Enjoying the peanuts from one of the feeders. Have not seen it for a few weeks – welcome back !
Regards Mark
Stand collapses during bullfight | Watch (msn.com)
At least four people have reportedly been killed and hundreds injured after a stand collapsed during a bullfight in Colombia.
It happened in the municipality of El Espinal in the central region of the country at about 1pm local time on Sunday during a local festival.
Among the dead were two women, a man and an 18-month-old baby.
Footage has emerged of a wooden stand crowded with spectators collapsing at the stadium.
Mayor Juan Carlos Tamayo said 800 spectators were seated in the sections that collapsed.
The stand was seen toppling forward into the ring, where people were participating in a bull-running event, which is tied to the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul.
According to Major Luis Fernando Velez, director of civil defence in the province, no one remained trapped in the wreckage.
He told local media that several people were missing but have since been found.
“The emergency has been overcome at the site of the incident. More or less 70 people were injured,” Mr Velez said.
Injured people were taken to the nearby cities of Ibague and Maelgar in ambulances.
Mr Velez said El Espinal’s hospital was overwhelmed, adding he didn’t know what the stand was made from but it appeared to be wooden boards.
Current President Iván Duque wrote on Twitter: “We lament the terrible tragedy registered in El Espinal, Tolima, during the festivals of San Pedro and San Juan, with the collapse of the stands during a Corralejo.
“We will call for an investigation.”
President-elect Gustavo Petro urged officials to ban such events.
The cultural festival is observed every year on 29 June and the event is the feast day that honours Saints Peter and Paul, who were apostles of Jesus Christ and Christian martyrs.
Regards Mark
?? Karma for tormenting animals ??
We have had the following sent through from Ana; she asks ‘what can we do ?’.
Sadly Ana, probably very little now, as this all appears to already be done and dusted according to the article. The new deal has already been done. We agree with the statement in the article:
“Animals Now said the measure would provide an economic incentive to “an industry that abuses animals.”
“To continue to give a customs exemption for the import of live calves is to give benefits to a handful of businessmen, and to transfer hundreds of millions of shekels from the public purse to the meat industry, while humanity is dealing with the climate crisis, is simply absurd,” it said.
Article:
Government deal to boost beef industry pilloried as bad for climate, public health
Agriculture minister says NIS 420 million accord will help cut prices, while rights activists say permanent customs tax exemption on import of live calves is a license for abuse
A range of activist groups on Thursday denounced a new deal between the Agriculture and Finance ministries and the Israeli Cattle Breeders’ Association to boost the beef industry.
The agreement, reached Wednesday, commits the government to investing more than NIS 420 million ($122 million) into the local beef industry over the next seven years; removing customs duties on imported beef products; turning a temporary exemption on customs duties for livestock imports — which is renewed annually — into a permanent exemption; and increasing the number of foreign workers that can enter Israel to work in the sector.
Agriculture Minister Oded Forer described the agreement as, “more good news for dealing with the high cost of living,” that would help cut the price of beef, “a product that is in increasing and constant demand from year to year,” while also supporting the cattle breeders and giving the sector certainty.
The Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians and the Israel Forum for Sustainable Nutrition, however, warned in a statement that encouraging beef consumption was bad for public health, the environment and for fighting climate change.
According to UN estimates, livestock is responsible for around 14 percent of human-generated greenhouse gases, especially methane.
“To continue to give a customs exemption for the import of live calves is to give benefits to a handful of businessmen, and to transfer hundreds of millions of shekels from the public purse to the meat industry, while humanity is dealing with the climate crisis, is simply absurd,” it said.
According to Agriculture Ministry figures, a record 856,630 calves and lambs were shipped to Israel in 2021 for fattening and slaughter, an increase of 42% over a year earlier.
Per capita, Israelis are among the highest consumers of beef in the world.
Regards Mark
https://www.timesofisrael.com/numbers-of-animals-imported-for-fattening-slaughter-up-42-last-year/
Rocky the Coyote Paces in a Tiny Cage—Act Now!
After humans mistook Rocky the baby coyote for an abandoned puppy, they captured him in nature and sent him to an animal shelter in Tennessee before he’d even opened his eyes.
From there, he was sent to the Forest Preserves of Cook County and relegated—all alone—to a small, bleak corncrib cage at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook, Illinois. With a constant view of the forest around him, Rocky now presses his snout against the bars that imprison him.
In nature, coyotes live in packs. Studies done in Cook County show that coyote packs roam territories averaging more than 4 square miles. But at the River Trail Nature Center, Rocky languishes alone and has been observed pacing in apparent distress. This blatant disregard for his needs threatens his health, but sadly, it’s business as usual for the self-proclaimed “nature center.”
