The Reindeer’s Story – Fantasy & Fact

,,,what to my wondering eyes did appear

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer

With a little old driver so lively and quick

I knew in a moment he must be St Nick*

Father Christmas in his sleigh, Donner, Blitzen, Dancer, Prancer and the rest, an image beloved of children generation after generation, made their first appearance in the starry winter sky nearly 200 years ago in 1823. But Rudolph was just too darn cosy in his straw-filled stable at the North Pole. It was another 100 years plus (1939) before he first poked his red nose outside, and was promptly appointed Santa’s right hand reindeer. I know Vixen, life is not fair.

It’s likely though that this bizarre-when-you-think-about-it vision of Santa and his reindeer flying across the night sky has far deeper roots:

“According to the theory, the legend of Santa derives from shamans in the Siberian and Arctic regions who dropped into locals’ teepee-like homes with a bag full of hallucinogenic mushrooms as presents in late December. 

“As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago, these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collect Amanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice. Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story.”*

Little wonder our ancestors were dreaming dreams of magic!

Reindeer facts

• The festive sleigh-pulling team contrary to popular belief is comprised entirely of females – yes, even Rudolph. Though both sexes of reindeer wear antlers, the males only need theirs for the autumn rut and shed them well before Christmas
• In the winter the animals live almost exclusively on “reindeer moss” (lichen) and cover long distances to find it, travelling the furthest of any land mammal in the world, up to 5,000 km a year
• They can run at up to 80 kph
• They are smaller than you think, standing at only 1.2m at the shoulder
• They have clowns’ feet – wide spreading hooves that make perfect snowshoes, shovels to shift snow (to get at the food beneath) and paddles for swimming
• It’s true they do have unusual noses – not normally red – because they are furry. In fact their special insulating hollow fur covers every bit of a reindeer’s body from furry nose to furry feet, except of course their eyes. Their coat is one of the thickest and densest of any animal
• They talk to each other with their feet. When the herd is moving, “they make a delicate clicking or popping sound. Being surrounded by a small herd sounds a bit like being in a bowl of puffed rice as the milk is poured on to it”
• Once reindeer roamed the hills of northern England and Scotland. They were hunted by the Vikings
• In the 1950s a small herd was reintroduced to the Cairngorms and are now 130 strong
• Elsewhere they can now be found only in Russia and Norway
• This naturally curious and gentle creature was a prime candidate – thought to be the first with hooves – for humans to domesticate, 30,000 years ago in Scandinavia
• Like so many animals, their usefulness to humans (milk, meat, skins) meant their being hunted almost to extinction
• In southern Norway, there remain only 20 herds, about 40,000 deer in all

In reality, having to pull Santa’s sleigh all around the world, arduous as that sounds, is the least of Rudolph’s problems

The main threats to these beautiful animals, along with nonhuman animals the world over, are human-caused: habitat fragmentation and destruction; roads carving up the forest; house-building; oil, gas and timber extraction. And global warming – the timber line is creeping northwards and shrinking the arctic tundra on which the reindeer rely.

Another serious cause for concern is inbreeding. Reindeer females don’t seem able, as many species of animals do, to select mates from outside their immediate group, and will frequently mate with males too closely related to them. Direct human interference has exacerbated the problem. Large numbers of males were removed from the herds in the 70s, to increase the preponderance of females and produce more young. The intended outcome was more reindeer to hunt. The unintended outcome was a further shrinking of the gene pool.

Shooting rights up for grabs

If you have a yen to celebrate the season of goodwill with a killing spree and have enough spare cash, the Norwegian government has opened up two of their largest national parks for you to slaughter any number of the last surviving wild population of these gentle creatures in Europe.

The business selling the tickets for such a trip, for which it claims exclusive rights, styles itself “Scotland’s Premier Sporting Agency“. Shooting reindeer in Norway is, it says, “a magical experience”. (And feel free to take a pop at bears and wolves, both critically endangered in Norway, while you’re there.) This is the picture promoting the trip on the agency’s website

A very different kind of Christmas magic.

What can we do?

Support the League Against Cruel Sports’s campaign against trophy hunting

Sign the petition asking the Norwegian government to End the reindeer slaughter in Norway

And help stop the exploitation and abuse of reindeer here in the UK at Christmas:

Support Animal Aid’s reindeer campaign 

Sign the petition Stop using live reindeer at Keswick Christmas fair!

Sign the petition Stop reindeer exploitation

 

Cover pic courtesy of Focusing on Wildlife

*Anthropologist John Rush for LiveScience

* * *

Postscript

The fate of reindeer and wolves is inextricably linked. Find out more about what is happening to Norway’s wolves.

Sources

The Reindeer’s story: How our No.1 Christmas animal is suffering

Animal Christmas Stories

Rich Trophy Hunters Pay to Shoot Reindeer in the Wild

A Visit from St Nicholas by Clement C Moore

Related posts

Christmas Spoiler – Rudolph is an Impostor!

How Do Squirrels Remember Where They Buried Their Nuts?

Gifts Animals Give – & Strictly No Socks!

 

These Brazilian Meat Dealers Are Taking Over The World – And We Should Be Worried

The True Cost of Cheap Meat

“If you eat meat, you probably buy products made by one Brazilian company. A company with such influence it can impact climate change, openly admit to having bribed more than 1,000 politicians, and continue to grow despite scandal after scandal. And you’ve probably never heard of it.

“Welcome to a world where meat is the new hot commodity, controlled by just a handful of gigantic firms which together wield unprecedented control over global food production. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has been investigating the biggest of all: JBS, a Brazilian company which slaughters a staggering 13 million animals every single day and has annual revenue of $50bn.”

A cloud of scandals hangs over JBS and its shadowy network of subsidiaries, yet the company continues to expand. In the last decade it became the world’s biggest producer and exporter of meat with facilities in Australia and across the Americas, swallowing up among others the big US company Pilgrim’s Pride and Northern Ireland’s poultry firm Moy Park. Since the takeover, JBS’s investment in its Moy Park arm of the business enabled construction of hundreds more chicken farms in the UK which now supply nearly a third of all chicken eaten here in Britain.

