Category: Farm Animals

South Korea: Animal Rights Groups Urge Suspension of Traditional Bullfighting.

Animal Rights Groups Urge Suspension of Traditional Bullfighting

Groups like the Korean Animal Welfare Association on Monday held a press conference in front of the National Assembly, urging politicians to remove exceptions for bullfighting in the Animal Protection Act.

“Cows are herbivores that do not fight in the wild. It amounts to animal abuse if humans force them to fight for mere amusement,” the groups said.

The Animal Protection Act stipulates in Article 8 that inflicting an injury upon an animal for gambling, advertising, amusement or entertainment amounts to animal abuse.

There is an exception, however, in cases specified by the Ordinance of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, such as folk games, exempting bullfights held in 11 provinces located across the country from punishment.

Image Credit: Yonhap / photonews@koreabizwire.com

Animal Rights Groups Urge Suspension of Traditional Bullfighting | Be Korea-savvy (koreabizwire.com)

Regards Mark

Vietnam: Urgent Appeal To Rescue 5 Bile Bears and Send Them To The Animals Asia Sanctuary.

Further update 2030hrs GMT

This link is not associated with any scam – it is a direct link to the ‘Animals Asia’ donation site.

At the bottom of the donation link there is both a telephone number and also an e mail address.

Donations can be made using this number directly if you wish to donate by card. This is for the UK office.

Email: info@animalsasia.org
Phone: +(0)1752 224424

I will give the donation link once more:

Animals Asia | Make a donation today

Both the links given will take you to the same donation area; you can use either.

Here is the international site link of you wish to donate via this instead:

https://www.animalsasia.org/

—————————————————————————————————————————-

We’ve received a call from the Forest Protection Department in Vietnam alerting us to five bears who need rescuing immediately.

Will you join our Bear Rescue Team and help bring them home to safety?

Between these five bears there has been over 100 years of torturous bile extraction, without a second of freedom.

Right now, that’s all we know about them.

Two decades of abuse will have taken an enormous toll on their minds and bodies. It’s crucial we reach them as soon as possible. Please, will you help?

Welcoming these bears home to our sanctuary in Tam Dao, Vietnam means we’re now at full capacity. But you must know, this will not stand in the way of us rescuing them. Nothing will.

Please will you donate today? Your gift could help rescue five desperate bears and prepare our second sanctuary for the arrival of the hundreds more still waiting.

Donate via this link:

And I promise, with you by our side, nothing will stop us from saving more bears who desperately need us. Will you send an urgent donation today and help bring them home? We can’t do this vital work without you.

Every single second counts for the bears waiting to be saved from these terrible farms.

I’m beyond grateful for your support and dedication to the bears. Thank you for ensuring that no bear is left behind.

Jill Robinson MBE, Dr med vet hc, Hon LLD
Founder and CEO

PS I’ll be joining the team on the rescue so I promise to keep you updated as much as I can but in the meantime, it would mean the world if you could donate to these precious bears.

Donate via this link:

Regards Mark

EU: Force-feeding for foie gras: new investigation reveals this inhumane practice still occurs in the EU, despite high sanctions in most Member States

Force-feeding for foie gras: new investigation reveals this inhumane practice still occurs in the EU, despite high sanctions in most Member States

21 February 2023

GAIA

Recently, the European Parliament hosted a meeting of the parliamentary Intergroup for Animal Welfare, in which footage was shown revealing the horrific reality of force-feeding in foie gras production on a farm in France. Ways forward to finally solve this problem in relation to EU law were suggested by attendees.

Olivier Morice, Public Affairs Officer for L214, showed the footage taken at the end of 2022 on a mainstream French farm. The images of the animals during, before and after force-feeding were a shocking and accurate display of the horrible effects of this awful practice, calling to attention why it urgently needs to be addressed by policymakers.

The use of force-feeding for foie gras production in the EU

Force-feeding ducks and geese for foie gras production is a form of animal abuse that has already been made illegal in 22 EU Member States, plus two of the three Belgian regions. As Adolfo Sansolini, Advisor to Eurogroup for Animals and Consultant to GAIA, explained at the Intergroup, sanctions in those countries if animals were force-fed for foie gras production could reach fines of up to €800,000, and imprisonment for up to six years.

