Don't send A Cow - Plant A Tree!

pat | 25.01.2007 17:01 | Animal Liberation | Climate Chaos | Globalisation

Nottingham vegan campaigners Veggies Catering Campaign have created a Google Bomb which expodes myths about animals ab/used by charity schemes.

Don’t Send a Cow

Think twice before donating money to charities that supply 'developing' countries with live animals. Farming animals is a wasteful, unsustainable and expensive way of producing food. Supplying cows, goats and chickens to impoverished people with limited resources just adds to their burden.

All farmed animals require proper nourishment, large quantities of water, shelter from extremes of weather and veterinary care. It makes no sense to devote such resources - in critical short supply in much of Africa - to such an indirect way of feeding people.

Globalizing our preventable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes hardly seems charitable ... two-thirds of non-Caucasians on the planet are lactose intolerant and cannot digest dairy ... the last thing a hungry child in Africa needs is the milk of a cow.

Meanwhile according to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport.
Ref:

http://www.veggies.org.uk/page.php?ref=917

As well as providing food and many other resources sustainably, planting trees can help reverse climate change by sequestering carbon.

Don't Give a Goat - Plant a Tree!

Veggies Catering Campaign and Animal Aid are supporting a tree-planting initiative in Kenya, which will provide fruit-bearing trees for local families. The aim is to help 100 families to plant 20 trees each, which will bear oranges, avocados, mangoes, pawpaws, kei apples, and macadamia nuts, with a few additional trees for timber and firewood.

Help our Don't Send A Cow GoogleBomb!

On 5th January 2007 the first critique of the Send A Cow scheme was 20th on a Google Search. By adding a link on your website, you can help raise its search engine ranking and hence help alert the public to concerns about such schemes.

On other blogs and forums you can simply reference this page:

http://www.veggies.org.uk/page.php?ref=955

By 20th January we had made it onto entries 4 and 5 on page one on Google, but help is needed to maintain its' position.

See

http://www.veggies.org.uk/page.php?ref=955 for details.

pat
e-mail: info@veggies.org.uk
Homepage: http://www.veggies.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

careful now!

25.01.2007 18:06

"Nottingham vegan campaigners Veggies Catering Campaign have created a Google Bomb which expodes myths about animals ab/used by charity schemes."

"Bomb"...."explodes"... could be enough for the anti-terroist squad to kick your door in and drag you off these days.

Fly Posters

Cow or not cow?

25.01.2007 22:44

Well, some animals, eg goats graze where nothing edible grows- from our point of view. Though I agree animal farming is a waste of resource in arable land, it is almost the sole resource in dry, mountain and desertic areas. Go tell the people who are living in those areas to relocate where the land is more fertile? Probably the fertile land has been already talken from the people forced to survive on the mountains or in the desert. In my hometown during World War 2 they ate all the pigeons, most cats and also some rats and mice.
I think the problem with land and food is much wider than your argument.

yes and no

donkey

26.01.2007 00:36

I got an oxfam donkey from my sister at Christmas, or rather I got a fridge magnet of a donkey. Assuming it isn't donkey stew by now it'll be helping transport all the veg to market while eating scrub and fertilising the fields. So not all the animal schemes are bad for the environment - no ?

dp

27.01.2007 00:13

"fridge magnet" - This month's fucking idiot

H4TE TH3IR GR33D

Jon B

27.01.2007 17:16

Don't believe that Goats are OK because they eat where nothing edible grows.

Goats eat almost everything including crops and trees. In some areas of Africa trees have been planted by charities only to have them destroyed by goats.

A hectare of land produces 10 times more protein for human consumption when growing crops that for raising animals to eat.

And.. animals need huge quantities of water, for growing crops to feed the animals, to water the animals and for meat processing.

I will never send a cow, try helping in a more sustainable way be providing a clean water well or renewable electricity.

Jon B

the priority is here

28.01.2007 10:00

My point is not all animals are kept for their flesh. And since I haven't had a fridge for 7 years and asked my sister not to buy me a Christmas present I think you could award yourself the idiot of the month award.

A wider point would be it is imperialist to condemn farming practices in developing countries when we factory farm all sorts of useless beasts at home. Sorting out European meat markets would be a better contribution to the environment than indulging in this pettiness. I'm sure Pat does his bit on this front but I'm not sure about the rest of the posters on this thread.

green hypocrites

28.01.2007 10:15

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1152757.0.0.php

SOME OF the groups in Scotland campaigning against the pollution that causes climate chaos have often chosen to fly within Britain, even though flying is the most harmful way to travel.

A Sunday Herald survey of flights within Britain has exposed the Soil Association, Oxfam and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) as the most frequent fliers among non-governmental organisations.

http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/food_and_drink/reports/_labelling_and_shopping/Soil_carbon_footprint_news_article_557_107563.jsp
Food which is imported to the UK by air may be denied the ‘organic’ label under proposals being put forward today by the country's main organic certification body.

The Soil Association is concerned about the damage being done to the environment by greenhouse gas emissions from flights carrying food products around the world.

Planting trees in Sahara

03.02.2007 03:23

For me it sounds hippocritical to suggest to someone living in let's say Sahara to plant a tree instead of farming animals. As far as I know there's much more we can do by looking at a mirror before starting to give advise for the others. The organisations sending animals have asked local people what would they need. Have you?

Peace

Shopping in Himalaya

03.02.2007 12:24

Yeah why don't those people in Himalaya go and buy a Gore-Tex jacket instead of using poor animals skin who die in the process. Animals drink our water and eat grass which is away from the plates of humans so they should stay away from us. The co-operation between animals and humans was a step towards hell anyway in the first point.

bedouin

We could just have the best of all worlds...

11.03.2007 05:37

As important as "how" to give efficiently, is "how" to give more! If you've stumbles across this site unintentionally like I have:

Give them olive trees, give them technology, give them livestock, give them books translated in their local languages, give them charitiy, give to Africa, Palestine/Israel, see your family, give to your neighbors, give to your strangers and local crazies, give to your wall mart, your mom and pop stores, give them some animals, and don't forget crops ...just give and your life will be whole.

SkyPilot

what right?

01.04.2007 20:02

No-one who has looked at the figures can argue that any kind of animal farming is a reasonable use of natural resources.
To quote Gandhi, "We should be growing food not feed, supplying need not greed."

I do also look in the mirror and I notice that the developed, western, world countries are the worst culprits (I don't think anyone was implying the opposite), but duplicating such folly in the name fair play is madness. Instead, many of us (in addition to not sending a cow) actively campaign to end the misuse of the developing world's natural resources by the global meat industry.

Whatever, when it comes to addressing the consequences of greed and selfishness, shouldn't we maintain an objective perspective?
If so, then consider:
Condemning one feeling individual to help another is NOT charity, but bigoted favouritism.
I can just imagine in previous centuries some well-meaning, humanitarian organization launching a "send a slave" initiative for beset gentlefolk out in the colonies (having asked the gentlefolk in question what they need).
The goat is not yours to send.

D. Otieno