15-12-07

A skinned fox.


Dogs squashed in a crate ready for slaughter.

44 dogs squashed dead on arrival.

Tiny primate cages.

Primates need touch.

Before telling you about our present and future projects concerning re-housing and sterilizing pets in South Africa we need to tell you of an urgent matter that concerns animals and humans worldwide.....  

 URGENT APPEAL TO EVERYONE!!!

PLEASE HELP US TO STOP CATS AND DOGS AND WILD ANIMALS FROM BEING SKINNED ALIVE FOR THEIR FUR. THIS IS SUCH OUTRAGEOUS CRUELTY THAT IT MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY. THE PICTURE OF A TRUSTING GERMAN SHEPHERD WAGGING HIS TAIL AT THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM MOMENTS BEFORE HIS HEAD IS CLAMPED AND HIS SKIN CUT AND RIPPED FROM HIS BODY SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO MOVE EVERY DECENT HUMAN BEING ON EARTH TO DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT. THESE ANIMALS ARE SKINNED ALIVE AND THROWN IN PILES WHERE THEY CAN RASP FOR BREATH FOR UP TO 10 MINUTES AFTERWARDS. 

 (See bottom of page for more info' and pages from PETA's website www.peta.org . PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Other websites include www.voice4dogs.org  and  http://sirius.2kat.net/phil.html  )

update  12/5/06: We also discovered the AAF (Animals Asia Foundation) run by heroic european women in China trying to stop the skinning alive of animals as well as  bear bile farming. 3 cheers for them! Will be adding some of their good work on our page soon. There was a symposium for pets in China earlier this year, and  the chinese animal welfare groups present represented more than a quarter of a million members! They are all pet lovers concerned about ending the suffering of the animals in the fur trade. This is very heart-warming to know that so many people within China would like to end this trade.

update 26/12/06: We are going to have protest marches at embassies in the very near future. Will give dates as soon as we know them.

WE MUST ALSO STOP THE HORRORS OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS.  (See PETA's website for details or BUAV's - British Union Against Vivisection - www.buav.com .)

No friends. No exercise. No toys. No comforts. No sun. No fresh air. Just cold steel.

Our campaign to stop this:

1) PUBLICIZE THIS. People don't know about it.

2) We have written letters to governments demanding that they pass laws recognizing animals as sentient beings and that ban the keeping and killing of animals for their fur and other body parts AND that ban the use of animals in experiments. (Click here to see our letters and here for  e-mail, fax and postal addresses we've sent them to. We'd be very happy if all of you could send the same letters, or your own, to the same people and any others you can think of.) We'll also be sending letters to fashion houses who sell fur clothing, letters to celebrities who wear fur clothes and letters to fur farms. Please help us inundate these people with letters until they stop their part in the fur trade.

3) In the same vein we'll make a list of all companies doing experiments on animals or selling fur products or those made of dog skin, such as rawhide chew toys for dogs, and send them letters and boycott their products.

4) We'll have public demonstrations to bring this cruelty to the public's attention. We'd like to get a dead dog from a vet and skin it and hoist it up for everyone to see.

5) We'd like posters and T-shirts  with anti-fur and anti-vivisection slogans and cartoons. Perhaps some could be of people involved in the fur industry, including government officials, showing half of their face with no skin. Also  slogans such as 'wearing fur isn't COOL, it's CRUEL' or 'wearing fur isn't COOL, it's COLD-BLOODED'. There's a large clothes store interested in doing this line for us.

6) We are  praying and meditating at 7am and 7pm (SA time) for all countries to pass laws to protect these animals and we visualize them being set free either in the wild or in natural reserves where they can be cared for. Please join us and get everyone you know to as well. It doesn't matter what religion you believe in or whether you are an atheist. Thoughts are energy (ask any quantum physicist) and the more people thinking the same thing the stronger that energy will be and the more likely that the thing pictured will happen. So just relax and picture in your mind the governments passing these laws and the animals being set free.

If you have any good ideas as to how to publicize and end this barbaric cruelty please let us know.

Please look at the bottom of the page for more info' and developments in our campaign.

(links: top page ;campaign; Chinese fur farms; jlopez; fur farm facts; Iams cruelty; our letters; addresses

                         _______________________________

Here are Pet Link-up's present ....SA projects

Project 1 : sterilize the dogs and cats belonging to people who can't afford it as well as feral ('street') cats who breed dramatically fast.

