New vaccination scheme masquerading as 'animal health programme'

Janusz Wojciechowski is to be the European new Agriculture Minister

So we need to start writing to him to explain where we're at in Ireland and what we really need European funding for.

We really need a system change.

There has been a 10 million euro allocation for a new vaccination scheme is allocated under ‘animal health’ but is only in reality a European grant to pharmaceutical companies  - The 20 euro per vaccinated calf will only be recoverable after payment. It is to the ‘discretion’ of the pharmaceutical producer no doubt how much they will charge and the scheme will  not cover all the costs and will definitely not be charged at any lower than the max €20 euro they’ll know is available.

It is thought that the vaccine will not need to be administered by a vet, another huge expense to farmers, but the farmers themselves will be able to inject their herds. But they could easily change their minds on that.

A vaccination will only cover one or two strains and will not reduce risk of contracting pneumonia. The more obvious reason why dairy calves suffer so regularly from pneumonia is that they are separated from their mothers before receiving the cholostrum needed to develop their own immune systems. It would be much better to change the system to stop them being taken from their mothers at birth. The next place of risk is the overcrowding in cold barns with countless other vulnerable, if not ill already, calves. Export for veal should be stopped as both the travel and then isolated, unnatural keep of calves increases the risk of pneumonia.

As a farmer, I disagree that vaccination improves the health of calves. I also question why we would go to the manufacturers of anti-biotics to ask them for a preventative measure against pneumonia. They are corporate entities benefiting their share holders from the sale of endless rounds of antibiotics when pneumonia takes hold and now they are being promised 10 million to provide a vaccination against that same income stream. As calves are only kept for a matter of months, we can be sure that the long term effects of animal vaccinations living on in trace elements in the meat for human consumption are never known. 

We should be pushing for a system change where organic standards of care are offered, a better price given for high welfare traceability and practices that eliminate the need for veterinary and chemical support are funded. 

In the same edition, I see that Kepak are going to be penalizing farmers for animals that come in at weights outside their randomly-decided remit. Surely, this should not be allowed when all the meat plants have such high incident rates of  non compliance, price-setting and weighing machines at factories that are operating well outside the tolerance level of inaccuracy. How can the meat plants be allowed to decide how few animals they will accept at one time from a farmer and then be allowed to penalize them for going out side the finishing weight that they want to receive them at. I noticed that there will be a new weighing scheme for dairy calf to beef weighing. I suggest that farmers could put that 10 euro per head  for each 1-2 year old calf weighed on their farms to better use. Will we be allowed to weigh them ourselves and who will those weights be submitted to and why?

Everything in animal agriculture, at the moment, from care, to finance, to good practice, to cost, to quality of life, to welfare, to licenses, to cut backs, environmental measures etc is the responsibility of the farmers and meanwhile the meat bosses share the table at the Bord Bia awards, make deals for thousands of tonnes of beef abroad and command profits of over a billion annually  and the European Union is clearly being wined and dined by the agri chemical and pharmaceutical industries and organizing that all schemes and grants directly and only benefit them. 

TD Josepha Madigan HAS LIFTED the ban on senseless hare capture

Pippa Hackett for the Green Party pointed out:

“Minister Madigan has an abysmal record on wildlife protection, and this decision is a total abuse of power and a reckless act of wildlife vandalism. She is pandering to a minority group of people and amoral backbenchers that support this cruel activity, and it’s risking the increased spread of this fatal disease.

I wrote:

Dear Josepha,

I don't know what pressure you are under or from who but if you don't reinstate that ban on hare netting...hares being the national emblem of Ireland and endangered and horribly kept and tortured in coursing, you are literally licking the *****of the hare coursers. 

I have demonstrated outside the championships in Clonmel 4 years in a row. I can safely confirm that that is something you do not want to do. The men are gross, cold, ignorant and indifferent. Or should I say attached to their violent viewing.

 There are a few women who show up too, but they just don't want to be hated. This, I understand. But in your position, where you can make a change for the better and you started the ball rolling.

 I ask you to make up whatever pretext you need to protect the hares. Or just keep the threat of imminent extinction going as a reason to keep the ban on netting hares going. They have never done anything to you. To anyone.  

Every other country has banned it. 

The greyhound cruelty has even at last been highlighted in Ireland. Oh yes and some of the public don't like the hare torture, Is that what you want to mention at the pearly gates? That you didn't care? That you didn't respond to public opinion? That you had every back up?

 The RTE have exploded the situation.

You know there's a fatal disease. Why would you let  the ban go now? You have a chance to enforce something that has needed, cried out for and required someone to deal with it for years.

 The disease is spread by the empathy-free conditions of the cages the lads put them in. And yes it is only men. I would love to hear if there are any girls out there 'lamping': Petrifying and killing rabbits and hares.. I really doubt it.

Did you get the memo?

Is it six months since Kilkenny County Council declared a climate change and biodiversity loss emergency and unanimously agreed it? No one else in the council seems to have heard about it!

