PETA Press Release:

Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend Calls On Consumers to Avoid Piccadilly Store

London – Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer of The Pretenders, has appealed to Managing Director Ewan Venters to stop Fortnum & Mason selling foie gras – a product so vile that it is illegal to produce in the UK. Hynde’s action comes after PETA showed her undercover video footage, narrated by legendary actor Sir Roger Moore, which exposed terrible abuse on foie gras farms supplying Fortnum & Mason – including at an abattoir, where birds had knives plunged into their throats without prior stunning, in contravention of both UK and French law.

“I’ll stand by you, Mr Venters, just as soon as you stop the sale of foie gras in your store”, says Hynde. “Until then, I’ll be avoiding Fortnum’s like the plague and will be encouraging my friends and family to do the same.”

During foie gras production, huge amounts of grain are pumped into the stomachs of geese through metal pipes, which are rammed down their throats several times a day. Their distended livers – which can swell to up to 10 times their normal size – press against their lungs, causing them to pant constantly. Veterinarians and avian experts agree: there is no humane way to produce foie gras. Animal-protection groups – including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Compassion in World Farming, Animal Defenders International, Animal Aid, Viva!, Four Paws, OneKind, Save Me and the International Veterinary Society – have all joined PETA in calling for Fortnum & Mason to stop selling foie gras.

Tens of thousands of PETA supporters have written to Fortnum & Mason urging it to stop selling the barbaric product. Dame Vera Lynn, Twiggy, Joanna Lumley, MP Zac Goldsmith, Brigitte Bardot, Bill Oddie, Emma Parker Bowles and Arlene Phillips are among the other high-profile people calling on the store to rid its shelves of this “torture in a tin”.

For a photo of Hynde supporting the campaign, please click here. For more information and to view Hynde’s letter, please visit PETA.org.uk.

Guardian:

One-third of common land animals could see dramatic losses this century because of climate change, scientists predict.

More than half of plants could be hit the same way as habitats become unsuitable for numerous species.

The collapse of ecosystems would have major economic impacts on agriculture, air quality, clean water access, and tourism…

ADI Press Release:

8 May 2012, Bogota, Colombia: The Colombian Senate’s Fifth Committee approved a draft bill to end the use of animals in travelling circuses. The 8 to 1 committee vote (4 absent) sends the Bill to the plenary session and was welcomed by Animal Defenders International (ADI), following a six-year campaign after their undercover investigators exposed cruelty and suffering in Colombia’s circuses.

Bill 244, 2012, introduced by Senator Juan de Jesús Córdoba and supported by Senator Camilo Sanchez, Rep. Hugo Velasquez, and President of the House of Representativas Augusto Posada, prohibits the use of animals in circuses. The Committee heard evidence from Eduardo Peña, ADI South America Campaign Coordinator and representatives of the animal circus industry.

Senator Cordoba urged the Fifth Committee members to support the Bill, “The passage of this bill would prevent the public health and safety problems triggered by animal circuses”.

The Bill has widespread public support as well as a number of Colombian public authorities, celebrities and organisations.

Eduardo Peña, ADI South America Campaigns Coordinator, “We urge approval of this important initiative. It is not opposed to circuses, we want to see more humane shows for the benefit of the animals, the people who work in the circus and the public. Audiences can enjoy talented human performances, and cut out the suffering.”

ADI’s investigation horrified the public and exposed: abuse of elephants, tigers, ponies, llamas and shockingly, an elderly female chimpanzee screaming as she is repeatedly punched in the face and beaten with a chain. Dogs, tigers and a horse displayed abnormal, stereotypic behaviour, indicating suffering due to deprivation.

ADI President Jan Creamer: “People are shocked because every time we have sent our investigators to work undercover in the circus industry, they have found abuse. We now believe that the whole culture of the circus industry, worldwide, gives rise to the ill treatment of animals and poor environmental conditions are common. The animals exist to perform, with no regard for their welfare and intrinsic value.”

PETA Press Release:

PETA US Asks Chef to Swear Off Foie Gras After Violent Force-Feeding, Deaths and Slaughter Found on Supplier’s Factory Farm

London – A new PETA US investigation of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which supplies Manhattan restaurant Gordon Ramsay at The London, has revealed shocking cruelty to ducks at the factory farm, which calls itself the “premier producers of foie gras” in the US. PETA US has sent flamboyant celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay – who has rejected some of the pork industry’s worst factory-farming practices on his show The F Word – a request to stop selling foie gras. PETA US included video footage revealing how Hudson Valley Foie Gras workers shove steel tubes down ducks’ throats and dump huge amounts of grain into their bodies three times a day, every day, for weeks in order to sicken and enlarge the birds’ livers. At slaughter, ducks are hung upside down, have their throats slit and are left to bleed to death.

Experts have found that force-feeding causes oesophageal tears and splits, liver rupture and failure, heat stress and aspiration pneumonia – and by the company’s own calculation, some 15,000 ducks on the farm die every year before they make it to slaughter.

“Every exposé of foie gras farms has revealed how grotesquely cruel it is to jam pipes down birds’ throats and force-feed them until they sicken and die”, says PETA UK Associate Director Mimi Bekhechi. “We hope Gordon Ramsay and other chefs will swear off this particular ‘f-word’ – foie gras – for good.”

This was not PETA US’s first visit to a New York foie gras factory farm. In 1991, at a farm that was later acquired by Hudson Valley Foie Gras, PETA investigators revealed cruel force-feeding and countless sick and injured ducks, including one whose maggot-covered neck wound was so severe that water spilled out of it when he drank.

PETA US’s letter to Gordon Ramsay is available here, and broadcast-quality video footage from PETA’s investigation is available upon request. For more information about the cruelty behind foie gras, please visit PETA.org.uk.

The Sun:

The shocking extent of animal rights abuses in China’s zoos is laid bare today in a series of pictures that have emerged from the country.

The sickening snaps — taken by a Brit visiting the communist state — show bears, monkeys, lions and tigers all being forced to perform circus acts for the watching crowds…

This Is Somerset:

A joint hunt master and a terrierman pleaded guilty to interfering with a badger sett yesterday after they caused the “most severe” damage an RSPCA officer had seen in 25 years…

…But yesterday, at North Wiltshire Magistrates Court in Chippenham, the RSPCA dropped the hunt charges after Radborne and Pethers pleaded guilty to interfering with a badger sett…

Telegraph:

Spectators watch on in horror as a bear knocks down and eats a monkey it was performing with during an animal Olympics show.

In the video, which was posted onto Live Leak on Sunday, the crowd can be heard cheering as two primates and a bear are forced to race bicycles around a track as part of a circus act…

Daily Mail:

A humble moth has been identified as having the sharpest hearing in the animal kingdom – up to 150 times more sensitive than a human’s.

The greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella) lays its eggs in beehives, where the larvae feed on the wax and debris of the honeycombs.

Now, new research published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters has shown it has extremely high frequency sensitivity in its simply constructed ear…

First Post:

In what is being viewed as first sign of whale sharks finding a conducive environment for reproducing along the Gujarat coast, a sub-one metre pup of the largest fish species was recently caught in fishing nets.

Experts working on whale shark conservation are studying the phenomenon which indicates the giant fish swims all the way from Australian shores to Gujarat to reproduce.

The whale shark pup was found in the nets of a fishing trawler off Sutrapada coast in Junagadh district, around 300km from here, a few days ago. Mohan Beem Solanki, a fisherman, informed the Whale Shark Conservation Project…