Farm Animals

Lizards are beheaded for Gucci accessories

In never-before-seen footage, a PETA Asia investigation into an Indonesian slaughterhouse that supplies Gucci with lizard skins reveals how Gucci wallets, belts, and purses are made.
The lizards’ legs are tied, then they’re callously thrown around and beheaded without stunning—causing them a prolonged, agonizing death.
This kind of cruelty goes into every one of Gucci’s lizard leather purses, belts, wallets, and other fashion accessories.

Workers put the lizards on a wooden block one by one and chopped off their heads.
PETA Asia’s investigators documented workers striking lizards up to 14 times with a machete until the decapitation was complete.
Lizards struggled and thrashed throughout the process.

According to Dr. Clifford Warwick, a reptile expert who reviewed PETA Asia’s footage, decapitating live, conscious reptiles has been recognized as extremely inhumane by major scientific bodies for approximately four decades and is illegal in some parts of the world.

Decapitation does not cause an instantaneous death in lizards. According to Dr. Warwick, the lizards’ brains were probably conscious—fully aware and feeling intense physical pain and psychological stress—for over 30 minutes after they had been beheaded.

PETA Asia’s footage shows lizards’ heads moving after being severed.

Workers then inflated the lizards’ headless bodies with an air compressor to make their skin easier to remove.

“The film depicts the brutal treatment and killing of lizards using methods that are strongly inconsistent with scientific evidence-based protocols, are contraindicated, are abusive, and are inhumane.”
—Dr. Clifford Warwick, PGDip (MedSci), Ph.D., C.Biol., C.Sci., EurProBiol, FRSB

Despite hearing from PETA, Gucci continues to profit from this kind of cruelty.

Lizards have individual personalities, just like cats and dogs. Research has shown that some species of lizards are devoted parents and mates, and three generations of lizards may live together in family groups.
Rather than exploring lush rainforests, the lizards used by Gucci are taken out of their natural habitat, abused, and violently killed for cold-blooded vanity.

No matter what standards companies tout, PETA entities have repeatedly exposed the horrendous ways in which animals are abused by the exotic skins trade.

A previous PETA Asia investigation documented that snakes in Vietnam are killed by being inflated with compressed air and that crocodiles are electroshocked, stabbed, inflated, and then likely skinned alive.

In South Africa, PETA U.S. investigators caught workers on camera striking ostriches in the face during transport, and at the slaughterhouse, they were stunned and flipped upside down, and then their throats were slit in full view of the other terrified birds—all for the bumpy-textured ostrich-skin purses sold by Gucci.

No bag, belt, or wallet is worth so much pain and suffering.

Please don’t buy accessories made out of exotic skins: Choose humane, eco-friendly, vegan options instead.

Gucci banned fur and angora after hearing from PETA and our supporters. It’s time for the company to do the same with exotic skins.

Please join PETA in calling on Gucci to stop using exotic skins today.

https://investigations.peta.org/lizards-killed-gucci-accessories/

And I mean…Luxury items make money.

The trade in Asian pythons alone is an estimated 1 billion US dollars annually.

Because the leather of the phyton snake is particularly popular.

To do this, the living phyton snakes are hung with their jaws on a hook and pumped full of water so that the body is full and the snakeskin can be peeled off with a straight cut.

A living python with a compressor hose: anus and mouth are sealed with tape Photo: dpa / Peta

After that, the skinned phythons, which are disposed of as waste, often live for several days before they die in agony.

The EU countries alone imported an incredible 6.3 million whole hides and more than 4 million pieces of skin from protected snakes, crocodiles, monitor lizards and tejus (monitor lizards from Latin America).

Most of the leather used is imported from “low-wage countries” such as China, Brazil, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

The conditions there are cruel in terms of keeping and killing the animals, but also in terms of working conditions.

In the countries of origin, leather can now often be sold more expensive than meat, which is why leather is no longer a waste product of the meat industry, as is widely believed, but the opposite is often the case.

The leather of exotic reptiles is back in vogue: The reptile leather is mainly imported from luxury fashion brands such as Gucci, Cartier, Hermès and Bally and processed by them into watch straps, shoes and bags.

Switzerland is the world’s largest dealer of goods made from the leather of exotic animals.

The industry and the exclusive clientele do not seem to care what agony the animals have to suffer from in order to end up as an accessory.

There is no species-appropriate way to kill an animal. Millions of animals die each year for trade in exotic skin, and every single animal goes through the same excruciating killing process.

