Religious slaughterPosted by SfA Fri, September 03, 2010 16:31:01Halal here we come
Halal is worth up to £2bn in the UK, but most
meat is imported and sold via ethnic retailers. Fred A'Court looks at
attempts by the domestic industry to build a recognised slaughter
industry and how supermarkets are jumping at this new, potentially huge
opportunity
By Fred A'Court
- Published: 06 August, 2010
The huge halal meat sector may be on the verge of further
development. Up to four million Muslims, representing 3% of the UK
population consume an estimated 27% of lamb and 40% of poultry produced
(according to supplier Janan Meat). Given this and the fact that the
European halal food market is worth approximately 15bn (£12.5bn) serving
over 50m Muslims a population estimated to have grown by more than
140% in the last decade (according to Halal Industries Group) it is
little wonder that mainstream retailers and wholesalers want to tap
into halal.
Educating the population about halal meat, production
methods and quality standards has helped moving its sale out of purely
Muslim communities into mainstream trading. But it will not be
straightforward. While the non-Muslim industry strives to fully
understand the sector, Muslims themselves recognise the need to
harmonise different interpretations of halal practices, counter
misunderstandings and to raise standards. Leading halal processors,
retailers and entrepreneurs may practise high standards but are acutely
aware of UK sensitivities over animal welfare and the need to improve
hygiene standards.
While halal may have been a closed, even a
niche, sector in the 1970s and '80s, the '90s saw the beginnings of a
breakdown of barriers within halal groups through better communication.
Since the turn of the century, a number of groups and websites have
begun appearing, aimed at promoting halal and broadening understanding.
Websites from the Halal Food Authority, the Halal Monitoring Committee
and the European Halal Development Authority all set out their views
and interpretations on standards.
Rizvan Khalid, the executive director of one of
the main halal processors, Shropshire-based Euro Quality Lambs,
believes a wider communications policy within different halal groups
may be the launchpad for further development of the sector. The
challenge going forward will be to bring many of these groupings closer
together, he says. "There is a lot of consumer education still to be
performed to counter many misconceptions rumours if you like both in
the halal and the non-halal communities. A lot of it is holding the
industry back.
"The halal market is growing tremendously. There needs to be
something to bring groups together; they need to operate in a more
acceptable framework to function properly." That framework, he says,
might be a mixture of industry and consumer groups working closely
together. "It's very much an evolution and it will be interesting to see
how it plays out. There is great potential."
High-value market
Estimates put the value of the halal market in the UK as high as
£2bn, but much of the meat is imported. A company at the forefront of
developing the UK is Halal Industries Group, a private equity company
aiming to develop markets, supply chains and infrastructures through
wholly-owned subsidiaries in both Islamic and non-Islamic countries. In
the UK, the firm has announced plans to create up to 3,000 jobs in a
new £150m halal-themed business park in south Wales, comprising a halal
product-packing centre, halal meat processing, halal meat storage and a
halal research centre. Funding would come from outside investors and
perhaps government top-up grants. The plan is to have the park open
within five years.
Mahesh Janarayan, chairman of Halal Industries, sees
further possibilities: "The growth of halal in western mainstream
society has come about through the cross-border migration of Muslims
and the dynamic growth of Asian and Middle Eastern food in mainstream
society," he says. "The fastest-growing restaurant market in the world
is that of Asian and Middle Eastern food and most of them serve halal.
"Halal has spilled over to the supermarkets, due to the fact that
supermarkets respond to demand. And there is now a perceived demand for
halal food, especially in certain ethnic residential pockets such as
Birmingham."
Current world and political events have
probably slowed momentum in the halal market. Janarayan believes the
general acceptance of halal is a long way off in the West. "The true
significance and meaning of halal is little-known among mainstream
society," he says. "Unfortunately, the negative Muslim sentiment does
not bode well. In my opinion, halal will continue to grow, purely to
cater to the sheer size of the Muslim market. But it will probably take
the same awareness curve that organic food did and it will be some
time before a British household puts halal on the shopping list as a
must-have item."
Steering group work
Nevertheless, halal is a significant market and one that Eblex, for
example, is looking to better understand and serve. The organisation set
up a steering group to look at halal at the beginning of this year,
one working on a better understanding of the sector. The group is
looking to guide work in the halal market and act as a forum for issues
related to the meat. It is trying to better understand Muslim
population growth in England, as well as demand for halal products, the
supply chain and changing consumption trends, and build on previous
work done to form a complete view of the sector. The work the group is
doing has been welcomed by the European Halal Development Agency as
significant progress for the halal meat market and Muslim consumer.
Changes in the consumption of halal meat and consumer trends towards
halal products in England are currently being studied. It has yet to
report any findings, although some public announcements are expected
soon.
