Press-Corner
from EVU News, Issue 4 / 1996

Animal Fat promotes Parkinson’s disease

Translated from "Brugger Generalanzeiger", 12.7.’96, SDL

Original source:
Logroscino G et al: Dietary lipids and antioxidants in Parkinson’s disease: a population-based, case-control study. Ann Neurol 1996, 39, 89.

Childrens’ League introduces itself

In June a new society was founded: The International Vegetarian Childrens League, member of "Deutscher Naturheilbund" and the European Vegetarian Union (EVU).

On the 1st of November there was a first meeting in the conference hall of the holiday village "Bayernpark" (Germany), where experts spoke about new methods of education, nutrition and the planning of leisure time. Our children are the future not only of our country but they will guide the destination of our planet in the next millennium. Do we prepare them in an adequate way?

Every day we can see pictures of tortured and ill children, while many children are spoilt, showered with toys and confronted in an uncontrolled way with sex and violence.

Only in few families is there time for care and love. Even the nutrition is often reduced to fast food. This should make us reflect on the fact that 1/3 of our children is suffering from allergies and asthma. Are ill children the result of a polluted environment or of wrong nutrition?

The Childrens’ League wants to defend the weak, it wants to be a lobby for children and offer help to parents, to educate children with love and patience and to respect and foster the individual unique way of every child. Ethical values like responsibility, compassion, gratitude, respect and tolerance towards all creatures are to be the aims to strive for in the education, according to the speakers.

Irina Prekop, psychologist for children and author, stressed in her lecture that children need the unconditioned love of their parents, but for their development they need also limits, examples, the possibility to experience conflicts, to accept disappointments.

The new society wants to promote itself through little actions like wholefood baking for children, holiday camps, where expert educators will try to stimulate the children to play creatively and use their fantasy again. The children will also participate in the preparation of vegetarian meals.

Percy Usleber

The members of the society are full of enthusiasm but need more members and funds. It is hoped that the 20th of November, the day of the child will be an occasion for donations or new members to join. For the annual fee of 70DM all members will receive the monthly magazine "Naturarzt".

Please contact: Percy Usleber, PB 1142, 88151 Lindenberg, Germany

Translated from Lindauer Zeitung, 5.November’96 by SDL

Food not Bombs

The American initiative "Food not Bombs" has been distributing vegetarian food to homeless people for 16 years.

In 1980 a group of activists put their soup kitchen in front of a Boston bank in order to protest against nuclear energy and the investment policy of the bank. 300 homeless people came and the initiative was born.

As no official permission had ever been given to distribute free meals, several of the members in more than 100 towns were arrested.

As "radical pacifists", the members renounce all violence , especially against animals. Their label shows a clenched fist holding a carrot. The meals are strictly vegetarian and if possible from organically grown ingredients.

Digest from "Essen statt Bomben", Hinz&Kunz, Nov.1996, SDL

Indescribable Animal Tortures

In the Indian Ocean a ship, coming from Australia and heading for Jordan, caught fire causing the crew to abandon ship leaving the 67,500 passengers to their fate. Why did we not read about it on the front page of our newspapers? Because the passengers were only sheep destined for the slaughterhouses of Jordan.

Last year Australia shipped 5.5 million sheep to Jordan, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman or Bahrain and got 208 million dollars for them. This lucrative deal has been going on since the fifties and the fact, that annually about 20,000 animals die in transit does not seem to bother anybody.

The transport from there "homefarm" to the coast lasts up to 4 days. Weakened through the lack of fodder and water the animals stay for several days in a pen where they are supposed to get used to the mixed dry fodder. After about 10 days the animals are put onto container ships where they are placed on several decks: 4 sheep per squaremetre. There are ships that can carry 125,000 sheep!

During the journey of about 3 weeks the animals are not only standing in their own urine and excrement but from the upper decks the excrement drips down on them and their fodder. Many animals fall ill.

Contaminated fodder, heat, change of climate, hunger are the causes of many deaths.

Once a ship had to wait 16 weeks before it could enter the harbour and 30,000 creatures had already died. Animal protection groups are trying to stop this terrible suffering but nobody listens to their complaints. The demand for "hot meat" (one-day-old meat) is enormous.

The Australian Government would not listen to the proposals of the animal protectors to slaughter the sheep in Australia and to send the frozen meat to the Middle East. There are too many dollars to be earned.

When there was a trade in horses in the eighties, the Australian Government had to stop the export under the pressure of the population’s protests.

The terrible conditions of the sheep are accepted without complaint because sheep are "stupid".

Translated and summarised from Weltwoche, 3. October 1996, by SDL

Animal Transports to Triest Stopped

After terrible pictures shown by the German TV station ZDF in "Frontal Spezial" about brutal conditions of cattle in the harbour of Triest, several German Countries have stopped the export to the Italian harbour, where the animals are shipped to Beirut and other destinations in the Middle East, for ritual religious slaughter.

Animals which had collapsed, with broken legs, were driven cruelly onto ships or trucks.

The government of Lower Saxony will try to see to it that the exportation of living animals (85 000 animals were exported in 1995) will be forbidden and only meat can be exported. This is possible only through the EU and great resistance is expected.

Translated and summarised from Brückenauer Anzeiger, Nov.’96, SDL