WAV Comment – we are an animal rights group; but that does not stop us from sometimes dealing with human rights issues also when we think it is right.  Here are a few stories from Brazil which we hope you will enjoy reading and support.  We hope this information will help one of our supporters, Barbara Crane Navarro – of the Rainforest Art Project;

Barbara Crane Navarro | Rainforest Art Project – Pas de Cartier ! (barbara-navarro.com)

Regards Mark

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered an inquiry into the sale of protected areas of the Amazon rainforest via Facebook.

It follows a BBC investigation, which revealed plots as large as 1,000 football pitches listed among the platform’s Marketplace classified ads.

The court is asking the government to “take the appropriate civil and criminal measures”.

Facebook has said it is “ready to work with local authorities”.

But the tech firm has indicated it will not take independent action of its own to halt the trade.

The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming. It is home to about three million species of plants and animals, and one million indigenous people.

Still online

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso has asked the country’s attorney general and Ministry of Justice to investigate the BBC’s findings.

He was already overseeing a lawsuit brought to the Supreme Federal Court by an NGO – the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil – and six political parties.

The plaintiffs have accused the government of failing to do enough to prevent the coronavirus from affecting indigenous communities.

The judge took the decision to extend the case to include the Facebook ads.

And he drew particular attention to the Uru Eu Wau Wau community. The BBC’s documentary reported that land inside a reserve used by the indigenous group had been listed for sale for the equivalent of about £16,400 in local currency.

No papers

The BBC has flagged up some of the ads involved to Facebook, but the social media giant has failed to remove them.

The listings include areas inside indigenous territories and national forests, which have protected status.

Some feature satellite images and GPS co-ordinates. Many of the sellers admit to not being able to prove legal ownership.

To find them, users need only type the Portuguese for terms such as “forest”, “native jungle” and “timber” into Facebook Marketplace’s search tool, and pick an Amazonian municipality as the desired location.

The BBC arranged meetings between four sellers on Facebook and an undercover operative posing as a lawyer, who claimed to represent wealthy investors.

The sellers caught on hidden camera were illegally selling and clearing rainforest so it could be used as cattle pasture and farmland.

‘Stolen land’

The head of the Brazilian Senate’s Environment Commission, Senator Jaques Wagner, has described the land deals as “criminal”.

He said his panel of lawmakers would write to Facebook demanding it “review its policy so that this practice is curbed”.

Facebook has previously indicated it believes the task of trying to deduce which sales are illegal is too complex for it to carry out itself.

But one congressman mocked this explanation.

“What is the difference between selling stolen land with violence against indigenous rights on Facebook and selling narcotics through the platform?” asked Nilto Tatto, a member of the lower house’s environment commission.

“Can Facebook then be used to sell narcotics? As a parliamentarian, I will ask this question.”

International pressure

Photo – Getty Images

Brazil’s government has faced international criticism for failing to curb deforestation, which is at a 12-year high.

Conservationists have accused the country’s President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging loggers and farmers to clear parts of the rainforest.

And some of the sellers captured on hidden camera by the BBC said they viewed him as an ally.

The BBC approached Brazil’s Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles with the findings of its investigation.

He said: “President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has always made it clear that his is a zero-tolerance government for any crime, including environmental ones.”

A UN Environment Programme spokesperson told the BBC: “Illegal deforestation undermines international treaties and commitments, including the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity.”

Read more about the BBC’s investigation here.

Watch Our World: Selling the Amazon on BBC iPlayer here

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56272379

And …

Amazonian groups sue French supermarket chain over deforestation

French supermarket chain Casino is being sued by indigenous groups from the Amazon, for allegedly selling beef linked to deforestation.

The 11 indigenous groups, backed by NGOs in the US and France, are seeking €3.1m ($3.7m; £2.7m) in damages.

In a statement, the groups linked Casino meat to an area of deforestation “five times the size of Paris”.

