South Korea disease outbreak

I've not seen this reported in the English press at all. You have to go to Cattle News (!) to find out that there is a massive animal disease outbreak in South Korea, and they are only reporting it because of the impact it's having on US markets.

As things stand 16% of the entire pig and cow herds have been slaughtered (2.1 million animals). Obviously the markets think this is great because it has seen a jump in the future's markets. “The movement of animals is completely paralyzed,” said Dennis Smith, a senior account executive at Archer Financial Services Inc. in Chicago. “They basically are not producing any meat for their retail counters. They’re going to have to come to other people, primarily us.”

At the same time they are suffering a bird flu outbreak. Considering how much the press used to go wild over bird flu stories the fact this is passing them by seems perverse. The bird flu immediately prompted the authorities to cull half a million birds and we will have to see if this has contained the outbreak.

The Wall Street Journal blog reports that "people involved in the months-long containing operation are reported to be suffering from psychological damage. The National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement today it started a program to support approximately 6,500 people involved, including farmers, vaccinating and culling officials, with a psychological program."

In addition to this the outbreak may have spread to North Korea and they are currently suffering their coldest winter for some time. Not good news, but it is, I think, news which has been almost entirely ignored in the British press.

Beautiful urban foxes

There's a mini-tabloid storm brewing against urban foxes because, apparently, a fox wandered into someone's home bit a couple of kids for kicks and then wandered off again. The papers do not record whether the fox's friends filmed the incident on their mobile phones, or whether the fox had arrived in London from Poland in a secret compartment in a lorry.

Whatever the ins and outs of the case, and let's assume it's all true, this would make it an extremely rare occurrence.

The Guardian tells us that "Vulpes vulpes has long fascinated and repelled us", which is news to me. Who is this "us" who have long been "repelled" by beautiful urban foxes? Bed wetting Guardian journalists no doubt.

The article ends with a list of ways of "off foxing the fox" which are basically a number of ways of moving the fox into your neighbour's garden.

Thankfully the Guardian's eco-wing has a better article by the sainted Terry Nutkins which a) casts doubt on whether this was a fox at all and b) reminds us that foxes not go out of their way to harm humans, the harm is purely a one-way process. Well worth a read.

The BBC reports that the authorities went and found a fox and killed it in retaliation but they also quote a fox expert, John Bryant, who says that a fox attack of this kind makes no sense what-so-ever.

Whatever really happened in this case I'm concerned that, in typical knee jerk fashion, we may be facing a reprisal fox cull which will make no one any the safer but do yet more to purge our cities of some of its most delightful inhabitants.

n.b. I wondered whether foxes ate rats in order for me to make a case that they were useful, but wikipedia seems to think they mainly eat insects and worms, but whether we can trust this source or not I don't know as it doesn't even mention their main diet, discarded kebabs.

Green Party conference: Animals, science and health

For those who've been following these things there has been an ongoing "re-evaluation" of Green Party policy around scientific evidence. This came about mainly due to a few journalists helpfully letting us know that there was some deeply dodgy stuff in policy. It certainly came as a shock to many of us who had not thoroughly read our voluminous policy documents.

This conference saw the first swath of re-orientating our policy on a more science friendly footing. As one of the Party members who've been quite heavily involved in trying to change party policy the experience has been instructive and, I think because we were friendly and open minded in our approach - taking our time rather than just trying to crush anyone who looked like they were in opposition to us, the whole process has been quite effective.

I've already mentioned this but conference started well, as conference passed the motion on abolition of the science pledge. A policy so offensive to scientists and 'technologists' that it makes me wince just to think of it. Anyway, it's gone. Hurray.

This was quickly followed by the passing of the science chapter enabling motion which means that the party has officially endorsed a review and rewrite of our entire science and technology section of the PSS, our core policy document. That's going to take some hard work and we'll be looking for people both inside and outside of the party to help us with that process.

Health

However, some of the key problem areas were in the health chapter which is why a review of this section was prioritised and we voted on this new document on Saturday and this morning. There were a whole number of improvements made and it's to the great credit of the health group that these went through relatively smoothly.

Many of the amendments to policy were on subjects like patient empowerment, the way private medicine feeds off the NHS and breast feeding but I'll stick to the science stuff for the time being.

The headlines in this are that we state that we "will not make judgements on individual treatments or medicines" as that is the job of regulators and scientists which replaced a very specific and somewhat rigid list of treatments we, apparently, like in favour of others.

