Tories decide we are not a nation of animal lovers
Via The Independent:
Millions of hens will have their beaks mutilated; game birds will remain in cages; pigs, sheep and cows in abattoirs will lose crucial protection from abuse; badgers will be culled and lions, tigers and other wild animals will continue to perform in the big top.
In a series of little-noticed moves, the Coalition has scrapped or stalled Labour initiatives to improve animal welfare some weeks before they were due to come into force.
The Agriculture minister James Paice, who part-owns a farm in Cambridgeshire, has been behind most of the moves – which have infuriated welfare groups. In the latest of a series of controversial decisions, Mr Paice this week delayed by five years a ban on beak mutilations of laying hens due to come into force in January.
The article goes through ‘the betrayals’ with half-hearted replies from the supine RSPCA. All the scrapped initiatives were based on evidence to improve animal welfare. Evidence which is common sense anyway. In the case of badger culling, the evidence clearly finds that TB rates in cattle increase outside of culling zones. The Welsh Assembly have spent a fortune trying to introduce culling in Pembrokeshire but every attempt has been stopped in the courts. The most effective way of keeping badgers free from TB is good animal husbandry, not cruelty to animals.
H/T @ChrisGPackham
| Post to del.icio.us |
Filed in: Current affairs
Private Eye has a piece this week on the badger issue. The latest pathetic whine is that now the government is going to authorise culling, the farmers will have to pay for it. The agri-lobby is claiming that as it is a huge health issue the public purse should pay. Scientists have put forward the theses we already spend to much on it http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.tim.2009.11.002
While the jury is still out on whether culling badgers is correct, these animal welfare nutters really need to get a grip. They’re cut from the same cloth as the moaning climate change protesters and the thugs who break the windows of Tory HQ.
There are far more important issues to talk about, like where are all the jobs going to come from.
The ‘jury’ isn’t ‘still out’ Larry. Keep up with the judgements made about badger culling in Wales.
Perhaps some more jobs can be created by slicing off more chicken’s beaks? Are you up for that job Larry?
I am disgusted by this. Absolutely sickened.
My list of things the Tories do that piss me off is getting longer every day.
Nikki,
So Labour did nothing that pissed you off?
By the way, remind me again why animals have rights? Apart from food, what do they contribute to the economy?
Actually NuLabor beat them to it when it decided to ignore the advice of its own Farm Animal Welfare Council that halal and kosher slaughter was intrinsically cruel, caused severe suffering and should be prohibited in Britain.
The grounds given for refusal in 2004 by the Minister for Agriculture Ben Bradshaw were that ‘the FAWC’s banning proposal had “understandably been deeply contentious for the Jewish and Muslim communities”.
By the way, remind me again why animals have rights? Apart from food, what do they contribute to the economy?
Did someone say animals have rights? I am dubious about that, but I do think inflicting gross and unnecessary suffering - or acquiescing in it - diminishes humans.
As for what they contribute, they stop the eco-system from collapsing.
Apart from food, what do they contribute to the economy?
If everything is judged by how much contribution they make to the economy - no doubt Larry will be lining up to demand that severely disabled people be shot too.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-animal-rights-2134911.html
Thanks Trofim. Very funny letter from the MP who makes money out of farming. Total rubbish.
@2
So, if you think there are better things to worry about, you should surely be narked off at the government for prattling around undoing animal welfare legislation instead of concentrating on jobs no?
@11
They’re just undoing all the red tape put up by Labour.
I care about the economy, jobs, Britain, BRITISH people, etc., not animals and multiculti.
But then I’m guided by reality, not my bleedin’ heart.