Category: General News

General News

Who else is interested in WHO?

Today (February 9, 2021), the World Health Organization (WHO) wrapped up its investigation in China into the origins of COVID-19.

According to reports, the WHO’s team of experts from 10 countries concluded that it’s “highly unlikely” the virus leaked from a nearby laboratory, and is most likely to have jumped from a non-human animal to a human.

WET MARKETS: The WHO team spent time researching a particular market in Wuhan, but has not yet determined the specific animal or location where the virus first jumped from animals to humans.
However, judging from the significant role that animal farming has played in the mutation of respiratory diseases in the past decade, it would be no surprise if live animal markets, also known as wet markets, played a role (!!) in the evolution of the virus from animals to humans.

Last year, with the help of local Chinese activists, our investigators went to wet markets in China and documented that, despite promises from the government, many of these live animal markets were still operating business as usual.

Footage reveals living and dead animals in close proximity to humans and in extreme confinement and unsanitary conditions—the perfect breeding ground for zoonotic diseases to emerge.
Now, over half a million people have signed our petition asking the United Nations to call for a ban on wet markets that sell live and dead animals.
Not only are wet markets that sell and slaughter animals extremely dangerous, but they’re also horrific places for the animals who are kept in squalor and killed typically without stunning and in full view of each other.

INDUSTRIAL FARMS: Like wet markets, industrial farms pose a great risk to public safety and are a living nightmare for the animals in them.
While COVID-19 may not have started on a farm, many other infectious diseases developed in humans as a result of animal agriculture, such as SARs, H1N1, Swine Flu, and Q Fever, to name a few.

And just recently, a new respiratory disease was discovered in The Netherlands that could’ve originated in goats. If animal cruelty alone isn’t enough, these deadly outbreaks should be a wake-up call for change.

It’s only a matter of time before the next pandemic originates from a factory farm, and there’s no telling how widespread it will become.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Whether in China or here in the United States, raising and killing animals for food is a dangerous and cruel business.

The good news is that we all have the power to help stop it.

Every time you choose a plant-based food option over an animal-derived one, you’re doing your part to reduce the demand, and thus reducing the number of animals held in extreme confinement on farms.

Now more than ever, going vegan is the best decision for humans, animals, and the future of our planet.

MAKE A CHANGE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

Try vegan and sign our Petition to close live-animal markets

https://animalequality.org/news/world-health-organization-concludes-covid-19-likely-jumped-from-animals-to-humans

And I mean…So it’s clear the virus did not come from a lab. Did they get any evidence of where it did come from?

Quote from the interview with NPR’s global health correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff in the NPR newspaper:“ So the team says the most likely hypothesis is that the virus started in a bat, jumped into an intermediate host, like a pangolin or mink, and then into humans. And exactly what animal that is and where that happened is still a big mystery. However, they said the pandemic did not start in the Huanan Seafood Market.

The virus was already circulating before then. And so they’re trying to figure out how the virus got to the market. And one possibility, they said, could be frozen foods “ (we have to stop eating pizza)

The interview ends like this: “This investigation has raised more questions than it has answered”.

Therefore we feel enlightened and safe, and we rely on research!

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965966786/world-health-organization-finishes-investigation-into-origins-of-covid-19

Nowadays, anyone who thinks they are well, comprehensively, and diversely informed is sleeping the sleep of the just.
In the medium and long term, a rude awakening is almost inevitable.

My best regards to all, Venus

General News, Vivisection

No, Elon Musk, there is nothing ‘cool’ about experimenting on animals – Musk has wired up a monkey’s brain with an implant to attempt to make it play video games with its mind !

 

No, Elon Musk, there is nothing ‘cool’ about experimenting on animals

Neuralink Corporation, a company Musk co-founded, has wired up a monkey’s brain with an implant to attempt to make it play video games with its mind – can this ever be acceptable?