In HE312 we have removed the idea that health research will have a "particular emphasis" on "holistic treatments" and "complementary therapies". We removed the statement that "vivisection is of questionable value and incompatible with ecological philosophy" replacing it with a section calling for "a thorough evaluation of animal tests" which seems difficult to disagree with as it happens already.

In HE314 we previously had the difficult situation where we appeared to state that alternative therapies did not require the same kind of regulation as more conventional medicines. Conference amended this to ensure that all medicines are properly regulated and subjected to the same controls "based on the best clinical evidence available". We also deleted a long section on "natural medicines", whatever they might be.

Importantly HE315 now states that "We recognize that the assessment of treatments... should be driven by clinical need rather than either political or commercial influence."

Bizarrely, we did have a policy that opposed some stem cell research (but not using adult stem cells) and appeared to be, and maybe even was, the sort of thing George W. might have approved of. This was also problematic because it clashed with our 100% pro-choice agenda on abortion.

Now the policy reads that we look to the "benefits to humans and other animals from stem cell technologies, using both adult and embryonic cellular material. These benefits include direct medical advances, improved non-animal testing methods for new medical treatments, and the advancement of knowledge." What a relief!

Animals

As a last part of this process this conference we also took a look at the animal rights section and although the motion, C9, that I proposed was not passed the animal experimentation policy has been improved by removing direct reference to "scientific" grounds for opposing animal experimentation and the rather blanket reference to "superior non-animal technologies" which implied all animal tests had an already existing superior alternative that did not involve harm to animals.

However, my ambition to strip out all reference to scientific grounds for opposition to animal testing was not approved by conference. I had hoped to stick to the ethics of animal rights within this section and leave the policy on the utility of animal testing to the health section, which seemed more appropriate, but I think members thought this was a step too far and they wanted policy to reassure them they were objectively right on a moral stance. I'm determined to see the positives of this but secretly I'm gutted at this (single) conference defeat.

The debate itself was conducted in a very friendly way and I'm grateful to those who disagreed with me (us) for the open, honest and political way they debated the issues as sometimes these things can get very fraught.

When push comes to shove the Green Party has made great strides forwards at this conference and the focus is now to pull apart the science policy and make sure it's strong, evidence based and relevant to a campaigning political party that wants to see progressive change. All help much appreciated.

Our furry friends

Personally I'm a cat person. Cats have a dignity that's completely alien to, for example, a dog whose whole sense of self seems to revolve around its pack leader. Cats are great, but dogs? They're bloody animals!

Anyway, having spent a chunk of the weekend re-proofing the proofed Green Euro-Manifesto (ooohhhhh!) I have to confess I read the section on animals peeping through my fingers as I hid behind the sofa. It's not my natural territory and I've always kept the arguments for animal rights at arms length, a current of thought that many of my fellow Greens are dead keen on.

Now, thankfully, it didn't offend my tender mainstream eyes. The section is even called Animal Protection rather than the ethically tangled Animal Rights so I didn't even have to worry about the deeper philosophical implications of the way we'd framed the issues.

Although I generally agreed with the policies outlined I suspect I'm probably approaching the issue in a different way than many Green Party members. For example, I'm opposed to fox hunting essentially on the basis that the ban annoys the rich rather than particular concern for The Fantastic Mr Fox who, after all, is a carnivore himself.

With these issues in my mind I noticed this story about the teenage Bull fighter, Jairo Miguel Sanchez (pictured), in Spain. He was gored and almost killed when he was 14 and is now back in the ring at 16. This has caused a bit of controversy in Spain (health and safety gone mad again) provoking this response;

"Bullfighting, like tennis, is best learned as a child," Jorge de Haro, president of the Mexican Association of Fighting-Bull Raisers once told reporters. "Bullfighting must be unconscious and a child isn't conscious of the danger or risk. The younger, the better."

I don't recall tennis involving the deliberate killing of a fine beast for the voyeuristic gratification of a large crowd - but perhaps that's something we should introduce. It may well improve the British showing at Wimbledon if there was more of an element of risk involved.

I asked my friend, who's from Brazil and quite green and progressive, whether Bull fighting was popular in Brazil. Her response was interesting in that she said that it's popular in the north (where she comes from) and, I think with a little pride, she said it was more dangerous than in Spain. "It's nice to watch, but not so nice to take part in. Lots of people are killed."

