To mark World Day for Animals in Laboratories on 24 April, “scientists” performed “procedures” similar to those conducted on primates on a restrained human “subject”, who had his head shaved, “cut open,” and fitted with an “electrode” before being force-fed “drugs” via a feeding tube, dosed with eyedrops and “had blood taken” with a syringe:
A man was strapped down, his head shaved, “cut open”, and force-fed “drugs” in a chilling street demo by PETA. Why? To expose the horror millions of animals endure in British laboratories. This shocking stunt stopped people in their tracks. pic.twitter.com/uoC1tLGFZc
The demonstration took place in front of a banner with a message reading, “Call it science, and you can get away with murder!” instructing the government to end experiments on animals:
This is the latest action in PETA’s campaign asking for a government-led roadmap to phase out all experiments:
In June, the Labour Party released its manifesto, pledging to work towards phasing out testing on animals and to “partner with scientists, industry, and civil society” to achieve this goal.
PETA is calling on the party to adopt the Research Modernisation Deal, a six-step strategy to end all animal experimentation.
“Every year, millions of mice, rats, fish, primates, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and other animals are caged, subjected to physical and psychological torment, and killed in unreliable experiments that do little to advance human health,” says PETA Senior Science Policy Manager Dr Julia Baines. “PETA is calling on the government to honour its commitment to end all experiments on animals: stop wasting money and lives on archaic animal experimentation and switch to kind, cutting-edge methods that actually help people.”
In 2023, more than 2.6 million animals were bled, poisoned, deprived of food, isolated, mutilated, or otherwise subjected to psychological suffering and physical pain in British laboratories. Millions more were bred and discarded as “surplus” because, for example, they were not of the desired sex or lacked certain disease characteristics.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits, and is urging the public to ask the government to engage directly with animal protection groups to create a roadmap for ending experiments on animals.
Horse racing is once again under scrutiny after the death of Celebre d’Allen, a 13-year-old gelding who was fatally injured during Saturday’s Randox Grand National at Aintree. Despite the pageantry and glamour often associated with the event, behind the scenes remains a brutal reality: the continued suffering and death of horses in the name of entertainment and profit.
Celebre d’Allen, trained by Philip Hobbs and Johnson White, fell at the second fence in the 30-fence, four-mile-plus steeplechase and was subsequently euthanised due to the severity of his injuries. The horse’s death is controversial because of his age – with critics arguing he should not have been ridden in the first place.
While the industry was quick to offer tributes, calling the horse “lovely” and “kind,” the tragedy highlights the inherent dangers these animals face, often without meaningful reform to protect them.
His death comes after Willy De Houelle died on the first day of the Aintree Festival.
Celebre d’Allen shows Aintree is unnecessary carnage
The Grand National has long been criticised for its exceptionally high risk to horses. Its oversized fences, long distance, and overcrowded fields create a perilous cocktail that regularly results in serious injury or death. While racing authorities boast of improved safety measures, such as fence modifications and reduced field sizes, horses continue to die.
The British Horseracing Authority and Aintree Racecourse insist they are committed to animal welfare, but incidents like this undermine their claims. In truth, the fundamental nature of events like the Grand National — pushing horses to their physical limits for the sake of gambling and spectacle — makes serious injury almost inevitable.
Celebre d’Allen is not an isolated case.
67 have lost their lives at Aintree in recent years. The racing industry, despite its wealth and influence, has failed to sufficiently address the core issues that lead to these tragedies. While tributes may pour in from trainers and owners, many animal welfare advocates argue that genuine respect for these animals would involve retiring events like the Grand National entirely.
These deaths are not accidents — they are the foreseeable consequences of an industry that prioritises human enjoyment and financial gain over animal lives.
It is absolutely heartbreaking that after being ridden in the Grand National Race until he had “no more to give”, Celebre d’Allen has died. To allow a horse of this age to be ridden in the most gruelling race in the country is disgraceful – and the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the British Horseracing Authority.
It is staggering that the racing industry continues to weave its dishonest fairytale that horses are ‘lucky’ to be born into the racing industry and that they live ‘the best life’. Horses born into this industry live quite the opposite – a dystopian existence where they must exchange their speed on a racecourse or ability to reproduce in order to stay alive. Lives in training are restricted, exploitative and bleak. Once no longer of use, they become vulnerable to an uncertain or horrifying end. If you are against animal-cruelty, then it logically follows that you are against horse-racing – and the Grand National is one of the most disturbing displays of this cruelty.
As long as the racing industry continues to treat deaths like Celebre d’Allen’s as unfortunate but acceptable losses, horses will continue to suffer and die. While the public is urged to mourn the fallen, the broader system that endangers their lives goes largely unchallenged.
Critics argue that if the sport cannot exist without the routine destruction of the very animals it relies upon, then it should not exist at all.
The death of Willy De Houelle at this year’s Aintree Festival has led to the League Against Cruel Sports repeating its calls for a new, independent horse racing regulator with animal welfare as its number one priority.
Willy De Houelle: another death that should not have happened
The national animal welfare charity has called for the body to replace the British Horse Racing Authority and for an immediate ban on the whip after Willy De Houelle died on the first day of the Aintree Festival.
The League has urged the public to boycott the festival in protest at the number of horses that die during the event every year.
Giovinco and Pikar both fell and died during last year’s Aintree Festival.
Emma Slawinski, League’s chief executive, said: “The tragic death of X, the sixty-sixth horse to die at the Aintree Festival since 2000, illustrates why we need a new, independent regulator that has horse welfare as its number one priority.
“We need to replace the British Horse Racing Authority, make immediate moves to outlaw the whip and stop sacrificing horses for entertainment and the profits of the gambling companies.”
Boycott Aintree
The League has called on the public to stay away from the Aintree festival, to stop betting on the racing and to avoid the ITV coverage and commentary which sanitises the spectacle.
The most recent Cheltenham Festival which saw two horses die while racing, recorded a 4.9% attendance slump compared to 2024. Attendance has now fallen 22 per cent since 2022.
Emma added: “There is a growing concern among the public at how the horse racing industry treats these beautiful animals, pushing them beyond what they can safely achieve and racing them to their deaths.
“How many more horses are we prepared to see lose their lives in front of a paying public before we take the steps needed to ensure their welfare is treated with paramount importance?”
National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports is urging the public to boycott the Aintree Festival in protest at the number of horses that die during the event every year.
Aintree Festival and the Grand National: horse-killers
Giovinco and Pikar both fell and died during last year’s Aintree Festival.
The League is also calling for the creation of a new, independent regulator with horse welfare as its main priority to replace the existing British Horse Racing Authority, and a ban on whips.
Emma Slawinski, League’s chief executive, said that “we’re asking the public to stay away from the Aintree festival, to stop betting on the racing and to avoid the ITV coverage and commentary which sanitises this spectacle”:
The death toll at the Aintree Festival is an indictment of racing’s track record in prioritising animal welfare – horses are being sacrificed for entertainment and for the profits of the gambling companies.
The recent Cheltenham Festival, during which two horses died while racing, recorded a 4.9% attendance slump compared to 2024.
As the Canary previously reported, Springwell Bay was the first horse to be killed at this year’s Cheltenham Festival after falling at a fence while racing and sustaining a fatal injury. It brings the death total at the Cheltenham Festival to 78 horses since the turn of the century with Animal Aid figures showing a horse dying at every single festival since 2000.
Shut it down
Emma added:
The British Horse Racing Authority is failing the horses taking part in racing and needs to be replaced with an independent regulatory body with horse welfare as its number one concern and which makes immediate moves to outlaw the whip.
I fear more horses will be lost during the Aintree Festival this year. We’re supposed to be a nation of animal lovers but year in, year out, horses are losing their lives in front of a paying public. It’s time for the welfare of horses to become our primary concern and number one priority.
National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports is urging the public to boycott the Aintree Festival in protest at the number of horses that die during the event every year.
Aintree Festival and the Grand National: horse-killers
Giovinco and Pikar both fell and died during last year’s Aintree Festival.
The League is also calling for the creation of a new, independent regulator with horse welfare as its main priority to replace the existing British Horse Racing Authority, and a ban on whips.
Emma Slawinski, League’s chief executive, said that “we’re asking the public to stay away from the Aintree festival, to stop betting on the racing and to avoid the ITV coverage and commentary which sanitises this spectacle”:
The death toll at the Aintree Festival is an indictment of racing’s track record in prioritising animal welfare – horses are being sacrificed for entertainment and for the profits of the gambling companies.
The recent Cheltenham Festival, during which two horses died while racing, recorded a 4.9% attendance slump compared to 2024.
As the Canary previously reported, Springwell Bay was the first horse to be killed at this year’s Cheltenham Festival after falling at a fence while racing and sustaining a fatal injury. It brings the death total at the Cheltenham Festival to 78 horses since the turn of the century with Animal Aid figures showing a horse dying at every single festival since 2000.
Shut it down
Emma added:
The British Horse Racing Authority is failing the horses taking part in racing and needs to be replaced with an independent regulatory body with horse welfare as its number one concern and which makes immediate moves to outlaw the whip.
I fear more horses will be lost during the Aintree Festival this year. We’re supposed to be a nation of animal lovers but year in, year out, horses are losing their lives in front of a paying public. It’s time for the welfare of horses to become our primary concern and number one priority.
Listen, I’m a vegan. I’ll be the first one to say: I wholeheartedly agree. Reducing or eliminating your meat consumption is an important way to fight factory farming. Being vegan is an important part of who I am and how I try to live out my compassion for animals. However, as a former meat-eater and a current proponent of the animal welfare movement, I will say that promoting veganism as the only way forward is actually hurting our cause.
That’s because changing your diet isn’t the only way to fight factory farming – and it might not even be the best way.
Instead of beating themselves up for not quite being able to give up cheese (and then doing nothing about it), what if any omnivore could do just as much good to fight the factory farming system for about the same cost as a streaming service subscription?
This isn’t theoretical. It costs the average omnivore just $23 a month to do as much good for animals as going entirely vegan. How? Because the most effective charities fighting factory farming have figured out how to create massive change for pennies on the dollar. Think of it as carbon offsets, but for animal welfare (let’s call it ‘diet offsetting’) – which is far more impactful than most people realise.
What is diet offsetting?
Courtesy: Compassion in World Farming
Diet offsetting is less complicated than it sounds: anyone can make a rough inventory of the animal products they eat and which animals those products come from. Then find charities working to improve those specific animals’ lives by tackling factory farming. Animal Charity Evaluators can help you identify the most effective charities that won’t waste your donations. Or, for an even simpler approach, you can use FarmKind’s offset calculator that handles the math and charity selection automatically, and lets you make a direct donation (100% of which goes directly to the chosen charities).
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that for most people (and animals), diet offsetting is a better option than going vegan. Despite decades of campaigns like Meatless Mondays and Veganuary, only about 5% of US adults identify as vegetarian or vegan – a number that hasn’t budged since 2012. Underneath that headline number lies a revealing pattern: 84% of people who’ve tried a plant-based diet report having given up, most commonly within the first year.
It would be an exaggeration to say that it’s impossible to persuade people to make dietary changes. Interventions based on appeals to preventing animal suffering have, at least a self-reported, impact on how much people eat animal products. Despite the fact that most of the discourse around animal agriculture focuses on environmental issues, it seems that, at least in the UK, the most prominent reason people go and stay vegan is animal welfare.
