Category: Farm Animals
| You’ve made a little sun bear’s one andonly wish come true.
Thank you, Mark! Thanks to your generosity, our emergency rescue team and I arrived at Aurora’s side on Monday. There, we were met with this pitiful, gut-wrenching sight…
Aurora has had a very sad and lonely life. This disgusting cage had been her entire world for 15 long and painful years.
I’ve been travelling with Aurora on the 4-day journey back to the sanctuary, and she is truly breaking all of our hearts… Every sight and sound fills her little heart with fear. How terrifying the world must be for a bear who has been in solitary confinement for so very long. After a life of eating nothing but cold congee soup, she is struggling with food. When we offered her watermelon and pineapple, she didn’t seem to know what to do with them. But slowly, she’s beginning to get the hang of it…
Aurora, unsurprisingly, is deeply traumatised by her 15 year ordeal. She has many months and even years of intensive veterinary care and rehabilitation ahead of her. But in the past week, Aurora has experienced more love and kindness than she’s known in her entire life. Thank you for giving this sad little sun bear a second chance. We couldn’t do this without you. With warming sun bear hugs, Tuan Bendixsen, PS This time last week, Aurora didn’t have a single friend in the world. But today, she has you. If you haven’t had a chance to donate to Aurora yet, could you send a gift today? You could help Aurora heal the wounds of her sad past. Donate now >>
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Is there actually meat from “animal welfare”?
“Good farm idyl” – does not exist, and despite new meat seal apply in practice hardly improvements in animal husbandry.
Consumers increasingly reject cheap meat from factory farming, so discounters and supermarkets increasingly resort to tricks.
“My butchery”, Aldi (the well-known food chain) advertises, and sells a special XXL crust roast! But who now believes that the “butcher” is right in the neighborhood, is wrong.
And Penny’s chain store “Mühlenhof” does not exist either. The logo of the sausage manufacturer “Rügenwalder mill” is a mill with red sausages as wings. Beware of advertising terms such as “from the region” or “from here”; because the term “region” is not protected by law. Recently, the discounters advertise with new meat seals, but even here there are hardly any improvements in animal husbandry.
And indeed, under German Trademark Law, it’s perfectly legal to sell products under a farm name as a product “from the region”, even if they’re not from there.
The German food trade is dominated by the so-called Big Four. Only four major food companies account for 85% of the sales market. This overweight gives them the power over the consumers, because most Germans buy their food there, attracted by cheap offers.
Where does the food for the fattening animals come from?
Soybean meal is the most important feed for intensive meat production. And it is also the most important agricultural import product for the European Union. 80 to 90 percent of soybean seed imported into Germany goes into meat production, the rest into milk production.
Most soya imports come from South America, especially from Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. In these countries, the savannas are now being cleared to create new crops. The animal mast in Germany is therefore also concentrated in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, because the feed can be landed in the large North Sea ports and the way to the farmers is short.
Where should so much “better meat” come from?
The area between Oldenburg ( in Lower Saxony) and Rheda-Wiedenbrück in North Rhine-Westphalia is Germany’s largest slaughterhouse. Every year, 3.5 million tons of pork, 900,000 tons of poultry and 400,000 tons of beef are produced here.
Slaughtering means cutting the throat, hanging it up, drilling the rectum, skining it, cutting it up, cutting it up, packing it.
It is hard to imagine: around 1400 pigs are slaughtered and dissected in the Rheda-Wiedenbrück factory at Europe’s largest meat processor Tönnies. Not during the day, but in an hour. That’s more than 22,000 animals per day. Instead of 26,000 pigs, Tönnies plans to slaughter 30,000 animals per day in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (a small town in the east of Germany).
Finally, what one wants to sell to us as meat from “animal welfare” looks like this in reality: In these animal factories, 5,000 pigs are controlled by one person. The animals are crowded. Their tails are cut and their teeth are ground down, otherwise they will bite each other’s tails out of boredom, get sick and need antibiotics. After a short life they are then slaughtered by modern slaves. These are mostly Bulgarians or Romanians, who bring the animals from their lives to death for 4.50 euros an hour at an insane pace!
https://netzfrauen.org/2018/12/12/fleisch-3/#more-58555
My comment: In the world of animal husbandry, meat production is often considered the lesser evil. We are pretty cleverly manipulated to combine milk and meat production with luck. Cow cartoons on yogurt cups are always smiling, dairy cows have their own commercials where they literally sing and dance with joy.
However, the dairy and meat industry has become a criminal enterprise in which animals are treated like objects. Consumers who want to do something good for their conscience and therefore buy meat “from the farmer” are cheated and ripped off because they pay a high price for an ‘animal welfare’ that is both legally and economically ignored and therefore does not exist
“Consumers are to business what voters are to politics.” Jim Turner, American business journalist.
