Animal

Chasse aux phoques Le marché européen reste ouvert Mise à jour le vendredi 26 janvier 2007, 22 h 39 . Ottawa et le gouvernement de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador crient victoire dans le dossier de la chasse aux phoques. Vendredi, l'Union européenne a rejeté une proposition de son Parlement qui visait à interdire les importations de produits dérivés du phoque. La Commission européenne a rejeté les arguments des députés. Selon elle, la présente loi qui protège les blanchons est suffisante. Adoptée en 1983, elle interdit l'importation de produits dévirés du phoque du Groenland âgés de moins de deux semaines et demie et du phoque à capuchon de moins de 16 mois. Dans sa réponse aux parlementaires, la Commission précise que les rapports qu'elle a reçus au sujet des méthodes de chasse sont contradictoires. L'organisme s'est cependant engagé à procéder à une évaluation indépendante de la chasse aux phoques pour s'assurer qu'elle est pratiquée de manière respectueuse. Les défenseurs des droits des animaux espéraient que la démarche des députés européens permettrait de mettre fin à la chasse commerciale au Canada. Le ministre des Pêches de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador a applaudi la nouvelle, estimant qu'il s'agit d'une reconnaissance que la chasse aux phoques est pratiquée de manière respectueuse. Le phoque interdit en Belgique La veille, les députés belges ont adopté à l'unanimité la première loi en Europe interdisant la vente des produits tirés de la chasse au phoque. Le sénateur Jean-Marie Dedecker a élaboré ce projet de loi déposé en avril dernier. « Ce sont surtout les images de la cruauté qui sont passées à la télé belge qui ont convaincu le public », dit-il. M. Dedecker a lui-même observé la chasse au phoque à Terre-Neuve, en 2004. Il qualifie cette expérience de pénible. Cette loi belge doit maintenant recevoir l'assentiment du Sénat belge, ce qui ne devrait être qu'une simple formalité, selon M. Dedecker. Le groupe animaliste International Fund for Animal Welfare croit que le vote en Belgique trace une voie à suivre pour d'autres États européens. Le gouvernement des Pays-Bas doit en effet se prononcer sur une législation semblable dans quelques semaines. Le marché des produits du phoque représente plusieurs millions d'euros, selon les groupes animalistes. En septembre dernier, le ministre des Pêches et des Océans du Canada, Loyola Hearn, s'est rendu en Belgique pour tenter d'y faire connaître le point de vue de son gouvernement sur la chasse au phoque. De toute évidence, il n'a convaincu personne. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/atlantique/2007/01/26/009-Chasse-phoques-UE.shtml

Chasse aux phoques Le marché européen reste ouvert 26 janvier 2007 Ottawa et le gouvernement de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador crient victoire dans le dossier de la chasse aux phoques. Vendredi, l'Union européenne a rejeté une proposition de son Parlement qui visait à interdire les importations de produits dérivés du phoque. La Commission européenne a rejeté les arguments des députés. Selon elle, la présente loi qui protège les blanchons est suffisante. Adoptée en 1983, elle interdit l'importation de produits dévirés du phoque du Groenland âgés de moins de deux semaines et demie et du phoque à capuchon de moins de 16 mois. Dans sa réponse aux parlementaires, la Commission précise que les rapports qu'elle a reçus au sujet des méthodes de chasse sont contradictoires. L'organisme s'est cependant engagé à procéder à une évaluation indépendante de la chasse aux phoques pour s'assurer qu'elle est pratiquée de manière respectueuse. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/atlantique/2007/01/26/009-Chasse-phoques-UE.shtml

Oh boy, même au 5 mars, ça ne donne pas grand temps ! Tout va tellement vite et je suis tellement "pognée" avec ma physio... Je n'ai même pas encore eu le temps de travailler sur ma page des usines à chiots...

Je ne sais pas Cé, ils parlent de futur updates...(?) If there is any news related to farm animal welfare that you would like us to include in future updates, please let us know.

C'est absolument impossible de couvrir un si grand territoire avec seulement 3 inspecteurs (pour toute la province du Québec) ! Et c'est là qu'on voit que ça n'est pas une des priorités du gouvernement. Ça ne l'a jamais été d'ailleurs.

Tu as raison Linda ! Difficile à croire qu'on vit dans un pays civilisé après toutes ces nouvelles qu'on a pu lire récemment !!

Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 09:59:26 -0600 Sujet: CCFA Farm Animal Update Dear CCFA Members: CCFA has been very busy since our last update! Please read about what we’ve been up to below. If there is any news related to farm animal welfare that you would like us to include in future updates, please let us know. Thank you for your continuing to support of CCFA and our efforts to help farm animals in Canada . John Youngman Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA) http://www.humanefood.ca/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- REGISTER FOR AGRICULTURE & AGRI-FOOD PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is now holding public consultations across Canada to develop "the next generation of agriculture and agri-food policy." Farm animal welfare has historically been ignored or given minor attention by government when developing food policy, so this is your opportunity to encourage them to take a stronger stand on farm animal welfare, both for the sake of the animals and our global trading status. You can participate either in person or online: http://www.agr.gc.ca/pol/consult/index_e.php?s1=subscribe LOBLAW CAMPAIGN Postcards – The postcard campaign to Loblaw asking the company to label eggs from caged hens and stock more cage-free alternatives continues. We need to keep up the pressure on Loblaw in order for them to take action! Please email me at jcy@mts.net if you would like to receive more cards. Battery cage egg demos – Members and supporters took to the street this fall to educate consumers and add additional pressure to Loblaw. Demos in Guelph , Toronto and Montreal featured people dressed as hens, crammed in a human-sized cage modelled after a typical battery cage, outside the Loblaws’ stores. Passersby were given postcards to mail, educated about the cage system and encouraged to purchase eggs from other systems such as organic or free-range. Demos will continue in the spring in cities across Canada . DELIVERING HUMANE FOOD IN CANADA The workshop held primarily for the food industry at the Hilton Hotel in Toronto on October 26, 2006 was a great success! It featured: Temple Grandin, renowned animal transport and handling expert; Anne Malleau, Executive Director of Whole Foods’ Animal Compassion Foundation; Paul Shapiro, Director of the Factory Farming Campaign at the Humane Society for the United States (HSUS); and CCFA’s Stephanie Brown and John Youngman speaking about CCFA’s current and future campaign as well as reviewing national and global trends in farm animal welfare. A video of selected conference proceedings will be available for viewing on our website in the near future! FRENCH WEBSITE The CCFA French website is up and running! Thanks to Kind Translators (and especially Lucie Savard ) for the generous gift of translation. When visiting the CCFA website (http://www.humanefood.ca/ ), viewers will be given the option to view contents in French or English. CAGE-FREE CAMPAIGN GROWING CCFA is currently working with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) on efforts to persuade the City of Toronto and the Toronto District School Board to adopt a cage-free egg policy. NEW MAPLE LEAF POSTCARDS CCFA is asking Maple Leaf Foods, Canada ’s largest pork producer, to offer consumers more pork products that do not come from supply chains that keep mother pigs confined to cruel sow stalls and to label their products according the housing systems in which the mother pigs are kept. To receive the cards for distribution, please contact me at jcy@mts.net. Please help us help mother pigs by distributing the cards. NEW FOIE GRAS FACT SHEET A new fact sheet with information about foie gras is available on our website. It may be viewed or printed at: http://www.humanefood.ca/docs/foie_gras_factsheet_6.pdf CCFA AT TORONTO VEGETARIAN FOOD FAIR This year marked CCFA’s first appearance and the Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair. The event was lots of fun and a great success! We distributed loads of materials and postcards as well as collected pages of signatures on the Loblaw and Maple Leaf petitions. A worthwhile effort for sure! CCFA FUNDRAISER A HIT A fundraiser was held for CCFA the Renaissance Café in Toronto featuring photographs by Jo-Anne McArthur ( http://www.joannemcarthur.com/ ) and original music by Sandy Blakeley and Eric Walker. The musicians donated their time and Jo-Anne donated all the proceeds of sales of her photographs to CCFA. Thanks to the generous support of Jo-Anne, Sandy and Eric, we raised $2,000!

EU rejects appeal for ban on Canadian seal products January 26, 2007 The Associated Press The European Union's executive commission rejected appeals Friday for an EU-wide ban on the import of seal fur products to force the closure of Canada's annual seal hunt. The EU head office in Brussels said a 1983 EU law that imposes limited bans on the import of fur taken from young seal pups "provides adequate response" to concerns presented by the European Parliament. The EU assembly voted last year, demanding the European Commission introduce a ban on seal products to protest what EU lawmakers called cruel and inhumane hunting tactics used to kill seal pups for their skins, notably in Canada. In an official response sent to the legislators, the commission said reports it had seen on inhumane hunting methods were "partly contradictory." However, it said the EU would take "all necessary steps to ascertain the use of humane hunting standards for seals, and if deemed appropriate, propose … to take action," in wake of "the high level of public concerns" over the issue. Also seeking cat, dog fur ban The commission said the population of seals in Canada's Arctic and Atlantic regions "has grown significantly" in the last three decades, from just under two million to around six million harp seals alone, adding the seals were not listed as endangered species. Legislators said, however, that the inaction by the EU was hypocritical as it seeks to impose a separate ban on all imports of dog and cat fur into the 27-nation bloc. "Commercial seal hunting is a brutal and cruel practice, targeting seal pups only a few weeks old," said Carl Schlyter, a Swedish Green party member of the EU parliament, who visited the annual seal hunt off Canada's eastern coast last year. He said Europe remains the largest market for seal fur, "so introducing an EU ban on seal products would be a crucial step toward ending this barbaric cull." However, Canada says the biggest market for its seal products remains Norway, which is not an EU member. Schlyter said current rules were insufficient in preventing the import of fur from seal pups. Current EU rules impose a ban on seal products derived from newborn harp seals less than 12 days old and young hooded seals less than one year old. Environmental and animal rights groups argue the rules allow hunters to go after the pups once they reach an age just over the ban limit. Move angers Canada The European Parliament's appeal and moves by several EU nations like Belgium to introduce national bans caused widespread anger in Canada. Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn told Belgian politicians last year to think about Canadian soldiers who died in Europe during the first World War before slamming the door on Canadian seal products. Belgian legislators however, voted unanimously on Thursday to back a national ban on the import of all seal products into the country, becoming the first EU country to do so. Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are also working on similar bans. Canadian officials have defended the hunt saying it is vital to the survival of aboriginal peoples in the Arctic and provided an economic lifeline for a region desperate for jobs and growth. The seal hunt also employs around 6,000 Atlantic Canadians per year. The Canadian Press, 2006

Thursday, January 25, 2007 CBC News Another four wild horses have been shot and killed in the Central Alberta foothills. RCMP in Sundre confirmed the recent shootings on Wednesday. The Wild Horses of Alberta Society, which is offering a $6,500 reward for information leading to the shooters, says the white stud, a mare, foal and yearling were all found dead on Tuesday. Police believe the incident is related to the shooting of two foals and a mare that were discovered on New Year's Day about 10 kilometres away. A total of 20 feral horses have been discovered shot since 2004. Wild Horses of Alberta Society has been lobbying the government to pass legislation to better protect the horses. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/01/25/horses-dead.html

certainement qu'elle est aussi responsable animo, d'autant plus que ça faisait au moins 4 ans que les voisins se plaignaient ! p.s.: Aux nouvelles tout-à-l'heure, on a vu des chiens terrorisés, de même qu'un pauvre chien mort de froid et de faim, couché sur la neige !

C'est un peu le résumé du livre «The Bloodless Revolution» et ça ne me donne pas envie de le lire après avoir lu cet article !

