Watch for More Defence for Industrialised Killing

Bleak countryside truths charting the farmer’s ruin have elicited attempts at redressing rural disasters.

The electorate’s concern over activities and topics such as intensified high-input production, pesticides, diseases (some zoonotic), killing and cullings of livestock in slaughtering of massacring enormity, and of belated and misapplied farming subsidies intended for environmental purposes, are receiving PR dollops of free ranging and premium VAT (Virtue Adding Tricks) misinformation lulling an electorate into disremembrance of disasters, especially from stubble burning on, that blemish our green and pleasant land.

A miasma of cruelty and rapacity hangs over the countryside. We reiterate the need for “green” campaigners to thrust their views and solutions into the political arena. We call attention now to a Channel 4 programme beginning at 21.00 on Thursday, 3rd May 2007. It’s entitled The Lie of the Land.

Click here to read the full article.

Watch a debate at the Royal Society for Arts in London.

Whey Out For Cheesytarians

For switched on veggies, all of the dairy / beef / veal part of the live / deadstock industry and its output and by-products are objectionable (“Mars back down but vegetarians left baffled”, 21 May 2007).

Let us here at VEGA show a leading light to consumers lured by the milky way tainted by ill use of cow and calf in a ruthless exploitation in the interests of intensified production. “Cruelty-free” confections, meat-, dairy-, egg-, and fish-free, are widely and increasingly in the ascendant in shops and supermarkets. Some options shine with fairtrade accreditations. Customers need not be left benighted and baffled: read the labels, choose real chocolate and enjoy. Thumbs down on choc au lait.

Labelling on Eggs

VEGA comments on DEFRA Consultation on Eggs and Chicks (England) Regulations 2007

We think that all commercially-produced eggs should be sold with a welfare warning based on the 5 Freedoms, thus production of these eggs entails cruelty to the birds. We see good grounds for extending the warning to eggs from other birds, e.g. quails, ducks etc.

News Round Up at Wet and Windy Whitsun

We review some current topics and Whitsuntidings that have engaged VEGA over recent weeks.

They emphasize our need for volunteers to engage in our campaigns and to add to the fun with well-versed contributions to our efforts and enhancement and use of our database. It is being overhauled now to make it even more freely accessible - a real Freedom Food for Thought and Action.

Here's a list of current topics that grab our attention.

• Food Standards and Manky Meat
• Cane or Beet – Are the Sugars the Same? No: Provenance Matters
• Water Supply Contaminated at Food Plant
• Dimming Views of the Milky Way
• A Cow Yielding “Semi-skimmed” Low-Fat Milk
• Is the Animal Welfare Act Working?
• Avian Flu and Other Viral Diseases Epidemiology, Screening and Genetics (and Epigenetics)
• D2 or D3. Calcichew, Bisphosphonates, and Osteopenia
• The Thyroid
• Fishing for Complements
• Radioactive Sheep in the UK. In the Wake of Chernobyl
• Meat, McDonald’s, and the Meat Market. The 4 Ms
• Freedom’s Just Another Word… The RSPCA in Shame

Available here.

More Trouble for Katsouris’ Food Plants

Food factories that have “blighted the lives of people living nearby for years with the stench of ‘hot sick’ and onions could be sued by residents” (Sickened by smells from food plants, Ealing Gazette 01 June 2007).

The name of Katsouris is already in bad odor after recalls of products such as houmous suspected of being contaminated with salmonella, which has prompted a rigorous investigation by Tesco of a factory that has been supplying several supermarkets.

Click here to read the full article.

VEGA on REACH

VEGA comments on a DEFRA consultation on the Enforcement of REACH in the UK. REACH came into force on the 1 June 2007 in the UK.

1. This is an OverReach document: it requires much more assessment of intentions on the basis of definitions and tapped experiences from physiologists and regulators of the pharmaceutical industry and of the Home Office. In other words, it needs a scientific foundation before the battleship plant of legislation and enforcement come to a grounding in waters inadequately fathomed but still capable of the passage of more maneuverable vessels flagged with good intentions.

2. Medical and veterinary advice must be sought urgently and draft of proposed working examples should be put about to focus the challenges in the light of increasing knowledge in physiology, genetics, immunology, and the pharmacology of toxophores that could reduce the toll of suffering caused by experimentation on non-human animals, even when Home Office stipulations are applied.

Click here to read the full article.

New Health Food Superstore in Kensington, London

Whole Foods Market is opening its first UK store on High Street Kensington this Wednesday (6th June 2007). A launch party took place for press and others invited Monday evening.

Whole Foods Market was founded in 1980 as one small store in Austin, Texas. The company “obtains [its] products locally and from all over the world, often from small, uniquely dedicated food artisans”. It also “strives to offer the highest quality, least processed, most flavorful and naturally preserved foods” (Whole Foods Market’s website). In 2004 Whole Foods Market bought Fresh & Wild, which they continue to operate under the Fresh & Wild name (Whole Foods' British invasion, Statesman May 27, 2007).

The new store is in Kensington, in the Barker’s Building on 63-97 High Street Kensington, W8 5SE. Whole Foods Market is planning to follow up with another 30 to 40 stores across the UK.

Overall, it is a good health food store, but also a good general supermarket, even though the prices might be a bit high. Whole Foods Market focuses on raising standards for animal welfare (but are those standards up to scratch when it comes to British standards?), as well as seasonal and local fresh produce. There are many options good for meat(and fish)-reducers, free-froms, ethical shoppers and dairy-frees.