JBS in numbers

• 13.6 million poultry birds slaughtered per day
• 116,000 pigs slaughtered per day
• 77,000 cattle slaughtered per day
• $50 billion – amount of annual revenues
• 900,000 – number of employees across the world
• 150 – number of countries it supplies with meat
• $250 million – amount company paid out in bribes in 2017
• 1,829 – number of candidates across Brazil’s political spectrum the company admits to having bribed
• $3.2 billion – amount JBS was fined for bribery, one of the biggest fines in global corporate history

Scandal after JBS scandal. Take your pick –

• Wholesale bribery and corruption – among many other scandals over the years, revelations from a 2014 investigation actually toppled the Brazilian government. Right now the company is under investigation for colluding with politicians and public servants to divert resources from a government-owned bank
• Dirty meat – rotting beef, falsified export documents, failure to inspect meat plants, chickens contaminated with salmonella (a million of them in the UK)
• Slave labour – workers forced to live in degrading conditions without adequate shelter, toilets or clean water
• Animal cruelty – chickens punched and beaten with iron rods, piglets beaten and their testicles ripped off without anaesthetic
• Illegal Amazonian deforestation –  fined $7.7 million in 2017
• Being part of a price-fixing cartel – now driving down prices paid to farmers for their meat, and now driving up their own wholesale prices by colluding with other major poultry producers to reduce the supply of chicken

And don’t imagine it couldn’t happen here in the UK. The Moy Park arm of JBS doesn’t bear close scrutiny either.

Moy Park UK in numbers

• More than £1 million – total of fines paid since 2015 for subjecting chickens to “unnecessary pain and distress”, failure to pay workers the minimum wage, and unsafe work practices
• 8 million in 2 years – number of birds that never reach the market, wasted, thrown away as diseased, emaciated, injured with fractures and dislocations, dead before reaching the slaughterhouse, or contaminated
• 6 million – number of birds slaughtered per week
• £1.6 billion – company turnover in 2017

In June this year three Moy Park farms in Lincolnshire were secretly filmed uncovering “horrifying conditions”, chickens lame, struggling to breath and surrounded by dead birds. Moy Park supplies most major UK supermarkets, as well as McDonald’s and KFC.

It took a team of seven dedicated investigative journalists to lift the lid on the unsavoury modus operandi of the JBS matrix. They deserve our thanks for all the hard (and possibly dangerous) work they put into producing this exposé of meat production’s dark and dirty underbelly. Do take a few minutes to read it in full.

They conclude:

“JBS began as a local butcher’s shop; now its beef travels thousands of miles from Brazil to UK supermarkets. That journey clouds the link between farm and plate and makes it almost impossible for the average consumer to understand where their food comes from — and how big a price the planet is paying the price for their cheap meat.”

Let’s not allow their hard work to be in vain. The only way we can be certain we’re not funding the shady JBS brothers’ luxury yachts and lamborghinis, lavish parties and sumptuous mansions – and much much more importantly that we’re not complicit in deforestation, animal cruelty, human rights abuse, wholesale corruption, and the supply of contaminated products – is to take the meat off our plates. The cause of justice, the animals and the planet will thank us.

Here are 10 easy ways to make a change.

And now look at it from the animals’ point of view:

From Brazilian Pastures to Middle Eastern Slaughterhouses

 

Update

9th August 2019 MRSA on Northern Ireland’s farms

27th July 2020 Revealed: new evidence links Brazil meat giant JBS to Amazon deforestation

Source 

JBS: Brazilian butchers take over the world  A special investigation from Andrew Wasley, Alexandra Heal and Lucy Michaels in London, Dominic Phillips, André Campos and Diego Junqueira in Sao Paulo and Claire Smyth in Belfast

Related posts

Are Meat & Dairy Really Bad for Sustainability & the Planet?

When Everyone is Telling You Meat is the Bad Guy Revisited

Another Nation Trims Meat From Diet Advice

If everyone on Earth ate a Western diet, we would need two Planet Earths to feed us. We’ve only got one and she’s dying

The Living Planet Report: Our Dinner Plates are Destroying Life on Earth

 

 

 

Norway to Ban the Farming of Fur

“It’s a big victory for animal welfare in Norway. It’s a realisation that the consideration for animals can actually weigh heavier than just money and business interests.”

Siri Martinsen, head of Noah, animal rights organisation.

Later this month, the ban on fur farming passes into Norwegian law. It means new fur farms prohibited with immediate effect, and all existing fur farms dismantled by 2025.

Noah has been lobbying for the ban for three decades – that is stickability! “It’s totally unnatural and against these animals’ needs to keep them in very tiny metal cages.”

The babies are born in spring, smooth and furless. But by autumn they will have grown their thick glossy winter coats, brown, black or grey. Then the youngsters pay dearly for their gorgeous beauty, by being gassed and skinned.

So thank you Noah for never giving up on the animals.

It was a quirk of the contemporary political scene that finally tipped the scales in the animals’ favour. In echoes of 2010 in the UK, Norway’s Conservative party found themselves in a position where they were forced to invite the Liberals into a government of coalition. The Liberals said yes, but there was a condition. And the condition was – the fur farm ban.

Norway now joins the UK, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Croatia on the right side of fur farming history. In addition, regulations surrounding the cruel practice in Germany and Switzerland are so strict as to be effective as a ban.

Of course, not everyone is happy. The 200-strong Norwegian fur farmers’ association says the ban is “unjustified, illegal and undemocratic.” Fur farmer Kristian Aasen is enraged: “It’s unbelievable that a microscopic party that is today polling around two percent could impose its views on spineless politicians.”

Aasen farms 20 cows, and as a very lucrative sideline, 6,000 caged mink. He says he can’t make a living without them.

The government is offering financial assistance to dismantle the farms and help find other income strings. (One MP suggested the cultivation of medical cannabis.) But the fur farmers are pessimistic about finding alternatives. One thing is certain, animal farming will not be an option. Everyone knows what one of their number openly admits:

“There is already an overproduction of meat. We produce too much lamb, pork, chicken, milk.”

Someone needs to tell them –

The future is plant-based!

Go vegan!

Sign the petition to make a fur-free Britain here

 

Source

Days are numbered for Norway’s fur farms

Further reading

The Labour Party pledges to ban fur imports to the UK

 

 

“My promise to the animals is this: You have all of me”

“My promise to the animals is this: You have all of me. The lioness in the circus—I see you. The pig in the sow stall—I see you. The mouse in the medical experimentation facility—I see you. The fish crushed at the bottom of a trawler net—I see you. I know your suffering, and I will never be silent. I will push forward no matter what life throws my way because the cruelties inflicted on you must end, and I’ll do all I can to see that happen. You have all of me.”

The stirring words of outspoken vegan activist Emma Hurst, representative of the Animal Justice Party (AJP), at her swearing in to Australia’s New South Wales State Parliament. She is now the third vegan activist elected to state office.