We don’t need wildlife products for luxury fashion. This damages the ecosystem and causes incredible torture for the animals

My best regards to all, Venus

General News, Uncategorized

England: Five Ice-Age Mammoths Unearthed in Cotswolds After 220,000 Years.

WAV Comment – Talking of old fossils – there I was thinking the Conservative Party had only been around since 1834.  Just shows you; you live and learn. Joking aside; an amazing discovery to learn more about the past.

Regards Mark

Sir David Attenborough with some of the mammoth bones
Sir David Attenborough with some of the mammoth bones found in the gravel quarry near Swindon. Photograph: Julian Schwanitz/BBC/Windfall Films

David Attenborough will tell of ‘pristine’ skeletons found with other extinct species

Five ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation have been discovered in the Cotswolds, to the astonishment of archaeologists and palaeontologists.

The extensive remains of two adults, two juveniles and an infant that roamed 200,000 years ago have been unearthed near Swindon, along with tools used by Neanderthals, who are likely to have hunted these 10-tonne beasts. More are expected to be found because only a fraction of the vast site, a gravel quarry, has been excavated.

Judging by the quality of the finds, the site is a goldmine. They range from other ice-age giants, such as elks – twice the size of their descendants today, with antlers 10ft across – to tiny creatures, notably dung beetles, which co-evolved with megafauna, using their droppings for food and shelter, and freshwater snails, just like those found today. Even seeds, pollen and plant fossils, including extinct varieties, have been preserved at this site.

Steppe mammoth
An artist’s impression of the Steppe mammoth. Photograph: Beth Zaiken/Reuters

All these will now offer new clues into how our Neanderthal ancestors lived in the harsh conditions of ice-age Britain, a period of prehistory about which little is known. The exceptional discoveries will be explored in a BBC One documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, to be aired on 30 December, in which Sir David Attenborough and evolutionary biologist Professor Ben Garrod join archaeologists from DigVentures to film the excavation.

Garrod told the Observer: “This is one of the most important discoveries in British palaeontology.” While the odd mammoth bone often turns up, he said, finding such complete skeletons is “incredibly rare”. “Where these mammoths lie in the ground is exactly where they died a quarter of a million years ago – next to incredible things like stone tools and the snails they trampled underfoot.

“We have evidence of what the landscape was like. We know what plants were growing there. The little things are really revealing the context of these big, iconic giants. It’s a glimpse back in time. That’s incredibly important in terms of us understanding how climate change especially impacts environments, ecosystems and species.”

Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise, said: “Exciting doesn’t cover it. Other mammoths have been found in the UK but not in this state of preservation. They’re in near-pristine condition. You can’t take it in.”

She added: “Archaeological sites from this period are rare, and critical for understanding Neanderthal behaviour across Britain and Europe. Why did so many mammoths die here? Could Neanderthals have killed them? What can they tell us about life in ice-age Britain? The range of evidence at this site gives us a unique chance to address these questions.”

The researchers believe that the mammoth remains and the artefacts date to around 220,000 years ago, when Britain was still occupied by Neanderthals during a warmer interglacial period known as MIS7. Falling temperatures had forced Neanderthals south, and this site was then a lush, fertile plain to which both animals and humans were drawn.

Archaeologists excavating the mammoth bones

Archaeologists excavating the mammoth bones. Photograph: DigVentures

The earliest mammoths came from Africa about five million years ago. This particular species, the Steppe mammoth, was the largest of them, and lasted from about 1.8m years ago to about 200,000 years ago.

Garrod, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of East Anglia, said the species weighed up to 15 tonnes, twice or three times the weight of an African elephant: “This was the largest species of mammoth ever. By the time they were about to be gone, they had dropped down to 10 tonnes, which still sounds a lot. We think that was an adaptation to the change in environment, climate and resource availability. It was becoming colder at that time, resources were getting sparser, and it drove that shrinking of the species. On top of that, there would have been undoubtedly local pressure from hunting and competition from other species.”

Speculating on why so many animals died at this site, he added: “Was there a massive glacial flood that washed these poor animals down? By looking at the mud, it doesn’t look like there was. It’s very uniform all the way down. Were they hunted by people? Were Neanderthals crouching down in the rushes and chasing them into the water? Possibly. There is definitely an association between a wonderful hand-axe and other stone tools and these bones. Did they chance upon this bunch of dead mammoths and have a mammoth buffet?

