"Spanish should eat less meat to limit climate crisis, says minister"

[Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images]

  I completely agree with him...

"Alberto Garzón wants public to recognise impact of megafarms on the environment and change its eating habits.

Eating less meat will play a key role in helping Spain mitigate the effects of the climate emergency, slow the process of desertification, and protect its vital tourism industry, the country’s consumer affairs minister has said.

Alberto Garzón said people in Spain needed to realise the huge impact that eating meat – particularly beef raised on industrial megafarms – had on the environment, and to change their eating habits accordingly.

“People here know about the part that greenhouse gases play in climate change, but they tend to link it to cars and transport,” Garzón told the Guardian.

“It was only very recently that everyone started to look at the impact of the animal consumer chain and, especially, at the impact of beef. Other countries were pretty advanced on that but in Spain it’s been a taboo.”

The minister said that the country’s geography made it profoundly vulnerable to climate change, adding the Spain people know and love is in danger of disappearing forever.

“If we don’t act, it won’t just be climate change we’re dealing with – it’ll be the triple crisis: the loss of biodiversity; pollution, and climate change,” he said.

“It would be the end for a country like Spain. Spain is a country in the Mediterranean basin – it isn’t the UK or Germany – and desertification is a very serious problem for our country, not least because it depends so much on tourism. Visiting a desert isn’t quite as attractive as visiting the Costa del Sol.”

Read more from source at The Guardian here.

"The Inner Life of Animals" -- My latest book review for Catalonia Today magazine

[Pic: Club Hípic Raúl Pinteño]

Can horses feel shame? Do deer grieve for their dead? Why do roosters deceive hens?

What about humpback whales that act as if they’re grateful, adulterous magpies or pigs that have learnt their own names?

These are the kinds of questions that are asked by people who spend lots of time around animals because our life experiences are full of stories that seem to support an obvious ‘Yes’ answer.

In Peter Wohlleben’s book, “The Inner Life of Animals” -- translated with warmth and clarity by Jane Billinghurst -- we get as close as (currently) possible to understanding how the creatures we share the planet with are much more complex than we might at first think. 

With our inbuilt tendency to ‘humanise’ animal behaviour, we like to compare them with our own species but this book has a remarkable way of putting us into their minds, bodies and hearts. 

Some of these are the author’s own pets and farm animals and his lifetime’s sharp observations of them bring the reader genuine insight.

The other great strength of this book is also one of it’s few weaknesses. We are moved and educated in equal measure with page after page of compelling anecdotes about the uplifting and even empathetic side of animals (squirrels adopting orphans and even cross-species pseudo-families) but there is only featherweight attention given to the cruelty that also runs through the animal world. 

Where, for example is the fox that only eats the fatty jowls and throat of the sheep and leaves it to die in slow agony with the rest of its body intact? 

If we humans are merely animals (and this is a biological fact of evolution that Wohlleben rightly points out) then surely the cruelty we routinely practice can also be found in our four-legged relatives too.

Wohlleben tells us with loving, enthusiastic praise about the crow that goes tobogganing for fun. He overlooks the cat that tortures and toys with the mouse for nothing but amusement. The book would be stronger if this was acknowledged because it would add a few fistfuls of balance. 

Where the book also charms the reader is in overthrowing misconceptions we generally have. Fish have no memory? Pigeons are “bird-brained” or pigs are simpletons? After reading this work, your mind is very likely to have been changed for good on these and similar questions. 

He also counters other popular notions by illustrating that ‘the law of the jungle” and “survival of the fittest” are only parts of how animals relate with each other.

Organised cooperation amongst individuals and groups is surprisingly common and it seems that many creatures (such as red deer) have the ability to switch off their hunger impulses when the seasons dictate this. 

When it comes to domesticated animals though, in a brave and convincing section, Wohlleben also shows that some animals undoubtedly enjoy their work with men and women.

He writes about horses happily clear forests as well as shepherd dogs engaged in keen “partnership” with their owners. This is only after stating of course, that “most animals used by people lead dismal lives.” 

Before now running his own home farm, the author worked in forestry commission woodland for 20 years and he has also written a book about the hidden life of trees.

Reading that might even persuade me to stop using paper.

[This book review was first published under the title ""Animal feelings" in Catalonia Today magazine, January 2020.]

"TTIPing us over the edge" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

While we are all going about our daily business this month, big business is going about trying to make sure that Europe is run purely in its interest.

If agreed to by the European parliament, the new Free Trade Agreement between the United States and the European Union, better known as TTIP, will do immeasurable damage to the lives of citizens across this continent. 

The progressive organisation Global Justice believes that it poses "great risks to hard won measures to protect public health, worker rights and the environment."

Essentially, TTIP is "designed to take away barriers which are behind the customs border – such as differences in regulations, standards and certifications" of goods for trade. 

This may sound reasonable but what it means is that Europe would be required by law to have exactly the same product rules as the United States, which are widely known to be the loosest and most anti-consumer protection in the developed world.

The TTIP negotiations have all been conducted in secret sessions - closed to the public and the media. 

The reason for this is simple. 

The leaks of information from the meetings have shown that TTIP would mean that any business could take any government to court if they believed that a government policy threatens their profits. 

This legal method, (known as the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism) has already led to countries being sued for putting health warnings on cigarette packets, regulating medicine and energy prices, raising minimum wages, and removing tax incentives.

TTIP would further strengthen the power of big business (because only the largest can afford it) to control what national parliaments can and cannot do for their private citizens. 

Fracking, to take just one other example, would be more likely to go ahead because public administrators would want to avoid costly litigation that they are likely to lose defending a decision against it.

On top of all this, there is a fear – from the European Commission itself – that because of TTIP changes up to one million workers employed in small businesses are almost certain to lose their jobs. 

So, if accepted, TTIP may well worsen inequality across the EU.

Meanwhile, according to online global web campaigners Avaaz, “cruel factory farms are pumping healthy animals full of antibiotics so that they can produce more meat, faster and cheaper.” 

They argue that this practise is also creating drug-resistant superbugs but, in a positive development, several European countries have already drastically cut the use of antibiotics, and now EU ministers are negotiating laws to do so across the wider region. 

Unsurprisingly, and in a parallel move with pressure on TTIP, “the farm and pharma lobby is out in full force to stop the new EU laws.”

I would urge readers to think about taking action by signing the online petitions (as I have done) at the websites of the two organizations I’ve mentioned above in this article: Global Justice and Avaaz.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2015.]

How to confirm a stereotype

One standard opinion of Spanish people is that they enjoy cruelty to animals. Unfortunately, this is supported by some of the festival activities here.

“In the Basque village of Lekeitio, the celebration of Antzar Eguna (Geese's Day) is honoured with contestants who try to hold onto a dead goose for as long as possible while being jerkily dipped into the ocean on a rope. The winner is the one who decapitates the goose with his bare hands. In earlier times, the geese was alive…”

See photo of this “event” here.