Eblex is already producing more specific
material for the halal supply chain. A DVD has been made available,
called The Quality Meat Supply Chain for the Muslim Consumer, to help
farmers, consumers and public sector caterers understand how halal meat
is produced in England. A lamb-cutting guide for the halal market has
been created as a training tool, with the aim of achieving consistent
standards throughout the industry. A halal poster to highlight specific
cuts is also in development and will be made available shortly, and
relevant dates in the Islamic calendar are now posted on Eblex's trade
website.
Among leading halal processors making an effort
to embrace a wider audience and foster a better understanding of halal
concepts is Naved Syed, managing director of West Midlands-based
processing plant Janan Meat. Syed recently opened his plant for a day
to show how its use of new monitoring technology, including CCTV and
stun monitoring equipment, is raising standards. More than 100 people
spent time touring the site, which employs 55 and has a throughput
ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 lambs and sheep a week.
The open day was held to show the Muslim community that halal
principles are being correctly adhered to on the slaughter line and to
demonstrate to non-Muslims that best meat production practices are being
carried out. "There are problems of credibility with producing halal
meat and we want to show that we have nothing to hide," said Syed. "We
want to convince our Muslim community exactly how we do halal and
non-Muslims how we care for animal welfare. We want to convince all
communities. Animals are our product and our livelihood. We have to
ensure we do right by them to the best of our ability." Janan is also
trying to expand its sales into mainstream supermarkets and wholesalers.
The interpretation of halal standards,
particularly the issue of whether it is permissible to stun animals
prior to slaughter, causes widespread debate within Muslim communities
and welfare concerns outside. The open day was widely welcomed by
Muslims looking to see how Janan interpets standards and by non-Muslim
interest groups looking to work with the halal sector. Members of the
Lancashire Council of Mosques, which liaises with more than 100 public
sector bodies and community groups in Lancashire seeking assurance that
meat procurement is from genuine halal sources, toured the plant.
Rizvan Khalid of Euro Quality Lambs, said holding the open day was the
right thing to do "without a doubt". He planned to hold his own open
day when the time was right.
Eblex director Nick Allen also welcomed the
open day. "The fact that Janan has CCTV in the abattoir demonstrates
their determination to be open about their operation. We have seen
Animal Aid get into abattoirs and get potentially damaging footage.
Maybe we have to be prepared to be a bit more open to counter those
inferences and have a greater understanding of what is happening. It's
not everyone's cup of tea to see what goes on in an abattoir. The
public want to know it's done right, but they don't want to see it for
themselves but it's enough to reassure people in the public sector,
along with the retailers."
Regional director for Weddel Swift Distribution
Andy Lea said the open day initiative was all about raising awareness
of the sector, which could only help it. "I've come along to learn more
about halal," he said. "It's a market we ought to be in, but it's not
an easy market to get into." Weddel is looking to add a range of halal
products to its portfolio and is currently talking to processors.
FSA criticism
Syed has been highly critical of the Food Standards Agency's (FSA's)
failure to properly implement halal guidelines, drawn up in 2004 at a
cost, he says, of £1.4m. "They've been sitting in a drawer gathering
dust for the last five years," he claims. As a member of the FSA Muslim
Organisations' Working Group (MOWG), he recently urged other
representatives to boycott its next meeting. Syed claims that, in 2004,
an agreement was made by the MOWG, which laid out clear guidelines for
local authority food law enforcement officers to take action against
businesses that failed to implement halal standards in the same way as
they would take action against contravention of food law in food
premises generally. "The guidelines have to be implemented," he says.
"We have to address this issue, we cannot ignore it it's
straightforward. The rest of the world are implementing similar
guidelines so why are we pussy-footing around?"
But not everyone thinks implementation is
straightforward. According to Khalid: "I don't see how the FSA can
enforce the guidelines, because although good, they are only
guidelines."
The issue of whether to stun or not makes it
difficult to implement one set of guidelines, he says. "Having studied
the stunning issue from a scientific and a religious point of view, I
can see the benefits of both." The 'default' practice at Euro Quality
Lambs, where an average 15,000 animals a week are processed, is to
stun. But for some customers animals are not stunned. "Some consumers
only accept non-stun, but some will accept stunning as long as it does
not kill the animal," he says. "But the determining factor is not the
stunning itself, but how you handle and restrain the animal for
stunning or for immediate slaughter." With such diverse and different
requirements from customers and consumers, it is difficult to come up
with one set of guidelines, he believes.
Sarah Appleby, head of enforcement and local
authority delivery at the FSA, says: "One of the concerns to come out
of the latest meeting of the working group was whether all local
authorities were aware of the guidelines and steps are now being taken
to ensure better awareness." The group is also working on a voluntary
code of practice for red meat abattoirs, aimed at ensuring consistent
and acceptable standards in the production of halal meat while
fulfilling halal practices. The draft code is currently out for
consultation with interested groups, although there is no timescale at
the moment for its introduction.
Supermarket developments
Mainstream supermarket groups are working with halal specialists to expand their halal offering.
