Chinese Dog Butchers - an abomination against humanity

A worker kills a dog with a stick at a slaughter house in Dongbei county of Lianzhou, Guangdong province, China.

Preserved dog meat is an accepted cuisine in some parts of Guangdong province

Butterflies imprisoned by IntraTuin

Live butterfly in Mother’s Day gift box creates outrage in Netherlands and around the civilised World!

Intratuin Netherlands wants to pack live butterflies and sell them as Mother’s Day gifts. News that live butterflies will be packaged as Mother’s Day gifts and sold in garden centre Intratuin has been criticised by the Animal Rights Party (PvdD) and the Dutch Butterfly Conservation in the Netherlands.

The PvdD, which holds two seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, slams the sale of a live butterfly in a box as cruel and has asked the Nature Minister Gerda Verburg to ban the sale of the “fragile creatures”.PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand was quoted in the AD as saying: "This is bizarre; butterflies do not belong in boxes."The thistle butterflies, which will be sold in one of Intratuin branches in South Holland, will be priced at EUR 6.99 each.

The sales promotion is aimed at highlighting the plight of some butterfly species in the Netherlands, said a spokesperson for Intratuin. The company expects purchasers to release the insects within 24 hours, thus boosting the butterfly population.

The Dutch Butterfly Conservation condemns the plan and fears that many thistle butterflies are unlikely to survive their time spent in the box."It's a really bad idea. The chance that the butterfly will die is really, really high. If they get warm in the box, they start flapping their wings, get stressed and damage their wings," said Kars Veling of the Dutch Butterfly Conservation organisation.

However, Intratuin maintains there is nothing wrong with selling live butterflies."We are always very careful with the sale of live animals… It's also part of a campaign to make people aware of the fact that butterflies are facing serious problems in this country," said an Intratuin spokesperson.

The argument is invalid according to Veling who said butterfly numbers have fallen dramatically over the last 30 to 40 years due to the enormous changes in the Dutch landscape.“Releasing a few butterflies won't help at all," said Veling.

Vile trade: Bear Bile farming should be outlawed

JASPER is an Asiatic black bear, also known as a moon bear because of the yellow crescent on his chest. In 2000 he came to the Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu, China, from a bear farm.

When Jasper arrived his rescuers had to cut him out of a tiny "crush cage" that pinned him down so the farmer could extract lucrative bile from his gall bladder. Bear bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine and fetches a tidy price. In China, the wholesale price is around 4000 yuan (approximately $580) per kilogram; each bear produces up to 5 kilograms a year. But it comes at terrible cost.

Jasper spent 15 years in his cage. Other bears spend up to 25 years in cages no bigger than their bodies, barely able to move. Bears are milked for bile twice a day. In China, farmers use a crude catheter inserted into the gall bladder or a permanently open wound. In Vietnam, they use long hypodermic needles.

Over the past 10 years, Animals Asia has rescued 260 bears from Chinese bear farms. These are the lucky ones. The official number of farmed bears in China is 7000, but Animals Asia fears the real figure is closer to 10,000.