Sadly, force-feeding for foie gras production remains legal in France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain and Wallonia. It’s difficult to understand why. Not only has scientific evidence shown the practice of force-feeding to be unnecessarily cruel and detrimental to the welfare of animals, but citizens across the EU have called for its end as well through surveys like the ‘Attitudes of Europeans towards Animal Welfare’ Eurobarometer (2016), through which 94% of participants said they believed it was important to protect the welfare of farmed animals.

A future without force-feeding: how can the EU move forward?

It’s clear this mistreatment can’t be allowed to go on. EU institutions must ensure that citizen and animal welfare concerns, rather than niche sectoral interests, are represented and defended in legislation. ‘Traditional’ animal-derived foods (an umbrella under which foie gras arguably falls) should not undermine ethical and scientific progress, and currently, the fact that this practice is still enabled by European law undermines the EU’s global reputation for high animal welfare standards. 

Sansolini explained two ways to end force-feeding for foie gras production:

1. Foie gras production can be made possible without the use of force-feeding: To achieve this, the arbitrary requirement of minimum liver weights – introduced in the European Regulation on marketing standards for poultry meat in 1991 (and maintained in the 2008 version) – must be removed. This would generate fairer competition for farmers across the EU, allow consumer choice, and level the playing field for the companies and countries that have adopted higher standards. DG AGRI is responsible for this piece of legislation;

2. Force-feeding can be banned altogether in the EU and without exemptions: Therefore fully implementing Directive 58/98/EC, which states that “No animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner (…) which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury”.

Reineke Hameleers, CEO of Eurogroup for Animals, commented that “millions of European citizens look with hope at the work of Commissioner Wojciechowski to make foie gras production without force-feeding possible, giving back choice to citizens and ending the discrimination on the market of higher-welfare producers. The time has come to end the scandal of force-feeding for good, by including a ban in the proposals that Commissioner Kyriakides is preparing on farm animal welfare.”

Regards Mark

USA: But if you don’t ignore the violent suffering of animals, kids will get cavities …

With thanks to Stacey at Our Compass

Our Compass | Because compassion directs us … (our-compass.org)

Regards Mark

But if you don’t ignore the violent suffering of animals, kids will get cavities …

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

by Stacey

I’m gonna have to call out some traumatized nonvegans again. On a comment board following a NYT opinion article Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal in favor of a DxE rescue of two chickens from the death industry, some nonvegans had to digitally vocalize why those two chickens should have instead violently suffered death in a “caring, welfare-respectful establishment” – while ignoring that there are zero laws “protecting” “food animals” – in a world where trillions of animals violently suffer yearly for a largely indifferent society that doesn’t experience anger at SUFFERING but rather at people who rescue animals from suffering. I know that was really wordy, but it’s hard summarizing the mass, incalculable violence and pain humans effortlessly inflict, but relentlessly defend, on innocents. (And I’ll just point out here that ALL animal exploitation is cruel, not just “some”.) The comments were eventually closed so I was unable to respond to a couple directly, and while there’s probably a 100% chance of 0 that the original commenters will see my responses here, I think it’s important to make these corrections in general as so many of these excuses are inaccurately-yet-consistently demonstrated by so many non (anti) vegans, whose only change is their name, to attempt to validate injustice. And I can’t just ignore them. Sue me.

This is a favorite of mine: nonvegans demanding vegans make violence against animals more comfortable for nonvegans. So instead of saving chickens, because obviously Michael likes to eat chickens, animal rescuers need to instead concentrate on saving “veal” calves, obviously because Michael doesn’t like the flavor of infant flesh but needs to deflect from his willing participation in chicken suffering and float the idea that because calves violently die due to not being rescued by vegans – versus being killed for and by nonvegans – he can’t be bothered to not kill chickens. (I mean, antivegan’s excuses are like a brain trust in reverse.)

(And they’re not “its”, but I understand that humans have been exploiting speciesist language to distance themselves from their sentient victims since communication was born and it’s just easier for people to refer to boats as “she” and animals as “its”.)

I actually answered this one by factually demonstrating, with USDA data, that “veal” is caused by “dairy”. In other words, Michael, your milk, cheese, and ice cream consumption – because you actually do like to eat those – are responsible for all those poor, sweet baby cows being violently confined and killed as early as 3 weeks of age (of course there are millions who violently die at an even earlier age of 0 in slaughterhouses, too, when their mothers are violently killed and cut open to – surprise! baby here who needs to be killed too).