Tesco has been working with the National Halal Food Group (NHFG) to
develop the sector in some of its stores NHFG sells produce through
retailers and wholesalers. Tesco's Birmingham Hodge Hill store, which
opened in December and created 250 new jobs, stocks a range of halal
products. It also has a dedicated halal meat counter, which is an NHFG
concession, the second halal meat counter that the Birmingham-based NHFG
has opened for Tesco in the region. Chief executive Muhammed Yaqoob,
says the counters "allow customers to readily obtain a range of
high-quality halal meats".
The store group has also launched a dedicated
halal barbecue range this summer. Tesco ethnic food buying manager
Steve Ewels claims: "Until now there has never been a dedicated halal
barbecue range. We know, from our own sales data, that there is a high
growing demand for halal food, so for us it is a natural move to offer a
barbecue range." Tesco currently offers 100 different fresh halal
products, with volume sales growing at 82% year-on-year.
Other supermarket groups are developing
specific halal meat offerings. Asda currently has 16 halal counters
across the UK, run by external companies, among them Hounslow-based
halal meat retailer Haji Baba in London. Two more concessions will open
this year, with more planned in 2011. Recognising the growing
significance of ethnic food sales in the UK, Asda opened what it termed
the 'World Food Store' in west London last year, serving six different
nationalities covering hundreds of ethnic lines, including a halal
butchery.
In 2009, Asda saw a 42% year-on-year rise in sales of ethnic products
across its stores, off the back of an 83% increase in 2008. The London
store concept will be rolled out in other places if it proves a
success.
http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/11161/Feature:_Halal_here_we_come.html
NewsPosted by SfA Fri, September 03, 2010 15:28:23On Saturday SSPCA inspectors raided Hoganess Salmon on Shetland’s
west side, acting in concert with the police, the Scottish Environmental
Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage and the government agency
Marine Scotland, reports Shetland Marine News .
Hoganess Salmon operates from the shore base at Burrastow, near
Walls, and grows around 3,000 tonnes of salmon over an 18 month cycle.
Scottish SPCA chief superintendent Mike Flynn said: "I can confirm
that the Scottish SPCA is leading an investigation into alleged fish
poisoning in the Shetland Islands, working with SEPA, Scottish Natural
Heritage, Marine Scotland and the police.
"This investigation is currently ongoing therefore no further information is available at this stage."
A SEPA spokeswoman also confirmed they were involved in “an ongoing
investigation into an alleged fish mortality incident in Shetland”.
Hoganess Salmon is part of the Lakeland Group which is owned by
Norwegian firm Marine Farms ASA, who have fish farming operations in
Shetland, Argyll, Spain, Belize and Vietnam.
Lakeland’s managing director Willie Liston said problems arose when
the company wascarrying out a controlled treatment for sea lice at one
of its 16 cages in the area on 15 August.
He said that between 5,000 and 6,000 fully grown salmon, weighing an
average of 3.5kg each, had died and the company had immediately
launched its own investigation into what happened.
SEPA became involved after dead fish started to be transported to
the dump in Lerwick last Thursday, he said. SSPCA and SEPA inspectors
visited the fish farm on Saturday morning.
Mr Liston said: “The investigation revolves around a higher level of
mortality than we would have expected in one cage while doing a sea
lice treatment. I don’t know when that will be finished but we should
know something within the next 10 days.”
He said there were different treatments for sea lice and this had been “a gentle bath treatment”.
The cage had been enclosed in a tarpaulin and the treatment had been
applied using “one of the latest technology workboats to look after
the welfare of the fish”, allowing the dosage to be more finely
measured.
The Lakeland Group is certified by the English animal welfare
charity RSPCA under its Freedom Foods label, which guarantees that
animals are farmed to the highest welfare standards.
Lakeland say their policy is “to farm its fish with due
respect to preserving the environment and consideration of animal
welfare”.
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/030910/scotland___fish_farm_investigation_.aspx
Meat and the EnvironmentPosted by SfA Mon, August 30, 2010 19:27:56From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
Editorial feature:
How expanding animal agriculture swamped Pakistan
Is the world close to reaching finite ecological limits on the
production capacity of animal agriculture? Flooding inundating more than
a fifth of Pakistan in recent weeks may demonstrate that the limits
have already been exceeded, doing catastrophic harm to more than 20
million displaced people and 30 million livestock, plus untold millions
of dogs, cats, and wildlife.
Critics of industrial agriculture and diets centered on animal products
have been predicting such an impending crisis for more than 40 years.
Among the most influential were Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb
(1968), Frances Moore Lappe in Diet for A Small Planet (1971), and E.F.
Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful (1973). Their insights and dire
prophecies helped to build the environmental movement--but, focused on
the collision course of human population growth and food security,
Ehrlich, Moore Lappe, and Schumacher each hugely underestimated the
human capacities for invention, adaptation, and denial.
