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The
RSPCA Veggie-states. Members’ Crucial Cruelty-free
Vote
Food and beverages served at future
RSPCA AGMs will be strictly vegetarian (i.e. vegan).
A proposal to this effect was passed on 24 June 2005
at the AGM of the Society in London by 72 votes for,
12 against, and 7 abstentions.
This
act and demonstration of the RSPCA’s increasing
concern for farm animals.
Read
the full story here
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Not
Our Sorta Investments in a Portfolio of Premier Diets
and Food
Adding Oxo to its stock in the
grocery cupboard completes Premier Foods biggest acquisition
to date. Premier Foods already owns Branston Pickle,
Lloyd Grossman’s sauces and Fray Bentos tinned
meat pies. The latest deal costing £460 million
funded by a £450 million rights issue, will effectively
double Premier Foods’ issued capital base, and
further acquisitions are not ruled out.
Read
the full story here
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Nutritional
Labelling Consultation
VEGA comments on an FSA Consultation
on nutritional labelling, available from the FSA website.
Read
our comments here
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The
Nutrition Society in a Stew
The Nutrition Society’s AGM and annual conference,
sponsored by respectable academic and research organizations
and the Food Standards Agency, but also by a commercial
sector and other sponsors, among which were Cadbury
Schweppes.
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the full story here
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VEGA
Manifesto
A New Kinder Farming and Food
Applying the 3Rs – Reduction, Refinement, and Replacement
in the Development of Standards Aiming at a Cruelty-Free
and Wholesome Food Supply. Britain is Fumbling the Possibilities
of Salutary Food from Salubrious Farming. Finland Scores;
Britain Misses Goals; National Plan Needed.
Rejection
of VEGA’s submission to contribute a talk in the
program invited for a 3-day international conference
at the Royal Society, London, beginning on Wednesday,
13th September 2006, with the title ‘The Quality
of Life’, prompts us to rehearse the main intended
content as follows. The event has been arranged by the
Universities’ Federation for animal Welfare in
conjunction with the British Veterinary Association’s
Animal Welfare Foundation. As the topic is highly relevant
to VEGA’s aims, we submitted an abstract, as requested,
but our application was turned down. The title of the
intended talk was ‘ What Price Animal Welfare in
Policies for Farming’.
All
has not been lost: the BVA’s AWF is inviting a
few chosen representatives to participate in its own
conference in London on Wednesday, 24th May, on Farm
Animal Welfare and Surveillance, followed by an evening
reception at the House of Commons. DEFRA representatives
will participate in these events. VEGA has accepted
the invitation too
Read
the full manifesto here
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Tapping
the Eurobarometer: Set Fair for Welfare?
Ticks in little boxes don’t
make for sound policies for birds in cages, calves in
crates, pigs in pens, and animals in farms, units, and
lairages in slaughterhouses.
A Eurobarometer survey on consumer attitudes to farm
animal welfare prompts an examination of demands for
the products of sustained suffering on an enormous scale
unworthy of human wit and intelligence. A scientific
and objective survey finds the welfare and rights groups
lacklustre in exemplification and proclamation of their
persuasions. Consumers cannot expect governments to
plod through legal enactments of kindness and mercy.
Societies surfeited and suffering from the self-abuse
of excesses of badly distributed food and agronomic
bad practice must exercise the self-discipline of “if
in doubt, leave it out”.
We have the wit and resource to live harmoniously with
“our” environment and ever more of its denizens.
Education, reform, and replacement are incentives by
well-informed consumers whom governments and manufacturers
must respect and serve. Well-meaning surveys, such as
Eurobarometer, don’t cut the mustard. The welfare
of non-human animals demands a better-informed guide
than Eurobarometer to inspire a human population stamping
too heavily on its environment. We are inspired by Eurobarometer
to essay changes of consumer pressure that bid fair
to portend a better climate for all species.
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the full article here
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