In his roundabout, disjointed way, Stuart also divides ethical vegetarians into the "anthropocentric" and the "biocentric" strains. The first believes that abstaining from meat is in the enlightened self-interest of humanity. In his chapter on the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (the most intellectually coherent and rigorous part of "The Bloodless Revolution"), Stuart explains that Shelley thought that eating flesh "animalized" mankind, and corrupted not only human relationships but the entire planet. Carnivorousness had introduced savagery into a natural world that was essentially peaceful and gentle. Although an atheist, Shelley believed in a lost, Edenic age and was convinced that if human beings gave up eating meat, the rest of creation would follow suit and return to that paradisiacal condition in which "the lion now forgets to thirst for blood." Biocentric vegetarianism, on the other hand, "values non-human ecosystems for their own sake," and considers animals to have a right to their own lives, a right that we human beings aren't entitled to violate for the paltry reason that we like the way they taste. Many other factors enter into this great debate: the cruelty with which domesticated animals are often treated vs. the fact that they owe their existence to human patronage; the need to control animal populations for the benefit of entire ecosystems; the fact that raising meat is a much less efficient use of farmland than growing vegetable foods, and more. All of these issues are important, but until the end of "The Bloodless Revolution" -- some 400 pages in -- Stuart addresses them in a haphazard fashion, as his narrative bounces from oddball savant to historical curio to crackpot. The problem with treating the history of vegetarianism as a history of vegetarians is that the crusading "Pythagoreans" of the past were overwhelmingly cranks, and their examples only taint a legitimate philosophy with an aura of kookiness. The eccentric behaviors displayed by the vegetarians Stuart profiles include: claiming to be Adam, "hosting crazed spiritual revelries," advocating the veiling of women over the age of 7, performing nude jumping jacks every morning in front of an open window (in Scotland, no less), swanning around in a white linen gown in supposed imitation of Pythagoras, renting out an "electro-magnetic" bed purported to increase sexual vigor, stripping naked in the street and giving one's clothes to beggars while high on ether, professing to be "the universal self, or man-god" while roaming the streets of London in "full Armenian costume" and running a "druid temple" out of Cavendish Square. Other vegetarians, like the Marquis de Valady, an active participant in the French Revolution, were merely annoying in the usual countercultural fashion. The hero-worshipping, freeloading Valady would throw himself at the feet of various vegetarian leaders and finagle his way into their households where he would aggravate their wives by "always asking for vegetable foods that one did not have in the house" and expressing astonishment "if one did not have milk at all times of the day." These visits usually concluded with Valady being kicked out after suggesting that "a community of possessions in every thing" ought to be extended to the sexual favors of his host's wife. Small wonder, then, that vegetarianism became associated with crankery. One of Stuart's particular causes in this book is to give due credit to the inspiration that India's vegetarian Hindus provided to their Western counterparts. But most of these European enthusiasts never met a real Hindu, let alone traveled to India, and those who did often returned with an inaccurate and starry-eyed view of life there. (India's millions of vegetarians did, at least, provide solid evidence against the common belief that most people couldn't survive on a meatless diet.) This hardly seems a sturdy enough hook to hang a 600-page book on, and the more incessantly Stuart returns to the theme, the more he risks coming across as a bit of a crank himself. Finally, given that "The Bloodless Revolution" calls itself a "cultural history," it could do with a bit more cultural literacy. Stuart has a pretty feeble grasp of literary matters: Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" was not a satire of the 18th-century obsession with hypersensitive "nerves," and describing a cough as "consumptive" is not a figurative allusion to the cougher's eating habits but a reference to tuberculosis. But perhaps the most baffling omission -- or near-omission, since Stuart does mention it in passing -- is a thorough examination of how conceptions of gender affected the vegetarian cause. Even the most hardheaded, skeptical thinkers Stuart quotes accepted the idea that eating meat, especially red meat, makes people more aggressive. Meat eating has long been associated with virility -- both lustfulness and a propensity toward violence. Women were thought to prefer "mild" foods like dairy products, pastries and sweets, and so for them to abstain from eating flesh seemed only fitting, especially as the Victorian era ushered in a more fragile, gentle and timorous notion of femininity. But as long as European society wanted its men to be brave in battle and robust in bed, convincing them to give up meat was a nonstarter. Even vegetarianism's advocates subscribed to this notion, claiming that herbivorous men would be less bellicose and lascivious, the ideal citizens for a new peaceable kingdom in a world without war. The powerful metaphorical connection between meat eating and manliness lives on: Real men don't eat quiche. It persists in the face of common sense and concrete evidence. History, after all, has given us bloodthirsty, genocidal vegetarians. They include not only Adolf Hitler, but another British oddball whom Stuart has unearthed, John Oswald, who claimed to be a "Hindoo," and "was intimately involved in the process that transformed the French Revolution from a mainly peaceful process into a bloodbath." Oswald introduced the revolutionaries to the up-close and gory method of pike fighting (saves on ammo!) and once suggested simply massacring every Frenchman whose loyalty to the cause wasn't absolutely secure. We're so used to linking masculinity with carnivorousness that we seldom stop to recognize how illogical it is. Just because vegetarianism is correlated with pacifism -- people who draw the line at killing animals are probably loath to kill human beings, too -- it doesn't follow that eating flesh, and especially the flesh of mammals, causes the battery of aggressive behaviors we choose to call manly. Yet even today, insulting vegetarians is presented as a display of bold, defiant machismo, a way of saying, "I understand and embrace the bloody truths of life with lusty vigor, unlike you salad-noshing pansies!" It's hard to believe that vegetarianism will make any serious inroads into Western society as long as this curious superstition remains in place. For, despite Stuart's efforts to portray vegetarianism as a thriving force in European culture for the past 400 years, the bloodless revolution has not yet taken place. It turns out that even this author, who labored to produce 600 pages on the topic, can't conclude his book with a wholehearted endorsement of the vegetable diet. He's not sure that universal human vegetarianism entirely jibes with his own notions of what's "ecologically sensible." And so, "The Bloodless Revolution" ends with the surprisingly mild statement that "there are compelling reasons, at the very least, to reduce our consumption of meat." (p.s.: je n'ai pas encore eu le temps de le lire....) Read all letters on this article (165) Read Editor's Choice letters on this article (12) 75 blog reactions http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/01/25/stuart/index2.html

