Where do you begin adding comments to a story like the one below? A society that values animals so lightly that members of that society can kill for fun and escape prison? A society that is appalled by one method of killing but that participates and funds the mass slaughter of these same babies each year.

Scott Douglas was celebrating his 17th birthday when he removed the lamb from its mother in a field near Loch Ness.

He was sentenced to 200 hours community service at Inverness Sheriff Court and banned from keeping animals for 10 years.

Sheriff Kenneth Robb told Douglas his actions had caused “considerable public revulsion”.

Apprentice joiner Douglas had faced up to 12 months’ detention or a £10,000 fine after admitting causing the animal unnecessary suffering.

Fiscal depute Sandy Collie told the court that Douglas and his friends had been celebrating his birthday by camping at Kerrow Bridge in Cannich on 28 May.

Mr Collie said: “Initially he had gone to get the lamb from the river bank where it was with its mother and other lambs.

“On taking it to the other youths one of them said to behave and to leave it alone, and it was returned.

“However, he then went and got the lamb again and took it back and threw it on the fire.”

The fiscal added: “He was indicating that he was wishing to have it for his dinner. Drink was not an issue here prior to the killing of the lamb.”

Douglas, of Dall Cottage in Balnain, Drumnadrochit, later told police: “I was going to have a laugh.”

Defence lawyer David MacNeill said one of Douglas’s friends had grabbed the lamb from the fire but it was so badly burnt he “put it out of its misery”.

He added that his client’s parents had donated £500 to the Scottish SPCA, and Douglas was to pay them back.

“Research frequently indicates this level of violence often escalates and the animal is the first victim.

“In certain states of America crimes of this type have psychological assessment. This has been helpful in identifying violent behaviour.”

Is the uproar being caused by import of monkey and atelope meat to New York, a reaction to worry about disease, intolerance to different religious customs, or speciesism? Certainly if the meat being imported was of a variety more typically seen in the West the meatismurder team predict the news coverage wouldn’t have been so massive. Monkeys are like us, and antelopes are so graceful thay deserve column inches. Those damn cows though…they can look after themselves.

NEW YORK (AP) — From her baptism in Liberia to Christmas years later in her adopted New York City, Mamie Manneh never lost the longing to celebrate religious rituals by eating monkey meat.

Family members sit with a portrait of Mamie Manneh at their home in Staten Island, New York.

Now, the tribal customs of Manneh and other West African immigrants have become the focus of an unusual criminal case charging her with meat smuggling, and touching on issues of religious freedom, infectious diseases and wildlife preservation.

The case “appears to be the first of its kind relating to that uniquely African product,” defense attorney Jan Rostal wrote in a pending motion to dismiss. “Unfortunately, it represents the sort of clash of cultural and religious values inherent in the melting pot that is America.”

At the center of the case in federal court is a modest woman with nine children and a history of domestic discord.

The case dates to early 2006, when federal inspectors at JFK Airport examined a shipment of 12 cardboard boxes from Guinea.

They were addressed to Manneh and, according to a flight manifest, contained African dresses and smoked fish with a value of $780.

Instead, stashed underneath the smoked fish, the inspectors found what West Africans refer to as bushmeat: “skulls, limbs and torsos of nonhuman primate species” plus the hoof and leg of a small antelope, according to court papers.

Three days later, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents were at Manneh’s door, where she told them she ran a smoked fish importing business.

According to the agents, she initially denied ordering any bushmeat from Africa or ever eating it while in the United States.

But after she consented to a search, the agents came across a tiny, hairy arm hidden in her garage.

“Monkey,” she explained, claiming the arm was sent to her out of the blue “as a gift from God in heaven.”

Federal prosecutors hit Manneh with smuggling charges that accused her of violating import procedures and suggested she was a menace to man and beast alike.

A criminal complaint cited evidence that the illegal importation of bushmeat encourages the slaughter of protected wild animals.

Here at meatismurder, the editorial team are always discussing speciesism, because if and when this hurdle is overcome, the systematic abuse and murder of individuals will become a relic of the past, just as other prejudiced behaviour is now looked back on with horror. The author Carol Adams, has highlighted another approach with which to look at speciesism.