Casino told AFP and Reuters news agencies that it took a “rigorous” approach to its supply chains.

The company is being taken to court under a French law enacted in 2017. Under the law, businesses must avoid human rights and environmental violations in their supply chains.

The indigenous groups from Brazil and Colombia have accused Casino of “damages done to their customary lands and the impact on their livelihoods”.

In the statement they said deforestation in South America, particularly in Brazil, was mainly driven by cattle ranching.

“According to evidence compiled and analysed by the Center for Climate Crime Analysis for this case, Groupe Casino regularly bought beef from three slaughterhouses owned by JBS,” a meatpacking company accused of deforestation, they said in a joint statement.

“The three slaughterhouses sourced cattle from 592 suppliers responsible for at least 50,000 hectares of deforestation between 2008 and 2020… The deforested area is five times the size of Paris.”

Casino also controls Brazil’s largest food retailer, Grupo Pão de Açucar (GPA), and Colombian retailer Almacenes Éxito.

The indigenous groups also accuse Casino of violating indigenous rights, and cite one case in particular in which indigenous lands were invaded and used by cattle farms that supplied beef to GPA.

• Brazil’s Amazon deforestation ‘highest since 2008’
• UK to ban illegally logged rainforest products
• McDonald’s among firms urging tougher forest rules

“The demand for beef by Casino and Pão de Açucar brings deforestation and land-grabbing and violence, and the murder of indigenous leaders when they choose to resist,” Luiz Eloy Terena, a leader of Brazil’s Terena people, said in the statement.

“With this lawsuit, we seek to hold the company accountable for the consequences of these impacts and to bring some relief to the reality confronted by our indigenous peoples on their lands.”

Casino told Reuters news agency that its Brazilian-sourced beef was not sold in its French shops.

GPA also told the agency that in 2016 it set out criteria that its suppliers must comply with – including “zero Amazon deforestation, no slave-like condition, no child labour and no invasions of indigenous land or conservation areas”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-56278819

Above – Bolsano

Regards Mark

Enjoy – Coldplay – Fix You (Live In São Paulo)

Hi Mark,

We just released a new investigation into Harris Beef, the slaughterhouse used by Harris Ranch, which is the largest cow feedlot on the West Coast. Harris claims their slaughter facilities were designed to be humane with curving chutes so the cows can’t see the danger ahead. But DxE’s hidden camera footage is showing the world the truth: terrified cows trying to escape from the slaughter line before they are systematically killed and butchered.

And the cruelty is growing. The Harris slaughterhouse is currently constructing several new buildings to expand its operations and increase its death toll. This is why we need a moratorium on factory farms and slaughterhouses right away. ­ ­

Watch and share the breaking exposé on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.

DxE launched the No More Factory Farms campaign to combat the expansion of animal agriculture in California. We’re exposing the biggest animal abusers, mobilizing people throughout the state to take bold action, and creating the momentum for a moratorium that prohibits the construction or expansion of factory farms and slaughterhouses – first in California and then beyond.

DxE is funded entirely by people like you. And for the next 48 hours, all new $20+ monthly donors will receive a No More Factory Farms shirt as a thank you gift. Show your support for this campaign by becoming a monthly donor today.

Cassie ­ ­

­ ­ ­

­ ­ ­ ­

­ ­ ­ ­

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With thanks as always to Stacey at ‘Our Compass’ – Our Compass | Because compassion directs us … (our-compass.org)

Regards Mark

Remember:

‘One mans terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’

“A particularly brutal process called “ventilation shutdown,” or VSD. Workers sealed off airways while pumping steam into the barns, intensifying the heat — over the course of many hours — to the point at which the pigs died from suffocation and/or hyperthermia”.

After pork giant was exposed for cruel killings, the FBI pursued its critics

MARCH 1, 2021

Source The Intercept: “…making it quite possible that some pigs survived, and are therefore buried alive or crushed by the bulldozers that haul away the corpses.”