Michael’s response?

Silence, aka, a hugely silent, “OOOOOOOOOOPS!!! I didn’t know that so will just pretend that I still don’t know and ignore that I personally cause baby cow suffering AND chicken suffering ….”

Of course.

Cruelty is only offensive when you don’t know about or acknowledge that you are directly responsible for said cruelty.

But yes, it’s vegans’ responsibility to help Michael sort his conscience on his self-serving journey to zero accountability….

Just stop the tantrum-blaming, suggesting your cruel actions and violent behaviour are someone else’s responsibility, I’m not here to make you feel better about abusing animals, that’s all on YOU, YOU enable “veal crates” and other suffering via your actions and pathetic welfare “reform” internet support and involvement in an inherently cruel “system” that normalizes a culture of violent animal suffering and death that is ALL RELATED. (And as for those “reforms” I swear I’m going to hurl if I see another person scream, “Yes, pass those regulations, I’m more than happy to pay more for humanely raised animals!!!” while STILL supporting what they admit is cruel NOW. Not to mention – again – that ALL animal exploitation is inherently cruel (if a bigger cage is important, what’s more important than NO CAGE?), it’s just that people have been brainwashed into conformist flesh zombies, believing that unethically and inhumanely violating and violently killing animals is ok because “poor people, male-calves-I-mean-oooops-not-really, a vague future with maybe bigger cages, children’s cavities tho” … :

How about you? Because, you know, instead of spending time criticizing people who spend time helping animals, how many teeth could you have saved by NOT taking time reading and commenting on an article that makes you angsty? (Are you even a dentist or are you implying we all just need to grab some pliers? Seems a bit torturous but I wouldn’t expect an animal abusing apologist to care much about kids anyway.)

But you don’t really care about kids, you care about inventing some fake moral outrage so you don’t have to address the factual suffering and cruelty YOU cause that you could easily NOT.

I mean, imagine feeling so insecure as to suggest that NOT helping animals is required to helping kids while simultaneously ignoring abject animal abuse – animals being boiled alive in this case – because you’re incapable of being a decent human who refuses such cruelties but have to pretend that you’re not complicit because kids get cavities. Desperate much? I can’t even word your illogic logically it’s so bizarre.

But do tell how your violence helps kids with their medical care. And do share also how many sports events, malls, libraries, grocers, theaters, clothing stores, zoos, vet clinics, etc., etc., etc., you’ve visited, screaming at people who shop, play sports, or watch tv, that THEY should instead spend time helping other humans with their dental needs.

Oh. It’s only people who care about animals that you enragingly target: “I refuse to minimize animal suffering so I’m just gonna criticize those who do!!!”

You know why? Because you can’t justify your cruel behaviour, but rather than examine and change it, you have to try to bring others down to your level of indecency and apathy. Indeed, rather than choosing plant-based milk instead of suffering cow’s milk, you have to falsely accuse animal rescuers of being anti-human to deflect from your pro-abuse behaviour.

The hubris irony of “humanitarians” who demand those very humans NOT exercise their rights and ethics to minimize suffering. Honestly, I’ve never been hit with so much hatred than from antivegan “humanitarians” who casually forget that vegans are, you know, human.

And by the way, millions upon millions of animals are condemned (removed from “food supply”) yearly due to disease, neglect, and squalor, do they affect kids’ teeth? Or is it only the animals who are rescued … from you?

And to be clear, the people who spends gobsandgobs of time killing animals, abusing animals, hunting animals, eating animals, cooking animals, using animals, buying animals, wearing animals, breeding animals, impregnating animals, mutilating animals, celebrating animal violence, encouraging more violent exploitation of animals, mocking animal suffering, and mocking people opposed to animal exploitation, are cool, though? As long as a person’s time used to abuse animals aligns with your standard of “legitimate time suckage via animal suffering” they’re good?

So much logic it makes me want to cry ………..