My last post “Isn’t it Time to Stop the Killing in the Name of Conservation“, cast the spotlight on the horrific scale of Australia’s ongoing slaughter of wild and feral animals. Still more blood is shed to ‘protect’ farmers’ and ranchers’ interests – without mentioning the unhappy fate of the farmed animals themselves. So it’s good to know Arian Wallach and the Centre for Compassionate Conservation are not alone in their campaign for kinder ways. Here is an introduction to the Animal Justice Party –

Last month vegan activists stopped the traffic in central Melbourne, while others demonstrated outside abattoirs. The Prime Minister Scott Morrison no less, said their activism was “un-Australian”, and bad-mouthed them as “green-collar criminals”. 40 of them were arrested. He declared his determination not to let them “pull the rug from under our Aussie farmers,”  at present an industry worth $30 billion.

May 18th’s pivotal election

“Australians will return to the polls this Saturday in what’s becoming a pivotal election for animals and the environment. The big question: Will Australia’s next prime minister be friend or foe to the nation’s  animal agriculture industry?”

Veganism in Australia

• The country has more than 2 million vegans
• Veganism is especially popular among younger voters
•  44 percent of young people (aged 18–24) think that veganism is “cooler than smoking.” (Certainly much healthier!)
• The plant-based food industry there is forecasted to grow 58% by 2020

Why things have to change

• 1.8 billion animals have been killed for food in Australia so far this year and counting
• 70% of the $30 billion Australian agriculture is ‘worth’ comes from slaughtered animals
• 30% comes from milk, wool and eggs (which of course all also mean animal slaughter)
• Last year the country exported 2.85 million living animals which suffered cruelly over long journeys in cramped shipping containers
• 2,400 sheep died of heat stress en route from Perth to the Middle East
• Australia’s animal agriculture accounts for 11% of national emissions of GHGs
• Over 20 year timescale that actually means 50% because methane has a stronger climate forcing effect
• “Nearly 85 percent of the population that lives along the coast will be impacted by rising seas, storm surges, flooding, heatwaves, and damage to public infrastructure”

And climate change is already a big problem 

• Last year Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology issued four Special Climate Statements relating to “extreme” and “abnormal” heat, and reported broken climate records
• With temperatures around 40°C in December last year, firefighters struggled to contain the 115 bush fires raging across Queensland
• Piles of dead fox bats, whose brains literally fried in the heat, covered Sydney
• For the last two years the country’s rainfall has been 11% below average
• With the severe shortage of grazing on the parched land for their cattle, farmers in Western Australia have been struggling to find the money for the cost of feed, at $10,000 dollars per truckload
• Farmers have also had to drive round with tankers of water to keep their thirsty cattle alive

In spite of all this, “as far as Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Parliament’s pro-farming majority are concerned, animals are no more than the means to a very profitable end for this Parliament.” (This attitude is what we are all up against.)

The Animal Justice Party, which doesn’t “prioritize a cattle and BBQ culture ahead of a livable climate,” but does, like Emma Hurst, prioritise animal rights, certainly has its work cut out.

If you live in Australia please vote this Saturday for the AJP.

“My promise to the animals is this: You have all of me.”

For the sake of the animals, please share this post widely. Thank you.

Sign Animals Australia’s petition against live exports here and take more actions for the animals here

---

Sources

Australia Swears in Third Vegan Activist to State Parliament – Sentient Media

Australia’s 2018 in weather: drought, heat and fire 

Related posts

Eat a Steak, Kill a Lemur, Eat a Chicken, Kill a Parrot

Eight Women Changing the World for Animals Part 2

Why I Love Women, Especially Loud Vegan Women

Isn’t it Time to Stop the Killing in the Name of Conservation

 

Eat a Steak, Kill a Lemur – Eat a Chicken, Kill a Parrot

“Humanity’s lust for meat is killing off Earth’s large animals”

“We are living on the planet of the chickens. The broiler (meat) chicken now outweighs all wild birds put together by three to one. It is the most numerous vertebrate (not just bird) species on land, with 23 billion alive at any one time. Across the world, chicken is the most commonly eaten meat.”

The tragic life of the broiler hen has become the symbol of the Anthropocene. And the world’s taste for its flesh and for the flesh of other animals is set to cause the in-our-lifetime extinction of at least 150 megafauna species – if we persist in eating so much meat.

But hang on a minute – can that even be true? Isn’t meat-eating in decline? Don’t we keep on hearing how veganism is skyrocketing?

According to a 2018 survey, 3.5 million UK citizens identified as vegan. That’s a 700% increase from 2016. There’s a similar 600% increase in the USA. And, “As of 2016, Asia Pacific holds the largest share of vegan consumers globally, with approximately nine percent of people following a vegan diet in this area.”

Google Trends concurs: in recent years there’s also been a huge growth of interest in veganism in Israel, Australia, Canada, Austria and New Zealand.

It all sounds like great news! So where’s the problem?

The problem is, the worldwide consumption of meat is winning the race by a long mile.

It has escalated by an alarming 500% since 1961. Of course some of that 500% can be accounted for by the exponential growth in the world’s population. But much is down to globalisation and people’s increasing prosperity. Populations that were traditionally plant-based eaters started to crave a less healthy Western diet, heavy in meat.

“Overall, we eat an excessive 300 million tons of meat every year, which translates to 1.4 billion pigs, 300 million cattle, and a whopping 62 billion chickens.” Which all amounts to an infinity of suffering for each and everyone of those sentient beings, creatures with lives of their own we seem to value so little.

Humans do though appear to care a great deal more about the megafauna. So, which are the megafauna being put in danger by humans’ rapacious appetite for meat? Many of them are those animals on which we humans seem to place the highest value, the most iconic, the most popular. The infographic illustrates the results of a poll into our favourite wild animals.

Image credits: Celine Albert / PLoS.

Just look at those species: every one of them is endangered or critically endangered.

But why is our eating meat threatening their survival? After all, we don’t go round eating tiger burgers or hippo steaks do we?

Well yes, in effect we do. By ‘we’ I mean of course our kind, humankind. “Direct harvest for human consumption of meat or body parts is the biggest danger to nearly all of the large species” that are under threat, says William Ripple, researcher at Oregon State University. So, “minimizing the direct killing of these animals is an important conservation tactic that might save many of these iconic species” and “the contributions they make to their ecosystems.”

There are two major issues here: the first is, as we know, the illegal trade in rhino horn, tiger bones, bear bile, pangolin scales and other endangered animal body parts, much of which is consumed in the mistaken belief it is medicinal. The second is bush meat – indigenous people hunting to survive. Both these hugely problematic issues merit far more space than I can give them here right now.

The meat doesn’t have to come from a tiger or a hippo for our carnivorous ways to put iconic species at risk.

To satisfy the growing demand for meat, livestock farming is rapidly devouring land that is crucial species-rich habitat, and turning it over to grazing pasture and monoculture crops for livestock feed. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation “Livestock is the world’s largest user of land resources, with pasture and land dedicated to the production of feed representing almost 80% of the total agricultural land.”

