Dr Lindsay Marshall, biomedical science advisor to the Humane Society International UK, has recently stated “The UK cannot expect to have world-leading science innovation whilst we rely on failing animal-based research methods that are rooted in the past.” [1]

Earlier this morning, Animal Freedom Movement accessed sheds containing young beagles and liberated 5 dogs. This marks a significant escalation in the nonviolent direct action (NVDA) against MBR Acres and Animal Testing in the UK.

In 2020, 2.88 million instances of animal testing were recorded in the UK [2]. 4,340 of these were carried out on dogs, with 4,270 of these on beagles like those bred by MBR Acres. The procedures often result in vomiting, internal bleeding, organ damage and seizures; the tests can last for months, after which the dogs are killed.

AFM urge anyone who supports an end to animal testing to attend a peaceful demonstration outside The Home Office on Monday June 27th at 4.30pm.

ENDS

High quality images can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11P7tMYma2tRqHNHoWPhI2QRxBnxXcuzW?usp=sharing

For further comment or interviews see the following:

Email: AnimalFreedomMovementPress@protonmail.com

Oliver (Back Office Press): 07706 066859 ​​​​​​

Notes To Editors:

[1] https://www.hsi.org/news-media/home-office-statistics-reveal-no-decline-in-uk-animal-experiments/

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-of-scientific-procedures-on-living-animals-great-britain-2020/annual-statistics-of-scientific-procedures-on-living-animals-great-britain-2020

The post Animal Freedom Movement Supporters Liberate 5 Beagle Puppies in a Second Day of Action Against MBR Acres Beagle Farm first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

For those of us in the UK, we may wonder how buying a burger from a McDonald’s outlet halfway across the world from South America has anything to do with the deforestation taking place in the continent. Here’s how. 

McDonald’s buys most of their chicken from Cargill, an American global food corporation founded in 1865, now one of the largest privately held corporations in the United States. Cargill has evolved into a food-product empire and has enormous power, with a vast proportion of the world´s main agricultural commodities passing through its hands. 

There is no reason any British consumer tucking into a Chicken Burger or McChicken sandwich would ever know that an American company is involved in almost every step of their foods’ production. Or, more importantly, that areas of rainforest have been flattened in the process. 

In the early 2000s, deforestation rates in the Amazon were shocking. Following campaigns from environmental groups and retailers, companies like Cargill agreed not to buy soybeans grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon in the 2006 landmark Amazon Soya Moratorium. This worked, and from 2004 to 2012  the clearing of trees in the Amazon fell by 84%. But of course, it didn’t work for long. Cargill and McDonald’s put profit before the planet, and simply found loopholes in the moratorium to ensure they could continue buying soya grown on deforested land. 

Companies like Cargill simply began buying from soya plantations in the Bolivian Amazon and the Brazilian Cerrado according to a Mighty Earth report. The cerrado is a crucial ecosystem containing 5% of the world’s plant and animal species. More than half of its native vegetation is already gone due to deforestation.  In addition, with the moratorium applying only to soya in particular, farmers have been able to sell their crops as deforestation-free as they continue to clear land for cattle, maize and other commodities. Consequently, deforestation has continued and reached an all time high last year.

Efforts to extend the soy moratorium to the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado have long been opposed, despite calls to do so by local NGOs, scientists and the Brazilian environment minister. Retailers have so far not used their leverage over Cargill to compel it to support a soy moratorium expansion. Being Cargill’s biggest customer in Europe, McDonald’s would have huge influence. The company however, would appear to care far more about soy reaching Cargill´s chicken processing plant here in the United Kingdom Hereford. Cargills’ Hereford site slaughters over a million birds per week, many of which will go on to be sold in McDonald’s branches across the United Kingdom.

Brazil is the biggest producer of soy consumed in the United Kingdom, and 70 percent of it is imported into the UK by Cargill, the vast majority of it to become animal feed. Only about two percent of the world’s soy crop is processed into plant-based alternatives such as meat alternatives, tofu and soy yoghurt . It is  mostly grown in Europe and does not drive deforestation.