The last comment was correct, but the disinformation machine is alive and violently successful in the first. People say things with zero hesitation because many honestly believe what they’re saying is the truth based on what THEY heard and on and on and on. (Listen to Jem’s They)

You can’t have “empathy” for animals you eat. You have to literally smother your capacity for empathy and instead adopt indifference and word salad justifications overandoverandover to make yourself believe that abusing animals benefits animals. And “humanely raising” is reserved for beings who benefit from a nurturing environment of care and support as they age, not one that exploits and violates your body prior to your body being violently killed and eaten at a fraction of your “normal” lifespan, ffs.

But where are these small farms that slaughter their “own animals” and sell them to community members? I see this “advice” all the time.

Which is really bizarre.

Because it’s illegal.

It’s not a fruit stand, folks, you can’t just “stop by” Farmer Bob’s on your way to bingo and buy a leg and a pound of guts.

In the US, all flesh commercially sold requires inspection and certification via a slaughterhouse. While farmers can kill and consume their “own” animals, it’s illegal to sell their body parts to others.

What’s really (angeringly) interesting is that you’ll NEVER see farmers or industry shills correcting misinformation. No, instead they fuel it with ludicrous, “We love the animals, they’re like our children!!!”

Yikes.

Imagine the absolute betrayal animals experience at the violent hands of their “parents”.

Ah, LB from Minneapolis nobly participates in abject animal suffering because LB is concerned about “poor people”: “I really, really hate abusing animals, but I’m forced to eat dead animals to help poor people…………..”

I wonder if LB smokes and also encourages other people to smoke to sustain tobacco farmers? They have families to feed, too, right?

Honestly.

Caring about poor people doesn’t require animal abuse, that’s just the desperate position you take to garner social approval for being pro-violence. Not one utterance of shock at the violence you cause, LB, just vague references excusing it because “other people tho”; and not actively condemning animal exploitation by being vegan DOES defend factory farming. The entire world loves to object to factory farms on the internet but even with such global condemnation, they still exist “producing” >90% of animals violently killed globally for consumption each year. Someone’s fibbing, LB. Shocker.

And let’s be honest: it’s actually privileged to believe others’ bodies belong to you and abuse and kill them for that belief.

And empathy is free. Use it!

Zero antivegans care about poor people, migrant workers, people who live in food deserts, or quinoa farmers in Peru until vegans enter the room. Then they turn into snot-sobbing humanitarians who boldly sacrifice ethics and exploit other people’s tragedies and negative experiences to (attempt to) legitimatize eating violence (while also ignoring that the largest consumer segment of plant-based food are people who also eat animals).

You can care about animals and humans. At the same time. I do, why can’t you?

A pound of “ground beef” would cost about $35 minus subsidies, how about you stop exploiting animals and use those dollars in a more worthwhile manner? Because rather than admit that you don’t need to support animal abuse, you deflect by instead pretending that violence against animals is ok based on “my (fake) hurty feelings about poor people tho” and criticize people who support animal rescue.

And by the way, when people exploit “poor people” to (attempt to) legitimatize their personal contribution to animal suffering, they’re suggesting that poor people are incapable of being vegan and minimizing animal suffering. And THAT’S offensive. SL

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

USA: Opinion – Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal.

Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal

Opinion | Rescuing Farm Animals From Cruelty Should Be Legal – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

For about six weeks in the summer of 2021, an activist working with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, gained undercover access to one of the largest chicken slaughterhouses in California, a Foster Farms facility in the Central Valley city of Livingston.

Using hidden infrared cameras that can see in the dark, the DxE activist captured video showing a production line moving too quickly — about 140 chickens are killed every minute on each of the four slaughtering lines in Livingston — to offer any kind of humane death for the animals. Live birds are seen thrown, crushed, left for dead and suffocated under piles of dead birds. Some aren’t properly stunned before they’re killed. And while the DxE footage doesn’t show this, inspectors working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture have reported seeing evidence that birds at the Livingston facility had been dunked alive in a boiling water tank for defeathering.

Foster Farms denies any wrongdoing; in a statement, a spokesman told me that allegations of inhumane treatment “are without merit and a disservice to the thousands of Foster Farms team members that are dedicated to providing millions of families in the Western United States and beyond with a quality nutritious product.”

But the footage presents an ethical challenge to a society that claims to care for animal welfare: What should happen to people who try to save these chickens?