Herbivore vs. carnivore Are vegetarians the moral, peace-loving, cruelty-free enemies of the meat eater? Or a bunch of kooks living in la-la land? By Laura Miller Jan. 25, 2007 | If history teaches us anything, it's that today's habit may be tomorrow's abomination. What people saw as a matter of course in the streets of 17th-century London -- rich men beating their servants, crowds gathered in a festival mood to watch bloody executions -- would horrify the pedestrian of 2007. Morality, too, has a history, but the people of any given period usually don't see it that way. They think that they already have a pretty solid understanding of right and wrong (even if they find it difficult to be virtuous) and rarely imagine that future generations might view them as unenlightened at best and depraved at worst. Activists, on the other hand, know different. They count on the evolution of morality. Recently, Adam Hochschild's fascinating "Bury the Chains" chronicled the means by which a group of committed 18th-century idealists convinced their fellow citizens in Britain and America that slavery was an intolerable wrong. It wasn't easy, and it didn't happen overnight. Some people of that era thought that slavery was lamentable but intractable; others found it easy to justify an institution that brought them profits and comfort. Still others -- the majority, perhaps -- didn't give it much thought at all, as they sweetened their tea with sugar produced at brutal slave plantations on islands far, far away. For this reason, even an omnivore should find an intellectual history of vegetarianism interesting. We, like the people of the early 1800s, could be living through a period of slow but profound ideological change. To the people of their own time, men like Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson -- early abolitionists and the founders of the first human rights movement -- seemed as impractical, as demanding, as self-righteous and as obsessed as many animal rights activists seem to us today. In the future, right-thinking people might look back at us meat eaters with the same disapproval we heap on those who considered slavery acceptable 200 years ago. Tristram Stuart's "The Bloodless Revolution" promises to be the kind of book that could make such a case. There are many things that this self-professed "Cultural History of Vegetarianism From 1600 to Modern Times" might have done. It might have traced the history of arguments for and against meatless diets as they appeared at the dawn of the scientific revolution, and explored the ways those arguments developed in response to the new discoveries Europeans made about the natural world. It might have outlined the various schools of vegetarian thought -- there are several, often with conflicting premises. It might have compared vegetarian activism with other kinds of movements that aimed to get humanity on the right track, not just abolitionism, but universal suffrage campaigns, feminism, anti-industrial protests, socialism and so on. Lastly, it might have examined what average citizens ate, what various vegetarians considered an ideal diet and the cultural meanings the people of the day invested in those diets. In truth, "The Bloodless Revolution" does a little bit of all of these things, but in a scattered, partial and confusing way that mostly just frustrates the reader looking for a thoughtful history of vegetarianism. Stuart seems to subscribe to the current notion that popular history is best told as the story of colorful characters embarked on grand quests to "save the world" via geography or lexicography or some other scholarly pursuit that used to be viewed as dry and dull. A far better title for this book would be something like (with apologies to Lytton Strachey) "Eminent Vegetarians." In this instance, however, the Colorful Character school of historiography, meant to humanize and make accessible disciplines that most people find stuffy, goes badly awry. Vegetarianism as a philosophy and practice has much to recommend it. And while many meat-eaters think vegetarian diets are boring, as a topic, vegetarianism is anything but; no subject is more likely to rile people up, to provoke defensiveness, self-doubt, ranting and defiance. But vegetarianism has always suffered from one terrible public relations problem: vegetarians themselves. They have a reputation for being priggish, fanatical, kooky and a nuisance to hostesses, and unfortunately the parade of eccentrics that marches across the pages of "The Bloodless Revolution" only confirms that image. Western vegetarianism has a venerable past, linked to the mythological bard Orpheus, the first-century Greek poet Plutarch and, above all, Pythagoras, the philosopher best known for his geometrical theorem but also the founder of an ascetic group that swore off meat and private property. (European vegetarians were often referred to as Pythagoreans.) It would have been nice to have the precedents for Western vegetarianism clearly laid out in the early pages of "The Bloodless Revolution," but no such luck. You can gather tidbits here and there along the way, but Stuart apparently presumes that his readers come pre-steeped in vegetarian lore, and therefore already know that Plutarch wrote a powerful indictment of meat eaters and so only mentions it in passing. Plutarch was a canonical writer known to every educated European during the centuries this book covers, but today he is little-read, and this omission leaves all but the specialist reader at a loss. What Stuart does do well is dig up obscure and sometimes fascinating historical figures and cultural phenomena from deep in the bowels of libraries and other archives, including, in one case, a crumbling French chateau. A particularly choice discovery is the eight-volume "Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy," supposedly the correspondence of "an Ottoman spy called Mahmut operating out of Paris from 1632 to 1682," but actually written by a series of British authors. Speaking through the fictional foreign spy "Mahmut," these writers were able to criticize conventional European mores and religious beliefs, including the West's rejection of the herbivorous "Banquet" offered by the benevolent earth in favor of the "Cruel Massacre" needed to supply our tables with the "Flesh and Blood of Slaughter'd Animals." (Unfortunately for Stuart, this boilerplate condemnation of the West from an imaginary and idealized Eastern perspective is much less intriguing than the revelation that the success of "Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy" set off a string of "copy-cat spy thrillers," all pretending to be caches of letters. It looks like the spy novel may be older than the novel itself!) Next page: Were early vegetarians healthier -- or just less constipated? ----------- Vegetarianism has long been associated with a host of heterodox preoccupations, including nudism, teetotaling, communitarianism and other utopian schemes, free love, idiosyncratic religions, bizarre health regimens and the violent overthrow of the state. The first eminent vegetarian Stuart dusts off is an acolyte of the great 17th-century