Fish quotas? Bad for everyone including the poor fish.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall did a great programme last night on tv about the scandal of EU fish quotas.  He was as shocked as his audience would have been when  the hundreds of unwanted (perfectly good fish) were thrown overboard dead.
Fisherman are allowed  quotas of a certain type of fish,  and when they have filled these quotas huge numbers of extra fish are wasted and thrown back into the sea. Due to over-fishing, fish that were fairly common up to about 15 years ago are now scarce or very small  though depletion of stocks of cod and other varieties have now been partially halted. The quota system  is a mad scheme when good food is deliberately wasted in order to fulfill some insane regulation brought in by that  scarcely representative  body, the European Union!
It was pointed out in the programme that the government minister for fisheries was unable even to identify the most common fish!
Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall pursues his next 'fish' agenda with a programme about the assault on the tuna.

Factory farmed pigs, how shameful!

A short programme on radio 4 this morning featured a US farm that intensively breeds  and fattens pigs,  on a massively industrialised scale. 
Americans are supremely trained in the use of euphemisms. They are past masters at turning  truth  into lies, never call a spade a spade if you are an American , just hide nastiness by giving it a pleasant sounding word.  This particular 'farmer' likes to stress that pigs are not human beings,  he insists we must not anthropomorphise pigs yet he constantly uses the word 'gals' for his breeding sows. He keeps these in the most degrading and dreadful  conditions. The trapped sows eventually go  mad, chewing on the bars of their tiny crates  in bleak despair.
Gestation crates are used in US, Canada, Denmark, and Mexico.In some states in the US namely Florida,  Arizona, and California they are banned, they are also banned  in the UK, and from 2015 it will be illegal to use sow crates on New Zealand pig farms.
Systems for housing pigs for fattening (piglets are taken from their mothers at a few weeks old) are equally horrific.  They live crowded together in a small pen indoors on a concrete slatted surface without straw.  They, like the sows never see the light of day. Excrement passes through the slats, and pigs which are highly intelligent naturally clean animals have to live their entire lives above the smell of their own waste. Piglets are subjected to tail docking, teeth clipping, and ear notching  without anaesthetic,  they are put on drug programmes , and antibiotics, vitamins,  and hormones are administered pre-emptively.  In the US there is a Humane Slaughter Act but there are repeated violations of this in the slaughter houses. North Carolina  houses approximately 10 million pigs,  with the   greatest state of  barbarity  reserved  for breeding sows. They spend 70 days a year confined to their metal crates where they produce c2.5 litters per annum,   and are despatched to the slaughter house if they fail to reach this number or in any way fall below par.
How can anyone eat  bacon or ham  without checking its origins first?  The association of greed and the human being is mindblowing.  A pig, or indeed any other animal,  is not a machine!

Super Markets?...nasty business.

Panorama on BBC tv last night came up trumps with an almost in depth programme about the 4 biggest supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsburys. Quite a denouement!
The programme went into the various aspects of factory farming, cut prices (to the detriment of smaller farmers), land grab and the bribery involved in gaining planning permission, false labelling, etc etc. Probably the worst aspect of their businesses is their desire to dominate almost every area of shopping. They want, in fact, to set up new towns out of town, so that the original town with its small specialist shops is totally destroyed. These voracious supermarkets want to gobble up everything in sight, and go hang the rest!
Probably the most scary aspect of the way these businesses are run is their total disregard for the natural lives of animals. They consider animals are machines, - See November blogs 'Battle for the Sanity of our Cows....', 'Whatever next?...Cows factory farmed in Lincolnshire....'. These blogs give details of the proposed factory at Nocton in Lincolnshire where thousands of cows are to be locked up in sheds and literally milked to death. This proposal is an outrage and should be fought at all costs!
It is up to government and councils to stop taking bribes, keep these outrageous supermarket businesses in check, and cease giving planning permission for more.

Battle for the sanity of our cows.

Today we hear the Lincolnshire factory farmer has reduced the number of cows he wants to lock up in his factory farm from 8.000 to c4.000. Thin end of the wedge. Once he's had the go-ahead for this number of cows the sky will be the limit. Foot in the door and all that. He is on the same push as the gm foods lobby. Kill off all the small conventional struggling dairies then the prices will really take off! Personally I think milk is far too cheap anyway. Super markets have largely been responsible for pressurising dairy farmers into keeping their profit margins to a minimum, thus small dairy farms (with less than 100 cows) are in great danger of going under. Unscrupulous people can move in and take advantage of a fragile situation, and this is exactly what's happened. We can only hope and pray that this horrific plan will be given a swift knock back. see Compassion in World Farming for in detail information.

Whatever next? Cows factory farmed in Lincolnshire?!

Thousands of cows are threatened with life in one large shed in Lincolnshire. No more grass for them to munch and ruminate in their specially adapted digestive system that includes four stomachs. They will see virtually no daylight, never commune in open green fields. They are to become, like the grossly misused chicken and pig purely exploited money making machines for the farmer. Those to be incarcerated in this ginormous shed are a specially chosen (engineered) breed, one that will produce the maximum amount of milk. We are told their lives will be wonderful, they will want for nothing, there will be a vet at there beck and call. They will not even have to experience the cold or the dark! They will be fed a good substitute for grass of which a large proportion will be natural fodder and specially 'balanced' to suit their needs. Oh! the pleasure of life as a factory farmed cow! The gigantic shed is to house 8.000 cows. In America - where the idea comes from (don't you know), the farmers can pack in even more. One consolation for the poor cow if the planning application goes through, is that it's normal life span of 25 years will be reduced to about 5.