.. to hate the Grand National?

I stopped watching the race over 12 years ago when the horse I really liked the look of, fell and had to be destroyed.
They either need to ban the race or make some drastic changes to the course so that it is safer. Seems to me that horses are expendable - would be a different matter if jockeys were dying in each race.

Production of foie gras was a major industry in the area where we lived in France. There were a few years when avian flu caused the culling of hundreds of thousands of birds and some farmers faced bankruptcy. They got some financial compensation.
We knew an english couple who worked force feeding ducks, I think it was once a day early morning. They had to make a living, and there weren't many alternatives.
We never had foie gras, and I agree the method amounts to animal cruelty. But it will be difficult to stop - big money involved.

How many times a day is a goose tortured to make her liver big and fat?

Eloethan, That report is 7 years old, and the production of Fois Gras still continues.

I haven't shopped in Fortnum and Mason in over 10 years for the reason that they continue to sell Fois Gras, as does Harrods and Selfridges food halls which I have also stopped using.

I have been known to vetoe a restaurant for dinner having looked on its menu and finding out it had this product on the menu.

This is just one step too far for me to go along with this dreadful practice.

I've heard in the past that some HRT meds come from pregnant mares, so I've looked up Vagifem, which many of us use, and they say it's veg. based.
From Wiki:
"The estrogen-replacement drug Premarin, prescribed to menopausal women, is made from horse urine; in fact, the drug's name is short for PREgnant MARes' urINe. ... But unlike Premarin, Cenestin is derived from plant sources—soybeans and yams—not horse urine."

The UK has comparatively better animal welfare laws . If the UK were to remain in Europe we could use our considerable influence on behalf of European animals. Europe is itself a world power. Think what our old Country could do if a major player within Europe!

GrannyGravy13

Extracts from a post on the France 24 website in October 2012 :

"A group of European MPs called on Thursday for a controversial EU-wide ban on the production and sale of foie gras. ....

"A group of European lawmakers, including a member from France’s Green Party, have joined animal rights campaigners in a bid to ban the production and sale of the French delicacy foie gras across the European Union.....

"The MEPs' call for a ban followed a bid by French producers, backed by the country's junior minister for the food industry Guillaume Garot, to defend the gourmet food at the European parliament.

"With some 35,000 people involved in foie gras production, the demand for a ban is unlikely to go down well in France.

"Currently, farming of animals to produce foie gras is banned in 22 EU nations - excluding Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Hungary and Spain - but not the import or sale of what campaigners dub as "torture in a tin ............

.......... the famous UK store Fortnum & Mason said in October of this year that it will not be “bullied” into stopping the sale of the product ...........

As the above article states, many countries in the EU ban the production of foie gras and many MEPs are continuing to campaign against it. However, there is, in my opinion, a certain hypocrisy in being critical of the EU's role in this matter while many countries that ban production of foie gras, including our own, still allow it to be imported. France is the main producer of foie gras and - as has been argued re many practices involving animals - the cultural and economic importance of maintaining the status quo often seems to be thought good enough reason to overlook any cruelty that occurs. The same has been argued for events like horse racing, polo, fox hunting, big game hunting, etc, etc. This attitude is not exclusive to the EU but can be found all over the world.

People seem to want to have it both ways - claim that the EU acts like "Big Brother" in telling countries how they should conduct themselves (although it's my understanding that such matters are voted on, not just dictated) while at the same time blaming the EU for not imposing on countries laws with which they are not all in agreement.

Alexa - Apparently Premarin is a coined from PREgnant MAres uRINe, so I would imagine that they would have called it something else if they could have sourced it from a more palatable source. I am totally in agreement with you.

Is Premarin still being made from the urine of pregnant mares? I sometimes hate our human species for our greed and selfishness.

Animal labs should be inspected by government vets. Even better if infiltrated by animal welfare whistleblowers. Living conditions including psychological welfare should be species appropriate, and most importantly, used animals euthanased immediately. Kennel attendants should be highly qualified and well paid.

Absolutely no animal experiments for cosmetics, or cleaners, and animal feed experiments very limited to mild tests.

trisher I am exactly the same, never taken HRT.

Unfortunately some life saving drugs have come to the NHS via animal laboratories.

In a life or death situation I think we have to be practical although we may feel something is morally wrong.

