Based on PETA’s evidence, a team of U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) officials conducted a multiday inspection of the mill.
The dogshad no beds, no toys, no stimulation—no real lives.
For more than 50 years, various companies have bred them at this dog factory farm to sell to laboratories for experimentation.
The dogs were kept in sheds that stretched as long as a football field and were deafeningly loud when hundreds of them barked at once.
The noise level reached over 117 decibels—louder than a rock concert—and of course, the dogs have no way to escape from the virtually constant noise.
Dogs’ hearing is much more sensitive than humans’—they hear sounds that we cannot and from much farther away.
The crowded and stressful conditions cause the animals to fight, often resulting in injuries, especially to their ears.
Female dogs are bred repeatedly for years.
Many gave birth to puppies on the hard floor.
A supervisor found one pregnant dog afflicted with a fever. The next day, a worker found her “dead—like stiff as a board,” with “two puppies in her and … they had torn through her uterus [and] were just kind of floating around in her abdomen. So all like … the afterbirth … was all … in her stomach. And I think that just led to a massive infection.”
Dead and Dying Puppies: An Almost Daily Occurrence
Over the course of the investigation, PETA’s eyewitness found more than 350 puppies dead among their live littermates and mothers.
Some puppies had been inadvertently crushed to death by their mothers inside the cramped cages, while others suffered from hydrocephalus (in which fluid builds up inside the skull and puts pressure on the brain), were eviscerated, or just couldn’t survive the harsh conditions.
This is really for UK residents only, but it will provide an insight into the ‘scratch my back, I scratch yours’ lobbying / open doors issues which happen in politics.
As we (UK) are all aware of, and by now, totally bored with; a lot in the media / press recently about Members of Parliament (MP) having ‘other’ paid ‘work’ in addition to that of being an MP, for which they are paid a basic salary of £81,932.
We personally would often call it being a lobbyist for an organisation or company; the very recent Owen Patterson MP case showing that he was paid in excess (in addition to his MP salary) of £110k to be a ‘consultee’ for 2 organisations. Very much case of getting money to open the right doors we would say; something which campaign groups do not have the funds to do, or wish to be involved with.
So here and now, I am supplying UK residents with a few links which will help them determine if ‘their’ MP is being paid for work in addition to than being an MP. Most people outside of parliament would think and say that being an MP is a full time job in its own right; let alone having more time to earn extra money for undertaking extra duties; but the data provided in the following may show differently.
Today, 9/11/21, we now have additional info relating to one as provided here:
Here below is the main (They work for you) link which allows you to find your own MP and any financial interests associated with them. I (Mark) have not obtained this info through the back door, through ‘contacts’, lobbyists, or any other secretive routes. It is information which is available to everyone who has computer access and knows where to look.
I know where to look and so I want to share the link with you, without me asking for any financial backhanders to do so; a case of simply passing over info so that you can look at your own MP in a little more detail; view them a little differently (?); and maybe ask them some questions if you wish.
In addition, here below is a link from the BBC which again details additional ‘work’ payments that are being given to some MP’s in addition to their MP salary of £81,932.
No wonder Boris Johnson (Prime Minister) is trying to keep it all quiet and sweep it under the carpet. Personally, I view it that an MP is an MP, full stop; and should have NO other job or paid work interests. Some people would skin their grandmother for a few extra quid; and to some, making money is the ‘god’ that they worship. Fortunately, lots of us ‘normal people’ are not in the same boat; we get by and fight the fights that we feel need actions; without paying for doors to be opened or other favours to get us up the pyramid.
Why do adults still drink milk? Why do we obtain it from an entirely different species, let alone a being who is not our mother? Why do we continue to guzzle down a drink that leaves us bloated and uncomfortable hours later? It simply does not make sense.
According to evolutionary history and fossil records, the modern human being has inhabited this earth for the past 200,000 years (1).
Historians date the practice of drinking cows’ milk back to the past 8,000 to 10,000 years. (2).
What this tells us is that consuming the milk of another species isn’t instinctual, and our bodies don’t naturally ‘crave’ it. So the question is – which one of our brilliant ancestors looked at a cow’s udder, licked their lips, and started sucking? Perhaps more importantly, why did others join in?
‘A short but riveting history’
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
Dairy farms organize
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 (3).
