meat is murder

Burgers don’t just arrive at drive-in, they have to be removed from living creatures that display emotion, pain and live in family groups just like…oh yes, humans.
Please see this Times article from a few years back for insights and then compare to a video shown by CNN, filmed by the Humane Society of the US of a processing plant in America. Try and not look away.

The secret life of moody cows
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety — they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness.

The findings have emerged from studies of farm animals that have found similar traits in pigs, goats, chickens and other livestock. They suggest that such animals may be so emotionally similar to humans that welfare laws need to be rethought.

Christine Nicol, professor of animal welfare at Bristol University, said even chickens may have to be treated as individuals with needs and problems.

“Remarkable cognitive abilities and cultural innovations have been revealed,” she said. “Our challenge is to teach others that every animal we intend to eat or use is a complex individual, and to adjust our farming culture accordingly.”

John Webster, professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden. “People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic,” he said.

Webster and his colleagues have documented how cows within a herd form smaller friendship groups of between two and four animals with whom they spend most of their time, often grooming and licking each other. They will also dislike other cows and can bear grudges for months or years.

Dairy cow herds can also be intensely sexual. Webster describes how the cows become excited when one of the herd comes into heat and start trying to mount her. “Cows look calm, but really they are gay nymphomaniacs,” he said.

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also become excited by solving intellectual challenges.

In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph was used to measure their brainwaves.

“Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment,” said Broom.

The assumption that farm animals cannot suffer from conditions that would be considered intolerable for humans is partly based on the idea that they are less intelligent than people and have no “sense of self”.

Increasingly, however, research reveals this to be untrue. Keith Kendrick, professor of neurobiology at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has found that even sheep are far more complex than realised and can remember 50 ovine faces — even in profile. They can recognise another sheep after a year apart.

Kendrick has also described how sheep can form strong affections for particular humans, becoming depressed by long separations and greeting them enthusiastically even after three years.

Remainder of article at The Times

Isn’t killing and eating things fun! It makes any Christmas a treat!
At least that seems to be the idea of a group of people who are going to celebrate the thing they hate - Christmas - by eating reindeer. The idea of taking life as a joke is so very abhorrent that the author of this post is at a loss of polite words. The only (non)saving grace is that these people aren’t contributing to the disgusting end of the world proportioned poultry massacre that takes place every year.*

*
22 million turkeys are killed each year in licensed plants with an estimated 10 million being killed at Christmas (based on consumption figures, DEFRA, 23/10/2001).

From the Daily Telegraph

About 90 regulars are set to tuck into Father Chrstmas’s four-legged friends as members of the Humbug Club at The Victory in Walton, near Clacton, Essex.

Russell Bettany, 44, the landlord, said: “Among the over-50s there is such an anti-Christmas feeling and I just thought starting the Humbug Club was a good idea.

“But we do it for charity and it’s very light-hearted.”

Mr Bettany said putting reindeer on the pub’s Christmas menu had gone down well with Humbugs and other customers - 200 people had reserved places at the pub between December 1 and 20.

“First and foremost, for our Christmas menu, we wanted to get away from the traditional and do something with a slight angle or hook to it,” he said.

“So I thought, ‘I know, let’s eat Santa’s little helpers.’

“The Humbug Club members are coming to make sure they can eat the reindeer, which they feel will go some way to spoiling everybody else’s Christmas.”

In a pointlessly reported argument Paul McCartney has been all over the press having said very little against Gordon Ramsay who has in turn said nothing new about vegetarians but managed to court the controversey required to maintain his elevated profile as this generation’s Fanny Craddock.
 
The meatismurder crew having nothing against cooks. Taking ingredients and turning them into a meal to be enjoyed by loved ones, friends…activists, is a great skill to be admired, but we do believe that for tv chefs and their pornographic love of braising and frying body parts to be so reveared is just plain weird.