With their poor track record on deforestation becoming increasingly obvious to consumers, McDonald’s announced a series of ‘’ambitious’’ sustainability initiatives in October 2021. The company explain on their website: ‘’We want to make sure the beef in our burgers contributes to a sustainable food system in which communities, animals and the planet thrive.’’ Animal Rebellion has a very different idea of a sustainable food system. In our eyes, flattening rainforests, slaughtering millions of animals, and selling a ludicrous quantity of largely unhealthy products is in no way sustainable. 

McDonald’s sells more than 75 hamburgers per second. Each year McDonald’s buys 1.9 billion tons of cow flesh to be used for patties in outlets across the world, producing more than 53m metric tonnes of greenhouse gases. The fast food giant stresses its burgers sold in the UK come from British and Irish farms, but have been accused of feeding animals with feed  coming from deforested areas in Latin America. Glenn Hurowitz, chief executive of Mighty Earth highlighted that ‘’everything we know about their suppliers suggests they’re still chock full of deforestation.”

Despite McDonald’s massive and ongoing role in the destruction of primary forests, it has gained several certification labels. For example, there is evidence that the Rainforest Alliance, who certifie McDonald’s coffee, uses child labour in their farms. In addition, the RSPCA has given its stamp of approval on McDonald’s chicken factories, instead of telling the truth and highlighting that captivity and death can never be aligned with good welfare standards. Instead of standing up for the animals, RSPCA complies with the big business. The labels on meat and dairy do little but confuse and greenwash. They are certified lies. 

McDonald’s recognises their own complicity in deforestation by stating on their own website:  ´´We’ve set an ambitious goal to eliminate deforestation from our global supply chain by 2030.´´ It is difficult to take this, and all of McDonald’s other sustainability targets seriously, as not only is the breeding of cows the largest driver of deforestation in the world, with beef potentially being the single most environmentally destructive food in existence. 

According to landmark environmental documentary Cowspiracy, cows are the world’s largest source of methane, which is up to 100 times more destructive to the climate than CO2. Cows around the world produce 150 billion gallons of this gas per day. Raising cows is incredibly resource draining with a staggering 2,500 gallons of water needed to produce just 1 pound of beef. This means that the production of one hamburger requires 660 gallons of water – the equivalent of the average person’s showers over a period of 2 months.

Raising cattle also requires a huge amount of land, which is why so many forests are being cleared to make room in the first place. According to the Cowspiracy, 1.5 acres of land can only produce 375 pounds of beef as opposed to 37,000 pounds of plant-based foods. Rearing livestock and their feed already occupies up to 45% of the earth’s ice-free land. With the demand for meat being so large, there is still not enough space to raise the animals to feed our appetite and more forests are having to be cleared. Where will this end, with the whole planet being deforested and devoted to meat production?

By selling huge quantities of these catastrophically polluting foods, at the expense of both animal and human kind, we believe McDonald’s to be running one of the most polluting and morally corrupt operations underway in our world today.  

Animal Rebellion calls on McDonald’s to stop this madness and transition to a fully plant-based menu by 2025. After all, this is the only hope the company has at meeting their climate goals. Climate experts who reviewed McDonald’s targets say: ´´The company is largely dodging the one bold step it must take to slash emissions: dramatically reducing the amount of beef it serves. Not moving boldly on their menus suggests motivations might not be to mitigate climate change but to manage investors.”

Gidon Eshel, an environmental and urban studies research professor at Bard College says: ´´The naked truth is McDonald’s is in a business that is fundamentally at odds with the Earth’s integrity. The culture of beef is not consistent with Earth’s wellbeing, and we have to choose: do you eat beef and let Earth incinerate, or do you forgo beef and give Earth a fighting chance?”. 

The answer is simple. McDonald’s must cease to sell products which cause deforestation and pollution and transition to a fully plant-based menu, now. The introduction of one or two plant-based products is, at this point, a drop in the ocean. We need a complete and thorough reinvention of the McDonald’s menu and we need it now. 