 

Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, became the richest person in the world last month, according to Forbes. This week, he bought $1.5bn worth of Bitcoin, causing the price of the cryptocurrency to reach an all-time high. Love him or loathe him, what Musk does matters to millions. 

This is why it was so concerning to hear the news that Neuralink Corporation, a company Musk co-founded, has wired up a monkey’s brain with a tiny implant to attempt to make it play video games with its mind.

In a private speech given on the invitation-only social media app Clubhouse, Musk said: “One of the things we’re trying to figure out is whether we can have the monkeys playing mind pong with each other. That would be pretty cool.”

This is not the first time Neuralink Corporation has experimented on animals. The company has previously implanted wireless technologies into the brains of pigs. Musk described this as a “Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires”.

Despite the company’s claims that these experiments could help find cures for spinal cord injuries and neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, many other scientists are less convinced.

Sadly, Musk’s actions are hardly an isolated incident. They reflect an increase in the number of experiments on animals taking place, despite mounting public concern and a growth in alternative approaches to scientific research. At leading laboratories in the US, experimenting on animals has increased by a staggering 73 per cent in recent years, while more experiments on animals are conducted in the UK than in any other country in Europe. The latest government figures revealed a total of 3.4 million experiments were completed during 2019, with more than half of these performed in universities, often paid for by the taxpayer. 

Take the recent outcry in Edinburgh, where the university was accused of using the widely discredited “forced swim” test to research antidepressants. This is where animals are placed in beakers of water from which they cannot escape, literally giving them the choice of sink or swim. While it’s unclear what provoking a drowning experience in small animals can teach us about the difficulties humans face battling depression, these experiments did raise awareness of some of the creative but barbaric ways we still employ, pushing the limits of animals in the UK. 

The harmful use of animals in experiments is not only cruel but so often ineffective. In fact, 90 per cent of drugs that successfully pass the preceding animal tests fail in human trials. Animals do not get many of the human diseases that people do, such as major types of heart disease, many types of cancer, HIV, Parkinson’s disease, or schizophrenia. Often the symptoms have to be simulated, to then be tested on. As a result, fewer than five per cent of medicines tested on animals lead to approved treatments within 20 years. 

Analysis of 27 “breakthroughs” in the UK also revealed there was a high degree of exaggeration by animal researchers in their findings. Most do not result in anything useful. Sadly, this hasn’t stopped the UK being the second biggest tester of dogs in Europe, including weed killer tests performed on beagles. Beagles are particularly useful to experimenters because they are a very trusting breed towards humans. These tests are unnecessary, cruel and not supported by the British public.

Yet, as we have seen at Neuralink Corporation, animals are increasingly not being used even to test medical or domestic products. Fifty seven per cent of experiments in universities are now believed to be in the area of basic research, much of it driven by the “curiosity” of university researchers. It can be a vicious cycle – many scientists need to perform experiments to be published but the data they are using for comparison is based on animal testing. 

It is obvious we all need to ask questions about the direction we are heading in. There are still too many examples of animal experiments being conducted, even when validated non-animal methods are available that are often cheaper, quicker and in many cases, more accurate.  

Science has performed admirably during the Covid-19 crisis, but whether it is in British universities or Silicon Valley, we can all clearly do more when it comes to achieving human-relevant science without suffering. 

Dr Katy Taylor is the director of science at Cruelty Free International

No, Elon Musk, there is nothing ‘cool’ about experimenting on animals | The Independent

Enjoy ! – Regards Mark

Environmental, Farm Animals, Fur and Fur Farming, General News, Live Transport

News from around the world.

News from around the world

French president Emmanuel Macron has said Europe should grow its own soy and that to depend on Brazilian soy “would be to condone deforestation of the Amazon”. The EU is the second largest importer of Brazil’s agricultural products after China, and Brazil is seeking to expand exports with a trade deal with the EU. More than 1m tonnes of soya used by UK livestock farmers to produce chicken and other food could be linked to deforestation, according to Guardian reports last year.