Let’s be clear: all animal slaughter is inherently abusive and cruel and causes fear and suffering regardless of how humans, who will never be subjected to the same violent fate, define it. Those who are horrified by ventilation shutdown yet not “commonly accepted” forms of slaughter are actually just using one form of cruelty to justify another.

Please visit HERE to learn of the violence inherent in the animal exploitation industry regardless of how you define such, and before you reject footage as “the exception” (it’s not) or based on vegan “propaganda” (versus nothing provided by the animal exploiters) just remember: the “animal agriculture industry” relies on and actively pursues consumer ignorance, willful or not, and DO NOT release their own footage. Ask yourself why that is: if they are humane, they can prove it, but are unable to, and rather than use funds supporting “humane treatment” they use money to hide their deception, cruelty, greed, and intentional participation in abject suffering. That is why you will never see the an-ag industry actually demonstrate “humane treatment” before or during the killing; they instead hide the barbarism and focus on those who are exposing it.

Who’s the terrorist? SL

Source The Intercept

By Lee Fang

Last June, Noel Williams, the chief operations officer of Iowa Select Farms, a powerful pork company and the largest in Iowa, pulled into the parking lot of an empty housing complex typically used for the firm’s immigrant workforce.

He was there to transport Lucas Walker, a former truck driver for Iowa Select, to a meeting with Nick Potratz, an FBI agent from the Des Moines office of the bureau. That’s according to Walker, who had recently tried to report Iowa Select, his former employer, for mistreating animals. After The Intercept published leaked video of pigs being killed off en masse, Walker came under scrutiny.

Now, the FBI had a favor to ask: Would Walker become an informant? More specifically, they wanted him to help in an effort to investigate and undermine an activist group that had become a thorn in Iowa Select’s side. They even asked if he’d be willing to sell drugs.

The saga that brought him into contact with the FBI began when the 26-year-old grew frustrated with his former employer, Iowa Select, which is headquartered in his hometown of Iowa Falls. Walker thought the company was blatantly disregarding state “double stocking” rules, which limit the size and number of pigs that are held in an intensive animal feeding facility, letting overweight pigs crowd into pens far too small to hold them.

He was tired of what he saw as frequent rule-breaking and disregard for the well-being of the tens of thousands of hogs raised by Iowa Select. The company, in his view, seemed hellbent on expansion and profits, leading to rampant overcrowding and water pollution. That rapid expansion led to the annual production of 1.5 billion pounds of pork a year, a global leader before the pandemic. The novel coronavirus, however, closed regional slaughterhouses, creating a glut of pigs.

He decided to speak out and called state regulators.

Walker doesn’t fit the profile of an animal rights activist. The central Iowa-raised truck driver, who jokingly refers to himself as corn-fed with beer running through his veins, is a fervent Trump and NRA supporter who has spent years working in the state’s maze of hog production facilities. He describes himself as independent-minded with libertarian instincts, with a bit of a contrarian side suspicious of organized power.

“I’m not necessarily animal rights by any means,” said Walker in an interview with The Intercept. “I have a cattle herd — small calf herd — and my wife and myself have some free-range pigs ourselves.”

“It was a moral issue at the heart of it. … I’m the kind of person who knows right from wrong. It was a principled thing.”

Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources, the local farm regulator, Walker felt, did not seem to care about his concerns over the phone or show any interest in enforcement on a company like Iowa Select. Iowa, followed by North Carolina and Minnesota, is the largest pork-producing state in the country and infamously deferential to industry. Iowa officials have faced criticism for failing to regulate concentrated pork facilities for water pollution and poor animal welfare standards.

Jeff Hansen, the founder of Iowa Select, built the pork powerhouse first as a salesman, helping distribute modern farrowing crates, automatic feeders, and other livestock equipment to other pig farmers in the state. He built two companies at once: a turnkey construction firm known as Modern Hog Concepts, which helped farmers upgrade their barns into modern factory farms, and Iowa Select, which raised pigs for slaughter.