Climate scientists within the next decade began warning the world about
the impending threat of global warming. By then, however, advances in
agricultural technique had already disproved the worst doom-and-gloom
scenarios of the neo-Malthusians. India, in particular, developed the
capacity to feed more than five times as many people as Ehrlich had
imagined would be the upper limit, and became a net food exporter at
about the same time that Ehrlich had anticipated famine.
A generation of food scientists and agricultural entrepreneurs grew up
believing that the old warnings about exceeding the planetary carrying
capacity had been largely disproven (not just the specific details of
the predictions), and that there are no inherent limits to the expansion
of either animal husbandry or the cultivation of grains, grasses, and
legumes to feed livestock. 2010 probably will not mark a turning point
in human thinking about animal agriculture, including a voluntary turn
away from consumption of meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products.
Severe though the Pakistan disaster is, seen on millions of TV and
computer screens worldwide, it does not yet directly affect enough of
humanity to induce personal and societal change on the scale that would
be necessary to avert many further calamities of comparable magnitude in
the coming years.
But in a more far-sighted and considerate world, the warning should be
sufficient. The suffering in Pakistan illustrates the confluence of two
disastrous trends. One is the increasing impact of animal agriculture on
the global environment. The other is the extent to which promoting
animal agriculture in inappropriate local environments can set up a
nation for destruction on an apocalyptic scale.
A month of torrential rains beginning on July 22 made the 2010 monsoon
floods hitting Pakistan one of the largest "natural" disasters in
recorded history by mid-August, with more rain on the way at this
writing. Unusually heavy rains and regional flooding have also afflicted
parts of northern India and southern China, but the greatest portion of
the water has surged down tributaries to the Indus River, and on down
the Indus itself. The Indus River drains the whole of the habitable part
of Pakistan--and much of the Himalayas.
Though the greater portion of the flooding afflicting three of the
world's most populous six nations results from recent rainfall, the
melting Himalayan ice and snow caps are a contributing factor. Snowmelt
from the Himalayas has historically helped to keep the rivers of
southern Asia flowing sufficiently to sustain productive crop
cultivation all year long, but global warming has steadily diminished
the watershed capacity of the Himalayan glaciers for at least 34 years
now. The immediate consequences are most evident in Pakistan, but Indian
glaciologists Rajesh Kumar, V. Ramanathan, and Syed Iqbal Hasnain have
for years cautioned anyone who would listen that essentially the same
disaster now occurring along the Indus could occur along the Ganges.
The Ganges and tributaries provide much of the water used to feed as
many as 1.3 million humans in India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. As severe
as the Indus River basin flooding is, the longterm threat there, and
along the Ganges, is drought. Warned Steven Solomon, author of Water:
The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, & Civilization, in an August
15, 2010 New York Times op-ed essay, "Hard as it may be to believe when
you see the images of the monsoon floods that are now devastating
Pakistan, the country is actually on the verge of a critical shortage of
fresh water. Like Egypt on the Nile, arid Pakistan is totally reliant
on the Indus and its tributaries.
Yet the river's water is already so overdrawn that it no longer reaches
the sea, dribbling to a meager end near the Indian Ocean port of
Karachi." Water scarcity is already a major contributing factor to the
political instability of much of Pakistan, Solomon continued. "Chronic
water shortages in the southern province of Sindh breed suspicions,"
Solomon explained, "that politically connected landowners in upriver
Punjab are siphoning more than their allotted share. There have been
repeated riots over lack of water and electricity in Karachi, and across
the country people suffer from contaminated drinking water, poor
sanitation, and pollution.
"The future looks grim," Solomon concluded. "Pakistan's population is
expected to rise to 220 million over the next decade, up from around 170
million today. Yet, eventually, flows of the Indus are expected to
decrease as global warming causes the Himalayan glaciers to retreat,
while monsoons will get more intense. Terrifyingly, Pakistan only has
the capacity to hold a 30-day reserve storage of water as a buffer
against drought." "Eventually" is not far away. The United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change observed in 2007 that the
Himalayan glaciers "are receding faster than [glaciers] in any other
part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of
them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if
the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon, no stranger to disaster,
after an a flyover on August 15, 2010 called the Pakistan flooding the
worst disaster he had ever seen. However, focused on the urgent need to
raise $900 million in emergency aid from other nations, Ban Ki-moon
diplomatically did not seize the opportunity to discuss global
warming--a topic with which he is quite familiar, but which might have
raised controversy in the U.S., counted upon more than any other nation
to help rescue Pakistan. "For my generation," Ban Ki-moon told the
United Nations General Assembly on March 1, 2007, "coming of age at the
height of the Cold War, fear of nuclear winter seemed the leading
existential threat on the horizon.
But the danger posed by war to all humanity-and to our planet-is at
least matched by climate change." At a less sensitive time Ban Ki-moon
once personally visited the White House to urge then-U.S. President
George W. Bush to reduce the U.S. contribution to greenhouse gas
emissions. Not known is whether Ban Ki-moon cited to Bush the 2006 U.N.
