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Event – What could the EU and China do for Animals?

6 November 2020

Join us on Wednesday 18 November to discuss what the EU and China could do for Animals, and how this could also benefit public health and climate change.

In 2017, China’s Vice-Minister for Agriculture Yu Kangzhen indicated China’s willingness to work on comprehensive legislation on animal welfare. 

Now that the European Commission has announced the long-awaited review of its animal welfare standards in the Farm to Fork strategy, it seems to be even more urgent to discuss what the EU and China could do for animals. Especially considering the vast challenges humanity is facing: the climate emergency, the spread of zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance, and their links to the way society deals with animals.

The two hours event, hosted by MEP Niels Fuglsang (S&D, DK), will bring together academics, Chinese and European stakeholders, NGOs, representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as Member States, and will be the opportunity to launch the  Eurogroup for Animals’ new report ‘What could the EU and China for Animals?’.

 Find more information on the agenda and registration here. 

Canada’s first case of rare swine flu variant found in central Alberta patient.

https://www.cp24.com/news/canada-s-first-case-of-rare-swine-flu-variant-found-in-central-alberta-patient-1.5175007

EDMONTON – Canada’s first case of a rare swine flu variant has been found in a patient from central Alberta, but the province’s chief medical officer of health says it seems to be isolated.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw says the Influenza A H1N2v case was detected in mid-October after the patient showed up at an emergency department for medical care.

“This currently appears to be one isolated case,” Hinshaw said at a news conference Wednesday. “It is also the only case of influenza that has been reported so far this flu season.

“Influenza viruses that normally circulate in pigs, including H1N2, can infect people – although this is not common.”

When cases appear in humans, they are called ‘variant’ viruses and a ‘v’ is added to the end of the name.

Hinshaw said it’s the first reported case of H1N2v in Canada since 2005 when reporting became mandatory – and one of only 27 cases globally.

Health Canada said on its website the other cases include 24 in the United States and two in Brazil.

“Based on current evidence in Canada, the risk to human health is low,” it noted.

The federal agency said swine flu viruses don’t normally infect people, but there have been infrequent exceptions. It can be contracted by humans when they breath in respiratory droplets from an infected pig or touch something with the virus on it and then touch their mouth or nose.

“All have been linked to direct or indirect contact with swine and none of the previously reported cases have caused sustained human-to-human transmission,” added Hinshaw.

The Alberta patient, she said, had mild symptoms, was tested for influenza and COVID-19 as is routine in hospitals, and recovered quickly.

“There is no evidence at this time that the virus has spread further,” she said.

Hinshaw said Alberta Health is working closely with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, as well as Alberta Health Services and the Public Health Agency of Canada, to determine the source of the virus and to verify that no spread has occurred.

“Retrospective testing of central Alberta COVID samples from the past two weeks for influenza is almost complete and no positive influenza samples have been found,” she said.

Hinshaw said Alberta Health Services will offer optional influenza testing to anyone in central Alberta who shows up for COVID-19 testing.

Both she and Dr. Keith Lehman, the province’s chief veterinarian, said they are still investigating the source of the virus.

“At the moment, there are no links to slaughterhouses,” said Hinshaw, who added that they are looking into potential links to some pig farms in the area.

Lehman said the animal health investigation is using information provided by the patient.

“We have identified some potential sources and we are continuing to investigate,” he said.

Lehman added that it’s not unusual to see influenza in swine populations in Western Canada and around the world.

“Within Western Canada, we have routine surveillance that is undertaken for our swine farms and we tend to see anywhere from roughly 10 to 30 cases identified per quarter,” he said. “It is a virus that is not uncommon in our swine populations.”

Lehman said there’s no increased risk to other hog operations because they have strong biosecurity practices to prevent it from spreading. If a pig does contract it, it’s typically a mild illness, he said.

Officials stressed that H1N2 in pigs is not food-related.

“It is not transmissible to people through pork meat or other products that come from pigs and there is no risk associated with eating pork,” said Hinshaw.

EFSA reiterates that slaughter without stunning should not be practiced.

5 November 2020

A new Scientific Opinion by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) identifies many animal welfare problems likely to occur in cattle at the time of slaughter, and propose measures to minimise and prevent them. Eurogroup for Animals calls on the EU Commission to take the assessment into account for the revision of the Regulation 1099/2009.

The killing of cattle for human consumption (slaughtering) can take place in a slaughterhouse or during on‐farm slaughter. A new EFSA assessment identified 40 hazards, most of them related to stunning and bleeding, that impact the welfare of these animals while slaughtered. 