scholar Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Bushell, who in his youth was unfortunate enough to become tarnished in a smear campaign by Bacon's political enemies; they accused Bacon of paying Bushell for sex. After Bacon's death, the distraught Bushell plunged into dissipation before throwing it all over for the austere lifestyle his mentor had advocated, subsisting on bread and water and retiring to his estate in Oxfordshire. In his old age, he entertained visitors on the grounds; "There," one reported, "he had two mummies; [and] a grott[o] where he lay in a hammock like an Indian." (One of the mummies, a rare Egyptian specimen, was a gift from Queen Henrietta and soon rotted away in the moist grotto.) Bacon had also concocted a plan to start an "ideal colony" in 3-mile-deep caves, where the inhabitants would be fed only on "a fermented meat drink." Bushell adapted this scheme for a silver mine that he owned in Wales, providing a dining hall that served the miners only bread and water, which must have seemed painfully meager to men who didn't spend their days lying in a hammock. As it is, it's hard to believe Bushell could have survived on such a regimen. The question of what exactly historical vegetarians ate is one that never gets sufficiently addressed in "The Bloodless Revolution." Another 17th-century vegetarian reported feasting on "broth thickned with bran, and pudding made with bran, & Turnep leaves chop't together, and grass." Very rarely, Stuart clarifies such statements by explaining, for example, that the term "herbs" sometimes included cabbage, but no further insight is offered into this particular gentleman's startling claim to have eaten grass. Conventional wisdom held that meat was essential to proper nutrition, but all early vegetarians insisted on the superior health-giving properties of their diets. To evaluate this controversy, it would be invaluable to know what exactly the average middle-class European ate every day and what specifically the vegetarians recommended instead. What sorts of fresh vegetables were available? How common were dishes of grains, beans, nuts and legumes? Anyone who has read the intimate letters of 18th- and 19th-century men and women will recall how often they complain of constipation (the James brothers, Henry and William, being prime examples), so it's possible that high-fiber vegetarian diets prescribed by evangelical doctors like the celebrated George Cheyne really did work wonders. (Although the widespread medicinal use of opium might have also been to blame for the problem.) I once heard the novelist Neal Stephenson observe that bladder stones, a common and life-threatening 17th-century ailment that's extremely rare today, might have resulted from the dehydration of city dwellers who dared not trust the local water supply. More vegetables might have helped with that, too. No one seems to know why bladder stones have vanished as a health problem in developed countries, though, and it's quite possible that Stuart simply couldn't find out what constituted the typical nonvegetarian diet of these various historical periods. We may never know what, exactly, the vegetarian quoted above meant by "grass." Still, if Stuart tried and failed to establish any of this, he doesn't mention it. This lack of context makes the book's many, repetitive accounts of the health claims made by different vegetarian champions especially tiresome; it's impossible to consider them against any reliable standards of human nutrition. They are cloud-cuckoo theories voiced in a cloud-cuckoo land of fantastical dimensions, like the attributes of Dungeons and Dragons characters. Pre-20th-century medicine was so wacky and delusional that it's hard to care much about the debates that raged within it. Doctors blamed disease on factors like the accumulation of vapors in various parts of the body, bad air, thinking too hard and the imbalance of humors, and they prescribed bleeding and the ingestion of toxic substances in addition to weird diets, of which vegetarianism -- often dubbed "the milk diet" -- was only one. When you learn that Cheyne thought epilepsy was caused by "hydraulic blockages in the blood and nerves" and that ingested meat left behind salt crystals whose tiny sharp edges would poke through the walls of blood vessels, it's hard to be impressed by the one time he came close to the contemporary understanding of cholesterol. When he was right about something, it was almost certainly by accident. And when he was wrong, as Stuart scandalously suggests, it might have been on purpose. One of Cheyne's more celebrated patients was the publisher Samuel Richardson, who would later go on to write "Pamela," the first novel in the English language. Richardson came to Cheyne complaining of a cold, and Cheyne prescribed him a course of pills that contained mercury. This wasn't unusual -- mercury was commonly administered as a medicine at the time -- but it was dangerous. Mercury, as Stuart explains, is "a virulent neurotoxin" and when introduced into the body in sufficient amounts causes "fits of trembling, twitching, temporary and local paralysis, giddiness, nausea, anxiety, depression, hypersensitivity (erethism) and a tendency to withdraw from social contact." Richardson was soon very sick indeed. Cheyne increased the dosage, and when Richardson got even worse, he prescribed his most radical therapy: a completely vegetarian "milk diet" -- and the cessation of all mercury treatments. Richardson quickly improved, and Cheyne's pet diet took the credit. As appalling as this story is, Stuart has further discovered that Cheyne already knew that mercury was toxic. The physician admitted that the chemical caused "nervous disorders and paralysis" in his books. "It is hard to believe that Cheyne knowingly poisoned people with mercury until they succumbed to his vegetable diet," Stuart writes, but it is also hard to believe otherwise. At worst, Cheyne was irresponsible, or subscribed to a purgative strategy not unlike that of today's "high colonic" enema buffs, believing that his patients' "corrupt bodies" needed to be violently "cleansed" of the garbage they'd ingested before the "purity" of his vegetarian diet could work its magic. Stuart suspects that most of the people who pushed vegetarianism as a health regimen also wanted mankind to give up meat eating for moral reasons. It was often hard to disentangle the two, since the foremost authority on how human beings ought to live (and therefore eat) was the Bible. Omnivores pointed to God's admonition to Noah that "every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you," while vegetarians argued that before the Fall, Adam and Eve were instructed to subsist on "every herb bearing seed" and "the fruit of a tree yielding seed" which "to you ... shall be for meat." Whether or not humanity should or could revert to the prelapsarian diet of Eden was a key point of debate. But because ethical vegetarianism was associated with either religious free-thinking or (in England) crypto-Catholicism, many of those who opted to give up meat for moral reasons tended to present their choice as a medical one in public. .../2