“Or was it just really muddy? With elephants today, if a juvenile gets stuck, often the adults won’t leave the site. They’ll try and help them. This is very thick mud. I’ve grown up near the seaside, near estuaries; you don’t need to be very heavy to get stuck in mud very quickly.”

The excavations also revealed further evidence of Neanderthal activity on the site, including flint tools that would have been used for cleaning fresh hides. Some of the bones have possible butchery marks.

DigVentures is a team of archaeologists that specialises in public outreach. They were called in after a Neanderthal’s hand-axe was found with the initial discovery of mammoth remains by amateur fossil-hunters Sally and Neville Hollingworth.

DigVentures raised the funding from Historic England, dug the site and is coordinating the analysis and research. They hope to continue excavations once further funds have been raised. The site is now protected from fossil hunters by natural flooding.

Westcott Wilkins praised the Hills Group, the quarry owners, for allowing them as long as they need: “There are also early discussions about wanting to build a public outreach centre where we can display some of the finds.” Other finds are expected to go to the Bristol Museum.

She noted that the mammoths were barely five metres below ground level and close to a busy road: “People are whizzing by, not realising that feet underneath their car is this scene. It’s very surreal. We’re all still trying to get our heads around what we found.”

Regards Mark

Farm Animals

you decide whether they live or die

We are a society that has got used to violence.

click on the picture

Every year around 60 billion animals are murdered worldwide to satisfy the greed of industry and carnivores.
It’s an extremely cruel and violent practice, but that’s how the meat mafia works.

The machinery draws its energy from the large power plants of economy, press, religion and politics, but the energy itself is extracted in the deep, dark tunnels of the thought mines of human indifference.

The meat eaters in the billions help to maintain this system of exploitation, extermination, crime against animals, although they are informed almost every day, and even by conventional media, about the Holocaust of animals.

When you buy eggs or milk, meat or fish, you are paying the ones who make the money to do the dirty work … you are not innocent of these crimes if you still consume animal products … your money is that what they want … and they go all out to get the most money … by the cheapest means and the worst animal suffering …it’s time to stop eating animals and their products, it’s time to say … Animals of any kind are not resources, they are individuals, part of our Earthling family.
Speciesism and anthropocentrism are both ideologies that have enforced and manifested the highest contempt for life in the non-human world.

Don’t be a follower of these filthy ideologies; finish them.

My best regards to all, Venus

Environmental

Nicaragua: Thousands of sea turtles lay their eggs under military protection

Soldiers have guarded thousands of sea turtles on the coast of Nicaragua in the past few days.

The animals laid their eggs under military protection (!!)

A member of Nicaragua’s army carries a paslama (or Lora) turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea) after it laid her eggs at the beach in La Flor Wildlife Refugee in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, during nesting season, on December 5, 2021. –  (Photo by Oswaldo RIVAS / AFP)

Together with the environmental authorities of the country, the emergency services on the beach of La Flor in San Juan del Sur in the south of the country are to prevent residents from neighboring communities from plundering the nests of the olive ridged turtles.

The turtle species is considered critically endangered.

The sea turtles cover long distances to lay their eggs in the La Flor and Chacocente nature reserves on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast.

Authorities estimate that out of 100 hatched turtles, 90 make it into the ocean, but only 3 reach adulthood.

However, the young animals in particular are exposed to many other dangers: They are eaten by larger fish and seabirds.

In addition, pollution, boats and fishing pose a threat to the turtles.

For example, many animals are killed as “bycatch”.

Each of the turtles lays around 90 eggs.

The offspring hatch from the eggs after about 40 to 70 days.

When fully grown, the animals are a little over half a meter tall and weigh around 38 kilograms.
Source: spiegel

And I mean…Nice! the good news of the day!

You can see, if wanted, that the military can also be used for extremely sensible measures: to protect endangered animals from human violence.
It would be nice if the example caught on worldwide.
For many other endangered animal species too!
This is really a military phrase that can be welcomed without reservation.

In the country’s most recent elections (November 2021), Nicaraguan President Ortega received 75 percent of the vote.
The Biden government condemns the Sandinista government of Ortega as undemocratic and threatens with consequences for his election victory.

The US should be the last to criticize other nations’ elections.
Any election result that the US does not like is a bad one; any brutal dictator, as long as he is on the side of the United States, is good.

We congratulate on the election result and hope that further such meaningful actions for animals on the part of the government will follow!

