The Mass Slaughter Of Wild Animals

Huge Investments In Animal Agriculture.
A massive pig breeding and farming operation in Vietnam is set to expand, aided by $26million in funding granted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The investment comes despite fierce opposition from animal and environmental protection organisations.
The groups touched on a number of issues ranging from the treatment of animals to public health and deforestation, expressing concern that despite all of these red flags, IFC continues to fund industrial livestock projects.
A 2020 investigation found that IFC was one of two major development banks that had funnelled a total of $2.6billion into meat and dairy industries in just ten years, prompting researchers to warn that funding industrial animal agriculture could put global climate goals at risk.
A Feedback report published in July 2020 took a wider look at the financing of animal agriculture, showing that $478billion had been given to meat and dairy companies by more than 2,500 investment banks, firms, and pension funds around the globe from 2015 to 2020.
By comparison, just $59billion in backing was received by alternative protein producers over the same period, according to the Good Food Institute.
( Jennifer Mishler, 29.03.2022 )  ..  sentientmedia.org

Science that fails to embrace all living beings is far more dangerous than any virus.
( Steve Simmons )

Let us all learn to respect every animal as a sentient being.
( Jane Goodall )

To face animal suffering is to face our responsibility in their suffering.
( Jo-Anne McArthur )

The Shocking Treatment Of Male Calves In The Dairy Industry.
Nearly 30,000 calves were slaughtered in Ireland in 2018 after they reached ten days of age.
RTE’s flagship farming show revealed that in spring 2018 approximately 1.5 million dairy calves were born on Irish farms – but about half of those or 750,000 were male calves.
Many were sold into the beef sector while nearly 200,000 of the bull calves were exported live for veal production.
The huge numbers of unwanted male calves born in Ireland are one of the consequences of the major push to expand the nation’s profitable dairy herd with the end of EU quotas in 2015.
The RTE programme shines a spotlight on the welfare of the male calves who are often euthanised at birth in other countries like New Zealand and the UK.
The programme highlights how the calves in a small number of farms are fed milk but also hay from birth to cut costs even though it is not digestible to their systems until they reach four weeks of age.
Farmer Colm O’Leary, who helps run his family farm near Blarney in Co Cork, milks 240 cows who gave birth to 90 male calves last spring.
The programme reveals that under regulation all calves must be cared for on the farm for a minimum of ten days but when the time period was reached he said he had no choice but to send 22 male calves to slaughter.
( Lynne Kelleher, 05.12.2019 )  ..  irishexaminer.com

Farming animals is the greatest source of animal cruelty on the planet.
The magnitude of it, you can’t even imagine it – 80 billion of them are slaughtered every year.
( Dame Joanna Lumley )

Forcibly extracting semen from the male and forcibly impregnating the female without their consent is, in my opinion, not just sexual abuse but also immoral, unnatural, perverted and disgusting.
( Rose Winfold )

The best part of being a vegan is the purity and peace of mind one experiences and the strong connection I feel to the animal kingdom.
( Uri Geller )

The Mass Slaughter Of Wild Animals To Protect Farm Animals.
More than 1.75 million wild animals and birds were killed in the U.S. in 2021.
Wildlife Services, a department within the US Department of Agriculture, maintains the slaughter is necessary to protect agricultural output, threatened species and human health.
The 2021 toll shows the killings included alligators, armadillos, doves, owls, otters, porcupines, snakes and turtles.
European starlings alone accounted for more than one million of the creatures killed.
A single moose was shot, along with a solitary antelope and, accidentally, a bald eagle.
Wildlife Services say they target certain “invasive species” that it considers a threat to ecosystems, such as feral hogs and a type of giant swamp rodent called nutria, but it also, controversially, kills vast numbers of America’s native species.
Last year (2021), 404,538 native animals were killed by the agency that included 324 grey wolves, 64,131 coyotes, 433 black bears, 200 mountain lions, 605 bobcats, 3,014 foxes and 24,687 beavers.
Plenty of animals are killed “unintentionally”, too, with 2,746 unfortunate creatures, including bears, foxes and dogs, exterminated by “accident” last year.
Last year’s death toll was, in fact, fairly low by the standards of recent years.
In both 2008 and 2010, Wildlife Services killed 5 million native animals, and as recently as 2019 it killed around 1.3 million native animals, a total much higher than last year.
This is down to the methods used by Wildlife Services, which deploys leg hold traps, snares and poisons to target animals.
The agency uses a variety of other approaches too, such as rounding up and gassing geese or shooting coyotes from helicopters or aircraft.
“Killing carnivores like wolves and coyotes to supposedly benefit the livestock industry just leads to more conflicts and more killing”, said Collette Adkins, director at the Centre for Biological Diversity.
( Oliver Milman, 25.03.2022 )  ..  theguardian.com

Veganism is not about how hard it is for you.
It’s about every animal’s right not to be used as a slave.
( Randy Sandberg )

