After days of discussion, California’s Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Laura Passaglia slapped a high-profile animal rights activist on the wrist with 90 days in jail, followed by an additional two years of probation for his trespassing and conspiracy convictions.
Wayne Hsiung, animal rights activist, lawyer, and co-founder of the group Direct Action Everywhere, was convicted in November for his extreme antics on poultry farms, and faced up to three years in jail for his convictions.
The Body Shop has teamed up with long-term partner Cruelty Free International to reignite its campaign against animal testing.
The UK banned animal testing for make-up and its ingredients in 1998, but the government says it has changed its policy to match rules in the EU where some animal testing is allowed.
To raise awareness of the changes and call for a reinstation of the full ban, The Body Shop and Cruelty Free International have launched a limited-edition version of their iconic heritage ‘Forever Against Animal Testing’ t-shirt. The shirt first appeared when the organisations campaigned on the issue in the early 1990s.
All profits from the sale of the products will go directly to Cruelty Free International to support its work.
Animal-loving backbench MPs are trying to breathe new life into welfare legislation quietly dropped by the government last year.
Plans to ban trophy hunting imports, live animal exports and crack down on puppy smuggling were included in the 2019 Conservative election manifesto.
Three MPs are now attempting to get some of these policies into law.
Labour’s John Spellar has launched a Private Members Bill (PMB) to ban hunting trophies.
Two Tory MPs – Selaine Saxby and Anna Firth – have launched separate PMBs to ban live animal exports and make pet abduction a criminal offence.
These two measures were originally included in the Kept Animals Bill, which was dropped by the government over fears it could be used to force a vote on hunting – a deeply divisive issue in the Conservative Party.
On Wednesday, Ms Saxby tabled a PMB to restrict the import of dogs, cats and ferrets to crack down on pet trade.
The RPSCA thanked Ms Saxby for “rescuing” the plans, which they say are crucial for ending puppy farming – where dogs often kept in terrible conditions which would be illegal in the UK, and used to breed multiple litters.
David Bowles, head of public affairs at the RSPCA, said: “Buying an imported puppy leaves new owners open to the very real risk that they are supporting cruel overseas puppy farming.
“We are delighted that Selaine Saxby’s Bill will give the UK government another opportunity to support an end to this cruel trade.”
Ms Firth introduced a PMB to specifically criminalise abducting cats, dogs, and other common pets.
PMBs rarely become law without the support of government, as they do not get the same amount of time dedicated to government businesses.The government has been under pressure to dedicate government time to fresh legislation to fulfil a manifesto commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies into Great Britain.
Every year, hunters from the UK travel abroad, often to southern Africa, and pay thousands of pounds to legally shoot animals, such as lions and elephants.
Under current rules, with the right paperwork, they can then bring trophies, such as stuffed heads or horns, back to the UK.
The measures had been expected in government legislation but ministers instead backed a PMB from Conservative MP Henry Smith during the last parliamentary session.
It passed the Commons comfortably, but ran out of time as its face opposition in the House of Lords.
Time for PMBs are allocated by a lottery – 20 MPs are randomly chosen for a chance to debate their bill on one of seven Fridays set aside for this purpose.
The top seven MPs get priority for these debating slots.
Julie Elliott, Labour MP for Sunderland Central, won the top spot in the ballot, giving her first priority. Her PMB seeks to level the banking sector’s competitive field by modernising rules that currently restrict building societies’ lending abilities.
Regards Mark
You bet they are under pressure ! – we will continue to make this an issue right up until election day – about 1 year max away.
The government has been under pressure to dedicate government time to fresh legislation to fulfil a manifesto commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies into Great Britain.
A lucrative underground trade risks undermining research, creating new pandemics and pushing a recently abundant species to the brinkIn 2019, Jonah Sacha, a researcher at Oregon Health and Science University, received a delivery of 20 monkeys from Mauritius. As part of his research into stem-cell transplants as an HIV treatment, he performs tests on long-tailed macaques.
Comedian Ricky Gervais has donated £1.9 million to animal charities across the globe.
The stand-up and creator of television shows such as After Life and The Office, has donated a substantial sum raised from ticket sales from his latest Armageddon world tour.
The money will be split equally between 11 worldwide animal charitiesthat have been chosen by Gervais.
These include All Dogs Matter, Animal SOS Sri Lanka, Catastrophes Cat Rescue, Chaldon Animal Sanctuary, Dogs On The Streets, Helping Rhinos, Millions of Friends, Mira Dogs, Paws2Rescue, PDSA and Wild Futures.