My best regards to all, Venus

Environmental, General News, Hunting

EU: Ivory Trade: Steps Forward Against Elephant Poaching and Ivory Trafficking.

17 December 2021

News

The European Commission adopts a set of new measures to end ivory trade. While they will help in the fight against wildlife crime and to protect elephants, significant gaps remain.

Yesterday,(16/12/21) the European Commission adopted the revised Guidance on the EU regime governing ivory trade, following measures already taken under the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking to “eradicate illicit ivory from the EU market”. 

The new measures suspend trade in raw ivory on the EU market except for the exclusive purpose of repairing objects containing ancient ivory. Together with amendments made to Commission Regulation 865/2006, the Guidance also suspends intra-EU trade in worked ivory items, unless strict conditions are fulfilled. 

While Eurogroup for Animals welcome the Commission’s amendments to Regulation 865/2006 and the revised guidance document on the EU regime governing trade in ivory, some significant gaps still remain. 

The trade restrictions on worked ivory are only partially addressed in the Regulation (with the rest being in the guidance document), and those on raw ivory are currently only included in the guidance document and therefore are not legally binding for Member States.

Eurogroup for Animals has been directly involved in the process of developing the new rules, through participation in meetings, consultations, drafting documents and public mobilisation. 

The recently adopted measures represent a great achievement in the fight against wildlife crime and the slaughter of elephants. However, we will continue working, together with our members, to ensure that the new rules are duly implemented by Member States and strictly monitored by the European Commission.

Reineke Hameleers, CEO, Eurogroup for Animals

Regards Mark

Environmental, Farm Animals, General News

EU / China: EU investments driving unsustainable farming in China.

17 December 2021

Study found a significant increase in EU investments flowing to the Chinese livestock sector following the introduction of new investment rules in China. In the absence of sufficient animal welfare related standards in the country, this practice harms the global transition towards sustainable food systems, and fuels the public health and environmental crises the planet faces.

In 2020, EU and EFTA-based investors owned shares worth around €4.5 billion across four of the largest Chinese meat and dairy companies: WH Group, Muyuan, Mengniu and Yili. With the introduction of new investment rules in China, investors like JP Morgan Asset Management Europe, Allianz SE and BNP Paribas significantly increased their shareholding. 

In recent years, European livestock giants like Tonnies and Danone have also entered the Chinese market. Tonnies, whose core business is pork and beef processing, spent €500 million in 2019 on a slaughter and butchering centre in the Sichuan region, initially for two million pigs a year (rising to six million), while Danone earned almost €1 billion in profits from the 2021 sale of its stake in Chinese dairy company Mengniu. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which holds the world’s biggest stock portfolio, also entered the market after the new rules were introduced, now owning shares worth approximately €437 million in these four companies. 

The business opportunities may seem eye-watering, but a perfect storm of economic, cultural and regulatory issues that accompany EU investments into the Chinese livestock sector could lead to misery for millions of animals. China’s livestock sector is growing in the direction of greater intensification and automation, and the welfare problems associated with intensive livestock are well known and increase with scale.

In addition to being detrimental to animal welfare, intensive industrial farming has a very negative impact on the environment (air, water and ground pollution), biodiversity (as related land-use changes often lead to habitat loss), public health (as intensive conditions tend to favour the spread of zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance) and climate change (as animals emit greenhouse gases, and also because of the related deforestation). Intensive farming also leads to huge volumes of waste (i.e. high level of water use, animal remains, excrement, water and soil pollution). 

Without careful management and awareness of the welfare concerns associated with intensification and automation – and in the absence of further regulation in China – EU investments risk transforming China into a living laboratory for futuristic experiments in animal husbandry, with consequences that could affect the entire planet. 

In that context, the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) – which has not been ratified yet – is also a missed opportunity as it does not allow to address a situation where investments fostered under the deal would fuel unsustainable sectors.

To prevent such situation, Eurogroup for Animals thus calls on the European Commission, the European Parliament and EU Member States to:

  • adopt effective rules on due diligence, including animal welfare within their scope; 
  • bring up the animal welfare dimension in the work started with China on agreed terms for responsible investment;
  • establish a cooperation mechanism with China around animal welfare standards;
  • promote a reform of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles in multilateral development banks where the EU and/or its Member States are share owners to include EU-equivalent animal welfare  requirements.

