Fire letter to Rutte and House of Representatives about animal suffering through coronavirus approach – Insurance for Pets

Animal Emergency Committee, ANIMAL A FRIEND and Animal Rights have jointly sent a fire letter to Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the parliamentary parties. In the fire letter, the animal interest organizations sound the alarm for the animals because their welfare is systematically excluded in this corona crisis and animals become victims of human actions even more than usual.

Fire letter to Rutte and House of Representatives on animal suffering through coronavirus approach | Photo: Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel Flickr via Compfight cc

The animal interest groups are also very concerned that the cause of this pandemic, our interaction with animals, should not now be called into question. New potential diseases from the factory farming industry and the meat industry, such as avian influenza and African swine fever, that are also dangerous for humans, are also approaching our borders.

The animal interest organizations find it shocking that farmers, slaughterers and veterinarians who work in slaughterhouses are counted among the vital professions and people who help animals, such as veterinarians and animal caretakers, are not.

Because animals can suffer just as much as people do, the animal organizations request in their fire letter to the government that, as long as the coronavirus is present in our country and in the surrounding countries, we are committed to the following appropriate and necessary measures:

1. No export and import of live animals.
2. A breeding ban for animals in industry.
3. A duty of care for animals born through human action.
4. Inclusion of veterinarians, animal emergency personnel and animal keepers in the list of vital professions.
5. Now start to treat all animals that are now bred, fattened and used in the Netherlands differently. The treatment of animals as production units and not as sentient, suffering creatures must have been longest.
6. Accelerated implementation of the ‘protein transition’, away from animal proteins and towards conversion to vegetable proteins. Vegetable life should be the norm for the environment, our health and animal welfare. This will prevent similar subsequent pandemics.
7. No animal testing in the context of corona control.

Additional animal suffering due to coronavirus approach

Animal experiments now seem to be approved without criticism because « the fight against corona » justifies everything. In order to find a real remedy or vaccine that works in humans, real scientific research will have to take place without animals. At least a million chicks are unnecessarily killed by Dutch hatcheries because the export destination has become unreachable. Due to strict border controls that result in long waiting times, there is a lot of extra animal suffering during animal transports abroad. The already sparse checks on farms for compliance with animal welfare are now carried out remotely as much as possible. The animals are literally outlawed in this way. Because the veal export market has completely collapsed, the veal calves remain on the farms and few places are left on the farms for young calves that are still born. At the same time, plenty of calves just a few weeks old are imported from Ireland. Calves that are on the road for more than 50 hours and have to do without drinking for 23 to 29 hours.

Sources: