Above – A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. Watercolour by R. Cooper, ca. 1912. Credit: Wellcome Collection
As always; the ‘Guardian’ (UK national press) produces some superb articles about animals and environmental issues.
The only way we can really reproduce the article on farm animal pandemics is to provide the link and then to let you click and read for yourself.
Symposium and Workshop: Replacing Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) in Research & Testing
21 September 2020
Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is used as an additive for cell and tissue culture media in biomedical research and testing to enhance cell growth.
However, there is massive underlying animal suffering in FBS production: To obtain the serum blood of unborn calves is collected by syringe from the beating heart of fetal calves without anaesthesia, even though there are clear indications that calf fetuses are already capable of suffering. In addition to the ethical dilemma, scientific reasons speak against the use of FBS as well: The exact composition of the serum is unknown and there is the risk of contaminations from pathogens potentially present in animal sera. This can compromise cell cultures performance and subsequent experiments.
Thus, switching to FBS-free medium is both an ethical and a scientific necessity. Alternatives to FBS exist and are already used in many cell cultures. Our symposium at the TranslaTUM in Munich aims to draw the attention on this topic and to increase the acceptance of alternative media already existing. Our subsequent satellite workshop at the Academy for Animal Welfare in Neubiberg will present techniques how cells can be easily switched to FBS-free media.
Symposium on November 3rd, 2020:
International experts from universities, industry, regulatory authorities and animal welfare will discuss the current status on the use of fetal bovine serum (FBS) and present ethical and scientific advantages of FBS-free alternatives. Lectures and discussions will be held in English. The one-day symposium takes place in the large auditorium at the TranslaTUM in Munich. Due to social distancing regulations to restrain the COVID-19 pandemic, participation is currently limited to 50 – 100 participants. Target Group Symposium: Undergraduate, graduate and PhD students in the fields of biology, medicine, veterinary medicine and related fields of study, post-docs, working group leaders.
Speakers Symposium:
Dr. Jan van der Valk (3Rs-Centre Utrecht Life Sciences)
Dr. Karen Bieback (Heidelberg University; German Red Cross Blood Service BadenWürttemberg – Hessen gGmbH)
Dr. Aline Chary (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology)
Dr. Sandra Coecke (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission)
Dr. Joachim Wiest (cellasys GmbH) · Tilo Weber (Animal Welfare Academy; Office for Alternatives to the Use of Animals in Research, Testing and Education)
Location Symposium: TranslaTUM Großes Auditorium Einsteinstr. 25 81675 Munich, Germany Date: November 3rd, 2020 from 8:30 a.m. (registration from 8:00 a.m.) to approx. 5:00 p.m.
Workshop on November 4th, 2020:
In the practical section of the satellite workshop, the suitability of serum-free medium for cell cultures will be demonstrated by Dr. Joachim Wiest (cellasys GmbH). Participants will be trained how to perform a switch of cells from serum-containing to serum-free medium using the cellasys #8 protocol. The suitability and the possible effects on the cells will be assessed based on the results of the demonstration.
The theoretical section of the workshop consists of lectures on the scientific risks of FBS and the availability of alternative media (Dr. Jan van der Valk, 3Rs-Center Utrecht Life Sciences) and information on further laboratory reagents of animal origin, such as polyclonal antibodies, gelatine, collagen, trypsin, Matrigel etc. (Tilo Weber, Academy for Animal Welfare). Lectures and demonstrations will be held in English.
The one-day satellite workshop will take place at the cell culture lab of the Academy for Animal Welfare (Akademie für Tierschutz) in Neubiberg. The workshop is limited to 10 participants. Meals are included. For workshop participants that are not resident in Munich or the vicinity, accommodation is included as well. Participation at the Symposium is required. Target Group Workshop: MTA, BTA, PhD students, post-docs.
Location Workshop: Akademie für Tierschutz (Academy for Animal Welfare) Cell Culture Lab Spechtstr. 1 85579 Neubiberg, Germany Date: November 4 th, 2020 from 9:00 a.m. to approx. 5:00 p.m.
House of Lords (UK) Votes to Ban Low Standard Imports – protecting British farming from ‘vile’ American animal welfare standards.