It is just a pity that despite all the reported environmental and health risks of animal based diets (see this site!), the future strife over food security (see future articles on this site) to be caused by Western animal based diets, and the love of the British, Americans, Canadians and god knows who else for animals with the right fluff to floppy ear ratio  people are still chowing down on cadavers and vegetarians/vegans are being reported as a fringe voice standing against the mainstream.

Anyway, please see below for the pointless debate
(from the Daily Mail).

Sir Paul McCartney has criticised Gordon Ramsay - calling the TV chef ’stupid’. Ramsay, 41, has angered the ex-Beatle, 66, with his outspoken comments against vegetarians.

The foul-mouthed chef has annoyed the music legend by saying he could not tolerate it if one of his three daughters came home with a vegetarian boyfriend.

Kitchen Nightmares star Ramsay said recently: ‘If one of my daughters’ boyfriends turns out to be vegetarian I swear to God I’d never forgive them.’
In another tirade, he said: ‘My biggest nightmare would be if the kids ever came up to me and said “Dad, I’m a vegetarian”. Then I would sit them on the fence and electrocute them.’

Sir Paul, who has not eaten meat for 30 years, told Sainsbury’s Magazine: ‘I think it’s a case of live and let live.

‘I will talk to people about the advantages of vegetarianism, and it will upset me if we’ve had a good conversation and they turn around and say something stupid.

‘I just read a quote from Gordon Ramsay… “If my daughter ever grew up and married a vegetarian, I’d never forgive her.”

‘But even that I would forgive because it’s not my affair, it’s not up to me if he talks stupid or not.’

The music legend, whose youngest daughter Beatrice, four, is vegan, said: ‘I’d be happier if everyone was vegetarian. The planet would be better off for it.’
In Ramsay’s Channel 4 show The F Word, the chef persuaded 50 vegetarians to feast on Janet Street-Porter’s recently butchered veal.

In July, outraged animal welfare groups accused Ramsay of employing shock tactics to gain publicity after he was seen on the show killing and eating puffins.

In another outburst against vegetarians, Ramsay told Girls Aloud star Cheryl Cole when she appeared on the show: ‘Didn’t you get the message? Vegetarians aren’t welcome here.’

Common sense and scientific reason has prevailed and the English badger cull has been cancelled due to the government considering an earlier, larger scale report that proved no conclusive link between badgers and bovine TB. This has aggravated farmers who are going to stamp and shout about it instead of putting their own house in order and improve the living conditions of and stop the movements of the animals in their charge. Or they could go one step further and just stand aside from the death industries altogether. (Badgers and Bovine TB information at Animal Aid.)

From the bbc

The government has decided against a cull of badgers in England to control TB in cattle, the BBC understands.Its decision goes against former chief scientific adviser Sir David King’s recommendations, made in 2007, that a cull could be an effective measure.
The decision has angered the National Farmers’ Union, which claims cattle TB has already cost the industry millions. In April a “targeted cull” of badgers was announced in Wales as part of a plan to eradicate TB in cattle.

But ministers have instead accepted the scientific arguments of the Independent Scientific Group on TB in Cattle.
NFU president Peter Kendall told BBC News that Westminster had “ducked the issue” and that the union would be organising a protest outside Parliament next week. A policy announcement is due on Monday. The ISG’s analysis - an earlier and much larger study than Sir David’s - concluded that culling badgers would not be economic.

However the imminent remains.

Channel Five News in the UK has been exposing how the standards of Freedom Foods Farms are not so righteous as the consumer is told. These are farms given a mark of approval by the RSPCA and are supposedly not as gruesome as the rest of the modern mechanised animal production machinery.
And as always we see that there is no escape from the fact that cruelty is involved in getting meat to a plate.
And it is also worth remembering that even if these standards had been met the animals still end up terrified at the same slaughter house having their lives taken away.

