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Category: General News
| 4 sweethearts covered in solid tar, only able to move their eyes
Four incredibly dear puppies came close to losing their lives in a horrendous accident when they stumbled into spilled tar in a garbage pile. When the first one wandered in and got stuck, she must have cried with so much emotion that the others came to see what was the matter, and they too got glued down by the awful tar. We knew they had a mother, but we couldn’t find her until the day following their rescue and the hours-long process of removing the tar with oil and dish soap. The little sweethearts were dazed with confusion, pain, fear and frustration, and two were so completely covered that all they could move was their eyes. But by the time Mommy arrived, they were freed from the poisonous grip of the tar and ready for the comfort of her love.
Help suffering sweethearts when they need us the most. Please donate. |
Member States should protect their wolves, says the European Court of Justice
The Court of Justice of the European Union has confirmed the strict protection of the wolf in Europe, saying that hunting permits should be delivered only in exceptional cases, and as a very last resort after non-lethal measures have been adequately implemented and have failed.
This good news for the species came last week when the EU Court of Justice (EUJC) delivered its decision on the permits granted by the Finnish Wildlife Agency to kill wolves – a seriously endangered species in Finland, with only around 200 individuals left – to prevent poaching and harm to hunting dogs.
The decision stresses that the wolf is a strictly protected species, and that the provisions of the EU Habitats Directive must be interpreted in light of the precautionary principle in Article 191(2) TFEU. In other words, if there is any risk (due to a lack of scientific data) that a hunting permit will adversely affect the conservation of the wider wolf population, then it should not be granted.
“The EUCJ decision is great news for wolves, and provides clear guidance on how derogations according to the Habitats Directive should be delivered. Member States’ efforts should focus on preventing conflicts and ensuring coexistence with the wolf and other strictly protected species, instead of calling for hunting permits,” says Reineke Hameleers, Director of Eurogroup for Animals. “We call on the European Commission to take into consideration these important EUCJ conclusions when updating the guidance document on the strict protection of Animal Species of Community Interest under the Habitats Directive.”
No European money for Ukrainian poultry company
Faced with strong opposition, MHP, the main Ukrainian poultry meat company exporting to the EU, has withdrawn its application for a grant from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
Over the past five months, Eurogroup for Animals and its Member organisations have urged the European Union and its Member States to prevent the EBRD from granting another €100 million loan to MHP.
Our message was clear: the loan must respect the rules of the EBRD, which means that the grantee’s operations must follow animal welfare standards equivalent to those applied in the EU. This was not – and still has not – been proven for MHP.
The discussions at the EBRD were postponed several times after the European Commission, through Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan, expressed its opposition to the EBRD granting such a loan to MHP. The EBRD had even published a recognition of the numerous concerns voiced by stakeholders and indicated that they would carry out a proper assessment of whether their environmental and social criteria – including animal welfare – were respected.
The announcement by the Ukrainian company that it has finally withdrawn its request for a loan is a victory. Faced with strong opposition from not only the animal welfare movement, the environmental NGOs and the European poultry sector, but also from the EU institutions themselves in the context of difficult EU-Ukraine trade discussions, the company has opted for another way to finance its acquisition of a Slovenian poultry producer, avoiding thus more scrutiny.
Eurogroup for Animals welcomes that no additional European money will fund unsustainable agricultural practices carried out by the Ukrainian poultry giant. In addition, considering the steep increase in animal products imported by the EU from Ukraine, we call on the EU and its Member States to encourage Ukraine to fulfil its commitment to align with EU animal welfare rules faster.
Revealed: The horrible fate of French animals exported alive to third countries
Suspended by their legs while still conscious, tied up and with their necks cut halfway through: a new investigation by Animals International reveals the fate of French animals exported alive to Morocco and Lebanon.
Today in France, Welfarm, Fondation Brigitte Bardot, L214, CIWF France and La Fondation Droit Animal, Ethique et Sciences are releasing footage filmed by Animals International’s investigators in slaughterhouses in these countries.
Every year, France exports live animals to other EU and non-EU countries. When it comes to animals transported outside the EU territories, the majority of animals are destined for countries in which the slaughterhouses do not have the infrastructure and equipment required to comply with the standards established by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in regards to slaughter.