About the move, BAFTA, Emmy and Golden-Globe winning comicGervais, 62, said: “I hope the dogs, cats, rhinos and monkeys invest this money wisely, because when my career goes tits up I’ll need it back.”
In an effort to take action against ticket touts, Platinum Tickets for the Armageddon tour went on sale to guarantee premium seats at market rates, with the extra profits from these ticket sales going to Gervais’s animal charities.
Gervais, a vegan, is a long-standing supporter of animal rights and has put his name to various initiatives in the past.
Earlier this year, he supported a campaign to end bear bile farming in Vietnam, where bears, trapped in small cages, are subjected to a painful method of extracting bile for use in traditional medicine.
Breaking – Animal Rights Advocate Benjamin Zephaniah dies
A very bad day for animal rights
He was diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks ago, a post on his Instagram page said, describing him as a “true pioneer and innovator” who “gave the world so much”.
Videos of vigilantes confronting and beating the man have sparked a debate on animal rights in China.
In the chat group, anonymous users compared notes about how they tortured and killed cats for fun, sharing disturbing photos and videos of their abuse. Li, a man in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, bragged that he had butchered several cats that week and said he planned on adopting four cats and streaming their killing live that night.
Alerted to the man’s plan late last month, a group of animal rights activists took matters into their own hands and confronted Li at a shopping mall on Feb. 25 when he was about to adopt a kitten, according to an account of the event shared by a Beijing-based animal rights group and confirmed by police. In videos that went viral on Chinese social media last week, the man, cornered by the group of volunteers, was roughed up and repeatedly slapped himself in the face. He also confessed to abusing five cats, including pouring boiling water on them.
The case has sparked an online debate about vigilantism and animal abuse in China. While some condemned the activists for resorting to violence, many applauded them for stopping Li in the act and blamed the Chinese government for failing to protect animal welfare. “They gave him a taste of his own medicine. Fair enough,” read a top comment with over 12,000 likes on the platform Weibo.
So far, Chinese authorities have refrained from taking sides. In an official notice issued on Feb. 28, police in Suzhou’s Wuzhong district said they were investigating Li for allegedly killing adopted cats and sharing videos of the abuse, as well as the activists for allegeding detaining and beating Li.
According to Companion Animals Working Group, a Beijing-based nonprofit, Li was part of a group on Chinese social media platform QQ, where dozens of users had gleefully shared videos of themselves torturing cats to death. Some were force fed acid, while others were thrown from heights or burnt alive.
In its posts on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat, the nonprofit said it had received a tipoff about the group’s operation. The nonprofit also shared screenshots of conversations, where a user, allegedly Li, claimed he killed three to five cats per week and posted clips of injured, bleeding cats as evidence.
Animal welfare groups have limited options when they come across cases of animal abuse, Naomi Fu, a volunteer at the nonprofit, told VICE World News. “The first step of getting authorities to open a case is already challenging,” she said.
The nonprofit implored authorities to investigate and hold members of the QQ group accountable, and urged Tencent, the developer of QQ, to stamp out similar operations on the messaging platform. It also renewed calls for regulation and law enforcement to deter abuse.
“China still lacks a comprehensive and effective set of animal protection laws,” Suki Deng, director of the China Cat and Dog Welfare programme at Animals Asia, told VICE World News. “While some municipalities prohibit animal abuse in local regulations on dog management, they lack details and are not enforced effectively.”
Peter Li, an associate professor at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist at the animal charity Humane Society International, said the attitude of authorities is also to blame. “Officials in general do not take animal cruelty seriously unless the act also directly impacts public health, public safety or economic interests,” Li said.
Meanwhile, activists have raised alarm over acts of animal cruelty across the country; instances in which even when caught red-handed, perpetrators were let off with only a slap on the wrist.
In 2020, a student at the Shandong University of Technology was caught brutalizing 80 stray cats and selling the videos online. He received psychological counseling and was kicked out by the school, but received no further punishment. In 2021, an investigation by the Chinese outlet Legal Daily found that behind these individual acts was a flourishing underground market, where abusers were paid for producing clips or livestreaming their acts.
More recently, eight cats were found dead—some strangled and some poisoned—on the campus of ShanghaiTech University in February. This has prompted students and faculty members to sign a joint petition urging school authorities to take the matter seriously and expel the student accused of killing the cats.
