$250K fine in Australia for fake ‘free range’ eggs

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Douglas Powell

In addition to changing Prime Ministers every 12 months (bye-bye Tony dumb-dumb) it’s almost impossible to buy cage eggs, at least without enduring the stigmatizing stares of other shoppers.

But are consumers getting what’s advertised?

Darling Downs Fresh Eggs must pay a $250,000 fine after the Federal Court ruled it had purposely mis-labelled its eggs as free range, in a case brought by the competition watchdog.

The court found that RL Adams Pty, the company behind the egg producer, engaged in misleading conduct and made misleading representations to consumers in labelling and promoting its eggs as `free range’ from December 2013 to October 2014.

The company admitted, in the course of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigation, that it had kept its hens confined to barns at all times, and kept doors shut so the chickens never had access to an outdoor range.

“It’s clearly misleading to claim your eggs are free range when the hens that laid the eggs didn’t roam freely outdoors,” said ACCC chairman Rod Sims.

“People are willing to pay a premium for free range eggs which they believe meet ethical or welfare standards. Businesses should not be benefiting financially from misleading claims about farming practices,” he said.

The severity of the penalty was mitigated in part by Rl Adams’ co-operation with the ACCC investigation, said the court.

Popular China restaurant serves crayfish with bacteria, causes food poisoning

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Bacteria has been detected in crayfish served by a restaurant which had been ordered to suspend operation after an outbreak of food poisoning earlier this month.

Inspection reports showed that Vibrio parahemolyticus had been detected in food samples provided both by Zheng Wen Qi Crayfish Donburi restaurant and its customers, Yangpu District government said on Friday.

“Considering the restaurant staff’s nonstandard practices in dealing with the excessive quantity of food, the incident is deemed as a food poisoning case caused by food affected by Vibrio Parahemolyticus,” a district government notice said.

A number of diners suffered from diarrhea, stomach aches and vomiting after eating crayfish donburi — a dish of crayfish meat on a bed of rice — at the outlet. The restaurant was so popular before the accident that it was said to have served 1,300 portions of donburi on its second day of opening.

Aussie live export cattle being killed with sledgehammer in Vietnam caught on camera, prompts calls for ban

Posted on May 19, 2015 by Douglas Powell

The Australian live animal export market makes a lot of money, but cannot be condoned, since refrigeration has existed since the late 1800s.

According to Australian media, shocking footage has emerged of live export Australian cattle being bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers in Vietnam.

Government authorities have been investigating reports of the sickening slaughter method since March, but Animals Australia said yesterday it was the first time photographic evidence had been made public.

Video obtained by the animal welfare group shows handlers in a Vietnamese abattoir repeatedly striking beef cattle over the head with a sledgehammer to subdue and kill them.

The hidden camera vision was captured late last month in a facility in northern Vietnam.

Animals Australia spokeswoman Lisa Chalk said Vietnam was currently the second-largest export market for Australian cattle, with 178,000 animals exported there in 2014.

“The industry has called what is happening in Vietnam ‘growing pains’,” Ms Chalk said.

“Most people would disagree. It’s horrific and preventable suffering.”

Animals Australia, the organisation which earlier this year helped expose the cruel practice of live-baiting within the greyhound industry, said video showing the sledgehammer slaughters was “so shocking and distressing that a decision has been taken to not publicly release it at this time.”

I’d barf too: Stench from rotting lamb carcasses at Detroit market makes reporter vomit

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Steve Neavling of the Motor City Muckraker writes:

The stench was so foul that I vomited.

A dumpster at the Eastern Market was brimming with scores of rotting lamb carcasses Sunday afternoon, plainly visible to motorists along Gratiot Avenue in what is a clear violation of state law and a risk to public health. The Bodies of Dead Animals Act of 1982 requires carcasses to be burned, buried or passed off to a licensed processor within 24 hours of being slaughtered.