The big problem is that, overall, trends are definitely in the wrong direction. Per capita meat consumption in the US, with a few blips along the way, climbed from about 113 kgs per person in 1971 to about 126 kgs by 2021. While the global average is tiny by comparison, 43 kgs per person, it has risen much more sharply over the same 50-year period (from 27 kgs).
While some climate consolation can be taken from the fact that beef is no longer the most commonly eaten meat in the US, this has been a welfare disaster.
This is because cheaper poultry has replaced beef. Relatively speaking, beef cows have far fewer bad lives than chickens, which are almost exclusively farmed in highly concentrated operations. It also takes far more individual chickens to feed people the same amount as a cow. So, we’ve swapped raising a smaller number of cows with higher welfare for raising billions of chickens in some of the worst conditions experienced by land animals on the planet.
The evidence is clear: individual diet change is not delivering the kind of transformation we need to end the moral atrocity that is factory farming. On the contrary, things are getting worse.
Stressing individual action holds movements back
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
But here’s the good news: while the strategy of individual dietary change has failed to deliver, a different approach has been quietly revolutionising how animals are treated in our food system. Strategic advocacy organisations have made huge gains here.
Take The Humane League’s cage-free campaign as an example of what strategic advocacy can achieve. In just 15 years, it has convinced more than 2,400 companies – including corporate giants like Walmart, KFC, and Taco Bell – to commit to cage-free eggs. The result? The percentage of US hens living cage-free has skyrocketed from 4% to around 40%.
Let that sink in: billions of chickens will no longer spend their lives confined in wire cages so small they can’t even spread their wings – spaces literally smaller than a sheet of printer paper. And here’s the kicker: achieving this transformation costs just 85 cents per chicken. This is what effective systemic change looks like.
This is where the real opportunity lies: instead of the uphill battle trying to get people to cut back on their meat or go plant-based, we could channel that energy into supporting the organisations that are already transforming the system.
Of course, some animal advocates bristle at this suggestion. I’ll admit, when my co-founder and I first had this idea, I had a moment of pause. There’s something that feels wrong about being able to simply write a check to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Shouldn’t we be asking people to engage more deeply with the ethics of their food choices, not less? After all, many activists believe that changing individual diets is the gateway to deeper engagement with animal welfare.
But, historically, emphasis on individual action has often held movements back, not helped them.
Consider this revealing parallel: in the early 2000s, one of the biggest promoters of the ‘carbon footprint’ – the idea that we should all obsessively measure and reduce our personal impact on global warming – was none other than oil giant BP. By shifting the conversation from corporate responsibility to consumer choice, BP masterfully deflected attention from the real drivers of climate change.
The meat industry is playing from the same playbook. While we debate the ethics of holiday dinners, they’re spending millions lobbying against basic animal welfare laws, pushing through “ag-gag” legislation to criminalise whistleblowers, and running sophisticated PR campaigns that paint factory farms as idyllic family operations. They’ve even tried to make it illegal to call plant-based products “milk” or “meat” – not because consumers are confused, but to maintain their monopoly on how we think about food itself.
This is why we need to shift our focus to systemic change. Instead of letting the industry keep us arguing about personal food choices, we should be supporting the organisations that are pushing for better regulations, fighting harmful agricultural subsidies, and holding these companies accountable for their practices.
The best part about offsetting? People will actually do it
Courtesy: Paralaxis/Shutterstock
Some critics argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements, like cage-free eggs, actually entrenches factory farming by making it seem more acceptable. They say we need to push for complete abolition, not small changes that might make people feel better about eating meat.
This strategy inevitably draws criticism from abolitionists within the animal rights movement. They argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements – like cage-free eggs – actually entrenches factory farming by making it more palatable to consumers. Better conditions, they say, just ease people’s consciences while leaving the fundamental system intact. We should be pushing for complete abolition, not compromises that might make people feel better about eating meat.
But this argument ignores how successful social movements actually work. Take child labour: it wasn’t eliminated in the US overnight. The path to abolition began with seemingly modest reforms – limiting working hours, requiring breaks, and restricting the most dangerous jobs. Each small victory built momentum for bigger changes.
Moreover, while we work towards evolving the food system away from cruel and destructive practices like factory farming, incremental changes make an immediate and meaningful difference for animals suffering right now. A hen who can spread her wings, scratch in the dirt, and dust bathe isn’t living in ideal conditions – but she’s significantly better off than one confined in a tiny cage. To dismiss these improvements as mere window dressing is to ignore the very real suffering we can prevent today.
But, the strongest argument for offsetting is also the most simple: people will actually do it.
For most of us, writing a check is a much easier ask than changing your entire diet – which means more people will actually help. The numbers bear this out: about 14% of Americans already donate to animal causes each year – almost three times as many people as identify as vegetarian or vegan. Imagine what organizations like The Humane League could achieve if we channelled more of our energy into funding their successful campaigns instead of arguing about personal food choices.
Right now, billions of animals are suffering in factory farms while we debate what’s on our plates. The fastest path to ending their suffering isn’t waiting for everyone to go vegan – it’s empowering everyone who cares about animals to make a difference, whether they eat meat or not. The system won’t change because we all become perfect ethical consumers. It will change because we organised, funded, and fought for that change.
Whether you’re reading this as a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore, or total carnivore – remember, you don’t have to change your diet to make a difference in the systemic fight against factory farming (which hurts us all). Just make sure you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
Listen, I’m a vegan. I’ll be the first one to say: I wholeheartedly agree. Reducing or eliminating your meat consumption is an important way to fight factory farming. Being vegan is an important part of who I am and how I try to live out my compassion for animals. However, as a former meat-eater and a current proponent of the animal welfare movement, I will say that promoting veganism as the only way forward is actually hurting our cause.
That’s because changing your diet isn’t the only way to fight factory farming – and it might not even be the best way.
Instead of beating themselves up for not quite being able to give up cheese (and then doing nothing about it), what if any omnivore could do just as much good to fight the factory farming system for about the same cost as a streaming service subscription?
This isn’t theoretical. It costs the average omnivore just $23 a month to do as much good for animals as going entirely vegan. How? Because the most effective charities fighting factory farming have figured out how to create massive change for pennies on the dollar. Think of it as carbon offsets, but for animal welfare (let’s call it ‘diet offsetting’) – which is far more impactful than most people realise.
What is diet offsetting?
Courtesy: Compassion in World Farming
Diet offsetting is less complicated than it sounds: anyone can make a rough inventory of the animal products they eat and which animals those products come from. Then find charities working to improve those specific animals’ lives by tackling factory farming. Animal Charity Evaluators can help you identify the most effective charities that won’t waste your donations. Or, for an even simpler approach, you can use FarmKind’s offset calculator that handles the math and charity selection automatically, and lets you make a direct donation (100% of which goes directly to the chosen charities).
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that for most people (and animals), diet offsetting is a better option than going vegan. Despite decades of campaigns like Meatless Mondays and Veganuary, only about 5% of US adults identify as vegetarian or vegan – a number that hasn’t budged since 2012. Underneath that headline number lies a revealing pattern: 84% of people who’ve tried a plant-based diet report having given up, most commonly within the first year.
It would be an exaggeration to say that it’s impossible to persuade people to make dietary changes. Interventions based on appeals to preventing animal suffering have, at least a self-reported, impact on how much people eat animal products. Despite the fact that most of the discourse around animal agriculture focuses on environmental issues, it seems that, at least in the UK, the most prominent reason people go and stay vegan is animal welfare.
The big problem is that, overall, trends are definitely in the wrong direction. Per capita meat consumption in the US, with a few blips along the way, climbed from about 113 kgs per person in 1971 to about 126 kgs by 2021. While the global average is tiny by comparison, 43 kgs per person, it has risen much more sharply over the same 50-year period (from 27 kgs).
While some climate consolation can be taken from the fact that beef is no longer the most commonly eaten meat in the US, this has been a welfare disaster.
This is because cheaper poultry has replaced beef. Relatively speaking, beef cows have far fewer bad lives than chickens, which are almost exclusively farmed in highly concentrated operations. It also takes far more individual chickens to feed people the same amount as a cow. So, we’ve swapped raising a smaller number of cows with higher welfare for raising billions of chickens in some of the worst conditions experienced by land animals on the planet.
The evidence is clear: individual diet change is not delivering the kind of transformation we need to end the moral atrocity that is factory farming. On the contrary, things are getting worse.
Stressing individual action holds movements back
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
But here’s the good news: while the strategy of individual dietary change has failed to deliver, a different approach has been quietly revolutionising how animals are treated in our food system. Strategic advocacy organisations have made huge gains here.
Take The Humane League’s cage-free campaign as an example of what strategic advocacy can achieve. In just 15 years, it has convinced more than 2,400 companies – including corporate giants like Walmart, KFC, and Taco Bell – to commit to cage-free eggs. The result? The percentage of US hens living cage-free has skyrocketed from 4% to around 40%.
Let that sink in: billions of chickens will no longer spend their lives confined in wire cages so small they can’t even spread their wings – spaces literally smaller than a sheet of printer paper. And here’s the kicker: achieving this transformation costs just 85 cents per chicken. This is what effective systemic change looks like.
This is where the real opportunity lies: instead of the uphill battle trying to get people to cut back on their meat or go plant-based, we could channel that energy into supporting the organisations that are already transforming the system.
Of course, some animal advocates bristle at this suggestion. I’ll admit, when my co-founder and I first had this idea, I had a moment of pause. There’s something that feels wrong about being able to simply write a check to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Shouldn’t we be asking people to engage more deeply with the ethics of their food choices, not less? After all, many activists believe that changing individual diets is the gateway to deeper engagement with animal welfare.
But, historically, emphasis on individual action has often held movements back, not helped them.
Consider this revealing parallel: in the early 2000s, one of the biggest promoters of the ‘carbon footprint’ – the idea that we should all obsessively measure and reduce our personal impact on global warming – was none other than oil giant BP. By shifting the conversation from corporate responsibility to consumer choice, BP masterfully deflected attention from the real drivers of climate change.
The meat industry is playing from the same playbook. While we debate the ethics of holiday dinners, they’re spending millions lobbying against basic animal welfare laws, pushing through “ag-gag” legislation to criminalise whistleblowers, and running sophisticated PR campaigns that paint factory farms as idyllic family operations. They’ve even tried to make it illegal to call plant-based products “milk” or “meat” – not because consumers are confused, but to maintain their monopoly on how we think about food itself.
This is why we need to shift our focus to systemic change. Instead of letting the industry keep us arguing about personal food choices, we should be supporting the organisations that are pushing for better regulations, fighting harmful agricultural subsidies, and holding these companies accountable for their practices.
The best part about offsetting? People will actually do it
Courtesy: Paralaxis/Shutterstock
Some critics argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements, like cage-free eggs, actually entrenches factory farming by making it seem more acceptable. They say we need to push for complete abolition, not small changes that might make people feel better about eating meat.
This strategy inevitably draws criticism from abolitionists within the animal rights movement. They argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements – like cage-free eggs – actually entrenches factory farming by making it more palatable to consumers. Better conditions, they say, just ease people’s consciences while leaving the fundamental system intact. We should be pushing for complete abolition, not compromises that might make people feel better about eating meat.
But this argument ignores how successful social movements actually work. Take child labour: it wasn’t eliminated in the US overnight. The path to abolition began with seemingly modest reforms – limiting working hours, requiring breaks, and restricting the most dangerous jobs. Each small victory built momentum for bigger changes.
