Can a sustainable food culture allow the non-stunning slaughter of animals?

Should non-stunning slaughter of animals be part of a sustainable food culture in Australia - or, for that matter, the world.  Please give serious consideration to Lyn White's message below.

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As you know, a big decision will be made this week when primary industries ministers from around the country meet in Melbourne to decide whether to close the loophole on non-stunned slaughter in Australia.

I'm writing to invite you to an important rallyorganised by Animals Australia on Thursday evening at the MCG, where the ministers are due to discuss their decision on this issue. Already 14,000 Animals Australia supporters have written to these ministers imploring them to show mercy and remove the exemptions that are allowing some abattoirs in Victoria and South Australia to cut the throats of fully conscious sheep. We need your help to send one last and all-important reminder as the ministers arrive for their dinner meeting, that caring Australians are depending on them to make the right decision.

• Where: Gate 2, Melbourne Cricket Ground
• When: 5:45pm, Thursday, 27th October (finishing 7pm)
• What to bring: Just yourself, we will have plenty of posters for people to hold
• More information: Call the Animals Australia office on 1800 888 584

Miss, of all the cruelty I have seen inside abattoirs, non-stunned slaughter of animals represents the single greatest cause of distress, pain and suffering I have born witness to.

Fortunately we understand that several ministers are already of the opinion that non-stunned slaughter is unacceptable, which means there is real hope to end this brutal practice in Australia. This rally may be the tipping point that gets the others over the line.

Please join our experienced campaigners for a peaceful gathering on Thursday evening and help us ensure that all animals in this country are extended this most basic legal protection.

I hope you can join us, Lyn White Campaign Director

P.S. You may be aware that the official meeting of the primary industries ministers will be held on Friday morning. We are rallying at their Thursday evening dinner meeting as it is expected that their position will be determined at this time. I hope you can attend, but even if you can't, you can have your say on our website right now.

Enslaved by chocolate: addiction or exploitation?

OK, dear Reader, time to experiment with the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword. Dust off those ethical thoughts. Chocolate and the child slaves who produce it is the issue. For more extensive information, please go here and here.

You might, dear Reader, like to start with the following:

Cadbury

Cadbury Consumer Services, PO Box 200, Ringwood VIC 3134

Feedback link is here.

Are you interested, dear Reader, in doing a factory tour with Miss Eagle during which we can ask the question on the premises about where Cadbury's cocoa comes from and what they are doing about the exploitation of children? Currently, it would appear that their website is concerned only with obesity in children. But there are children involved in the chocolate process who will never grow fat - even though they might never go out to play!

Nestle

Consumer Services Department, GPO Box 4320, Sydney NSW 2001

You can email Nestle from here.

As you would be aware, dear Reader, Nestle has been the focus in the past for the promotion of breast milk substitutes in Africa. You will find them expounding their corporate philosophy of Good Food, Good Life here. A portion of Nestle's website is devoted to a discussion about coffee. You might like, in your correspondence, to ask them about their attitude to Fair Trade coffee. There is no mention of that on their site.

Mars

Mars Australia, Wodonga (Australian Headquarters), Petcare Place, Wodonga Vic 3690

Snackfood/Mars, PO Box 633, Ballarat VIC 3353 - Ballarat Ring Rd 3350

You can email Mars from here.

On the Mars site, there is this section, The 5 Principles. Mmmm....

• Quality: this segment says : "The consumer is the boss". So, dear Reader, use your consumer power to tell Mars who is the boss and that you do not want your love of chocolate to hold other human beings to ransom.
• Responsibility: Mars said it recruits ethical people. Challenge them to put their ethics on show in relation to child labour and child slavery.
• Mutuality: Mars says its "actions should never be at the expense, economic or otherwise, of others with whom we work". Now Miss Eagle understands that the child slaves are not direct employees of Mars but they are stakeholders in the industry nonetheless. Without companies such as Mars there might not be a cocoa industry to be exploitative. So Mars needs to put its actions in the ethical framework of how do we expect all children to live and enjoy life.
• Efficiency: Here Mars talks about its pursuit of "the least possible cost". To the child slaves there is a very high cost - loss of childhood development, loss of education. The least possible financial cost should not require the exploitation of sentient beings or the despoliation of the planet.
• Freedom: Mars claims for itself "We need freedom to shape our future: we need profit to remain free." Well, guess what! So do African children. Enslavement - even if it is the only hope for survival in an environment of despairing poverty - does not provide freedom and does not bring any profit to the people so that they can remain free of exploitative practices. The Christian adage of doing unto others as you would have done unto you needs to be extended by Mars to the poverty stricken people caught up in the cocoa economy to provide luxury goods for those with great economic freedom.