Eastern MarketWitnesses said the dumpster has been full of lamb carcasses for several weeks – or longer – but it’s unclear how often they are being picked up. Images from Google Maps appear to show the dumpster full of animal carcasses in October 2014.

Walk the talk: Role of animal husbandry, food safety, MC officials criticized in India

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Douglas Powell

The role of officials of the Animal Husbandry Department, Food Safety Standard (FSS) and Municipal Corporation (MC) is under the scanner for giving a free run to a Shoghi-based private slaughterhouse. Two recent joint inspections during the bird flu scare has exposed that the slaughterhouse is not being run as per FSS norms as reports have pointed out blatant shortcomings there.

The six-member team’s report of the slaughterhouse, run by the Goels Food World, Shoghi, which is with The Tribune, revealed that the slaughterhouse was compromising on health and hygiene as 20-30 dead birds were lying on the dirty floor. Also, the slaughterhouse had no rendering facility.

Besides, the staff used no protecting gears and the effluent treatment facility was non-functional. It had no veterinarian to conduct the ante-mortem and post-mortem of the birds and cull the dead or unfit birds, the inspection revealed. Though the slaughterhouse was being run since 2006, the unit was registered as a food technology unit.

The inspection was carried out on August 6, 2014, and followed by another inspection on December 27, which found similar shortcomings.

The report also exposed the paperwork being done by the government agencies. The six-member team included officials from the Animal Husbandry Department, MC, veterinary officers, Pollution Control Board, but no official from the Directorate of Health and the FSS was involved.

Neither the MC-run slaughterhouse here nor the private slaughterhouse was quarantined for bird flu, as mandated under the FSS rules and WHO norms for bird and swine flus, revealed health experts.

The Municipal Commissioner, Shimla, said they had issued a notice to the private operator to stop the unethical practice of selling uncertified meat in the municipal limits after the joint inspection report pointed out the shortcomings at the slaughterhouse. “We have set up a modern slaughterhouse and monitor it daily but we cannot check the private one directly as it falls outside the limits of the corporation,” he added.

Couple kicked out of Wisconsin McDonald’s for bringing in kangaroo

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Douglas Powell

On Friday, Diana and Larry Moyer brought one of their five pet kangaroos to a McDonald’s in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, prompting a customer to call the police, reports WISN.

“He’s just a little guy, but you can touch him and pet him,” Larry says of Jimmy the kangaroo.

The couple often brings the smaller marsupial with them on errands to keep Diana, who is battling cancer, company. Jimmy isn’t a licensed service animal, but the kangaroo is a therapy pet.

The Moyers – who’ve owned kangaroos for five years – say the animals often turn heads in public, but rarely do they cause problems, so the couple was shocked when a customer at McDonald’s felt the need to call the police and complain.

Since kangaroos are not protected by disability laws, the Moyers and Jimmy were asked to leave by the restaurant. The group left without incident at the same time authorities arrived at the scene.

Vietnam buries thousands of cats smuggled for restaurants

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Vietnamese authorities have buried thousands of cats, many apparently still alive, that were seized after being smuggled in a truck from China for restaurants, a police officer said Wednesday.

Cat meat is easily available in some restaurants in Vietnam, especially in the north near the Chinese border, even though the government in 1998 ordered such restaurants closed and banned the trade of cats in an effort to encourage ownership and help keep the country’s rat population under control.

The cats that were buried were dealt with in accordance with the law because they posed an environmental and health risk, said the police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He confirmed that live cats were buried but was uncertain how many.

Police last week had stopped the truck carrying 3 tons of cats in cramped bamboo baskets. The truck driver, to whom the cargo belonged, was fined 7.5 million dong ($360) for smuggling the animals.

Halal slaughter: Outcry after UK undercover film exposes brutality of industry

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Nigel Morris of The Independent reports that UK Ministers are under pressure to respond to growing public discontent about religious slaughter after an undercover investigation exposed the horrific mistreatment of animals at a halal abattoir.