I can't say even I think that sounds "nice to watch", but maybe that's hypocritical on my part as I'm rather overfond of my bacon sarnies. So she may well be being more consistent than I am. I'm not anti-animal it's just I'm unashamedly anthropocentric and so tend to see animals in terms of our needs. So I don't like the idea of bull fighting - but this is probably based on the idea that it doesn't sound very nice rather than grounded in a firm ethical position.

I suppose I have a question rather than any answers; how central is the concept of animal rights / welfare to green thinking? It's certainly a key element in the ethics of many green activists, and was the route that they got involved in the first place, but is it an essential component or simply one branch of many in the green spectrum?

It's an epigemic!

I'm sorry. I just can't take this seriously. I do apologise but the British press are just going bonkers over this - where's your stiff upper lip guys? Some random person on the radio just said they were "calm"... urgh.... good? Unless you have a reason to think you're going to die of swine flu you have no reason to think you are going to die of swine flu. End of.

For example, I think the normally sane and rational Daily Mail is guilty of irresponsible fear mongering when it says 40% might die by the weekend and that "Face masks could prove useless in combating the killer swine flu virus, experts have warned." Please, please, please get back to the high quality journalism Mail.

The Guardian coverage has been mixed. Tanya Hyde was rather interesting, placing the flu outbreak in some sort of context. Whilst Mike Davis writes one of the stupidest articles I've seen for some time, and I can assure you there's a lot of competition! I suppose they are trying to cater to everyone - from people interested in the news to facile idiots who enjoy end of the world scenarios. The whole spectrum.

Gold star goes to The Independent who not only have the best coverage today (both in tone and content) but are also the only national newspaper not to have the porcine plague as a lead story on their front page. Kudos.

On the other hand Aaron has written a great post giving everyone sensible advise on how to cope with the aporkalypse. James points to a great 70's swine flu propaganda film they could re-use. Classic.

XKCD has the illustrated guide that no one should be without and this photo shows how swine flu got into the human population. It is "safe for work" but still disgusting!

Interesting bit of news: Israel has said it should be renamed Mexican flu because it's better to offend Mexicans than pigs, or something.

Phil writes a much more measured and level headed piece that doesn't down play the seriousness of dying of flu but heavily critiques the way the press has dealt with it. Too sensible by half in my book.

Many a happy hour did I spend listening to the Subhumans in my teenage years. Never has their song The Pig Man (3 mins 46 secs) seemed more appropriate. Enjoy.

Iceland: Kill the whales!

You may have heard that Iceland has a new government, made up of the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left Green Movement. The last one collapsed after sixteen weeks of protest due to the economic crisis and the fact they had a banking sector that went well beyond their means.

The new Prime Minister is possibly the first ex-air hostess to achieve such high office. More importantly she was selected to become PM because she's generally seen to be on the left of the SDA and what's needed now is a bit of old fashioned socialism to set capitalism back on its feet. Or something.

The Left Green's chairman and leading politician is Steingrímur Jóhann Sigfússon (pictured) who's most notable achievement to date appears to be the fact that when the US abandoned their air bases in 2006 he argued that Iceland should not develop its own armed forces. He's also spoken out against Gordon Brown and the use of UK anti-terror legislation to seize financial assets.

Steingrímur holds the positions of both Finance Minister and Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture, both extremely important positions and symbolic of the central role that the left is playing in the new government.

It's disappointing then to see that almost his very first act as top fishman is to extend whaling. There has been extreme international concern at the move, which is essentially a refusal to rescind an order made in the dying days of the old government, despite the fact that Parliament itself has grave reservations about whaling and the PM's earlier promise to review the decision.

"The ambassadors from the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Finland met with Sigfússon last week to discuss the issue. On Tuesday, those seven countries issued a letter asking him to rethink the sixfold increase to its whaling quota."

So let's be clear - New Labour is pressuring the Greens to ban whaling - and they are refusing. That's effing marvellous that is. That's a present from the disappointment shop with a bloody great ribbon on top!

The move will mean that whalers will be able to catch "100 minke whales and 150 fin whales during 2009", although Steingrímur has told whalers not to take these quotas for granted in future years. I'm sure the whalers are happy enough though as they were expecting the new government to institute an outright ban. Iceland and Norway are the only two countries in the world that allow commercial whaling (Japan hunts for "scientific purposes").

Not cool Steingrímur. This is not cool at all. You had it in your hands and you just let the opportunity slip through your fingers. Let's hope this kind of decision does not characterise your time in office.