My best regards, Venus
We have been fighting to get a ban on farrowing crates being used in UK farming practices.
We are happy with the response provided by DEFRA below; and although we all wish for quicker times, we accept that it does take time to phase out existing equipment.
We supported:
Ban the use of farrowing crates in the UK
Farrowing crates, profoundly similar to sow crates which were banned in the UK in 1999, are long, narrow crates in which sows are contained during gestation. It’s still legal to use farrowing crates in spite of them having the same implications to animal welfare as the sow/gestation crates.
Pigs are intelligent, sentient beings and these crates deny their natural behaviours. This frustration can be displaced to damaging abnormal behaviours such as self-mutilation due to the intensive conditions. Farrowing crates severely restrict the sow’s movement and deny them the instinctual urge to build a nest, worsening their frustrations. Having been made illegal in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, we should follow this route of progression to maintain our reputation for good animal welfare.
————————————–
UK Government Ministry DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has responded to us with the following:
Dear Mark Johnson – Founder ‘World Animals Voice’,
The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Ban the use of farrowing crates in the UK”.
Government responded:
The Government aims to make farrowing crates unnecessary. Alternative farrowing systems in indoor production are insufficiently advanced. Approximately 60% of UK sows are in farrowing crates.
The Government shares the public’s high regard for animal welfare and we are committed to being a world leader in the care and welfare of animals.
Comprehensive animal welfare laws already exist to protect livestock, including pigs. The Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulation 2007 (WOFAR) equally protects the welfare of the sow, as well as her piglets. It permits the use of farrowing crates. The majority of sows are housed in farrowing crates from approximately five days before they are due to give birth, until their piglets are weaned at 28 days of age.
After this period, they must be moved back to loose/group housing accommodation in which they are free to turn round easily. Both nesting material for sows and the need to provide environmental enrichment materials for all pigs are a requirement in WOFAR. Comparable legislation exists in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Government’s aim is to reach a point where traditional farrowing crates in indoor production are a thing of the past and where any new system protects the welfare of the sow, as well as her piglets. Government funded research has been undertaken by Scotland’s Rural College and the University of Newcastle, to develop and test commercially viable farrowing systems which do not closely confine the sow but provide adequate protection to piglets. This research has shown that some such alternative systems seem promising in an experimental environment, but it remains the case that results need to be replicated consistently under commercial conditions, as piglet mortality is still too high. Research is continuing to develop the system to try to improve piglet survival further.
As part of the Government’s animal welfare reform programme, the statutory pig welfare code is being updated and enhanced to safeguard the welfare of pigs, in line with the most recent scientific and veterinary advice. Pig keepers are required by law to have access to and be familiar with the code.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
UK Government and Parliament
Thousands of farm animals die in barn fires, and no one seems to care
When a barn catches fire, it can have disastrous consequences for the livestock trapped inside.
“The animals have no chance to escape. I mean, how do you evacuate 5,000 pigs or 60,000 chickens?” said Vicki Fecteau, the director of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals.
She said the immense scale of modern farming and the giant barns required mean the casualties are often enormous.
Fecteau spoke to Michael Enright, host of The Sunday Edition, about the coalition’s efforts to raise awareness about the toll barn fires take on the lives of animals.
Between January 2015 and October 2018, 610,000 farm animals died in barn fires in Canada.
Fecteau said society has a blind spot when it comes to the wellbeing of livestock.
For example, she said, there was international media coverage when 43 racehorses died in an Ontario barn fire in 2016.
“That very same week 50,000 ducks died in a fire in Quebec and that did not make the news at all. It may have made a local paper but, you know there was really no news about that at all.”
· Lessons learned at Classy Lane Stables in wake of devastating barn fire
Fecteau said people are very responsive when companion animals — including horses — are hurt or killed, but not livestock.
Vicki Fecteau says the media rarely takes notice when livestock are killed in barn fires. (John Ulan/University of Alberta)
The problem is not just the size of modern barns, but their susceptibility to fires.
Ontario’s Agriculture Ministry reports that 40 per cent of barn fires in that province are related to electrical problems.
Fecteau said the environment in barns is very harsh on electrical systems, causing the equipment to deteriorate and malfunction.
“There are corrosive gases like ammonia […] and hydrogen sulphide from animal waste. They have high humidity levels. There’s a lot of dust.”
The coalition is now working with the government to try and increase the use of fire detection systems in barns in Canada.
Fecteau said installing fire systems is expensive for farmers, but they also lead to lower insurance premiums.
