A N I M A L
VOICE
OFFICIAL MOUTHPIECE IN SOUTH AFRICA
FOR COMPASSION IN WORLD FARMING
CIWF (SA) has played the leading role in
achieving kinder lives for many of South Africa’s farmed animals – we need to reach many millions more!
“I buy Kinder Food!”
Season’s Greetings and Thanks to our supporters December 2014
Increasing our Compassionate Footprint
SA
ANIMAL VOICE CONTENTS
To: A FARMED ANIMAL
ACTION UPDATES 3 CIWF strides forward for laying hens
4
CIWF strides forward
5
CIWF strides forward
for mother pigs
and becomes part of Cape Town’s Food Dialogues
12 End the cage age!
With your help we can do it
RELIGION 6 Bishop Siwa
speaks out for all animals
NEWS IN BRIEF 7 Fish hauls for farmed animals African penguin heads for extinction
Give to a farmed animal this Christmas!
The successes of Compassion (SA) are achieved through a passion for justice for animals and a handful (literally) of like-minded individual donors. Please join us. Your donation and our endeavours help free farmed animals from the misery and torment of close confinement. Donate electronically by clicking on the donate button on our website:
www.ciwf.org.za
EDUCATION 8 Angry Parents
Teacher accused for teaching vegetarianism!
Or here:
EXPOSED 10 Nightmare Slaughter Festival
The Humane Education Trust is licensed to represent Compassion in World Farming in South Africa. Account Name THE HUMANE EDUCATION TRUST Bank Name ABSA, Somerset West Account Number 9094070046
INSIGHT 13 The key to change...
Warm regards,
14 Quantum Foods
Louise van der Merwe Director: CIWF (SA)
Cape Town Activist to witness and record horrors
Last word by Tony Gerrans CEO just doesn’t get it!
SA
WEBSITE: SA OFFICE www.ciwf.org.za www.humane-education.org.za Email: avoice@yebo.co.za WEBSITE: CIWF HQ www.ciwf.org
POSTAL ADDRESS The Humane Education Trust PO Box 825 Somerset West 7129 RSA International: +27 21 852 8160 Tel: 021 852 8160 Fax: 021 4131297
Your money at work...
CIWF strides forward to make 2014 a momentous year of
progress for farmed animals in South Africa... 1
28 December 2013
3
Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls for the world to fight injustice to animals in the same way as it fights injustice to blacks, women and gays. Earlier, Archbishop Tutu became the first world leader to sign Compassion's Vision for Fair Food and Farming www.visionforfairfood.org
15 - 17 April 2014
16 April 2014
Woolworths becomes the first retailer in Africa to receive Compassion's Good Egg Award for its commitment to cage free eggs.
2
Compassion's CEO Philip Lymbery travels to South Africa to launch his book Farmageddon: the true cost of cheap meat. He is met with overwhelming media interest and exposure, including: Radio: Bruce Whitfield's The Money Show, Cape Talk 567
4
Channel Islam International Nancy Richards' Enviro-Show on SAFM Jenny Crwys Williams, Talk Radio 702 Gorry Bowes Taylor, Fine Music Radio Television:
Presentation:
Carte Blanche
Constitutional Court Auditorium
Dagbreek
hosted by Prof David Bilchitz,
Expresso
director of SAIFAC
17 June 2014
Tony Gerrans, Compassion (SA)'s Representative on Sustainability, addresses Cape Town's Food Dialogues on the implication of factory farming on human communities, animals and the environment.
http://goo.gl/UZdf8X
9 July 2014
5
Director of Compassion's SA branch and Animal Voice editor Louise van der Merwe speaks on eNCA about the disregard for farmed animals that has become a culture in South Africa. http://goo.gl/LDPJSd More overleaf... 3
24 July 2014
9
6
Woolworths announces a ban on sow crates by December 2014 on all its fresh pork products as well as its branded processed and cured pork products such as bacon, boerewors and sausages.
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Compassion's CEO Philip Lymbery meets SA's top officials at the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
29 August 2014
From left: Dr Tembile Songabe (Veterinary Health Director), Philip Lymbery, Dr Botlhe Michael Modisane (Chief Veterinary Director) who is expected to be the next president of the World Organisation for Animal Health – (OIE), veterinarian Dr Tina Engel, & Tony Gerrans (CIWF SA).
LABELLING! Compassion in World Farming (SA) makes submissions for the inclusion 'living conditions' on all labelling of animal-derived food stuffs, in response to a call for submissions by the Department of Health: Food Control. Compassion(SA)'s submissions regarding the labelling of eggs must be received by the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa by 15th December.