The House of Lords voted on 22 September with a significant majority (307/212) in favour of an amendment to the Agriculture Bill that, in the event of a UK/US trade deal, would ban imports of food that would be illegal to produce in the UK such as pork dosed with the muscle-builder
Ractopamine, beef injected with growth hormones and chicken washed in chlorine.
The result is a significant response by the Lords that reflects both their personal values and those of the public in supporting real food and farming in the UK.
Who said what? Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, said the amendment was essential to protect British farming against “vile” American animal welfare standards.
But opposing Tory peer, Baroness Noakes said, “The government’s policy is clear, they are committed to higher food and welfare standards […] We do not need to write into law what the government is committed to.” A suggestion as to how to hold the government accountable to these commitments in the race for a trade deal outside of the EU, was not given by the Baroness.
So What Next ?
The Agriculture Bill now returns to the House of Commons where, after previous readings, almost all Conservative MPs voted against amendments to protect our farmers by restricting low standard imports, “primarily down to the political sensitivity around trade deals and their links to Brexit”. This vote by the Lords can be overturned by the Conservatives due to their vast majority, so we must keep up the pressure by lobbying Conservative MPs.
Which is why we still need signatures to support our campaign;Say No To Trump’s Toxic Trade Deal. We are focusing on high street fast food outlets that have not yet committed to not using substandard American pork. Greggs is one of them. Please sign and share the petition asking Greggs to commit to not using cruelly-raised factory farmed US pork.
It’s All Linked
David Attenborough’s recent film Extinction; The Facts explains that new pandemic diseases are emerging because industrialised crop monocultures, animal factories and expanding cities, have encroached onto the last areas of wilderness where bacteria and viruses that are harmless to wild animals, are deadly to immuno-compromised factory farmed animals – not least the city and factory bound human species!
This 12-story pig factory in China with over 1,000 pigs on each floor, complete with an elevator for transporting pigs between the floors, is being touted as ‘biosecure’. Really? Or is this just the typical ‘big is beautiful and more efficient’ myth? Dr Michael Gregor explains how factory farming makes pandemics more likely.
Farmers are victims, forced to compete in a global market; get big or get out of farming by industrialising, is the status-quo mantra. As a result farming has become cruel, monotonous, polluting and badly paid, with massive external costs paid for in taxes, our health and mass extinction. The average age of traditional farmers in the UK is 62, and young people who want to farm cannot afford to buy or rent land or invest in machinery and livestock. A network of small scale mixed farming systems, abattoirs, processors and retail outlets would boost rural employment, keep money in the local community, be more resilient to shocks and feed more people with less transport costs and fraud. So, trade agreements should be framed to take food and farming out of the global economy, and instead facilitate the re-localisation of real farming – as advocated and voted for by our nature-friendly Lords.
The meat industry can rely on its faithful servants in politics!!
The Federal Council has decided to carry out fewer controls in meat processing plants, and slaughterhouses will also have to control significantly less in the future. What sounds like a bad joke is unfortunately a reality.
Even so-called risk companies will have to inspect the consumer protection agencies less often than the previous regulation would like.
Companies from the sausage factory category, for example: So far, 12 mandatory inspections per year, in future only four.
For companies in which the authorities expect the highest health risk in the event of poor hygiene – the largest meat companies, for example – even 200 mandatory checks per year can now be omitted because instead of daily, are only mandatory weekly checks in the regulation ..Reason: Lack of staff!!
It’s like dismantling the speed cameras if too many cars are caught violating the speed limit – and in the end, the authorities are probably proud to say that there are now fewer speeders …
And I mean…After the corona outbreaks at the exploitative slaughterhouse company Tönnies, one would have expected that the responsible politicians would be ashamed and would pay more attention to the welfare of workers and keep an eye on the health of consumers, who have to be protected from poisoned and contaminated meat!
Instead, the slaughterhouses get even less control!! So the operators of the so-called “meat industry” officially and mercilessly exploit everything and everyone. With the blessing of the state!
I would say to the Federal Council: Go into the slaughterhouses and stay with the animals until they are chopped up.
Stay there and feel their fear of death, see how they defecate their bladders in fear, see how they try to escape, how they are beaten up, how the “staff” laughs.
Hear their screams for help, the screams in the gas chamber, the screams in the scalding bath, the fidgeting with a slit throat and hear their last breath and watch them being dismembered, how almost finished babies are cut from their bodies!
Then you will find that you are the ones causing this misery. And because you don’t even have the courage to commit suicide, the least you can do is to abolish these places.
Breaking news in from Compassion In World Farming (CIWF) – London.
Dear Mark,
Amazing news: the Scottish Government has halted live calf exports.
After our gruelling, six-month legal battle, the Scottish Government has now accepted that live calf exports that breach maximum permitted journey times – a regular occurrence since April 2019 – can no longer be tolerated.
It has therefore instructed that no further applications for unweaned calf exports that breach these rules should be approved – effectively halting the current trade.
We are pleased to announce that, after a gruelling legal battle, the Scottish Government has finally stopped live calf exports.
Having spent six months defending the inhumane export of unweaned calves to Europe, they have conceded that this trade was being conducted in breach of the legislation on the protection of animals during transport.
With backing from our dedicated supporters, we launched Judicial Review proceedings to challenge the lawfulness of this practice back in February. Both the Scottish and UK Governments resisted for several months – wasting taxpayers’ money – shamefully defending a trade which can see calves go for 23 hours without food and often water.
In a major U-turn, the Scottish Government has now instructed the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), which is responsible for approving export journeys, to not approve any further applications for unweaned calf exports that breach the time limits in the regulations.
“The Scottish Government’s conduct during this dispute has often fallen far short of that expected from a responsible authority,” said Peter Stevenson, our Chief Policy Advisor. “They have neglected to disclose key information, run misleading arguments, and despite export journeys exceeding the maximum permitted travelling time since at least April 2019, that these journeys were exceeding the maximum permitted travelling time, they failed to act and did not issue an instruction to halt the trade until over a year later. Above all, they have vigorously defended this cruel and unnecessary trade.”
Over several decades, millions of British calves have been forced to endure long, inhumane journeys to Europe for slaughter and fattening. We have fought this all the way. The ending of calf exports from Britain represents a turning point in the battle to stop this horrific trade.
“We welcome this decision that means thousands of calves will be spared such gruelling journeys every year,” said Natasha Smith, our Senior Campaigns Manager. “However, it is outrageous that it took legal action and years of argument to bring the Scottish Government to this point.”
Whilst this is a major victory for the welfare of Scottish calves, the policy must now be secured by legislation. The Scottish Government has promised a public consultation on banning journeys over 9 hours for calves, and the UK Government has previously committed to a separate consultation on live exports. Similar consultations in the past have yet to yield results.
“More consultations and empty promises are not enough,” Natasha continued. “We need new legislation to protect animals from this cruel and unnecessary practice once and for all.”
Now, our fight continues far beyond the courtroom. We will not stop until there is a complete ban on live exports from the UK for slaughter and fattening.
You have helped achieve justice for calves. A huge thanks to every person who has donated, emailed politicians, or even joined Kent Action Against Live Exports to protest the sailings in person.
Read more about our Judicial Review proceedings here.
KUWAIT Livestock Transport and Trading (KLTT) – Australia’s largest buyer of live sheep – has sold its twin-tier livestock vessel the Al Shuwaikh for an undisclosed amount.
KLTT’s Western Australian subsidiary, Rural Export and Trading WA managing director Mike Gordon said a Jordanian company, Al Delta Company, purchased the vessel about two weeks ago.
The Al Shuwaikh was due to be phased out from the Australian trade because of new marine orders that prohibited twin-tier vessels from operating in Australia beyond January 1, 2020, without an exemption.
Until now the vessel did have an exemption but it was only used for sheep.
A clause in the paperwork was discovered only when it was pointed out to the company by agriculture department officials, that denied them the ability to load cattle on deck five, costing KLTT $1million per voyage from WA.
Mr Gordon said the 34-year-old Al Shuwaikh was “due to be retired”.
He said the company would continue to service Australia “for the foreseeable future” with its two remaining vessels, the Al Messilah and the newly-purchased Al Kuwait, the world’s largest livestock carrier.
Mr Gordon said the vessels would be spaced to run back-to-back trips from September 16 to May 30, 2021, until the northern hemisphere summer moratorium prohibited trade to the Middle East (June 1 to September 15).
The company would also divert the vessels to South Africa when needed.
Two other twin-tier vessels had been servicing the Australian market – the Maysora and the Bader III.
Livestock Shipping Services, which owns these vessels, had cut the upper deck from the Bader III but decided to utilise the vessel in other markets.
Farm Weekly understands that the company has applied for an exemption for the Maysora to continue to service Australia in the short-term, however it’s last known position was off the coast of north-west Africa.
Just a few of our (WAV) past posts related to the AS:
From our live export campaigner friends at SAFE in New Zealand:
Kia ora Mark
Tens of thousands of animals have died in live export disasters over the last decade.
Animals are exported alive from New Zealand for breeding due to a loophole in our law. These animals are transported in dangerous conditions on open sea voyages or by air. When they reach their destination, they are likely kept and slaughtered in ways that are illegal in New Zealand.
Live export is not worth the suffering.
SAFE has launched an ambitious international campaign to put pressure on Labour leader Jacinda Ardern to impose a complete ban on all live export.
This advertisement is running in the Guardian online and will be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers across the UK and Europe.
Jacinda Ardern is known around the world for being a good leader and in Aotearoa New Zealand for putting kindness at the forefront of her values. Sadly, that kindness does not extend to animals.
The appalling human and animal suffering that happened when the Gulf Livestock 1 sank cannot happen again.
Jacinda Ardern needs to know just how many people care about animal welfare, and that the world’s attention is on how New Zealand handles this disaster. Our international reputation depends on it.
SAFE has run an advertisement in the Guardian newspaper so that people around the world can ask Jacinda Ardern to extend her kindness to animals and ban live export once and for all. You can help by sharing this advertisement with your friends and family via email and social media.
Share the advertisement now:
This year, approximately 65,000 cows have left our shores. There are significant risks to the welfare of farmed animals transported by ship, especially over long distances. The Pacific Ocean is renowned for rough seas that can cause the cows to suffer seasickness and be thrown around and injured. The rough seas, unnatural diet, high stocking densities and heat stress all have a negative effect on these animals, with some suffering injuries and others dying on board.
Once the journey is over, they may well end up confined in concrete factory farms for the rest of their lives, never to set foot on grass again. Then, when no longer deemed profitable, these cows will be killed, most likely by methods so cruel they are illegal in New Zealand.
We need to keep up the opposition to this cruel trade, and we can’t do it without you. Please make a gift today towards SAFE’s international campaign so we can continue to shine a spotlight on New Zealand’s cruel live export trade.
Animals need us to all work together to end their suffering.
A seven-storey pig building at Yaji mountain. A 12-storey building is planned. Photograph: ReutersYangxiang’s high-rise pig buildings at Yaji mountain. Photograph: Reuters
A 12-storey pig farm: has China found the way to tackle animal disease?
21 September 2020
Biosecure farms complete with staff quarantine and chutes for dead pigs are seen as progress, but may carry their own risks.
The buildings do not even look like farms. They are huge grey concrete blocks, many storeys high, which stand side by side in the middle of what might look like a quarry, a “hole” of red earth dug in the heart of a mountain.
We are on the Yaji mountain, which in Chinese means “sacred”, a few kilometres south of the city of Guigang in southern China. What we are looking at is the tallest pig farm in the world; units up to nine storeys high housing thousands of pigs, with construction of a 12-storey pig unit under way.
Pigs at Yaji farm are confined to one floor to avoid transmission of disease. Photograph: Dominique Patton/Reuters
“On each floor we can breed 1,270 pigs,” says Yuanfei Gao, vice-president of Yangxiang, the company that built the farm. “But in the future with the design of the new buildings we plan to have 1,300 pigs per floor.”
Yangxiang is one of the Chinese giants of the pork industry, producing about 2 million pigs a year in a dozen farms throughout China. The Yaji mountain site is its largest and most advanced multistorey farming system, and will have the capacity to produce around 840,000 pigs a year when construction is finished.
WAV Comment: We always thought that Trump had lost his marbles way before he was elected as the ‘President’ of the United States; but as money and the making of is his sole intention and concern; here we see that New York; with one of the largest Covid casebooks in the US, is now opening up its wet market doors because of Yom Kippur.
One really has to ask where the priorities of the US lay – trying to beat the Covid virus or simply as the article blow states:
“New York Mayor Bill de Blasio; his Health Commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi; and his Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, allow this mass ritual slaughter to take place, in spite of the health code violations and risks to public health, because NYC’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities represent a powerful voting bloc that can make or break elections in NYC and NY State”.
Now we know; to hell with the deaths and families affected; as per the Trump mentality; votes and money are the thing than mean more than anything else.
If the American public understand and believe this; then vote him in once again and put money before everything else. We have exposed the links to Covid deaths and the meat industries in many posts; if you ignore the evidence and go with the money; then that is your choice. We suggest that US citizens really taken this issue on board and start asking some hard, deep down questions about the New York policy – what is most important ? – deaths or votes.
The choice, voters of the USA, is down to you.
Link – New York Times 22/9/20:
At least 5 new coronavirus deaths and 575 new cases were reported in New York on Sept. 21. Over the past week, there have been an average of 790 cases per day, an increase of 5 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
As of Tuesday morning, there have been at least 455,187 cases and 32,691 deaths in New York since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database.
In the days leading up to Yom Kippur, tens of thousands of Hasidim in Brooklyn will purchase and physically handle live chickens in a wet market setting. Wearing little to no PPE, they will swing the chickens around their heads as part of an annual atonement ritual called Kaporos. The chickens will be killed in approximately 30 makeshift slaughterhouses erected without permits on public streets in residential neighborhoods in violation of eight New York City health codes.
The body parts, blood and feces of thousands of animals will contaminate the streets of South Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Borough Park for several days.
Kaporos is, in effect, the largest live animal wet market in the country and the only one in which the customers handle the animals before the animals are killed. Many of the animals have compromised immune systems and show signs of respiratory disease.
The chickens make each other sick, and they also infect some of the people who handle them with e. Coli and campylobacter. If the viruses that these animals carry commingle and mutate into a more dangerous strain that could be spread among humans, then these Kaporos wet markets could be the source of the another zoonotic disease outbreak. According to a toxicologist who studied fecal and blood samples taken during Kaporos, the ritual “constitutes a dangerous condition” and “poses a significant public health hazard.”
In addition to putting all of us at risk of another zoonotic disease pandemic, Kaporos, which attracts hordes of people in small areas, could be a COVID “super spreader” event because Hasidic communities have been observed not wearing masks or engaging in social distancing.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio; his Health Commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi; and his Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, allow this mass ritual slaughter to take place, in spite of the health code violations and risks to public health, because NYC’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities represent a powerful voting bloc that can make or break elections in NYC and NY State.
In fact, taxpayers help to underwrite the cost because the NYPD provides barricades, floodlights and a large police presence at many of the Kaporos sites. Given the risks and the disruption and death we have already endured already with pandemic, how can the Mayor and his health deputies allow Kaporos to take place?
For the past several years, animal rights and public health advocates have pled with Mayor de Blasio and his revolving door of health commissioners (Dr. Mary Bassett, Dr. Oxiris Barbot and now Dr. Dave Chokshi) to shut down Kaporos, given the health code violations and the risks to the public health.
Both in court and in the media, city attorneys and spokespeople for the NYC Department of Health have defended Kaporos and argued that the City has discretion over which laws to enforce. Throughout the month of September, the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos plastered 300 posters around New York City to sound the alarm about Kaporos.
The second undercover research reveals how pigs are again tortured for Tönnies!
We recently published scandalous video material from a Tönnies supplier in North Rhine-Westphaliaand reported the conditions there.
The public prosecutor’s office then took up the investigation and Tönnies, the group that slaughters around 20 million pigs annually and thus makes over six billion euros in sales, was forced to react.
Now we have again proof of the terrible way pigs suffer and die for the Tönnies Group.
We now have terrifying images from the largest pig fattening in Lower Saxony. The video recordings show how densely packed animals have to stand in their own droppings.
Many of the animals show some very serious injuries that did not occur overnight.
Untreated, bloody injuries, huge tumors, and abscesses can be seen. Most of the animals can only hobble.
Dead pigs can also be seen among the live ones. A statutory sickbay cannot be seen on the recordings.
Obviously, the farm operator is not fulfilling his duty of care and simply making the pigs suffer.
Particularly frightening: During the two documented nights, the drinking water was consciously turned off by the operator.
World Animals Voice 
