Japan’s efforts to get good old-fashioned whale killing back on the agenda have had another set back. Damn! the meatismurder admin had just invested in some scrimshaw stocks as well.

Japan’s long-term strategy to see a re-introduction of commercial whale hunting has suffered another rebuff.

Its motion asking the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to review whale stocks was defeated.

Approval for the motion, discussed at the CITES summit in The Hague, could have led to a resumption in a legal trade in whalemeat.

A similar proposal on fin whales by Iceland was also defeated.

The CITES conference follows hard on the heels of the International Whaling Commission annual meeting, which saw Japan suffer reverses on a number of issues.

“It’s a one-two punch for the whales,” said Patrick Ramage, global whale programme manager with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw).

“In the space of a week, the two leading institutions charged with protecting wildlife have rejected efforts by Japan to weaken protection for our planet’s great whales.”

Following suit

Historically, CITES has followed IWC advice on whale stocks. Because the IWC maintains a global moratorium on commercial hunting, international trade in whalemeat is banned.

However, with the IWC mired in deadlock and with no sign of the 21-year moratorium being lifted, Japan has viewed CITES as another route to opening the whale trade.

A CITES assessment that some stocks were robust enough to withstand a degree of international trade would signal they were also robust enough to sustain some commercial hunting.

A number of governments and NGOs supported Japan’s bid to have CITES re-evaluate whale stocks, with Eugene Lapointe of the World Conservation Trust (IWMC) commenting: “CITES has its own rules, its own criteria, and it’s just normal that the listing of species is re-assessed.”

The majority of delegates disagreed, and the resolution was defeated. Japan had offered to fund the re-assessment exercise.

Deep waters

The introduction of the commercial whaling moratorium in 1986 was supposed to be accompanied by an IWC global review of whale stocks. The fact that it is a long way from completion is a major factor behind Japan’s frustration.

But Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, who attended the recent IWC scientific committee meeting, defended the long timescale.

“I can assure delegates that the scientific review is indeed comprehensive,” he said.

“But it’s not a simple matter to assess species which spend so much time in the water, sometimes far offshore; and where individuals are often virtually indistinguishable from each other.

“With these factors in mind, it is unreasonable and unfair to suggest that CITES could produce something more thorough than the IWC scientific advice.”

The meeting passed an amendment saying that CITES should not re-assess whale stocks while the commercial moratorium remained in place.

I hope this is a turning point and we can look back at this date that things started to change. Look at this post from meatinfo. Get stuck in with the debate at the Daily Mail.

The government is considering a secret plan to turn the nation vegan, according to reports in the Daily Mail.

The paper reported that a leaked email from a government department expressed sympathy for the environmental benefits of the mass switch to a vegan diet.

However farming leaders have dismissed the idea as “simplistic”.

The email was sent from the Environment Agency to a vegetarian campaign group and the paper claimed it said: “The potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant.”

But, the message recognised that it would be very difficult to win public support, and said Defra was looking to encourage a gradual change that would be more palatable to the public.

The e-mail states: “It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority.”

The report said the official goes on to say it is “unlikely” that the Environment Agency would ever suggest adopting a fully vegan lifestyle, but added: “Certainly encouraging people to examine their consumption of animal protein could be a key message.”

The NFU’s Anthony Gibson told the Daily Mail the claims were “simplistic and flawed”, and NFU president Peter Kendall told the BBC’s Today show that from an environmental point of view there was a case that more intensive farming of livestock could actually play a beneficial role for the environment.

Vegan Knitting exists and a great exponent of it is the site ‘ fake sheep a website about vegan knitting ‘

Again we see that the huge financial resources of the dairy industry cannot win out over scientific fact and committed campaigners.

Groups to end ads that link milk to weight loss

WASHINGTON — An ad campaign suggesting that milk can help people lose weight is ending, the Federal Trade Commission told a doctors group that had complained.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine contended that the weight-loss claims were false and misleading.

The group, in a 2005 petition, asked the commission to order a halt to the dairy advertisements.

The agency did not take that step but said in a letter to the committee that the groups behind the ads planned to end them.

“It is obvious that the industry did not have a leg to stand on,” Neal Barnard, president of the Washington-based doctors committee, said Thursday.

His group advocates a vegan diet, which typically includes no animal products.

The two marketing campaigns at issue involve the “Milk your diet. Lose weight!” ads on television and the Internet and in magazines, and the “3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight” ads, which are now mostly Web-based.

The FTC, in a May 3 letter to the committee, said the agency met with Agriculture Department officials and representatives for the two campaigns, which decided “to discontinue all advertising and other marketing activities involving weight-loss claims until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence.”