Moreover, while we work towards evolving the food system away from cruel and destructive practices like factory farming, incremental changes make an immediate and meaningful difference for animals suffering right now. A hen who can spread her wings, scratch in the dirt, and dust bathe isn’t living in ideal conditions – but she’s significantly better off than one confined in a tiny cage. To dismiss these improvements as mere window dressing is to ignore the very real suffering we can prevent today.
But, the strongest argument for offsetting is also the most simple: people will actually do it.
For most of us, writing a check is a much easier ask than changing your entire diet – which means more people will actually help. The numbers bear this out: about 14% of Americans already donate to animal causes each year – almost three times as many people as identify as vegetarian or vegan. Imagine what organizations like The Humane League could achieve if we channelled more of our energy into funding their successful campaigns instead of arguing about personal food choices.
Right now, billions of animals are suffering in factory farms while we debate what’s on our plates. The fastest path to ending their suffering isn’t waiting for everyone to go vegan – it’s empowering everyone who cares about animals to make a difference, whether they eat meat or not. The system won’t change because we all become perfect ethical consumers. It will change because we organised, funded, and fought for that change.
Whether you’re reading this as a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore, or total carnivore – remember, you don’t have to change your diet to make a difference in the systemic fight against factory farming (which hurts us all). Just make sure you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
The first horse, Springwell Bay has died at this year’s Cheltenham Festival after falling at a fence while racing and sustaining a fatal injury.
Springwell Bay: killed at Cheltenham
It brings the death total at the Cheltenham Festival to 77 horses since the turn of the century with Animal Aid figures showing a horse dying at every single festival since 2000.
Announcing the sad news on ITV Racing, presenter Ed Chamberlin said: “There will be a sad postscript to the race I’m afraid because I have been handed a note to say that Springwell Bay, who took a nasty fall and was immediately tended to by the veterinary professionals, sadly sustained a fatal injury. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the connections of Springwell Bay. That is a sad finish to the race that was won by Caldwell Potter.”
Of course, these condolences are less for the horse, and more for the people making money off it.
National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports has been calling on the public to boycott the Cheltenham Festival in protest at its shocking safety record and the 76 horses that have died racing there since 2000.
At least one horse has died at every single festival that has been held since the turn of the century and campaigners fear this year will be no different, with gambling profits being put before horse welfare.
The League is calling on people to not attend the festival, bet on it or watch the ITV coverage and the advertising set to run alongside it.
It has also lost faith in the British Horse Racing Authority and is calling for an independent regulatory body with horse welfare as it number one priority along with a ban on the use of the whip for ‘encouragement’.
Therefore, Springwell Bay’s death was sadly predictable.
No more
Emma Slawinski, chief executive at the League Against Cruel Sports, has expressed her concerns at the terrible news:
The profits of gambling companies and people’s entertainment are being put before the well-being of the horses.
We are calling on people to boycott the festival by staying away, by refusing to bet on it, and by avoiding the TV coverage and advertising, which glosses over the cruelty of what is taking place.”
The British Horse Racing Authority needs to be replaced by an independent regulatory body that has horse welfare as its number one priority and that moves to ban the cruel use of the whip.
Emma added:
We said in advance that it was almost inevitable we will see more horses being sacrificed during this year’s festival, losing their lives while people in the stands, unaware of the cruelty they are supporting, check their betting slips and phones. And now Springwell Bay lies dead.
At least one horse has died at every single festival that has been held since the turn of the century and campaigners fear this year will be no different, with gambling profits being put before horse welfare.
The League is calling on people to not attend the festival, bet on it or watch the ITV coverage and the advertising set to run alongside it.
It has also lost faith in the British Horse Racing Authority and is calling for an independent regulatory body with horse welfare as it number one priority along with a ban on the use of the whip for ‘encouragement’.
Emma Slawinski, chief executive at the League Against Cruel Sports, said:
To have 76 horses dying at the Cheltenham Festival since 2000 is staggering and simply unacceptable if you are serious about animal welfare.
The profits of gambling companies and people’s entertainment are being put before the well-being of the horses who are being pushed beyond what they can safely achieve.
We are calling on people to boycott the festival by staying away, by refusing to bet on it, and by avoiding the TV coverage and advertising, which glosses over the cruelty of what is taking place.
Highland Hunter and Ose Partir both died while racing at the Cheltenham Festival in 2024, Malinello died in 2023, while 2022 saw four deaths – Ginto, Born Patriot, Mindsmadeup, and Shallwehaveonemore.
The use of the whip in horse racing was banned in Sweden in 2022 and can only be used to ward off a dangerous situation.
Stop supporting this
Emma added:
The British Horse Racing Authority needs to be replaced by an independent regulatory body that has horse welfare as its number one priority and that moves to ban the cruel use of the whip.
The tragic reality is that it is almost inevitable we will see more horses being sacrificed during this year’s festival, losing their lives while people in the stands, unaware of the cruelty they are supporting, check their betting slips and phones.
The UK government has once again been caught manipulating science to justify the mass killing of badgers – this time, under the Labour Party. Another review of the badger cull is, according to one group, little more than a device to ‘maintain the status quo’.
The badger cull: another corrupt review
A secretive DEFRA review on bovine TB (bTB) control is being run by the very same people who have spent years defending badger culling, undermining any chance of an independent assessment. In response to the scandalous revelation, Protect the Wild has launched a petition demanding the removal of conflicted panel members.
The review, launched in January under minister Daniel Zeichner, is supposed to examine the latest evidence on bTB policy. But instead of selecting neutral experts, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has stacked the panel with long-time pro-cull academics, including Professor Charles Godfray of Oxford University—a figure who previously helped justify badger culling in 2018.
In response to this scandal, wildlife campaign group Protect the Wild has launched a petition demanding that Professor Godfray and other conflicted panel members step down immediately, and that DEFRA appoint a genuinely independent review panel.
Maintaining the status quo
For years, the UK government has ignored independent research showing that badger culling has failed to control bTB in cattle. Instead, DEFRA has relied on advice from the very academics and industry insiders who helped create and defend this disastrous policy in the first place.
Professor Charles Godfray was part of the 2018 bTB review, which led to the continuation of badger culling under Michael Gove. His return to this panel raises serious conflicts of interest.
Oxford statistician Bernard Silverman—another panelist—will be reviewing his own university’s work, a blatant breach of scientific independence.
The BTB Partnership, which oversees the review, is stacked with livestock industry figures and pro-cull advocates, making impartial decision-making impossible.
This latest panel isn’t about reviewing the science—it’s about protecting the same failed policies that have led to over 230,000 badgers being slaughtered in England since 2013.
Labour’s broken promises
Despite promising to follow the science, Labour has allowed badger culling to continue in so-called Low Risk Areas, bowing to pressure from the same DEFRA officials who expanded the cull under the Conservatives.
Rob Pownall, Founder of Protect the Wild, said:
This is yet another rigged review designed to rubber-stamp the killing of badgers. DEFRA is once again allowing a group of pro-cull insiders to dominate the debate, ensuring that independent voices are silenced. We demand that Charles Godfray step down immediately, and that the entire panel is replaced with truly impartial experts. The public will not accept another sham review.
Public pressure can force change on the badger cull
Wildlife campaign group Protect the Wild has launched a petition calling for the removal of Professor Charles Godfray from DEFRA’s bTB review panel, alongside demands for a truly independent assessment of bTB policy. The group is urging the public to take action by:
Signing the petition to remove conflicted panel members and replace them with impartial experts.
Writing to Minister Daniel Zeichner to demand accountability and transparency in the review process.
Sharing this story to expose the biased panel and increase pressure on DEFRA to rethink its approach.
Earlier this year, public pressure forced the government to scrap Rishi Sunak’s flawed consultation on badger culling. Protect the Wild believes the same pressure can stop this sham review before it rubber-stamps another failed policy.
More than 175 food businesses across Asia have committed to improving their sourcing policies in light of sustainability and animal welfare, supported by a US non-profit.
A total of 83 food companies committed to implementing improved sourcing and production policies across Asia in 2024, as a result of campaigning by sustainability NGO Lever Foundation.
This is in addition to the 95 such corporate policies secured by the charity in 2022 and 2023 from food companies based or operating in Asia, impacting production covering “several million farm animals per year”.
“We’re encouraged by the growing commitment from food companies across Asia to adopt more sustainable and humane sourcing practices,” said Lily Tse, corporate outreach manager at Lever Foundation.
“These 83 new corporate policies generated last year represent meaningful progress. By working closely with companies of all sizes, from major producers to local restaurants, we’re seeing real transformation in how food is sourced and produced in Asia.”
China plant-based partnerships in focus
Courtesy: Accor Group
Among the corporate policies Lever Foundation says it generated last year are 17 shifts towards improved production systems, and five pledges to significantly ramp up the use of plant-based foods.
According to its website, it has helped shift 29 million corporate meals to plant-based and prevented 82 million kgs of CO2e from businesses each year.
Its impact in China is particularly notable. Lever Foundation partnered with IHG Hotels & Resorts Greater China to make 30% of the group’s offerings plant-based by 2025, a commitment that was matched a few months later by Dossen Hotel Group, and bettered by Orange Hotels, which pledged to convert 70% of its menus to plant-based options at 750 hotels.
Lever China also signed a strategic partnership with the Low-Carbon Hotel Development Institute, a state-affiliated organisation in China, to boost the adoption of plant-based foods in the country’s hotel industry.
These efforts come at a time when plant-based food is becoming more popular in local diets, making up a majority of the country’s protein supply. Polling shows that almost all (98%) Chinese consumers would eat more plants if they were informed about the benefits of a vegan diet.
China may be world’s largest meat consumer – making up 28% of the global consumption growth in the decade to 2023, with intakes set to increase further until 2030 – but experts suggest that half of all protein consumption in the country must come from alternative sources by 2060, if it is to decarbonise.
“The steady growth in corporate commitments throughout 2024 reflects the value of sustained engagement and clear communication for driving positive progress in the food system,” added Kertna Tharmaraja, communications manager at Lever Foundation.
Can Asian hospitality meet the sustainability moment?
Courtesy: Patarapong/Getty Images
The remaining 51 commitments generated by Lever Foundation in 2024 came from companies small, medium and large – including retailers, hospitality groups, bakeries, cafés and foodservice operators – to remove “particularly destructive practices” like caged farming from their supply chains.
Surveys by GMO Research show that at least three-quarters of consumers prefer cage-free eggs in markets like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.
In South Korea, Accor Hotels has removed caged eggs from 90% of its operations, and will fully eliminate them by this year, with support from Lever Foundation. This would speak to the 79% of Koreans who believe businesses should use cage-free eggs, and 69% who’re willing to spend more on them in restaurants.
So far, about 40% of the corporate policies it helped introduce have been implemented, with the remainder set to be rolled out in the years ahead, within publicly announced timelines. Of the 83 companies, 77 are based in Asia, with the rest having headquarters in Oceania, Europe or the Americas.
“Lever’s approach of working closely with partners across the supply chain has helped facilitate practical, implementable change that aligns with both business goals and sustainability imperatives,” said Tharmaraja.
“The willingness of businesses to embrace better practices – from improved production systems to expanded plant-based offerings – reflects an encouraging shift in corporate priorities and consumer expectations.”
Courtesy: PwC
According to PwC, 43% of consumers in Asia-Pacific are making more eco-minded purchases, and a third are changing how they eat in line with planetary health. And 55% say they’ll spend more to stay at an environmentally friendly hotel, much higher than their counterparts in the rest of the world (around 40%).