Outbreaks of bird flu continue to be reported across Europe, with hundreds of cases in poultry in France, Germany and Poland. Sweden was reported to be planning to cull about 1.3 million chickens after bird flu was found on a farm. There have been more than 20 bird flu cases on commercial poultry farms in the UK with all birds, including free-range ones, now required to be housed indoors. In Asia, South Korea is reported to be culling 19 million poultry to control bird flu outbreaks in the country.

Denmark is offering more than £2bn in compensation to mink farmers following its decision to cull millions of animals over fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines. Denmark had been the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, but has now suspended farming of the animals until 2022. Sweden has also paused mink fur farming for a year, and there have been calls to ban the practice in Spain. A Covid-19 vaccine for mink could, however, soon be available to breeders. In the US, officials have recommended workers on US mink farms to be given the vaccine as a priority.

New strains of the deadly pig disease, African swine fever (ASF), have been discovered in China. The disease has destroyed a large chunk of the pork industry in the country since 2018, although it is reportedly recovering quickly. One beneficiary of the shortfall has been Spain, which reported a rise in pork exports to China in 2020. ASF has continued to spread in Europe, with 30,000 pigs culled after an outbreak on a farm in Romania.

Mealworms are sorted before being cooked in San Francisco
Yellow mealworm, a maggot-like insect, has been approved as safe for human consumption by the EU food safety agency. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP


Yellow mealworm, a maggot-like insect, has been approved as safe for human consumption by the EU food safety agency. Insects are seen as a source of protein with comparatively low associated greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest potential market is expected to be as animal feed for chickens, pigs and other livestock, rather than human food products.

Germany has approved a draft law banning the culling of male chicks from 2022. The government has been exploring the use of dual-purpose breeds of birds which can lay eggs and be reared for meat. It has also invested in technology to detect egg sex prior to hatching and dispose of male eggs earlier. Separately, an Israeli startup has announced that it is planning to go further and change the sex of poultry embryos as they develop, doing away with the need for disposal.

News from the UK

Non-stunned halal and kosher meat must be clearly labelled to give consumers the choice not to buy it, the British Veterinary Association (BVA) has said after a government review of slaughter regulations. More than 90 million cattle, sheep and poultry were slaughtered without being pre-stunned in England in 2018. There is no non-stun slaughter in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The BVA said animals not stunned before slaughter are “highly likely to suffer pain, suffering, and distress during the cut and bleeding”.

Egg producers have been left struggling after a collapse in wholesale trade during the pandemic. The difficulties in exporting post-Brexit have also added to a fall in wholesale prices despite positive retail sales. Some producers have warned the situation could lead to chickens being culled. One free-range producer has reported giving tens of thousands of eggs to food banks.

Pig farmers in Northern Ireland are to get more than £2m in government support after a Covid-19 outbreak among workers led to the closure of a food processing factory for two weeks last summer. The meat plant is reported to process about 10,000 animals a week. Some farmers faced additional penalties on overweight pigs. Production was also halted at Scotland’s biggest pork processing plant in Brechin in January after several workers tested positive for the virus.

The UK’s veterinary capacity is at risk post-Brexit, MPs from the environment, food and rural affairs select committee have warned. About 95% of official veterinarians, who undertake vital certification and supervision work in abattoirs, are EEA-qualified nationals. The sector faces an increased workload due to additional export checks, Covid and disease outbreaks such as bird flu.

New Zealand is backing the UK as it seeks to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose members also include Japan, Australia, Canada, Vietnam, Singapore and Mexico. The New Zealand meat industry has called for greater access to the UK market for its beef and lamb.

Finally, Kim, a 12-month-old Welsh-born sheepdog, has been sold for a world record £27,100. Although a Welsh speaker, the seller Dewi Jenkins said he trains his dogs in English to allow him to sell them across the world, including in the US, Norway, Belgium, France and Ireland.

