If you are against animal testing and use Ecover products for reasons related to those principles, you should probably read this.

Basically, a there has been a parting of the ways between the Vegan Society and Ecover regarding animal testing, specifically a toxicitiy test which Ecover regard as essential to ensure their products don't poison marine life, and which the Vegan Society regard as unacceptable because it involves rabbit blood. (sorry if that is a gross thought for a Saturday morning) So Ecover will no longer carry the Vegan Society logo on new batches of their products, although existing batches will remain in the same packaging.

Personally (hey, you're reading my blog, you can't object *that* much to hearing my opinion!) I find Ecover rather greenwashed, and have done for a few years now. For a start, they had financial connections to Group 4 when the latter was supplying security guards to break up road protests in the 1990s. And their animal testing policy has never been all that - the Co-op's and even Teh Evil Teh Sco's were marginally better. So this won't be a difficult product to dispense with from my life.

If you've read this and decided Ecover isn't for you, I would point to Bio-D as the Ethical Consumer best buy in terms of animal testing, environmental policy, corporate connections and general ethicalness. Or if animal testing is the major issue for you and you are less interested in the other stuff - or if you are just too skint to get your washing-up liquid from a health food store, which is mostly where Bio-D can be bought - then the Co-op has the best policy on the high street.

Sorry, that *wasn't* your last dose of Gobby Vegan Nella today after all. This is because i remembered last night's intention to post on my frustration at the treatment of hunt sabs in TV shows.

So i've been watching this show called The Chase. It isn't about hunting, despite the dubious name. The main theme is a family of vets who seem to spend their time getting off with each other's husbands and wives. I watch it for a bit of harmless escapism with the odd cute moment. However, last week's episode (which i just watched last night on dvd due to having been off being Hard-working Vegan Nella at the Big Green Gathering) really pissed me off, especially as part of a long string of BBC dramas where sabs and animal rights people have been portrayed badly.

The general storyline involved one of the older vet nurses, Margaret trying her hand at some internet dating, and meeting a guy called Alan who had listed on his profile that he was an animal lover. Then, when they are in the pub with two of the other nurses, he reveals that he is against hunting (the other three people in the conversation were all on that weird boundary you get a lot in the countryside, of not supporting it but also having friends and customers who hunt and not being able to really condemn it either) and goes 'monitoring'. Now, for anyone who doesn't know, monitoring is at this stage in England's history a case of going out and filming the hunt to make sure they stay within the law. (They aren't allowed to send the hounds after a fox and are instead supposed to be following a dragged scent. Yeah and your mum's a virgin, as we said at school. They go on just the same as they did before the ban, unless constantly watched.) Now, Alan persuaded Margaret to go 'monitoring' with him, and it turned out to be sabbing after all. So far, so good. Nothing wrong with a bit of sabbing. Quite a lot right with it, in fact.

The sequence started out fairly sensibly, with Alan showing Margaret how to spray citronella where the hounds are likely to go. This is a common sabbing tactic, to stop them smelling fox. You can use little garden spray bottles, or huge tanks of the stuff squirted from the back of a van. So, yeah, fairly accurate. THEN the hunt turn up, and Alan goes mad waving a claxon around and screaming. In the ensuing chaos, a hound is kicked by a horse and collapses on the ground. Alan tells Margaret to leave it, and runs off. Margaret unmasks herself, and goes to help the dog. The MFH threatens to have her arrested if she doesn't leave, but she insists on helping the dog and taking it to the vet practice where she works. Then, the kennel huntsman turns up to pick up his hound and asks her out.

So the moral of this story turns out to be that sabs don't care about animals, manipulate innocent nurses into breaking the law, and are the last people you'd want your mum going on a date with. Er, thanks BBC.

I guess as a UK vegan blogger I should comment on the foot-and-mouth situation over here. I have very confused feelings about the whole thing, which is why i've generally stayed out of it.

So here's the summary:
- Mass culls = bad, but to be honest not any worse than what happens in abbatoirs every day. Of course if you point this out to some people they mark you out as an unfeeling b*tch.
- A suspension of live animal exports, however short, is a. good. thing. I make no apology for saying that. Live exports are the source of some of the worst animal abuses around. I say this as someone who is currently living in an area where you are haunted by livestock trucks at every turn. Those things aren't luxury transport at the best of times - hell, they aren't even the four-legged equivalent of a crowded inner-city bus - and for long journeys they are hellish. So yeah, I shed no tears whatsoever that there are even a few days this disgusting practice isn't happening, whatever the reason.
- It is very interesting that an animal research laboratory is one of the culprits for starting the current outbreak.
- Also, if you're worried about catching foot-and-mouth or bird flu or BSE, then maybe it is a sign that you should eat less meat or no meat. (yeah, i have an agenda, it ain't hidden) People who fret about risks to human health from farm animal diseases are doing the equivalent of worrying about AIDS then going out and having unprotected sex with twenty strangers. Kind of your business, but I'm not going to just stand there nodding if you ask my opinion.

So yeah, that's your dose of Gobby Vegan Nella for the morning... You may get Fluffy Vegan Nella this afternoon, as i have a cake in the oven.

The news is all over the fact that thirty animal rights activists were arrested yesterday. What they don't bother saying is that the police raided two animal sancturies. In one case they forced all the staff outside for hours and wouldn't let them go in to feed the large number of dogs and smaller number of cats, horses etc housed there. The other sanctuary, where we've had the gatherings for the past few years, is generally just this middle-aged couple and their family of rescued farm animals, including the pigs alluded to in the title. Sure, they're activists, but not into the illegal side. And the manager of the other sanctuary is retired from that sort of thing. Direct action doesn't have a particularly long lifespan.

Incidentally, while i don't normally mind debating animal rights, debating direct action, whatever, on this occasion i would ask that people keep hostile responses zipped or in their own journal.

The slightly twisted animal rights activist in me finds 102 Dalmations highly entertaining, if not the most original of films. I was impressed that, on finding out that the Ioan Whassface character's 'dognapping conviction' came from having liberated dogs from a laboratory, the female lead (a probation officer) said 'oh, is that all?' and snogged the face off him. That was cute. But i have to say that seeing the same character being put in prison for something he blatantly didn't do, on the grounds of a track record from the distant past or because he was more the 'sort' the cops would look for, has a certain unpleasant reasonance, this year more than ever.

I have to get back down to work tomorrow. A bit of demoralisation, a painful period, Christmas and a couple of hangovers are among the factors that have stopped me doing any. There may not be anything wrong with a break - although in general that doesn't apply to me, my laziness must show in my face because it seems to be the perogative of all and fucking sundry to question me about what i'm doing if i *gasp* get spotted taking time off - but when i'm in the middle of a particular, major task, i get so stressed about being away from it that quite frankly it isn't worth it.

I hate everything and quite possibly everyone, especially myself.

Rat monster! Hey, i know this was probably intended as some kind of anti-AR stunt. In a way, i can sympathise with the guy's reaction at the beginning - it does rather resemble some of my nightmares since getting involved with animal rights. But in another way - a very sick, twisted, nasty way - it is kind of funny. You were warned about the sick, twisted, nasty bit, so your choice to click or not. Don't have nightmares... :)