Meanwhile, Lever’s venture capital fund, called Lever VC, recently announced the first close of its Fund II, which will deploy an initial $50M in early-stage agrifood tech startups. Among the first five startups to receive financing are Gavan Technologies (maker of plant-protein-based Savor butter), sweet protein innovator Oobli, and mycelium meat startup Mush Foods. To date, Lever VC has completed over 100 investments in the category.
Analysis by Protect the Wild has found that over 500 incidents involving neglect and mistreatment of hunting hounds occurred in the first half of the current hunting season. The organisation has been compiling evidence on these incidents to provide much needed data on the welfare challenges that hunting dogs face. Hunts claim that they care about their hounds, but these shocking figures tell an entirely different story.
Hunting hounds welfare: a groundbreaking piece of research
Hunting hound welfare has been a subject of concern for years. But meaningful debate on the issue has been stifled by a lack of data that quantifies the welfare challenges these dogs face. Protect the Wild already compiles an annual report of hunt incidents, such as instances of wildlife persecution and trespassing, that hunt saboteurs and monitors record when they attend meets. Now, the organisationis compiling similar information on hound incidents to fill the data gap when it comes to their welfare.
By analysing reports published by hunt monitors and saboteur groups between 10 August 2024 and 20 January 2025, Protect the Wild identified 537 incidents concerning the welfare of hunting hounds. The incidents span 75 hunts and cover a range of minor to severe welfare issues.
Protect the Wild has categorised the incidents into eight different groups. Hounds being stranded is one of them, of which there were 53 incidents. Stranding puts the dogs at risk of threats like dehydration, harsh weather, and traffic accidents. A further 39 incidents involved hounds having visible injuries, minor and severe, that occurred during the monitored meet. Dogs also became stuck in fencing in 34 incidents, leading to potential injuries and distress.
Additionally, reports show that hounds were hit or kicked (12 incidents) and roughly handled (18 incidents) by their caretakers lifting, restraining, or throwing them inappropriately. In 10 incidents, hounds were hit by vehicles, which resulted in minor injuries, serious injuries and in some cases fatalities.
Different standards
The most common incident by far was hounds being lost or out of control, which happened on a massive 287 occasions. Out-of-control and lost hounds can be a risk to themselves, as well as to others, such as wildlife and farmed animals, or private property.
There were a further 84 miscellaneous incidents of varying kinds, such as hounds falling from heights, becoming trapped in dangerous conditions like deep/flowing water, being taken out during severe weather warnings, and running dangerously on roads.
These findings reveal that the hunting community is being held to a dramatically different standard to the rest of the British public when it comes to the welfare of kept animals. Citizens face stringent regulations regarding dogs deemed “out of control,” yet hunts consistently evade scrutiny despite the clear welfare risks to their dogs and negative impacts on affected members of the public.
To shine a light on this double standard and give the issue of hunting dog welfare the attention it sorely needs, Protect the Wild will continue this work and produce comprehensive reports covering hound incidents in each hunting season spanning 2022, 2023, and 2024.
In light of the government’s promised ban on trail hunting, Protect the Wild is also calling on hunts to cease breeding hounds and put a strategy in place to rehome existing individuals.
Hunting hounds suffer too
Presently, hunts across the country are weaponising hounds to oppose a hunting ban, claiming it would leave their future uncertain. This is nothing more than a fearmongering tactic, as rehoming is an entirely feasible option. Protect the Wild’s Rehome the Hounds campaign makes this abundantly clear, by showcasing rescued foxhounds who are living their best lives in homes.
In all of its hound-focused work, Protect the Wild aims to ensure foxhounds are treated with the care and respect they deserve while shedding light on practices, and the hunts, that are failing them.
Protect the Wild’s Charlotte Smith, who compiled the figures on hound incidents, said:
While public concern has focused on the suffering of foxes, it’s vital to recognise that foxhounds suffer too. Particularly with the hunting ban on the horizon, there is growing concern that hunts may attempt to manipulate animal lovers by portraying foxhounds as victims of this ban, while ignoring the welfare concerns these animals already face.
Foxhounds often endure injuries, abandonment, and dangerous environments, during hunting, with even less public transparency regarding how they are bred, trained, or cared for when injured or no longer deemed useful. The welfare of foxhounds can’t continue to be easily hidden and weaponised by hunts when it suits them. It’s time to demand greater care, accountability, and transparency, from the hunts responsible for their welfare.
Footage from eight Christmas events across the UK has highlighted significant welfare concerns for reindeer, with 75% of the animals displaying stress indicators like trembling or avoidance, an investigation by a group of animal rights organisations has found. OneKind, Animal Aid, Born Free, and Freedom for Animals reviewed the footage and consulted Dr. Tayla Hammond, an expert in animal…
On Monday 16 December, Cumbria Safari Zoo announced its plans to close after stacking up years worth of failures and animal rights abuses. However, all is not quite as it seems:
South Lakes Safari Zoo Closure: A Step Towards a Better Future?
What will happen to the animals they hold captive?
The park, previously known as South Lakes Safari zoo and South Lakes Wild Animal Park, has been drowning in controversy for years. In 2013, a Sumatran Tiger attacked and killed a zoo keeper after a ‘lockable self-closing door’ failed.
Cumbria Zoo Company Limited (CZCL) took over the zoo in 2017, when the previous owner, David Gill (who has since changed his name, to David Rivera) was unsurprisingly refused a license. This followed the deaths of nearly 500 animals in only three years.
The company was formed by the zoo’s previous board of directors and promised major improvements. However, a BBC investigation earlier this year uncovered allegations of avoidable animal deaths, welfare issues, and a bullying culture.
CZCL is also involved in a dispute with the Zoo Investment Company (ZIC). They own the land the zoo operates on, and want control of it.
Taking their problems with them?
Whilst this initially seems like a great move, a bit of digging seems to reveal that it seems to be a relocation, rather than a complete closure.
Plans have been lodged by the operators of South Lakes Safari Zoo to create a wild animal reserve at its Tebay site with exotic non-native species.
New Roots Holding Company Ltd has submitted a planning application to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority to create the visitor attraction and wild animal reserve at Brockholes Farm.
“The Applicant intends to cease operations at the Safari Zoo in Dalton and develop a more integrated and smaller scale visitor attraction at Brockholes Farm to align with their priorities, values and vision.
The funniest part of this? All the evidence suggests their ‘values and vision’ are nothing short of animal abuse and controversy – including the theft of two Humboldt Penguins in 2018.
Laura Walton, Campaigns Manager at Freedom for Animals, told the Canary:
The closure of Cumbria Safari Zoo is a monumental victory, not only for Freedom for Animals, but for all the animal protection advocates and organisations who have tirelessly campaigned for this outcome.
For nearly a decade, we have carried out undercover investigations, exposed shocking welfare and safety failures, and relentlessly pushed for action. While this news marks a major step forward, our main concern is, and always has been, for the safety and future of animals held captive at the zoo.
The litany of animal welfare and safety issues documented to have occurred at the zoo under the watch of both past and present management, has shown a concerning and consistent lack of appropriate care. Moving the animals to a different site will not address the core issues of why such failings have taken place over the years.
Therefore, we call on the local authority to ensure the animals relocation to appropriate sanctuaries; where they can finally receive the care and dignity they deserve.
The company’s continued damning litany of failures mean that it should be nowhere near the care of animals ever again. However, the half-arsed closure of the zoo speaks to a bigger problem anyway – the captivity of animals for private profit puts the bottom line above animal welfare, every single time.
In this excerpt taken from Chapter 5 of the new book Hungry Beautiful Animals, author and philosopher Matthew Halteman argues that choosing not to eat animals can usher us into a higher state of consciousness.
On the day that a crestfallen bulldog and a carrot-desecrated yard conspired with the universe to convince me of the moral equivalence of dogs and pigs, I would still have been deeply skeptical of the idea that orcas enjoy personal experiences in complex family cultures within a shared dolphin world.
As impressive as dolphins are, I might have argued back then, their accomplishments are still modest compared to skyscrapers and symphony orchestras. And when you’re out there trying to be taken seriously as a vegan, you’re not going to lead with animal biographies, especially those of apex predators allegedly so brutal in their ascendance that they deserve the epithet “killer.”
The only quicker way to achieve Annoying Vegan status is to mount a campaign for termite liberation at a pest control trade show. A better strategy, or so it seemed to me in the early years of going vegan, was to keep the focus tight on shame-inducing comparisons between the two classes of animals that most depend on our mercy: the companions whose bodies we hug, and the “food animals” whose bodies we eat.
As my inner ecology has become more unified and my vegan practice has gained confidence, it’s slowly dawned on me that the stories of free-living creatures striving to flourish in a wider world that provokes their desires and challenges their efforts can powerfully unveil the beauty of a new vegan normal in ways that appealing to the suffering of domesticated animals often cannot. This is certainly not to say that free-living animals are more beautiful or morally important than their domesticated fellow creatures. To render any such comparative judgment absurd, simply feast your eyes on the beauty and dignity radiating from every page of Isa Leshko’s magnificent Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries. The point is to interrupt our regularly scheduled program of seeing animals primarily in contrast to assumed human ascendence as dependent, oppressed, and suffering, so that exposure to their flourishing might invite us to imagine who they are beyond the human/animal binary that renders them lesser-than before we even know the first thing about them.
Courtesy: Basic Books
By retraining our consciousness of the lives of animals on narratives of free-living creatures doing well, we can transform our default vision of them as underlings, even and especially the domesticated animals we thought we already knew. By these lights, astonishing capabilities for living well on their own terms come brilliantly into focus that must hide in plain sight when we experience animals primarily within the overwhelmingly negative valences of our most common inherited conceptions of them. Instead of seeing animals merely as docile pets, expendable tools, brutal predators, cringing prey, or destructive pests—beings who, in all cases, are either servile underlings we feel entitled to dominate or encroaching aggressors we feel entitled to destroy—we can envision them as potentially flourishing creatures free to pursue ends uniquely their own.
We must achieve heightened awareness of the complex worlds and awe-inspiring capabilities that dignify other creatures and explode our comparative, inaccurate, and ultimately oppressive conceptions of them as subhuman. Because of our collective history of oppressing animals—and indeed, weaponizing the very idea of “the animal” to facilitate the oppression of fellow human beings—it is unsurprising and even fitting that our aspirations to go vegan often begin in lament over the cruel treatment of victims of this oppression. But going vegan can progressively lift us into heightened consciousness of members of other species as creatures whose lives are their own to cherish, beautiful in themselves and alive to possibilities we can never experience even as they provoke our deepest awe and respect.
“Animal consciousness” may sound a little spooky, but I think most of us have ample experience with what I have in mind. Just think of it as the felt human awareness that other animals have personal lives— that they are creatures who, like us, must make their own way in a world that pushes back. To have animal consciousness is to understand at some level, even if only occasionally in inklings, that other animals have lives that matter to them, lives that could be better or could be worse from their own perspective. Such creatures have experiences, desires, abilities to seek things they want and avoid things they dislike, and their desires are often personally inflected. Some dogs eat six pounds of carrots a week while others never touch the stuff.
Courtesy: Basic Books/Green Queen
But all dogs are cognitively, emotionally, socially, and physically invested in doing well for themselves, as their gorgeously shameless trash-rummaging, pre-vacation pouting, backyard showboating, and massage-begging ways attest. Animal consciousness comes in degrees and waxes and wanes situationally in keeping with how presently threatening or invigorating one finds the prospect that human beings are not the only creatures on the planet who cherish doing well. As children, many of us enjoy such high levels of animal consciousness that our fierce caring for the feathered and furry extends even to our stuffed animals (as any unlucky parent who accidentally smothers a plush sloth at bedtime is abruptly reminded). As we age, sustaining such high levels of animal consciousness becomes increasingly inconvenient, as our perceived interests in doing well come increasingly into conflict with those of other animals.