Two DxE activists, Alexandra Paul and Alicia Santurio, will go on trial next month on charges of misdemeanor theft for taking two chickens from a truck outside the Livingston slaughterhouse in September 2021. They argue that what they did was not steal but rescue — that after trying other ways to protect chickens at the Livingston facility, they took the only option left to them, no different from breaking a window to rescue a puppy locked in a hot car.

Over the past few years, DxE has conducted a string of such open rescues, in which activists record themselves, often in daylight, taking a small number of chickens, pigs, beagles and other animals from facilities where they have documented inhumane treatment. In addition to saving the lives of the animals, the rescues are an attempt to provoke law enforcement into pursuing criminal trials against the rescuers — trials in which the activists want to publicize the unseen brutality that pushed them to act.

Their larger goal is to establish a right to rescue animals that face inhumane treatment in agriculture. In any context other than factory farming, treating animals the way we see chickens treated in the Foster Farms slaughterhouse videos would be considered blatant cruelty. Many would also consider it cruel to stand by while someone else handled animals this way. “If there’s someone in my neighborhood watching me boil birds alive, we’d say this is monstrous behavior,” Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DxE, told me.

Shouldn’t the same be true of animals we’re going to eat? Don’t we have a moral obligation to do whatever we can to save animals from inhumane factory-farming facilities, or at the very least, to not punish people who try to help?

I’m not a vegan or even a vegetarian, but as I’ve written before, vegans and animal rights activists deserve society’s immense respect rather than mockery because they are clearly right about the big issues: that industrial-scale animal farming is an incomprehensible cruelty many of us try our best not to think about, lest it ruin our lunch; that the animals we grow to eat are biologically no less complex and deserving of dignity and humane treatment than the animals we keep as pets; and that the production of cheap and plentiful meat has been an environmental and public health catastrophe whose obvious solution — eat less meat! — nevertheless remains culturally and politically verboten.

In these rescues, activists are again putting themselves on the line to establish a worthy principle.

They may succeed, too. Last fall, a Utah jury acquitted Hsiung and another DxE activist, Paul Darwin Picklesimer, of burglary and theft for taking two sick piglets from a farm owned by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of pork. Even though the judge in the case barred much evidence of animal cruelty from being shown, jurors accepted the activists’ essential argument that they were rescuing animals, not stealing.

These cases turn the abstract suffering of farm animals into questions about specific animals suffering in specific ways. The pigs rescued from Smithfield were visibly severely ill. According to DxE, one of the chickens taken from Foster Farms died within days of the rescue, and the other required intensive veterinary care to recover. The one who died was given the name Ethan. Jax, the chicken who survived, is at a sanctuary in California. Even meat lovers don’t want to eat sick animals.

DxE submitted its Foster Farms findings to law enforcement and animal welfare authorities. California’s animal cruelty laws make it a felony to subject an animal to “needless suffering” or “unnecessary cruelty” or to cause it to be “cruelly killed.” While there is an exception that allows animals to be killed for food, there’s nothing in the law that exempts farm animals from humane treatment; it is just as illegal in California to mistreat a chicken at a slaughterhouse as a kitten in your house.

But DxE says it has no knowledge that officials took any action in response. Paul told me she felt that she had no choice but to personally rescue any birds that she could. She says she has turned down a plea deal that would have involved no jail time; if convicted, she could face up to six months in jail.

“I want to go to trial because I want to elevate the stories of these chickens,” Paul told me. She added that “the only reason that people know what’s happening to animals in these places — in factory farms, in labs or behind circus doors — is because of animal rights activists.”

For that reason alone, they should be praised, not punished.

Regards Mark

Poland: Fox Farming in Europe: Investigation on Polish Fur Farm Reveals Dark Reality for Foxes.

Fox farming in Europe: Investigation on Polish fur farm reveals dark reality for foxes

15 February 2023

Essere Animali

A new investigation released by Essere Animali has documented the conditions for foxes farmed for their fur in Europe. Foxes were shown to be confined in cramped and dilapidated individual cages, with poor access to food and water and without any enrichment.

The footage was obtained in February 2023 in Poland, Europe’s leading country for mink breeding for fur production and second for fox breeding, after Finland.