In 2018 alone France exported 83,914 sheep and cows, mainly to Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Israel. Hanging the animals by their paws, pushing fingers into their eyes, slashing their throats, binding them, slicing their tendons, and letting to struggle with their heads half cut off are common practices in slaughterhouses in North Africa and the Middle East, where Animals International has been investigating for 10 years.
Confronted with this evidence, Welfarm, Fondation Brigitte Bardot, L214, CIWF France, La Fondation Droit Animal, Ethique et Sciences and Animals International, together with Eurogroup for Animals, have sent a letter to the French Minister urging him to stop the export of live animals and to shift to a meat and carcasses trade.
ACTION:
Sign the Welfarm petition to stop live exports
Read the article by Le Monde
Best regards to all, Venus
China records third case of plague this month
Three people from the rural village of Xilingol League have been diagnosed with different forms of the disease in November.
A 55-year-old man has become the third person to be diagnosed with a form of plague in China this month.
The unnamed man, from the rural village of Xilingol League, became infected with bubonic plague after killing and eating a wild rabbit on 5 November.
He is being treated at a hospital in the city of Huade in Inner Mongolia, a statement from the health authority in the region said.
The statement added that 28 people who had close contact with the man were quarantined, but none have a fever or are showing other plague symptoms.
Two patients, also from Xilingol League, were diagnosed with pneumonic plague in Beijing on 12 November.
Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague and is caused by the bite of an infected flea.
The bacteria travels to a lymph node which becomes inflamed and painful, causing a “bubo”.
Pneumonic plague, the most severe form of the infection, can develop from bubonic plague and results in a lung infection, causing shortness of breath, headaches and coughing.
Both types of plague are caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, and the infections can be fatal in up to 90% of sufferers who are not treated.
The pneumonic variant – where the bacterium is breathed into the lungs – is more dangerous because it is spread through coughing.
Septicaemic plague is a rare third variant which infects the bloodstream.
China has largely eradicated plague, but occasional cases are still reported, especially among hunters who come into contact with fleas that carry the bacterium.
The last major known outbreak was in 2009, when several people died in the town of Ziketan in Qinghai province on the Tibetan Plateau.
Plague has killed tens of millions of people around the world in three major pandemics, with about a third of Europe’s population wiped out in the 1300s by bubonic plague, known as the Black Death.
The bacterium is believed to have originated in Yunnan in southwest China, where it remains endemic.
https://news.sky.com/story/china-records-third-case-of-plague-this-month-11864058
More ……
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/18/chinese-man-diagnosed-bubonic-plague-eating-wild-rabbit/
Rodent populations have risen in Inner Mongolia after persistent droughts, worsened by climate change. An area the size of the Netherlands was hit by a “rat plague” last summer, causing damages of 600 million yuan ($86 million), Xinhua said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/18/china-records-third-case-of-deadly-bubonic-plague
Suddenly they were there. The green crosses of wood, covered with white signs. But what is behind it?
On 4 September 2019, the State Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner and Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze have decided, inter alia, that the cancer weed killer glyphosate from 2024 completely, and particularly harmful pesticides in most nature reserves will be already banned.
The insect killing is to be contained with it. The farmers should also create retreat areas for insects, the federal government wants to identify more biotopes. With 100 million euros, research on insect repellent is to be supported.
Even the controversial animal welfare label will come.
In addition, more agricultural subsidies, which have so far been paid mainly for the simple possession of land, should finance environmental projects by farmers, for example.
The farmers have organized a rebellion under the “Farmer Willi”.
Currently, the “farmer Willi” calls all farmers to protest with green wooden crosses in their fields against the “agricultural package” of the Federal Government.
But in his statements he often advocates the interests of agrochemical companies such as Bayer AG.
“Bayer / Monsanto, Syngenta, Gene-Lobby & Co. see their profit interests by the “agricultural package” massively endangered, but psychologically clever as they are, do not act on their own, but send targeted “farmer Willi, the small farmers & rural women “ before.
Behind the ridiculous crosses is actually a nationwide campaign.. “Protect the farmers by a yes to the poison and factory farming”.