29 September 2014
29 September 2014
The over consumption of animal-derived products places an enormous burden on human health, as well as on the lives of animals which are crammed into factory farms.
8
-— Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa
Pick n Pay announces a ban on sow crates by December 2015 on all its fresh pork products and by 31 December 2016, on all its branded processed pork products.
30 September 2014
10
Sponsored by Farmer's Weekly, Compassion's CEO Philip Lymbery travels to SA again as keynote speaker at the Agricultural Outlook Conference held in Pretoria.
4
16 October 2014
12
11
World Food Day:
16 October 2014
Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and President of the South African Council of Churches, calls on congregations to promote the well being of the land and all its creatures in the name of sustainability and justice for all.
Cape Town City takes a momentous lead in Africa for a more equitable, just and humane farming system, with the release of its Food Dialogues report. http://goo.gl/l5ub0N
Philip Lymbery gives the bishop a copy of Farmageddon.
Specifically, please see pages 28 – 31 where, under the title The Big Offenders: Meat and Dairy, the report points out that “the industrialscale farming of meat, dairy and poultry is not sustainable” and it calls on consumers to eat less meat and to eat ethically produced products. Compassion in World Farming (SA) is privileged to be included in the report.
13
The Humane Education Trust, umbrella body for Compassion (SA), has worked in schools throughout the year, thanks to sponsorship by LOTTO of our Teacher Workshops on Humane Education during 2014. We estimate that through our Teacher Workshops, we have reached at least 5000 learners during the year.
A huge thank
you
LOTTO for making this work possible.
Delegates to one of Humane Education’s Teacher Workshops fit together the Five Freedoms for all Animals
5
Bishop Siwa makes a passionate appeal for a
change of heart and mind. To mark World Food Day on 16 October 2014, Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and President of the South African Council of Churches, appeals for a change of heart and mind "a transformation of society at the level of culture itself”. I am writing this appeal as one of the followers of Jesus Christ who said in John 10:10 “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” I write as the faith leader on the eve of the World Food Day (16 October) and out of deep concern for the ecological crisis that threatens to bring us and the whole of creation to the brink of mass suffering and destruction. My appeal is that we pay special attention to this and request all people of faith to pause, reflect and act as stewards of all that God has created.
the lives of animals which are crammed into factory farms in order to supply our demands, especially for cheap meat. Farmed animals eat grass and bushes by nature – food that we, as humans, cannot eat - and 67% of land in South Africa is available and suitable for grazing and browsing. Yet we take the animals off the land and cram them in large numbers into huge sheds, feeding them vast amounts of fish and grains in order to make more meat, more eggs, and more milk, cheaply. The meat, eggs and milk from these animals is directed towards the Consumer Culture which then, in turn, struggles with obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, while the oceans become depleted of fish and rural farmers lose their livelihoods because they are unable to compete with cheap supermarket products. As for the animals, they live and die without ever seeing a blade of grass or a ray of sunshine.
This crisis is human-induced, caused among other things by industrialised agriculture which depends on monocultures, pesticides and factory farming of animals, as well as our prevailing culture of consumerism. The challenge to overcome this crisis lies in the human heart. Combating Climate Change requires nothing less than a radical change of direction, a change of heart and mind, a transformation of our society at the level of culture itself.
The church has a moral and theological responsibility to set aside this stupidity and embrace its role of stewardship of our beautiful earth and all its creation.
We need to realise that we have been captured by the lure of consumerism to believe our happiness and success depends on what we eat, wear, own and use.
We need our congregations to become eco-congregations transforming culture to promote a healthy diet for all, sustainable livelihoods for rural farmers, as well as the well-being of the land and all its creatures. Only in this way can we ensure sustainability and establish justice for all.
We are trapped in the logic of consumerism which emphasises what we lack downplaying what we already have. We are reminded daily of our unfulfilled needs, thus placing consumerism at the heart of culture. The over consumption of animalderived products – meat, eggs, milk and so on – is part of this culture of consumerism and places an enormous burden on human health, as well as on 6
In 2014 300 000 tonnes of anchovy were hauled out of South African waters to become fish-meal for chickens, pigs and cows confined in factory farms around the country.
Compassion's CEO Philip Lymbery was invited as keynote speaker to the Agricultural Marketing Trends conference held in Pretoria in September. In his speech he made special mention of the African Penguin which, he said, was the subject of the world's greatest wildlife rescue in 2000. “Yet a decade later, the birds' numbers have dropped perilously close to extinction, starved out of existence by the fishmeal industry to provide feed for industrially reared farm animals.” He added: “As the penguins collapse, so does the ecosystem upon which our fishfor-people industry also depends. South Africa's penguins really are the 'canary in the coal-mine' ”.