To the extent that our well-being seems to depend on steaks, chops, milk, and eggs, our animal consciousness contracts to the point of seeing animals, if we see them at all, as instinct-driven ambulatory objects ready to serve as tools for human use. But when a squirrel darts in front of the car or a tufted titmouse careens into the house, our consciousness intuitively if temporarily expands to receive these creatures as having interests in striving and surviving that soccer balls and paper planes clearly lack. And every now and then, when a mother mallard emerges from the brush with ducklings in tow, or a family of raccoons crests the garage roof on a moonlit quest for ripening grapes, our animal consciousness can instantaneously dilate into capacious curiosity, wonder, or even awe at their strivings. Most of us have it in us to be dazzled by other animals, at least when their flourishing demands nothing of us. In thrall to this bedazzlement, we can’t help but wish our fellow creatures well.
National animal welfare charity the League Against Cruel Sports has welcomed the ban on snares which comes into force in Scotland on Monday 25 November. It called on the UK government to deliver on its manifesto commitment and ban these barbaric traps in England as well.
Snares: banned in Scotland – so why not England?
The League has campaigned successfully with partners in recent years to get snares banned in both Scotland and Wales, leaving England and Northern Ireland as the only countries in the UK where they remain legal.
Will Morton, head of public affairs at the League Against Cruel Sports, said:
Snares are cruel and indiscriminate traps which have now thankfully been outlawed by both the Scottish and Welsh governments.
We welcomed the manifesto commitment by the Labour Party to improve animal welfare and ban snares and now look forward to the Government announcing new legislation to ban snares in England as a matter of priority.
Snares are cruel wire traps which are used primarily by the shooting industry to kill wildlife on and around ‘game’ bird shoots to maintain artificially high stocks of grouse and non-native pheasants and red legged partridges simply so they can be shot.
Government figures show up to 200,000 of these traps lie hidden in the English countryside at any one time, ready to tighten around the neck, torso or legs of their victims and causing immense suffering and pain before the animal is shot or faces a lingering death.
They trap indiscriminately and the same research from DEFRA show nearly three quarters of the animals caught are not the intended target species and include animals such as hares, badgers, otters and even people’s pets.
They must be consigned to history
Both the Scottish and Welsh governments have rejected attempts by the shooting industry to rebrand snares as humane cable restraints, a term used to mask the cruelty of these devices.
Snares are now being banned in Scotland as part of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024.
It follows a ban on these brutal traps in Wales taking effect in October 2023 following the Agriculture (Wales) Act being passed.
Will Morton added:
Consigning these brutal traps to the history books will be a huge step forward for animal welfare and we urge the Government to make good on its promises.
The vast majority of the public will support moves to end the use of snares and the pain and suffering they inflict on wildlife.
A short film calling on the Scottish Government to ban greyhound racing has been projected onto London’s Piccadilly Lights, in a move which drew attention to the unnecessary plight of greyhounds – as well as a campaign to outlaw the practice.
Campaign to ban greyhound racing gets the Piccadilly treatment
On 14 November, a snippet of the film which was declared the winner of the animal welfare category at the 2024 Big Syn International Film Festival, was shown on Europe’s biggest screen to the roaring support and cheers of scores of onlookers, filmmakers, and their supporters:
The animated film is from the Unbound the Greyhound coalition which comprises of nine animal welfare groups.
Members of the coalition include campaigning charities, rehoming centres, and an all-party parliamentary group: OneKind, All-Party Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group (APDAWG), Animal Concern, Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home, GREY2K USA Worldwide, Hope Rescue, League Against Cruel Sports Scotland, Say No to Greyhound Racing in Scotland, and Scotland Against Greyhound Exploitation (SAGE).
The film compares the lives of Bob the greyhound, who has been rescued from the greyhound racing industry, and fictional greyhound, Bea, who remains in the racing industry. Through the narration of Bob the greyhound, the short film explores the welfare issues of dog racing and highlights the need for a phase out to dog racing.
The film was declared the winner of the animal welfare category at the 2024 Big Syn International Film Festival Awards on Friday 8 November, in a gala awards ceremony at Curzon Soho in London:
A powerful display
Spokesperson for the coalition, OneKind’s Head of Campaigns and Media, Eve Massie Bishop, said:
“Seeing our film that calls for a ban on greyhound racing in Scotland light up Piccadilly Lights was a monumental moment for us. This powerful display has brought our message to one of the busiest spots in London, highlighting the often-unseen suffering behind greyhound racing and driving support for an end to this archaic pastime.
“2,751 deaths and 26,522 injuries were recorded across Greyhound Board of Great Britain tracks between 2018-2023. This is deeply upsetting as it is but doesn’t even account for greyhounds raced at unlicensed tracks, such as Scotland’s last track, Thornton Stadium.
“Within less than a year of launching the coalition, MSP Mark Ruskell lodged a Bill to phase out greyhound racing in Scotland, that has received strong backing from both the public and MSPs. We look forward to supporting it as it progresses in Parliament.”
Uggs has released a long-awaited line of vegan shoes and socks with New York’s Collina Strada but as with many animal-free alternatives to conventional materials, the plastic waste cost remains high.
After years of calls from consumers and animal welfare activists, Australian sheepskin boot maker Ugg finally introduced a vegan line of its famous shoes last month, though notably, while Collina Strada markets them as vegan, Uggs has mostly resisted using the label.
In collaboration with Hillary Taymour’s fashion label Collina Strada, the lineup comprises six shoes – from Ruffle Boots to Mini Platforms – as well as thigh-high socks. They’re available in the UK, with the shoes ranging from £180 to £230, and the socks retailing at £45.
Instead of using animal-derived components like sheepskin and leather, the shoes are made from what the company describes as ‘plant-based ingredients’.
But while the animal-free footwear is a major win for animal rights – the move was hailed by Peta too – there’s still some way to go in terms of sustainability, particularly when it comes to what plastic waste activists term ‘end of life’.
Vegan Uggs a positive sign, but not without their own problems
Courtesy: Ugg/Collina Strada
Ugg touts a range of innovative new materials for its vegan collection. The Ruffle Boots, for example, contain vegan organza, a textile blend of recycled polyester and elastane, sugarcane EVA (a rubber-like polymer), and a synthetic coating made from 52% plant-based materials and recycled microfibre.
Meanwhile, the Classic Mini Uggs have a Tencel-based faux fur (mixed with recycled polyester), sugarcane EVA, and the same synthetic coating, and the Thigh High socks are 97% polyester (not recycled, according to the brand’s website) and 3% elastane.
According to the material’s manufacturers, sugarcane-based EVA can be composted, recycled or reused in the same cycle as fossil-based EVA. All that sounds great. The problem? Compost facilities are few and far between in most countries, recycling infrastructure is patchy and most consumers aren’t aware of where to dispose of old shoes (other than a second-hand store). Further, while the sugarcane EVA on its own can theoretically be degraded, once it’s mixed with other materials, as in this case, it becomes pretty much impossible to recycle (or compost).
Elastane, which is made from polyurethane (a type of fossil-fuel-based plastic), can be key for textile stretchability and durability— it’s what makes your yoga pants stretchy— but comes at a cost for the planet. Making elastane is an energy-intensive, highly polluting production process, and for all its functional attributes, elastane is non-degradable, remaining in the environment for hundreds of years (unless it is burned).
Then there’s recycled polyester (rPET), a “reuse” upgrade to one of the most commonly used plastic materials globally. It is made by melting existing plastic (usually bottles) and re-spinning it into fibre. From a waste diversion point of view, recycling plastic can be seen as a positive solution. From a circular economy point of view, the reality is more murky. rPET may be recycled, but it’s still plastic. And plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is full of toxins and sheds microplastics, microplastics, which harm both marine life and human health.
While we’d all like to believe recycling is the answer to our plastic woes, in actuality, it’s a complex topic. The vast majority of all plastic ever created will never be recycled. Recycling levels max out at just under 10% (that’s right, 10%) globally, and in most countries, recycling just isn’t working. Over 90% of all plastic is either incinerated (a.k.a. burnt, a process that results in air pollution and health problems for those who live around incineration facilities) or (to a much larger extent) landfilled. Further, it’s tough enough to recycle mono-material products made from PET, but since there’s no way to separate materials like sugarcane-based EVA from elastane and the like, multi-material/blended material products like these will end up either in an incinerator or a landfill, neither of which leads us towards a more circular world.
Uggs efforts are laudable and it’s great to see fashion brands innovating on inputs. But we need to raise the bar and get to a point where both material inputs AND end of life are equally valued when it comes to the design process. Waste, even if it’s ‘better-for-you’ waste or lower-carbon waste, is still waste.
Finding the balance
Courtesy: Ugg/Collina Strada
Ugg isn’t the only brand to come out with a vegan shoe of late, with Adidas, Louis Vuitton, New Balance, Puma and Allbirds all coming out with animal-free products and ranges in recent years. Ugg itself released a Plant Power line in 2021, which had shoes made from what it claimed were carbon-neutral and plant-based materials.
Such efforts are inarguably important for animal welfare. “Ugg’s new vegan boots are a step in the right direction that will help spare gentle sheep being pinned down and often cut and hit so that humans can steal the wool that belongs to them,” Peta’s executive VP Tracy Reiman said about the Collina Strada range.
But the animal rights charity also pointed to the horrific welfare standards at Australian wool industry farms to urge Uggs to ditch shearling altogether. These calls don’t always go unheeded – in 2022, Ugg’s parent company Deckers Brands said it would eliminate the use of alpaca wool.
However, all this raises a conundrum for the aparrel industry and ethically-minded fashionistas: when it comes to vegan products, how do you balance animal rights with the environment? We’re still using plastic – recycled or otherwise – that can end up in landfill, so this solution isn’t a complete win-win.
A third of all plastic waste ends up in soil or freshwater, disintegrating into microplastics that have already been discovered in the human body – one study estimates that we eat 5g of microplastics per week on average (about the same as eating a credit card’s worth of plastic).
How the industry deals with the issue is crucial to its – and the planet’s – future. Animal rights and environmental sustainability should go hand-in-hand, and not come at the expense of the other.
More than 20 MPs gathered at a special reception hosted by PETA on animal experimentation at the Palace of Westminster.
PETA animal experimentation: the lobbying increases
The MPs were there to show support for – and pressure the current government to develop – a plan to phase out animal experimentation.
Titled “A Roadmap for Non-Animal Science in the UK”, the reception showcased PETA’s Research Modernisation Deal, a report created by PETA scientists that provides policymakers with a detailed strategy for ending experiments on animals and accelerating the uptake and further development of non-animal methods.
The event was sponsored by Bob Blackman CBE MP and attended by other MPs, including John McDonnell MP and Adrian Ramsay MP, plus Green Party Peer Jenny Jones:
Battlestar Galactica and Law & Order: UK star and long-time PETA friend Jamie Bamber was also there. He spoke to attendees about the importance of transitioning to cruelty-free and human-relevant research methods.
“The United Kingdom has long prided itself on being a nation that cares about animals. But if we are genuinely to live up to this ideal, we must commit to ending the suffering of animals in laboratories. Public support for this cause is overwhelming, yet previous policies have lagged behind the will of the people. Now is the time for renewed and decisive action,” says Bamber.