Food & Agricultural Organization report Livestock's Long Shadow,
which estimated that 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions are
attributable to livestock production. Though predictably disputed by the
livestock industry, the FAO estimate is actually conservative. World
Watch Institute researchers Robert Goodland and Jeff Ahang in 2009 found
that 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions might be attributed to
livestock, fodder cultivation, and the use of livestock byproducts.
"Aid" made matters worse
Suffering the brunt of the present macro-ecological consequences of
rapidly rising global meat consumption, the present plight of Pakistan
has been made considerably worse by misguided domestic food production
policies, based less on local customs and culture than on horrendously
bad advice from donor nations and international charities. The food
habits of Muslims, who eat beef, and Hindus, who do not, were central
among the issues that in 1947 split Pakistan from India. The religious
and political significance of this one major dietary difference tends to
obscure the reality that the traditional food cultures of both India
and Pakistan are essentially the same, with plant-centered diets, in
which dairy products and lentils are the major sources of protein.
There are relatively few vegetarians in Pakistan, compared with India,
where about a third of the population are lacto-vegetarian, but among
the populations of major nations, only Indians eat less meat per capita
than Pakistanis. According to FAO data, Pakistanis currently consume
about two and a half times more meat per capita per year than Indians,
but only a fourth as much as Chinese, an eighth as much as their
neighbors in Afghanistan, and a tenth as much as Americans. Low meat
consumption in Pakistan has historically been dictated by the aridity of
the habitat. Barely a fourth of Pakistan has water enough to grow
crops, scarcely as much land as is needed to feed the human population
without redirecting production to raise livestock.
Sixty percent of Pakistan is too dry to sustain more than light grazing,
again according to FAO data. Yet Oxfam since 1973, Heifer International
since 1994, and a variety of other international aid projects have
sought to increase Pakistani consumption of animals and animal
products--and have helped to open the way to the introduction of factory
farming. As the human population of Pakistan rose by 17% in the 10
years from 1998 to 2008, the donkey population increased 19%, sheep
production rose 14%, goat production rose 29%, buffalo production rose
40%, cattle production rose 51%, and poultry production rose 88%.
Pakistan is now among the world leaders in numbers of buffalo, cattle,
and poultry raised for slaughter. But that has not helped much of the
human population to get enough to eat. In January 2008 the United
Nations World Food Program reported that food insecurity had come to
afflict 37.5% of the urban population of Pakistan, and about 24% of the
total population--far more than were at risk of hunger a generation
earlier. Neither are Pakistanis really getting much more meat now than
then. The surge in meat production has increased per capita meat
consumption by just 4% in 20 years. Pakistan Agricultural Research
Council statistics on fodder production tell the story.
When outside efforts first began significantly boosting livestock
husbandry, Pakistan produced about 53 million tons of fodder per year.
Expanding irrigation and fertilization raised the output to a record
high of 61.3 million tons in 1997-1998. Since then, however, fodder
output has declined in all but three years, falling to about 55 million
tons per year. Some Pakistani environmentalists have blamed urban sprawl
for taking prime farmland out of production, especially near the cities
of Karachi, Multan, and Hyderabad. Indeed, about 10% less land is now
used for fodder production than when output peaked, and 20% less than 20
years ago.
Officials of the Pakistan government and international aid agencies have
blamed the Taliban insurgency for making parts of the nation
inaccessible to farming and agricultural transport. Farmers in the
hinterlands in turn blame a government prohibition on the manufacture
and sale of nitrate fertilizers, introduced to prevent the Taliban from
making nitrate explosives. Lack of fertilizer makes trying to raise
fodder on marginal land unviable. Without mentioning the fodder and
livestock issues, an April 2010 report from the U.N. Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs indirectly hints that the rise of
the Taliban itself may be a consequence of increasing food insecurity in
rural northwestern Pakistan.
Taliban violence against women coincides with food competition within
large extended families who share a single household. Women and girls by
custom do most of the food cultivation and preparation, but eat
last--and get even less food when families are displaced by fighting.
"Some 12 percent of children screened in displaced families, and their
hosts, suffer moderate or acute malnutrition, with girls making up 58
percent of those affected," the U.N. Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs found. The net effect is that men repress women to
ensure that males continue to eat first, and women in turn have an
unspoken incentive to encourage men to leave home to fight. Simply put,
Pakistan cannot produce enough grain, legumes, and vegetables to feed
173 million people, up from 144 million a decade ago, and feed
burgeoning livestock populations too.
Indeed, the major difference between livestock production today and at
the beginning of the rapid increase in animal husbandry may be just that
the animals raised today grow faster and are therefore slaughtered at a
younger age. The grain that raised three chickens a generation ago
perhaps raises four today--and would feed more humans if milled for
direct human consumption. The ecological effects of expanding livestock
production in Pakistan were long ago clear to people who paid attention.
