Day: November 18, 2022

Farm Animals, General News, Uncategorized, Vegan Recipes

UK: (The New UK) Eco King Charles BANS Foie Gras At All Royal Residences. A Positive Message Against Animal Suffering and Abuse.

King Charles: Foie gras banned at royal residences

King Charles: Foie gras banned at royal residences – BBC News

There will be no foie gras served in royal residences, a letter from Buckingham Palace to animal rights campaigners has confirmed.

King Charles is understood to have been a longstanding opponent of the food, made from the liver of a duck or goose, that campaigners say is cruel.

The King’s household wrote to the Peta campaign group that foie gras was not bought or served in royal residences.

There have been protests about force-feeding used to produce foie gras.

King Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, had been an advocate of higher welfare standards in farming and for over a decade had stopped the use of foie gras in his own properties and had been instrumental in a wider ban across royal residences.

Now as King he has reaffirmed this opposition – with the luxury food staying off the menu.

A letter received by Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) confirms that a foie gras ban is in place across the Royal Household and for all royal residences, which would include Balmoral, Sandringham, Windsor Castle, Hillsborough Castle and Buckingham Palace.

Above – Force feeding in foie gras production.

Ministers drop plan to ban foie gras imports

MPs fail in foie gras import ban bid

Elisa Allen, vice president of the animal welfare group, welcomed this saying others should “follow the King’s lead and leave foie gras off the menu this Christmas and beyond”.

“Video footage of birds being painfully force-fed is enough to make anyone lose their lunch,” she said, describing how the livers of animals are engorged to produce the food.

The animal rights group has backed a “cruelty free” alternative called “faux gras” and is sending some of this to the King, which it says is in recognition of his “compassionate policy”.

There is a ban on the production of foie gras in the UK, but not a ban on its sale or importation.

But it will certainly not be on the menu next week for the first state visit of King Charles’s reign, when he hosts a state banquet in Buckingham Palace for the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

The Peta group is also campaigning for the use of fake fur instead of ermine for robes at the King’s coronation next May.

Regards Mark

Environmental, General News, Uncategorized

USA: Take Action Against the DAPL – violating Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights, and posing a constant threat to the Missouri River.

Photo – KeithTurrill/Alamy

Dear Mark,

Each day the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) continues to operate, it violates Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights and poses a constant threat to the Missouri River — a crucial water source for the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes as well as much of the United States.

Last year a federal court ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the environmental impacts of the pipeline before the project can proceed. But, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is refusing to make many of their most critical findings public, especially relating to the effects of a potential oil spill and the effectiveness of spill response plans.

Showing the immense risk that this pipeline poses is an important step in the fight to end the threat DAPL poses to people and the environment. This information is crucial to understanding the immense risk this pipeline poses. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has access to data from the Department of Transportation (DOT) — but they won’t make it public.

Urge the Army Corps and the Department of Transportation to reveal the true impacts of a potential oil spill from the Dakota Access Pipeline on frontline Indigenous communities and the environment today.

DAPL crosses the Missouri River one-eighth of a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation and travels under Lake Oahe, a reservoir that is the primary water source for the Reservation. The risk of a spill poses an immense threat to the Reservation drinking water system as well as crucial fish and wildlife habitats that provide food for residents of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is assessing the environmental impacts of the pipeline, the results of which will likely be revealed next year, the pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) — a company with a disastrous history of pipeline safety violations — wants to double the flow rate of the pipeline to nearly a million barrels a day . This will inevitably put more pressure on the pipeline, increase the risk of oil spills, and risk the safety of the Tribes’ water sources — and makes it even more vital that the Army Corps produces a fair assessment of the impacts of the pipeline in order to head off this threat.

The continued operation of the pipeline and the lack of transparency that is playing out in the review is an environmental justice issue, as the communities being affected the most by the pipeline’s operation and who would be first responders to a potential spill are being left out of the assessment process.