Eagles, owls, and hawks are also confined to small, barren cages there, including a kestrel and a screech owl who are kept in 4-foot-by-4-foot boxes with no room to fly and no access to sunlight, fresh air, or foliage.
But there’s hope for Rocky! The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado—which is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries—has offered to relocate him to an expansive naturalistic habitat where he could roam with other coyotes.
Keeping Rocky confined as an “educational” prop for human entertainment, when he could and should be roaming as a member of a pack, is an egregious form of speciesism—discrimination based solely on species.
Please urge Cook County officials and the River Trail Nature Center to give Rocky a chance to live at an accredited sanctuary!
Rocky the Coyote Paces in a Tiny Cage—Act Now! | PETA
Regards Mark
THE 11 BEST VEGAN POP-UPS, FOOD TRUCKS, AND DELIVERY KITCHENS IN LOS ANGELES RIGHT NOW
From veganized fast food to indigenous Mexican to flaky, butter-free French pastries—LA’s vegan street food scene is hotter than ever.
There’s a reason why Los Angeles has been named VegNews’ Best Vegan City three years in a row by VN readers. Dining institutions like Plant Food + Wine, Shojin, and Monty’s Good Burger are revered nationwide and have helped cement the City of Angels’ status as the best vegan dining destination in the country. But there’s another plant-based trick up LA’s sleeve: a world-class street food scene of underground pop-ups, ghost kitchens, and food trucks. And it’s proving once and for all that brick and mortars aren’t the only recipe for success.
The 11 Best Vegan Pop-Ups, Food Trucks, and Delivery Kitchens in Los Angeles Right Now | VegNews
Regards Mark
Elephants Shouldn’t Be Taught to Perform Unhealthy Tricks
| Elephants are smart, social, soulful creatures. But there are some things they just should not do. For example: unnatural, unhealthy tricks like headstands. In a recent video posted to Twitter that’s since gone viral, someone is filming as a handler washes a captive elephant. The animal leans forward onto its trunk and head, moving into a headstand while a man sprays the creature down with water. The people who posted the Twitter video may have been impressed with the stunt. But luckily most animal lovers on the internet know better — and they’re rightly outraged. While an elephant standing on its head might seem amusing at first glance, it’s an unnatural behaviour that these majestic beings do not display in the wild. That means they’ve been forcibly taught to perform these unusual tasks. And the way handlers train elephants is anything but humane. Instead, they employ vicious, horrific tactics like stabbing the animals with bull hooks, or shocking them with cattle prods. The video has since been removed from Twitter, but it was online long enough for it to amass more than 300,000 views. And when a video like this goes viral, it means more and more people could be lulled into believing such cruel exploitation is normal. Twitter must implement a stronger system to catch these videos before they go viral! Sign the petition if you agree! |
P.S. Elephants should never be coerced or abused into performing for humans in this way — not in circuses, not in zoos, and not anywhere else.
Sign the petition.
Regards Mark
Nothing has to be spoken;
Regards Mark
The Link Between Leather and Live Export
More than 1.4 billion cows, sheep, and goats as well as millions of other animals are killed each year to feed the fashion industry’s demand for skin – but how much do we really know about the journeys of the sensitive individuals whose skin is stolen?
The global leather supply chain is complex, making it difficult for consumers to determine the origins and sometimes even the species of the animals used for the items they purchase.
Live export is a process in which trembling animals are pushed onto a severely crowded truck or ship and transported many thousands of kilometres.
A new PETA video tells the story of how the leather trade fuels the live-export industry from the perspective of an investigator who has witnessed it firsthand.
Butchered Alive: Australian Cattle Killed Overseas for Leather Shoes
In 2021, PETA Asia investigators visited seven Indonesian abattoirs at random, some of which were part of the Australian government’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System.
At these facilities, the investigators found botched stunning or sometimes none at all. They witnessed animals being prodded repeatedly with metal rods and gasping for air as blood filled their throats.
The investigators learned that the skins of some Australian cattle were sold to a fashion brand that exports leather shoes worldwide.
Butchered Alive: Australian Cattle Killed Overseas for Your Leather Shoes – News – PETA Australia
Chilling scenes of abuse of Australian animals have been documented at Indonesian abattoirs this year, prompting a fresh set of complaints to be filed against Australia’s live-export industry, but consumers must take action as the government has shown no inclination to lift a finger.
The footage is a harrowing glimpse into the trade that supplies flesh to dangerous wet markets and skin to the global leather industry. Some of the facilities visited by PETA Asia investigators are even part of the Australian government’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS), dispelling all doubt about government inaction.
In the same month this abuse occurred, Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council (ALEC) CEO Mark Harvey-Sutton expressed his “full confidence in the standards the Australian industry upholds”. Watch the footage below and decide if you can say the same. If not, please stop buying leather right now!