Update December 2006: We have just sterilized 32 feral cats at a factory in Rosslyn, Pretoria. (Photos of 10 of them in the margin on the left.)

A group of remarkable women, who spend much of their spare time catching feral cats, worked  together with us. They caught the cats over two months, and we sterilized them and put them back. Each cat was marked by having it's left ear cut almost in half during their sterilization operations, so that they can be recognized from a distance, and not be caught again.

We will continue in January with this project.

There are two ways for you to help:

1)Please let us know of other feral cat colonies that need to be sterilized . Also dogs or cats that belong to people who can't afford to have them sterilized or who won't do it, and keep having puppies or kittens.

2)Please put money into our account (see donations page) to pay for sterilizations. The more money we have the more sterilizations we can do.

Project 2 : re-house the dogs and cats that we have at our rescue centre and others that we're helping. Please tell people who are looking for a dog or cat about us.

Project 3 : Get our website database on line so that we reduce the number of pets going to rescue centres. Pets can be re-homed directly from old to new owner and found pets from finder to owner.

Update: A very kind lady has offered to do our database for us. We're heartily grateful to her. We and other rescue groups are waiting in great anticipation to be able to start using it.

Future projects ....

Project 1: build a mobile clinic and start sterilizations on a large scale. (Hiring a vet to do operations in our unit will be cheaper than paying a fee per animal.) To help you can put money into our account. If you are a vehicle manufacturer or supplier you could donate a van to us! If you are a manufacturer or supplier of veterinary equipment you could donate that equipment to be used in the mobile clinic. If you are a vet you could offer us a few hours of your time to do operations once our unit is ready.

Update: For now we have the occasional use of our state vet's mobile unit until we can have our own.

Project 2 : build a veterinary hospital next to us for people to bring their pets to and for animals who need to be hospitalized. To help you can put money into our account. If your business is building supplies you could donate materials. If you are a builder or architect you could offer us some help in the actual building.

Update: We have bought a bit of equipment and do sterilizations  on our property at present.

(links; top page : campaign; SA projects ; Chinese fur farms; jlopez; fur farm facts; Iams cruelty; our letters; addresses; )
 

                         ____________________________________

BACK TO OUR CAMPAIGN TO END THE HORRENDOUS CRUELTY GOING ON AROUND THE WORLD....

In summary many millions of animals are tortured to death each year - often being skinned alive - and kept in torturous conditions for their short lives before that. China is guilty of killing about 2 million dogs and cats a year (as well as countless other animals) but 64% of these horror fur farms are in Europe, with 11% in America. There are no laws protecting these animals and so they are at the mercy of the barbarians who have none.

As well as the horrors of the fur trade, animals are still suffering extremely barbaric living conditions and painful and torturous experiments in laboratories world-wide. As with the fur-animals they get no veterinary treatment even when severely ill or injured but are just left to die.

Here are two pages from PETA's website against the horrors of the fur trade. (PETA is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.) 

(links: top page; SA projects; Chinese fur farms; jlopez; Iams cruelty; our letters; addresses;)

Here are  about fur farms taken from PETA's website.

Inside the Fur Industry: Factory Farms facts

Eighty-five percent of the fur industry’s skins come from animals living captive on fur factory farms.(1) These farms can hold thousands of animals, and the practices used to farm them is remarkably uniform around the globe. As with other intensive-confinement animal farms, the methods used on fur factory farms are designed to maximize profits, always at the expense of the animals.

Painful and Short Lives
The most farmed fur-bearing animal is the mink, followed by the fox. Chinchillas, lynxes, and even hamsters are also farmed for their fur.(2) Sixty-four percent of fur farms are in Northern Europe, 11 percent are in North America, and the rest are dispersed throughout the world, in countries such as Argentina and Russia.(3) Mink farmers usually breed female minks once a year. There are about three or four surviving kits for each litter, and they are killed when they are about half a year old, depending on what country they are in, after the first hard freeze. Minks used for breeding are kept for four to five years.(4) The animals—housed in unbearably small cages—live with fear, stress, disease, parasites, and other physical and psychological hardships, all for the sake of a global industry that makes billions of dollars annually.