And then there is the industry body to contact, too:

Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia

Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia,PO Box 1307 (Level 2, 689 Burke Rd),Camberwell VIC 3124

Email Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia (CMA) at cma@candy.net.au

When you have completed this task, dear Reader, you might like to keep Miss Eagle informed.

The Wombat, Spring, and the edible garden

Miss Eagle disguised as The Wombat of Upper Gully

To-day is Show and Tell over at Kelli's.

I have been s-o-o-o busy the last few weeks - for a number of reasons. The over-riding reason though has been the garden. Miss Eagle has been carrying on in the backyard like she's The Wombat of Upper Gully.
About a quarter of the backyard has been dug up and given to veges and herbs.
I have been wombatting in a most determined fashion, dear Reader, because Spring does not wait for anyone and can, at times, be quite anxious to turn into Summer and all that growing time is gone and cannot be reclaimed.
One of the difficulties in this mature garden is light. Fruit trees planted in the long ago are of great height and are heavy in branch and leaf - not to mention roots. I got quite carried away with the pruning of the plum tree to get extra space by the provision of more light. Above, can be seen a piece of the pruning I have rescued which I hope can do duty as a trellis for the snow peas whose seeds are planted beneath and around it.

I have tried to stretch my budget (if you could call it that) further this year by using a lot of seeds rather than seedlings. The wisdom of this decision will depend upon how many seeds come up, won't it?

A few notes of interest.

• I am fortunate in the provision of various bits and pieces through "hard rubbish": waste items put out on footpaths for collection. Herself says that at The Trad Pad we are not into Retail Therapy but Refuse Therapy (Opp Shops and Hard Rubbish). And, guess what? No credit cards required!


• Garden Picture No. 2 shows a white lattice propped against a plum tree. Garden Picture No. 3 shows a garden gate propped against the corner of the garden shed. These, if all goes to plan, will be trellises: the former for the ivy geraniums and the latter for golden zucchini.


• In Garden Picture No. 2 you will notice in the foreground a wire edging. Hard rubbish again - in sufficient quantity to go around the areas I have dug on either side of the shed. Herself had expressed a desire a couple of months ago for some garden edging but hadn't got to Bunning's to do anything about it. Just this week the very thing has been provided! It has a tad of rust - but we find rust in our vintage a bonus!


• Can't recall where the wire object from which the pots are hanging in Garden Picture No. 2 came from. Methinks that Herself acquired it in a swap or some long ago hard rubbish. The pots I have had for the best part of ten years and they are still going strong and they are planted with the seeds of cherry tomatoes.


• The toadstool sitting under the pots was a gift, more than a decade ago, from some very good friends. Now this sort of garden ornament is not really my style but my friends are very dear. To make it more me, I have a friend who does a very good line in frogs drawn in an Aboriginal style so I got him to draw such a one sitting on the toadstool. Now this quirky object and I have a whole lot more in common.


• In Garden Picture No. 1 the child's outdoor setting, the little wooden wheelbarrow, and the two wooden tubs are all found items. The large painted metal wheelbarrows I have had for a number of years. They came from garage sales.


• The area dug is on three sides of the tool shed with a small bed (planted with nasturtiums) on the fourth side. In these three areas are planted: sage, parsley, basil, coriander, silver beet, rocket, climbing beans, golden zucchini, beetroot, cherry tomatoes and snow peas. I have seed-boxes containing capsicums (peppers) and sugar-loaf cabbage. I need to find a home for cucumbers.


• My two yellow wheelbarrows contain: penny-royal, sage, thyme, common mint, Corsican mint, and oregano. In other parts of the garden I have other herb plantings with the addition of golden marjoram and lavender.