The cruelty must stop
“Every year, millions of mice, rats, fish, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, and other animals are caged, subjected to physical and psychological torment, and killed in unreliable experiments that do little to advance human health,” says PETA Science Policy Advisor Dr Kimberley Jayne.
“PETA is calling on the government to commit to ending all experiments on animals: stop wasting money and lives on archaic animal experimentation and switch to modern research methods that actually help people.”
In 2023, more than 2.68 million animals were bled, poisoned, deprived of food, isolated, mutilated, or otherwise subjected to psychological suffering and physical pain in British laboratories.
Millions more were bred and discarded as “surplus” because, for example, they were not of the desired sex or lacked certain disease characteristics.
The new government has committed to working towards phasing out animal testing, and PETA urges everyone to hold it to this promise by demanding a government-led roadmap for ending all experiments on animals.
A just-released Savanta poll commissioned by PETA of more than 1,000 young people, including those currently attending or considering attending university, found that an overwhelming majority believe universities should stop funding animal experimentation. Most said these kinds of animal rights would be a factor in their choice of university and affect their opinion of an institution.
Animal experimentation is a NO from students
The results come as universities nationwide – including the University of Bristol, which has been widely condemned for subjecting small animals to the cruel and widely criticised forced swim test – face a decline in student applications.
“The results couldn’t be clearer: the vast majority of young people oppose using university funds to torture animals in experiments like the forced swim test and find cruelty in laboratories a major turn-off when choosing where to study,” says PETA senior campaigns manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on higher education institutions – including the University of Bristol – to take heed of these results and on the Home Office to expedite the elimination of near-drowning tests in the UK”.
The poll asked 1,222 people aged 16 to 25 their opinions on animal testing at universities. It found that of those with an opinion, 82% feel that universities should divert money currently spent on animal experiments to other causes.
Of the university-age students with a stance on the forced swim test – which involves placing small animals into inescapable beakers of water in which they swim frantically out of fear of drowning, supposedly to shed light on human mental health conditions – 78% said that their opinion of their chosen university would be negatively affected if they found out the institution used the forced swim test.
Out of all respondents to the poll, 63% said they’d be more likely to choose a university that doesn’t conduct the forced swim test. The University of Bristol is one of the last universities in the UK still to conduct the test after the Home Office announced earlier this year its intention to eliminate it.
PETA calls on the government to act
A lecturer at the University of Bristol commented:
Universities are facing severe financial shortfalls and an extremely competitive environment in which to recruit students. If the University of Bristol continues to conduct the forced swim test after our competitors have rejected it, we are putting our reputation at risk. If we want to ensure that we remain an attractive choice for prospective students, we should be taking their concerns about the cruelty condoned in our labs very seriously.
PETA points out that prior to the last election, the previous government stated its intention to end the forced swim test. The current government has promised to follow through with this policy but has so far failed to provide a timeline.
The Labour Party committed to work towards phasing out animal testing completely in its manifesto, and PETA is calling on it to use the group’s Research Modernisation Deal – which lays out a strategy to switch from archaic animal experimentation to modern, human-relevant research methods – to take immediate steps towards ending all experiments on animals.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
Every fall, Mary Bull prepares for the olive harvest at her small-scale permaculture farm, Chalice Farm, in Sonoma County, California. She expects this year to be their biggest harvest yet, with more than 50 volunteers coming to help harvest over a thousand pounds of olives to make premium olive oil. Along with olives, Chalice Farm also grows perennial vegetables, fruit and nuts on their…
Protect the Wild is calling for an immediate end to the breeding of hounds for use in the hunting industry.
With the industry on its last legs, the organisation believes now is the time for it to – finally – show some compassion towards the hounds in its care by ceasing breeding and putting a strategy in place to rehome existing dogs.
This demand is part of a new “Rehome the Hounds” campaign launched by Protect the Wild, which cuts through the lies that hunts tell about hounds to keep their dying pastime alive.
Hounds: the forgotten victims in hunting
Dogs are the forgotten victims. Bred by hunts for use in their pastime, hounds are frequently injured and killed due to this exploitation.
In addition to the suffering hounds endure during hunting, investigations have shown that their lives in kennels are no picnic either.
In 2021, a long running investigation carried out by the Hunt Investigation Team, which was supported by Protect the Wild, revealed harrowing undercover footage of the Duke of Beaufort Hunt shooting dead four of its hounds.
Although this was the first time a hunt had been caught on camera shooting its hounds, hunts across the country routinely kill their unwanted dogs before the start of each hunting season.
It is estimated that up to 7,000 hounds are unnecessarily killed every year. Very few hounds make it past the age of five or six, despite having a life expectancy of around fourteen.
Shockingly, a 2022 investigation involving the Carmarthenshire Hunt revealed that in some instances murdered hounds are being taken to power stations and used to make electricity.
Founder of the green energy company Ecotricity, Dale Vince, funded the investigation. He said at the time:
Millions of Brits will be shocked and disgusted to discover how hunts are treating their dogs and will be horrified to find out their lights might be puppy powered.
Atrocious conditions
For hounds who hunts allow to live, kennel conditions can be atrocious. Over the winter of 2022/23, the Hunt Investigation Team and Northumberland Hunt Watch, supported by Protect the Wild, recorded conditions at one of the Border Hunt’s kennels in Northumberland.
Investigators found dogs living in squalid and insecure accommodation that provided little protection from the elements, insufficient bedding, the provision of filthy drinking water, and no enrichment.
Despite all this evidence to the contrary, however, hunts would have the public believe that it is the end of hunting which poses the real risk to hound welfare. They are trying to hoodwink people into believing that ending hunting would spell disaster for hounds by arguing that the dogs are difficult to rehome.
It follows, they claim, that most hounds would have to euthanised if hunting were to end.
This is not an original argument.
Animal exploitation, this time hounds
Industries that want to continue exploiting animals in the face of opposition often use this kind of talking point. Take the greyhound industry as an example. In response to a campaign calling for the phasing out of greyhound racing in the UK, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain warned that a racing ban risks the welfare of thousands of dogs.
But for foxhounds, as well as greyhounds, rehoming is an entirely feasible option. Protect the Wild’s Rehome the Hounds campaign makes this abundantly clear, by showcasing rescued foxhounds who are living their best lives in homes.
However, the continued breeding of hounds will mean more of them will need rehoming once the practice ends, putting unnecessary pressure on already burdened rescue centres. So, the responsible thing for hunts to do is immediately end breeding, which is exactly what Protect the Wild is calling for.
Protect the Wild’s founder, Rob Pownall, said:
Rather than being shot dead when deemed surplus to requirements we urge hunts across the country to do two things. Stop the breeding of foxhounds with immediate effect and put in place a proper strategy to ensure these amazing animals can go to appropriate homes, not discarded like trash.
International campaign group PETA has shocked Londoners by offering them ‘owl wings’ – not chicken – to try. People’s reactions are telling, plus they highlight an important point over animal rights.
‘You can’t eat OWLS’
“You can’t eat owls”.
“That’s disgusting”.
“I don’t want to eat Hedwigs”.
A new PETA video shows the horrified reactions from Londoners when they learn that the free samples of wings they’re eating aren’t from chickens but from “owls”.
Musician and satirist Oli Frost hands out the free wings – which are actually vegan – to passers-by, several of whom spit out the “meat” when Frost tells them it’s from owls.
“What is wrong with you?” one disgusted man responds.
The video concludes with a stark point: “Owl wings, chicken wings… What’s the difference?”
“Chickens are smart, social, curious birds who don’t want to be carved up and eaten any more than a human would,” says PETA vice president of programmes Elisa Allen:
PETA urges anyone horrified at the thought of eating owls’ wings to extend that compassion to all animals and go vegan.
Pity the chickens – but take action, too
Chickens raised for their flesh are routinely fed antibiotics and bred to grow so large over such a short period of time that their legs often collapse under their own bodyweight.
Moreover, as the Canary previously reported, analysing 1,964chicken products from 40 Lidl stores in 21 UK cities from September to November 2023, the charity Open Cages has detected ‘hock burn’ on 74% of the whole birds examined. These painful chemical burns can be seen with the naked eye as a brown ulcer on the back of the leg.
Birds are kept in filthy conditions and are bred to grow unnaturally fast.
As a result 3 in 4 of the whole chickens sold in Lidl are plagued by ‘revolting’ ulcers from the birds laying in their own waste – almost 4x higher than levels reported by rival Aldi.
94% of the discounter’s breast meat is afflicted by a muscle disease that makes the typically lean food 224% higher in fat content.
Diseased meat poses health risks and questions over food quality.
At abattoirs, they’re shackled upside down, their throats are slit, and they’re scalded in defeathering tanks – sometimes while still conscious.
Every person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals a year daily suffering and a terrifying death. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help anyone ready to make the switch.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.
At the 69th International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Peru last week, pro-whaling nations shut down the possibility of creating a South Atlantic whale sanctuary. At the same meeting, attempts to bring back commercial whaling, both directly and under the guise of food security, failed.
South Atlantic whale sanctuary
For 26 successive years, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay have put forward the proposal to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic. It would have prevented any commercial hunting of cetaceans within its waters. This would have extended from the east coasts of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina across to Western Africa. It also would have sat next to the Southern Ocean Sanctuary, which the IWC created in 1994.
In order for a proposal to be successful, it has to achieve a 75% majority – which it failed to do by just one or two votes. 40 countries voted in favour, 14 opposed, and 3 abstained.
According to Humane Society International (HSI):
Almost half of the world’s known species, subspecies and subpopulations of cetaceans, are listed as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable. Species such as humpbacks, southern right whales and more inhabit the southern Atlantic, and these populations are still recovering from decimation due to intensive commercial whaling of previous centuries. It is crucial that the sanctuary is established to ensure that these whale species recover and thrive.
Undermining the commercial whaling ban
Also on the agenda at the IWC’s meeting were two proposals which attempted to undermine the commercial whaling ban. However, both of these proposals were withdrawn before they could be voted on.
Firstly, the Republic of Guinea submitted an indirect assault on the ban. This was a proposal on food security. Cambodia, the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, and St. Kitts and Nevis all co-sponsored the proposal.
These are all countries which are closely aligned with Japan – a fiercely pro-whaling country. The proposal claimed that commercial whaling was justified due to the necessity for food security. However, as the Canary has previously documented, there is no evidence that whale meat makes any meaningful contribution to food security.
Antigua and Barbuda also submitted a direct assault on the ban. This was in the form of a proposal to lift the global moratorium on commercial whaling. According to HSI, the “dark and dangerous proposal” aimed to undermine the more than 40-year-old ban on commercial whale killing. St. Lucia co-sponsored the resolution – another close ally of Japan.
However, whale-friendly nations voted by a resounding majority to accept a resolution to reaffirm the global ban on commercial whale killing. Submitted by the European Union, it received 37 yes votes, 12 no votes, and 8 abstentions.
Grettel Delgadillo, deputy director of HSI for Latin America said:
The EU tabled this compassionate and conservation-minded proposal to remind countries of their legal obligations pertaining to commercial whaling.
Considering the persistent attempts by pro-whaling nations to dismantle the 40-year-old ban, the message behind this proposal is much needed. Thanks to the moratorium, the lives of hundreds of thousands of whales will have been saved and many species brought back from the brink of extinction.
Commercial whaling is unethical, unsustainable and unnecessary so we welcome the passing of this proposal as a signal to all nations that the world must continue to save the whales.