In that hotspot of biodiversity, the Amazonian rainforest, cattle ranching accounts for 65 to 70 percent of all deforestation, and production of soya beans another 25 to 35 percent. Soya beans are “the world’s second most exported agricultural commodity.” After chickens presumably.

 

Rapidly losing habitat and under threat – the Amazonian jaguar, red macaw, & sloth

But before we start pointing the finger at the vegans making lattes with their soya milk, let’s note that 98 percent of soya bean production is fed to poultry, pigs and cattle, especially poultry, and only 1 percent is turned into people-food.

The 2017 World Wildlife Fund report, Appetite for Destruction identified crops grown to feed livestock as the “driving force behind wide-scale biodiversity loss.”

“By 2050, given current trends, 15 ‘mega-diverse’ countries will likely increase the lands used for livestock production by 30% to 50%. The habitat loss is so great that it will cause more extinctions than any other factor.” Our lust for meat is laying waste the habitats of the very wild animals we love the most. Habitats that are theirs by right.

We have to ask ourselves what kind of bleak and desolate wasteland, stripped bare of the most majestic of all Earth’s wondrous creatures, will be our legacy to our children, and their children. Such a stark future will be the price we’re forcing them to pay for our addiction to that meat on our fork.

If there is one thing each of us can do to give these iconic threatened species the best possible chance of survival, it has to be making changes to what we put on our dinner plates. It’s as simple as that.

“You eat a steak, you kill a lemur in Madagascar. You eat a chicken, you kill an Amazonian parrot.” 

*******

You can #EatForThePlanet starting today. Just follow the three simple steps below.

1. Replace: Try to swap animal-based products in your daily diet with vegan alternatives (milk, butter, mayo, cheese, grilled chicken, beef crumbles, sausages, cold cuts, etc. For practically everything you can think of, there is a vegan version.)
2. Embrace: Add plant-based whole foods (local and organic when possible) to your diet like greens, fresh fruits, and vegetables, whole grains, plant proteins like lentils, nuts/seeds, beans, tofu, etc.
3. Moderate: Limit consumption of your favourite meats like beef, lamb, pork, etc.

and Take Extinction Off Your Plate – why we need to rewild our plates today

Free up more land for wildlife – Info @

Forks Over Knives   Vegan Society   Vegan Outreach    PETA    Viva!

It’s soooo easy!

Related posts

Are You Really Helping the Planet Eating Plant-Based? Yes! And This Awesome App Shows You Just How Much

If everyone on Earth ate a Western diet, we would need two Planet Earths to feed us. We’ve only got one and she’s dying

The Living Planet Report: Our Dinner Plates are Destroying Life on Earth

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When Everyone is Telling You Meat is the Bad Guy

Sources

Humanity’s lust for meat is killing off Earth’s large animals

Meat-eaters may speed worldwide species extinction, study warns

No Green Meadows for the ‘Übercow’ of Today

The picture¹ above is, for German documentary photographer Nikita Teryoshin,

“A symbol of human control over cows – how we can look into the cow and see everything.

“I wanted to update the old-fashioned image of a cow in a green meadow that we know from ads and milk packages. To show the dystopian side of milk production.”

The images in Teryoshin’s book Hornless Heritage express the shock he felt visiting the EuroTier agricultural fair in Hanover, a shock which prompted his 4-year scrutiny of this industry in his home country, and was the impetus for his book.

At the centre of the dairy industry is, of course, the cow. A cow falls into the zoological class of Mammalia. And the dictionary definition of the word “Mammal” is:

Any of a class (Mammalia) of warm-blooded higher vertebrates that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands

“That nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands” – the way Nature intended. But nothing about the German dairy industry bears much relation to Nature. Indeed, today’s dairy production practically all over in the world is so far from the storybook idyll of contented cows grazing in flower-filled meadows with the sun on their backs – the image the industry wants us to believe – that there surely must be a case for referring dairy product ads everywhere to their countries’ equivalents of our Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds of “false or deceptive messages”.²

What does the image below look like to you? What it doesn’t look like to me is a farm. But then, it doesn’t actually lay claim to that name. It calls itself an ‘automated dairy facility’, and is certainly closer to a factory than how most people imagine a farm.

Model of a state-of-the-art automated dairy facility at the EuroTier trade fair in Hanover, Germany. Nikita Teryoshin

This is journalist Laura Mallone describing Teryoshin’s experience of the EuroTier fair, “The crowds gawked at the latest in animal husbandry, including a Matrix-like robot that suckled a fake cow. But what struck Teryoshin most was an ad that read, 

‘Don’t let cows waste your money’

“‘It seemed impossible that you could think that a cow is wasting your money when you’re already taking everything away from it,” he says.”

Presentation of a hoof trimming chute at the EuroTier trade fair in Hanover, Germany.Nikita Teryoshin

That prompted him to begin Hornless Heritage. Teryoshin visited farms, insemination stations, laboratories, auctions and even a Best in Show, where owners primped their Holsteins and paraded them before a crowd. He got an up-close glimpse of seemingly happy cows like Lady Gaga—a black-and-white Holstein that’s won bovine beauty pageants—as well as clearly unhappy ones, such as those with bloodied legs he saw on a factory farm. He documented everything with a Nikon D800 and hand-held flash, illuminating the mundane horror of an industry where animals are reduced to commodities.

Artificial insemination. Nikita Teryoshin

‘German’ : ‘Efficiency’. Two words forever joined at the hip. Teryoshin witnessed the essence of ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ (progress through technology) applied to cows exactly as to cars. Maximising profit by reducing living animals to nothing more than milk-producing machines, their natural needs only being met as far as they further that end.

Model of a milking rotary at the EuroTier trade fair in Hanover, Germany. Nikita Teryoshin

Teryoshin writes, “Also known as ‘turbo cows’, German dairy breeds, like German cars, are very popular all over the world because of their performance and reliability. Thanks to computer technologies in the last decades German scientists got millions of breeding values together and a knowledge about the genomic code, which allows them to design the ‘Übercow’ with up to four times higher milk output, and even the horns disappearing,”

Based in Verden, the company VIT maintains data for millions of cattle in Europe. These numbers show the full genome of a cow. Nikita Teryoshin

In evolution, “horns mean for a cow protection and autonomy. They are even important for the milk performance and overall condition of the animal. For life in huge fully automated farms with hundreds of cows, horns are too dangerous. After decades of painful dehorning of cattle with a branding iron, German breeders and scientists in the future will produce cows hornless by birth yet with the same milk performance.” 

