-care

Regards Mark