Check out these animal health images:
Royal Army Veterinary Corps Officer Gives a Healthcheck to Afghan Livestock
Image by Defence Images
A Royal Army Veterinary Corps officer is pictured listening to the heart of a goat owned by a local Afghan farmer in a free veterinary clinic organised during a livestock bazaar in Helmand, Afghanistan.
The veterinary outreach programme at Shawqat, is one of a growing number conducted by the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, designed to help farmers and livestock owners in the remote corners of Helmand and the rest of Afghanistan.
Run and organised by the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) at Lashkar Gah, it is an opportunity for villagers to bring their sick animals to see a vet who can diagnose illnesses and provide treatment.
Photographer: LA(Phot) Iggy Roberts
Image 45152539.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk
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King Korn: You Are What You Eat
Image by elycefeliz
www.kingcorn.net/
www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/
Behind America’s dollar hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that quietly fuels our fast-food nation: corn. In KING CORN , recent college graduates Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis leave the east coast for rural Iowa, where they decide to grow an acre of the nation’s most powerful crop.
Alarmed by signs of America’s bulging waistlines, the filmmakers arrive in the Midwest enthusiastic about their new endeavor. For their farm-to-be, they choose a tiny town in Floyd, County, Iowa—a place that, coincidentally, both Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers called home three generations ago. They lease an acre of land from a skeptical landlord, fill out a pile of paperwork to sign up for subsidies and discover the U.S. government will pay them 28 dollars for their acre. Ian and Curt start the spring by injecting ammonia fertilizer, which promises to increase crop production four-fold. Then it’s planting time. With a rented high-tech tractor, they set 31,000 seeds in the ground in just 18 minutes. Their corn has also been genetically modified for another yield-increasing characteristic: herbicide resistance. When the seedlings sprout from Iowa’s black dirt, Ian and Curt apply a powerful herbicide to ensure that only their corn will thrive on their acre.
By summer, their modern farm is thriving, and the Corn Belt is moving toward a record harvest of 11 billion bushels of corn. But where will all that corn go? With their crop growing head-high, Ian and Curt leave the farm to see where America’s abundance of corn ends up. As they enter America’s industrial kitchen, they are forced to confront the realities of their crop’s future. In Brooklyn, it sweetens the sodas of a diabetes-plagued neighborhood. In Colorado, it fattens the feed trough of a 100,000-head cattle feedlot. Ian and Curt are increasingly troubled by how the abundance of corn is helping to make fast food cheap and consumers sick, driving animals into confinement and farmers off the land. Animal nutritionists confirm that corn feeding can make cows sick and beef fatty, but it also lets consumers have fast food at low prices. As feedlot operator Bob Bledsoe says in KING CORN, “America wants and demands cheap food.”
As Ian and Curt discover, almost everything Americans eat contains corn. High-fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet. America’s record harvests of corn are supported by a government subsidy system that promotes corn production beyond all market demand. As Ian and Curt return to Iowa to watch their 10,000-pound harvest fill the combine’s hopper and make its way into America’s food, they realize their acre of land shouldn’t be planted in corn again—if they can help it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr5HQrgg9mM
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/05/king-corn
The Reward of Cruelty
Image by Byzantine_K
Today, February 1st 2012, has seen one of the vilest spectacles in recent British political history as Conservative and most Liberal Democrat MPs vote to overturn amendments which may have lessened some of the cruelest and most despicable acts of this governments so called Welfare Reform Bill.
The image is taken from the 4th and final in a short series of engravings by William Hogarth entitled "The Four Stages of Cruelty", which depicts the downward spiral of the vile fictional character of Tom Nero.
"Beginning with the torture of a dog as a child in the First stage of cruelty, Nero progresses to beating his horse as a man in the Second stage of cruelty, and then to robbery, seduction, and murder in Cruelty in Perfection. Finally, in The Reward of Cruelty, he receives what Hogarth warns is the inevitable fate of those who start down the path Nero has followed: his body is taken from the gallows after his execution as a murderer and is mutilated by surgeons in the anatomical theatre".
The barberous treatment of animals and later humans is reflected in this governments increasingly barberous treatment of the sick and disabled, and all else, on benefits - in particular the actions of Iain Duncan Smith, David Cameron and Chris Grayling.
In the engraving, "The dissectors, their hearts hardened after years of working with cadavers, are shown to have as much feeling for the body as Nero had for his victims; his eye is put out just as his horse's was, and a dog feeds on his heart, taking a poetic revenge for the torture inflicted on one of its kind in the first plate".
Sadly in reality, the rewards for Iain Duncan Smith and his repulsive ilk are likely to be far, far less deserving.
I'm not happy - does it show!