Pakistani agricultural scientist Dost Muhammed reported to FAO in 2002
that rangelands not suitable for sustained agriculture were used each
summer to feed 93.5 million livestock.
"Heavy grazing over vast areas of rangeland has gradually put
intolerable pressure on land, vegetation, and its inhabitants," Dost
Muhammed wrote, "such as wildlife, farmed livestock and pastoral
communities. The main contributory factors are increases in human and
livestock populations. This has led to an expansion of dryland farming
on marginal lands to satisfy the increasing demand for human food crops,
and the cutting of shrubs and trees for domestic fuel consumption. As a
result, more palatable grasses, legumes, herbs, shrubs, and trees that
once covered the rangeland have been destroyed, or thinned out, and
dominated by unpalatable low quality vegetation. Therefore, each year
inadequate forage during the dry period, combined with drought years,
causes heavy losses of livestock."
Though Dost Muhammed did not predict catastrophic flooding, he described
the destruction of vegetation that in a healthy environment holds and
stores rainwater and prevents soil erosion. The 2010 monsoon flooding
came after another eight years of intensified environmental degradation.
"The flood is worst ever," e-mailed Vets Care Organization Pakistan
founder Waseem Shaukat to ANIMAL PEOPLE on August 4, weeks before the
flooding actually peaked, "with lasting severe impact on humans,
animals, agriculture and infrastructure. We are sending 25 volunteer
vets and vet students in four teams with all necessary medicines,
vaccine and equipments to rescue and provide relief to affected animals
in Layyah and Mianwali districts today," Shaukat said.
"We are trying to do our best within our limited resources. However
there is a shortage of feed for animals." This quickly became a
recurring theme. "Livestock and companion animals have yet not been the
priority of the government and organizations involved in relief work,"
lamented Asfaq Fateh of the Ravi Foundation & Mary Jean Trust.
"Green fodder is the main source of animal feed in the flood areas. The
standing crops have been washed away. There is an acute shortage of
animal feed. Buyers have rushed to affected areas to buy animals, not at
market rates but at a tenth the market rate. They are exploiting the
afflicted, who are forced to sell their animals at throwaway prices."
A chance for change
Shaukat, Fateh, and others hoped that international animal welfare
societies would respond by rushing funding and feed to Pakistan. But
that raised a threefold problem. On the practical level, only two
international animal welfare societies already had personnel in Pakistan
to respond to the crisis in any manner. Of those two, the World Society
for the Protection of Animals was itself hard hit by the flooding.
Among 23 bears who had been rescued from bear-baiting and dancing bear
acts, and were housed at the BioResearch Centre in Kund Park with WSPA
funding, only three are known at this writing to have survived. The
three survivors were taken to a newer WSPA-funded bear sanctuary still
under construction at Balkazar.
The Brooke Hospital for Animals scaled back work in northern Pakistan
"due to lack of accessibility and the clear need to keep staff safe,"
the Brooke announced, while extending "emergency relief to horses,
donkeys and mules and support communities affected by the floods"
elsewhere in Pakistan. The several dozen indigenous animal welfare
societies in Pakistan had all the work they could handle just trying to
stay afloat--sometimes literally--with the animals already in their
care. The largest, the Edhi Foundation of Karachi, helps animals as a
sideline to helping the urban poor, including displaced persons.
Even if the animal welfare community had been able to mobilize
immediately, however, an even larger practical problem was that in a
nation with an acute fodder shortage to begin with, there was little
food to be found for displaced livestock after more than half of the
national fodder supply was destroyed. Few nations, if any, could feed 30
million animals from grain reserves, even without 20 million humans
also in need. Neither did nearby nations have fodder to spare, even if
Pakistan enjoyed good relations with neighboring nations, which it
mostly does not. India and China have already pushed animal production
to the limits of their fodder supplies; Afghanistan and Iran have no
fodder surplus.
The nearest nation that is a major net exporter of grain and other
livestock feed is Russia. Russia in 2009 accounted for 17% of total
global grain exports. But even as Pakistan experienced the hottest
average temperatures of any Asian nation on record, ever, in the first
half of 2010, Russia suffered the hottest average temperatures it has
had in 130 years of record-keeping, accompanied by drought that cut
grain production 27%. Facing a 2010 grain harvest barely big enough to
meet Russian domestic needs, and holding a grain reserve of a third of a
year's domestic use, Russian prime minister Vladimir V. Putin on August
5 temporarily banned grain exports. Global wheat prices had already
soared 90%.
Even in the U.S., where farmers anticipate a healthy grain harvest,
grain prices climbed. The cost of buying enough grain to feed the
starving livestock in Pakistan, and of getting it to Pakistan, would be
beyond the resources of the world animal welfare community, even if the
logistics could be managed, and even if the project managers could
ensure that the animals actually got the food, instead of it being sold
by corrupt intermediaries--or desperate small farmers--on the black
market. Beyond the practical issues, there is the question of whether
animal charities should be spending money donated to promote animal
welfare and/or animal rights to bail animal agriculture out of a crisis
created by exploiting animals.
