Day: October 3, 2021

Live Transport

Animal transports – the EU`s shame

An Animals ‘Angels team accompanies a transport of bull calves to Turkey.
The animal children come from the Czech Republic. They are still transported across the Bulgarian-Turkish border in an EU-approved truck.
At the border, however, they are loaded onto a Turkish truck. This truck does not meet the requirements of the EU for animal transport by a long way.

There are neither drinking troughs on board nor sufficient ventilation or litter for the 60 calves.

They have to stand or lie on the bare, slippery metal floor for the next 17 hours.
We accompany the young bulls from the Turkish border to their destination near Kirsehir in Central Anatolia.
During a longer stop, we watch them roll their tongues in despair – a typical sign of hunger.

Many thirstily lick the metal walls of the truck.
The last time they could have a drink at the Turkish border. The last time they ate was in Bulgaria.
That was more than a day ago.

Many of the calves have clearly sunken flanks.

Erwin, who previously blinked at us with one eye (his other eye is infected, maybe from a blow or kick in the eye while driving), is now curled up on the dirty floor, exhausted.
Overall, according to our observations and calculations, they are at least 19 hours without water and almost 30 hours without food before they arrive exhausted at their destination the next morning.

There they will be fattened for the next few months before they make their last trip to the slaughterhouse.

This madness has to stop!
Animals are sentient beings – and the EU recognizes them as such.
But only on paper, because Erwin and all the other ‘farm animals’ do not notice any of this on the transports.
This transport also shows once again that control outside the EU is not possible.

Who on site is interested in whether the animals are loaded onto unsuitable vehicles?
Who will check and punish it accordingly? (!!!)

For us it is clear: The long animal transports to countries outside the EU must finally be banned!

With a detailed report on our observations on this transport, we continue to campaign for this export ban in the EU and its member countries.
Everything about our projects and missions: http://www.animals-angels.de
Time to Act: For a better law to protect animals during transport

https://www.animals-angels.de/neuigkeiten/beitrag/kaelbertransport-aus-der-eu-in-die-tuerkei-tiere-19-stunden-ohne-wasser-30-stunden-kein-futter.html

And I mean…The transports to third countries make up only a small part of the animal transports in the EU.
Because the grievances are particularly large and the images of them are particularly cruel, they keep making headlines in the media.

And yet! The animals also suffer terribly when they are transported within the EU and even within Germany.
Four million cattle, pigs, sheep and goats are transported from the EU to third countries every year and slaughtered there. These include 70,000 cattle from Germany.

For the entire EU, the numbers increase to 360 million pigs, cattle, sheep and goats and four billion poultry – every year!
In Germany, only one percent of all animal transports are checked on the road.

Article 3 of the EU Animal Transport Regulation states:
“Nobody may carry out or arrange for an animal to be transported if the animals could be injured or unnecessarily suffered in the process.”
Everything fits on paper!
The EU legislation has no time limit for Animal transport. With certain breaks, animals are allowed to go endlessly
be transported.
For horses and pigs, for example: 24 Hours of travel – 24 hours break in a supply station – 24 hours of travel – etc

That might still be bearable if the animals had as much space as in a stable.
But a full-grown fattening pig has to get by on half a square meter in a truck; 1.6 square meters are provided for a cattle.

Animal welfare organizations have been calling for the requirements to be tightened and the transport time to be strictly limited to eight hours for years.
We still remember the 1.2 million votes of EU citizens for the 8hours campaign in 2014.
But the EU Commission has so far shown no willingness to realize it.

We have had anger about animal transport with Brussels for at least 10 years.
It is too naive to believe that it can be done with good words and showing them what is going on.
Those responsible know exactly what is going on during animal transport – they just don’t care.

It is an incredible crime, it is barbaric to treat animals like that in the 21st century and to preach an animal transport law that is not even worth the paper.
Worse still, we are allowing an incompetent, disinterested oligarchy to work in the service of the meat and dairy industry and constantly refuse to respect EU citizens’ desire for better animal welfare.

My best regards to all, Venus

Farm Animals, General News

The twisted history of milk in America

According to evolutionary history, the modern human has lived on this planet for about 200,000 years and has only been consuming dairy milk for the past 8,000 to 10,000 years. Hence, consuming dairy milk is not instinctive behavior nor it is essential to our well being.

This begs the question – who was the brilliant ancestor of ours that saw a cow’s udder, licked their lips, and started suckling?? And why did the others join?

Relative to human existence, the history of milk is considerably short – yet it is truly riveting. Power, corruption, greed, mass manipulation—all are present in the evolution of milk in our modern-day society.

Thanks to the bizarre thinking of that early human, most of us are guzzling down a substance not meant for human consumption. It’s time to leave cow’s milk to the textbooks, and of course, to baby cows.

Fast-forward through the evolution of lactase persistence in European regions (yes, all early humans were lactose intolerant past their toddler stage), domestication of dairy cows, the invention of cheesemaking, millions of people who died from milk-borne illnesses prior to the invention of pasteurization (a fourth of all food-borne illnesses in the US were attributed to cows’ milk prior to the early 1900s), and the invention of the glass milk bottle, and we find ourselves in 1922 with the seminal passing of the Capper-Volstead Act

It wasn’t until the 1950s that skim milk received some commercial attention, though this was in the form of a dry, powdered, ‘just add water!’ mix.

As awful as instant milk powder sounds today, we can’t blame our grandparents – instant was all the rage back then.