Along the way, as he grew his business empire, Hansen built close connections with Iowa’s political elite. In 1994, during a cycle in which Hansen was one of the largest campaign contributors to then-Gov. Terry Branstad, he had set aside employee money for campaign contributions to local Republicans. The resulting scandal forced lawmakers to return campaign funds to Iowa Select, but the company continued to grow.

The owners of Iowa Select, Jeff and his wife Debra Hansen, are still among the largest campaign contributors in the state, and close to Gov. Kim Reynolds. A recent donation of $50,000 brought the total the couple has donated to the governor to nearly $300,000.

The governor has maintained cozy ties to Iowa Select. Shortly after her election in 2018, Reynolds volunteered to auction off her time as a gift to the Hansen family foundation. In the early days of the pandemic, her administration arranged a Covid-19 testing site at a corporate office used by white-collar Iowa Select employees and foundation employees, raising concerns with one Polk County supervisor of special treatment for the campaign donor.

And Kayla Lyon, who Reynolds appointed to run the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which inspects hog farms for compliance with animal welfare and environmental rules, is a former dairy industry official and agribusiness lobbyist. Lyon, in her previous capacity as an influence peddler in Des Moines, had worked to pass the 2012 “ag gag” law that criminalized recording at farm facilities, according to lobbyist disclosures. Lyon lobbied at a time when Iowa Select’s lobbyists in Des Moines pushed for the bill, records show.

The impetus for that bill, which was designed to criminally prosecute whistleblowers at factory farming operations, also started in part with Iowa Select. The year before the bill was signed into law, an animal rights activist group, Mercy for Animals, released an undercover video that showed Iowa Select workers ripping the testicles from conscious piglets, removing tails with dull clippers, and scores of sows in small confinement cages, appearing to suffer from untreated sores and other wounds.

The law, though later overturned by a federal court, was the first of its kind and rapidly inspired copycat legislation across the country.

Walker’s failed attempts to reach regulators, to report overcrowding in Iowa Select facilities, didn’t surprise him. “The DNR wasn’t very interested in talking about it,” said Walker. “They’re too big to be regulated.”

“There have been no recent enforcement actions against Iowa Select Farms. Nor are we aware of any complaints or allegations made to the DNR,” Alex Murphy, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said in an email to The Intercept.

Walker, aware that he had few outlets for help, turned to the internet to research whistleblowing resources for factory farms. That’s how he found Direct Action Everywhere, the Berkeley, California-based group that has worked to expose the shocking treatment of animals in factory farms.

Continue on Page 2

Still working on this; but here is the start;

Regards Mark

23/2/21

Link – Vegan / Recipes – Plant Based Food. – World Animals Voice

We are trying to promote a Vegan plant based lifestyle on this site; and to show you the realities of what goes on with ‘the other side’ – meat production, involving live animal transport; the dairy industry etc.

WAV is not a cookery site, but given the chance; we will give links to other sites and areas where you can delve deeper into the easy world of going Vegan.

So; now we are established a bit more, its time for a change, and a change which we hope will be of benefit.

On the site from today there will be a new section called ‘Vegan / Recipes’.  Here we will be giving you all further insight into the way forward to making veganism very easy; and cutting out meat and dairy.  It should be a cool place for new, aspiring, and ready to be vegans.

So if you are a foodie, or are looking for new ideas to broaden your already existing vegan diet, we hope this section will be of use to you.  Recipes and links will continue to be included in general news for a time, but gradually we hope to place all vegan diet related posts into this area.  Check it out; we will be transferring existing posts to the new area over the coming days as a starter anyway.

Link – Vegan / Recipes – Plant Based Food. – World Animals Voice

Enjoy – one of my fav tracks – Top man Vegan and animal rights advocate, Morrissey, and fab Kent girl Siouxsie Sioux – all Kent girls are the best !