Sincerely,

Matthew McKinzie
Senior Director of Planning and Operations, NRDC

Take Action

Help fight the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect Indigenous rights! | NRDC

Regards Mark

General News, Uncategorized

Non Animal, But A Wonderful Story.

Above – Veteran reunited with girl he helped during WWII

Veteran reunited with girl he helped during WWII

A 99-year-old veteran who fed a French girl during the Second World War has been reunited with her 78 years on.

During the Battle of Normandy, Reg Pye served with the Royal Engineers as a driver carrying sappers, mines and ammunitions.

While moving through Normandy, 14 days after D-Day in June 1944, Mr Pye spotted a 14-year-old girl staring at him while he ate his evening meal – a slice of bread with jam and a tin of pilchards.

Aged 21 at the time, Mr Pye handed his bread and jam over to the girl who ran away to eat it.

The following morning he found the girl had half-filled his mess tin with milk and left a handwritten note on the back of a picture of herself, which Mr Pye then kept in his wallet ever since.

Above – The picture Huguette left in Mr Pye’s mess tin

Some 78 years after their initial meeting, Mr Pye reunited with the girl who has been identified as Huguette, now 92.

The pair met in France where Mr Pye showed her the picture he kept, and gave her another jam sandwich.

“Nice to see you again after such a long time. We got older but we’re still the same,” Mr Pye said when meeting Huguette.

With the help of a translator, the pair drank champagne with their extended families.

“The memory of my very brief encounter with this young girl will stay with me forever,” Mr Pye added.

“In the bleakest of times this bit of human interaction made a huge mark on my life, I have carried her picture in my wallet for 78 years always hoping we might meet again.”

The reunion was made possible after Paul Cook, a volunteer from Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, started a social media campaign after hearing the story.

“There are no words to describe how elated I am that Reg has found Huguette, this is like a Hollywood blockbuster and I wouldn’t be surprised if this beautiful story was made into a film,” Mr Cook said.

Farm Animals, General News

Sweden: Djurens Ratt Reports Factory Farm To Police Re Animal Cruelty. We Wish Them Success !

Photo – Djurens Rätt

Djurens Rätt reports factory farm to police for animal cruelty

18 November 2022

Djurens Rätt

Our member, Djurens Rätt, has recently taken police action against a Swedish factory farm for animal cruelty.

Djurens Rätt received some harrowing images and footage anonymously, that displays chickens living in atrocious conditions on a factory farm in Sweden.

A supplier of the brand Kronfågel, the material shows:

Chickens in overcrowded quarters

Struggling poultry looking dirty and uncared for

Chickens being trampled over, both dead and alive

While Kronfågel claims to care about animals, the reality of life on their farms shows quite the opposite… and as Djurens Rätt has explored previously, this isn’t the first time they’ve been caught abusing chickens either.

‘The judicial system must act against animal factory farms like these’, says President of Djurens Rätt

After receiving the content, Djurens Rätt promptly filed a police report against the farm for aggravated animal cruelty: which they were able to do so with help from an amendment made in July. The amendment states that those who cause animals to suffer copiously can be prosecuted.

‘The judicial system must act against animal factory farms like these’, says Camilla Bergvall, President of Djurens Rätt. ‘We will continue to remind legislators, law enforcement and consumers that animals suffer in animal factories. It is beyond all criticism that sentient individuals are treated in this way in a country that claims to have the world’s best animal welfare.’ 

No more animal cruelty – we need stronger animal welfare legislation

After Lidl’s chicken scandal and the recent investigations exposing awful conditions on Italian quail farms (to name just two examples), it’s clear that the poultry industry – and farm animals in general – need our help.

‘Promises’ made by corporations and suppliers to care for animals are not enough. We need tangible action, including robust legislation and more pledges made to the European Chicken Commitment, to see real change in the sector. We must stop suffering from slipping through the cracks.

Learn about the work we are doing to secure better lives for farm animals.

Regards Mark