Un seul résultat réel

Bobinette :   Un débat à deux sens, deux mesures, deux mentalités, mais un seul résultat réel: les chevaux souffrent plus de la fermeture des abattoirs, car ceux qui y ont recours (pour diverses raisons) n’auront pas d’autres options.

Karin Hauenstein: Horse Crusader

Karin and I had a rocky start.  She thought I was a horse-killer.  She’s on a ride to stop horse slaughter, and when she first emailed me, she was using a smartphone.  Somehow, the wires got crossed (and since I can’t text while driving a car, I can only imagine what it’s like being in-saddle and negotiating a phone!).  Karin is a true crusader for our horses, and not just because she’s on a four-legged walkabout to publicize the cause, but because this is a woman who has done her homework…in spades…and all of it–the ride, the research–all of it comes from sheer love and respect for horses.

What really impressed me–once I introduced myself properly–was Karin’s research into the flight chemicals released in every head-shot horse.  I will let Karin explain it

Don’t Let Harper Cut the CFIA

A dear friend of mine who observed and monitored feedlots and horse slaughter in Western Canada for years before the CHDC or myself or any other group that I know of warned me just recently that while we’re busy maligning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the horsemeat industry is well and even thriving.  Her comments brought me up short.  One of my own chief arguments has been how absurdly understaffed the CFIA is, but it’s been too easy to pursue them and their shortcomings rather than the Government of Canada itself or an industry which closes ranks like a secret society whenever the public demands specifics–and gets away with it.

I replied rather sheepishly to my friend by saying that Canadians have every right to expect their own food safety agency to protect our health.  And we do, and it should.  But you can’t get blood from a stone.  That’s why the cuts to our food safety program that the Harper government is planning are so scary:

Gazette Food Critic Enjoys Horsemeat

Lesley Chesterman, food critic of The Montreal Gazette, reviewed a restaurant in Montreal called “DNA”.  This is what she wrote about the horse filet dish served by chef Derek Dammann:

Avon & China: the Economics of Harm

Let’s leave the subject of animals for a moment, and focus on the specious arguments by which multi-national industries get away with murder, so to speak. In the late sixties, when I was about 16, I watched a TV documentary on how cosmetics and beauty care companies experimented on animals to both test and improve their products (at the time, as I recall, “hypoallergenic” shampoos were the newest thing). TV images in that doc of cats with their skulls prised open and electrodes attached to their brains, eyes, and faces left me in shock.
I had only just begun wearing makeup (strict upbringing) and was now faced with what I thought was a moral dilemma. I had already joined the second wave of feminism and would shortly be working with other young women to set up a Women’s Centre at my local college (CEGEP). Wasn’t that enough? Some of the more militant feminists had already eschewed cosmetics, but for completely unrelated reasons.