Viva!
8 York Court
Wilder Street
Bristol BS2 8QH
Tel: 0117 944 1000
Fax: 0117 924 4646
email:
media@viva.org.uk
6 December 1999
Twiggy Does it for Ducks
Lesley Lawson (Twiggy) will give the ducks on St. James’s Park lake a Christmas treat when she feeds them on December 6. Surrounding Twiggy will be pictures of other ducks - close relatives of those on the water - and banners saying ‘Free as a Bird?’ and ‘No Water, No Life: Boycott Duck Meat!’.
Twiggy’s aim is to highlight how ducks are wild, water birds yet are now imprisoned without water in appalling factory farm conditions for their meat. It marks the start of a national campaign - Ducks Out of Water (December 11 to 18) - when hundreds of local Viva! groups will be mounting High Street protests and leafleting Christmas shoppers all over Britain
“I thought I couldn’t be shocked again by farm animal abuse. I was wrong!” says Twiggy. “To confine essentially wild animals in these conditions is a sad, sad commentary on the human race. A duck that never sees water - what an abomination. We have to stop this now”. Sir Paul McCartney and Joanna Lumley have also thrown their weight behind the campaign.
In a unique expose, animal charity Viva!, has revealed the squalid, cramped conditions on intensive duck farms after an investigation into factory-farmed duck meat. Secretly filmed video footage shows that most farmed ducks are kept entirely indoors - thousands in a single shed - where they are forced to waddle around in their own excrement.
A 52-page Ducks Out of Water report by Viva! and the Farm Animal Welfare Network (FAWN) reveals how the end of the birds’ sensitive beaks may be cut off to prevent feather-pulling - a result of the highly stressful conditions. Staff levels as low as one worker to 85,000 birds means that sick or injured birds often go unnoticed and may be left to die.
Equally disturbing is the fact that these aquatic animals are provided with no water for swimming. Unable to fulfil this most fundamental need, they can suffer from poor and dirty feathers, difficulty in keeping warm, eye problems and blindness.
Twiggy is calling on Christmas shoppers to boycott duck meat entirely and she is supported by Sir Paul McCartney, who says: “Once again Viva! exposes a new horror - duck factory farming. I defy anyone with the smallest amount of compassion to look at the facts unearthed by Viva! and not be upset. It is terrible that people in a so-called civilised society should be involved in such horrific practices.”
Joanna Lumley makes an appeal direct to consumers: “The cruelty of duck farming has to end - and you have the power to do it. Don’t buy meat from these sad, diseased and dejected creatures”.
Juliet Gellatley, director of Viva!, says: “While one Government department warns of the disastrous consequences of factory farming chickens and turkeys*, MAFF is encouraging the same methods for ducks. This mass abuse of animals is totally unacceptable - when combined with a direct threat to human health, it is insanity.”
For further information, copies of the duck report, pictures or video footage - contact Juliet Gellatley or Tony Wardle on 0117 944 1000.
* Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food, 18 August 1999
|
|
|
|