The videos collected in Poland by Essere Animali show:

● Foxes with stereotypical behaviour compulsively circling inside individual battery-operated cages, banging against the metal walls;

● Dirty, bare battery cages with no environmental enrichment;

● Cages with a floor made entirely of wire mesh, totally unsuitable for the animals and a source of additional pain to the paws;

● Poor systems for watering and feeding the animals: in the cages, the only way to water the animals is a single iron cup per animal and almost all the cups were empty when they entered the farm;

● A fox with health problems in its muzzle and mouth, which had very swollen gums due to hereditary hyperplastic gingivitis: this is a genetic disease that affects foxes selected for fur production and makes their condition much worse due to unhealthy life on farms. It often results in the premature slaughter of the animals.

Fur Free Europe is already a record-breaking initiative, demonstrating people’s sensitivity on this issue, but it is still important that thousands of citizens sign the European Citizens’ Initiative, thus showing the European Commission how urgent it is to legislate to protect these animals and ban the production, import and trade of fur in Europe. In these farms, all natural behaviours are denied to the animals, in no way different from our pets, and we cannot but ask ourselves if ethically we can still accept this. Our answer is obviously no: in a world in which we have so many more sustainable alternatives to animal furs and numerous brands that have decided to abandon fur, it is time to turn the page for good and also show manufacturers a better and more futuristic path, free of animal exploitation.

Brenda Ferretti – Campaigns Manager, Essere Animal

The documented conditions show the extreme and repressive confinement to which foxes are subjected. These animals have a complex social life in the wild, form pairs and family groups, and are used to digging dens with numerous tunnels and moving in a very large radius. Red foxes are able to walk up to 10 km a day, while arctic foxes in migratory seasons cover up to 100 km in a single period.

All of this is denied on farms, which do not guarantee any possibility for animals to express their natural behaviour.

The investigation is part of the Fur Free Europe European Citizens’ Initiative, which in just over nine months has collected more than 1.5 million signatures from European citizens who want to see an end to cruel, unnecessary and unethical fur production.

The signature collection will continue until 1 March 2023. Do you support this initiative? Sign now. 

All for the sake of a rich bitch fur hag !

Regards Mark

Fur Hag.

Italy: New Report Reveals the Minimal Cost of Fish Welfare.

New report reveals the minimal cost of fish welfare

14 February 2023

Essere Animali

A new report by Essere Animali finds that stunning fish before slaughter in aquaculture could have very little impact on production costs.

The Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry has developed a new “Sustainable Aquaculture” certification scheme in collaboration with sector associations. Unfortunately, key elements affecting the welfare of farmed fish are not addressed by the certification, despite the fact that the EU Strategic Guidelines for Aquaculture 2021-2030 treat animal welfare as an independent and priority topic.

According to Essere Animali, the most glaring shortcoming of the certification scheme is that, in total contradiction to the developmental directions taken by international regulations and certification standards, the Ministry’s specifications do not include the requirement for effective stunning before slaughter, effectively failing to guarantee animal welfare even during the end-of-life phases.

Currently, the vast majority of fish bred in Italy are subject to slaughtering practices that seriously affect the welfare of these animals. For example, sea bass and sea bream are commonly stunned by immersion in mixtures of ice and water, where, due to the thermal shock, they are immobilised even though it can take up to 40 minutes before they lose consciousness. 

Stunning methods more respectful of fish welfare already exist and, as the report produced by Essere Animali in collaboration with Animal Ask shows, applying them would have little impact on the production price.

For trout, the use of effective stunning methods would only account for 3% of the total production costs and would lead to an increase in the production price of 6 € cents/kg.

The same applies to sea bass and sea bream, where the use of effective stunning methods would only account for 1.2% of production costs with an increase in the production price of around 6 € cents/kg.

Selene Magnolia / We Animals Media

Even taking into account the initial investments needed to purchase the machinery, the increases in the production price would still be manageable (16 cents/kg for trout and 11 cents/kg for sea bream and sea bass), without considering that these investments could be financed within the 340 million euro coming to Italian aquaculture in the 2021-2027 plan of the Common Fisheries Policy, whose objective is precisely to support the development of systems with better animal welfare standards and more value for production.

The figures are similar to those in the European Commission’s own study from 2017 which found that stunning would increase the cost of seabass and seabream in Greece by around 5 cents/kg, and reduce the cost of trout in Italy by around 6 cents/kg.