Never wanted to do HRT because of its origins, I know now that most is synthetically produced but this was the way it was first sourced everywhere and I was never comfortable with it.

This is and has been utterly deplorable for many years, notentirelyallthere!

On the subject of animal (horse) welfare and the US, it has long been the case that the US confines pregnant mares in separate boxes in large barns in order to extract oestrogen from their urine and turn it into HRT. The drug is Premarin.

The foals are killed in their 000s and the mares too, once their 'useful' life is over.

Seems a suitable subject for a forum full of menopausal women! Here's a link to a Factsheet. horsefund.org/pmu-fact-sheet.php

I am sorry gransnetters before you start condemning the USA, which has got an appalling way of raising their "animals for the food chain"

I suggest you look at the EU, which still thinks it ok to shove a pipe down a gooses neck to over feed its liver for fois grass, or the way mainland Europe raises veal calves, which is totally inhuman as opposed to the UK's "rose veal", the vast pig and chicken sheds and the fact that it is still legal to transport live animals across Europe in utterly disgusting conditions with no food or water and in the summer months intense heat.

Animal charities in the UK have been highlighting this practices for years but the EU turn a blind eye!!!!

Yes, it's dreadful Trisher - very upsetting and worrying.

And the US practice of having huge, industrialised cattle barns is also awful because cattle rarely see the light of day and or go outside to graze. It is said that these barns may be introduced here - which won't be nice for the cattle or us because meat from stressed animals pumped up with hormones is not healthy and is said that these huge complexes create a terrible stink.

Those who were disturbed by the article about racehorses might find this even more upsetting (and I hate to bring Brexit into this but the USA thinks we are over-regulated-for the future?)
www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/24/real-cost-of-roast-chicken-animal-welfare-farms

Well, I expect vegetarians and vegans are concerned about chickens. To not eat them at all is probably the only way to show absolute concern but at least caring about the conditions in which they live is better than nothing.

About 40 years ago, in West Sussex, I had a friend who had worked as a secretary at the Head Office of a national animal charity. She told me that one day a group of women came to the office asking the charity to mount a campaign about the way chickens were treated. My friend said the senior officers there thought it was ridiculous and refused to take the issue seriously. Nowadays more people are, if not vegetarian, then at least trying to behave more ethically.

I don't think there's much point in downplaying one kind of cruelty by saying other animals are treated worse. Both are wrong. I do agree, though, that there seems to be a list of animals that elicit more respect and affection than those which have no material, aesthetic or emotional impact on human beings.

I wonder if people are as concerned about chickens? After all they are the most commonly abused and mistreated animal. How many people ensure that the eggs they buy and the chickens they eat are reared in proper and completely suitable environments? I suspect racehorses have a much better life than many chickens.

The horse is such a graceful animal...I love watching them in action ?

Apples and pears notentirelyallthere! I think they all get a bad deal! Cruelty comes in many guises, sometimes it comes disguised as love, sometimes as a life of luxury.

Although I raised the point about the economic value of the racing industry Eloethan, I wasn't saying I supported that as a reason for horse racing to exist.
I was trying to draw attention to the sentimentality of people worrying about horses while knowing little about them in reality and contrasting that with the cold, hard facts that underlie the commodification of animals! In plain English, it's capitalism init?! Lots of distracting, muddled, split values contained in a system and way of life that undervalue people, nature and animals. I've seen enough unhappy, abused horses to know that racehorses don't get a bad deal.

I disagree with the idea that a product or service's importance to the economy should override almost every other consideration. When animals (including human beings) and the wonders of the natural world are seen as valuable only in respect of their often short term usefulness to the economy, that is, in my view, a recipe for long term problems.

It's the same attitude that various groups, including trades unions, have with regard to the arms trade.

Racing has done a lot to improve horse welfare by lowering jumps and severely restricting use of the whip. At the end of the day, horses raise emotions, they are beautiful and sensitive animals but racing is an industry which is important to the economy and over production of horses has an unavoidable outcome. As it says in that article, many ex racehorses are unsuited to a different life because they are so finely bred and highly strung.
It's not so very different from the dairy and livestock industries, animals suffer in the service of people, few of whom stop to consider how these animals are kept or slaughtered when their viable lives are over. Dairy cows are slaughtered after a short life of endless pregnancy after their calves are removed at birth, etc, etc.

trisher on mainland Europe there are specific breeds of horses bred solely for their meat.