• I have not yet planted tomato seedlings. I can only find Gross Lisse seedlings. I am looking for heritage tomatoes such as I planted two years ago. I will take a drive into The Hills later to-day to see what I can locate up there. And maybe I'll let my fingers do the walking using this list.


• Here at The Trad Pad, we compost. We have two bins - but two older single women don't make a lot of compost very quickly. I add to our household scrap pile in the bin by adding, every few months, some additional layers. I will put in a layer of cow manure; a few months later, a layer of lime. Sometimes I find I have left a small amount of potting mix to its own devices in the tool shed, so it goes into the compost too. I didn't have quite enough from the two compost bins to provide an adequate layer over all of the dug area so there was a narrow patch on the long side of the toolshed where the rocket seeds have been planted which received cow manure. I prefer manure to blood and bone. Blood and bone is an organic fertiliser/nutrient but I prefer not to use it. If I could be assured that it comprised the remains of old and injured animals who have been killed in a humane manner, I would use it. However, most blood and bone would be the detritus from meat processing facilities which kill animals for food. So I prefer to go with cow manure because it means that an animal has not given its life for the main purpose of providing humans with food.

It hasn't all been veges and herbs. Pretty baskets a-plenty are decorating the trees in the back yard. Here are some of them. And I have not included any pictures of the succulent collection in the courtyard outside the sunroom. BTW, these wire baskets are found items!

Woolworths, Safeway, Liquor and Fuel - but not food

Miss Eagle has sent the following email to Liz in Victorian Regional Office of Safeway (the name used by Woolworths in Victoria). It is self-explanatory. If you, dear Reader, agree with Miss E, please feel free to write to Woolworths in your state. If you are writing in Victoria, please send to ejamieson@woolworths.com.au.

This afternoon, I was in the Safeway store at Burwood Highway, Ferntree Gully (not the Mountain Gate store). I was stunned to see an advertisement stating, that if customers purchased $60 of goods from Safeway Liquor, they would receive a 20c a litre discount on fuel.

I am amazed at the ethics of such a campaign. I have been told by Kerry in the Area 5 office that this was part of a national campaign organised by the Marketing Division of Woolworths. M

The campaign has certainly not been well thought through. It sends very mixed messages to the community:

1. Alcohol is more valuable than food because it attracts a larger discount on fuel at the bowser.
2. $60 worth of alcohol far outweighs in value at the bowser any amount large or small spent on food.
3. The campaign links alcohol to driving in an encouraging way - in more or less the same way that large car parks at suburban hotels encourage a drink and drive mentality.
4. Woolworths, whose income is derived - in the main - from families, encourages a significant slice of the family budget to be devoted to alcohol.
5. The campaign seeks to encourage a significant amount of spending on alcohol which is the root cause of violence and road deaths in our society and ties the name of Woolworths/Safeway to it.

I would ask you to immediately withdraw this marketing campaign from all Woolworths and Safeway stores and to refrain from any similar type of marketing in the future.

I also wish to complain about the way complaints are handled within Woolworths and Safeway.

I am told that the Woolworths system means that someone in the local regional office will email someone in Sydney but that the system does not allow for me to be cc'd. So I have no way of knowing the accuracy of material forwarded to the responsible person regarding my complaint. I have rung the corporate office in Sydney who referred me back to the local regional office. Sydney refused to give me the name of the person with responsibility for the campaign. I then asked for the title, the phone number and the email of the person responsible for the marketing campaign. This too was refused. There is clearly no way for the customer to be in direct contact with the person with corporate responsibility. I am told that the matter will take two business days and I am familiar with the time limit that Woolworths sets itself to respond.

I fear that the manner in which Woolworths deals with complaints means that the complaint will not be acted upon in a positive manner leading to the withdrawal of the campaign and that Woolworths will go on its merry way regardless.

Yours sincerely,
[Name supplied] [address supplied]
Email: [supplied]
Phone: [supplied]
Blogs: Oz Tucker at http://oztucker.blogspot.com/
The Trad Pad at http://tradpad.blogspot.com/
The Eagle's Nest at http://eaglesplace.blogspot.com

We'll wait to see what - if anything - happens.