Germany’s dairy facts

• Germany is the EU’s biggest milk producer
• The country has 4.2 million cows
• Today, farmers use genomic selection to design ever-more-profitable ‘turbo’ cows that can produce more than 88,000 pounds of milk in their lifetimes

These servers sit in the basement of the VIT center in Verden, Germany. They contain genomic information about millions of bulls and cows. Nikita Teryoshin

• Cows used to live about 20 years. Now they end up canned and packaged in the pet food aisle of supermarkets before the age of 5, sent to slaughter because of lameness, infertility or mastitis
• Such are the miracles of technology, in a life lasting only a quarter of the time of her great-great-great grandmother’s, a German cow can now be made to produce at least double and up to 4 times as much milk
• In 2018, Germany produced from its ‘turbo cows’ 8.6 billion gallons – enough for 104 gallons/473 litres per person – in one year. About 1.3 litres per person per day – milk Nature intended for the nurture of these mothers’ babies, which have been taken from them.

A farmer spray paints a cow before an auction in Krefeld, Germany. Nikita Teryoshin

“’I stopped drinking milk and eating dairy for a while,’ Teryoshin says. His photographs might make you lose your appetite for the stuff, too.”

Only for a while, Nikita? What a shame. How desperately sad that you should so readily forget the shock you experienced peeling away the dairy industry’s green pastures fantasy to uncover the technologised nightmare beneath – the pitiful existence of a mammal mother, intended only by Nature to suckle her own, that is today’s Übercow.

Yes, we can indeed “look into her and see everthing”. Everything that is except the one thing that matters – her soul.

**************

It’s not too late to join the Veganuary movement and discover simple and tasty ways to eat dairy-free

And everything you ever need to know (well, almost!) about going vegan here

You can see more of Hornless Heritage here

Interesting read: Nazi super cows: British farmer forced to destroy half his murderous herd of bio-engineered Heck cows after they try to kill staff

Related posts

Dairy in Decline? It’s Not That Black & White

Mountains of Milk, Lakes of Cheese, & What We Can Do About It

Why Cows Need Their Friends

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Are Meat & Dairy Really Bad for Sustainability & the Planet?

Source

Capturing the Everyday Horror of Dairy Farming in Germany

¹The photo depicts the Free University of Berlin’s anatomical model of this animal. 

²Marketing and Advertising: the law

Updates

5th July 2019  New dairy cattle breeding method increases genetic selection efficiency

Voices for the Voiceless – A Year of Victories for the Animals

Victories won for animals by just a few of the many voices raised for the voiceless in 2018

In the UK,

Animal Aid 

Since the graphic above was prepared, “more developments have taken place. For example, more than 30 organisations have now taken the decision to cancel live reindeer events. While it has been an excellent year, there is still so much work to be done.

“With your help, we can achieve even more for animals in 2019. Why not get involved straight away by visiting our Take Action page?”

PETA UK 2018 highlights

The International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Awards for inspiring animal advocates

This year’s full list of winners:

• Christine (Chris) and George Rockingham, from Norfolk, for a lifetime’s dedication to rescuing and rehabilitating animals at their PACT sanctuary for nearly 25 years.
• Michel Birkenwald, from London, for drilling more than 100 ‘hedgehog highways’ in South West London to help hedgehogs navigate to new areas to forage.
• Ralph the Golden Retriever, from Hertfordshire, for changing the life of his companion Paul who was left paralysed after a car crash six years ago.
• Debbie Bailey, from Derbyshire, for her work to protect badgers from culling through vaccinations.
• Michelle Clark, from London, for starting her voluntary run, not-for-profit organisation Dogs on the Streets (DOTS) that cares for and helps homeless people and their dogs.
• Nigel and Sara Hicks, from Cornwall, for their dedication to treating injured and orphaned orangutans in Borneo for six months every year, for nearly 10 years.
• Chloe Hennegan, from the West Midlands, for running her rabbit rescue and rehabilitation centre Fat Fluffs since 2008.
• Trisha Shaw, from Warwickshire, for her many years volunteering and raising thousands of pounds for her local dog charity Pawprints.
• Natalia Doran, from London, for setting up Urban Squirrels, a licensed squirrel rescue in her own home.

World Animal Protection 2018 proudest moments

Too much to mention – these are just a few of our proudest moments: 

• 29 travel companies committed to stop promoting elephant entertainment venues, making a total of 226 
• 10 bears used for baiting and dancing were given new lives in our partner sanctuary in Pakistan 
• We reached more than 500,000 KFC petition signatures, and are in talks with the fast food chain to improve their animal welfare standards
• 83,000 dogs in Sierra Leone and Kenya were vaccinated against rabies  
• We helped 454,774 animals recover from 12 disasters around the world  
• The disaster preparedness work we did with governments and NGOs this year will help protect 52,000,000 animals in future
• Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Lidl and Tesco have all joined the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) which we helped set up in 2015 to tackle the problem of Ghost Gear (marine pollution from abandoned or lost fishing nets and lines)

In Australia,

Animal Australia Year in Review 2018

In the US,

Click on the link below to see a wide range and a long list of achievements won for wildlife by the Humane Society of the US:-

Wildlife gains for 2018 range from bans on wild animal circus acts to major fur-free announcements

The Animal Legal Defense Fund is winning victories for animals in the US courts of law

“As 2019 approaches, we’re looking back at our biggest legal victories for animals over the last 12 months. These are just a few highlights – watch the video from Executive Director Stephen Wells to learn about all the legal advances we made for animals.”

 

Previous posts related to voices for animals in the legal system:-

Eight Women Changing the World for Animals 4

Animals Can Legally Be Considered ‘Victims’ – Oregon Supreme Court

Will Today Be the Day Chimpanzees Become Legal Persons?

Good News in a Bad Week

Persons Not Property – Could the Tide be Turning?

Cecilia Blazes the Trail – Or Does She?

Naruto & the Selfie – The Case is Settled

What Will Brexit Mean for UK Animals & Nature?

“The government’s wish for the UK to become a global leader in free trade is not necessarily compatible with its desire to maintain high animal welfare standards,” The House of Lords subcommittee on EU Energy and Environment

“A coalition of leading environmental groups says there is a ‘significant risk’ that British environmental protections will be reduced after Brexit, despite the government’s positive rhetoric.”

Well, somehow she (and by ‘she’ I mean the woman who wrote into the 2017 Tory manifesto her intention to repeal the ban on fox hunting. Yes, that ‘she’) She somehow got her Brexit through the Cabinet, and the 27 EU states have ceremonially signed it off. The next step is a Parliamentary vote. Who knows what will happen there? And as for after the vote, it’s anyone’s guess.

As the Brexit juggernaut rolls inexorably towards the edge of the cliff, what will it mean for our UK animals and nature?

Here are some disturbing reasons why all animal – and nature-lovers will want to do their damnedest to stop the juggernaut in its tracks, because Brexit is bad news for UK nature and its animals, wherever they are: in labs, in the wild or on farms.

