Brian Clancy
June 29, 2009
CONCERN for animal welfare is a direct result of higher living standards and personal wealth, according to animal welfare specialist Dr Andrew Fisher.
“As food security and immediate personal needs are no longer a daily challenge for many, society’s circle of moral concern has expanded,” Dr Fisher said.
He told the BestWool-BestLamb conference in Bendigo in Victoria last week that the wool industry was feeling those community concerns with the mulesing debate.
He said these concerns in highly developed communities were reflected in a recent Europe survey that asked respondents how they rated animal welfare.
Sixty-seven per cent of Swedish respondents said it was a major concern while Eastern European countries were at the other end of scale.
The Czech Republic gave a 21 per cent response, with Britain falling in the middle at 47 per cent.
Dr Fisher, who is an associate professor at Melbourne University’s facility of veterinary science, said the need for farmers to address animal welfare concerns in their production systems would grow.
He put farming practices that prompted welfare concerns into four categories:
* Restriction of animal movement.
* Surgical practices that cause pain.
* Long-distance transport for higher profits.
* Diseases or problems induced by the production environment.
He said the best strategy for farmers was to take the time to understand consumer concerns.
Where Australian practices differed from farming industries elsewhere, they were likely to face greater scrutiny or appear more of a problem to outside observers.
Dr Fisher said mulesing and the need to truck animals long distances were examples of major issues for Australia.
He said farmer reaction to an animal welfare issue often followed three stages.
The first was denial – “don’t mention the war” – and the second was “yes, we are looking at the problem”.
The third was “we have identified the problem and this is how we are dealing with it”.
Dr Fisher hoped the establishment of the government-sponsored Australia Animal Welfare Strategy and the development of Australian standards and guidelines for each livestock species would go much of the way to addressing community concerns.
He said the new standards and guidelines would replace the existing Model Codes of Practice.
Animals played an important role in Michael Jackson’s life, abruptly cut short yesterday. One of Jackson’s earliest hits, and a personal favorite song of his, was “Ben,” a loving tribute to a pet rat. Jackson was just 14 years old when he recorded the song, becoming the youngest ever performer at the time to top the U.S. charts while still being a member of a group, The Jacksons.
“Ben” was written for a 1972 film of the same name. A young boy befriends Ben the rat in the movie, which was echoed in Jackson’s own life since he owned a rat as well.
From Discovery News, June 26
From OIPA:
Animal Liberation Victoria was contacted in early 2007 by distressed students from Monash University’s third year undergraduate science course.
Students were being instructed to perform experiments on live unconscious rabbits which included:
* Restraining the rabbits on a work table, with their paws and teeth tied to anchor points
* Cutting open the rabbits’ throats with unsterilised instruments and inserting a tube into their wind pipe
* Administering various chemicals into their blood stream to observe the effect on the rabbits’ heart rate
At the end of the class, the rabbits were given a lethal overdose and discarded in a rubbish bin.
Undercover footage was then recorded from inside the classroom using a hidden camera.
We are happy to update you about the action alert we supported. We are overjoyed to announce that Monash University have confirmed that the live rabbit dissections are not taking place this year. The classes have been replaced with a humane non animal alternative.
Thank you so much to everyone who sent in objections, took part in protests, or contributed to the campaign in any way. This huge victory for the rabbits could not have been achieved without you!
For more info please visit: http://www.monashkills.org
On the bouncy play platform outside Ghent’s 15th century slaughterhouse, the banana was thumping the beefsteak.
The two boys battled in the drizzle yesterday, the one in the fruity yellow costume serving up another veggie victory over his rival in bloody scarlet.
The parent onlookers laughed and munched another soya fritter. Mmm, yummy, said the man with a heart condition. They queued five-deep in the rain to dip their organic, wholegrain bread in the aubergine caviar, to smear their lips with eggless mayo. Another pure fruit vitamin cocktail under the marquee?
“This is pretty special, pretty unique,” said Tobias Leenaert, an anti-meat campaigner. “An entire city proclaiming one day a week a veggie day.”
Ghent embarks on a radical experiment today, seeking to make every Thursday a day free of meat and of the fish and shellfish for which the city is renowned.
On the eve of what is being touted as an unprecedented exercise, the biggest queue in the Flemish university town of 200,000 yesterday was for signatures – to collect a bag of wholefood goodies and sign up for “Donderdag – Veggie Dag”, turning the burghers of Ghent into pioneers in the fight against obesity, global warming, cruelty to animals and against the myth that meat-free eating amounts to a diet of soggy lettuce, a slice of tomato, and a foul-tasting bean burger.
