Asks ASI’s Jill Howard Church.
As more Chinese acquire companion animals and are exposed to humane education, attitudes are changing, particularly in urban areas. But the sheer number of Chinese consumers is driving a demand that can undermine efforts elsewhere in the world to curtail animal cruelty.
Every now and then something across the desk of the Grumpy Vegan which makes him so mad that he can’t stand it. Here’s the latest one. Burying alive pigs because they may be sick. Go figure. If isn’t stupid enough for many reasons to raise animals for food, then, how ridiculous can it be to start killing because they may be infected with foot and mouth — a disease which isn’t even harmful to people when they chose to eat charred bottoms of dead pigs.
As if a policy of using animals to produce food isn’t Kafka-esque enough. Dumping one million live animals into pits to bury them alive surely must rank as the cruelest and stupidest public policy on earth.
The much more sensible organisation Compassion In World Farming steams away in its own very polite anger by saying,
The Republic of Korea is a member of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and live burial of animals is in clear breach of OIE Guidelines on the Killing of Animals for Disease Control Purposes.
Go to Compassion’s Web site now to register your protest with the Korean Ambassador in London. Americans please go to Mercy for Animals to protest. Also, for on the ground updates, go to Animal Rights Korea, which has a section on its home page dedicated to this atrocity and further information on other pages. They report
Latest reports put it at 1,410,000 animals killed, perhaps 90% of them or more buried alive, since November 29, 2010. This includes pigs and cattle.Latest reports put it at 1,410,000 animals killed, perhaps 90% of them or more buried alive, since November 29, 2010. This includes pigs and cattle.
When it suits financially and culturally vegetarianism is a happy friend to business.
Leading American fast food chains, which globally are known for their non-vegetarian offerings, are raking in more moolah from their veggie delights in India following the lead of organised retail supermarkets which tend to avoid stocking non-vegetarian fresh produce items. Cashing in on the rising fitness awareness among Indian consumers, players such as McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut and Domino’s are seeing over 50 per cent of their sales coming from their vegetarian spread. In contrast, the global average of sales split for Domino’s is 95 per cent from non-veg offerings, while the non-veg contribution to Pizza Hut’s sales globally is 70 per cent of overall revenue.
Once again turning to Rose Elliot’s The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine I baked these delicious vegan muffins using her Whole-Wheat Banana Tea Bread recipe (p. 330). I adapted the recipe by grating one cooking apple and adding it to the mix. Instead of baking it in a loaf tin I divided the mixture up into individual paper cup cakes. I sprinkled white sugar on the top to make them even more interesting!
The Houston Chronicle reports on a new type of spill: beef fat. About 250,000 gallons were lost from a tank. Later, about 15,000 gallons were released from a storm drain. Accident allegedly due to “employee error.” Not boss’s fault. Helpfully, the paper explained,
The beef fat or tallow is rendered from slaughterhouse leftovers. “It’s all the stuff that we don’t eat,” Lindquist said. The substance is used for personal care items including cosmetics and bar soap as well as animal feed.