Rabbits are slaughtered by the millions for meat, particularly in China, Italy, and Spain. Once considered a mere byproduct of this consumption, the rabbit fur industry demands the thicker pelt of an older animal (meat rabbits are killed at the age of 10 to 12 weeks). The United Nations reports that “few skins are now retrieved from slaughterhouses,” and countries such as France are killing as many as 70 million rabbits a year for fur, used in clothing, as lures in flyfishing, and for trim on craft items.(5)

Life on the “Ranch”
To cut costs, fur farmers pack animals into small cages, preventing them from taking more than a few steps back and forth. This crowding and confinement is especially distressing to minks—solitary animals who may occupy as much as 2,500 acres of wetland habitat in the wild.(6) The anguish of life in a cage leads minks to self-mutilate—biting at their skin, tails, and feet—and frantically pace and circle endlessly. Zoologists at Oxford University who studied captive minks found that despite generations of being bred for fur, minks have not been domesticated and suffer greatly in captivity, especially if they are not given the opportunity to swim.(7) Foxes, raccoons, and other animals suffer equally and have been found to cannibalize each other as a reaction to their crowded confinement.

Animals on fur factory farms are fed meat byproducts considered unfit for human consumption. Water is provided by a nipple system which often freezes in the winter or may fail because of human error.

Pests and Parasites
Animals on fur factory farms are more susceptible to diseases than their free-roaming counterparts. Contagious diseases such as pneumonia are passed from cage to cage rapidly, as are fleas, ticks, lice, and mites. And disease-carrying flies thrive in the piles of rotting wastes that collect under the cages for months. Video footage and photos taken by undercover investigators show animals suffering from severe infections and injuries, untreated and left to die slowly.
 
Unnatural Habitats
Fur factory farm cages are often kept in open sheds that provide little to no protection from wind or harsh weather. Their fur alone is not enough to keep them warm in the winter, and in the summer, minks swelter because they have no water in which to cool themselves. When minks learn to shower themselves by pressing on their drinking water supply nipples, farmers will modify the nipples to cut off even this meager relief.

Poison and Pain
No federal humane slaughter law protects animals on fur factory farms, and killing methods are gruesome. Because fur farmers care only about preserving the quality of the fur, they use slaughter methods that keep the pelts intact but which can result in extreme suffering for the animals. Small animals may be crammed into boxes and poisoned with hot, unfiltered engine exhaust from a truck. Engine exhaust is not always lethal, and some animals wake up while being skinned. Larger animals have clamps or a rod applied to their mouths while rods are inserted into their anuses, and they are painfully electrocuted. Other animals are poisoned with strychnine, which suffocates them by paralyzing their muscles in painful rigid cramps. Gassing, decompression chambers, and neck-snapping are other common fur-farm slaughter methods.

The fur industry refuses to condemn even blatantly cruel killing methods. Genital electrocution, deemed “unacceptable” by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) 1993 Panel on Euthanasia, is a fur factory farm killing method that causes animals the pain of cardiac arrest while they are fully conscious. In 1994, Indiana became the first state to file criminal charges against a fur factory farm after PETA investigators documented genital electrocution at V-R Chinchillas. The chinchilla fur industry considers electrocution and neck-breaking “acceptable.”(8)

In 1995, one district attorney filed charges against pelt supplier Frank Parsons of Salisbury, Md., for injecting a mixture of rubbing alcohol and weed-killer into the chests of minks. PETA undercover investigators videotaped Parsons using an illegal pesticide, Blackleaf 40, to painfully kill the minks.

Would You Wear Your Dog?
An undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States, reported in a 1998 Dateline NBC piece, revealed that dog and cat fur is a multimillion-dollar industry in Asia and found that coats and toys made with domestic dog fur are being sold in the U.S. “There are no federal laws preventing anyone from importing dog and cat fur into this country,” reported Dateline. “If the imported item costs less than $150, the importer doesn’t even have to reveal what it’s made of.” Dateline footage shows a German shepherd, tail wagging and head stuck in a restraint, moments before he is skinned alive. A cat, crowded in a cage, watches and waits his turn, as one by one, his cagemates are choked, slung up, and hanged just inches away.(9) New legislation outlawed the import or sale of clothing containing dog or cat fur, but the fur still enters the country illegally since it is intentionally mislabeled and can only be detected by expensive DNA testing. 