Load-shedding the meat from our plates...
Top academics call on the University of Cape Town to free itself from an unholy alliance in the suffering of farmed animals.
As part of their final year mark, Food Technology students in Cape Town were challenged to develop meat alternatives that look and taste like the real thing. Made from alternative protein sources like beans and mushrooms, the new products may be submitted for possible commercialisation, said Prof Jessy van Wyk, Head of Food Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. — Courtesy Times Newspaper
The latest issue of UCT's newspaper Monday Monthly, published in October 2014, features a call for the university to put its principles of justice where its mouth is and pledge to take animal suffering off the menu at university functions.
Note from Ed.
Authored by the Department of Philosophy's Professor David Benatar and Dr Elisa Galgut, the article suggests that “consumers have entered into an unholy alliance with farmers and retailers – the consumers don't ask and the farmers and retailers don't tell. A conspiracy of denial surrounds our eating practices to guard our consciences against what we know is morally unacceptable.”
By now we are all aware that animal agriculture accounts for 14,5% of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than global transport! http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e0 0.HTM
But what about meat-eating's large water footprint!?
Read the full article here:
http://www.uct.ac.za/mondaypaper/?id=9889
Did you know: ? To produce one portion of beef (250g) requires the same amount of drinking water that one person needs (one litre a day) for 11 years of life. www.waterfootprint.org
A World First for India
? Each year, an estimated 50 billion litres of bloody water goes down the drain at abattoirs in South Africa to sustain current levels of meat consumption. (Based on figures by the Food Ethics Council report.) www.foodethicscouncil.org
After monks went on a hunger strike to push for a city-wide ban on animal slaughter, the local government declared Palitana a meat-free zone. Read the full article: http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/inindia-the-world-039-s-first-vegetarian-city/indiapalitana-food-meat-fish-gujarat/c3s17132/ 7
Angry parents allegedly scream at this Cape Town teacher for turning their children away from meat and God...
...But her support base among the learners just
keeps on growing...
help posed to p u s m a er I “ e the bigg e s to s r e learn ealthy to make h d n a e r tu pic .” their lives in s e ic o h c
“I am con demned fo r informing lear ners th at munching on hormones , antibiotic s, chemicals and cruelt y, is an unhe althy and inhumane choice!” Melanie Thomet
Cape Town English and Life Orientation teacher Melanie Thomet has had a rough time of it recently. Summoned to the office of her principal at De Kuilen High School where she teaches, Melanie was faced with a barrage of angry parents who accused her of indoctrinating their children with animal rights concepts and turning them away from meat – and God - in the process. Two of the learners have allegedly run away from home in the ensuing conflict with their parents.
Says Melanie: “We launched an animal rights group at school nearly two years ago as part of a drive to collect dog food for an animal shelter in need. This was all okay. But the moment I talked about vegetarianism or veganism, teachers at the school – and now, parents too – display a horrific negativity.” “Yet,” she says: “as a Life Orientation teacher, I am supposed to help learners to see the bigger picture and to make healthy choices in the lives. Regarding Climate Change, for instance, everyone stays happy as long as I tell our learners to switch off appliances or walk to school but when it comes to the one fundamental issue that drives climate change – namely, animal agriculture - I am condemned for informing learners that munching on hormones, antibiotics, chemicals and cruelty, is an unhealthy and inhumane choice!”
In November this year, Principal of De Kuilen High School, Herman Mellet laid a complaint against Melanie with the SA Council of Educators. The outcome is pending. Mr Mellet was quoted in the Rapport newspaper as saying that while Melanie is an 'outstanding' teacher, his duty is also to his learners and their parents who believe that animal rights had turned their children away from meat and God.
8
Basheer Rawoot,
Matric learner Demi Lisa Legget,
a Grade 11 learner and a devout Muslim, is another of Melanie's staunch supporters.
is a devout Roman Catholic and one of Melanie's staunch supporters.
Says Basheer: “Islam allows the eating of animals but just because something is permissible doesn't mean it has to be done. The important thing here is how my teacher is being treated. She's being ostracised and screamed at and falsely accused of forcing vegetarianism on people and turning them away from their religion. She never once tried to take me away from my religion.
Says Demi: “Yes, the Bible talks about animal sacrifice, but my God is a loving God who would never sanction the pain and fear and suffering that animals experience at the hands of man. As humans, we say it's wrong to murder each other and we extend some protection to our companion animals too. But if it's a pig or sheep or any kind of farmed animal, suddenly it's fine to kill them.
