AR-News: FW: Austria: latest update on Austrian campaign to ban battery cages

[Andrew Knight]

This campaign is truly inspiring.

 

  _____  

 

The latest openrescue that Martin Balluch, PhD, and his team carried out in
Austria on 9th April, at 6 am when 35 activists went to a battery farm 
in Salzburg and liberated 37 hens will be posted on
<http://www.openrescue.org> www.openrescue.org  later today with
photographs.

 

(ps there are several other openrescues soon to appear on this site once
investigations are completed that have been underway since january)

pss also check out  <http://www.chickenindustry.com/> ChickenIndustry.com
for an amazing undercover report on the 'broiler' chicken industry done by
COK in the USA

 

 

 

Watch this space: by 11th of May, the true battery farm ban for 2007 or 
2009 in Austria will be announced!

 

Further what happened in the campaign to ban battery farming in Austria 
since 23rd April:

1) The candidate for the Conservatives running for presidency did a 
press conference on Friday 23rd April. On the conference, she was 
supported by a number of famous people, among them a writer who asked to 
say something at the end. As a social democrat supporting a conservative 
candidate, she said, I have a wish free: ban battery farming! Some daily 
newspapers ran this story on page 4 giving it quite some air. The 
candidate was described as being surprised by this demand.

2) The conservative candidate had published an article in a daily 
newspaper saying that the animal laws should be tightened, without 
specifying how. On 24th April, the day before the election, she did 
another press release demanding an end to battery farming! It is obvious 
that all events must have put great pressure on her to do this sort of 
thing as her last press release before the election.

3) On the election, the social democrat candidate won the presidency 
with 53% of the votes - a huge loss by the conservatives.

4) Today, 27th April, the parliamentary committee met to discuss a ban 
on battery farming. For that occasion, firstly, we held a demo outside 
parliament for 11 hours. Thousands of leaflets were distributed and the 
conservative party was blamed for blocking advances on animal 
protection. Also, today our half-page appeal to the prime minister to 
ban battery farming signed by 70 prominent Austrians from science and 
arts appeared, paid and signed by the 6 largest national animal 
rights/welfare groups in Austria.

At 9:15 am I had an appointment inside parliament with the conservative 
party delegation to hand in 10.000 signatures we had collected on the 
streets since beginning of this year against the enriched cages proposal 
of the government and for a ban on battery farming as well as other 
progress in the new animal protection law. State TV was arranged to 
cover the handing over of the petition. But at the same time, we had 
prepared a number of big sized fotografs of the first Austrian enriched 
cages battery farm showing the awful conditions there, as well as on a 
real size enriched cage, which we had brought with us to show what 
enriched cages looked like. The conservatives were absolutely enraged, 
shouted at me, calling me a liar and doing other stuff rather 
irrational. They even sent out a press release immediately, which 
portrayed me in person, I was named, as someone, who does not speak 
truthfully, without actually explaining what my lies supposed to be. The 
Greens answered the PA and defended me. We also did a PA with pictures 
of the (verbal) attackers plus fotos and cage model of the enriched cage 
system.

The conservatives behaved increasingly hysterical, especially when the 
green party committee member took our cage and the fotografs with her 
into the meeting. While the TV team was interviewing me, in the houses 
of parliament, the president of the farmers union as well as a spokesman 
from the agricultural ministry came and actually behaved physically 
threatening. Then they called the parliamentary guards, who removed me 
and the film team. We had to finish the interview outside. It might be 
in tonights news or on Sunday's parliamentary news.

It is obvious that the pressure is really getting to them. Now the 
conservatives have lost the last 3 elections (provincial and 
presidential), but are still in government at least for 2 years. Still, 
they start to seriously feel the heat. The strategy to attack only the 
leading party in government and not their junior partner paid once again 
off today: the freedom party, junior governmental partner, sided with us 
and publicly said they also want a complete battery farm ban!

5) The next attacks in brief: tomorrow I will debate in Parliament on a 
parliamentary panel as 1 of 3 experts from the animal advocacy movement 
3 politicians, none of them conservative of course. On Thursday I give a 
public talk against battery farming in the heart of the battery farming 
community (hope I survive that). On Friday the parliamentary committee 
will meet again on the battery farming issue. We, again, will 
demonstrate all day outside parliament. For the following week, again 
almost daily actions are planned.

Today, after these experiences, I believe stronger than ever that we 
have a real good chance to win this issue. The conservatives are well 
and truely cornered. They have no allys anymore, neither their 
governmental partner, nor the media nor the public nor the experts. 
Watch this space: by 11th of May, the true battery farm ban for 2007 or 
2009 in Austria will be announced!

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