Susan Ruland, a spokeswoman for the “Milk your diet” campaign, said there was nothing misleading about the ads.

“We absolutely stand behind our weight-loss campaign and the science supporting our messages,” said Ruland, who represents the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board. “There’s a strong body of scientific evidence that demonstrates a connection between dairy and weight loss.”

Still, she said, the board plans to phase out the milk ads and focus the campaign instead on how dairy can help promote a healthy diet.

The National Dairy Promotion and Research Board said it has already changed its “3-A-Day” campaign.

The Agriculture Department, which has oversight of the two boards, had approved the ads.

Good news in California…the kids with their lack of lifelong prejudices, dogma, and guilt are happy to embrace veganism.

New vegan burgers sell out in minutes Newport Harbor optimistic about continuing vegan menu in other district schools. By Michael Miller Newport Harbor High School started small with veganism on Monday, frying up only 12 meatless burgers in case sales went slowly. In the end, there was no need to have a cow. The school, the first in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to sell vegan food at lunchtime, sold out of the burgers within a few minutes and still had requests coming in, according to cafeteria manager Sue Lindsey. As a result, she said the school would prepare twice as many vegan patties today. “We’ve gotten orders already for some teachers,” Lindsey said. “I’d say it’s going to start booming.” Newport-Mesa announced plans last week to begin offering vegan food — which contains no meat, milk, eggs or other animal products — at every secondary school cafeteria in April. District nutritionist Dale Ellis said the other high schools would likely adopt the recipes in the next week or two, with TeWinkle Middle School and Ensign Intermediate School to follow later in the month. The brisk business Monday at Newport Harbor, she said, left her optimistic. “That’s a good sign that there’s more demand than we thought,” Ellis said. “Hopefully, it will continue.”

A significant step in the nail of the coffin of the meat industry? Now Animal Rights Advocates need to not let a new meat markets slip in and fill the gap and instead keep hammering home the message about the damage that meat consumption does to peoples’ health and the environment.  [src]

CHICAGO — The line of horses stepping toward their slaughter at a DeKalb, Ill., plant came to an abrupt halt Thursday after a federal court order that horse lovers and animal rights advocates hope may mark the end of the controversial practice of killing American horses to ship their meat overseas.

There are just three such slaughterhouses left in the United States, and the two others, both in Texas, stopped the slaughter in the past couple of months after a separate case in which a New Orleans federal court upheld a 1949 Texas law that banned the sale of horse meat.

Popular opinion has swayed against the practice in recent years and legislative bans are garnering bipartisan support in both Washington and Springfield. The federal ruling Wednesday halted the slaughter indefinitely, but animal advocates hope lawmakers will take action soon to ensure that the last horse butchered for human meat in the United States was in Cavel International’s “killing box” in DeKalb on Wednesday.

“If I were any of these plants and I was looking around me, I would see no escape at this point,” said Nancy Perry, the vice president of government affairs for The Humane Society of the United States.

The latest order came from a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judge who ruled Wednesday that it was illegal for horse slaughterhouses to pay the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cover costs of their own health inspections. The USDA had agreed to do that with the nation’s three remaining horse slaughterhouses in early 2006 after Congress cut off funding for those inspections in 2005, but the Humane Society sued, calling that arrangement a conflict of interest.

As a result of the ruling, the USDA Thursday pulled its on-site inspectors-including a veterinarian who checks that the animals are healthy enough so that their meat will be fit for human consumption-from the DeKalb slaughterhouse. Thus, the slaughter ceased.

“Obviously you don’t want regulated agencies paying for their government inspections,” Perry said. “If they saw something concerning and they wanted to shut down the slaughter, the hand that’s feeding them is the same one that they would be biting.”

But James Tucker, the general manager of the Belgian-owned Cavel plant, called the ruling “bizarre and outrageous.” He said the funding arrangement did not alter the inspectors’ ability to be critical.

“The Congress wanted to not have ante-mortem inspections of horses funded and we made arrangements with the USDA so it would not be funded by government funds,” Tucker said. “Now to have the court ruling that that was not correctly done is, well, is a shame.”

Tucker called the ruling an “awful blow” to the 55 people employed at the DeKalb plant, which slaughters about 1,000 horses a week and generates $30 million a year in foreign trade by shipping meat mostly to Europe, where it is still considered a delicacy.

The USDA did not seek an immediate injunction, according to Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

“The lawyers are reviewing the ruling, but the ruling was very clear and the judge’s order was very clear and the department is complying,” Cohen said.