Environmental Destruction
Contrary to fur-industry propaganda, fur production destroys the environment. The energy needed to produce a real fur coat from ranch-raised animal skins is approximately 20 times that needed for a fake fur.(10) Nor does fur biodegrade, thanks to the chemical treatment applied to stop the fur from rotting. The process of using these chemicals is also dangerous as it can cause water contamination.

About 44 pounds of feces are excreted per mink skinned by fur farmers. Based on the total number of minks skinned in the U.S. in 1999, which was 2.81 million, mink factory farms generate approximately 62,000 tons of manure per year. One result is nearly 1,000 tons of phosphorus, which wreaks havoc in water ecosystems.(11)

Fur in Sheep’s Clothing
As fur sales decline, sales of shearling—the skin of lambs with the wool attached—have risen. Some fur manufacturers have actually taken to disguising mink as shearling.(12) Many people are unaware of shearling’s origins or that shearling sales are an incentive for sheep ranchers to increase their stock, thereby adding to the plight of sheep (see PETA factsheet “Inside the Wool Industry”).
 
In Afghanistan, karakul sheep are now raised to produce lambs for the high-end market in “Persian lamb” coats and hats. For “top-quality” lamb skin, the mother is killed just before giving birth and her fetus is cut out. The pelts of the unborn lambs are prized in the fashion world for their silk-like sheen. It takes the skin from an entire lamb to make one karakul hat.(13) 

Industry in Decline
Austria and the U.K. have banned fur factory farms, and the Netherlands began phasing out fox and chinchilla farming in April 1998.(14) In 2003 there were 307 mink farms in the U.S., down 5 percent from the previous year.(15) In a sign of the times, supermodel Naomi Campbell was denied entry to a trendy New York club because she was wearing fur. Said the club’s owner, “I really love animals, and I wanted us to be the good guys.”(16)

Humane Choices
Consumers need to know that every fur coat, lining, or item of trim represents the intense suffering of several dozen animals, whether they were trapped, ranched, or even unborn. These cruelties will end only when the public refuses to buy or wear fur. Those who learn the facts about fur must help educate others, for the animals’ sake. For more information, visit www.FurIsDead.com  

References
1)“Facts on Furs,” International Fur Trade Federation, 2000.
2)“To Make 1 of These … You Need 183 of These,” E.S. Magazine, 27 Oct. 2000.
3)“Fur Farming,” International Fur Trade Federation, 2000.
4)“General Livestock,” The Digital Daily, U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury.
5)Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The Rabbit: Husbandry, Health and Production, No. 21 (Rome: 1997).
6)“Minks,” The Nebraska Game & Parks Commission .
7)“What Captive Minks Miss Most—Swimming,” Reuters, 28 Feb. 2001.
8)“Standard Guidelines for the Operation of Chinchilla Ranches,” Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Mar. 1998.
9)Dateline NBC, 15 Dec. 1998.
10)Gregory H. Smith, “Energy Study of Real vs. Synthetic Furs,” University of Michigan, Sep. 1979.
11)S.J. Bursian, G.M. Hill, R.R. Mitchell, and A.C. Napolitano, “The Use of Phytase as a Feed Supplement to Enhance Utilization and Reduce Excretion of Phosphorous in Mink,” 2003 Fur Rancher Blue Book of Fur Farming, Department of Animal Science, Michigan State University.
12)Joan Verdon, “The Golden Fleece,” Hackensack Record, 21 Sep. 2002.
13)Paul Haven, “Karzai’s Hat Made From Lamb Fetus,” Associated Press, 23 Apr. 2002.
14)Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, “Commission Report Reveals Serious Welfare Problems in Fur Farming,” 20 Dec. 2001.
15)U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, “Mink,” 15 Jul. 2004.
16)“Fur Flies Out of Fashion,” MX, 13 Sep. 2002, p. 30.

(links:  top page ; campaign ;SA projects; chinese fur farms; jlopez ; fur farm facts ; letters ; addresses )

Here's an excerpt from the PETA website about Iams (Eukanuba's) cruel animal experiments. They inject animals with mange that  causes them such illness that they  die from it. They cut dog's gums and cause gingivitis to try their 'dental formulas' on. They keep their experimental animals in small kennels in isolation their whole lives - never seeing the sun, never playing, never being touched by other dogs or a caring human being. They kill chicks to test protein digestibility even though much more accurate tests can be done with modern equipment and no animals. (P&G stands for Procter & Gamble.)

