ALL ANIMALS: Bear Grylls regrets killing for TV, 61% prefer plant protein, Ed Winters nominated for award and other news
Bringing you a digest of news and opinion pieces you might have missed from the past week, covering all things animal agriculture, animal protection and environmental justice.
Bear Grylls admits he regrets killing animals due to vegans (and vegetarians)
Bear Grylls has admitted that he regrets killing animals “in the name of survival” in his early television shows, the Evening Standard reported at the weekend.
Grylls - famous for his survival programmes and adventuring ways - has faced a barrage of accusations of cruelty for killing a myriad of different animals throughout his career, including crocodiles, snakes, turkeys and pigs.
Survival programme The Island was no exception, but Grylls has come out to say that too many animals were killed in the early days of the hit programme, and that his perspective has changed partly due to the rise of veganism and vegetarianism.
He told BBC Radio 4: “I think in terms of survival and food, definitely in the early days we were killing way too many snakes and stuff like that in the same of survival. I’ve moved so far away from that nowadays.”
“I have taken many, many stars who are vegan and vegetarian into the wild,” he added. “It has been a wonderful adventure and I am always super respectful of that.”
Brazil’s “apocalyptic” wildfires killed an estimated 17 million animals
Scientists studying the devastation caused by the Brazilian wildfires that burned between January and November 2020 have concluded that an estimated 17 million vertebrate animals - including reptiles, birds and primates - died, the BBC reported.
The estimate was published in the journal Scientific Reports, with its authors stating the it highlighted the importance of preventing such disasters in the future. 22,000 separate fires were recorded in 2020.
The researchers pointed out that more frequent wildfires are "among the most visible consequences of human‐induced climate change".
WWF Brazil's Dr Ferreira described the disaster in the Pantanal as "a message" to humanity.
"It shows us that nature is suffering, but we're also suffering - from lack of clean water and lack of food," she said. "We need to change the way that we interact with nature if we want future generations to live in this world."
61% of Consumers Worldwide Describe Plants as a Preferred Protein Source
A report by nutrition company Kerry has revealed that most consumers around the world strongly associate protein with health, and that plant-based proteins were preferred by 61 per cent of respondents, Vegconomist reported last week.
Worldwide, 61 per cent of consumers said plants were a preferred source of protein, compared to 50 per cent for animal protein. Consumers in Europe and Asia-Pacific had the most positive opinions regarding plant protein, choosing it over animals by 16 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
The report found that North Americans and Latin Americans had a slight preference for animal protein over plant protein, by seven per cent and three per cent respectively, but that interest in alternative protein sources has increased significantly to the extent that it could overtake animal protein in a matter of years.
Surge co-founder Ed Winters nominated for Vegan Food & Living Reader Award
Surge co-founder and co-director Ed Winters AKA Earthling Ed has been nominated for Vegan Personality of the Year in this year’s Vegan Food & Living Reader Awards.
Winters is in excellent company too, alongside other nominees from the world of animal and environmental justice including Greta Thunberg, Joaquin Phoenix and Pamela Anderson.
Voting is open until January 10, 2022, so cast your vote for Ed soon!
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PETA files complaint against University of California for rampant animal abuse
Following numerous counts of animal welfare violations, PETA has filed a complaint to the US Department of Agriculture regarding the University of California and the California National Primate Research Center, reported One Green Planet.
PETA was acting upon federal documents it received that showed cases of animal abuse at the university, plus six that were in breach of the Animal Welfare Act. All the cases ended with animals either seriously injured or dead.
According to the One Green Planet report, UC-Davis has a history of conducting abhorrent animal experiments - 1,428 tests on primates and 206 on rabbits in 2020 alone. One particularly horrific experiment ended with the euthenisation of 54 tit monkeys after they were injected with a vaccine not designed for their species.
NEW YORK TIMES: “We will look back on this age of cruelty to animals in horror”
Wrote Ezra Klein as part of Times Opinion’s Holiday Giving Guide 2021 this week:
“How we treat farm animals today will be seen, I believe, as a defining moral failing of our age. Humans have always eaten animals. We’ve hunted them, bred them, raised them and consumed them. What’s changed over the past century is that we’ve developed the technology to produce meat in industrialized conditions, and that has opened vast new vistas for both production and suffering.
“Technological advances, as well as the global desire for cheap meat, have turned this into an age of animal cruelty. But we can also see glimmers of how it might, one day, end. Perhaps we live in the lag between when it became possible to treat sentient animals as industrial inputs and when it will become unnecessary and perhaps even indecent to do so, because we will be able to grow or mimic most meat with less animal involvement, and abusive treatment of animals will be easier to abhor.
“But that future is not assured. It must be created, and the Humane League, Mercy for Animals, the Good Food Institute, New Harvest and the Material Innovation Initiative are trying to do just that.”
FORBES: “Do welfare certifications raise the bar for farm animals?”
Brian Kateman, writing for Forbes this week, questioned the efficacy of welfare certifications:
“But even if one considers the meaningful improvements some certifications ensure, like providing enriched environments and outdoor access, it’s hard to know whether those improvements are actually being implemented on every certified farm. Auditing and verification processes are major concerns for certification sceptics.
“Certifications like AWA and CH are essentially ‘second party’ audited—they hire, train, and oversee auditors directly who go to farms and verify that the relevant standards are met. That means the organization that stands to benefit financially from the outcome of the certification is also the one making the decision, and that creates an obvious conflict of interest.”
Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.
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