“The important thing here is how my teacher is being treated.”
“ I am going to go all the way in fighting for justice for animals.”
“I had to fight hard against the education authorities to grow my beard which is a recommendation of my religion. Now once again, I am faced with irrational thinking and stupidity and rules that don't make sense. School is a place where you are supposed to prepare yourself for the world outside. Part of who I am is someone who cares about suffering – all suffering - and my religion points to compassion. If Melanie tries to speak about compassion, she's blocked and shouted down. We want adults who can listen, discuss, exchange ideas and enter into dialogue.”
“People are blind to the horror we inflict on farmed animals. There's a complete inconsistency at play her - and that's the scary part. I believe that deep inside, humans do care about animals. ” Demi says she is fortunate that her mother supports her and has “started walking the same path”. “People say that one person can't change the world but if you are vegetarian or vegan, you are saving animals' lives one by one. In my life ahead I am going to go all the way in fighting for justice for animals. People who know me know that ‘ek skrik vir niks!’ ”
Louise van der Merwe Director in South Africa: Compassion in World Farming Editor: Animal Voice Managing Trustee: The Humane Education Trust Tony Gerrans, Trustee of The Humane Education Trust, is Compassion (SA)'s Representative on Sustainability. Anyone wishing to book him for his 40-minute presentation should contact our office at 021 852 8160.
Zwivhuya Ramashia Humane Education’s teacher at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg 9
Eileen Chapman
Compassion (SA)'s Representative
in Gauteng
Vivienne Rutgers Humane Education's adviser on Curriculum Compliancy. Here she stands with Phil Arkow, international expert on the link between animal cruelty and human violence.
CIWF fronts an International Campaign to
STOP
SLAUGhtER FESTIVAL
Compassion's CEO Philip Lymbery
Sometimes you find out about an animal welfare nightmare so terrible you simply have to do everything within your power to stop it. When we found out about the Gadhimai festival, and the suffering it causes to hundreds of thousands of farmed animals, we knew we had to take action on a global scale.
A young water buffalo lies surrounded by the dead bodies of others while one is butchered nearby.
A water buffalo is about to be beheaded.
10
Says Philip: “The Gadhimai slaughter festival is set to take place in Nepal on 28th and 29th November. Estimates expect the inhumane sacrifice of over a quarter of a million farm animals. At Compassion we have mounted an international campaign to stop this festival which takes place in the name of the goddess Gadhimai and has been going on every 5 years for the last 260.
This piglet's head was cut from its body using a small knife.
A young goat that died at the festival before reaching the point of sacrifice.
Nikki Botha hit the headlines in September this year when, as a volunteer for Sea Shepherd, she was among those arrested in the Faroe islands for trying to stop the islanders from killing a pod of pilot whales. In the photo below, she is accosted by police in Taiji, Japan, who threatened to arrest her for taking photographs of a newly captive dolphin transfer.
“In the run up to the festival tens of thousands of buffalo will be corralled into a giant pen, with no shelter and severely limited access to water. Then on 28th and 29th November, over 100 slaughter men will be let loose into the enclosure to behead the buffalo one by one.” As part of Compassion HQ's campaign, Louise van der Merwe, Director of the local branch of CIWF, wrote to the Nepalese embassy in Pretoria expressing our revulsion at the prospect of the festival. Counsellor Bishnu Prasad Gautam, Charge d'Affaires at the Embassy of Nepal, replied saying he shared our concern and would convey our letter through the Foreign Ministry to the Nepalese government. As it happens, South African animal activist Nikki Botha leaves on 25th November to attend the festival as an independent journalist. “I am set to go with a camera, video equipment and a go-pro (camera strapped to her body or head),” said Nikki. “ It has nothing to do with courage. It's about what is right and just. The way we treat animals is neither. And I will not keep quiet or stand idly by while living beings are being tortured, exploited, maimed, mutilated and murdered. Neither should anybody else.”
Please sign Compassion's petition to STOP THE FESTIVAL! http://goo.gl/8TwlVS
11 19
Compassion in World Farming headquarters has launched its biggest-ever world-wide campaign, targeting the ultimate symbol of cruelty and deprivation,
the cage.
Join us at Compassion's South African branch by adding your power to this campaign.
SA For a start ... ? Sign our on-line petition:
http://www.animal-voice.org/index.php/signa-petition/101-please-help-release-24-millionlaying-hens-in-south-africa-from-the-tormentof-their-battery-cages
Such a monstrous thing we have constructed, out of wire and cement and steel, so huge you can't see the other end, so filthy you can hardly breathe, stuffed with living beings for which we are responsible.