Le vendredi 26 janvier 2007 Réagissez à cette nouvelle Cruauté envers des chiens à Disraeli Paroisse Anima-Québec a frappé un grand coup vendredi matin à Disraeli Paroisse. Une quarantaine de chiens ont été pris en charge par l’organisme. La propriétaire des lieux pourrait faire face à des accusations de cruauté envers les animaux. L’opération a duré une bonne partie de la matinée. La quarantaine de bêtes, entassées dans une cabane délabrée, ont pris le chemin du refuge. Pour des raisons de confidentialité, Anima-Québec refuse d'expliquer sa venue à Disraeli Paroisse. Impossible donc de savoir si ce sont les soins aux animaux ou l'état des lieux qui est en cause. Les voisins de la dame sont soulagés. « J'ai fait un minimum de 75 plaintes écrites à la municipalité. Les chiens criaient tout le temps. Ils avaient faim et froid. Heureusement, c’est terminé », explique l’un d’eux. http://www.tqs.ca/infos/estrie/2007/01/Exclusif---cruaute-envers-des-chiens-a-Disraeli-Paroisse-5129.php BUL. PRINT. 2007

Le vendredi 26 janvier 2007 Réagissez à cette nouvelle Cruauté envers des chiens à Disraeli Paroisse Anima-Québec a frappé un grand coup vendredi matin à Disraeli Paroisse. Une quarantaine de chiens ont été pris en charge par l’organisme. La propriétaire des lieux pourrait faire face à des accusations de cruauté envers les animaux. L’opération a duré une bonne partie de la matinée. La quarantaine de bêtes, entassées dans une cabane délabrée, ont pris le chemin du refuge. Pour des raisons de confidentialité, Anima-Québec refuse d'expliquer sa venue à Disraeli Paroisse. Impossible donc de savoir si ce sont les soins aux animaux ou l'état des lieux qui est en cause. Les voisins de la dame sont soulagés. « J'ai fait un minimum de 75 plaintes écrites à la municipalité. Les chiens criaient tout le temps. Ils avaient faim et froid. Heureusement, c’est terminé », explique l’un d’eux. http://www.tqs.ca/infos/estrie/2007/01/Exclusif---cruaute-envers-des-chiens-a-Disraeli-Paroisse-5129.php

Si vous avez un petit 20 minutes, prenez la peine de lire cet article de 4 pages sur le plus gros producteur de cochons au monde --------------------------------------------- USA: Smithfield Foods, the largest pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year 2007-01-24 America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. 27 million hogs: That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson. Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America's thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield's total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company's slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.... http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/1

Owners pose with their adopted cats at the inauguration yesterday of an association in Taipei to care for stray cats. PHOTO: ANGELICA OUNG, TAIPEI TIMES Association to look after stray cats By Angelica Oung STAFF REPORTER Monday, Dec 18, 2006 Taipei's stray cats now have an association all their own which will look after their wellbeing in a metropolitan environment that can often be inhospitable. Sara Choi, the founder of the association, told a press conference about the mistreatment she witnessed years ago that spurred her to form the group. "I don't know how my neighbors had the heart to poison cats or get rid of kittens by tossing them off the 12th floor," the South Korean said. Choi, who first came to Taipei from South Korea as a student, soon began to take in strays she found at the market or in the streets close to her home. She now works for an airline company and keeps 11 cats of her own in her 109m2 apartment. "I realized that eventually my individual powers to make a difference would be limited and that is why we formed this association" Choi said. "Our goal is to neuter 20 cats a month and adopt at least one," she said. Choi says that Trap, Neuter and Release (TNR) is a more humane and sensible approach to controlling the population of stray cats in the city than euthanasia. "Human beings are the ones making the city dirty by littering. This brings in the rats, followed by the cats," Choi said. She added that the association captures strays, neuters them and assesses whether they are suitable for adoption. "Some cats are too wild and not suitable to be house pets, so we put them back out there after we've neutered them," she said. "Every city needs a certain population of cats or we'll be overrun by rats," she said. At the association's inaugural meeting yesterday, a number of cat owners who have chosen to adopt unwanted cats rather than buy them from a pet store showed off their beloved felines. "We did not want to support the cat breeding industry in Taiwan, as many of its players do not operate in an ethical manner," said Chiu Yu-te (ªô¦³¼w), who has adopted a persian mix and a chinchilla cat with his girlfriend. The association has yet to come up with an English name. http://www.taipeitimes.com

Un mouvement d'interdiction des produits de la chasse au phoque prend forme en Europe. Qu'en pensez-vous? À VOUS LA PAROLE http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/atlantique/index.shtml

Atlantique La chasse au phoque expliquée aux Européens Mise à jour le vendredi 26 janvier 2007, 10 h 28 . Pêches et Océans Canada et le ministère des Affaires extérieures du Canada recevront une délégation de grands médias nationaux européens à Terre-Neuve et aux Îles de la Madeleine, la semaine prochaine, pour leur expliquer les rudiments de la chasse au phoque. Le gouvernement canadien veut accroître ses efforts de communication pour contrer les campagnes internationales des animalistes contre cette chasse. Les journalistes rencontreront les chasseurs de phoques et les industriels dans leur milieu de vie. Plusieurs pays européens envisagent d'adopter des lois interdisant l'importation de produits du phoque. La Belgique, notamment, a déjà adopté une telle loi. Aux États-Unis, l'organisme Humane society of United States mène une campagne depuis deux ans pour convaincre les restaurateurs américains de ne plus servir de produits de la mer du Canada à leurs clients. En 1983, le parlement européen a adopté un boycottage de certains produits du phoque. Le directeur de Pêches et Océans des Îles de la Madeleine, Roger Simon, s'en souvient. « Beaucoup de gens ne pensaient jamais que ce serait adopté et personne ne prenait ça au sérieux jusqu'au jour où on s'est rendu compte que nos marchés étaient fermés. Je pense qu'il ne faudrait pas répéter les erreurs du passé et rester inactifs », dit-il. Pêches et Océans travaillera donc sur plusieurs fronts. Les ambassadeurs étrangers et canadiens seront informés sur la chasse au phoque. On rencontrera aussi des membres d'associations américaines, dit M. Simon. « Pour beaucoup, c'est corriger l'information, qui est un peu déformée, des groupes antichasse », explique-t-il. http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/atlantique/2007/01/26/002-QC-chasse-europe.shtml

