Get Live Hare Coursing banned in Ireland!

Jul 262010
 

Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports

July 21st 2010
Lower Coyne Street,
Callan,
Co. Kilkenny,
Ireland

Dear Friends,

Following the recent historic ban on carted stag hunting in Ireland, campaigners against blood sports are hopeful that the Irish government will follow up this achievement by banning the horrific practise of live hare coursing, in which hares are used as live bait in contests between competing greyhounds.

Here is a link to a film of what hare coursing in Ireland involves:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFdjBy5S8k8

Thousands of hares are captured annually in Ireland for this “pastime”…to be chased and terrorised in wired enclosures for “fun” and “entertainment”. Many are mauled to death; others die of stress-related ailments or internal injuries after being released back into the wild following the coursing events.

Other hares, mainly the ones deemed unsuitable for coursing, are used to “blood” dogs as part of their training. This involves feeding them live to greyhounds. The greyhounds also suffer injury, ill-treatment, and neglect in coursing.

A decision will be made by the Irish government shortly (at some point before the end of August) on whether to permit yet another season of this barbaric blood sport. The hare-coursing season itself, if allowed to go ahead, would begin in the final week of September.

The Irish government is sensitive to outside opinion as tourism is one of our most lucrative industries, so messages from abroad can influence the decision.

Can you congratulate Ireland’s Environment Minister John Gormley on his achievement in banning carted stag hunting…a brief message will suffice…And ask him to now consider banning live hare coursing in Ireland?

You can contact him at: minister@environ.ie

Thanking you,
John Fitzgerald,

Campaign for the Abolition Of Cruel Sports

New Footage Shows More Pig Abuse

Jul 262010
 

Shocking new footage has emerged of pigs at the same Levin farm exposed by TVNZ’s Sunday programme more than a year ago.

The footage, filmed by Open Rescue who accompanied Mike King on the Levin farm last year, reveals stressed and injured sows tightly packed in crates or confined in small concrete pens. The grisly footage shows pigs suffering from a variety of injuries that include bleeding sores caused by constant contact with the bars, flesh wounds that appear to be gangrenous, bloody feet and a sow with a badly infected and swollen ear.

Watch the Close Up interview

International Action: End Animal Experimentation in Universities

Jul 262010
 

For years, PCRM worked to end the use of live pigs in medical student training at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. But we just learned that the school has replaced its use of animals! Your calls and e-mails to the school helped make this victory happen.

We now need your help to end animal use at Wisconsin’s other medical school—the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). Please ask MCW dean and executive vice president Jonathan Ravdin, M.D., to replace the school’s use of rabbits, frogs, and rats.

One of the last holdouts among United States medical schools, the University of Wisconsin (UW) now joins the overwhelming majority of institutions that no longer use live animals to teach future physicians. During the first year physiology course at UW, medical students used to participate in laboratory sessions during which procedures were practiced on live pigs before the animals were bled out and killed.

Earlier this year, MCW also eliminated its pig lab, but MCW is still using live frogs, rats, and rabbits. Please e-mail Dr. Ravdin and ask him to end this animal use too. Ninety-five percent of U.S. medical schools have already ended their live animal laboratories. With your help MCW will be the next school to completely replace animal use in its curriculum.

Thank you for all of your help.

Best regards,
Senior Medical and Research Adviser John J. Pippin, MD, FACC

John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C.
Senior Medical and Research Adviser

Consumer Ad Campaign Challenges Pig Industry

Jul 192010
 

A striking new advertising campaign launched today by national animal advocacy organisation SAFE seeks to warn consumers about a planned ‘100% New Zealand Welfare Approved Pork’ label. The ‘Don’t be fooled’ consumer campaign will be SAFE’s largest ever, and will consist of billboards, posters and a series of radio advertisements.

The ‘Don’t be fooled’ campaign, launched on the eve of the New Zealand Pork Board’s 2010 national conference, will directly challenge the New Zealand Pork Industry Board’s proposed ‘Welfare Approved’ pork labelling scheme. SAFE says the misleading labels will be available to any farm that passes an audit based on the current pig welfare code and, indeed, to the very same farms that caused consumer outrage in 2009 after their facilities were shown on television.

“SAFE says the standards for the pig welfare audit are so low that farmers who use cruel sow stalls or farrowing crates will be able to call their pork ‘Welfare-Approved’. It is outrageous that the pig industry has the audacity to label pork produced from factory-farmed pigs ‘welfare-approved’, given that research shows that crated pigs suffer, and consumers oppose these cruel farming methods,” says SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek.

SAFE also challenges pork industry comments that pork sold in supermarkets does not come from sows kept in stalls.

“These comments are designed to fool consumers into believing that sow crates are not used in the production of pork. The truth is that over half the pork on supermarket shelves comes from pigs born to mothers confined in sow stalls and farrowing crates. These pigs spend their first four weeks inside the crates with their mothers and most continue to be factory farmed until they are slaughtered, and will never see a grassy field or feel the sun on their backs,” says Mr Kriek.

ACTION TODAY
SAFE will launch its ‘Don’t be fooled’ campaign outside the Willis Street New World supermarket in Wellington at 12.30pm today. Lucy, the 2.5-metre high ‘super-pig’, will be on hand to warn consumers about falsely labelled pork.

For more information contact Hans Kriek on 027 446 2711.

France: Deputies request vegetarian canteen in Parliament

Jul 122010
 

5 July 2010

Paris – Four deputies of the majority and the opposition request one vegetarian day per week in the restaurants of the National Assembly, or at least a vegetarian menu.

In their letter to the President of the National Assembly, Yves Cochet (Green), Geneviève Gaillard et Gérard Bapt (PS) and François Grosdidier (UMP) ask Bernard Accoyer to lead the way by launching a meatless day per week as soon as possible.

In May these deputies had already voiced their concern about excessive meat over-consumption and its impact on health and the environment, thus endorsing the campaigns by the ex-Beatle Paul Mc Cartney and the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.

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