Tired of Being Right
For nine years,
Viva! has been shouting as loudly as it can to end animal abuse and the human and environmental catastrophes it spawns – but there’s none so deaf as those that don’t want
to hear
I’m no academic but I’m not stupid. I didn’t go beyond O levels so keen was I to leave school and as journalism required no professional qualifications, it seemed the natural choice. No, I’m not stupid – but I’m sick of being treated as though I am.
Since Viva! launched, we have tried to dig beneath the official posturing of government in order to understand the true nature of exploitation. Soon after we launched, a whirlwind of controversy roared through Britain as cattle began to die from BSE after eating infected feed. The official position was dishonest – it is an infectious disease that won’t infect anyone and it can’t be passed on to other animals. When more than 16 different species had caught it, we were still told we should carry on eating beef as if humans were somehow immune.
Then someone died and we were told that the infection was confined to the brain and central nervous system and by excluding these from the food chain, we could eat the rest of the carcass. Our first question was – if the infection is caught by ingesting infected meat, how does it get from the stomach to the brain and CNS? Of course, there was only one answer – via the blood. If it was in the blood then no part of the animal could be guaranteed safe to eat. This was strenuously denied for a while and then all the meat from animals under 30 months old – the ones thought most likely to be infected – was excluded from the food chain in its entirety.
As sheep had eaten the same infected food as cattle, we next wanted to know how there could be any guarantees for the safety of sheep meat. We were rubbished like naughty children insisting that daddy is the bogeyman. But now, it seems, scientists are meeting to examine thousands of sheep brain samples in order to test their fears that the disease is present in sheep.
BSE/CJD has killed about 150 people so far in the UK and while there are still no guarantees, it may not turn out to be the devastating epidemic once feared. Government can claim no credit for this – it was just extraordinary luck that they didn’t kill half the population. Why were they so selective in their interpretation of the science? Because short-term financial and political imperatives were more important than anything else.
The terrifying truth is that when you look at almost every pressing problem around the globe – the ones that Viva! campaigns on – you find similar myopic self interest and a refusal to take meaningful action.
Fish stocks are collapsing because of overfishing. Belatedly, some scientists are finally starting to demand action to prevent a collapse of the oceans. The great white shark, at the top of the food chain and therefore a good indicator of the oceans’ health, has seen its numbers collapse by 80 per cent in 20 years. Our government’s response – all governments – has been to ignore the omens and the science, continue with the subsidies and allow wholesale fishing in Europe to continue, albeit at a slightly lower level.
We warned that there was no prospect of ending impoverishment and starvation if Europe and other rich countries continued to use developing continents such as Africa as mass suppliers of cheap animal fodder. The number of animals has gone on increasing, the imports of high-quality plant protein have grown correspondingly and the number of people who are permanently hungry has passed the one billion mark. Our policies of self indulgence are killing more people than any dictator could ever manage.
Viva!’s defence of farmed animals has always been based partly on morality – that we have no right to confine, torture and kill highly intelligent, sentient creatures who have evolved social structures and emotions equally as complex as our own. Incredibly, the argument that animals feel little or nothing is clung to with obdurate persistence because it makes exploiting them just that little bit easier to defend. Latest research into pigs shows them to be so complex as to be capable of feeling long-lasting resentment over such abuses as having their babies removed.
Even fish, dismissed as unfeeling with a three-second memory span, have been found to exhibit intelligence in some spheres that rivals even apes. Researchers use phrases such as ‘steeped in social intelligence’ and ‘exhibiting stable cultural traditions’to describe them. But the killing continues unabated.
Trivialisation by the media presents our future climate as being rather jolly, like that of the Mediterranean. Okay, we may lose a bit of land to flooding but that’s a small price to pay. In fact the opposite is almost certainly true and within the next 20 to 100 years Britain will become a near-Siberian wilderness.
Viva!’s insistence that human health is being destroyed by our addiction to meat and dairy products is dismissed scathingly. But one by one, the world’s leading health advisory bodies are making statements that should knock the props from under the meat and dairy industries. But still Mr Blair keeps the subsidies going and responds to this mass health problem by advising people to exercise more. It implies that indolence is the sole cause and makes the remedy the responsibility of the individual. Meanwhile, the companies who profit from killing our children by cramming fat, animal protein, sugar and salt into them, continue unhindered.
Viva! has consistently said that livestock production is at the heart of almost every environmental catastrophe afflicting the globe, including global warming. In fact, biomass burning to create grazing, the flatulent emissions of ruminants such as cattle and sheep and the use of fertilisers to boost fodder growth constitute the second largest cause of global warming. Britain, of course, boasts that it has done more than any other country to cut greenhouse gasses, the cause of global warming.
So how was it achieved? Entirely by luck! Privatisation of the energy market saw producers clambering over each other to manufacture the cheapest electricity and that could only be achieved by switching from coal-fired generators to gas fired. Whether that was the most sensible use of natural gas is another question. Our government has instituted no structural changes that will curb C02 emissions long term, such as reducing livestock production, and has done little to find alternatives to natural gas once in runs out.
As for Mr Bush, he refuses even to acknowledge that global warming exists and clutches at any irresponsible scrap of pseudo science to support his view. A stunning piece of new research has just been broadcast by the BBC science programme, Horizon. There is no question in the minds of the global experts who participated that global warming exists, it is the likely effect that interests them. For Britain, the prospects are dire.
Trivialisation by the media presents our future climate as being rather jolly, like that of the Mediterranean. Okay, we may lose a bit of land to flooding but that’s a small price to pay. In fact the opposite is almost certainly true and within the next 20 to 100 years Britain will become a near-Siberian wilderness.
What makes our climate so equable is the influence of the Gulf Stream – a current like a massive river which starts around the Gulf of Mexico and travels North to Britain before curving around towards Greenland, where it sinks beneath the cold waters of the North Atlantic,
the flow eventually returning to where it started. What makes it sink is its high salinity which is denser than the water surrounding it. This conveyor belt of warmth heats our climate by the equivalent output of 1,000 power stations.
Contained within Greenland’s ice is an extraordinary frozen, 200,000-year record of our climate and its changes. To access it, an ice core is removed which consists of many layers, each layer representing one year of history. Locked into these layers is pollen and dust and a thousand other clues as to what was happening at that very precise point in time. Researchers have made the discovery that the first and second ice ages were not the only periods of incredible cold in the Northern hemisphere. In fact, there were many periods and they were triggered by the Gulf Stream simply stopping. It didn’t peter out over a thousand years or so but ended almost overnight, as suddenly and completely as throwing a light switch.
In each case, the ending of the conveyor belt was brought about by global warming, triggered by volcanic activity, leading to a melting of ice and a reduction in the Gulf Stream’s salinity. According to the researchers, this process is already well advanced again and the amount of salt in the Gulf Stream has already reduced by 20 per cent in recent years. At this rate of change, they predict that the light switch will be turned off again very soon – possibly in as little as 20 years time. Unfortunately the flow does not restart as quickly as it ends.
All the subjects I’ve covered should provoke a national debate and urgent action. But truth is no longer the star by which we steer our course, it is a commercial hindrance to be ignored or circumvented.
So, Mr Blair – like I say, don’t treat me and millions of other concerned people as stupid because we’re a lot brighter than you think. It’s why we’re giving up voting altogether, it’s why protest is becoming the only meaningful form of democracy and itwhy contempt for politicians is at an all-time high. Next time you feel like declaring war on weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism, any or all of the topics I’ve mentioned would make good enemies. The only difference is, you wouldn’t need to lie to get our support.