Botched Stunning or None at All
PETA Asia investigators visited seven randomly selected abattoirs in Indonesia in April and May 2021 and filed an official complaint.
They found steers and bulls being forced into restraint boxes and shot in the head with captive-bolt guns. The cattle were often fully aware of what was happening to them. They slammed their bodies against the metal chute they were trapped in, in a futile attempt to turn around and escape.
Workers repeatedly failed to stun cows adequately. Clearly still conscious after being shot in the head, one steer was jabbed 64 times in the face and on his torso with a steel rod to try to force him to stand back up so a worker could shoot him again.
Workers also violently twisted his tail until it was broken. In a last-ditch attempt to move the struggling, panicked steer, they pulled on his broken tail a dozen times.
Then there were those for whom stunning wasn’t even attempted at all. Some cattle were simply physically restrained before their throats were slit – which, believe it or not, is a killing method approved by the Australian government.
ALEC boasts on its website that 95% of Australian cattle in Indonesia are now stunned prior to slaughter. But based on what investigators saw, that’s not the case.
Butchered Alive
Abattoir workers viciously yanked and deliberately stepped on animals’ tails, apparently in a crude attempt to check for consciousness. Some cattle still kicked, but they were butchered anyway, with no further attempts at rendering them unconscious.
Steers who were still moving and whose heads dangled by only a strip of flesh after their throats had been slit were hung by the neck on metal hooks. Their legs continued to thrash as they were dragged across the bloody floor and then hoisted up.
Investigators saw animals blinking after their throats were cut, gasping for air as blood filled their throats. Some suffered this way for up to 12 minutes after being shot with a captive-bolt gun.
Monica KH Bando, a veterinarian with more than 13 years of clinical and research experience, said the footage captured by investigators depicted “egregious violations of acceptable animal welfare standards for livestock” including “[p]oorly designed facilities, unsanitary conditions, substandard handling, restraint methods that induce stress and distress, lack of stunning and ineffective stunning, and inhumane killing methods”.
10 Years of Failure
Workers told investigators that the cows being slaughtered came from Australia, and most wore Australian National Livestock Identification System ear tags.
These are just a tiny percentage of the millions of animal victims of Australia’s live-export trade. Australia exported more than 1.8 million animals in 2020, and the vast majority of them were cattle.
It’s been a decade since cruelty in the live-export trade to Indonesia was exposed by Animals Australia on national TV in the programme Four Corners, after which a traceability programme – Export Supply Chain Assurance System – was put in place.
The programme hasn’t provided “assurance” of any kind. In fact, it’s been a colossal failure. It was supposed to stop this kind of cruelty. There have been 184 reports of non-compliance (just reports – the number of incidents would be far higher) since it was established.
When this latest footage was filmed, the Department of Agriculture was still investigating cruelty complaints against Indonesian abattoirs made by Animals Australia in 2020.
The Government Ignores This, but We Have the Power to Stop It
The Australian government should be preparing for a future without live exports, but it’s not. Every new exposé is “shocking” to those in power, but are you really surprised? When animals are crammed onto ships as though they were inanimate commodities and then sold for slaughter, how can anyone expect them to be treated as if their pain mattered?
Australia is a nation of self-proclaimed animal lovers, so many of us blame somebody else for the cruelty – the government or people overseas. Never mind that these cattle were slaughtered for meat and leather sold all over the world, potentially even in Australia.
The live-export industry is the meat industry and the leather industry. If you buy meat at an Australian supermarket or purchase a pair of leather shoes, you’re putting money in the pockets of the same people who send these animals to be slaughtered in hideous, painful ways overseas.
And since the leather produced in Indonesia is exported globally, you could be wearing or sitting on the skin of the same animals you’ve just watched in this video. PETA Asia investigators found that the skins of some Australian cattle were sold to a fashion brand that exports leather shoes worldwide.
If you continue to buy the flesh or skin of animals, you send the same message to producers that the government does, i.e. that this industry has a social license to continue and a sustainable future. Please, act now to change the market and spare animals’ lives every time you buy a meal, a pair of shoes, a jacket, or a belt. Personal responsibility will end this trade. Let’s go!
Australia: It’s Time to Abandon Ship
In April 2021, New Zealand announced a ban on all live exports (including breeding “stock”) by sea, citing the need to “stay ahead of the curve in a world where animal welfare is under increasing scrutiny”. New Zealand actually banned export for slaughter all the way back in 2008. In May 2021, the UK announced that it intends to ban the live export of animals for slaughter and fattening.
Meanwhile, Australia is still leaving a bloody trail around the world, causing animals misery en route and in every port they reach.