The industry also had plenty of skim milk to get rid of, as much of it was leftover from WWII when dry milk powder was used as a relief food. To chisel down this surplus, the industry employed skilled marketers to position skim milk as a weight-loss food.

Milk dealers received backing from physicians to pedal this product as a health food, and by the 1950s, skim milk had transformed from a waste byproduct to a trendy weight loss beverage mostly consumed by affluent society

In reality, farmers just need a way to get rid of (and profit of off) the skim milk they had made during the war effort … which tends to be a theme in milk’s history: made too much? Turn to clever marketing.

Let’s hop back to WWI – the global event that catapulted America’s century-long milk surplus into existence.

The US government started sending canned and powdered milk to soldiers overseas, and dairy farmers responded by ramping up production.

They invested in the latest equipment and even abandoned other forms of farming to dedicate their work to the war effort.

While the war ended, the milk production did not – creating a surplus and dangerously low milk prices. Throughout the 1930s, dairy farmers staged several strikes and unionized to demand a fair price for their milk. To appease these farmers, the government created federal programs to artificially drive demand.

The first of these programs included the 1940 Federal Milk Program for Schools and federally subsidized milk advertising under the Works Progress Administration. In 1946, President Truman passed the National School Lunch Act, which mandated each lunch include between one and a half to two pints of whole milk.

Continue reading “The twisted history of milk in America” →

General News, Vegan Recipes

USA: Venus Williams Says Being Vegan For 10 Years Transformed Her Health In Major Interview.

Venus Williams says her health and skin were transformed since going vegan over a decade ago
‘So to be able to control as much as I can, what’s happening in my body, my inflammation levels, through what I eat – is a godsend’ Credit: Instagram

 

Venus Williams Says Being Vegan For 10 Years Transformed Her Health In Major Interview

She’s still a ‘junk food junkie’ but has been able to keep playing tennis despite being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that affects her joints

Venus Williams Says Veganism Transformed Her Health In Major Interview (plantbasednews.org)

Tennis legend Venus Williams detailed the extent of her health transformation since adopting a vegan lifestyle a decade ago.

Ditching meat and dairy helped her athletic performance and enabled her to better cope with an autoimmune disease affecting her joints, she told Insider.

‘Plant-based definitely changed my life’

Williams, who was once world number one in the sport, said her plant-based diet made her skin ‘amazing’.

Furthermore, it helped immensely after she was diagnosed with autoimmune disease, Sjögren’s Syndrome.

As it causes joint pain and fatigue, the diagnosis threatened her future as an athlete.

She said: “Living with an autoimmune disease, things can get a little tricky and you can be on loads of medicine, and that’s not something that I want to do.

“So to be able to control as much as I can, what’s happening in my body, my inflammation levels, through what I eat – is a godsend.”

Venus Williams

It’s not the first time the iconic Olympian and Grand-Slam champion has spoken out about the host of benefits that come with switching to plant-based.

Upon launching her own vegan protein shake company Happy Vegan, she said she needed to ‘take back control’ of her health.

‘Happy Viking was created to fuel your inner fighter, your inner Viking, while feeling happy and satisfied about what you put in your body’, she told Insider.

Moreover, she is an investor in the vegan grocery store, PlantX.

Vegan ‘junk food junkie’

Williams is a self-confessed ‘junk food junkie’, adding: ‘I’ve never met a French fry that wasn’t vegan’. It can be difficult traveling for tournaments and planning meals around it.

Moreover, there is a lot of processed vegan ‘junk food’ out there, she explained.

Williams said: “I’m definitely not a robot. You can reward yourself and have fun eating as well. 

“There are so many more athletes doing it and sometimes they ask me how to do it. So, I tell them, ‘Hey, sometimes you just have to have some pie.”

Regards Mark

Farm Animals, General News, Stray Animals

South Korea: Massive Pyeongtaek dog farms are under surveillance by animal rights group Watchdog!

Massive Pyeongtaek dog farms are under surveillance by animal rights group Watchdog!

On both sides of the road in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi-do province is a dog farm complex large enough to potentially hold 10,000 dogs! Today, Watchdog is at that huge, industrialized dog farm complex, which has been operating for decades and never before been exposed by anyone.

The vicious dog farms in this complex have gone so far as to divide the normal size raised wire dog cages into thirds, making the cages even smaller and more tortuous for the dogs. Tosa dogs, bred in these raised wire cages the size of a plastic dog carrier, barely had room enough to even turn around.😭

Watchdog will be filing civil complaints against the dog farms that have the capacity to hold 10,000 dogs (an annual capacity of 30,000 dogs). Watchdog is committed to shutting these farms down!

Watchdog members are currently serving on a volunteer basis. The goal of the organization is to raise enough donations on an ongoing basis to enable them to hire full-time paid activists to expand and carry out their vision of the complete elimination of dog farms and slaughterhouses. With a dedicated full-time paid staff, Watchdog will be in a position to accomplish even more than they are currently doing.

Video:  Click to watch. Pyeongtaek dog farms. CARE & Watchdog. https://www.facebook.com/CAREanimalKorea/videos/1523481031343736/

Click HERE to learn more about Watchdog.

Click HERE to see some of dog farms and dog slaughterhouses shut down by Watchdog.

Operations like this are only possible thanks through donations to CARE. Please help them continue their important work of shutting down the dog meat industry in South Korea by donating today. Thank you!

Donate by Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/fromcare

Regards Mark