A fine line must be observed between relieving the misery of livestock
and draft animals, which every animal charity donor hopes to accomplish,
and perpetuating the system which causes them to suffer--along with, in
the case of Pakistan, the humans who have been sold the false premise
that raising and slaughtering more animals will alleviate their own
suffering. Instituting animal welfare standards and teaching better
treatment of livestock and draft animals is among the essential work of
animal charities, but such efforts must stop short of enabling people to
breed and slaughter animals. In the case of Pakistan, which could ill
afford the expanded animal husbandry of recent decades, the present
calamity offers a chance to promote a permanent downsizing of animal
agriculture. The traditional regional diet could much more adequately
feed the nation than the recent practice of diverting a disproportionate
share of plant food production to feeding livestock, whose meat most of
the population is rarely able to buy.
The 2010 flooding could sweep away a failed system and bring a new
beginning--but only if planners and decision-makers are persuaded that
escalating animal husbandry was the wrong response to runaway human
population growth.
-- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236
www.animalpeoplenews.org
Meet your MeatPosted by SfA Sat, August 28, 2010 12:40:51Meat from cloned bulls can be sold in UK, says EU
Meat from the offspring of two cloned bulls on a Scots farm can be
legally sold into the UK food chain according to the European
Commission.
European chief have said special UK licensing rules did not apply to the calves.
The Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs
(Defra) said they were looking to learn lessons from the recent
incident, and were working with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to see
whether there is a need to improve advice to farmers. A spokesperson
described it as a "complex" area of regulation.
Farmer Steven Innes, of Auldearn, near Inverness
commented: "I would definitely feed the meat to my children and I don't
think there is anybody who looked into it that wouldn't."
Innes can now include the heifers with cloned heritage in
his dairy herd. He said: "This is what we've been led to believe
from the start. There's no issue with it."
"Some people we speak to think that we're walking about
with white coats on, with test tubes, and we're actually making the
cows; that we add a few chemicals together and nine months later we
get a fully-grown cow out of a test tube.
"Actually, it's implanted into a normal cow just the same
as an embryo would be, the same gestation period, and then the cow
gives birth to 100% normal calf just as a natural calf would be born.
"They think the cow's been genetically modified to end up
with some machine that can produce vast amounts of milk or vast
amounts of meat that's not natural, which is not the case.
Under European law, foodstuffs including milk produced
from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and gain
authorisation before they are marketed.
Innes owns 96 second-generation offspring of a cloned
cow, and could look to sell his milk as a speciality product, if the
rules would allow it.
Innes was at the heart of the cloned meat row earlier this month
after it was discovered that meat from one of his bulls entered the food
chain, despite being bred from a cloned cow. The FSA subsequently
investigated the matter.
http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/11301/Meat_from_cloned_bulls_can_be_sold_in_UK,_says_EU.html
NewsPosted by SfA Thu, August 26, 2010 11:57:35SSPCA demands ban on 'barbaric' guga hunt
Up to 2,000 guga are killed every year on Sula Sgeir island, 40km off
the Butt of Lewis, by a group of ten hunters who bludgeon the birds to
death with heavy implements after hauling them from cliff tops using
nooses attached to long poles.
The killing of other wild seabirds is outlawed under the 1981 Wildlife
and Countryside Act, but the guga hunters are granted a special licence
from the Scottish Government to continue their tradition.
"A competent person may kill one or two birds outright with a single
blow, but in our opinion most will take more than one blow to be
killed," said Mike Flynn, chief superintendent for the SSPCA, who has
written to the government to demand that the hunters' licence is
revoked.
"If someone did this to a pigeon outside their back garden, they would
probably face prosecution. This practice has gone beyond its sell-by
date."
The birds are brought back to Lewis and eaten by the residents of Ness.
Surplus guga are sold on the island and to other communities in the
area.
"If you go back hundreds of years, it did form part of the staple diet
on the island, but that is no longer the case," said Mr Flynn. "From
our point of view, it is not acceptable to keep anything going that is
not 100 per cent humane."
But Donald S Murray, an author from Ness who wrote a book entitled The Guga Hunters, insists the practice is humane.
"Banning guga hunting would just be flying in the face of all reason,"
he said. "It has been tradition for hundreds of years. I fail to see
what the difference is between catching fish and catching seabirds, as
long as it is done in a sustainable safe way which does not damage the
birds' environment."
This year's hunt, which lasts for two weeks, is currently under way.
The hunters leave the Isle of Lewis for the duration and sleep in
bothies until the catch is delivered back to the quayside on Lewis.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: "We are satisfied that
there is no conservation risk to the local gannet population posed by
this traditional hunt. We are also satisfied that, provided it is done
effectively and competently, the method used to dispatch the birds is
not inhumane."
An RSPB spokesman added: "In conservation terms, gannets are doing OK, and are actually increasing nationally.
