http://www.effa.org.au/news-articles-2016/2016/9/18/michael-rubbo-and-the-man-who-cant-stop
Animal rights group sour over sow stalls
MELBOURNE, October 31st – Activists met at the Bourke Street Mall today to protest against what they say are cruel practices in Australian pig farms.
The rally, organised by Melbourne Pig Save, condemned the use of ‘sow stalls’, which are used to contain female pigs during pregnancy.
The standard stall is metal-barred with a concrete floor, two metres long and a little over half a metre wide. In the stall the sow cannot turn around, and can only take a few steps forwards and backwards.
Rally organiser Karina Leung said the industry’s practices were ‘only getting crueller’.
“[They are] basically cages that the mother pigs are kept in,” Ms. Leung said.
“They can be kept in them for their full term pregnancy, which is around 16 weeks.”
Australian Pork Limited, an organisation that supports and promotes the Australian pork industry, says the stalls help prevent aggressive behaviour among the pregnant sows.
The organisation has now said it is ‘committed to voluntarily phasing out sow stalls by 2017’, but there is no legislation banning their use in Victoria.
Sweden banned the use of sow stalls in 1994, followed by the UK in 1999. New Zealand will introduce a ban on the use of stalls in December this year.
The RSPCA says sow stalls restrict pigs from engaging in natural exploratory and foraging behaviour, causing physical problems and emotional distress.
Ms Leung said she and co-founder Paul Mahony established Melbourne Pig Save to publicise the poor treatment of animals in the agriculture industry.
“We just felt that there was a big gap in raising awareness in the public eye,” she said.
Ms Leung said the group champions pigs because people have strong connections with them.
“For a lot of people, they seem to identify with pigs initially,” she said.
“Their level of intelligence, their curiosity – they’re smarter than dogs, they’ve got the intelligence of a…three to four year old child.
“So it’s an easier segue into discussing all animal issues and just igniting some interest in [the public].”
She said the industry would not change until the public became more aware of the practices.
“People’s views of animals is what needs to change, we’re not going to see the changes in the industry.
“If farmers want to keep up with the current demand, they have no other choice but to keep pigs in sheds, by the thousands, mass producing them and treating them like a commodity.”
US-based ethologist Dr Jonathan Balcombe, who spoke at the rally, said a ten per cent decline in meat consumption in the US over the last decade demonstrates that their cause is gaining momentum.
“To me it’s a bellwether of what lies ahead as people become more informed about how it affects animals but also how it affects their own personal health,” he said.
The rally came just days after the World Health Organization released a report linking the consumption of processed meat and red meat to colorectal cancer.
https://instagram.com/p/9ftP8vmdm2/
vegan_lexi shares a photo from the rally on Instagram.
Research grant inequity a ‘worrying trend’, experts say
October 31st- The Australian Research Council has announced the grants for science funding commencing in 2016, with less than eighteen per cent of applicants successful.
Now, many academics and researchers are criticising the ARC’s approval processes.
University of New South Wales Physics Researcher Adam Micolich posted an in-depth analysis of the funding results on his blog.
He said the data showed that young researchers were losing out to established scientists.
“The real winners out of this are late career males,” he wrote.
He said if this inequity continues, Australia would be ‘engineering its own scientific recession’.
“A gap will form behind them, and when they all retire, that gap is going to mean scientific output in Australia goes backwards.”
Dr Micolich said one of the issues with the grant process was the amount of paperwork involved in proposals, which can exceed 100 pages, with as little as ten per cent focusing on the actual science.
He said the Australian system was ‘like a CV arms race’, where proposals focus on applicants’ track records rather than their current research.
Grant applications usually have a number of contributing researchers, called ‘chief investigators’ (CI), but there is typically one lead CI who solely receives the funding.
Gaetan Burgio, a researcher at The Australian National University, said in a post on medium.com that about 60 per cent of lead CIs that received funding were full professors.
Associate professors and postdoctoral researchers both made up about 20 per cent of the lead CIs that received funding, Dr Burgio said.
He said the statistics indicate a lack of funding for junior academics, and were ‘worrying for the future of Australian science’.
Some Australian researchers have already explored alternatives to grant applications to fund their research.
In 2013, Deakin University partnered with crowdfunding site Pozible to trial the platform as a way to fund research projects. The initiative, called ‘Research My World’, successfully funded six of its eight initial projects, generating over $50,000.
Dr Mel Thomson, Infectious Disease Researcher at Deakin University, has now run three campaigns through Research My World. All three campaigns reached their funding goals, raising over $30,000 collectively.
Dr Thomson’s campaigns demonstrate how crowdfunding research requires a strong presence on social media, while maintaining the typical features of crowdfunded projects like incentives for donors.
Her latest campaign, aiming to remove the stigma from gastrointestinal infections, offered a miniature 3D printed toilet for donors who pledged $50.
In September, astronomers working at the Mopra telescope raised over $90,000 through a Kickstarter campaign after budget cuts left them without the funding to finish a survey of the Milky Way.
They established a website to drum up support for their campaign, and had frequent communication on Twitter with the hash tag #teamMopra.
Despite the campaign’s success, the group was still reliant on their funding application to the ARC to keep the telescope operational into next year.
Team Mopra did receive funding from the ARC, being granted $150,000 to run for another year, but it did not receive the $180,000 for three years the group was hoping for.
