Economic Downturn: British Legacy Income

by Kim W. Stallwood Posted on March 20, 2009

With charitable legacies worth almost £2 billion, they are of immense importance to both the third sector and the beneficiaries of charitable work. However, the impact of the downturn is likely to have considerable negative repercussions for legacy giving. With house and share prices falling, and with many donations made as a percentage of a legator’s estate, the outcome is likely to be that charities receive a smaller absolute, if not proportional, amount.

“Charitable Legacies in an Environment of Change” — a report published by The Smith Institute.

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The Beginning of the Downers Campaign

by Kim W. Stallwood Posted on March 20, 2009

The Grumpy Vegan believes it’s important to remember how the campaign against downers, which culminated in Obama’s recent decision, was started with the rescue of Hilda by Farm Sanctuary.

After Farm Sanctuary’s rescue of Hilda, a downed sheep who was left on the “dead pile” behind Lancaster Stockyards in 1986, media exposés about downed animal abuses in the 80s and 90s led the U.S.D.A. to start a surveillance program to monitor stockyards.

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NYT’s Kristof Second Op Ed on Farming

by Kim W. Stallwood Posted on March 19, 2009

We don’t add antibiotics to baby food and Cocoa Puffs so that children get fewer ear infections. That’s because we understand that the overuse of antibiotics is already creating “superbugs” resistant to medication.

Yet we continue to allow agribusiness companies to add antibiotics to animal feed so that piglets stay healthy and don’t get ear infections. Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the United States go to healthy livestock, according to a careful study by the Union of Concerned Scientists — and that’s one reason we’re seeing the rise of pathogens that defy antibiotics.

Pathogens in Our Pork

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Cancer and Vegetarianism

by Kim W. Stallwood Posted on March 19, 2009

Here’s vegan Jack Norris RD take on the recent Vegetarians Get Fewer Cancers.

Among vegetarians and people who eat moderate amounts of meat and don’t smoke, cancer rates are about the same, but lower than for people who do smoke and eat large amounts of meat. In other words, you can reduce your risk of cancer by not smoking, by limiting meat to moderate amounts (or abstaining entirely), and by eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. The evidence for stronger claims doesn’t seem to be there.

Similarly, the combined colon cancer rates to date seems to indicate that, in comparison to eating moderate amounts of meat, being vegetarian neither increases nor decreases your risk of colon cancer.

Cancer and Vegetarianism

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He Got Six Months for Assaulting Hunt Monitor

by Kim W. Stallwood Posted on March 18, 2009

Remember the Devon huntsman, Christopher Marles, who was convicted of deliberately assaulting, Helen Weeks, an animal rights activist? He got six months.

Exeter Crown Court Recorder Ros Collins told him he had acted like an “arrogant, cowardly, drunken lout” when he used his horse ‘Whisper’ to knock her into a muddy ditch three times causing a back injury which required hospital treatment.

Turns out that at the time of his attack on Weeks, Marles was “serving a suspended sentence for attacking another hunt monitor.”

Bitter battle between hunts and anti-hunt lobby

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