"Iams and P&G Cause Animals to Suffer Needlessly."

"For nearly 10 months in 2002 and early 2003, a PETA investigator went undercover at an Iams contract testing laboratory, where a dark, sordid secret was discovered beneath the dog- and cat-food manufacturer’s wholesome image. Our investigator found dogs who had gone crazy from intense confinement in barren steel cages and cement cells, dogs who had been left on a filthy paint-chipped floor after chunks of muscle had been hacked from their thighs, dogs who had been surgically debarked, and horribly sick dogs and cats who were languishing in their cages, neglected and left to suffer without veterinary care. "

(links :top of page ; campaign ; chinese fur farms; furfarm facts ; jlopez ; SA projects ; addresses)

letters we have sent :-  

1) covering letter with essay 'the Height of Civilization'

Hello!

Please take 5 minutes to read our attached essay and another 5 to tell us your response! 

On 14^th November the European Parliament will be voting on the REACH proposal which could see 5 million animals poisoned in toxicity tests. We’re writing to you in the hope that we can sway your opinion on the matter and that you can influence the outcome of the vote!  

You already know that there are alternative non-animal methods of testing that are more scientifically acceptable. It is a matter of CHOICE whether these tests are done on animals and that depends on the moral and ethical status of the people voting. 

If governments are concerned about the mass unemployment of animal technicians if animal testing is stopped then I’m sure that animal welfare groups would be happy to help with an ‘adopt a technician’ campaign! They could re-habilitate them like the ex- laboratory animals that they have saved in the past! 

If governments have a financial interest in animal laboratories then they should tell us what it is worth to them and see if animal lovers can match it! That’s only fair! We’ve got some rich celebrities on our side! 

If it’s simply a matter of ethics and morals then please let everyone who has an influence on this outcome read our letter ‘the Height of Civilization’ and decide on which side of fence they are sitting. 

The Parliament’s decision affects every one of us – even people unaware of what’s going on. That’s because we are all humans and what some of us do affects us all. Every decent person we know is ashamed of the human race for its destruction of the world around us and lack of respect for life in any form. We live with this guilt and it destroys us. Mostly on a subconscious level, so that we don’t know why we drink alcohol or smoke or take pills or stuff ourselves with chocolates. We do it even though we know that it harms us. We are self-destructive because of guilt.  

If our leaders are moral then we at least can hope that one day our whole society can also be. If our leaders are not moral then that part of society that is will feel hopeless.

Thank you.  Susan & Julie. 

                                                               (END OF LETTER)

2) Essay : the Height of Civilization

                                           The Height of Civilization 

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."  Mahatma Ghandi.

A few weeks ago we found out that in China two million dogs and cats and countless wild animals are dragged roughly from small cages, bludgeoned, pinned down and skinned alive. They are then thrown in bloody heaps to rasp out their last breaths…for their fur. In their unspeakable deaths and short cruel lives they are not shown even the smallest act of kindness. (1)

We were shocked at this barbarism – this sheer lack of compassion towards other living beings. They hack their way through rows of animals like an industrial production line, chatting to each other and indifferent or unaware that their ‘products’ are live things suffering extreme pain and terror. We reckoned that after 2000 years of ‘culture’ China now needs a bit of civilization. It has no laws protecting animals and the population  and it’s leaders obviously need educating with ‘Black Beauty’ and David Attenburough nature films! (As do African countries where tortoises, hedgehogs and porcupines are burned alive to eat, animals hacked to death or pieces cut off of them and pet dogs hanged if they are a nuisance.)

Then we saw that 65% of fur farms are in Northern Europe and 11% in the USA and the horror story is the same as China’s. Also China’s pet fur is imported by Europe! Surely civilized nations wouldn’t allow these things!  Not nations that have banned practices like docking dog’s tails and ears for fashion and that prosecute people for mistreating their pets. We couldn’t believe it! We’d actually thought that ‘civilized’ people nowadays wouldn’t think of wearing fur because it’s bad taste. Would England – THE land of animal lovers – have fur farms? No! Our confidence in England was confirmed when we read that she had banned them. Hooray! Good old England! Keep the light shining! (We didn’t see that they’d banned the IMPORTING of furs…but maybe we missed it.) (2)

We then learnt about the laboratory experiments on many millions of animals world-wide. What? That’s something that we’d also thought had gone with the dark ages. Shocking, senseless cruelty inflicted with the same absence of compassion as the fur-killers in China.