Sauvons l'ours polaire avant que la glace ne se sauve Louis-Gilles Francoeur Édition du vendredi 26 janvier 2007 Les biologistes chinois ont signé, il y a quelques semaines, l'acte de décès officiel du baiji, un dauphin du fleuve Yang-tsé, à la suite d'une expédition de plusieurs semaines qui n'a pas permis d'en observer un seul spécimen. Cette espèce, surnommée la déesse du Yang-tsé, était d'autant plus importante pour le patrimoine biologique mondial qu'elle était présente sur la planète depuis 20 millions d'années, ce qui en faisait une des espèces vivantes les plus vieilles. Son extinction est attribuée à la destruction de son habitat, à la surpêche, aux blessures infligées par la navigation, à la pollution et en grande partie à la construction des barrages sur ce fleuve, qui ont coupé l'espèce de ses aires de migration traditionnelles. Il y avait encore, dans les années 80, quelque 400 baijis qui sillonnaient les 3500 kilomètres du Yang-tsé. L'expédition a fait à deux reprises la portion entre le barrage des Trois Gorges et Shanghaï, dans le delta du fleuve, sans pouvoir localiser le moindre dauphin. En 1997, une expédition similaire en avait dénombré 13, et la dernière observation remonte à septembre 2004, rapportait récemment l'agence Environmental News Service. On a déjà songé, en Chine, à capturer les derniers survivants et à les déplacer dans des eaux plus propices à leur survie, mais au bout du compte, le débat a duré un peu trop longtemps... Néanmoins, ce grand fleuve chinois abrite encore quatre autres espèces de dauphins, aussi présents dans d'autres cours d'eau d'Asie. Mais les quatre espèces en question figurent elles aussi sur la liste des espèces menacées de l'Union internationale pour la conservation de la nature (UICN). Et nos ours polaires Pour des raisons tout à fait différentes, certes, les ours polaires de la planète se portent très mal, et si l'espèce n'est pas menacée de disparition sur la couronne circumpolaire, son déclin est amorcé et mérite qu'on fasse le point sur les connaissances que nous en avons. Et nous devons le faire avant que la banquise polaire n'ait complètement disparu, ce qui est prévu pour l'an 2080. Peu avant le début de la nouvelle année, le président George W. Bush a inscrit l'ours polaire sur la liste des espèces vulnérables de son pays. Mais ce n'était pas un geste pour casser la glace, si on peut parler ainsi sans trop d'ironie, dans le dossier des changements climatiques. Il s'agissait plutôt, pour l'administration fédérale américaine, de donner suite à une entente internationale conclue il y a quelques années avec la Russie et qui a mené, en 2006, à l'adoption de la loi américaine sur la gestion et la conservation de l'ours polaire. Le président Bush a effectivement signé cette loi, ce qui l'a fait entrer en vigueur, et, fin décembre, il a inscrit l'ours polaire sur la liste des espèces vulnérables. Selon le dernier bilan dressé par l'UICN sur l'ours polaire, cinq des 19 populations connues de la couronne circumpolaire accusent présentement un déclin prononcé, indiquait à la mi-décembre un rapport publié en Suisse. Ce rapport prévoit un déclin de 30 % de la population d'ours polaires de la planète d'ici 35 à 50 ans. Cela ramènerait les effectifs de ce cheptel, qui s'élève actuellement entre 20 000 et 25 000 têtes, autour de 13 000 à 17 000 individus. En mai dernier, l'ours polaire a d'ailleurs été inscrit sur la liste internationale des espèces en déclin. Tout le monde sait que le réchauffement du climat est devenu la principale menace à la survie de cette espèce parce que la fonte de plus en plus rapide de la banquise polaire, la diminution de sa surface globale et sa fragilité croissante réduisent l'accès des ours aux phoques. Ces mammifères marins, qui utilisent le moindre trou dans la glace pour respirer à intervalles réguliers, se retrouvent ainsi momentanément vulnérables face aux chasseurs humains ou ursidés. Mais l'épaisse couche de graisse des ours polaires leur permet d'aller beaucoup plus loin que les humains sur la banquise car ils peuvent revenir à la nage si les blocs de glace deviennent trop espacés au moment de la fragmentation annuelle. La population d'ours polaires du Québec accuse un déclin encore plus prononcé, selon le rapport de l'UICN, que celle des États-Unis. En effet, elle aurait jusqu'à présent perdu 22 % de son effectif global dans la baie d'Hudson et dans le sud de la mer de Beaufort. En guise de comparaison, la population globale des ours présents dans l'ensemble du Canada et des États-Unis (en Alaska) a chuté de 17 %. Pour les chercheurs, le déclin accru du cheptel de la baie d'Hudson traduit l'impact des changements climatiques sur cette espèce car la fonte de la banquise y est plus prononcée. Un des impacts de ce déclin réside dans l'hybridation désormais documentée entre des grizzlis de l'Alaska et des ours polaires. La température plus clémente permet au grizzli de migrer plus au nord alors que les ours blancs sont de plus en plus réduits à chasser sur les côtes, ce qui permet aux deux espèces de se côtoyer, pas toujours harmonieusement d'ailleurs. Incapables de refaire leurs réserves de graisse comme par le passé -- la chasse aux phoques leur procurait des réserves qu'ils utilisaient plus de six mois par année --, les ours polaires affichent de plus en plus de signes de cannibalisme et d'agressivité envers les humains. Les biologistes constatent une nette diminution du poids moyen des ours polaires, causée par la difficulté, voire l'impossibilité de chasser sur la banquise dans certains secteurs où la glace se fait plus rare. Les analyses réalisées sur les jeunes ours blancs indiquent par ailleurs une baisse accentuée de leur résistance aux maladies en raison d'un poids nettement inférieur. Cette réduction de poids, critique chez les jeunes, est directement liée à la fonte prématurée de la banquise, qui disparaît maintenant trois semaines plus tôt, en moyenne, qu'il y a 30 ans, à un moment éminemment critique pour la croissance des oursons. Et c'est sans compter la pollution toxique actuelle ou à venir car, même s'il n'y a aucune usine dans le Grand Nord canadien, de fortes concentrations de BPC et d'autres toxiques ont été relevées dans les populations d'ours polaires qui vivent près du Groenland. Ces toxiques proviennent de nos régions industrielles et migrent par les grands courants atmosphériques pour se concentrer, en définitive, dans les poissons, les phoques, puis les ours ou... les humains. Du côté canadien, même s'il n'y a aucune usine autour de la baie James et de la baie d'Hudson, la pollution toxique pourrait croître rapidement au cours des prochaines décennies et frapper durement les espèces déjà fragiles de cette dernière grande mer encore vierge de la planète. En effet, la pollution souvent effarante que charrient certains fleuves des provinces de l'Ouest va ultimement finir par frapper la baie James et la baie d'Hudson. S'ajoute à cela la menace que fait peser sur tout le nord du Canada l'exploitation des sables bitumineux de l'Alberta, dont la pollution acide frappe désormais le Québec sur un flanc qui était épargné par ce problème il y a 20 ans, révèlent les études fédérales. Plusieurs toxiques provenant des raffineries albertaines pourraient accompagner les molécules acides dans leur périple aérien. Un exemple: selon un communiqué émis par la Première Nation chipewyan de l'Athabaska, une étude réalisée par la société Suncor Energy révélait l'été dernier une forte contamination à l'arsenic des orignaux des régions voisines des sites d'extraction et de raffinage des sables bitumineux. La petite communauté de Fort Chipewyan, située sur la rivière Athabaska en aval des gisements de sables bitumineux, a été estomaquée d'apprendre à la lecture de cette étude que les orignaux qu'elle chassait dépassaient de 453 fois le niveau d'arsenic jugé acceptable. Dans une communauté aux prises avec des taux alarmants d'un cancer rare, cette découverte était particulièrement troublante, d'autant plus que plusieurs autochtones se nourrissent principalement des poissons de l'Athabaska. Le gouvernement albertain a contesté les conclusions de Suncor mais sa propre étude, amorcée peu après, se fait toujours attendre, même si ses conclusions étaient promises pour l'automne. Vos réactions les dauphins et le reste - par lise jacques Le vendredi 26 janvier 2007 09:00 Réagissez à ce texte http://www.ledevoir.com/2007/01/26/128697.html