Join Animal Rebellions campaign No Love In It for McDonald’s to transition to a fully plant-based menu by 2025. Take a look at some of our previous actions here including the blockade of McDonald’s UK burger factory for 3 days, the overnight occupation of McDonald’s Leicester Square and sit-ins across the country. Please fill out our Volunteer Form to get involved with what we´re planning next! 

The post Amazon Deforestation for McDonald’s Profit first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

So how have the stakeholders in our current, archaic, and destructive food system reacted? Supermarkets, restaurant chains, and producers alike have come up with a desperate lie: less but better. Telling us, the public, “less but better” ignores the simple fact that no meat, dairy, or fish is sustainable. Case in point: even the supposedly least sustainable plant-based milk is still more sustainable than the supposedly most sustainable dairy one!

The need to go beyond the less but better agenda is glaring. So why is it that less but better exists? Simply put, it is the death throe of a losing industry. It echoes the sheer fantasy of the tobacco industry in decline that “falsely marketed and promoted low-tar and light cigarettes as less harmful” than regular cigarettes to keep people smoking and sustain revenues”. The industries driving deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate breakdown are using the same tactics to maximise profits at the expense of people, animals, and the planet.

The parallels are undeniable. Meat, fish, and dairy industries are clamouring to deceive the public and not do what is necessary to safeguard the future. How can less but better work when every observable plant-based alternative is more sustainable than one coming from meat, fish, and dairy industries? 

The greenwashing of the meat industry is an emerging scandal, with a DeSmog investigation shedding light on the sustainability sham. They’re not alone in highlighting the underhand practices rampant throughout meat production, that harm workers, animals, and the planet. Underreporting emissions, making false promises, and manipulating sustainability labelling are just a few tactics used to give the illusion of sustainability. 

Why would these industries be working so hard to cover up their practices if they were actually sustainable?

Plant-based options are less land intensive, more productive, and infinitely repeatable. Adopting them will allow us to nourish the world’s population for generations to come, rewild land, end the suffering of billions of farmed animals, and allow for adequate carbon capture! None of this is possible with any food-system reliant on meat, fishing, and dairy.The stories that the likes of McDonald’s want to tell us about “Sustainable Agriculture & Beef“ are laughable in the face of swathes of evidence to the contrary. The only way to achieve sustainability is through a just transition to a plant-based food system. Our planet is on the brink of collapse, and already millions of people are experiencing the deadly impacts of climate breakdown.

Now is not the time for governments and corporations to lie to the world; now is the time for real change, real action, and a just and sustainable plant-based food system.

How?

• Volunteer with us!
• Demand McDonald’s and Arla go plant-based by 2025. 
• If you’re a student and want to make the change with the Plant Based Universities campaign at your university, please contact us using the details, or fill out this form now!

The post Why 100% Just and Sustainably Plant-Based? first appeared on Animal Rebellion.

Animal Rebellion occupied the headquarters of Cargill in London during the 2019 Rebellion to ask them to tell the truth and act now about the climate and animal emergency. In March 2020, Animal Rebellion Turtle Island united with other groups in a global day action to call Cargill out. This August 2021, Animal Rebellion is uniting with animal liberation and other groups from across the country to stand in solidarity with the trillions of animal and fish killed yearly. 

We are marching together as allies with non-human animals. 

Message to Cargill

Cargill family: you have perhaps more power than any company, past or present, to either destroy the planet or lead the transition to the only form of a just, sustainable food-system there is: a plant-based one.

The world needs you to #ActNow! Start now the transition to just and sustainable plant-based agriculture. Will you join us today on the right side of history?

Cargill, whilst remaining little-known, has grown to be one of the largest traders of commodities for the animal-agricultural industry. Over the last 130 years, Cargill has become the largest worldwide producer of the grain-based feed for farmed animals and the third-largest “meat processing” company in the world. As of 2019, their agri-business was the largest food-conglomerate in the world. 