What the EU meant for animal welfare before Brexit

The EU is renowned in the world for its pro-animal stance and high standards of animal welfare. Article 13 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty recognises nonhuman animals as ‘sentient beings’ for whom suffering and distress should be diminished as much as possible. Last year the UK Tory government rejected Article 13 – a foretaste of things to come?

Check this link for a comprehensive list of the EU’s achievements for animals The European Parliament’s Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals

Of our current legislation regulating animal welfare and the environment, 80% comes from our membership of the EU.

After Brexit?

Under the Repeal Bill, “All existing EU legislation will be copied across into domestic UK law to ensure a smooth transition on the day after Brexit. The UK Parliament can then ‘amend, repeal and improve’ individual laws as necessary.”

It’s increasingly unlikely that all these laws can be adequately translated into UK law without the access we previously had to EU organisations, and against the ticking Brexit clock. “Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Andrea Leadsom admitted that about a third of environmental laws … could not initially be brought into UK legislation.”

And “MPs fear ministers may use the process of adapting those laws to chip away environmental protections.” This is a government that favours deregulation to give greater freedom to business. In this respect Theresa May and Donald Trump do indeed hold hands. Nature and animals will be the losers.

Additionally, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee fears EU legislation that does get adopted into UK law could become ‘zombie legislation’, no longer subject to EU updates and with no regulatory bodies to see it enforced.

The Birds and Habitats Directives which protect wild birds and Britain’s most important wildlife and plant habitats will not be adopted into UK law, even if the UK remains in the Single Market. A report on the directives “warns that this could have potentially far-reaching negative consequences for the UK’s biodiversity.”

Bowing under pressure from farmers, the Tories have already expressed opposition to the EU’s strict regulation of GM crops, chemicals and neonicotinoid pesticides – all of which can devastate insect life and the animals that feed on them. At present the European courts and the European Commission enforce these laws. After Brexit there will be nothing to stop deregulation.

The Common Agricultural Policy

No-one denies the CAP needs reforming. Farmers hate it and its complex regulations. But, the CAP provides 60% of farmers’ income. And under the 2013 EU “Greening” initiative, farmers are financially incentivised to use their land sustainably, and care for natural resources.

“Under the new [2013 Greening] rules, farmers receiving payments help conserve the environment and contribute to addressing greenhouse emissions by:

• making soil & ecosystems more resilient by growing a greater variety of crops
• conserving soil carbon & grassland habitats associated with permanent grassland
• protecting water & habitats by establishing ecological focus areas.”

MPs are calling for a new UK Environmental Protection Act as part of Brexit. The Tory manifesto last year promised to make the UK environment greener after Brexit than EU regulations left it. But it’s hard to see that happening. In view of this government’s continual capitulation to pressure from the farming community, most notably by rolling out again this year (the 6th) an horrendous cull of a much-loved and protected species, the badger, in 32 areas across 10 counties, ignoring the science, the data, much expert advice, and public opinion … Well, I can’t even finish the sentence.

“When a government dares to call its concrete-grey Autumn Budget environmentally “green” because of its initiative to plant a few trees alongside its billion pounds worth of road infrastructures, and when that government can barely agree on whether the cruel practice of fox hunting should be allowed, all hope is lost for the safety and welfare of animals.”

Our new trading partners

Failing a decent trade agreement with Brussels, the UK is looking to the USA as a major trading partner. The US his already dictated its terms – no trade unless we eliminate our “unjustified sanitary restrictions”.

Not wanting to jeopardise our chances of a deal with America, a possible future lifeline in the event of a bad Brexit, the Home Office “have failed to write-up any legally binding commitments that uphold food hygiene and humane animal treatment post-Brexit. Horror stories of chlorine washed chicken, ractopamine riddled pigs and hormone enhanced beef hitting British shores may be closer than we think.”

The infographic below reveals some of the barbarity of the treatment of animals on American factory farms

If you’re not already acquainted with US farming methods, let me tell you I doubt you can imagine a worse hell. Check for yourself here.

The Pound

From the Brexit referendum’s results day, the pound declined in value. If we get as far as actual Brexit Day, March 29th 2019, we will see the pound plummet, sucking into the country a flood of products from unethically, inhumanely-reared animals . (Not that I will ever concede there is such a thing as humane farming of animals. Apart from anything that happens to them in the short time they are allowed to live, those lives all end in the bloody horror of the slaughterhouse. There are though, degrees of suffering.)

UK farmers will be unable to compete without a significant lowering of their own animal welfare standards, the standards at present required of them by the EU.

Farms in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire – PETA

If this is what it’s like now, how much lower can they go?

In addition, in the face of ever-decreasing profit margins farmers will strongly resist legislative attempts to protect the welfare of farmed animals post-Brexit. The animals will be “collateral damage”.

The economy

Levels of poverty in the UK are already “staggering” according to UN rapporteur Philip Alston. He found 1.5 million of our citizens destitute and 14 million living in poverty. Food bank use reached its highest rate on record this year. Our own Treasury has predicted that under all possible Brexit scenarios we will be worse off in 15 years time. All of which means that people will be looking for the cheapest possible food, however dodgily produced. Concerns for animal welfare will be a luxury many can no longer afford.

EU Immigrants

On many farms between 40 – 58% of the workforce are EU nationals. The labour shortage created by their disappearance will push agricultural workers’ wages up, putting further financial pressure on farmers. They will look for any way possible to cut costs, and may well resort to cutting welfare corners to the detriment of the animals.

A staggering 90% of vets working in the UK are EU nationals. The British Veterinary Association warns of a severe shortage of qualified vets post-Brexit. That is not good news for any UK animal.

After Brexit, because of the change in regulations for trading with Europe, more not fewer Official Vets will be needed to supervise imports and exports and sign health certificates for live animals. Doesn’t this acute shortage of properly qualified personnel mean that whatever animal protections there are supposedly in place, are going to pass by unchecked and unenforced?

“Deregulating trade while curbing immigration would lead to a sharp decline in animal welfare. When immigration is curbed and access to dedicated workers is stifled, the situation for the UK’s voiceless and defenceless creatures is bleak.”

Live exports

Last year Michael Gove claimed that the EU was holding us back from banning live exports.

Would a Tory government fly in the face of its supporters in the farming community to enforce such a ban? Even if they did, which seems highly unlikely, now ‘free’ of EU regulations the UK would be subject to World Trade Organisation rules instead. And they do not allow for such a ban. If you voted for Brexit hoping to see an end to this cruel trade, I’m sorry to disappoint.