Intellect and knowledge is empathy and understanding.
It requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.
( Rose Winfold )

I don’t like the idea of any creature having to lose its life to keep me alive.
( Dame Joanna Lumley )

Gamekeepers On Shooting Estates Suspected Of Poisoning Birds Of Prey.
A highly toxic rat poison is killing increasing numbers of birds of prey.
Most recently, a white-tailed eagle was found poisoned by the anticoagulant brodifacoum on an estate in Dorset, England, UK.
Police closed the investigation into the eagle’s death with no charges issued.
New data from the Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme shows that from 2005 to 2019, the number of dead birds of prey found where the main poison in their body was brodifacoum was in single figures each year.
This changed in 2020, when 23 were found, rising from four in 2019.
Twenty-five were found in the first half of 2021.
Brodifacoum is a potent anti-coagulant that causes animals that ingest it to bleed internally, often for days, before dying.
Experts monitoring the white-tailed eagle that died in January 2022 believe, due to its movements monitored by a satellite tag, that it suffered for days before it perished.
Prior to 2016, the poison’s use outside was banned, and it was only sanctioned for use indoors, for example in food storage areas, barns and homes.
Now, it can be used outside, near buildings, and gamekeepers and landowners are cautioned to remove dead rodents in areas the poison has been applied so predators do not eat them.
Unlike some other poisons, users do not get put on a register.
The EU recommends it is only used in buildings, or, in severe circumstances, around them.
The rapid rise in deaths, which began four years after the rules were relaxed, has led bird-crime investigators to believe that those who wish to kill birds of prey have cottoned on to its potent impact.
A map of where dead birds with brodifacoum in their organs have been found shows that they have been poisoned in North Dorset, where there are many shooting estates, and around the North Yorkshire moors, another popular place for shooting.
There have been very few incidents elsewhere in the country.
Historically birds of prey have been shot and poisoned by gamekeepers because they are thought to disrupt shoots by flying overhead and scattering the quarry, as well as occasionally eating the small birds intended for shooting.
( Helena Horton, 06.04.2022 )  ..  theguardian.com

We choose to eat meat and have therefore built slaughterhouses for the animals and hospitals for us.
( Akbarali H. Jetha )

There is a soul in all living beings, and it can speak, without words, to another soul.
( Rose Winfold )

You can’t do anything violent humanely.
( James Wildman )

The True Cost Of Milk.
Farmers have been left furious after vegan activists hijacked the BBC to smear the dairy industry.
They said the episode, titled “A Cow’s Life: The True Cost Of Milk”, presented all dairy farmers as cruel to their animals.
The show aired secretly filmed video by an activist from Animal Equality UK of one farm in Wales.
The shocking footage showed workers kicking, punching and hitting cows in the heads with shovels.
The Panorama episode aired undercover footage of one dairy herd in Carmarthenshire, Wales.
It showed cows treated poorly, including being beating repeatedly and calves being dumped from digger buckets.
The farm in the spotlight supplied Freshways, which processes the milk before it goes into the supply chain.
The farmer was signed up to the Red Tractor assurance scheme which gives buyers a guarantee their product comes from farms where the animals are looking after.
( James Gant, 15.02.2022 )  ..  dailymail.co.uk

Life is as precious to us as it is for an animal.
An animal is as loving, caring, and kind to her children as we are.
She might not be able to tell us but she can express it through her eyes and expressions.
She feels joy and happiness.
She is helpless in our cruel hands and vulnerable to our vicious greed.
( Debasish Mridha )

Animals don’t count anymore.
They are no longer living, breathing, feeling individuals.
They are commodities, walking lumps of flesh waiting to be brutally killed and butchered.
( Rose Winfold )

Boris Johnson Confessed To A Love For Hunting With Dogs.
An article penned by Boris Johnson in 2005 unveiled some disturbing views on the banned sport of fox hunting.
Writing in the Spectator magazine, which he edited at the time, he confessed a love for hunting with dogs which in part stemmed from the “semi-sexual relation with the horse” and the “military-style pleasure” of moving as a unit.
Johnson argued that the imposition of the ban was “not about cruelty” but “a Marxian attack” by the Labour government on the upper class.
Arguing that hunters should break the law to continue the killings, Johnson said it was unlikely that the ban would be properly enforced.
“I loved my day with the hunt, and hope they have the courage and organisation to keep going for ever,” Johnson said.
Johnson also said he hoped that they defy the police and the magistrates and the government, until a new government can rescue an old tradition and restore it for the sake of freedom and freedom alone.
( Jack Peat, 19.07.2020 ) ..   thelondoneconomic.com

We need to realise that these are beings that suffer the same as we suffer, they want freedom the way we want freedom.
( Russell Simmons )

Female pigs spend almost their entire life lying in a cage barely bigger than their body.
They are forcibly impregnated to give birth after birth and have their babies snatched away to be brutally slaughtered for bacon, sausages, ham, and other ‘pork’ products.
When the female is no longer productive and economical, she too will be brutally killed.