The city council says it is the first town in Europe and probably the western world to try to make the entire place vegetarian for a day every week. Tom Balthazar, the Labour party councillor pushing the scheme, said: “There’s nothing compulsory. We just want to be a city that promotes sustainable and healthy living.”
Every restaurant in the city is to guarantee a vegetarian dish on the menu, with some going fully vegetarian every Thursday. From September, the city’s schools are to make a meat-free meal the “default” option every Thursday, although parents can insist on meat for their children. At least one hospital wants to join in.
A small, dreamy city of spires, bicycles, and canals, prospering since the Middle Ages, Ghent may be on to something. It appears to be tapping into a zeitgeist awareness of the cost to human health and the environment of intensive meat and dairy farming. Other towns in Belgium and the Netherlands are making inquiries; there has even been one from Canada.
“We hope that the university, other institutions, enterprises and other towns will jump on the train,” said Leenaert, director of the local branch of Flanders’ Ethical Vegetarian Association (EVA).
The organisers cite UN data arguing that meat production and consumption are to blame for 18% of greenhouse gases – more than cars. “If everyone in Flanders does not eat meat one day a week, we will save as much CO2 in a year as taking half a million cars off the road,” said the EVA.
“I never touch meat, unless I’m at my grandmother’s and I need to be polite,” said Karien De Temmermann, a young EVA member.
“This is not a plan for everyone to be forced into vegetarianism,” said Wim Coenen, a vegan who works as an importer of vegetarian pet food from Italy. “But it will reduce our carbon footprint. The basic premise is to introduce a way of lessening our meat consumption.”
The revolution starts today with a foodie festival at the vegetable market. Ninety thousand town maps listing the best eateries for the meat-shy are being handed out. Recipe booklets and food samples are being distributed, with fair trade wine to wash down the nibbles. A nearby restaurant is serving a four-course veggie lunch for €12. The kebab house on the market is eschewing the doner for broadbean falafel and haloumi cheese.
Ghent boasts a string of outstanding restaurants and is well-known for gourmet vegetarian cuisine. The council reckons it has more veggie eateries per capita than London, Paris or Berlin.
The Lib-Lab coalition running the city was persuaded to back the idea when Philippe van den Bulck, an outstanding culinary talent, served up a veggie gastronomic tour de force at the town hall. He is one of Flanders’s top chefs and food writers, doing time at El Bulli in Spain, to many the best restaurant in the world. He is also a vegetarian.
Today we celebrate an incredible victory!
The European Parliament has just announced a ban on the trade of seal products within the European Union.
This may be the most significant victory in IFAW’s 40 year campaign to end Canada’s commercial seal hunt…and we couldn’t have done it without you.
From Mexico City to Madrid to Moscow, tens of thousands of letters, postcards, and e-mails poured in – making a clear statement that the world is against this brutal hunt.
The European Parliament listened, and now the end of the commercial seal hunt may be inevitable. Already, prices for seal pelts have dropped to half of what they were last year. And with this ban, 7 out of Canada’s top 10 export markets are now closed for business.
This is a fantastic win, but we can’t rest now. We must make a final push to end this hunt once and for all!
IFAW is shifting all its focus back to where we started this fight four decades ago: For the first time in history, a Canadian senator has proposed a bill to ban the hunt – and now we need to gather as much support for Senator Harb’s bill as possible.
If you already contacted the Canadian embassy, thank you!
If you haven’t yet had a chance, please contact the Canadian embassy today, http://www.stopthesealhunt.com/c.ihKPIWPCIqE/b.5015401/k.8FB6/Action_Item_TEST/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?msource=DR090401001 and demand that they support Senator Harb’s bill to ban the seal hunt.
You can make history – by helping make the seal hunt history. Let’s put an end to this cruel hunt once and for all.
Please act today – http://www.stopthesealhunt.com/c.ihKPIWPCIqE/b.5015401/k.8FB6/Action_Item_TEST/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?msource=DR090401001 make it the very next thing you do.
Congratulations on this incredible victory, and thanks so much for your support,
Fred O’Regan
IFAW President & CEO
p.s. IFAW started this fight…and now we’re going to finish it. Help us end this hunt forever by contacting the Canadian embassy today.
Two days before Earth Day, I took my Global Media class out on a limb by relocating us to the shade of a giant tree to begin a discussion of the history of human culture through the seemingly odd reference point of our relationship to the cow. Before we started, I had my students use the time spent in search of shade to observe things around them, to note “non-human life” in all its forms. They came up with some good points, and of course, the inevitable question of what trees and birds and butterflies on Lone Mountain had to do with media studies.