Dear Councillors,

Is it possible that following the unanimous agreement to declare a climate change and biodiversity loss emergency,  that there was not even an internal memo sent to the council’s own departments to put any sort of focus on this?

I would like to raise three specific instances and requests. Firstly,  council workers are still spraying pesticides and herbicides on hedgerows…formerly known and recently accepted as being important as habitat. Outside my own home, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, I found a group of council workers strimming. They said that it was for safety around the junction. The junction was over 200 metres away.  They agreed that it would in no way help with seeing around the corner, even if they strimmed right up to the corner. They agreed to put my sign up as much more useful. I asked them had they heard the the council had declared the environmental emergency and they had not. They said they were still doing a lot of spraying too.  All those sprays are poisonous to wildlife, I thought you understood that now. And poisonous to our food.

Secondly, in regard to poisoning our food. I ask Kilkenny County Council to make a request to government to halt the new VAT of 23% they are threatening to put on Health Food Supplements on November 1st. In case some in the council don’t know, Kilkenny City supports 4 extremely good health food shops, which basically supply natural and chemical-free food and plant extracts to support the immune system. We are talking about the trace minerals and vitamins that our lifestyles and food no longer provide and also boosts for people who are vulnerable or under physical pressure, like in training or during pregnancy. 

To derive good quality products requires diligence at every stage of the supply chain. Everyone knows that producing high quality, organic small-scale plants and remedies takes skill, time and more money than mass-produced convenience foods. Instead of supporting health food shops, their suppliers and customers, the government is recommending that people over 65 or pregnant get a flu vaccine.  Our complex and brilliant immune systems can fight any bacteria, virus or fungal infection, if people are given affordable access to health supplements and education on their diets – to reduce sugar as it blocks the absorption of vitamin C for example. Please make a collective statement to the government to stop this VAT, which will make them unviable, unsustainable, unprofitable, intolerable and consequently shut them all down and compromise public health still further.

Thirdly, the council have not told the local department of agriculture office about the emergency or an adaptation plan or even to include it in their assessments of new farms, planning permissions, licenses or herd numbers. I have just had my inspection by the local Department of Agriculture and been approved to become a farmer and been awarded a herd number. The inspection was carried out by two senior, County Vets. They checked that automatic water was available and that the fencing was secure. We talked about the 5 freedoms that should be afforded to farm animals and they were amused to hear me mention them. The one improvement they remembered was that sows are no longer tethered in their crates. One stood up for the use of concrete and steel as the best way to avoid infection. I showed them my organic growing space and descrbed why I feed organic pig nuts; so that the manure they produce can be used on the land to feed the soil. I showed my rainwater conservation measures and the re-wilding of my garden and turning it to mainly native and edible fruit and nut trees and shrubs. I asked them what had they added to their farm inspection criteria to support biodiversity recovery  and address the climate emergency. That is when they said they had not heard of the council’s declaration back in April.  Not one thing. 

Please send that memo out. It can say simply:

There is to be no more spraying of pesticides or other chemical use. 

Budget and time spent previously on that can be used pulling ragwort and other notifiable and noxious weeds all over council land and verges and planting in their stead, willow coppicing plantations or fruit/nut trees or wild flowers. Bare root planting starts now and spring bulb planting starts now (autum). Let’s seize the moment and show the birds and the bees that we’ve got some cop on.

There is to be a clear and public veto of the natural health supplements VAT  from Kilkenny County Council, on behalf of its people and demonstrating awareness that will support every county in following suit and the government re-thinking its proposal.

There is to be a clear change of direction in Agriculture, with a focus on quality of life for workers, animals, wildlife and land. Inspections could involve a simple survey of soil quality, water quality, responsible animal ownership and supports offered for organic standards of practice, produce and welfare.

I am not even sure if you have got the adaptation plan totally worked out, these things take time I understand. But get each draft out to each department for consideration and additions. Don’t wait until everything and everyone is dead or wishes it was dead through ill health, intolerable conditions or toxic breakdown…and that goes for people and animals.

Many thanks and kind regards,

Frances Micklem

Harmony Hall Think Tank

Co. Kilkenny

World Wide Fast Against Slaughter

Please make a stand for the animals, like Gandhi did, refusing to take food himself until the government acknowledged the plight that he was highlighting. Again it's on the 2nd October. I've been doing it for a number of years. And we want to stop all slaughter - the clue is in the word. Do you want to get to the pearly gates and explain how you were a part of it?

It's not that pigs are not fully gassed, before they're processed (chopped up, to you and I). It's not that the cows are fully conscious while they are hung upside down to be processed (throat cut, for you and I). It's not just the live export where all farm animals are transported (crammed in a trailer against their will and in a panic) for days without food or water.

