Animal welfare and fair trade are far bigger concerns to UK consumers than climate change, according to a huge new poll of UK shoppers.
Only 4% rate climate change as their top ethical priority, compared with 21% who think animal welfare is the most important issue and 14% who rate fair trade as their key concern.
The findings come from a survey conducted by the Co-op grocery business that has been used to draw up a “responsible retailing” policy, designed to reflect shoppers’ concerns.
The Co-op claims the survey is the biggest poll of consumer ethics ever undertaken. The supermarket group analysed responses to a detailed, four-page questionnaire from more than 100,000 members and customers. It intends to use their responses to guide changes to the way it does business.
As a result of the survey the Co-op is halting the sale and use of eggs from caged hens with immediate effect.
Catching Cold
The current batch of headlines lauds British scientists who have created a mouse that can catch a cold.
The Grumpy Vegan didn’t know that there was a shortage of people to study with colds. Did you?
Thought for the Day
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970, British philosopher and pacifist
Thought for the Day
I can tell you that we are at a moment in American history where we are in danger of losing our country. That is what causes me to defend the Constitution. It is what causes me to seek strength through peace, to propose peace for the violence in our own society, domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, violence in the schools. I do not only reject war as an instrument of policy. I reject the inevitability of war. I believe peace is inevitable if you are ready to work for it. If you examine the underlying structures in our society, they have not really challenged this notion of the inevitability of violence, whether it is domestic violence, child abuse, spousal abuse, violence in the schools, gun violence, gang violence, racial violence, violence against gays, police/community clashes. It is as if we don’t believe that our culture be non-violent. Violence is learned; so is nonviolence. I am looking at helping to create a social transformation here. This isn’t just about winning an election. Elections come and go. Where is the country? What happens to our nation? What happens to the people? Politics cannot just be an inside game between competing corporate interests. It amounts to the condition under which people live and survive. I see a much higher purpose to what it is we do. That is why I continue to participate.
Dennis Kucinich’s Fight to Bring Credibility to the Democratic Party
Thought for the Day
I stand in honourable company as a modern-day pirate, though I’ve not shot anyone, burned any ships, looted any cargos or kidnapped anyone. We are also pirates with a sense of humour and a moral code of non-violence. In 30 years of eco-piracy we have never injured a single poacher, though we’ve sent nine whalers to the bottom. Instead of cannon balls, our guns shoot coconut cream and chocolate pie-filling. We toss stink bombs instead of grenades and we are so non-violent we don’t even eat meat or fish on our ships. No fish, fowl or mammals have died in the making of our high seas campaigns.
What we do is defend the whales from illegal slaughter by ruthless and merciless killers. If people want to call us pirates for that, we’re proud to be so. We have whales to save and Japanese ships to attack.
I’m proud to be a pirate by Paul Watson
Monk’s House
To stand on such sacred ground was humbling. And to think that it will be open to the public soon takes one’s breath away.