Particularly, EFSA identified 12 welfare consequences the cattle can be exposed to during slaughter: 

• Heat stress
• Cold stress
• Fatigue
• Prolonged thirst
• Prolonged hunger
• Impeded movement
• Restriction of movements
• Resting problems
• Social stress
• Pain
• Fear 
• Distress

This Scientific Opinion acknowledges that proper management plays a crucial preventive role and that 97.5% of the hazards identified have their origin in the lack of skills of the operators.

Methods are also causing animal welfare problems. In this regard, despite the Panel agreeing with the World Animal Health (OIE) list of unacceptable methods and procedures, it also raises concern towards certain practices, such as the unloading or moving of severely injured cattle, the use of painful stimuli to move animals, and slaughter without stunning. 

EFSA reaffirms that “slaughter without stunning should not be practiced”, acknowledging that “pre-cut stunning is the only preventive measure for the welfare consequences connected with cutting”. 

With this opinion EFSA set a list of hazards, welfare consequences and related corrective and preventive measures.

These findings should be used by the EU Commission to address the OIE standards and hopefully to inform the revision of the Regulation 1099/2009:eliminating all the practices assessed by EFSA as detrimental from an animal welfare perspective, and for which preventive and/or corrective measures do not exist.

How does one of the world’s biggest pork firms go bust during a boom?

A giant US player is quitting despite huge export hikes during the pandemic – the reasons why get to the heart of the industry

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/27/how-does-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-pork-firms-go-bust-during-a-boom

How does one of the largest pork companies in the US go out of business at the height of a crazy global pork boom? And what does this tell us about pig farming today? The answer to that question starts where most of the world’s pigs end up, in China.

China produces and consumes almost half the world’s pork. But when African swine fever was detected in the Chinese pig herd in August 2018, it led to millions of hogs being culled in an attempt to control the spread. The drop in China’s pork production has been precipitous. Since 2018, swine populations have fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s, eliminating decades of growth.

And so the huge magnetic pull of the Chinese market has only grown. A kilogram of pork that fetches about $3.30 in the US wholesale market is worth nearly $7 in China, creating huge incentives for processors to send pork abroad.

The Covid pork boom

US producers jumped on the opportunity, and in the first five months of 2020, the amount of pork exported to China from the US was up 531% on the previous year, with exports accounting for almost one-third of US pork production.

You may be wondering, at this point, about the famous meat shortages at the beginning of the pandemic; weren’t meat plants shutting down because of sick workers and pigs being culled? In fact, though US domestic hog processing declined in April, processing rates rebounded relatively quickly, rising back to well above 2019 levels by June. That was partly thanks to industry activism to gain government support. Meat processing giant Tyson chairman John Tyson published a full page ad in the Washington Post and elsewhere in April saying “there will be limited supplies of our product available in grocery stores”. A ProPublica investigation found that meat industry actors may have had a direct hand in drafting the executive order that was announced by President Donald Trump just days later, which provided cover for meat plants to remain open or reopen despite the fact that workers were still getting and spreading Covid-19.

Looking back, it’s clear that meat shortages never actually became a problem. Livestock processing fell by only about 15% even during the peak of closures, and on top of that, there were 661m pounds of pork products warehoused in the US at the start of the pandemic, representing record storage levels for multiple cuts.

Consumers may have experienced brief and small scale “selling out” at retail locations, but this was likely a factor of either an individual store’s ability to keep shelves stocked or the store’s storage capacity relative to the high volume of purchases.

So what happened to Maxwell?

So why did Maxwell Foods, one of the biggest pork processors in the US, announce earlier this year that it would be quitting the sector by the end of 2021? About the same time, the company also filed a lawsuit, asserting that its demise wasn’t due to natural causes, but the direct result of actions by another company, one that was both an important customer and competitor: Smithfield Foods

Maxwell Foods is one of the largest pork producers in the world, making the list of the top 31 global pork mega-producers for possessing 100,000 breeding sows. The company reported producing 1.1 million pigs for slaughter in 2019. A subsidiary of Goldboro Milling Company, Maxwell has contracts with about 120 farmers in North Carolina to supply its animals. In the statement announcing the end of operations by mid-2021, the company cited “low prices” for its products as a primary driver.

But Smithfield, against which Maxwell has now filed a lawsuit, is even bigger. The company, owned by China’s WH Group, tops the list of global mega-producers with 1.23 million breeding sows, producing more than 6bn pounds lb of pork in 2019. The $16bn company is the largest hog producer in the world, and critically, Maxwell’s primary customer.

According to the lawsuit, in 1994, the two companies entered into an agreement that Smithfield would purchase all of Maxwell’s pork produced in the Carolinas and Virginia. As part of the agreement, Smithfield gave Maxwell a sort of “most favoured nation” status, agreeing to extend Maxwell the best price it was offering to any of its other partners.

