Viva! 8 York Court Wilder Street Bristol BS2 8QH Tel: 0117 944 1000 Fax: 0117 924 4646 email: media@viva.org.uk	Lambs to the Slaughter PHOTOCALL - Wednesday 4th April at 1.30 pm at the Bull Ring Market (main entrance), Birmingham Viva! campaigners dressed in lamb costumes will be at the Bull Ring Market in Birmingham on Wednesday. At 1.30 pm, they will unfold a giant banner saying: If killing ‘healthy’ lambs upsets you - don’t eat them. They will urge people in Birmingham to go vegetarian and offer free information to help them make the change. Viva!’s aim is to highlight the hypocrisy of those who shed tears for slaughtered lambs yet continue to eat them. While they recoil from death on the farm, they remain silent when lambs just a few weeks older are sent on horrific road journeys as far as Greece to be inhumanely slaughtered. Viva! is also calling for an end to the misplaced sentimentality which has engulfed this crisis and the start of an informed debate on British agricultural policy - which has played a major part in promoting this and other animal-borne diseases. “The British taxpayer is propping up an industry which is unviable”, says Juliet Gellatley, Viva!’s director. “The demand for lamb and other red meats has been in decline for 20 years and yet the whole industry is kept alive with public money. We pay the bill but have no say in what happens to either the animals or our countryside.” Every hill sheep farm receives an average of £31,836 in direct subsidies. Compensation payments now have to be added to this figure. In 1994, the Government’s advisory body - the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) - reported that without subsidies, most hill and many lowland sheep farmers would go out of business. Handouts have encouraged overstocking, widespread environmental degradation and a reduction in the quantity and quality of grazing. The result is that 20 per cent (over 4 million) of all new born lambs now die from starvation and disease in the most miserable circumstances. Ms Gellatley concludes by saying: “People have to ask themselves what is it that upsets them about the killing of lambs. It certainly won’t stop when foot and mouth does. If they are genuinely disturbed then they should stop eating them”. For more information, contact Becky Smith, Juliet Gellatley or Tony Wardle at Viva! on 0117 944 1000.