Someone told us that groups in England had just about stopped experiments there by breaking into buildings and rescuing the animals and threatening lab technicians. Dedicated people not deterred by prison sentences. What heroes, we thought!

 So it was with huge dismay that we read that ENGLAND has the biggest animal laboratory ‘industry’ in Europe despite the efforts of our shining knights. Three million animals are being experimented on right now behind closed doors where no-one who cares about them is allowed to check on their welfare. Despite laws that are supposed to give them some protection, they are in reality left to the mercy of their torturers and killers just as the animals in China are left to theirs. (3)

Still trying to digest this, we found out that the European Parliament is going to vote on November 14 on a proposal that could see five million new animals used and killed in toxicity tests. They’ll be forced to inhale poisonous gasses and swallow caustic chemicals. Acids will be dripped into their open eyes, poured onto their scraped skin and injected into them. No painkillers or other treatment will be given and notes will be made until they die. Much of this will be done in England.                                                                  

We were stunned. How could this be even considered by our european nations who should be getting  more civilized as time passes and not less! They should be banning these experiments and not planning new monstrous projects!

It seems that England has an influential position in the European Parliament at the moment and so its vote will be very important. If England’s vote reflects it’s general population’s wish then it will be to reject all animal experiments. But what is the government’s view? If its the same as that of the House of Lords then its a shocker for anyone who thinks that animals are more than just pieces of meat in fur wrappings.

In their report on animal experiments they justify why animals can be used for procedures that would ‘not be acceptable if applied to humans’ by saying that animals probably suffer less than we would! Mammals and birds MAY have the capacity to feel pain in a SIMILAR way to us but that is not the same as the capacity to experience suffering or distress. They don’t know how much suffering or stress is caused by an animal’s confinement in a laboratory or its experience of pain and whether it can remember it and anticipate it next time. They’ll have to wait for further developments in ‘animal cognition and suffering’ to see! (4)  

This is as good as the government writing that the world is probably flat despite the popular belief that it is round, and we’re waiting for research (probably on animals) to confirm just how flat it is! (One might understand it if one of the lords had expounded his intellectual flat-world theory to a pal – I mean colleague -after one more than usual and having just read a Terry Pratchett ‘discworld’ book, but to put it in WRITING!) 

Have the dear lords never had pets? Have they not at least read Black Beauty, or, if this is not their medium, watched any of David Attenborough in action on their TVs?   

If they’d just watched the ‘super sense’ series they’d know that animals’ physical senses dwarf ours. A dog’s nose is a million times more sensitive than ours. We’ve seen dogs sneezing violently and nearly falling on their backs in their haste to get away from what to us was just a ‘sharpish’ chemical smell. Who would experience more pain by inhaling toxic gas – man or dog?  

Animals and human children are very aware of and affected by their environment. Adult humans used to city life become blunt to the ‘vibes’ around them. Put one in a tiny cell with no exercise or company and unpleasant people outside his cage and he might not notice a difference to his usual way of life! Do the same to animals or children who naturally want to use their bodies and have physical contact and they will suffer dramatically –– and they will be frightened of nasty people and the ‘vibes’ they radiate. (Even adults who have been seriously assaulted will know that it’s not just the physical assault that’s distressing but the intention behind it.) Make that a wild animal whose senses are the sharpest and fear of ANY human great and this suffering is extreme. Our lords may need scientific proof of this, but for the civilized masses it is enough to see the blind terror on the faces of new monkeys as they are ripped from each others arms and thrown into a life of steel bars and isolation. We can see the stressful effects of this life on those same monkeys later on by the vacant stares, cage rocking or circling or self-mutilation in between the terror of being caught and hurt. 