Shopping: therapy, festival, compulsion, illness, manipulation

Ramada - Mall of America

Shopping is better than sex.
If you're not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.

Adrienne Gusoff

Shop Til You Drop Magazine

What is it about shopping? What is it about shopping and the female of the species? Can we live with it? Can we live without it?

We talk about retail therapy. There seems to be a word for shopping til you drop: oniomania. Melbourne - which has more than its fair share of bread and circuses - is contemplating, as Miss Eagle has mentioned before, a shopping festival. Dubai actually has one and so has Hong Kong.

It is lovely to walk through beautiful shops selling beautiful things - even if one doesn't spend. Miss Eagle can still dream about Prada and Bulgari even if she can't afford it. This is why, even though she has not spent a cent there, Miss E was thrilled by the refurbishment of the Ground Floor at David Jones' Burke Street Mall store.

Could there possibly be a down side?

There is the illness. The cultural distortion which sees Hot Cross Buns - an Easter tradition - on sale before Epiphany. Advertising manipulating our children. The sexualization of our children. And for more information on how, when we consume, we are consumed go here.

Then there is the economic impact. Some see the globalization of retail and commodities which it sells as a positive thing. This article - brief as it is - comes out on the positive size while mentioning social disruption and the loss of jobs in some sectors of the economy.

We need to remember that when we purchase all that stuff from China and India it is great for their economies. And they really do need jobs. But when we lose jobs in this nation, we also lose skills - skills that are not always readily replaced with new ones. We can also lose access to jobs and personal economic development for women and young people.

So what is the solution? Miss E has none except the caveat emptor (buyer beware) provisions. Be aware! Demand accountability - not just from individuals but from governments and corporations.

If we become aware and demand accountability, we will become smart, ethical shoppers.

And for increasing numbers of us, we will go this way to the opp shop.

Sing a song of freedom,er.. sixpence

The following poem comes from The Peaceable Table.

In these times, many of us are considering the matter of cruelty free eating so it is apt.

It is a little long - but worth it.

FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS

Sing a song of sixpence

A pocketful of rye

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked into a pie.

When the pie was opened

The birds began to sing.

Wasn’t that a dainty dish

To set before the King?

The King got just the piecrust

And really could not say

The dish was very dainty--

For the birds all flew away.

The cooks and maids all chased them

‘Round the royal halls;

The birds just flew much higher

Within the castle walls.

One maid was in the garden

Performing daily chores,

She heard the noise and ran in –

But did not close the doors!

The four and twenty blackbirds

Flew out to open skies.

“The King”, they sang in merry glee

Will not eat blackbird pies!”

The King was very wrathful,

So foolish he had looked;

He vowed that every Blackbird

Would soon be caught and cooked!

The Queen was in the parlor

Eating bread and honey

She heard all this commotion

And thought is wasn’t funny.

She said, “Oh, sire, forgive me,

But I must have my say.

Blackbirds were not meant for pies –

I’m glad they flew away!”

“A bird was meant to soar high

And sing up in a tree.

A man is not the only one

Who wants to live all free!”

The King looked at his loving Queen

Standing brave and tall--

“Her Majesty speaks truly,"

He said to one and all.

It hurt my pride to think that

A bird defied a King:

But Kings and knaves and blackbirds

All share one needful thing.

He called for pen and parchment

And wrote a public order:

"Let none make blackbird pies

Within my kingdom's border!"

He called his palace workers-–

They gathered in the hall--

And then a very handsome plan

He told to one and all.

Now when the Blackbirds heard it

They all began to sing.

Everyone went right to work –

Yes, even the Queen and King.

They sawed and nailed and painted,

They worked the whole day through.

They made each bird a birdhouse

All bright and clean and new.

Each house was snug and cozy

'Gainst winter’s rain and snow.

The four and twenty houses

Were hung up in a row.

The birds were fed the finest grain-

And sometimes blackberry pie;

(This was just on holidays)

And it was made with rye.

Sing a song of sixpence

A pocketful of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds

Fly free up in the sky.
--Betse Streng