 

Animals Farmed

A decade after an outbreak of Q fever killed 95 people in the Netherlands, there are worries about human cases of pneumonia linked to goat farms. The Q fever outbreak followed a period of rapid growth in goat dairying in the Netherlands and its aftermath heightened tensions around zoonotic disease threats, especially in the south of the country where the highest numbers of goat farms and infection rates were found.

Rabbits
Rabbits being skinned and dismembered at a slaughterhouse as featured in the photo essay: ‘Hidden lives: the animals behind the products we consume’. Photograph: Jo-Anne McArthur/Animal Equality

The EU has been revealed to be world’s biggest live animal exporter with more than 1.6 billion chickens, pigs, sheep, goats and cattle transported across a border in 2019.

In the UK, live farm animal exports to mainland Europe have come to a standstill post-Brexit. The UK government consultation on banning the export of animals for slaughter and fattening is due to end later this month.

Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, sourced cattle from supplier farms that made use of workers kept in slavery-like conditions, according to a new report. JBS said it had “a zero-tolerance approach to forced labour and also urge anyone who suspects or has evidence of individual or farm-level malpractice to report it”.

Outbreaks of African swine fever and Covid among workers in meat plants in Germany have raised questions over the consequences of the country’s fixation on “cheap meat”. In China, experts have questioned the effectiveness of new animal health rules in preventing another zoonotic disease outbreak. And news of plans to develop animal-only antibiotics has been criticised as a “techno-fix” for intensive farming practices.

A Welsh council has admitted it should not have granted planning permission for a 110,000-chicken farm in the “poultry capital of Wales” after campaigners crowdfunded a judicial review. Former free-roaming nomads in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, stuck between China’s push for more industrialised farms and Buddhist monks urging them to embrace vegetarianism. Finally, we’ve reported on the mounting death toll of people and animals in Nigeria as herders seeking dwindling reserves of pasture clash with farmers.

From the brilliant ‘Guardian’ (London) as always:

Animals farmed: insects for lunch, £2bn for mink farmers and the future of male chicks | Environment | The Guardian

Enjoy – Regards Mark

Fur and Fur Farming, General News

Sweden: 600 mink were freed from cages

From the Blog of “Animal Liberation Press Office”:

“According to media reports, 600 mink were freed from cages at a fur farm in Tingsryd during the night of January 22.

The same farm was raided by activists in September 2019.

We, Animal Liberation Press Office, have not received a statement in relation to the action, but you can read the report that was released after the action in 2019;

Sweden

In the early hours of September 3, 2019, all of the prisoners on a small mink farm in Hölkemåla, Blekinge, Sweden, escaped from the cages.

In total, about 1500 persons managed to get free.
We gave a helping hand by disassembling the fence of the farm and then opening all the cage doors. We removed parts of the fence using a wrench to ensure a way out.

Sweden-Mink farm

The fur farm was situated right next to a lake where we hope that as many as possible now get to live.

In a world where freedom exists only in moments of rebellion and insurrection, we still think that the possibility of life in the forest and lake is quite the opposite of that in a cage.

We do recognize that the already destroyed eco-systems and colonized nature is nothing like a dream, but since it is all that we have it is where we will go from our imprisoned existences.

Norway

A passion for freedom is what drove us to this hidden killing facility to increase freedom for all of us.

Our desire to share this moment of freedom with the minks is rooted in solidarity and love as well as anger and hatred towards those who dominate us and try to steal our lives.

We strongly believe that there is no limit to the things we can do, all we need is to make up our minds and pick a target”.

https://animalliberationpressoffice.org/NAALPO/2021/02/01/600-mink-liberated-from-swedish-fur-farm-tingsryd-sweden-2/

And I mean…The Swedish government decided on January 27, 2021, to ban fur farming in Sweden until the end of 2021.