?
Boycott Nulaid, the biggest battery egg producer in the country
?
Write to Pick n Pay's egg buyer Gigi Bisogno and ask him to evolve as a matter of urgency by taking all 'caged' products off Pick n Pay's shelves. Email: gbisogno@pnp.co.za
?
Write to Shoprite Checkers egg buyer Rudolph van Rooyen and ask him to evolve as a matter of urgency by taking all 'caged' products off Shoprite Checkers shelves. Email: ruvanrooyen@shoprite.co.za
With your help, we can
End the Cage Age!
– 'Cage Wars: A visit to the egg farm', Harper Magazine, November 2014.
Please donate by clicking on the donate button on our website: www.ciwf.org.za
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e... g n a h c o t The key
by Tony Gerrans
M
ost people in the industrialised west, when confronted with the excesses and cruelty of modern animal agriculture, research, circuses, racing, laboratories and other commercial exploitation of animals, will condemn such practices outright. Our expressed values of fairness, justice and compassion allow no other response.
The key to meaningful change lies in each of us making small changes — supporting an
active animal welfare organisation, changing our diets, reporting abuse and educating lawmakers. There are hundreds of ways ordinary people can get involved, and the sum of all the small changes will sweep aside the few who resist.
Yet the abuse continues and seems to be growing in scale in many instances, screened from public scrutiny behind physical and legal barriers, or behind utilitarian arguments that such practices are necessary for development, security, commerce or some other type of desirable collective good. The implication is that these things are done in our name and for our good.
As Gandhi famously once said:
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS."
We in this office will continue to work towards better welfare for animals, and our ultimate goal of a more compassionate world for both animals and people. Animal welfare and indeed animal rights are concepts that are now increasingly accepted by large proportions of modern urban educated societies. We invite you to join us on this exciting journey.
We need to target the very organisations and businesses that continue to perpetrate or support animal abuse in the name of society at large. In many ways, generating real change for animal welfare may seem like a huge challenge - the industries appear too powerful, and the cruelties too institutionalised for the ordinary person to make any difference.
Our deepest thanks to those dedicated few who make our endeavours for the animals possible.
But I believe exactly the opposite is true. Real social change does not require everyone to be a dedicated public activist - out there leading a march or dominating the media. 13
Will expansion into Africa with battery eggs and live broiler chickens rescue Quantum Foods from its financial doldrums? — by Editor: Louise van der Merwe
Seems like 2014 has not been a good year for Quantum Foods which sells table eggs under the Nulaid label! First there was its unreserved apology to the NSPCA in June for its 'horror treatment' of end-of-lay hens, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tCeWXOR6e0, then Agribusiness giant Pioneer Foods didn't want Quantum as a subsidiary any more, and now, according to the Sunday Times of 26 October 2014, Quantum has had a dismal performance on the JSE since listing earlier in the month. Their share price started off trading at R5.25, but quickly dropped to R3.00.
with some arguing that the share price could come under further pressure if larger minority shareholders wanted to exit what is deemed a "difficult business". An analyst has recommended shareholders sell the share. Quantum's CEO Hennie Lourens told the Sunday Times that from an operational profit point of view, the last two years had been negative. However, he said he was 'pretty confident' that Quantum would show good returns in the year ahead with its egg investment into Africa, see http://www.acbio.org.za/ and with the selling of live broiler chickens.
In fact, on 7 October 2014, the day after the company listed, Business Day reported that market sources reckoned the Quantum listing (with the immediate drop in price) was largely as expected,
Several Compassion (SA) supporters wrote to Quantum Foods' Hennie Lourens advising him to salvage his business by ditching battery eggs altogether and by making a fresh start with a humane and ethical endeavour. Mr Lourens wrote back like this: (See letter on next page)
What drives the food system is not human appetite, but profit. If consumption (of animal products) drops in rich countries, corporate interests will hunt for markets in poor countries, just as they have for cigarettes and weapons. – Joan Dye Gussow Ecology and vegetarian considerations.ajcn.nutrition.org
14
Note from Ed.
Mr Lourens – you just don't get it! You can't fix something as fundamentally evil as the battery egg system. Release your Nulaid hens from their torment. 15
END THE CAGE AGE, MR LOURENS!
Compassion SA's battle for mother pigs has been long and hard!
It began nearly two decades ago!
Here, for example , is the front page of Animal Voice w ay back in 2001!
We’ve still got a long way
to go!