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Chickens Slaughtered Because Of Avian Flu Virus.
The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) has confirmed a case of the highly contagious bird flu in a commercial flock of 570,000 broiler chickens and that the birds will be “humanely depopulated and disposed of.”
The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a highly contagious virus that spreads easily among birds through nasal and eye secretions, as well as manure.
The virus can be spread in various ways from flock to flock, including by wild birds, through contact with infected poultry, by equipment, and on the clothing and shoes of caretakers.
Several other states have also reported cases of the virus in various bird species, with South Dakota reporting 85,000 cases.
Wisconsin and Missouri have also reported cases.
( Rachel Scully, 23.03.2022 )  ..  thehill.com

Anyone who doesn’t believe that animals are aware that they have family and friends, and care about them, must also be a paid-up member of the Flat Earth Society, or still think the sun revolves around the earth.
I mean, how switched off can you be?
How can anyone still believe animals don’t have emotions?
They’re alive and emotions are a response to life.
I’ve seen warthogs that are more intelligent and more responsible than some people I know.
( Lawrence Anthony )

Have we been conditioned, desensitised and programmed to ignore their suffering?
And to ignore their unimaginable pain and brutal slaughter?
Or is it because so many people just don’t care?

There is no other industry as cruel and oppressive as factory farming.
With regard to numbers affected, extent and length of suffering, and numbers of premature deaths, no other industry can even approach factory farming.
Billions of individuals are exploited from genetically engineered birth, through excruciating confinement, to conveyor belt dismemberment.
Consequently, there is no industry more appropriate for social justice activists to boycott.
( Lisa Kemmerer )

Horrific Cruelty And Abuse Inflicted On Dairy Cows.
Animal Recovery Mission’s (ARM) investigation at Natural Prairie Dairy stands as the first-ever cruelty investigation into an organic dairy farm in the United States, and the third instalment of the largest dairy investigation of all time into Fairlife and Select Milk Producers, Inc.
The first two investigations released by ARM were Operation Fair Oaks Farms and Operation Fairlife.
Natural Prairie Dairy is located in Channing, Texas, and houses over 25,000 cows between its four locations.
Over four months, an ARM investigator documented cows stabbed with screwdrivers, kicked and dragged when unable to stand due to illness and fatigue.
Cows were repeatedly and violently inseminated and mother cows were witnessed being chased while giving birth, and the babies immediately ripped away from their mothers.
Cows are removed from their holding barns every eight hours to be milked, day and night.
Daily, cows were tormented, kicked, hit with shovels, and stabbed with screwdrivers by the farm’s so-called animal caregivers.
Downer cows were repeatedly beaten to get up.
Cows that couldn’t prop themselves back up were stabbed with screwdrivers, pulled by the head by front loaders, dragged, picked up by the bucket and driven to a holding area where they awaited transport to be sold for slaughter.
Other cows were left to die slowly in barns, some cows taking a whole day or longer to die, all under the supervision of management.
Cows were seen falling into cesspools and almost drowning.
Many of the cows suffer from infection and lameness and were reluctant to eat, so they were force-fed with metal tubes by untrained employees.
The ARM investigator also documented dead calves and cows in a dumpsite.
( Matthew Zampa, 26.07.2019 )  ..  sentientmedia.org

Graphic images of inside slaughterhouses should appear on all animal products, just like graphic images appear on cigarette packs.
People cannot then say they didn’t know, and whatever choices they make will depend on their morals and their character.
( Rose Winfold )

The Cowardly “Trophy-Hunters” Are Killing One Animal Every Three Minutes.
More than 1.7 million animals, including lions, elephants and endangered rhinos, have been slaughtered in the past ten years, with wealthy hunters competing to kill the most highly prized creatures.
The devastating figures have emerged in a book which highlights the links between the £300 million-a-year industry and powerful global elites.
Trophy Leaks: Top Hunters And Industry Secrets, by Eduardo Goncalves, also reveals the latest craze among American hunters is to shoot pigs from fast, low-flying helicopters. It claims that:
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is a member of a breeding programme that has raked in millions of pounds selling rare animals to trophy-hunters.
Almost 800 hunters have won the ‘African Big 5’ prize, an industry award for killing at least one lion, elephant, leopard, a black or white rhino, and a buffalo.
Hunting lobbyists Safari Club International (SCI) awards a special prize to anyone who shoots more than 80 different African species.
Game-hunting enthusiasts funded a £600,000 ‘dark arts’ disinformation campaign on Facebook and Twitter using fake accounts purporting to be Africans opposed to Boris Johnson’s pledge to ban trophy imports from coming to Britain. They also reportedly handed more than £1.5 million in campaign donations to U.S. politicians, including Donald Trump.
( Michael Powell, 27.12.2020 )  ..  dailymail.co.uk