Worldlog week 7 – 2014

Thanks to our motion, government will have to vote in the EU AGAINST admitting genetically manipulated maize! Government wanted to abstain from voting in Brussels on the controversial GM crop, but Parliament fortunately did not approve of that. Read more on this in my Worldlog of last week.

Government will provide an overview of how often unannounced and announced inspections are conducted in the cattle industry, transport and slaughterhauses. They also promised to look at a potential obligation for slaughterhouses to disclose shops to whom they delivered suspicious meat. At last, steps in the right direction to address “meat fraud” and animal suffering in intensive farming.

I have heard that a major action is in the making to exterminate foxes the north of France. Unbelievable! A national organisation involved in the abolition of hunting, RAC, has organised a huge campaign in Lille on 15 February. In France, hunting is done fanatically, but fortunately an increasing number of French people oppose hunting and let themselves be heard.

In the Netherlands, we had a debate on poaching in the Netherlands. I argued that poachers are hunters without permits and hunters are poachers with permits. Recently, hunters were caught in the act while illegally shooting swines and other hunters while illegally shooting a red deer in the nighttime. Worse even, last week, the top lobbyist of Dutch hunters, the director of the Royal Dutch Hunters Association (KNJV), was caught using a goose call illegally with a hunting mate. The duo tried to quickly hide the call in the reeds, but thanks to bold action of the Frisian police they were still caught in the act. Meanwhile, the KNJV director has been suspended, but the incident is indicative of the ethics in the field. Poor supervision, plenty of violations of the law. This is another example of the fact that, although animals enjoy legal protection, they still cannot count on actual protection. The State Secretary still sticks to the idea that she intends to combat poaching together with the hunters… To be continued.

Last week, I spoke in Parliament with the anti-poaching police (Wildlife Rangers) from Kenya. They said that legal trophy hunting leads to an increase in poaching in Kenya and makes it extremely complicated to track down poachers. In the Netherlands, we will therefore have to take strong action against hunting tourism!

Last Friday, the Winter Games began in Sochi. Sochi has “cleared” its stray dogs with poison and traps. We already asked questions about this in Parliament last year. Unfortunately, our Government feels this is a matter of Russia and does not intend to do anything about it.

Sports must remain sports. We therefore do not expect sportsmen to boycott the Olympics. However, we feel emphatically that our Prime Minister, ministers and the King and Queen should refrain from travelling to Sochi. If a delegation of Dutch government and the King and Queen are present, it may give the idea that the Netherlands do not reject Putin’s policy. This is highly undesirable.

We find it very important that the Netherlands stand up for human rights worldwide. Under no circumstance should economic interests take priority over the promotion of human rights. Unfortunately, however, this is what is happening regularly now, also when it comes to violations of human rights in Russia. It certainly seems that Government finds commercial interests of the Netherlands with Russia more important than respect for human rights.

Animals can make themselves virtually invisible. But let’s not overlook them 😉 via @fascinatingpics.

Until next week!

Marianne