This bill gave agricultural industries permission to act together, form organizations, and market their product. While the industry was very much reliant on small farms back in the day, this bill paved the way for the enormous dairy conglomerates and massive milk marketing campaigns of today. Without it, the American people would have never known the phrase: “Got Milk?”.
The popularization of skim milk
Before pressing further, a note on skim milk. Prior to the 1930s, most of it was literally sent downriver. Families who drank milk had one option – whole – but skim milk still existed as a byproduct of the butter-making process.
This ‘waste’ was commonly disposed of by dumping it into rivers throughout the 1920s until the government was forced to put a stop to it due to the horrific odor of spoiled milk that permeated the surrounding areas.
Skim milk powder
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 (4). 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 (15).
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.
World leaders must address the impacts of animal farming on climate change
8 November 2021
Eurogroup For Animals calls on world leaders to enhance pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to better uphold the obligations derived from the Paris Agreement. Linking animal protection, trade policies and sustainable food systems would be a first step in the right direction.
Six years after the Paris Agreement, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) is taking place in Glasgow. This conference is particularly important because it’s the first time the ‘ratchet mechanism’ foreseen in the Paris Agreement will be used.
Indeed, each country is expected to submit enhanced “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) every five years to ratchet up ambition to mitigate climate change. However, despite the fact that the 2020 conference was postponed due to the pandemic, dozens of countries still have not updated their pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the time of the 2021 conference.
The implications are serious. A global temperature rise of 2°C above pre-industrial levels delivers the probability of dangerous climate change. Hence, GHG emissions need to be drastically reduced but countries continue to do “business as usual”.
Livestock farming represents a significant share of the planet’s emissions that cannot be ignored as they account for approximately 18% of global GHG emissions, which is more than all transports combined.
As outlined in the recent IPCC report, we have no time to lose in cutting methane emissions. Reducing livestock numbers could contribute significantly to meet the Paris target, while failing to reduce them will put most of the UN SDGs out of reach.
World leaders need to explicitly recognise the intrinsic link between animal protection and the UN SDGs, and the importance of animal protection in putting the world on a sustainable path to 2030. Changing the food system and how we treat animals is a major opportunity for climate change mitigation. Political leaders and governments can, for example:
Redirect subsidies from industrial animal production, the main receiver today, to plant-based ones.
Invest in the development of plant-based proteins and cultivated meat.
Use the land differently, since deforestation is driven by animal feed production.
It is also high time to address the impact of trade on climate. Currently, trade agreements liberalise trade without any climate or animal welfare conditions. As a result, they fuel unsustainable production systems, harming people, animals and the planet. For instance, the EU-Mercosur trade deal, by granting significant market access to animal products, will fuel intensification of animal farming which highly contributes to deforestation, which in turn will contribute to climate change. In Brazil alone, over half of the country’s deforestation over the last twenty years came from the beef sector, mainly due to the conversion of forests into cattle pasture.
Eurogroup for Animals’ contribution
To inform COP26 attendees about the environmental issues associated with animal-related sectors, as well as how improved animal welfare and transformed food systems can help build back better, Eurogroup for Animals have created a leaflet entitled “Protecting Animals to Protect the Planet”.
New film shines light on the environmental impact of animal agriculture
8 November 2021
Eating Our Way to Extinction is a new documentary exploring how our broken food system contributes to ecological collapse around the world. Narrated by Academy Award winner Kate Winslet, the film features undercover footage, shocking evidence from globally renowned figures and leading scientists, and firsthand accounts from Indigenous people directly affected by animal agriculture and climate change.
It calls for a switch to a plant-based diet due to unsustainable intensive livestock and fish farming that is leading to routine suffering, deforestation, ocean dead zones and species extinction.
At the COP26 climate summit this week, world leaders have pledged to end and reverse deforestation and lower global emissions of methane by 30 percent by 2030. The film explores both issues and finds that animal agriculture is the largest source of methane emissions and by far the greatest forest destroyer.
Steep cuts to livestock production will greatly benefit the climate by slashing short-term emissions to give us the circuit-breaker desperately needed to stem global warming.
Eating our Way to Extinction trailer
To inform COP26 attendees about the environmental issues associated with animal-related sectors, as well as how improved animal welfare and transformed food systems can help build back better, Eurogroup for Animals have created a leaflet entitled “Protecting Animals to Protect the Planet”.
The dogs were kept in sheds that stretched as long as a football field and were deafeningly loud when hundreds of them barked at once.
World Animals Voice 