It's not that calves are killed on arrival so their milk can be milked from their mothers and  distributed to human food and to coat human medicines. It is not that chickens are slaughtered in their millions and over a million die in transport each year. It is not that male chicks are either put through a mincer, via a conveyor belt alive and a few days old or the belt takes them straight into in bags that once full are tied up to gradually asphyxiate the birds.

 It is not that factories and meat plants are ripping off farmers, are non compliant to food safety, are shafting their workers, are non-compliant to basic welfare or humane slaughter legal requirements. It is not that all the animals are killed in front of each other in a terrifying procession of screaming and pain. It is not that some people want everyone to go vegan or stop eating meat and you don't have to answer to them.

I am asking if you yourself are okay with all this stuff that is happening to animals under the glib heading of necessity for food or they're only animals, they don't know or I can do what I want, eat what I want. My mother used to say 'don't care was made to care'. If you can't stop yourself eating convenience, cheap foods that exploited animals right here and people in other countries then you're going to get some hideous disease and then you'll have to care.

You'll be advised by a doctor to give up meat, avoid sugar and make sure nothing with chemicals further toxifies your body. The same doctor will give you a sugary sweet after chemo. The same doctor will prescribe you drugs (which are formally labelled chemicals), pills coated with another carcinogen casein from milk and those prescriptions will render your own immune system capable of nothing.

 Why wait and ask the very people who want you sick and dependent to help? Merck in Carlow want €5,000 per injection of throat cancer treatment. The government say 'Thanks Merck for coming to Ireland and you can be tax free for 12 years or whatever' In the same breath, the government has decided to tax and vat natural food supplements by 30% come November. (Probably putting the only ethical shops we have - health food shops - out of business. So if you wanted to boost your immune system or thyroid function or lower your cholesterol and aid your digestion with time-honoured tinctures and drinks from organically grown and hand prepared herbs, you soon won't be able to afford to do so.

Same goes for extinction rebellion. Surely there's no point trying to force Daddy, I mean the government and big industry to stop destroying the planet when they are the very ones doing it. And be careful what we wish for. One of Irish governments first big statements was to say that only electric cars be allowed by 2030 or whenever...I only know one rural person who has been able to afford an electric car so far. What are we all going to do? Illegal to drive our old cars, no way to get around. Doesn't it look like they want us to move into cities? Give up the food independence we have?

Doesn't it look like they want us to think smart cities are a great idea. Smart? A wilful misuse of energetic frequency is being perpetuated. Every watch and card will mean we're tagged and accounted for: Rolling out 5G with well-documented health consequences: Ravaging new quarries and children in different areas to source magnets and minerals for batteries and computer parts. Isn't it dodgy that extinction rebellion was started by two people from a telecommunications commercial enterprise. We are being manipulated. We need to do our own thing, our land can support us sustainably.

Petapixel's photo of wifi signals caught by long wave camera outside building .

Greta Thunberg herself is being manipulated. Of course she is innocent but consider the country she comes from. Sweden is one of the most controlled countries in the world. She is only talking about the bit, the powers that be want her to talk about. Children can't make anyone do anything. They're not even allowed to go out in the evening or drink a beer, let alone vote. They can learn how to grow, prepare and share though.

They can't even appeal to the better nature of companies or government. Government doesn't have a better nature. And children are not shareholders, they're collateral.

Collateral noun: "Something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default."

Collateral adjective: "additional but subordinate; secondary".

 It is only us, the responsible, capable adults who can really inform ourselves and be discerning in our actions. Not be fed a story. Why would you listen to Greta Thunberg but not DavidIke who has been investigating climate change and what has been unfolding for decades. Why is no one talking about geo-engineering. This is the only deliberate, climate affecting practice that we can actually see for ourselves, in streaks and more streaks across the sky and the soil and air degradation and pollution measured. Why aren't people asking for that to be stopped? 

David Icke Picture on Twitter

Ireland to ban new petrol diesel vehicles from 2030.

“If you want to change society in ways that you wouldn’t normally have an excuse to do then you find an excuse, it’s a technique of mass perceptual manipulation that I gave a name to a long long time ago. 

“‘Problem, reaction, solution’ – at stage one you create a problem, real or manufactured, you blame someone else or something else for it

“At stage 2 You want a reaction. You want a reaction from the public that is either A. do something or B. not against it strongly enough to say you mustn’t do it.

“And step number three is then offering the solution openly to the problems that you have either covertly created or lied about.

David Icke

So, I suggest plant your winter beans and detox your family of excess electro magnetic charge and wifi signals at night and organic raw foods by day to make it strong and recover the clarity to deal with what is actually happening. 

This detox for me has been the best prep ever for my fast tomorrow. Endless fruit and my own hazelnuts, homemade Ferrero Rocher, organic strawberry cheese cake (vegan raw obviously so sunflower seeds rather than cheese) and many organic pulses - mung beans and what I gather is most important, getting into the flow. 4 hours dancing totally did it, following the salsa leads at the Teachers Club and then learning new patterns and spin technique later in the Mezzo at Temple Bar.