Worldlog Week 20 – 2011

Last Wednesday was Accountability Day in the Netherlands. This is the day when the government gives an account of what it achieved in the previous year. This year was rather odd in that the government has only been in office since last October. Nevertheless, we have made it clear to this government that we do not agree with, for example, their assault on our beautiful nature.

State Secretary Bleker is going to ban the bizarre ‘game’ of goose pulling! Finally, as a result of parliamentary questions submitted by us, something is going to be done about this horrible form of ‘popular entertainment’. At the goose pulling event held in Grevenbicht, the head of a goose, killed specially for the competition, is pulled off by horsemen. Traditional popular games of this kind testify to total disrespect towards animals and do not belong in this day and age.

I also hope that the gray geese can count on more tolerance in the Netherlands. I say this because 40 council members of the Dutch Bird Protection Association must decide on behalf of its members whether more than 100,000 geese are to be culled. In Germany the geese remain welcome while in the Netherlands the Dutch Bird Protection Association has agreed to a massive culling operation, would you believe. And, oh yes, you can bet the politicians won’t do a thing now that nature conservationists have sided with hunters and proclaim that culling “is unavoidable”. The Royal Dutch Hunting Association has already condemned the goose culling plan since such large-scale displays of shooting to cull in the summer period (and hence observed by large numbers of holiday-makers) would damage their image.

This week I asked the prime minister to explain the trade mission to Vietnam, during which the population will be urged to consume more animal-derived protein. While during the UN sustainability conference in New York in 2009, Crown Prince Willem Alexander argued, on behalf of the Netherlands, for a reduction in meat consumption, in 2011 he and Princess Maxima will be leading a trade mission to promote sales of Dutch pork and dairy products in Vietnam. While the Dutch government says all the right things about sustainable food consumption at home, abroad it is promoting cut-price meat – unbelievable.

This week I received a letter from the Dutch Ambassador to Sri Lanka with a wonderful full-page story about the Party for the Animals in a Sri Lankan newspaper. The article is also available online.

Until next week!

Marianne