Onshore gas inquiry sees unprecedented public response as committee releases interim report
The Parliament of Victoria’s Environment and Planning Committee has received over 1700 written submissions from organisations and the public outlining concerns surrounding a proposed onshore gas industry in Victoria.
In its interim report published September 1, the committee said the number of responses was likely to be the most ever received by a Victorian parliamentary committee.
Unconventional gas is stored in geological formations that are harder to penetrate than conventional gas sources. In recent decades it has become more accessible through hydraulic fracturing – ‘fracking’, which uses a pressurised mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to break into rocks and allow extraction of the gas.
Coal seam gas does not always require ‘fracking’, but the other varieties of unconventional gas – shale and tight gas – do require it.
Victoria currently has a moratorium on the hydraulic fracturing process, as well as a ban on issuing any more licences to explore unconventional gas mining. The moratorium will continue pending the committee’s final report to Parliament, due December 1.
Friends of the Earth Campaign Coordinator Cam Walker, who spoke in favour of a permanent ban on the industry, said public opposition of an onshore unconventional gas industry in Victoria had been huge.
“We’ve now had 64 communities declare themselves gas-field free”, Mr Walker said.
The committee’s report says public concern has mostly surrounded the potential hazards that fracking poses to the environment and agriculture.
These hazards include risks of underground water contamination and the potential for spills of contaminated waste fluid from the fracturing process.
Companies and organisations in favour of a Victorian onshore gas industry have argued that proper management of gas mining operations would alleviate the risk involved with the industry.
But Mr Walker argued that negative effects have already been documented in Queensland, where an unconventional gas industry is well-established.
“We would point to the situation in Tara in the Darling Downs region, where there have been huge public health consequences,” Mr Walker said.
Mr Walker said the BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene) chemicals released during the fracking process were a major cause for concern for residents of Tara.
The Minerals Council of Australia said in its submission to the committee that the ban on BTEX was ‘appropriate due to the potential risks’, but said BTEX chemicals were not used in the industry prior to the ban.
The release of the committee’s interim report follows a report from the Auditor-General published in August, which determined that Victoria was ‘not as well placed as it could be’ to handle problems that may arise if onshore gas activities were to commence in the state.
Parliament will make a decision based on the recommendations of the committee within six months of its final report.
Japanese culture in bloom at Melbourne flower-arranging exhibit
Ikebana International’s annual exhibit has welcomed spring to Melbourne through the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging.
The free exhibit features work by local artists from five distinct schools of ikebana: Ichiyo, Ohara, Ikenobo, Sogetsu and Shogetsudo Koryu.
The arrangements include both traditional and modern varieties and use both natural and man-made materials.
Exhibition curator Christopher James said ikebana exemplifies the artisanal qualities of all Japanese art.
“The degree of refinement is extraordinary, and I think that’s…quite characteristic of Japanese culture.”
Mr James said ikebana provided balance to his professional life while he worked as a psychologist. Now retired, he teaches ikebana in Melbourne and Geelong, and keeps a blog that showcases the art of Victoria’s ikebana community.
He said his inspiration for ikebana came from a book by Norman Sparnon, a pioneer of ikebana in Australia.
Sparnon learned Japanese in Melbourne before he was deployed during World War Two as a Japanese language officer. He remained in Japan for twelve years, where he learned ikebana from Japanese masters.
The rest of his life was dedicated to establishing post-war relations between Australia and Japan through his art.
Read more about Norman Sparnon’s life at the Australian War Memorial website.
Today, many Australians keep a connection to Japan and its culture alive through the practise of ikebana.
Trish Ward, whose collaborative piece features in the exhibit, said she admired the respect for ikebana in Japan.
“You can go along and see it on footpaths and in shop windows, and no one touches it”, Mrs. Ward said.
“You can be just walking along the backstreets in Tokyo and you’ll see ikebana out on people’s doorsteps.”
Mrs. Ward said she takes inspiration from the natural surroundings of her home near the Dandenong Ranges, where she collected materials for her piece with fellow Sogetsu School artists Lara Telford and Beverley Webster.
Ikebana Melbourne President Chieko Yazaki learned ikebana from her mother in Japan, and has continued the practice since moving to Australia over forty years ago.
Mrs Yazaki’s arrangement at the exhibit, from the Shogetsudo Koryu school, is themed on a Japanese garden in Melbourne and represents a cultural bridge between the countries.
“It’s a bit of Japanese [culture], but it’s Melbourne too”.
She said her arrangement represents the ‘joy of spring in Melbourne’ and features foliage commonly found in local gardens.
Ikebana International’s Melbourne chapter celebrated its 55th anniversary last year, and it looks to keep a strong presence of the iconic Japanese craft in Australia.
The exhibition will run until September 12 at the Melbourne Town Hall Rear gallery. More information can be found at Melbourne Ikebana’s website.
See below for a small gallery of installations from the exhibition.
By Pascal Tremblay – Shogetsudo Koryu
By Lorraine Langley – Ikenobo School
By Yukako Braun – Ikenobo School
By Nobuko Kobayashi – Ichiyo School
By Joan Norbury – Sogetsu School
By Lara Telford, Trish Ward, and Beverly Webster – Sogetsu School
Cameron Scott 