Time Out – Mark is a guitar hero here in the UK – ex Dire Straits frontman.
Some great footage to support the music – Enjoy.
A long road for many animals in long distance transport today.
Calf photos – Val Cameron.
Talking of the EU; please check out our recent post re foie gras production in the EU:
EU to review animal welfare strategy
By Peter Teffer
The European Commission is going to evaluate its animal welfare strategy, it has said in response to a report by the European Court of Auditors published on Wednesday (14 November).
The review of the strategy comes almost three years after the European Parliament asked for it.
The auditors said in their report that animal welfare in the EU has improved, but that member states were slow to implement recommendations from the commission.
One example of slow implementation was found in France.
In 2010, the EU commission had recommended that French inspectors use better equipment to check conditions of animals’ environment on farms and during transport.
According to French legal requirements already in place since 2000, inspectors were supposed to have specialised equipment to make measurements.
“The French authorities had not, however, procured all the required equipment by the time of our audit,” the auditors wrote.
“During our visit to a laying hens farm certified as free-range, where the presence of ammonia inside the building was evident, the French inspector did not have the necessary equipment to measure the level of gas concentration. The inspector noted in the inspection report that the related requirement had been met,” they added.
Following the auditors’ visit, French authorities told the EU commission in spring 2018 that they had bought measurement equipment.
“However, inspectors were only asked to use this on farms raising chickens for meat,” the report said.
Meanwhile, Romania had been told several times between 2009 and 2011 that it needed to have legal sanctions in place for those who broke EU animal welfare rules.
“At the time of our audit, the Romanian authorities had not yet approved the necessary changes in the legislation to apply such sanctions,” said the report.
Above – A Calf peers out of a veal crate which should have been banned in the EU 6 years earlier !!
A review, finally
The EU’s animal welfare strategy was published in 2012, and was specifically designed for the period 2012-2015.
However, some of the proposed measures were delayed until after 2015, and the commission has not published a new strategy paper since.
On 26 November 2015, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution urging the commission “to evaluate the existing strategy and to draw up a new and ambitious strategy for the protection and welfare of animals for the 2016-2020 period in order to build on the work of the previous strategy and ensure the continuation of a framework for delivering high animal welfare standards across the member states”.
In March 2016, a group of northern and western European ministers also called for new rules to improve animal welfare standards.
The European Court of Auditors said in a report out on Wednesday that the commission had not assessed if the strategy had achieved its goals.
“There are no baseline indicators or target indicators to measure how far the strategy objectives have been achieved and the commission had not yet evaluated the results of its actions as requested by the European parliament,” said the report.
In response, the commission acknowledged that, and said that it planned to perform an evaluation of the strategy.
“Its actions have not yet been evaluated since they were completed only by early 2018, and therefore, the impact of all actions has not yet materialised,” the commission said.
Improvements, but slowly
The report stated that there were “still some significant discrepancies between the animal welfare standards established in the EU legislation and the reality on the ground”.
They audited the situation in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania.
“The member states visited generally followed the European Commission’s recommendations, sometimes took a long time to address them,” auditor Janusz Wojchiechowski told journalists in a briefing on Tuesday.
He did not want to say whether the commission should introduce a new animal welfare strategy.
“This is not our role, to suggest or recommend to have a new strategy,” he noted.
The report stated that some of the measures announced in the 2012 strategy, like the publication of EU guidelines on the protection of animals during transport had been delayed by up to five years.
Below – Live exports of animals from the UK to France by Dutch convicted criminals !
Above – Germany – A piglet is castrated without any veterinary involvement or use of medication.
“The guidelines on pig welfare and on the protection of animals at slaughter were also delayed due to lengthy discussions with stakeholders,” the report said.
“Most reports were based on external studies, which were sometimes delayed due to lack of staff at the commission to manage the procurement process and review draft content,” it continued.
Further reading of our posts relating to EU lack of involvement for EU animal welfare issues:
https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/08/give-us-today-our-daily-meat/
https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/06/pissing-in-the-rain/
https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/12/01/hungary-eu-more-evidence-to-show-why-the-eu-cannot-enforce-its-own-legislation-regarding-animals-and-their-welfare/
https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2018/11/27/england-dutchman-onderwater-exports-scottish-calves-from-ramsgate-plus-more-info/
Junker – Mr all talk and do nothing.
Help consumers take cruelty away from EU’s Xmas buffet
By Michel Vandenbosch and Reineke Hameleers
BRUSSELS, 10. Dec, 15:02
Only five out of 28 EU member states continue to force-feed birds for the production of foie gras – a broadly-acknowledged cruel and inhumane practice.