Secretly filmed footage which appears to show abattoir workers repeatedly hacking at sheep’s throats, hurling them into solid structures and kicking them in the face has intensified demands for a complete ban on the religious slaughter of animals without stunning them first.

Four slaughtermen at the North Yorkshire abattoir have had their operating licences suspended by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) after a catalogue of apparent brutality was caught on camera. The footage shows animals being treated with “gratuitous violence and contempt”, according to the charity Animal Aid, which carried out the investigation.

The film emerged days after a petition demanding that slaughter without pre-stunning be outlawed passed the 100,000 mark, adding pressure on political leaders to bring in fresh curbs on inhumane practices in abattoirs.

The Government has said it has no intention of introducing new controls on the production of halal or kosher meat, a line that David Cameron repeated during a recent visit to Israel. Animals are meant to be stunned before they are killed, but there are exemptions for Muslim and Jewish producers.

The covert filming at the Bowood Lamb abattoir in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, appears to show workers hacking and sawing at throats in contravention of Islamic practice, which requires animals to be killed with one clean sweep of a knife. In one instance it took five attempts to sever blood vessels.

The petition calling for an end to non-stun slaughter has been championed by the British Veterinary Association, which has warned ministers that they “simply cannot ignore the strength of public feeling” over animal welfare.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid753144093001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAkVf4sTE~,ZHihQoc0Mak3KW61gTbGinrWzI69us3-&bctid=4028969078001

Farming science, without the conscience

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Following an account by Michael Moss in the N.Y. Times last week, a Times editorial says the little-known U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, financed by American taxpayers, which employs the sophisticated tools and scientific expertise of modern animal management — apparently without a conscience.

The details Mr. Moss’s article exposes are sickening. In engineering animals to maximize industry’s bottom line, the center, at a sprawling, secluded site in Nebraska, has created pigs that bear freakishly large litters of frail piglets, which are often crushed by their mothers. Cows give birth to triplets, many of them deformed. Lambs are born in open fields, where they starve, are eaten by predators and are overcome by the elements. These so-called easy-care sheep are bred to eliminate the need for shelters and human help at birthing time.

(Reuters has reported that the secretary of agriculture, in the wake of Mr. Moss’s article, has directed the agency to create a new animal welfare plan, which will involve employee training and a review of research practices.)

The humans who work at the center are not necessarily oblivious to its failings. Some veterinarians and researchers told The Times they were appalled by the suffering and abuse. They should not have their consciences degraded by what is supposed to be beneficial work. Congress founded the center 50 years ago. It should oversee it and reform it — or shut it down.

Daddy, why is there airport security? More than 2300 turtles seized at Jakarta international airport

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Douglas Powell

While traveling recently with daughter Sorenne, she asked why she had to go through security at the airports.

I tried to explain, but probably failed.

Maybe this turtle story will help.

Authorities in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport have foiled a bid to smuggle an astonishing 2,350 Pig-nosed Turtles out of Indonesia this week, highlighting the continuing pressure on a species sought after for its rarity and exotic looks.

The turtles, found only on the island of Papua (shared between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea) and Australia, were packaged in boxes falsely labeled as mangrove crabs and were bound for Shang Hai, China, via Singapore, where they would have been sold as pets or, in some cases, for consumption.

The seizure, made on 17th January by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries via the Fish Quarantine Inspection Agency, is not the first of its kind. In January 2014, Indonesian officials seized more than 8,000 baby Pig-nosed Turtles hidden in suitcases suspected to be destined for Singapore and China. Shortly after that, on 12th January 2014, authorities in Hong Kong intercepted a shipment of some 2,700 Pig-nosed Turtles coming from Jakarta, Indonesia, falsely declared as live tropical fish.

“Pig-nosed Turtles are being absolutely hammered for the lucrative, but illegal pet trade” said Dr Chris R. Shepherd, Regional Director for TRAFFIC in Southeast Asia. “It is highly unlikely this species can withstand such enormous offtake.”

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