Fabienne Thibeault enfourche le cheval de bataille des races patrimoniales Fabien Deglise Édition du vendredi 26 janvier 2007 C'est sans doute une question de feeling. La chanteuse Fabienne Thibeault a décidé de mettre les deux pieds dans les terroirs du Québec pour sauver le patrimoine agricole de la province. ................. «Comment pouvons-nous être sensibilisés à la disparition de ce poulet si nous ne sommes même pas capables d'en acheter pour en mettre sur nos tables?, dit Mme Thibeault. http://www.ledevoir.com/2007/01/26/128765.html

Le vendredi 26 janvier 2007 Le Québec propose le libre-échange entre le Canada et l'UE Rémi Nadeau Presse Canadienne Davos, Suisse Le gouvernement Charest rêve d'un accord de libre-échange entre le Canada et l'Union européenne qui permettrait de profiter d'un marché de 450 millions de consommateurs. Le premier ministre Jean Charest a annoncé vendredi qu'il avait enclenché un processus de discussions à cet effet, en faisant part de son intention à son homologue fédéral Stephen Harper et à ses collègues des autres provinces. .... Jean Charest a informé Stephen Harper de son intention de dévoiler le projet avant son départ pour la Suisse, et il a fait parvenir une lettre au président du Conseil de la fédération, le premier ministre de Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador, Danny Williams.

Hier soir aux nouvelles on nous montrait encore le gros Pouliot (le président de l'industrie du cochon du Québec) avec sa grosse bouille à fesser d'dans... et ensuite on nous a montré l'intérieur d'une porcherie et de pauvres truites enfermées chacune dans des stalles métalliques minuscules ! Il y en avait une qui essayait constamment d'ouvrir sa cage avec son groin ! Ensuite, on voyait les yeux de pauvres cochons qui se trouvaient à l'intérieur d'un camion qui devaient les emmener à l'abattoir: Il faisait moins 22 degrés celcius hier- moins 39 avec le facteur éolien - Ce matin, en revenant de ma pysio, j'ai également vu un camion rempli de pauvres cochons sur l'autoroute: et ce matin encore il faisait aussi froid qu'hier. Il y avait un trafic énorme, donc la circulation était complètement arrêtée. Comme ils devaient avoir froid ces pauvres cochons, eux qui n'ont jamais mis le nez dehors depuis leur naissance ! Pauvre bêtes ! Ça m'a brisé le coeur de voir ça.. !

Je crois que les truites vivantes sont d'abord assommées puis vider, avant d'être plongées dans une marmitte d'eau bouillante... Ça m'étonnerais beaucoup qu'on serve des truites qui n'ont pas été vidées auparavant... d'autant plus que les truites consomment n'importe quoi.... J'ai déjà vu des truites manger des petits cannetons dans un étang... Elles les attrappaient pas les pattes et les faisaient couler pour ensuite les dévorer vivants !