I too had an ex-racing greyhound. Wonderful animal!

Simple solutions to complex problems often lead to perverse outcomes, particularly when they are at odds with fundamental human instincts. It’s called the law of unintended consequences and is only exacerbated by trying to manipulate an issue to fit one’s own narrow perspective or ‘bounded rationality’. The two are a potentially dangerous mix.

This issue isn’t about how meat is produced. It’s about human nature and fraud. Fraud born out of the ‘value culture’ of British and European food retailing and the relentless pressure exerted by retailers on their supply chains to enable them to offer affordable meat to consumers whilst protecting their margins. Pressure that if not actively endorsed by government, has until now been tacitly condoned as part of a desperate rearguard action to keep a lid on food price inflation at a time of unprecedented commodity price rises.

Consequently, suppliers are already flouting existing labelling requirements to stay in business, so what makes you think for a minute that they will adhere to stricter ones?

And why do they do this? Because of Human nature, a product of millions of years of evolution, however distasteful you and your lentil chomping chums might find it, that has made (most of) us omnivores; hunter-gatherers, not forager-gatherers with a taste for meat. It is at best fanciful to imagine a situation where the majority of people are ever going to want to stop eating it; therefore the fundamental demand driver for affordable animal protein will remain and the market will always look for ways to satisfy that.

Trying to enforce your own particular brand of bounded rationality on the rest of the world by attempting to price meat further out of the reach of the majority, simply to pander to vegan conceit and middle-class consumer guilt is only ever going to exacerbate not ameliorate the current situation.

So rather than spending this Friday trying to trend twitter all on your own like some demented broken record, why not get off your moral high horse, look up ‘pragmatic’ in the dictionary and think about how you can work constructively with the industry to deliver workable solutions that accommodate the real and valid expectations of all of society, whilst still objectively addressing the core welfare principles upon which your organisation was founded ?

Horses are highly reactive flight animals – their senses are even more developed than farm animals. Therefore the suffering is very likely to be even greater. Shame on us as human beings allowng this unnecessary torture.

I thank goodness for the work that Compassion does for all farm animals, for without your lobbying and campaigns I dread to think of the inhumane treatment many animals would still be receiving. By the way I have signed up for the labelling campaign and perhaps it could not have come at a better time, so perhaps out of something very sickening and saddening, something good may come out of it.

Labeling doesn’t work! Nor will it work. How would a label offer any guarantee? The member states couldn’t care less. The “Produced in the EU” label, is supposed to do just that. That is now used to hide the point of origin. Almost all of the meat products here, are from EE countries. Fish, is mostly from Spain, and West African states. According to the Label on the packaging…

There are almost 1 Billion of us in Europe. For real change to occur, every EU citizen would have to be made aware. I imagine gaining the attention of “Joe Bloggs” in a city street isn’t going to be easy. As you would first have to get through the religious, political, educational, language barriers first. As well as the spin. That’s a lot of tape to cut through! We would together have to boycott all 27 governments, all meat/fish producers and all high street food stores in Europe at the same time. And do so long enough, for the governments/stores to lose money.

It would actually be easier, and safer for us to produce locally again…

I’d really like to be a part of community where I can get feed-back from other knowledgeable individuals that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Kudos!

Please join me at our website and we will pledge our support.
Note that many live exports are destined for religious slaughter. Read up the details on the internet – it’s horiffic.

Thank you
Animal-Welfare Org