An overwhelming majority of EU citizens expect the EU to offer better protection for farm animals and 23 EU countries no longer accept force-feeding.
On 26th November, 79 MEPs formally prompted the commission to take its responsibilities by engaging to take firm action on a topic so many EU citizens feel strongly about, and committing to a meeting with MEPs at short term.
In January such meeting was promised for “early this year”, but a date has never been fixed.
With Christmas approaching, retailers’ windows fill themselves with festive products including end-of-year high end ‘delicacies’ such as the fatty goose or duck liver foie gras.
Because of the tricky requirement of minimum liver weights introduced in EU legislation as recently as 1991 and contained in Regulation 543/2008, foie gras is systematically the result of ‘gavage’, or force-feeding.
This means producers force tubes down geese’s and duck’ throats and pump the birds’ stomachs with more grain over the course of a couple of weeks than they would normally eat in a lifetime.
Extrapolated to our own body, this would equate to the ingestion of 20kg of spaghetti every single day by a human being.
As a result, their liver pathologically grows up to 10 times bigger, with large deposits of fat.
Incapable of moving or even breathing normally, the animals face constant pain and infections loom.
It is therefore no surprise that 23 EU member states have already banned this practice, which they rightly consider as animal abuse.
The 2016 special Eurobarometer on animal welfare showed that 94 percent of EU citizens think protecting the welfare of farmed animals is important and 82 percent think they should be better protected by the EU than they are now.
Interestingly, alternatives exist and are widely embedded across the EU member states where the practice was banned.
But for such alternatives to really root in the market, we now need to see some legislative change, which is what 79 MEP’s formally called for at the end of November through a written question to Commissioners Hogan and Andriukaitis in the European Parliament.
It is not the first time MEPs call on the Commission to act on this issue, however this question exceeds all previous actions by the quantity of parliamentarians it rallied and feasibility of its simple call to action.
This written question was promoted by a diverse group of MEPs: Marlene Mizzi (S&D, MT), Sirpa Pietikäinen (EPP, FI), Mark Demesmaeker (ECR, BE), Petras Auštrevičius (ALDE, LT), Pascal Durand (Greens, FR), and Anja Hazekamp (GUE, NL).
The EU has uncontested animal welfare laws, such as directive 58/98, applying to farming practices stating among others that “No animal shall be provided with food or liquid in a manner, nor shall such food or liquid contain any substance, which may cause unnecessary suffering or injury.”
This clearly rules out the acceptability of forced feeding.
Nevertheless, in open contradiction with such requirements, regulation 543/2008 imposes minimum weights on the livers of ducks and geese, which can be reached only by force-feeding the birds, in order to be allowed to market such products as foie gras.
Today, only five EU countries continue to allow force-feeding in foie gras production, namely France, Hungary, Bulgaria, Spain, and Belgium (Wallonia only).
79 Parliamentarians representing the seven main political groups and all 28 member states have demonstrated, in the second-most-signed parliamentary question of this term, that EU citizens no longer want pockets of tolerated animal cruelty to exist in the way farmed animals are reared for our food.
They have strongly made the case that the marketing regulation on foie gras is an unjustified barrier preventing products of higher morality to prosper and gradually allow consumers to create market opportunities for foie gras production without force-feeding, based on their preference and ethical values.
As long as the requirement of minimum liver weights is maintained, foie gras production is bound to produce huge animal suffering.
This is why, jointly with 79 MEPs, we call on commissioner Hogan and commissioner Andriukaitis, in reflection of today’s European public moral, article 13 TFEU and the will of the EU citizens, to support a simple, cost-free proposal – deleting the requirement of minimum liver weights contained in Regulation 543/2008 – that would empower consumers to drive change.
Michel Vandenbosch is president of Global Action in the Interest of Animals (GAIA) and Reineke Hameleers is director of Eurogroup for Animals
Disclaimer: This article is sponsored by a third party. All opinions in this article reflect the views of the author and not of EUobserver
Source – https://euobserver.com/stakeholders/143651
WAV Comment
As we have often said and shown, the EU is NOT enforcing its own legislation.
The ‘club’ that means nothing and wields no power.
Another reason why the UK wants to break free from this farce that is called the EU club – a club that wants to pretend that all is well whilst the animal abuse continues all day, every day. People like Junker and Tusk should be ashamed of themselves; not place themselves on the high platforms that they do.
Mr Junker – Useless, like the rest of his club.
Published on 24 Jun 2011
Many of these exported calves will be reared in conditions that would be illegal in the UK.
Sheep exported for slaughter often travel in cramped trucks, sometimes with failed water tanks and ventilation systems.
Some of these animals may die during their dreadful journey.
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/
World Animals Voice 