Bending the rules
The IWC banned commercial whale hunting in 1986, with the exception of scientific research. Whilst Japan did always technically obey this, they continued to kill a whopping 333 whales each year and stated this was for ‘research purposes’. Japan has been pushing for the ban to be scrapped since its inception, and have since withdrawn from the IWC.
As HSI has pointed out, the commercial whaling ban has been instrumental in bringing many species back from the brink of extinction.
HSI has joined with other NGO’s in signing a letter to the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda. The letter condemned the proposal. It pointed out that the country’s own Environmental Protection and Management Act 2019 designates all species of whales, dolphins, and porpoises as protected and prohibits their hunting.
Dr Madison Miketa, wildlife scientist at Humane Society International, said:
Whales are worth far more alive than dead and are critically important for healthy, productive oceans. For communities reliant on eco-tourism and whale watching income, or those dependent on healthy fish stocks, the presence of abundant whale populations is a lifeline.
Furthermore, killing these long-lived, slow reproducing animals who are also impacted by myriad human-caused threats such as climate change, pollution and fisheries bycatch, would do nothing to ameliorate food insecurity.
Not to mention that whale meat and blubber are often contaminated with high levels of pollutants and heavy metals such as mercury and PCBs, making them unsafe for human consumption.
Earlier this month, Danny Chambers MP tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) to support a campaign to free 15 Gentoo Penguins from ‘dungeon-like conditions at Sea Life London:
As the Canary previously reported, Global entertainment giant Merlin Entertainment is keeping Gentoo Penguins captive underground, with no natural light or fresh air. This is in itsSea Life centres. Animal rights activists have labelled the conditions as “dungeon-like” and “cruel”.
Freedom for Animals are calling for Sea Life to relocate all their Penguins to suitable sanctuary spaces:
THIS WEEKEND! Join incredible activists to stand up for the penguins kept in a tiny windowless basement at Sea Life London Aquarium! Placards/Leaflets provided!
Now, Danny Chambers – Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester and veterinary surgeon – has tabled an EDM in support of Freedom for Animals campaign. Currently it also has the support of nine other MP’s.
An EDM means that a motion has been submitted to the House of Commons for debate – but no date has been fixed yet. Although very few EDM’s are debated, they can attract a large amount of public interest and media coverage.
Over the last four months, Freedom for Animals campaign has regularly been on the streets of London and has also made it to national press. In August, they published an open letter signed by Chris Packham and various other celebrities. The letter demanded that Merlin Entertainment address the issue of Penguin exploitation right across the Sea Life brand.
They are hoping for more representatives to back this motion to encourage a debate in the commons chamber. Ultimately, they want Merlin Entertainment and Sea Life to stop their exploitation of animals in their captivity.
False pretences
The IUCN currently list Gentoo Penguins as of ‘least concern’ on their red list. This means they are doing well in the wild and population levels are not in danger.
Whilst Freedom for Animals current work is around freeing the Gentoo Penguins in London, they are calling for Sea Life to relocate all their Penguins to suitable sanctuary spaces.
Sea Life also hold Penguins in captivity in four other UK locations, Birmingham, Great Yarmouth, Scarborough, and Weymouth. At Birmingham, Gentoo Penguins are living in equally devastating conditions.
Penguin breeding programmes, such as those seen at Sea Life, are based on false pretences.
It claims to have one of the most successful Penguin breeding programmes in the world. However, they are only breeding them for captivity. This is not conservation – but exploitation for entertainment, and therefore profit. It is clear that Sea Life is merely a money making scheme spearheaded by Merlin.
Previously, the Canary reached out to Sea Life for comment – and whilst they did respond, their evasiveness to specific questions was clear. We quizzed them on the amount they put into conservation each year – to which they didn’t directly respond. They claimed conservation was the “bedrock’’ of the company however they were unable to give any concrete examples of figures.
As Freedom for Animals notes on their website:
Breeding animals for captivity and exhibition is a cruel and exploitative practice that has no place in a modern society.
Campaign group PETA has provocatively highlighted how the EU is still allowing animal testing for human cosmetics. This is despite EU assurances to the contrary, and a so-called ‘ban’ which the group says is not fit for purpose. Once again, corporations are profiting off the back of appalling animal rights.
PETA: stop the cruelty of animal testing
Dressed as bruised and bloodied rabbits, two PETA supporters hung “lifeless” from a gigantic makeup bag outside the European Commission headquarters earlier today to blast the institution for allowing animals to be tormented, poisoned, and killed in cruel, avoidable tests for cosmetics ingredients used in products such as sunscreen, shampoo, and perfume:
“Allowing animals to be poisoned with chemicals, tormented, and then dissected for shampoo and sunscreen breaks the promise made when the EU banned these cruel and archaic tests” says PETA science policy advisor Dr Jen Hochmuth. “PETA is calling on the European Commission to close these shameful loopholes with a complete ban on animal testing for cosmetics ingredients”.
A single test for a cosmetics ingredient can involve hundreds of rabbits, some of whom will be force-fed an ingredient throughout pregnancy before they and their unborn offspring are killed and dissected.
This week, authorities in Greenland decided that veteran anti-whaling activist Captain Paul Watson must remain in prison whilst they considered his extradition to Japan – despite global mounting pressure for his release:
BREAKING NEWS: DENMARK EXTENDS PAUL WATSON’S DETENTION UNTIL OCTOBER 2ND
Paul will remain in custody until October 2nd as the court seeks more evidence. Our lawyer is challenging this decision, arguing that the conditions for his detention aren’t met due to a lack of… pic.twitter.com/wau0tL8F5b
— Captain Paul Watson Foundation (@CaptPaulWatson) September 4, 2024
Captain Watson’s anti-whaling activism
Captain Watson was arrested by Danish police back in July when his ship docked in Nuuk, Greenland. Authorities from Greenland – an autonomous territory of Denmark – claimed the arrest was due to an international arrest warrant issued by Japan. This was related to his his previous anti-whaling interventions in Antarctica more than a decade ago:
For decades Paul Watson has worked tirelessly to protect marine life. Now he’s behind bars in Greenland, being held by Danish Police, at risk of being sent to Japan where he could spend the rest of his life in prison… for saving whales. Another environmental activist in jail… pic.twitter.com/rXGyRtshnJ
At the time of his arrest, Watson was travelling through the Artic to stop Japan’s new factory ship the Kangei Maru. The Canary previously reported on this ship back in May, when it first set sail. The ship is hunting endangered Fin Whales and carries drones with a range of over 100km which allows them to quickly find and kill them.
Less than 10 days after Watson’s arrest, Japan killed 59 Fin Whales. They also began harvesting the endangered animals in the North Pacific. This confirmed the Paul Watson Foundation’s suspicions that the Japanese government had ulterior motives behind the arrest.
The courts in Greenland allowed Japan to show their video evidence. However, they did not allow captain Watson to. The charges against him were bodily injury of a Japanese crew member, destruction of property, and trespassing.
However, had they allowed Watson’s team to show their video evidence, they would have seen that the charges were bullshit. His lawyers claim that the first charge is irrelevant – as:
the Japanese sailor was not at the spot that they claimed they got injured
Japanese authorities are trying to claim that the injuries came from a stink bomb which Watson set off. However, the video evidence very clearly shows Japanese sailors trying to fire tear gas at Watson’s boat. Hilariously, the wind blows it straight back into their own faces. From the video, it looks painful.
The second charge of trespassing comes from an incident whereby a Japanese whaling boat – the Shonan Maru – drove into the Ady Gil – an anti-whaling boat. Captain Pete Bethune then boarded the Shonan Maru to deliver a bill for the destruction of his ship. They arrested, charged, and then deported him on a suspended sentence. He was then forced to confess that Watson ordered him to board the ship – which he retracted once he was released.
The final charge of destruction of property is what Paul’s extradition is based on. This is allegedly due to damage to a $800 net – which Bethune cut when he boarded the Japanese ship. Meanwhile, the captain of the Shonan Maru was never charged or fined for taking out the Ady Gil.
Lawyers have pointed out that both trespassing and destruction of property are punishable by fine only, under Japanese law. Under both Greenlandic law and the Danish constitution, authorities are not allowed to detain anyone for an offence that is only fineable. Danish law enforcement are turning a blind eye to the evidence.
International law
Earlier this year, Japan defied international consensus and resumed commercial whale hunting. They are aiming to catch nearly 400 whales this year alone:
#Japan has harpooned (from reports) & ‘Processed’ 5 ENDANGERED #FinWhales, these gentle mammoths of the Ocean, that help keep it healthy are being massacred while Paul Watson is kept in Jail, so he can’t go & stop them!
Fin whales are listed as a vulnerable species in the southern hemisphere & endangered in the North Atlantic, but some humans selfishly do not understand conservation. So disappointing. https://t.co/bGAEZ3j4H6
The International Whaling Committee (IWC) banned commercial whale hunting in 1986, with the exception of scientific research. Whilst Japan did always technically obey this, they continued to kill a whopping 333 whales each year and stated ‘research purposes’:
Kyodo Senpaku, Japan’s leading whale killers, have released footage of the first fin whale killed by Japan in nearly 50 years.
4 more fin whales have been slaughtered since.
Japan’s quota of 376 whales, includes 59 fin whales this year.
In 1998 Japan started conducting scientific research on whaling in the North Pacific and Antarctic. Countries within the IWC and conservation groups called it commercial whaling in disguise:
A slow, tortuous and agonizing death for this beautiful family- oriented sentient being. Now Japan & others countries that kill whales, can continue with no accountability to break the laws in international waters and sanctuaries. #FreePaulWatsonhttps://t.co/JJqG5sATRf
Notably, in 2019 Japan withdrew from the IWC. They then announced the resumption of commercial whaling within Japan’s EEZ – but they never announced catch quotas:
Paul Watson’s arrest is part of a global campaign by governments against environmental activists. He must be released. pic.twitter.com/lLZUcEzpnP
Commercial whaling is illegal under international law – which captain Watson is now in prison for trying to uphold. This is far more than any authorities did when Japan repeatedly broke said laws, when they decided to resume their whaling programs. Now, Japanese, Danish, and Greenlandic authorities are all culpable in detaining captain Watson under false pretenses. There is currently a petition to help free Watson.
Activism groups are calling for a withdrawal of financial support for the livestock sector from banks including the Big Three, in light of the industry’s contribution to climate change.
Banks must stop financing meat and dairy producers to fight the climate crisis, halt biodiversity loss, and protect animal rights, says a new letter directed at the world’s biggest financial institutions.
Penned by 105 environmental and animal advocacy NGOs – including Friends of the Earth, Changing Markets Foundation, ProVeg International, Feedback Global, and Greenpeace – the open letter highlights the banking sector’s outsized support for planet-harming animal agriculture.
Take the US, for instance. Between 2016 and 2023, 58 of its banks provided $134B in financing to meat, dairy and animal feed corporations, with the Big Three – Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase – responsible for 55% of the sum.
These banks have aided livestock giants like Nestlé, JBS ADM, Bunge and Cargill. These producers are among the leaders of an industry that accounts for as much as a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, the climate footprint of the top 56 livestock companies is higher than Japan.
Research has found that meat and dairy production accounts for 57% of the food system’s emissions, and the letter references a study that suggests global livestock production will use 80% of our carbon budget by 2050.
“The actual emissions are undoubtedly higher than their self-reported emissions because meat, dairy, and feed corporations’ emissions data is often underreported and Scope 3 impacts are largely undisclosed, even though they generally account for 90% or more of these companies’ emissions,” the organisations write.