On October 3, 2010, around 18,000 mink were released from a fur farm in Skillingaryd, Sweden. According to media reports, only 4,000 mink were recaptured and around 50 were run over by cars.

Sweden-2010

This means that around 14,000 mink have been given the chance to live in freedom.
Just one day later, on October 4th, another 4,000 mink were released at a facility near Vaggeryd, Sweden.
The action was one of the largest liberation actions in the history of the animal liberation movement.

In the same year, the largest animal liberation action in the history of the animal rights movement took place in Greece, where around 50,000 mink were freed from a farm

Since the Swedish animal rights organization Djurrattsalliansen published extensive research on fur farms in August 2010, the Swedish fur industry has been under enormous pressure, not least because of media interest.

Today, and thanks to Corona, the list of countries that have banned this cruel business is growing every day!

In Austria, Great Britain, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia, fur farms are prohibited by law.
A fur farming ban came into force in the Czech Republic in 2019

In the Netherlands, the second-largest mink producer in Europe that keeps chinchillas and foxes is already banned. The last mink farms should close in 2024 as the farms will close this year due to the coronavirus.

Then came Norway, Denmark …Only Finland persistently does the cruel business in the north.
In Germany, no more animals were kept on the last German fur farm in Rahden (North Rhine-Westphalia) in March 2019

Corona has dealt the last blow to this cruel business for a year.
Before that, however, it was also the economic losses caused by the direct exemption measures in fur farms that also contributed to the death of the fur industry.

Supported by our demos, petitions, and the educational work of the animal rights organizations

We sincerely thank the activists and wish those who have been liberated a long life in nature.

My best regards to all, Venus

General News

Idiots play “clowns” in front of vegan protesters

A pair of Melbourne pranksters have been slammed on social media after filming themselves eating KFC in front of vegan protesters.

Nick and Bill, who boast a following of more than 85,000 on TikTok, uploaded the video over the weekend.

As seen in the video above, the duo is seen eating fried chicken pieces and burgers in front of a group of protesters near the Royal Arcade in the CBD.

@nickandbill

Not all super heroes have capes #vegan #antivegan #veganteacher

♬ original sound – Nick and Bill

“Do you want a bite?” one of the boys is heard asking a protester at one point.

Two protesters are seen speaking to the boys in the video, as they scoff down burgers.

“I actually really appreciate these guys being here,” one protester is heard saying, “it’s creating a spectacle”.

The video has since been viewed more than three million times on TikTok, with users slamming the duo as “disrespectful”.

“This isn’t funny or cool, I’m not even vegan but it’s about respecting others,” one person commented.

One of the two clowns

“They’re not disrupting anyone and they were being polite why did (you) go out of your way to buy food and eat it in their face and film it, that’s weird,” another person wrote.

Despite the backlash, some hailed the pair “heroes”, while others said their “respect” for them increased after viewing the video.

But it’s not the first time the duo tried out the stunt.

In a video posted to TikTok in November, the pair were again seen eating KFC in front of protesters at what appeared to be the same location.

https://7news.com.au/news/vic/tiktok-pranksters-nick-and-bill-slammed-after-eating-kfc-in-front-of-vegan-protesters-c-2118997

And I mean…To call someone a hero just because they do the same thing as the other 7.8 billion carnivorous human animals on the planet is ridiculous.
And the carnivorous provocateurs show very little experience in the field.

Because they think that with two or three pieces of dead meat in the bag they can annoy or provoke the experienced demonstrators.
They take themselves very seriously, these flat-foot- carnivores.

My best regards to all, Venus

Environmental, Farm Animals, Fur and Fur Farming, General News

Sweden: Petition – BAN SWEDEN’S CRUEL AND DANGEROUS MINK FUR FARMS. Please Sign.
SIGN: Ban Sweden’s Cruel and Dangerous Mink Fur Farms
Image Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur

BAN SWEDEN’S CRUEL AND DANGEROUS MINK FUR FARMS

PETITION TARGET: Swedish Board of Agriculture

Deprived of their natural habitats, captively-bred mink languish on cruel fur farms in cramped, filthy cages from the day they’re born until the day they’re killed.