‘The Sexual Politics of Meat‘

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory explores a relationship between patriarchal values and meat eating by interweaving the insights of feminism, vegetarianism, animal defense, and literary theory. A pioneering book, it is now available Tenth Anniversary Edition. When it first appeared in 1990, Library Journal called The Sexual Politics of Meat “an important and provocative work” and predicted it would “inspire and enrage readers across the political spectrum.” True to Library Journal’s prediction, the book was hailed by CHOICE as a “’bible’ for feminist and progressive animal rights activists” and equally reviled by conservative commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, John Leo, and Cal Thomas as an example of political correctness taken to excess.

The Daily Mail reports how meat and dairy farms are now harbouring ESBLE coli - a superbug. The usual speciesist rant could be shoehorned in here as reporters get the public worked up by human death and neglect to mention that the farmed animals in question are bred only to die at human hands, but the article works as a reminder of what the vegan movement has been saying for a long time now, that the intensive farming of animals is detrimental to human health as well as the suffering of the animals.

Health fears grow over deadly superbug infecting 32 farms

A superbug which kills hundreds of patients a year has been found on 32 farms, it emerged yesterday.

The discovery raises fears that the infection is spreading to the human population through meat and milk.

The bug - ESBL E coli - causes around 30,000 cases of blood poisoning and urinary tract infection each year.

It is known to have killed hundreds of people over the past five years, although some experts put the annual death toll as high as 4,000.

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Bovine transmittors: Cows can carry E.Coli to humans through milk

Experts from the Government’s Veterinary Laboratories Agency are due to reveal details today of the extent of the infection on farms.

The “super E coli” is thought to have developed a high degree of resistance to antibiotics through their use in intensive livestock operations.

Its spread from farm to farm has mirrored the rise in the number of infections and deaths in the human population.

Experts at the Health Protection Agency are investigating a possible link between the bugs found in livestock and the sale of meat and milk.

Dr Georgina Duckworth, who compiled a report for the agency on the emergence of the E coli, concluded: ‘The findings show evidence of people carrying these bacteria in their gut.

“If this is found to be commonplace in the general population this may point towards the food chain being a potential source.”

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Deadly bug: E Coli kills hundreds of humans every year

During slaughter, the bug, which lives in the gut, can be spread through meat, making it a risk to abattoir workers.

Similarly, bugs from cow dung can get into milk during milking. E coli should be killed during pasteurisation but tests show that some forms of TB bacteria can survive heat treatment.

Remainder of article

Another chance to show the horrendousness of the treatment of animals, and the confused attitudes of the meat-eating public. A German zoo has alledgedly been killing animals and selling the bodies for meat. This has caused outrage. Presumeably because zoo animals are somehow divine and far more important than all other deer stocked for venison.

German Zoo Embroiled in Scandal Over Illegal Meat

It all started when an eagle-eyed employee noticed declining animal stocks at Erfurt Zoo. It ended with a scandal, sackings and a criminal investigation into an illegal meat operation. Some zoos aren’t as lucky as the one in Berlin. Most don’t have superstar polar bear cubs and the potential to exploit cuteness through marketing deals and promotions which would make even David Beckham seem like a media-shy hermit with no business sense. There are no tie-ins, no plush toys flying off the shelves, no hordes of expectant children and insatiable paparazzi stampeding through the turnstiles. For those zoos lacking star-quality, life is bleak. The future is under-funded and the staff and animals suffer accordingly. However, some animals — like those at Erfurt Zoo — suffer more than others.

For these poor creatures, their suffering was not caused by a reduction of enclosure space due to a budget cut or an enforced diet due to spiraling feed costs. No, it came courtesy of those unscrupulous members of staff who, instead of looking after the beasts, were killing them and shipping their carcasses out the back door as meat. While other establishments were relying on merchandise to boost income, the evil workers at Erfurt were lining their own pockets with a grisly sideline in exotic animal flesh. Bambi steaks could be tip of meat iceberg More buck for your buck: Deer meat proved very popular.

Apparently, the staff responsible had been turning petting zoo deer into venison as part of a clandestine business for a number of years. Now it is feared that Bambi steaks will turn out to be just one specialty on the macabre menu. “We are worried this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Wolfgang Apel, president of the German Animal Protection League, who also called for a thorough review of controls at the zoo and at all other institutions with animals in the eastern state of Thuringia. The secret meat trade was revealed after an anonymous zoo employee noticed that the number of animals was declining.

…read more of story at dw-world.de