I am currently attending the superb Compassion for World Farming (CIWF) Conference in London entitled Extinction and Livestock.

One of the major themes of the Conference is how 21st Century industrial farming(amongst it’s other horrors) is also destroying natural habitats by growing feed products for factory farmed animals and this driving many species to the verge of extinction including the Sumatran elephant whose population has been devastated by the destruction of the natural environment by Palm oil production which includes the palm kernel which is rendered down for factory farm animal feed.

The Conference has a wide range of speakers but the highlight for me on the first day was the contribution of Neurologist and Public Health specialist, Aysha Akhtar and her message of the need for a Vegan/Vegetarian diet to solve the problems we and the planet are facing. Her message that we should treat Animals as “Who and not What” is one that CCA has been arguing for years and contrasted sharply with the contributions of even so called “enlightened, high welfare farmers” who continue to call the animals they work with as “products” and therefore no different in their eyes to any inanimate object such as a pen or any other item.

This contrast is indeed a critical one and shows in very simple and easy to understand terms the problems we continue to face in promoting Animal Welfare and Animal Rights