These solitary creatures pace restlessly, self-mutilate, and fight with their cage mates, all of which are telltale signs of severe psychological distress and trauma.

After a lifetime of cruel confinement and suffering, these defenseless mink are gassed, electrocuted, bludgeoned, or have their necks broken — all so their fur can be ripped from their bodies and manufactured into products.

Sweden — a major fur-producing country — has banned mink breeding until 2022 following COVID-19 outbreaks at mink farms throughout the world, joining a growing list of nations restricting the dangerous industry.

But the risk of zoonotic disease outbreak is always present at these farms, and a permanent ban is the only viable solution. For the sake of both animal welfare and public health, the torturous fur farming industry in Sweden must end.

Sign this petition urging the Swedish Board of Agriculture to permanently ban mink farming throughout the country.

Petition Link:  PETITION: Ban Dangerous Mink Farming in Sweden (ladyfreethinker.org)

General News

Paris: City Hall closes the archaic bird market

The Council of Paris voted to prohibit the sale of birds and other live animals, as the French capital’s famous bird market near Notre-Dame Cathedral faces closure over animal welfare concerns.

Paris-bird market

Paris City Hall made the decision as officials felt that the birds were being held in crowded conditions and that the animals’ needs and well-being were not being considered.

There were also concerns that the market, which dates back to the 19th century, encouraged the trafficking of birds.

Currently, 13 companies are licensed to operate at the market, with seven of those stalls selling birds, but city officials found that, in recent years, unlicensed street traders have apparently been using the site to peddle their illegal trade.

Paris-bird dealer

Animal welfare groups such as Paris Animaux Zooplis (PAZ) had called on officials to close the bird market, calling its existence “cruel and archaic”, with one petition securing 2,500 signatures from individuals who believed the animals were deprived “of their liberty and their most elementary behavior.”

The closure decision follows a Council of Paris vote in December that sought to renovate the market and improve its internal regulations, as well as a 2013 investigation by France’s National Hunting and Wildlife Office (ONCFS) that resulted in the arrest of seven people and the seizure of dozens of birds. Paris-bird market

The market is due to receive €5 million ($6.05 million) between 2023 to 2025 in renovation funds.

The local government in Paris has been working to address animal rights issues in the city, including banning the sale of kittens and puppies under the age of six months in pet shops from 2022 and prohibiting the use of live bait by anglers.

https://www.rt.com/news/515054-paris-city-hall-closes-bird-market/

And I mean…It looks like the animal dealers from Paris have looked at some examples from China.
But a country like France, with such a great history and culture, should no longer use the word “tradition” to justify animal cruelty.

In addition, Paris is not known and desired for its bird market, but for its rich cultural and social life.

The government is to be commended for this decision.
Any market that holds living beings in cages to sell them as goods is a medieval tradition and no longer fits in a civilized society

No matter where it happens in this world.

My best regards to all, Venus

Environmental, Farm Animals, General News

USA: Behind That Green Mask.

This article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr is a profoundly wise and impeccably researched (and referenced) exposé of how the corporate takeover of our food and farming sector is facilitated by Bill Gates’s billions. Robert F Kennedy Jr. is an American environmental lawyer, activist, and author. Kennedy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy. He is the president of the board of Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-profit environmental group that he helped found in 1999, and is the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-unsafe vaccine advocacy group.

If your time is short and just want a taste of what the article holds read below;

“Gates has a Napoleonic concept of himself, an appetite that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses.” — Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, presiding judge in the Gates/Microsoft antitrust-fraud case

For a man obsessed with monopoly control, the opportunity to also dominate food production must seem irresistible.

According to the newest issue of The Land Report, Gates has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States. Gates’ portfolio now comprises about 242,000 acres of American farmland and nearly 27,000 acres of other land across Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Arizona, Florida, Washington and 18 other states.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.