“By financing the world’s largest meat, dairy, and feed corporations, global banks are prioritising corporate gain at the expense of people and the planet.”
Banks must halt new financing and set 1.5°C-aligned targets
Courtesy: Feedback Global
Banks and financiers have provided $615B in credits to the 55 largest livestock producers since 2015, supporting companies that can slaughter 44 million chickens, nearly 200,000 cattle, and 639,000 pigs every day.
But with the demand for animal proteins set to grow by 20% by mid-century, the livestock industry’s environmental footprint is only set to expand. That is a major problem – the amount of land, water and resources it takes to grow meat is highly inefficient, and will exacerbate food security globally.
Switching to plant-based diets instead can cut emissions, water pollution and land use by 75% – but to enable such a change, money (both private and public) needs to go in the opposite direction it’s going now.
The letter calls on all banks to treat industrial livestock as a high-emission sector, and immediately publish and implement agriculture-sector-specific targets to comply with a 1.5°C future.
At the minimum, this should include “halting all new financing that enables the perpetuation or expansion” of factory farming, requiring livestock companies to “disclose third-party verified 1.5°C targets and action plans that align with the IPCC22 or an equivalent science-based sectoral pathway”, and “addressing the additional social and environmental harms from industrial livestock production”.
Courtesy: Erik McGregor
When it comes to the aforementioned 58 banks, up to 70% of their total meat- and dairy-related financed and facilitated emissions come from methane, a gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. Bank of America’s financing of JBS alone accounts for 87% of this figure.
Together with Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, livestock corporations only represent 0.25% of their lending portfolios. But they result in 11% of the Big Three’s reported greenhouse gas emissions.
“By eliminating their financing of high-emitting corporations involved in meat, dairy, and feed production – a relatively small change in how they allocate their capital – these big banks can affect a sharp emissions reduction,” the letter states.
Banks have set climate goals, but their livestock contribution is growing
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
Ola Janus, banks and nature campaign lead at watchdog BankTrack, slammed industrial livestock production as a “wasteful and cruel” illusion. “In our reality of limited resources, it’s shocking that any respectable financial institution still views this outdated industry as a valuable investment rather than a liability,” she said.
The letter notes how banks are coming under increasing pressure from policymakers, shareholders, and civil society groups as “evidence of harm driven by companies and ignored by their financiers mounts”.
That has compelled banks to make climate commitments, including the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, in which 144 banks from 44 countries have pledged to set emission-cutting targets for agriculture by the end of this year.
But despite their commitments, banks’ involvement in livestock production is on the rise. “From 2019 to 2022, banks granted 15% more credit to the largest meat, dairy, and feed corporations than the previous four years,” the letter reads.
“Industrial livestock companies’ operations are structurally at odds with a sustainable future – they are hardwired to pursue growth in the unsustainable mass production of meat and dairy,” it continues. “Therefore, banks simply cannot achieve their climate commitments without a significant reduction in their financing to meat, dairy, and feed corporations.”
The letter comes months after the World Bank expressed support for alternative proteins, asking governments to redirect subsidies from livestock farming towards these low-emission foods – although its own private-sector arm has provided at least $1.6B to industrial livestock farming projects since 2017, and been subject to similar calls from activists.
“Halting bank financing of industrial livestock production would immediately and significantly improve banks’ emissions equation, demonstrate a commitment to addressing climate and nature-related impacts, and deliver benefits to the planet, people, and the banks,” says the letter.
Campaign group Protect the Wild has released a damning new report detailing the high levels of wildlife persecution and animal rights violations that took place during the 2023/24 hunting season. A Case for a Proper Ban on Hunting shows that nearly 600 wild animals were chased or killed over the course of season, some two decades on from the hunting of live wild animals being outlawed.
Responding to the report’s findings, wildlife TV presenter and conservationist Chris Packham called on the Labour Party government to act. He said:
A single wild animal being chased or killed is one too many. A single disturbance of a badger sett is one too many. Attacks on wildlife monitors, the public, havoc on roads- the numbers are clear- trail hunting is nothing but a lawless, cruel ‘free for all’ for an arrogant rural mob.
We have the report, what we need next is a reaction from Labour. The overwhelming evidence of the cruelty and criminality involved in fox hunting necessitates urgent legislative action.
A damning report into wildlife persecution and crime
This is the second annual report by Protect the Wild on the state of the hunting industry in England and Wales. You can read it here.
It covers the period 1 July 2023 to 30 April 2024 across the two countries and is based on 2312 reports published by hunt saboteur and monitor groups, newspapers, and members of the public.
Key findings from the report include:
There were 364 reported incidents of fox hunting across the season, with hunts chasing 335 foxes and killing a further 29 individuals. Somerset’s Blackmore and Sparkford Vale Hunt accounted for 12.83% of the total reported fox chases and kills.
There was a total of 150 reported incidents of hunts chasing deer and 26 cases of hunts killing deer.
Reports during the season revealed that hunts chased 40 hares and killed one individual. Most of these incidents were due to foxhounds going after hares while searching for a fox.
Dig outs were reported on six occasions across the season. This is where hunts block holes to prevent foxes who have taken shelter underground from escaping, before then digging them out.
Relatedly, hunts interfered with badger setts on 124 occasions, according to reports. Setts are typically interfered with, such as their entrance holes being blocked, to stop foxes taking shelter underground.
It’s important to note that these findings relate solely to monitored or witnessed activities by hunts. Protect the Wild’s Glen Black, who authored the report, said:
The 2,312 reports that were reviewed to gather data for the report represent just a portion of the total number of hunting days throughout the 2023/24 season. An exact figure for hunting days isn’t publicly available, but Protect the Wild estimates there were likely over 19,000 when taking all hunts and the early season meets, such as for cubbing, into account.
The conclusions drawn in the report, based on the data on what was observed, offer a shocking statistic: nearly 45% of hunt meets involved some sort of anti-wildlife, anti-social or criminal action. Taking even just the 587 incidents where hunts reportedly chased or killed wildlife equates to roughly one-in-four observed meets.
Abuse and aggression towards anyone anti-hunting
Non-wildlife focused incidents highlighted in the report include aggression from hunts towards saboteurs, monitors, and sometimes members of the public. In total, there were 239 incidents of minor attacks, ranging from racist and transphobic slurs to pushing and shoving. 16 further attacks were considered major, which included the destruction of vehicles and causing serious injuries to activists or members of the public.
The report also found high levels of incidents involving ‘hunt havoc’, meaning situations involving hunts on public roads and properties. In all, there were 280 incidents of road havoc, 327 incidents of traffic offences, and 251 incidents of trespass across the season.
Some constabularies have started taking the anti-social behaviour of hunts seriously as a crime and the report spotlights the progress made by police forces in this regard. But the chaos that hunts are causing in the countryside is costing the public money in policing costs, as the report also documents.
According to the data reviewed, 351 police units attended hunt meets throughout the season, not including Boxing Day events. The financial burden of this policing is exemplified by Leicestershire Police’s expenditure of £7,350.78 on Operation Enlighten, which oversees the constabulary’s response to hunting and anti-hunting matters, and the £14,322 spent on policing the Kent Hounds’ Boxing Day parade.
Labour must act to protect wildlife
This second annual report from Protect the Wild comes nearly 20 years after the Hunting Act was passed to end the hunting of mammals for fun. It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as Black says, the hunting industry is “committed to terrorising and murdering wildlife.” The need for a new hunting law couldn’t be clearer.
Protect the Wild commissioned Advocates for Animals to prepare a new draft bill in 2023 to replace the Hunting Act. The resulting Hunting of Mammals Bill can give Britain’s wildlife the much-needed protection it needs from the ongoing persecution outlined in this report.
Protect the Wild is calling on the Labour government to replace the Hunting Act urgently. Its founder Rob Pownall says:
The evidence is there for all to see. Don’t be fooled by the laughable ‘National Trail Hunting Day’. The hunts are very much still at it and until this govt works to bring about legislative change then we will continue to see the illegal persecution of wildlife across the country. It’s time for a new proper ban on hunting with hounds.
Shocking new footage from a factory puppy farm in the US has exposed the brutal conditions and experiments an animal testing company is carrying out. However, the same US-based company operates similar facilities in the UK. In other words, corporations are engaged in atrocious animal abuse much like the experimentation caught in the video. It’s why animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are calling on the UK government to act.
PETA: horrifying puppy farm footage
An animal rights campaign group has uncovered the horrific treatment US corporation Marshall BioResources is meting out on beagles at its New York-based MBR Acres facility:
You’ve never seen a video like this
Dogs who make it out of MBR Acres are experimented on and then killed. Some of these barbaric procedures may be funded by your taxes. Watch till the end to see what the beagle breeder tried to hide. pic.twitter.com/wZ1IEh5oEG
As PETA UK wrote on the undercover footage captured by anti-MBR activist group Camp Beagle:
Whistleblower photographs recently shared with PETA US from inside Marshall’s New York facility show ferrets locked inside dingy wire cages caked in faeces, while beagles and their puppies sit in barren cages with metal mesh floors above soiled concrete.
The whistleblower also alleged that cages were only cleaned every two weeks, feeders were mouldy, and puppies were commonly found dead in their enclosures with large quantities of blood. The whistleblower said that staff also handled dogs roughly, injuring their jaws, and confined incompatible dogs to a single cage, causing stress-induced fights.
Moreover, PETA has highlighted that while senselessly killing animals, MBR rakes in staggering profits in the millions every year. In 2023, the UK MBR Acres subsidiary alone had assets totalling over £1.3m.
MBR Acres harming animals in the UK too
After releasing the footage from the US animal testing facility PETA UK is calling on the UK government to end the cruel practice. This is because companies also carry out similarly horrendous animal torture and imprisonment here.
In 2021, campaign group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty exposed a beagle breeding factory farm in Cambridgeshire. PETA highlighted that the farm – also owned by MBR Acres – purportedly churns out:
a total of between 1,600 and 2,000 offspring for medical testing each year.
There, footage revealed staff packing pups into overcrowded crates, feeding them toxic chemicals, and subjecting the canines to other callous experiments, before slaughtering them.
In 2022, animal testing sites carried out 4,122 procedures on dogs in the UK. These are the latest government statistics available. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Overall, companies abused animals in scientific procedures 2.76 million times in that year alone.
PETA petition: UK government must step up
Given the staggering levels of animal cruelty involved – as the latest State-side footage showed – PETA is demanding the UK government take action. Specifically, the animal rights organisation has an ongoing petition.
At the time of writing, more than 120,000 people had signed it. In particular, the petition text reads:
Please commit to the EU’s final goal of fully replacing the use of animals in scientific procedures to ensure that the UK is not left behind – in either animal-welfare standards or scientific innovation – in the wake of Brexit. Although EU Directive 2010/63/EU (the Directive) has been transposed into the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, the UK has not formally adopted the EU’s ultimate goal of replacing the use of animals in scientific procedures, as reflected in Recital 10 of the Directive.
Notably, the EU has committed to phasing out animal testing, but the UK government has yet to do the same. It therefore calls for the UK urgently to catch up in developing a roadmap for this:
We, the undersigned, respectfully request that the government take this official step immediately, establishing a clear policy within a legislative framework, mandating an end to experimentation on animals, and providing a clear strategy and timeline for achieving this goal. Redirecting funding away from unreliable and unethical tests on animals and instead investing in superior, non-animal methods will benefit humans, animals, and the future of science in the UK.
This shocking stunt stopped people in their tracks. pic.twitter.com/uoC1tLGFZc
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