Category Archives: Cattle

Nigeria cattle crisis: how drought and urbanisation led to deadly land grabs

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The death toll of animals and humans is mounting as herders seeking dwindling reserves of pasture clash with farmers

In February last year, Sunday Ikenna’s fields were green and lush. Then, one evening, a herd of cattle led into the farm by roving pastoralists crushed, ate, and uprooted the crops.

“I lost everything. The situation was sorrowful, watching another human being destroy your farm,” says Ikenna, a father of 10 who farms in Ukpabi-Nimbo in Enugu state, southern Nigeria. “I farmed a smaller portion this year because I am still scared of another invasion.”

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‘Let’s get rid of friggin’ cows’ says creator of plant-based ‘bleeding burger’

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Impossible Foods working on milk and fish substitutes as Patrick Brown pledges to put an end to animal agriculture industry

Patrick Brown is on a mission: to eradicate the meat and fish industries by 2035. The CEO of Impossible Foods, a California-based company that makes genetically engineered plant-based meat, is deadly serious. No more commercial livestock farming or fishing. No more steak, fish and chips or roast dinners, at least not as you know them.

In their place, his company’s scientists and food technicians will create plant-based substitutes for every animal product used today in every region of the world, he promises.

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Brazilian beef farms ‘used workers kept in conditions similar to slavery’

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Workers on farms supplying world’s biggest meat firms allegedly paid £8 a day and housed in shacks with no toilets or running water

Brazilian companies and slaughterhouses including the world’s largest meat producer, JBS, sourced cattle from supplier farms that made use of workers kept in slavery-like conditions, according to a new report.

Workers on cattle farms supplying slaughterhouses earned as little as £8 a day and lived in improvised shacks with no bathrooms, toilets, running water or kitchens, according to a report from Brazilian investigative agency Repórter Brasil.

Since 1995, the report said, 55,000 Brazilian workers have been rescued by government inspectors from “situations similar to slavery”. While the number of investigations has fallen in recent years – 118 workers were freed in 2018, compared with 1,045 a decade earlier – that does not mean the situation has improved, just that inspections have been reduced, it noted.

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Tesco urged to ditch meat company over alleged links to Amazon deforestation

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Responding to Greenpeace campaign to cut links to Brazilian meat giant JBS, supermarket calls on government to ensure all UK food is deforestation-free

Tesco has called on the UK government to order food companies to ensure all food sold in the UK is deforestation-free. The move comes in response to a new Greenpeace campaign calling on the supermarket to cut links to JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, over its alleged links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation.

The supermarket says the UK should introduce due diligence across supply chains to monitor for deforestation. Germany is also weighing up a due diligence law on supply chains, reportedly supported by Angela Merkel. And more than half of Britons would consider rejecting meat products linked to deforestation, a YouGov poll for Greenpeace has found.

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Secret footage shows calves from Ireland beaten and kicked in France

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Video by activists appears to show cruel treatment of weeks-old cattle transported on long journeys to Europe for veal

Footage which appears to show Irish calves being beaten and kicked at a French feeding station has been published by animal campaign groups.

The video, published by Eyes on Animals (EoA) and French welfare organisation L214, appears to show workers repeatedly beating calves that are a few weeks old with sticks. One is kicked and another is dragged away, unable to stand. The calf was euthanised by a vet, said an EoA observer.

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