Viva! 8 York Court Wilder Street Bristol BS2 8QH Tel: 0117 944 1000 Fax: 0117 924 4646 email: media@viva.org.uk web: www.viva.org.uk > Photo Gallery > Video > Viva! Reports > Leaflets > Campaigns Section
	6 September 2001 DON’T SUPPORT FARM AID, SAYS VIVA! Give your money to people who need it! The vegetarian organisation Viva! is urging pop bands and pop fans to boycott this October’s Farm Aid - organised by Glastonbury festival founder Michael Eavis to raise money for UK livestock farmers in the wake of foot-and-mouth. Viva! has today written to all the bands on Mr Eavis’ Farm Aid ‘wish-list’ - like the Manic Street Preachers and The Charlatans - asking them not to play the gig. The group will be staging a major demonstration outside Cardiff Millennium Stadium. Viva!’s objections to Farm Aid centre around the huge compensation paymentsalready paid out to livestock farmers. Every hill sheep farm receives an average of £27,500 in direct subsidies and on top of this, many farmers have made huge sums of money from the generous government payments made for slaughtered animals and farm clean-up operations during foot-and-mouth. Estimated compensation costs for slaughtered animals are already running at £1,131 million. “Michael Eavis is likening the ‘plight’ of livestock farmers to starving Ethiopian children by staging this Live Aid-style event,” says Viva! senior campaigner Becky Smith. “It is a sickening concept when you consider that many farmers have actually made healthy profits from the disease. Meanwhile, the rural tourism industry is in ruins and receiving virtually nothing.” “Foot-and-mouth spread because of the overcrowded conditions on factory farms and the vast distances which animals are made to travel from farm to market to slaughter. Farmers brought the disease upon themselves and there is no reason why anyone should feel sorry for them. Their industry is directly responsible for the wholesale destruction of the British countryside and the daily abuse of millions of animals - hardly a charitable cause.” Ms Smith concludes, “We are urging all performers and music fans who feel strongly about the devastating impact of modern, intensive agriculture to stay away from the Millennium Stadium in October and to donate their money to people who genuinely need it instead.”   More information: Becky Smith, Juliet Gellatley or Tony Wardle on 0117 944 1000