The sustainability of EU investments in the Chinese livestock sector – The role of Animal Welfare

File

Report: The sustainability of EU investments in the Chinese livestock sector – The role of Animal Welfare2.38 MB

Regards Mark

Farm Animals

California: Suffering and mass murder of male chicks

Report Animal Equality-December 16, 2021

Animal Equality has released its latest undercover investigation exposing serious violations of California’s animal cruelty laws inside a major U.S. meat supplier.

Animal Equality has released a new investigation documenting shocking scenes of suffering and abuse of birds at a Foster Farms hatchery in Stanislaus County, California.

This facility provides baby chickens to farms managed by Foster Farms, where they are raised and then slaughtered.
Foster Farms supplies major west coast grocery chains as well as the fast food chain Chick-fil-A.

The investigation exposed serious violations of California’s animal cruelty laws and showed chicks routinely being inhumanely killed or left to slowly die from injuries.

PROLONGED SUFFERING AND DEATH: At the hatchery, video footage documented chicks left to suffer for hours after being mutilated and severely injured by machinery, before they were dumped into a chute to be ground up while still alive.

Chicks who were just a few hours old were found with their bodies ripped open and internal organs exposed.
Others were caught or crushed by processing equipment that moved the birds along on conveyor belts.

Some chicks became trapped in hatching trays and were pulled into washers, where they were scalded and drowned in hot water.

Viewer discretion is advised.

CRIMINAL WELFARE VIOLATIONS: The investigation found serious criminal violations of animal cruelty laws:

Newly hatched chicks were crushed or mutilated by automated processing machinery.
Live chicks were found drowning in water and chemical foam on the floors underneath conveyor belts.
One chick was discovered alive in a hatching tray that had gone through the washing machine which uses hot, high-pressure water.

Continue reading “California: Suffering and mass murder of male chicks” →

Environmental, General News

England: ‘Gentle giants’: rangers prepare for return of wild bison to UK.

European wild bison

The rangers will manage the first wild bison to roam in the UK for thousands of years. Photograph: Tom Gibbs and Donovan Wright

Animals arrive in Kent in spring 2022 and will create forest clearings – described as ‘jet fuel for biodiversity’

“When you see them in the wild, there’s this tangible feeling of humility and respect,” says Tom Gibbs, one of the UK’s first two bison rangers. “The size of them instantly demands your respect, although they are quite docile. I wouldn’t say they are scary, but you’re aware of what they can do.”

The rangers will manage the first wild bison to roam in the UK for thousands of years when four animals arrive in north Kent in the spring of 2022. The bison are Europe’s largest land animal – bulls can weigh a tonne – and were extinct in the wild a century ago, but are recovering through reintroduction projects across Europe.

“They are magnificent animals, truly gentle giants,” says colleague Donovan Wright, who spent 20 years working with rhino, cape buffalo and other large animals in southern Africa. “The Kent project is very different, but it’s no less important.”

Wright says: “How amazing will it be to track the largest land mammal in the UK on foot right here in [Kent]? To experience something like this only five miles from Canterbury would be just incredible, and help people reconnect with nature.”

Gibbs and Wright have just returned from training with wild bison herds in the Netherlands, where they were reintroduced in 2007. The £1m Kent project is called Wilder Blean and is run by the Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust, and funded by the People’s Postcode Lottery. A principal aim is for the bison to rewild a dense, former commercial pine forest.

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Tom Gibbs (L) and Donovan Wright.
Tom Gibbs (L) and Donovan Wright. Photograph: Tom Gibbs and Donovan Wright
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Environmental, General News

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds.
Plastic washed ashore on Berawa Beach, Bali, Indonesia.
Plastic washed ashore on Berawa Beach, Bali, Indonesia. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

Surprising discovery shows scale of plastic pollution and reveals enzymes that could boost recycling

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds | Plastics | The Guardian

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study.

The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic.

The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.

The results “provide evidence of a measurable effect of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecology”, the scientists said.

Millions of tonnes of plastic are dumped in the environment every year, and the pollution now pervades the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Reducing the amount of plastic used is vital, as is the proper collection and treatment of waste.

But many plastics are currently hard to degrade and recycle. Using enzymes to rapidly break down plastics into their building blocks would enable new products to be made from old ones, cutting the need for virgin plastic production. The new research provides many new enzymes to be investigated and adapted for industrial use.

“We found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome’s plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution – a significant demonstration of how the environment is responding to the pressures we are placing on it,” said Prof Aleksej Zelezniak, at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

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