News
The number of news found: 21.
08/31/2015 ELI ROTH LAUNCHES RAINFOREST CONSERVATION CAMPAIGN FOR NEW MOVIE
Director Eli Roth is helping to preserve at least 20,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest as part of a promotional tie-in for his latest flick, "The Green Inferno." Roth is teaming up with rainforest information website Mongabay and charity fundraising platform Prizeo for the campaign. For its part, Mongabay will set up a journalism fund that will go towards reporting stories on threats facing indigenous people and forests in the Amazon as well as sending money to non-profit organizations that help protect indigenous population and the wildlife of the Amazon rainforest in Peru.
08/28/2015 VEGAN ROCKSTAR AND ATHLETE JOHN JOSEPH ON WHY "MEAT IS FOR PUSSIES"
Punk singer and athlete John Joseph is living proof of the possibility of transformation. As a teenager he was homeless, addicted to drink and drugs – he "spent all of '88 on crack" – shot, stabbed and banged up in jail. Now, 35 years on, he is a vegan athlete with five Ironman triathlons under his belt – and he puts his metamorphosis down in part to his meat-free diet. Veganism hooked him – and inspired him to write a no-nonsense book on the subject with the name Meat Is For Pussies. Joseph has the sort of strength and endurance many people assume is only attainable with a carnivorous diet. Read here what he tells Metro.co.uk why he believes meat is for pussies.
08/27/2015 HALF OF ANIMAL TESTING IN ISRAEL INVOLVES MAXIMUM PAIN ALLOWED
A report by the Council on Animal Testing revealed Tuesday that more than half the experiments in Israel in 2014 were conducted at the highest level of pain for the animal, and more than 99 percent of the animals were put to death when experiments were finished. There were 340,000 experiments conducted on animals last year, the report found, 12.1 percent more than the previous year. This data does not include tests conducted by the defense establishment, where tens of thousands of animals are used in tests which are not independently monitored. The council found that there was a rise in the use of mammals, especially monkeys and mice. Mice were used in 83.9 percent of the experiments, while chickens and other birds were used in 7.4 percent, fish in 7 percent, and 1.3 percent in large mammals. The rise in the number of experiments, according to the report, comes to a large extent from the wider use of mice and fish, both used in experiments in much larger quantities in 2014 than in 2013.
08/26/2015 UPS BANS SHARK FIN SHIPMENTS
Global logistics giant United Parcel Service is banning shipments of shark fin amid worldwide pressure from conservationists. The firm announced the move on Twitter, saying it had implemented the ban "following consultation with WWF". In a separate statement, it said it had enacted the ban "due to concerns about the enforcement capabilities of the authorities and potential inaccuracy of visual inspection" under the global Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It called the potential for misidentification an "unacceptable business condition". The ban severely limits choice for shippers of shark fin products. At least 31 global airlines, including Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Lufthansa, have imposed a blanket ban on the cargo.
08/25/2015 BRIGITTE BARDOT CALLS ON UN CHIEF TO MAKE A STAND AGAINST "TROPHY HUNTING"
Former French screen legend turned animal activist Brigitte Bardot is calling on the head of the United Nations to urgently make a stand against "trophy hunting" following July's killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe by an American dentist. "It's with repugnance and with tears in my eyes that I ask you to take a strong position – this is urgent!" Bardot wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, according to the letter made public on Monday, August 17. Bardot, who runs an animal protection foundation in her name, called for the "abolition" of the "scandalous sporting and recreational murder" of animals.
08/24/2015 MEAT FOOD WASTE MORE HARMFUL FOR ENVIRONMENT
Wasting food that contains meat has a greater impact on the environment than vegetarian food, says a study. This is because significantly more energy is used in the production of meat compared to the production of vegetables, researchers said, though on average less meat is wasted compared to fruits and vegetables. This wasted energy is usually in the form of resources that can have negative impact on the surrounding environment such as diesel fuel or fertilizer being released into the environment.
08/21/2015 UFC HEAVYWEIGHT GOES VEGAN
Last week, well-known UFC heavyweight fighter Mark Hunt announced on Facebook that he is "going vegan" after watching the latest undercover pig farm cruelty video produced by Last Chance for Animals (LCA). His Facebook status update also said, "I hate this" in regards to the video, which depicts mutilated pigs being left to die in a downed pig pen, infections rupturing, and piglets trying to nurse around a dead sow. Hunt's Facebook post instantly filled with comments in support of the athlete's decision to go vegan, including encouraging references to other vegan athletes such as professional NFL player David Carter, strongman Patrik Baboumian, and former UFC fighter Mac Danzig.
