This week's Observer article on broiler chickens

This week The Observer's supplement Food Monthly Magazine carries a good article on the conditions in which broiler chickens are reared and the RSPCA's Freedom Food scheme.

Of course it is not going far enough because it is not promoting a vegetarian diet, but it is good for a wide-circulation Sunday paper to devote space to the welfare of farm animals. I usually don't like The Observer, but in this case I have to say: well done.

A letter to Cancer Research UK

Some health charities ask for donations to help people with diseases and disabilities and then spend the money they receive from a trusting (sometimes gullible) public to fund horrific experiments on dogs, rats, mice, primates, rabbits, hamsters, pigs, and other animals.

Instead of wrecking animals’ bodies in the application of a highly unreliable experimental method in pursuit of an impossible scientific answer, compassionate charities concentrate their funds on the research which holds the best hope for treatment: with humans. They know that we can find treatments through modern methods in alternative to vivisection, and they finance only non-animal research.

One of the charities which do fund animal experiments has written to me. This was my reply to them.

You can use this letter, indeed I encourage you to use it.

Letter to Cancer Research UK:

We have received a letter from your organization asking for funds. We want to inform you that we do not support your charity in any way, because you fund animal experimentation. This is a highly immoral practice, no less criminal than murder and torture. We find hypocritical that an organization that claims to be a charity and to take the moral high ground can fund such a criminal practice. You should take example from the charities which do not conduct or fund experiments on animals, such as Caring Cancer Trust, New Approaches to Cancer, Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research and many others.

Sincerely,

Signature

Are pesticides saving animals' lives?

"Kenya plans massive elephant translocation to ease human-wildlife conflict." We constantly hear news like this. In Africa in particular, animals living in the wild have to "make room", one way or the other, for a growing human population which uses low-yield, traditional agricultural methods and therefore requires much more land than if it used high-yield, modern methods involving pesticides.

Elephants and gorillas, among others, are always losing habitat to humans.

We know that occasionally birds and other non-human animals accidentally eat the pesticides and are killed by them.

The question is: what kills more non-human animals, pesticides or the alternative to them, the farming techniques which require much more land and destroy much more wildlife habitats?

Pesticides may be more good than bad for non-human animals.