Worldlog Week 23 – 2011

This week I had a very special interview with nine-year old Roos 't Hart about animal abuse. She has a speaking engagement in two weeks and this conversation helped her prepare. How wonderful to see that compassion for animals can start so young!

The new Upper House was sworn in this week and we're represented there again with the world's first animal rights senator. I presented our senator Niko Koffeman with a bouquet of vegetables at his swearing in: it was to congratulate him and to hearten Dutch vegetable growers facing the continuing food crisis, thanks to the EHEC bacteria. This week saw a plenary debate on this EHEC bacteria. We managed to get the cabinet to investigate the possible relationship between manure fermentation facilities and the EHEC bacteria as well as the excessive use of antibiotics in the cattle farming industry. Increasing numbers of people and animals are falling victim to food scandals and animal disease crises.

Our sister party, PAN, achieved 1.04% of the vote in the Portuguese national elections, even running to 1.7% in Madeira. What a great start! We are going to help them grow so that animal welfare is given a prominent place in political decision-making not only in the Netherlands, but in Portugal too.

Happily, the stray dogs in Romania will not be culled en masse. Thanks to huge international pressure, the Romanian government decided to cancel the law amendment which would make it possible to kill three million stray dogs. The Party for the Animals also pushed the Dutch government to take action against this Romanian law, that would lead to stray dogs being killed in a grisly manner. The Romanian government will now consult with animal protection organisations and set up sterilisation and capture programmes.

And now some gorgeous, sometimes intense images of the volcanic outburst in Chile.

And finally, some fantastic news from Australia. They are temporarily halting live cattle exports to Indonesia. This is as a result of the gruesome images from slaughterhouses in Indonesia that I talked about last week.

The abuse in Indonesia needs to be tackled hard.

See you next week,

Marianne