Worldlog Week 47 – 2009

This week we have been busy in Dutch parliament with the Crisis and Recovery act. Under the guise of ‘crisis recovery’, every kind of infrastructural project, such as the creation of new roads, is being pushed through and the time given to allowing others to have their say on the matter has been shortened. This means animals, nature and the environment now receive zero consideration. This is a scandalous state of affairs which we voted against. We hope the next step is that the senate will stop the proposal and our representative will their very best to ensure that this happens.

Unfortunately, the discussion about who will be awarded the extra seat in European parliament does not look too promising. This flies in the face of the fact that if the government had followed the electoral council’s advice, the chair would have been awarded to the Party for the Animals, but it seems other political parties in the Netherlands do not want to listen. Dutch newspapers write that the chair will be ‘conceded’ to Geert Wilder’s anti-Islamic Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), but the parliamentary debate on this subject still needs to be held and we will fight to the last – even though the prognosis is unfavourable.

This evening someone erected a bloody sheep’s head on a stick in the chairman of one our provincial workgroup’s garden. The accompanying letter talked of the perpetrators concern that our chairman had participated in a discussion about limiting the eel harvest – an extremely endangered animal. “She really should be more worried about ritual slaughter”.

Oh, would that be the subject that our party creates a private member’s bill for! But anyway, people who hate animals and who want to paint those who protect animals in a bad light are hard to convince with words and arguments. Those who can see what these people do to others don't need a great deal of imagination to know how they treat animals.

I will soon be travelling to Copenhagen for the climate conference. We will also screen Meat the Truth and I am looking forward to meeting like-minded people from other parts of the world, such as the incredible Marly Winckler from the Vegetarian Society of Brazil.

This week I also read a highly encouraging report about an American scientist called Patrick O. Brown who will work towards a scientific way to denounce the over-consumption of animal proteins and to offer alternatives.

These kinds of initiatives fill me with hope. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you again soon!