Since then, the lawsuit has continued, and Smithfield’s aggressive pursuit of vertical integration has consolidated the market and left Maxwell vulnerable to Smithfield’s whims.

“Smithfield represents approximately 25% of the total pork processing market nationwide, which, in turn, has left Maxwell with no bargaining strength in its dealings with Smithfield.” Maxwell claims its revenues have been declining in particular since 2016, and that it has been selling pork at unsustainable prices to Smithfield ever since. When Maxwell requested repeatedly to renegotiate pricing, Smithfield declined, but Maxwell reports finding out later that Smithfield had been offering better prices to other partners, violating the “most favoured nation” pricing provision, and providing a basis for the lawsuit.

Scale matters, even between very big and huge

Lee Miller, Duke University

“Scale matters, even between very big and huge,” writes Lee Miller, an agricultural law expert at Duke University. “The Maxwells of the world – while enormous by historical standards – do not wield anything approaching the power of Smithfield, in either market or political spheres.” Smithfield’s foreign ownership adds to the complexity, he says, because a company that might at least have some trickle-down benefits for local communities now sends profits to foreign stockholders, leaving communities near pork production facilities and workers at slaughter plants with significantly less access to company decision-makers.

Then, in April 2020, Smithfield stopped purchasing the full amount of Maxwell hogs, according to Maxwell, instead buying only half. The company pulls no punches in its summation of these actions, writing: “Smithfield has engaged in its course of conduct … for the express purpose of harming Maxwell’s business and with the objective of driving Maxwell out of hog production altogether so as to benefit Smithfield-owned competitors of Maxwell.”

Continue reading on page 2.

WAV Comment – Mulesing is one of the most hideous and barbaric practices undertaken on living sheep today,  In Mulesing, farm workers force live sheep onto their backs, restrain their legs between metal bars, and cut chunks of flesh from their backsides.  This is alleged to prevent ‘flystrike’; something which can be done with medication nowdays, but which the industry refuses to use because of costs involved for better animal welfare.

Not only does Australia still undertake chopping chunks of flesh off of living animals; it is still very involved in transporting live animals across the globe re live exports.  One has to question the Australian approach to animal welfare when they are still heavily involved in practices from the dark ages.

The Peta proposed mulesed lamb statue sounds like a great idea – as they say; surely the industry would welcome a statue designed to inform people about this element of wool production, given how hard it has fought for decades to continue mulesing, even in the face of public outcry and worldwide designer boycotts?

What has the industry got to hide ? – it either stops mulesing or it has a statue to inform the world that it still undertakes carving up live animals.  They have a choice.

In the following you can see pictures of mulesed sheep.

Regards Mark

Mulesed Lamb Statue Proposed for Goulburn

Posted on 27 October 2020 at 8:16PM by PETA Australia

Following news that a parliamentary inquiry in New South Wales has failed to recommend ceasing the practice of mulesing sheep in the state, PETA has written to the Mayor of Goulburn, home of the “Big Merino”, and asked permission to erect a new statue for the area – a giant mulesed lamb.

More than 70% of Australia’s wool comes from sheep who are mulesed, a barbaric practice in which workers force live sheep onto their backs, restrain their legs between metal bars, and cut chunks of flesh from their backsides. This is terrifying for prey animals like sheep, who cry out in fear and pain. It also leaves them with open wounds – which, ironically, are prone to flystrike, which mulesing ostensibly aims to prevent.

When PETA US first exposed mulesing to the world back in the early 2000s, the Australian wool industry promised to phase it out by 2010. Since then, numerous  celebrities, consumers, fabric buyers, and fashion houses worldwide have called for an end to mulesing.

In 2018, New Zealand has made mulesing illegal, and yet it remains prevalent in Australia.

Surely the industry would welcome a statue designed to inform people about this element of wool production, given how hard it has fought for decades to continue mulesing, even in the face of public outcry and worldwide designer boycotts?

Sheep Need Your Help

Not only does the Australian wool industry mules lambs, it also cuts off their tails and castrates males without any pain relief. Shearers, who are paid per fleece, work roughly and violently, pinning petrified sheep down, punching them in the face with metal clippers, cutting them open, and shoving them down chutes. Over the past six years, PETA’s affiliates have visited 43 farms across New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria and have found cruel treatment of animals at every single one.

With so many animal-free, environmentally friendly fabrics now available, there is simply no need to continue inflicting so much pain on sheep.

The wool industry and the government have both failed sheep, so it’s up to each of us to act. Now, more than ever, we must vote with our wallets and leave wool out of our wardrobes.

Help sheep now:

https://secure.peta.org.au/page/33840/action/1