So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.

Let’s explore the context of Gates’ stealth purchases as part of his long-term strategy of mastery over agriculture and food production globally.

Beginning in 1994, Gates launched an international biopiracy campaign to achieve vertically integrated dominion over global agricultural production. His empire now includes vast agricultural lands and hefty investments in GMO crops, seed patents, synthetic foods, artificial intelligence including robotic farm workers, and commanding positions in food behemoths including Coca-Cola, Unilever, Philip Morris (Kraft, General Foods), Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble and Amazon (Whole Foods), and in multinationals like Monsanto and Bayer that market chemical pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers.

As usual, Gates coordinates these personal investments with taxpayer-subsidised grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the richest and most powerful organisation in all of international aid, his financial partnerships with Big Ag, Big Chemical, and Big Food, and his control of international agencies — including some of his own creation — with awesome power to create captive markets for his products.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a protégé and partner to David Rockefeller, observed that, “Who controls the food supply controls the people.” In 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations launched the $424 million Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) promising to double crop productivity and boost incomes for 30 million small farmers by 2020 while cutting food insecurity in half.

Characteristically, Gates’ approach to global problems put technology and his chemical, pharmaceutical and oil industry partners at the center of every solution. As it turned out, Gates’ “innovative strategy” for food production was to force America’s failed system of GMO, chemical and fossil fuel-based agriculture on poor African farmers.

African agricultural practices have evolved from the land over 10,000 years in forms that promote crop diversity, decentralisation, sustainability, private property, self-organisation and local control of seeds. The personal freedom inherent in these localised systems leaves farm families making their own decisions: the masters on their lands, the sovereigns of their destinies. Continuous innovation by millions of small farmers maximised sustainable yields and biodiversity.

In his ruthless reinvention of colonialism, Gates spent $4.9 billion dollars to dismantle this ancient system and replace it with high-tech corporatised and industrialised agriculture, chemically dependent monocultures, extreme centralisation and top-down control. He forced small African farms to transition to imported commercial seeds, petroleum fertilizers and pesticides.

Gates built the supply chain infrastructure for chemicals and seeds and pressured African governments to spend huge sums on subsidies and to use draconian penalties and authoritarian control to force farmers to buy his expensive inputs and comply with his diktats. Gates made farmers replace traditional nutritious subsistence crops like sorghum, millet, sweet potato and cassava with high-yield industrial cash crops, like soy and corn, which benefit elite commodity traders but leave poor Africans with little to eat. Both nutrition and productivity plummeted. Soils grew more acidic with every application of petrochemical fertilizers.

As with Gates’ African vaccine enterprise, there was neither internal evaluation nor public accountability. The 2020 study “False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)” is the report card on the Gates’ cartel’s 14-year effort. The investigation concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 18 countries that Gates targeted. Rural poverty has metastasised dramatically, and the number of hungry people in these nations has risen to 131 million.

Under Gates’ plantation system, Africa’s rural populations have become slaves on their own land to a tyrannical serfdom of high-tech inputs, mechanisation, rigid schedules, burdensome conditionalities, credits and subsidies that are the defining features of Bill Gates’ “Green Revolution.”

Biopiracy

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s letter to all state governors, February 1937

Long experience and research have shown that agroecology based on biodiversity, Seed Freedom and Food Freedom is essential not just to civil liberties and democracy, but to the future of food and farming.

For thousands of years, farmers’ innovation and biodiversity evolved together to create the most efficient practices for sustainable food production and biodiversity. The United Nations’ seminal 2009 study by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) documents the incontrovertible evidence demonstrating the abject failure of the Gates/Rockefeller “Green Revolution” to improve on traditional agriculture.