Similar PR actions and the enormous power of the agricultural lobby in the past have led to massive groundwater problems with nitrate in Germany.
The farmers say, “The package is” so closely tied up “that it takes away the air of many companies to breathe.
In agriculture, this would result in a significant land loss of many areas, and the use of many resources should be massively reduced. This is an encroachment on our property values, as areas would be worthless and could no longer be used for food production.
Furthermore, there is a high risk of “falling yields” and threatens a decline in regional products.
At last, a high price for an animal welfare indicator, in view of the many already existing labels on the market, no one needs more “!!
And we say: In reality, it’s the other way around:
If the soil continues to be poisoned,
the insects continue to die,
the groundwater continues to be contaminated
and our food continues to deteriorate,
then our diet will destroy our lives.
So we see the crosses in the fields as a symbol of death, exploitation, and destruction of the animal and nature world.
And we consider this abuse of Christian symbols for poison, glyphosate and factory farming not only ridiculous, but a sign of farmer primitiveness.
My best regards to all, Venus
Hi all;
well our global Clustrmap (the World map on the left of the site) which we use to see where visitors are arriving from seems to have been a bit up in the air over the last few days to say the least.
This service is totally out of our control.
https://clustrmaps.com/site/1a9kn
Visitor traffic for yesterday showed that zero people had attended the site – where as in fact we had around 300 visitors.
We do not know what has gone wrong, but at the moment things seem a bit ‘iffy’.
All we will do is keep banging out posts as usual with the hope that Clustrmap gets back on track and shows the real amounts of visitors.
Regards Mark and Venus.
RSPB clash with gamekeepers over missing Scots sea eagles
Two tagged sea eagles disappeared on the same day (Image: Colin Carter Photography/Getty Images)
TWO tagged sea eagles disappeared on the same day after last being recorded on Scottish grouse moors.
RSPB Scotland has appealed for information after the protected birds of prey, also known as white-tailed eagles, disappeared “in highly suspicious circumstances” this summer. Transmissions from the tags ceased on July 22. One of the birds, known as ‘White L’, was a male tagged as a chick in Fife in 2016. His tag last transmitted on a moor near the Banchory to Fettercairn road in Aberdeenshire. The other chick disappeared on managed moorland at Tomatin, on the A9 between Inverness and Aviemore. It was born in Inverness-shire.
RSPB Scotland said the Inverness-shire moor is “in an area with a history of raptor persecution, including numerous suspicious disappearances of tagged golden eagles over several years”.
White-tailed eagles are Scotland’s largest birds of prey, with an eight-foot wingspan.
Ian Thomson, RSPB Scotland’s head of investigations, said: “Yet again, rare, protected birds of prey have disappeared in highly suspicious circumstances, with their last known locations on grouse moors. And yet again, we can be almost certain that these birds have been killed, with those responsible destroying all the evidence.
“The disappearance of these two eagles is more than a loss of two birds; it means any future breeding success they might have had, helping to boost the numbers of these rare birds, has also been destroyed.”
White-tailed eagles are Scotland’s largest birds of prey, with an eight-foot wingspan (Image: raycooperman/Getty Images)
In both cases, RSPB Scotland said the tags ceased transmitting with no prior evidence of any technical issues.
Follow-up investigations by Police Scotland and the National Wildlife Crime Unit, including searches of the final known locations of the birds, have yielded no further information as to their likely demise.
Industry body Scottish Land & Estates (SLE) said it was “frustrating” that RSPB Scotland had waited three months to issue its appeal.
SLE executive director Sarah-Jane Laing said: “It is frustrating that more than three months have passed before the appeal for information has been issued publicly by RSPB and we await further information from Police Scotland. We question RSPB’s decision to immediately point the finger of blame at grouse moors rather than to find out what has actually happened.”
The Scottish Gamekeepers Association said it was possible the tags had failed.
A spokesman said: “There needs to be a degree of caution when dealing with satellite tag incidents.
“Tags can and do fail. They only give an indication of birds’ movements because there can be considerable time lapses in data being received.
“A bird can therefore travel a fair distance from the point the last known locational fix was sent, which makes searching often futile. We have seen cases where birds that have been given up for dead have later been located.”