08/20/2015 BULLS KILL SEVEN AT SPAIN SUMMER FESTIVALS
Bulls have gored seven people to death during festivals across Spain since the beginning of July - four of them over the past weekend. The deaths occurred during bull-running in the streets, not in bullrings. It is an unusually high number of fatalities for such a short period. Among them was a 36-year-old town councillor gored in Penafiel, a town near Valladolid, north of Madrid. Further north an 18-year-old man gored in the stomach died in Lerin, Navarra. The other deaths occurred during bull festivals in the regions of Valencia, Murcia, Toledo, Castellon and Alicante. Last year more than 7,200 bulls and steers (castrated bull calves) were killed by bullfighters across Spain, the news website El Diario reports. Nearly 2,000 bullfights - or "corridas" - are still held in the country every year, but the numbers are falling. In 2010, Catalonia became the second Spanish region after the Canary Islands to ban the tradition.
08/19/2015 ACTIVIST JUMPS INTO BULLFIGHTING RING TO COMFORT DYING BULL
In an extraordinary act of bravery, an animal rights activist jumped into the Malagueta bullfighting ring to comfort a dying bull in Malaga, Spain. For a few moments, Virginia Ruiz, 38, was able to lay her body over the bull and shield him before arena officials and fans violently hauled her away. "I could hear him crying in pain and I jumped down, walked across the ring to where he lay dying," Ms. Ruiz explained. "He looked at me and I believe he felt my energy. I wanted to give him love before he left this earth," she said. As she was pulled off the bull, the crowd of bullfighting fans jeered, yelling "fuera!" ("get out") in unison. "They called me names," said Ruiz, "they kicked me, they spit on me, they told me to go back to the kitchen and they called me a whore." The bull was stabbed to death.
08/18/2015 PAMELA ANDERSON TO WORK WITH RUSSIAN OFFICIALS ON ANIMAL RIGHTS
Pamela Anderson hopes to collaborate with the Russian government on environmental issues at the upcoming East Russia Economic Forum, the Canadian-American actress said in a letter addressed to a Russian official. Anderson, who gained celebrity status in the 1990s starring in television series Baywatch, has become increasingly engaged in environmental activism in the following years. In her letter, addressed to Evgeny Shumilov, an economic officer at the Russian Embassy in the U.S., she thanked the diplomat for accepting her request to attend the forum, which will take place in the far eastern city of Vladivostok on Sept 3.
08/17/2015 ANOTHER DEATH AT ELEPHANT CENTER FOUNDED WITH DISNEY TIES
There's more bad news at the National Elephant Center in Fellsmere, which has ties to Walt Disney World. An elephant there has passed away – the third death in three years. Juno, who belonged to the Nashville Zoo, died less than four months after arriving. The preliminary necropsy report indicates the cause of death is attributed to acute small intestinal disease, according to the Nashville Zoo. The zoo had sent Juno to the center while its elephant facilities undergo expansion. It had plans to send three more but said executives are rethinking that. So Tsavo and Thandi, the two Disney elephants who were among the center's first residents, may be there alone for a while. The center was meant to be a combination retirement home and temporary reserve for elephants.
08/14/2015 MEAT-EATERS MAY SPEED WORLDWIDE SPECIES EXTINCTION
Diets rich in beef and other red meat can be bad for a person's health. And the practice is equally bad for Earth's biodiversity, according to a team of scientists who have fingered human carnivory - and its impact on land use - as the single biggest threat to much of the world's flora and fauna. Already a major cause of extinction, our meat habit will take a growing toll as people clear more land for livestock and crops to feed these animals, a study in the current issue of Science of the Total Environment predicts. Many of the places expected to see the greatest shift in land use from forest to livestock are in 15 "megadiverse" countries, which harbor the largest number of species. The habitat loss is so great that it will cause more extinctions than any other factor, the study notes, particularly when coupled with other deleterious effects of livestock production, including climate change and pollution. The trend toward meat-eating is already having an impact, the scientists say.
08/13/2015 KIRK DOUGLAS AGAINST HUNTING
Veteran actor Kirk Douglas has confessed his regrets over a wild game hunt in which he killed a leopard and a zebra on a trip to Kenya 50 years ago, and has called for the hunting of wild animals to be stopped. In a blog post for The Huffington Post, the actor describes his experiences of the wild game hunting trip to Africa, which was documented by a photographer for a book called Great Hunts.
08/12/2015 AN ITALIAN COURT JUST RULED THAT BABIES CAN BE VEGAN AND HEALTHY
A court in Alto Adige—a region in Northern Italy recently ruled on what is being called a groundbreaking case for the recognition and rights of alternative diets. The dispute in question began in February, when a young mother from the town of Merano notified her ten-month-old son’s nursery school that the child would be switching to a vegan diet. The nursery decided that not only would they refuse to comply with the mother’s wish to feed the kid a vegan diet, they also demanded to see a medical certificate proving the health and welfare of the aspiring vegan infant. After the mother refused the dubious request, the nursery expelled the child in retaliation. The Mother claimed in court that not only were the benefits of a vegan diet scientifically proven, the nursery had been unfair and disproportionate in its expulsion of her son. The judge agreed with her, stating that the expulsion was discriminatory and that the nursery’s request for a detailed medical certificate was not in fitting with current social norms.