IAASTD deployed a team of 900 leading scientists, agronomists, and researchers to study the issue of world hunger. Their comprehensive and definitive report showed that GMO crops are not the answer to food shortfalls or rural poverty. That report definitively concludes that neither Gates’ Green Revolution nor his GMOs can feed the world and at the same time protect the planet.

You will not be disappointed by the amount you will learn if you read the entire brilliant article.

Best wishes,

Tracy Worcester, Director
farmsnotfactories.org – England UK

Environmental, Farm Animals, General News

UK: UK Government Rejects Calls For A ‘Meat Tax’ To Fight Against Carbon Emissions – Who Pressures Who, We Ask ?

UK Government Rejects Calls For A 'Meat Tax' To Fight Against Carbon Emissions
‘We will not be imposing a meat tax on the great British banger or anything else’ Credit: Adobe. Do not use without permission.

 

UK Government Rejects Calls For A ‘Meat Tax’ To Fight Against Carbon Emissions

A senior No10. official has said the meat tax is ‘not going to happen’ – despite the UK’s ‘ambitious’ climate targets…

WAV Comment – We wonder where this pressure has come from ? – all the facts show the British public are changing to a plant based diet in a big way and are very much ‘eco informed and supportive’.  Could it be once again that as always; money talks, and the meat industry will get what it wants regardless ?

The UK government has rejected calls for a ‘meat tax’ as a way to fight against carbon emissions. 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been under increasing pressure to up the price of meat due to its environmental impact.

The government has also been told meat and dairy should ‘take their place alongside tobacco, alcohol, sugar, and fuel. All of which are taxed because of their negative impact on human health or the environment’.

‘Not going to happen’

However, according to the Evening Standard, a senior No10. official recently said: “This is categorically not going to happen.

UK Meat tax

Last year, vegan charity PETA urged the UK to implement a meat and dairy tax to ‘lessen the economic fallout after COVID-19 and combat the climate crisis’.

The organization wrote a letter to Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. It suggests revenue from such a tax could ease the burden on the NHS. Moreover, the letter says the move will help farmers transition away from meat and dairy to more climate-friendly arable ventures.

Dawn Carr is PETA ‘sdirector of vegan corporate projects. She said: “We must heed the Committee on Climate Change’s call for meat and dairy consumption to be cut down and act on the United Nations’ recommendation that national governments introduce a tax on meat.“The resulting tax revenue could be used to help meat and dairy farmers make the transition into healthier, more sustainable crop farming at a time when the plant-based food market is booming.”

UK climate targets

The push for a meat tax comes shortly after Johnson’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by more than two-thirds in the next decade.

The politician described the targets as ‘ambitious’. However, he says they are necessary to set the country ‘on course to hit net zero by 2050’.

He said, in comparison with 1990, there will be a decrease of 68 percent in annual carbon emissions by 2030.

UK Government Rejects Calls For A ‘Meat Tax’ To Fight Against Carbon Emissions | Plant Based News

Farm Animals, General News

Must See Documentaries of 2020 – Supplied By Stacey at ‘Our Compass’.

As always; we had a great link through from Stacey at ‘Our Compass’.

In her latest message to us, there is a lot of info, from glimpses into the world of farm investigations to a prediction of the state of the world in 30 years’ time, a round-up our pick of short films and documentaries that came out in 2020.

I think as there are a lot of links; rather than download everything, we will send you over to Stacey’s site so that you can get everything you need directly.  One of the videos relates to ‘Hogwood’, which we (in England) are very familiar with as a campaign by Viva! regarding actions against a pig facility.

Here is the link to Stacey at ‘Our Compass’; followed by an overall link (which is then sub divided) to the issue of Hogwood that we have done in the past.

Thanks Stacey as always;

Regards Mark

Our Compass Link – Must see documentaries of 2020.

Surge: Our Must-See Documentaries from 2020 | Our Compass (our-compass.org)

Here is the overall link to all our Hogwood posts – take your pick of the posts !

Search Results for “Hogwood” – World Animals Voice

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Image result for hogwod