Animal testing

Cruelty Free International are worried that “a no-deal Brexit could mean that the UK would need to carry out the same animal tests for chemical registration as the EU. This would mean twice as many animals would suffer. If existing EU animal-test data is not shared with the UK, then the same animal tests would have to be carried out again by the UK for the same information.”

At a time when without Brexit the number of laboratory procedures continues to rise, that just does not bear thinking about. NatureWatch echoes CFI’s concerns and urges the government “to ensure that re-testing does not take place and that existing testing data can be used in the UK.”

Companion animals

The present EU pet passport system is being extensively abused by criminal gangs smuggling puppies with fake passports into the UK and other countries. The government has pledged to stamp out this cruel trade. Perhaps the only good news to come out of Brexit. Although…

In all the years we have been an EU member state, the government could have eliminated this problem anyway with better UK border checks. Plus, it’s hard to imagine this will be a high priority for the Tories in a post-Brexit Britain.

One final reason to reject May’s Brexit on behalf of our animals

Many animal advocacy organisations are either already working on a Europe-wide basis, or are starting to join forces with their european counterparts.

Surely we are stronger together for the animals?

Look at these EU-wide groups: Eurobadger, Eurogroup for Animals, the European Enforcement Network of Animal Welfare Lawyers and Commissioners and the vitally important aforementioned European Parliament’s Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals

All in all, if the animals had a voice and were given a vote, I feel certain the result would be – Remain.

Further reading from the Ecologist and the UK Centre for Animal Law’s Brexit Manifesto

Related posts

We Encourage Everyone who Cares about Animals to Vote Remain

Eurobarometer 2016 Proves EU Citizens Overwhelming Support for Animal Welfare

The Fight to Protect Badgers Moves to Europe

Poll: Would Brexit be the best thing for Europe’s wildlife?

EU Animals Face Torture & Abuse During Live Exports

Sources 

Brexit and the future of animal welfare

Post-Brexit trade deals ‘threaten UK’s animal welfare standards’

What are the key issues for the Brexit negotiations?

New Environmental Act needed after Brexit

European Commission Agriculture and Rural Development

Could no-deal Brexit mean more UK animal tests?

Brexit: Does the EU stop the UK improving animal welfare?

Britain risks losing green protections after Brexit

“My job is to give people hope” – Jane Goodall’s Call to Action

‘How come the most intellectual creature to ever walk Earth is destroying its only home?”

Who better to open the Guardian’s new series The Age of Extinction, than the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall? Her lifespan of 84 years has seen a horrifying loss of wild animals of all kinds, along with their habitats.

And yet she believes if we come together and play our part in our own lives, we can “heal some of the harm we have inflicted.” This is her message to us all:

During my years studying chimpanzees in Gombe national park in Tanzania I experienced the magic of the rainforest. I learned how all life is interconnected, how each species, no matter how insignificant it may seem, has a role to play in the rich tapestry of life – known today as biodiversity. Even the loss of one thread can have a ripple effect and result in major damage to the whole.

I left Gombe in 1986 when I realised how fast chimpanzee habitat was being destroyed and how their numbers were declining. I visited six chimpanzee range states and learned a great deal about the rate of deforestation as a result of foreign corporations (timber, oil and mining)and population growth in communities in and around chimpanzee habitat, so that more land was needed for expanding villages, agriculture and grazing livestock.

Chimpanzees were affected by the bushmeat trade – the commercial hunting of wild animals for food. I saw traumatised infants, whose mothers had been killed – either for the same bushmeat or the illegal animal trade, for sale in the markets, or in inappropriate zoos where they had been placed after confiscation by local authorities.

But I also learned about the problems faced by so many African communities in and around chimpanzee habitat. When I arrived in Gombe in 1960 it was part of what was called the equatorial forest belt, stretching from East Africa through the Congo Basin to the West African coast. By 1980 it was a tiny island of forest surrounded by bare hills, with more people living there than the land could support, over-farmed soil, trees cut down on all but the steepest slopes by people desperate to grow food for their families or make money from charcoal. I realised that unless we could improve their lives we could not even try to protect chimpanzees.

But chimpanzees, and many other species are still highly endangered. Over the last 100 years chimpanzee numbers have dropped from perhaps two million to a maximum of 340,000, many living in fragmented patches of forest. Several thousand apes are killed or taken captive for the illegal wildlife trade. Orangutans and gibbons are losing their habitats due to the proliferation of non-sustainable oil palm plantations. We are experiencing the sixth great extinction. The most recent report from WWF describes the situation as critical – in the last 49 years, we have lost 60% of all animal and plant species on Earth.

We are poisoning the soil through large-scale industrial agriculture. Invasive species are choking out native animal and plant life in many places. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere by our reliance on fossil fuels, destruction of the rain forests and pollution of the ocean. Increase of demand for meat not only involves horrible cruelty to billions of animals in factory farms, but huge areas of wild habitats destroyed to grow crops for animal feed.

So much fossil fuel is required to take grain to animals, animals to slaughter, meat to table – and during digestion these animals are producing methane – an even more virulent gas than carbon dioxide. And their waste along with other industrial agriculture runoff is polluting soil and rivers sometimes causing toxic algae blooms over large areas of ocean.

Climate change is a very real threat as spelled out in the latest UN report*, as these greenhouse gases, trapping the heat of the sun, are causing the melting of polar ice, rising sea levels, more frequent and more intense storms. In some places agricultural yields are decreasing, fuelling human displacement and conflict. How come the most intellectual creature to ever walk the Earth is destroying its only home?

Because many policymakers and corporations – and we as individuals – tend to make decisions based on “How will this affect me now, affect the shareholders’ meeting, the next political campaign?” rather than “How will this affect future generations?” Mother Nature is being destroyed at an ever faster rate for the sake of short term gain. This, along with our horrifying population growth, poverty – causing people to destroy the environment simply to try to make a living – and the unsustainable lifestyles of the rest of us who have way more than we need, is the root cause of all the planet’s woes.

It is depressing to realise how much change I have witnessed during my 84 years. I have seen the ice melting in Greenland, the glaciers vanishing on Mount Kilimanjaro and around the world. When I arrived in Gombe the chimpanzee population stretched for miles along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Buffalo, common then, are locally extinct and only a few leopards remain.

The water of the Lake was crystal clear, fish and water cobras were abundant, and there were crocodiles. But with soil washed into the lake and over-fishing, that changed. When I spent time in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro in the 60s and early 70s, rhino and elephants were plentiful. I grew up in the south of England. The dawn chorus of the birds was magical – so many of them have gone, along with the hedgehogs that used to rustle through the vegetation at night. In May and June we had to draw the curtains at night to keep out the hundreds of cockchafers – May bugs, attracted to the light – today it is rare to see even one, and the clouds of mosquitos and midges are almost gone.