08/11/2015 AFTER KILLING OF CECIL THE LION, DELTA JOINS AIRLINE BAN ON GAME TROPHIES
The recent killing of a popular lion named Cecil by an American dentist in Zimbabwe sparked considerable outrage on social media and elsewhere against safari hunting. The event has also brought to light the role that airlines play in transporting trophy kills as cargo, and may have contributed to changing airline policy. On Monday, Delta Air Lines became the latest carrier to change its rules about transporting hunting trophies. Its announcement came as a group of airlines including Air France, KLM, Iberia, IAG Cargo, Singapore Airlines and Qantas signaled last week they would ban the transport of trophy-hunting kills, according to Paul Ferris, the campaign director at SumOfUs.org, a consumer-based petition agency in Brooklyn, which has pressed for changing cargo policies.
08/10/2015 JEWS AND ARABS MARCH TOGETHER FOR VEGANISM AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
On July 25, more than 1,000 Arab and Jewish animal rights activists marched together for veganism in the city of Haifa, Israel, under the title "We Are All Their Voice: Coming Together for the Animals". Organized by both Arab and Jewish animal rights activists, the march marked a meaningful highlight in a continuous collaboration between the two communities in the north of Israel, where vegan activists have been working together over the last couple of years. The march, to which 2,500 people originally RSVP-ed, had three clear stated goals: to raise public awareness of the suffering of farm animals, to boost vegan activity in the north of Israel, and to create a large-scale event allowing the two communities to come together in full and equal collaboration.
08/07/2015 SWEDEN CONSIDERS IMPLEMENTING A "MEAT TAX"
The Swedish government is again considering a "meat tax" in a bid to encourage less meat consumption. Two years after it ruled out Swedish Board of Agriculture's recommendation that a tax on meat could curb consumption and reduce environmental implications, the Swedish government is now reconsidering the idea after a successful petition urged policy makers to to take the issue more seriously. Just last year, new research found that 10 percent of Swedes have gone meat-less, and of course, there's the health factor of going veggie: studies have shown that vegans tend to be thinner and have lower levels of cholesterol, blood-pressure, diabetes and cancer than those who consume meat. A vegan lifestyle yields huge benefits to the environment as well. Production of meat is one of the leading sources of greenhouse-gas emissions. Climate change scientists believe that by taxing meat, and thereby reducing meat production, work wonders for our environment.
08/06/2015 ENDANGERED SPECIES LIGHT UP THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
Between 9 P.M. and midnight on Saturday, the southern face of the Empire State Building became a giant projection screen filled with images of a snow leopard, a manta ray, and other imperilled land and sea creatures. The event, "Projecting Change: The Empire State Building," devised by Louie Psihoyos, the executive director of Oceanic Preservation Society, and the filmmaker and photographer Travis Threlkel, was a union of art, activism, and ambitious publicity stunt, designed to call attention to the plight of endangered species.
08/06/2015 BOTSWANA BANS SPORTS HUNTERS AFTER CECIL KILLING
The Government of Botswana made it clear on Friday that sports hunters would not be welcome in its country as it lamented the killing of Zimbabwe's Cecil the lion by American dentist Walter James Palmer. Government spokesperson Jeff Ramsay said sports hunting had been banned in Botswana and last year the government had also moved to ensure that Botswana's lions and other large carnivores were not exported to South Africa or any other country for so-called "canned hunting". Asked to confirm that all sports hunting was banned in Botswana, Ramsay said: "We are not giving out any licences for sport hunting here. The only avenue for potential abuse would be on game farms, but yes sport hunting is effectively banned."
08/04/2015 GERMANY BREAKS OWN RENEWABLE ENERGY RECORD
Germany has just broken its own record for the amount of energy generated by renewable sources in a day. On July 25th, the country generated 78 percent of its total energy through wind, solar and other non-coal energy sources, topping its previous record of 74 percent. Unusually high winds at most of the country's wind turbines' location contributed to the record-breaking day. As the gushing wind accelerated the turbines, the country's utilities slowed down the coal- and gas-fired power plants. Freakish winds aside, Germany is still leading the way in renewable energy production. A few days earlier, on a gloomy day when zero percent of the country's power was generated through solar panels, and barely any wind motivated the turbines to turn, Germany had 25 percent of its electricity generated through renewables.
08/03/2015 ZOO TO CLOSE AMID ANIMAL RIGHTS AWARENESS
A private zoo in Tainan's Madou District in southern Taiwan is set to be closed for good in January next year, with the owner complaining that the newly revised Animal Protection Act will make his business too challenging to run. "Making the decision is painful," said Chiu Hsi-ho, owner of the Madou King of Crocodile Zoo. Once the revisions to the Animal Protection Act take effect on Jan 23, 2016, it will be more and more difficult for small-scale private zoos to survive, Chiu said, admitting that he will be unable to run a zoo when the relevant laws become stricter than when he started his business nearly 40 years ago.
The number of news found: 21.