Astonishingly, all this makes Cargill directly accountable for: the life and death of billions of commoditised animals every year; for a critical amount of deforestation, air and water pollution; for the wellbeing of the animals fed their grains and ‘processed’ by their plants; for the welfare of millions of humans that work within their supply chains; and for the health of billions more humans that consume the animal products that Cargill directly and indirectly profits from.

Until now, though Cargill is the largest family-owned business in the world, they have managed to oversee a strategy of keeping a deliberately low-profile. But today, Animal Rebellion is asking Cargill to act now and help undo the destruction they have already caused.

McDonald’s supplier

This year we’ve shone light on the on-going issues McDonald’s needs to tackle. McDonald’s is Cargill’s largest customer. Cargill boasts proudly about the seven awards it has received from McDonald’s for their economical, environmental and ethical achievements.  This is just a bad joke. Cargill’s role is well-hidden to the public eye, but it is raising and killing the chickens that McDonalds sell. The silent giant is also selling soya to McDonald’s for chicken and cow feed, unscrupulously deforesting habitats for millions of animals across South America. 

This big corporation must take action now instead of hiding their misdoings, playing for the interests of a few billionaires at the expense of trillions of animals and people. Cargill need to stop pretending to go green and actually make decisions that protect all animals and the planet. They have the power to make big advances globally by transitioning to a just and sustainable plant-based food system. 

Deforestation

Animal farming relies on about 75% of the world’s soy — of which Cargill are the largest producer and which is fed to the animals slaughtered in their farms. Globally more than 1,000,000 square kilometres — three times the size of Germany — is dedicated just to growing soy fed to animals raised for meat. 

Cargill must own up to the destruction of rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands that have contributed significantly to the disruption of hydrological cycles, as well as the destruction of the habitats of many wild animals.

In 2014 Cargill signed a landmark deal with 150 other countries, businesses and civil society organisations, pledging to eliminate deforestation by 2020. However, years on from that and Cargill continue to expand its operation into new, pristine forest outside the Brazilian Amazon. Furthermore, they actively resist the extension of the deforestation-free production agreements into these areas. Cargill has pushed the deadline to end deforestation to 2030, but the animals that inhabit the forest can’t wait that long. How long will Cargill fail to meet their targets? 

Cargill as changemakers

While clinging to its identity as a ‘traditional animal protein’ company, Cargill has invested in plant-based protein producers (such as the pea-protein supplier to Beyond Meat). Does this investment recognise the importance of plant based alternatives to meat or is it only a money-making investmnet?  If Cargill can genuinely recognise the importance of these alternatives, they could have an enormous impact on animal justice. 

Cargill’s food competitors:  Tyson Foods, Maple Leaf Foods and Smithfield Food have taken steps to create their own meat free products. By making similar changes in the way they operate, Cargill could have an enormous impact in reducing and even eradicating the number of animals killed for meat.

Today, people are more informed about the sentience of farmed animals. We know that they are individuals whose lives matter. We are faced with data and numbers that demonstrate the daily massacre of harmless animals. Cargill recently altered their slaughter process for chickens at their London plant, reducing the distress experienced by these sentient beings in response to welfare concerns. Yet, this is not enough. Today, we say that listening to the general public can only mean spearheading a global shift towards a plant-based food system.

Cargill: you have enormous influence over today’s food and agricultural systems and over the companies that work within it! Crucially, you have a massive impact on the existence and habitat quality of billions of animals. We now know that a plant-based food system is the only system that can ensure animal justice. With your investments and your infrastructure, the scale of change necessary is possible.

What’s next:

Click going to the National Animal Rights March on 28th August and get more information on the Facebook event here.

Learn more about how Unilever, another stop during the march, needs to change now for animal justice. We also march to the Marine Stewardship Council to stand for fishes and other sentient aquatic animals. Where is the compassion for sentient marine animals in the fishing industry?

To get ready for the Rebellion, you can do trainings with Extinction Rebellion, a movement with whom we act in solidarity. You can check out our events and trainings here. 

Useful links:

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The post Cargill Family, A Historic Choice is upon You: Planetary Destruction or Animal and Climate Justice? first appeared on Animal Rebellion.