The lords want proof of how much animals suffer for each procedure.                                             

If we take one of these lords, rip his clothes off, drag him to apparatus where his hands and feet are clamped and roughly force acid down his throat (punching him on his jaw if he resists opening his mouth) and then throw him into a cage afterwards – all without saying a word to him – how much has he suffered? What proof is there that he has suffered? He won’t be able to scream because his voice box will have been taken out, being a potentially noisy lab’ animal. You can see him struggling to prevent anything going down his throat but that could just be because he’s stroppy and uncooperative and nothing to do with being afraid. Hunching up afterwards clutching his stomach could also just be a sign of sulkiness and bad temper. If he dies of internal bleeding then that doesn’t count as suffering at all in present evaluations. All in all there’s not much to note down in the technician’s book. Of course if he looked at the man’s eyes or imagined himself in his shoes he might have a better understanding of his feelings, but still not be able to ‘prove’ it. 

It’s hard to believe that a country can have a general public that is so ‘enlightened’ and a government quite so in the dark. 

Of course the lords believe the reverse. They say that the public needs to be educated because it doesn’t participate in the ‘meat process ’ any more and has become ‘sentimental’ about animals. They say that the government is campaigning to promote animal experiments, speaking at universities and industries, and would like to encourage schools to ‘use’ more live animals to teach children the ‘ethic’ that animals are here for us to make use of. (5)

So the lords are telling us that we’d all have a better perspective (and understanding of ethics) if we killed animals ourselves regularly! Perhaps in a spirit of international unity they could invite the Chinese to teach us how to skin animals alive here. SHIT – we’d really understand the ethics of the thing then!

Surely a parliament should reflect the wishes and beliefs and degree of ‘civilization’ of it’s people? Where it comes to recognizing animals as sentient beings and how much protection they should have against human cruelty, the british people and their government are not just at odds but progressing in opposite directions.

Is England’s vote going to be a step towards a higher civilization where we might one day actually be proud of being human, or is it going to drag us further back into the dark ages where we are ashamed of mankind?

We personally vote for a better civilization and we’d like to invite everyone to join us!

Let the governments world-wide know what our vote is so that they are encouraged to ban the fur industry and animal experimentation and make better laws to protect animals. This would make us all feel that we belong to a higher civilization than yesterday.

Foot notes:

1) see www.PETA.org about chinese fur farms. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)

2) see PETA’s website about fur farm facts.                                                                 

3) for info’ on laboratory animals see PETA’s website as well as www.BUAV.org  and www.eceae.org . (British Union Against Vivisection / European Coalition to End Animal Experiments)

4) House of Lords Select Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures Report 2002. see www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/id/idanimal.htm  chapter 3,  paras 3.2 and 3.3

5) same report : chapter 9 paras 9.4; 9.6; 9.7; 9.9

                                                                 (END OF LETTER)

(links: top page ; campaign; SA projects; chinese fur farms; jlopez; fur farm facts; Iams cruelty; letters;)

ADDRESSES TO SEND LETTERS TO:

(Due to lack of time I'm putting any addresses I find at random. Hope to have better list soon.)

Chinese addresses

His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong
Ambassador of the People's Republic of China
Embassy of the People's Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20008, USA
202-328-2574
202-328-2582 (fax)
chinaembassy_us@fmprc.gov.cn

Philippines:-

Philippines' President and Vice President, with cc to the other addresses.

Unfortunately the President has no direct email address, but you can send an email through her web site at http://www.op.gov.ph/contact.asp

Vice President vpguingona@ovp.gov.ph

Cc to Press Secretary opsnews@ops.gov.ph
Department of the Interior and Local Government osec@dilg.gov.ph
Department of Justice sechbp@info.com.ph
Office of the Executive Secretary agromulo@op.gov.ph
Department of Tourism dotrjg@info.com.ph
Philippines News Agency philna@ops.gov.ph
 

Belgium:-

Please write to  EU Commissioner Markos Kyprianou  who  is responsible for this issue, and the  President of the European Commission asking them to support a comprehensive ban on dog and cat fur throughout Europe.

Contact details:

Commissioner Markos Kyprianou
Department of Health and Consumer Protection
European Commission
Rue de la Loi 200
B-1049 Brussels
Belgium
E-mail: cab-kyprianou@cec.eu.int

Letters are are more effective than e-mails. If you send a email its best to print it out and send as a letter as well.  

(links: top page  ; campaign ; letters ; chinese fur farm; jlopez; fur farm facts; Iams; SA projects; )