Yet I believe we have a small window of opportunity when, if we get together, we can start to heal some of the harm we have inflicted. Everywhere, where young people understand the problems and are empowered to take action – when we listen to their voices, they are making a difference. With our superior intellect we are coming up with technological solutions to help us live in greater harmony with nature and reduce our own ecological footprints. We have a choice each day as to what we buy, eat and wear. And nature is amazingly resilient – there are no more bare hills around Gombe, as an example. Species on the brink of extinction have been given a second chance. We can reach out to the world through social media in a way never before possible. And there is the indomitable human spirit, the people who tackle the impossible and won’t give up. My job is to give people hope, for without it we fall into apathy and do nothing.

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How we fight back against biodiversity loss

In 1994, the Jane Goodall Institute launched the Tacare program, working in collaboration with the villagers themselves. A holistic program including restoring fertility to the farm land (no chemicals used), improved health and education facilities, water management programs, microcredit opportunities (particularly for women), family planning information, and scholarships to keep girls in school. Today this operates in 72 villages throughout the range of Tanzania’s remaining chimpanzees, most of whom live in unprotected village forest reserves. Village volunteers learn to use smart phones, patrol their forests, and note any illegal activities as well as signs or sightings of animals. This information is uploaded onto a platform in the cloud, including Global Forest Watch.

Tacare now operates similar programs in six other African countries. “The villagers have become our partners in conservation,” says Goodall. “They know that protecting the environment benefits them as well as wildlife.”

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*Jane’s call to action is urgent. According to the UN report she mentions, we have only 12 years left to get control of climate change. “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now. This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.” – Debra Roberts for UN IPCC

 

Related posts

Futurology Offers More Hopes than Fears for the Animals & the Planet

There is Always Hope for the Animals & the Planet

Hope for the Animals & the Planet?

High Schools Across China are Now Offering Animal Welfare Courses

These Are the Heroes Putting Their Lives on the Line for the Animals of Paradise

And for an entirely different take on the topic – Should We Look on the Bright Side of the 6th Mass Extinction?

 

A Cow Named ‘Spirit’

“There’s an island in the middle of a Polish lake, where, for a few strange weeks, one cow ruled supreme. And woe to anyone who tried to set foot on that island.”

(Cover pic from politician and former singer Paweł Kukiz’s Facebook page)

A week or two ago we heard about Swoboda (Freedom), the runaway cow wild wintering with bison near the Bialowieza Forest in Poland. We have yet to discover how her fortune will unfold.

Closely following on her hoofs is Hermien, the Dutch cow who broke free when she was being loaded on to a truck headed for the slaughterhouse. She has spent weeks hiding out in the woods and has become a media sensation. A crowdfunding campaign is raising money to guarantee her right to live out her natural lifespan in a the peace and safety of a sanctuary – if they are able to coax her out of the woods she has made home.

Here is Hermien, roaming free

Now back once more to Poland for the story of this other remarkable, until now unnamed bovine. A story that ends in undeserved tragedy.

I choose to call her Duch, Polish for ‘Spirit’

“When workers opened her pen to transport her to the slaughterhouse, the animal made a daring and spectacular break for it.

“According to Polish news station Wiadomosci, she broke free from her handlers and repeatedly rammed a metal fence until it burst open.

“Then she went fugitive.

“The cow made it to the edge of nearby Lake Nysa, where she was at last cornered by the farmers. But not so fast. The animal managed to break the arm of one of her handlers before plunging into the icy waters.

“I saw her diving underwater,” one of the farmers told Wiadomosci.

“A short time later, the cow appeared on the shores of one of the lake’s islands. And the farmer, hoping to keep her alive, left food for her there every day.

“But plans were afoot to draw this surreal saga to a close. After the local fire department failed in its bid to bring the cow back by boat — she refused to let anyone get near — the farmer mulled shooting the animal.

“Fortunately, by this time, the cow had found an unlikely, yet equally fierce ally. After hearing of her exploits, Polish politician and former singer Paweł Kukiz offered to buy the determined cow and let her live out her years in peace.

“A few days later Kukiz announced that media attention — radio and television outlets had joined the chorus to save the cow — had convinced the farmer to spare the cow.”

“Kukiz received assurances, he noted, that the cow would enjoy a ‘peaceful pension without the prospect of butcher knife.'”

“But an island is no place for a cow. Not even this fiery bovine empress. On Thursday, a team that included a veterinarian visited the island in an effort to bring her to a farm, where she could get proper care.

“The bovine bucked. She was tranquilized. Officials say she died on the truck. From stress.”

You may draw your own conclusions from these true life stories. These are mine:-

We are wowed and fascinated by these three, and others who made a break for it before them, precisely because they stand out from the herd. They have made themselves know to us as individuals. We see they have real personalities – that they are persons.

We identify with their fear and desire to escape a violent death.

We identify with their desire to live, and to be free from tyranny, free from having their fate determined for them by others – a life in subjection, and a life then taken from them prematurely.

These three bold and brave personalities make for great stories. But the truth is, while we are applauding their exploits, we forget all the others in the herds from which they come. And each and every cow in every herd everywhere also has its own personality – maybe not all as determined and spirited as our three heroines, but smart, gentle, loving, shy, patient, loyal… Each and everyone different, a person in her own right.

These are three of the articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:-

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

This photo of a bull shot by police in Germany after he’d escaped from a slaughter truck gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “the meat aisle”

If we see in Swoboda, Hermien and Duch what we can see in ourselves, do they and all the rest not merit at least those 3 rights, which surely every living being on the planet deserves?

I mourn for Duch who deserved so much better, and fervently hope that Swoboda and Hermien will be taken safely to a place where they can relish the sun on their backs and the grass under their feet with no more fear for their lives.

Most of all, I hope that their stories will challenge us to see the nameless, numberless creatures we force into our service as the individuals they truly are, and give them the respect and the right to a life free from harm they surely deserve.

If you think so too, or even if you don’t, please take a look at some animals already happy, contented, safe in sanctuary – and others who know they are destined to die.

And what better way to honour the memory of poor Duch, whose amazing spirit for life and freedom in the end, and through no fault of her own, failed to save her, than by checking out simple steps to transitioning your diet.

Then her courageous life and sad death will not have been in vain.

 

Sources

A cow’s incredible bid for freedom ends in tragedy

Heroic cow escapes trip to slaughterhouse, hides in Dutch forest for weeks

Cow who fled Queens slaughterhouse saved by animal activist

Cattle run loose in St. Louis after breaking free from slaughterhouse

These Videos May Prove Animals Know When They’re Next in Line to Die

Related posts

The Runaway Cow Wild Wintering With Bison

In the Eyes of a Cow