From news.five.tv

Five News has uncovered more evidence of chickens being kept in horrifying conditions at an RSPCA ‘Freedom Food’ farm, this time in Somerset.
Last week, Five News reported on the appalling conditions chickens were being kept in at a farm in Norfolk. The farm was endorsed by the RSPCA’s ‘Freedom Food’ label and is now facing an investigation into their handling of chickens.In Jason Farrell’s latest investigation he has uncovered another farm failing to meet the relevant standards set by the ‘Freedom Food’ label.
Video Blog Watch how Jason Farrell uncovered this latest investigation.
Click here to watch the video blog.

It’s been quite a week…
we’ve had pig farmers storming London because pig farming is expensive and they don’t earn enough money (stop doing it then), Japan fighting for support of whaling within the IWC (for a change), and the Sea Shepherd crew have reported at being shot at by Japanese whalers.
As usual at meatismurder, a caveat must be added to the whaling stories below - we report on the death of whales with the same passion and concern as we would report the death of cows or chickens as they are all sentient beings who deserve to not be caught in a machine of profit and greed.

Some 500 pig farmers and pig industry workers descended on Whitehall today to hand in a petition about the crisis threatening their industry.

Demonstrators from the National Pig Association protest in London
Demonstrators from the National Pig Association protest in Whitehall to demand a fair price from supermarkets

The campaigners include Jimmy Doherty, the TV pig farmer and friend of Jamie Oliver who is having to cut his rare-breed herd of breeding sows from 95 to 30 because of the rising price of feed.

Pig farmers say they are losing about £26 on every pig sold for slaughter in Britain because pig feed has gone up from around £130 to £225 a ton in the past year.

But while wholesale grain costs have doubled they claim supermarkets have not increased farm gate prices accordingly.

Winnie the Pig, a veteran of a similar campaign in 2001, also joined the Pigs are Worth It! rally outside Downing Street.

From the Telegraph

Japan has denied claims it fired bullets at anti-whaling protesters in the Southern Ocean.

Environmental activist group Sea Shepherd accuses Japanese Coast Guard officers of firing stun grenades and rifles during clashes today in the Southern Ocean.

Captain of the Sea Shepherd ship, Paul Watson, says he found a bullet lodged in the the bullet-proof vest he was wearing and that one of his crew was hit by a grenade and received minor injuries.

But Japan’s Government denies that, saying it only launched “noise balls” - loud explosive deterrent devices - after repeated attacks on its whaling ship by Sea Shepherd.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Tomohiko Taniguchi says no shots were fired.

From ABCNews

Japan is looking for new supporters of its pro-whaling stance ahead of a major meeting on the future of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

A one-day seminar on Monday brought delegates from 12 developing countries, most of them not IWC members, to Tokyo to discuss “sustainable use” of whales.

An official told the BBC that Japan hoped these nations would join the IWC.

On Thursday, the IWC begins a three-day meeting in London aiming to plot a new course for the fractured organisation.

We want the idea of sustainable use to be understood by as many countries as possible
Ryotaro Suzuki
Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Officially charged with the effective regulation of commercial whaling, many of its member countries would prefer its central remit to become conservation of the “great whales” and their close relatives such as dolphins and porpoises, with virtually all hunting banned.

But Japan, Norway, Iceland and their allies in the pro-sustainable use bloc argue that there is no reason in principle why whales cannot be hunted like other wild creatures, provided quotas are small enough to be sustainable.

Japan believes the western love of whales is culturally specific
In recent years, both camps have sought to bring new member countries into the IWC to bolster their numbers.

At the 2006 annual meeting, the pro-whalers achieved superiority for the first time in 20 years with the passing of a resolution asking for the eventual return of commercial hunting.

By last year’s meeting, enough new anti-whaling countries had joined to give this bloc the upper hand once more.

Both blocs continue to lobby potential new allies - hence Japan’s decision to host Monday’s seminar looking at the sustainable use of cetaceans.

Some of the 12 countries attending, such as Palau and Cambodia, are already IWC members; but most, including Angola, Eritrea and Micronesia, are not.

From the BBC