This investigation shows that no regulations, reviews, or reports are making the barbaric business of shipping and killing live animals more humane
TAKE ACTION
Demand an End to ALL Live Export – NOW! | PETA Australia
Regards Mark
Around 8/6/22 we wrote to our (UK) Member of Parliament (MP) expressing our concerns over the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and animal welfare issues. We had serious concerns over the UK animal standards being lowered down to Australian levels by this deal, especially with Australia still undertaking the mulesing of sheep, using up to 16 times as many antibiotics on Australian farms compared to those being used in the UK, and of course, the continuation of live animal exports from Australia to the Middle East.
You can read our letter of concern by clicking here:
We now have a letter returned to us dated 22/6/22 from Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP; the UK Minister of State for Trade Policy at the Department for International Trade.
I am publishing the letter below for everyone to read if they wish.
Today is the 24/6; and I need to inform people that yesterday, the 23rd; the British government led by Boris Johnson, suffered 2 defeats in by elections in the South West of England and also in the North.
Awful results for the Tories, but there’s something else that party’s ranks should fear (msn.com)
Will others follow Tory chairman out of the door? (msn.com)
We at WAV are non politically biased; we just fight for the better treatment and welfare of living, sentient beings. These defeats though cannot simply be dismissed as a mid term ‘thing’ that happens in politics; many see this as something deeper, possibly a reflection of a government in crisis which is doing little and expecting the ‘normal working man (and woman)’ to pick up the tab.
Animal welfare deals included in the UK – Australia FTA are a concern to us here in the UK. Australia has lower standards, the UK has better. We are keen to read in Penny’s letter that things are still moving on to deliver the (UK) Governments Manifesto commitment to end the live export of live animals for both further fattening and slaughter. We are pleased to announce that despite the Bill not reaching law yet; live animals have not been exported to any degree (when compared to the past) for many months now. The Bill is working its way through both houses of Parliament in order to become law; and as we have campaigned against this sick business for nearly 35 years, we want to see action now !
The second page of Penny’s letter declares that the UK government has “secured ground breaking provisions on animal welfare with Australia, including the first stand alone animal welfare chapter in any signed FTA”. We welcome the comprehensive partnership with Australia to progress and improve animal welfare standards. These include a joint working group who will meet regularly to provide a forum to support cooperation on animal welfare issues between the UK and Australia, which includes best practices.
We also welcome and support the UK governments and Australian efforts to stop the use of sow stalls, which were banned in the UK in 1999, 23 years ago !, and the commitments for bilateral cooperation which will see this practice also being stopped in Australia.
I will leave you to read the response to us from Penny, outing the UK government approach to animal welfare ‘move forwards’ with Australia. If we can make more efforts to stop live exports, the mulesing of live sheep, get the pigs out of sow stalls, and make differences for caged animals in Australia, then we may be on the road to further progress.
Finally, the massive government defeats in the UK yesterday sent a clear message to government that the common man and woman are not happy; and that things need to change, or else we change you by electing a different government.
So, get on and pass the (UK) animal welfare legislation to give animals a voice.
Forever hopeful ! (and continually fighting);
Regards Mark
Ship’s captain jumps overboard to rescue meerkat called Boris in Cornish port
From ‘Metro’ London
Ship’s captain jumps overboard to rescue meerkat called Boris in Cornish port (msn.com)
In today’s episode of headlines you just couldn’t make up we introduce a hero captain and his meerkat cargo.
Skipper Tom Sexton stripped to his boxers to rescue a meerkat called Boris confused itself for a Lemming and jumped 30ft off the side of the boat.
Luckily Boris survived the jump from the Gry Maritha when it arrived in port at Penzance, Cornwall.
His escape bid was not alone – his travelling companion Doris had managed to escape their cat cage and made a bid for freedom.
She was caught, but Boris made his bid for freedom.
They were both on their way to Axe Valley Zoo in Axminster, Devon, after being transported from the Isles of Scilly.
Tom, 33, said: ‘I think the owner originally had four of them in a sort of little petting zoo at his council house.
‘Two of them were in this cat carrier style box but managed to figure out how to break out while we were sailing.
‘The two of them were just running around the deck, but there were all kinds of cars and crates they kept hiding under so we decided to leave it until we got into port.
‘Eventually after mooring we all got out brooms and gloves and the five of us started running around the deck trying to catch them.
‘We managed to get the first one, but the second one jumped overboard. I was actually pretty impressed at how good a swimmer he was, but he seemed to be in a bit of trouble.
‘I decided I’d jump in and grab him so I stripped off down to my boxers and put on some gloves to go get him, I knew they could be quite nippy.
‘I was surprised how easy it was to get him though. We then put him back in his box and hoisted him back onto the deck.’
Regards Mark
World Animals Voice 