I do not have a definitive answer yet, but I am convinced that we cannot hope to either understand or improve our present media-dominated culture without turning to a much bigger and older picture: that of our relationship to nature in general, and to animals in particular. Perhaps for the first time in human history, we live in a world in which our understanding of animals is shaped more by the stories our media and consumer culture tell about them, than by direct experience.
It is important that we pay attention to what kinds of stories our media tell us about animals, our relationship to them, and indeed of our own place in nature. For generations in the past, the story of animals came from their collective wisdom and heritage, from what we might call their myths and legends. With the rise of modernity and the media, we have forgotten much of what animals mean to us and the world. Under the dizzying spell of modernity’s promises and consumerism’s illusions, we see animals as mere objects, either as commodities for our consumption or as blank slates for us to write our fantasies and fears upon. None of this does justice to the earth, and our unique place in it as a species which has great privileges and also appropriate responsibilities.
How we view animals is a part of how we view nature, and indeed life itself. When we trivialize the lives of animals, and worse, the suffering of animals, it speaks very poorly about our state of ethical evolvement and civilization. It is difficult enough that many parts of the world have gone from an occasionally meat based diet to an overwhelmingly and eco-expensively produced meat based one in the matter of a few centuries. But it is even more difficult to imagine how one could justify the abuse of animals for the sheer cruel pleasure of watching their abuse.
Yet, it is exactly such a form of egregious abuse that is now at the center of a legal debate. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would be looking into the decision of an appeals court to allow a “Free Speech” defense against charges of animal abuse. There are concerns that allowing First Amendment protection to acts of cruelty to animals would once again open the gates to the creation and circulation of the despicable “crush videos” that seemed to have declined thanks to the law. It seems frightening to even think of what the implications of declaring videos of rabbits being crushed underfoot as “free speech” would be.
The courts may decide on the legality of this situation, but the very fact that this has been brought up should make us think about the rather unchecked manner in which violence and cruelty towards living beings has run wild under the guise of entertainment and distraction for bored audiences in recent years. Most of us may recognize and abhor the depravity that underlies fetishes based on violence towards helpless animals. But we would do well also to ask the question of whether any form of entertainment that involves harm to a living creature is really necessary; even the senseless devouring of insects on certain reality shows like Fear Factor. I remember the outspoken campaign that some viewers in India started against this practice when Fear Factor began to appear on Indian television. Unfortunately, some Indian reality show producers ended up introducing the same senseless act in their programs as well.
A pioneering study on “Animal Issues in the Media” done over a decade ago by George Gerbner, one of the most revered figures in the field of media studies, found that television tends to present a skewed picture of animals (and their supporters) in the following manner:
Animal roles overplay villainy. While humans have many times more heroes than villains, animals have almost as many villains as heroes (and) are more likely to be seen as a threat. Animals suffer violence/victim overkill…. In prime time more than one-third and in Saturday morning children’s programs more than one half of the animal cast suffers overt physical violence. Animal rights activists are depicted as violent most of the time they are shown. … In general, the disapproval of animal rights activism is at least twice as frequent as its approval. (From Against the Mainstream: The Selected Works of George Gerbner edited by Michael Morgan)
It may be time to look closely again at what sort of a story we are telling ourselves about animals and our relation to them. Since Gerbner’s study, the media culture has grown exponentially. The internet has given free speech a whole new impetus. But the ease with which we can tell our stories and post our videos must not render us incapable of moral judgment and decency. It may be for the courts to decide whether cruelty to animals can pass off as free speech, but we must also rethink these important ideas as a culture. Free Speech may be a noble ideal, but perhaps we are better served by thinking of it not only as a right but also as a privilege.
There is an expression that is used in parts of India to describe animals in a compassionate manner: “noru leni jeevulu.” Living beings that have no capacity to speak. Human beings, on the other hand, not only have the gift of speech but also the benefit of law to protect it. The privilege that allows us to communicate, to tell stories about ourselves and the earth, to create works of art that move us, to dream up and build a better life on this planet, is too precious to be thrown away to the impulses of cruelty and boredom. Let us resolve, on Earth Day, to place our gift of speech at the service of our non-human neighbors as well, and not denigrate it by turning it into an instrument of their suffering. As Mahatma Gandhi once said:
True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind. There is an art that kills and an art that gives life… True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors.