By the end of 2023, the European Commission will present a package of four new proposals including a regulation on animals at the time of killing. This regulation is an opportunity to finally deliver European-wide rules for more humane stunning and slaughter provisions for fish.

Apart from the obvious shortcomings during the breeding stages, it is particularly serious that the certification does not even guarantee fish the reduction of suffering at the time of slaughter, an element that has been guaranteed for years to terrestrial species and on which there is already a European Regulation not fully implemented in our country. The European Commission has officially recognised that farmed fish need greater protection and it is extremely worrying to see not only that these indications seem not to be implemented in the ‘Sustainable Aquaculture’ specification, but that this has major negative repercussions for both fish and consumers, who are not fully guaranteed clear and transparent information.

Elisa Bianco, head of Essere Animali’s Corporate Engagement office

Download the reports for Italy and Greece below. 

Economic evaluation of humane slaughter methods for farmed fish in Italy

File

Italy_Humane Slaughter for Farmed Fish_0.pdf6.33 

Regards Mark

USA: Ok we got it wrong – Bill Targets Removing Injured Livestock After Not-Guilty Verdict Against Animal Rights Activists.

Bill targets removing injured livestock after not-guilty verdict against animal rights activists

A bill currently before the Utah Legislature would narrow the scope of legal defenses available to people accused of theft for removing injured or sick livestock from farms and ranches.

As introduced by Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, HB114 would amend state statutes to prevent defendants accused of theft from using the defense they removed livestock because the animals were sick, injured or were a liability to the owner. The bill would only apply to livestock, not dogs or other domestic pets.

Albrecht’s bill, which cleared the House last Friday by a 65-4 vote, is a direct response to a Washington County jury’s unanimous decision in St. George’s 5th District Court in October to acquit two animal-rights activists of all charges brought against them for removing two sick piglets from Circle Four Farms in 2017.

Continue reading at:

Bill targets removing injured livestock after not-guilty verdict against animal rights activists (msn.com)

Regards Mark

4.5 Tonnes of Cocaine Found on a Ship Carrying 1,750 Cows. Again, We Call for a Ban to Live Animal Exports.

Photo AIS / Marine Traffic.

4.5 tonnes of cocaine found on a ship carrying 1,750 cows

8 February 2023

AWF

On 28 January, the ORION V, a vessel bound for the Middle East from Colombia, was arrested off the Canary Islands: 4.5 tonnes of cocaine were found on board.

After 9 days at sea, the boat was stopped for over 56 hours and a large part of the crew was arrested. The rest of the crew was authorised to go to Algeria, as the animals were not allowed to stay in the European Union.

The 4.5 tonnes of cocaine were disguised as animal feed. National Police and Customs Surveillance Service have suspect that drugs have been transported on board the ORION V since 2020.

The vessel is closely linked to both drug trafficking and animal welfare/human health issues:

In June 2020, during a drug raid, the police noticed 5,000 cattle from Colombia in alarmingly bad condition.

The ship was overloaded and dirty, the animals were emaciated, and some were already dead. They were exported to Egypt without any veterinarian treatment. The drug raid had to be cancelled because the drug dogs could not work due to the ammonia smell.

In September 2021, three workers inhaled a toxic gas emitted from the cattle feed on board the vessel. Two were injured, one died.

Like most livestock vessels, the ORION V is very old and not suitable for animal exports. The makeshift solutions, sharp edges, sloping sides and dirty bedding pose serious dangers to the animals.

The fact that this trade is being targeted by drug smugglers is yet another wake-up call to ban cruel live exports once and for all.

The European Union needs a fundamental change in its agricultural policy. Long-distance transports of live animals must end. Exporting live animals and accepting their cruel slaughter in third countries is not compatible with the values ​​of the European Union.”

Maria Boada-Saña, veterinarian and project manager at Animal Welfare Foundation e.V.

We have obtained the following additional information:

What kind of ship is this?

ORION V (IMO: 7300992) is a Livestock Carrier that was built in 1973 (50 years ago) and is sailing under the flag of Togo.

Her carrying capacity is 4054 t DWT and her current draught is reported to be 6 meters. Her length overall (LOA) is 97.31 meters and her width is 16.24 meters.

Regards Mark