Some measures are on the cards as China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, meet in Beijing for their annual session this week. Zhao Wanping, a delegate and agricultural scientist, has proposed the introduction of animal cruelty laws, as well as a crackdown on the slaughter of dogs and cats and the sale and consumption of their meat across the country, citing how the illicit trade could be a public health risk.
While China reclassified dogs as pets instead of livestock in 2020 in response to the pandemic, only some cities, such as Shenzhen and Zhuhai, outright banned the eating of dogs and cats.
But it remains to be seen if Zhao’s proposals will be adopted.
“The Chinese government has been hesitating to take legislative actions to outlaw animal cruelty largely because of economic concerns,” said Li, of Humane Society International, citing fears that costs of farm animal products could go up because of the need to improve conditions. “Some productions, such as foie gras and bear farming, would have to be shut down.”
A Man Said He’d Adopt Cats and Torture Them in a Livestream. Then Vigilantes Took Action.
According to Companion Animals Working Group, a Beijing-based nonprofit, Li was part of a group on Chinese social media platform QQ, where dozens of users had gleefully shared videos of themselves torturing cats to death. Some were force fed acid, while others were thrown from heights or burnt alive.
In its posts on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat, the nonprofit said it had received a tipoff about the group’s operation. The nonprofit also shared screenshots of conversations, where a user, allegedly Li, claimed he killed three to five cats per week and posted clips of injured, bleeding cats as evidence.
Large carnivores, including wolves, should remain strictly protected within the EU, and have a right to co-exist with humans, say an overwhelming majority of rural inhabitants across 10 EU Member States.
Wolves are currently at the risk of having their protection downgraded, as the European Commission is currently assessing ‘evidence’ generated by an irregular public consultation process initiated in September 2023, which could lead to a proposal to do so. This move would jeopardise efforts made in the last years for the recovery of wolves in Europe.
The survey, released today, highlights that many rural inhabitants are supportive of protecting wolves and other large carnivores, with 68% stating that they should be strictly protected and over two-thirds (72%) agreeing that they have a right to co-exist.
The farming and hunting lobby have consistently been pushing for the protection status of wolves to be downgraded. Yet a very low proportion of respondents indicated that they feel well-represented by hunting (12%) and farming (18%) interest groups.
66% of respondents said that decision-makers, including EU institutions, should prioritise the conservation of large carnivores, with 65% saying that the killing of individual problematic large carnivores should only take place if it can be proved that adequate protection measures have been implemented and failed. Almost 7 in 10 respondents (69%) expressed that the benefits and functions of large carnivores should be considered in decisions related to their management. Wolves, as an example, play a crucial role in regulating prey populations, preventing overgrazing, and ultimately contributing to healthier ecosystems. The survey identified environmental protection for future generations (80%) and conservation of biodiversity (78%) as important priorities for the European Union.
While the risk of attacks by wolves and other large carnivores remains extremely low and can be further reduced by behaving appropriately in the event of such an encounter, the survey clearly highlights a need for greater awareness, with 62% of respondents saying that they would feel safer if they better understood how wolves and bears behave and how to scare them off if they had an encounter.
Tools to prevent and compensate for the economic damage caused by wolves to farmed animals are available, and in light of these results, we call on the European Commission and other EU institutions to listen to the voice of rural communities, as provided in the long-term Vision for the EU’s Rural Areas, maintain the strict protection status of wolf populations and continue to implement an ambitious Habitats Directive.
The return of the wolves in Europe is a cause of celebration, not of fear. Despite the narrative being presented by some, the results of this survey clearly highlight that the majority of those living in the proximity of wolves support their protection status and are willing to co-exist. Sound data, and the recognition of the importance of conservation and biodiversity should drive the European Commission’s decisions and not the interest of a few.
Reineke Hameleers, CEO, Eurogroup for Animals
The loudest voices in the chorus calling for the removal of the protection status for wolves have thus far been the farming and hunting lobbies. They have positioned themselves as representing the interests of rural communities. Yet, the results of this survey strongly suggest that many EU citizens living in rural areas are keen to uphold legal protections for such large carnivores, and support peaceful coexistence with these animals. It is vital that these rural voices are also heard by the European Commission and that ecologically important species like wolves are not declared fair game due to a failure of some to accept that it is necessary to coexist with them.
Joanna Swabe, Senior Director of Public Affairs, Humane Society International/Europe.
World Animals Voice 