"As such, the RSPB presently has a neutral stance on this activity, but
if the population is seen to be affected we would expect the terms of
the licence to be reviewed."
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/SSPCA-demands-ban-on-39barbaric39.6495162.jp
InterviewsPosted by SfA Wed, August 25, 2010 10:38:35Scotland for Animals Spokesman John Patrick will be guest on Ashley Collins' show tomorrow on Pulse Radio from 3pm.
Tune in at 98.4FM or online at www.pulseonair.co.uk
NewsPosted by SfA Sat, August 21, 2010 11:19:28Still no firm prosecutions though.
SfA
Essex slaughterhouse A&G Barber has been forced to close as a
result of an undercover investigation by campaigning group Animal Aid.
The closure has come about because A&G Barber's main buyer, a
German sausage manufacturer, cancelled its contract when it saw the
Animal Aid footage.
One worker and the slaughterhouse operator still face prosecution and
the slaughterhouse is reportedly up for sale, according to local
reports.
Animal Aid's undercover film, shot over three days in April, showed the
use of electric tongs on animals' snouts, tails and in their open
mouths.
Other breaches filmed included apparently inadequate stunning for
almost every one of the 767 pigs filmed, stunned pigs left to regain
consciousness, the use of electric stunning tongs on the bodies –
instead of the heads – of animals, which does not stun but delivers,
instead, a painful electric shock
Animal Aid also revealed in its footage pigs being kicked and hit in the face with shackle hooks.
Kate Fowler, head of campaigns at Animal Aid, commented: "It is
appalling that the cruelties meted out to animals at A&G Barber
were allowed to continue and that all regulatory systems failed to
detect and stop the abuses.
"If Animal Aid hadn't happened to film at the plant, we believe that
workers would still be causing deliberate suffering to pigs there. It
is right and proper that companies who have seen our film shunned
A&G Barber.
"And it is good news that this slaughterhouse, which allowed scared and
vulnerable animals to endure unimaginable suffering, has now gone out
of business."
A&G Barber used to kill a quarter of all cull sows in the UK, the
breeding pigs who are killed when their productivity declines. Meat
from A&G Barber was used mostly in processed products.
http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/11242/A_G_Barber_forced_to_close_after_Animal_Aid_filming.html
View more here: http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_slaughter//2331//
Religious slaughterPosted by SfA Sat, August 21, 2010 11:18:02What they don't mention here is the huge backlash
against this halal trial by locals and animal campaigners which appears
to have brought Domino's big plan to an end.
SfA
Domino's Pizza takes halal meat off menu after trial
Halal meat is being taken off the menu at Domino's Pizza, due to a commercial decision emanating from an 18-month trial.
Three outlets of the pizza delivery giant worked in conjunction with
halal accreditor the Halal Food Authority to see the first 100% halal
stores belonging to Domino's being offered to customers. However, the
company has now decided to end the halal menu and will be reverting
back to selling pork products in these outlets, a meat product
forbidden for consumption in the Muslim faith.
A Domino's spokesperson said: "We took the decision to trial a halal
menu back in January 2009 and chose to do so in three stores located in
the Hall Green area of Birmingham, Bradford and Blackburn. However, the
halal menu hasn't attracted the custom we had hoped it would and we
have decided to return to a conventional Domino's menu in all three of
these stores."
The halal menu included halal spicy beef sausage, roast and tandoori
chicken, halal pepperoni and halal cured turkey, but meant that
Domino's products such as the 'Meateor' pizza could not be sold in
these restaurants because it contained sausages, meatballs and bacon.
http://www.meatinfo.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/11237/Domino_92s_Pizza_takes_halal_meat_off_menu_after_trial.html
NewsPosted by SfA Thu, August 19, 2010 12:58:21Just want to give a big shout to singer/ songwriter Ashley Collins for her support for Scotland for Animals, thanks.
You can visit Ashley's website here: www.ashleycollinsmusic.com for downloads, gig details, etc.
NewsPosted by SfA Wed, August 18, 2010 15:23:04See below from Sonya at Staffy Campaign. This organisation do great
work so please support them by dowloading their breeding leaflet. Stick
it up in your work, school, library, local shop, etc. and also pass on
to friends.
SfA
Hi,
I wonder if you can make use of this new leaflet?
It is aimed at making people aware of the potential problems with breeding
and selling pups at the moment, especially Staffordshire Bull Terriers.
The leaflet 'Thinking of breeding your Staffordshire Bull Terrier?' is an
A4, 2 sided leaflet, in black and white - so it is easy and fast to print off
if you can make use of it, that would be excellent - almost 700 people have
visited the page to download it in the last week - I just hope they are
printing a few off and distributing them!
Even if it makes one person who was thinking of breeding reconsider, I think
that will be a result!
The leaflet can be downloaded from www.sbtinfo.weebly.com
Please feel free to add a link to your site if you wish!
Many thanks
Sonya
