Wild animals that die for our food, including vegetarian/vegan foods.

Addressed to Pick n Pay, Spar, Shoprite and Woolworths, South Africa.

This issue concerns anyone wanting to live a cruelty free lifestyle. It is not only South Africans who are affected, but all countries that import South African products. Vegetables and wines for example, are produced with the consequences being enormous suffering inflicted on wild animals in South Africa.

We ask you to please sign so that we can get as many signatures collected to show outlets the extent to which the consumer would like the choice of cruelty free vegan produce.

The jackal, caracal, bushpig, baboon and monkey are five species in South Africa that have been severely persecuted under legislation that clearly seeks to eradicate them. Although their status has changed from "vermin' to 'problem animal' to 'damage causing animal', the fact remains that these species continue to be persecuted  - often in an extremely cruel manner -  without challenge from the authorities.

Raptors, leopards, otters, honey badgers and others are also targeted and many animals that die in farmers traps are non-target species.

For those of us consumers wanting to lead a cruelty free life, whether our reasons are humanitarian, spiritual or health related, we would like the choice of cruelty free foods made available to us in all of South Africa's major food outlets.

Not only do we request that predator friendly meat be labelled as such but that all non-animal foods that have been produced by farmers who utilise non-lethal methods to manage so called "damage causing animals" when growing crops, be labelled this way as well.

As consumers it is our right to have this choice.

 We ask that all farmers who utilize non-lethal methods to produce crops, please make themselves known, as well as the outlets where these foods can be bought from.

NON-LETHAL METHODS USED FOR PRIMATES INCLUDE:

-   Electric fencing.

-    Baboon or monkey chasers:

Considering the high unemployment rate in South Africa, this option is the most attractive. Chasers need to be on gaurd from sunrise to sunset with at least two chasers taking turns to be on gaurd. Monkeys can be warned off using a catapult and small pieces of wood or cork (for example those used in wine bottles). Baboons can be chased by making a loud noise, banging on a pot, shouting and threatening with a piece of hosepipe. Baboon monitors have proved to be highly effective in the Cape Peninsula where the most raiding occurs bringing raids down by 90%. It needs to be continuously practiced and farmers need to be consistent in their approach.

- Feeding stations.

Set up a vervet monkey or baboon feeding area on the edge of your fields where these primates can enjoy some old or infested ripened fruit, directing them away from any crops you would like to protect. Determine where the monkeys or baboons are sleeping at night and place the feeding area between their sleeping trees and your fields. It is important to ensure the wild primates do not see this and don't come to associate this food source with humans.

We have found that most animals raiding crops do far less damage than farmers report and that shooting does not stop the raiding. It appears that many farmers shoot out of desperation and frustration rather than because this will result in less raiding. However, once one practices using a non-lethal method that works, the frustration will disappear and the problem will be resolved.

The history of problem animal persecution in South Africa

A picture of how animals have been persecuted as "vermin" can be seen from the figures given in the South African Journal of Science, dated August 1996, hundreds of thousands of animals, mostly harmless non-target animals, have been slain in terrible hunts.   Over a period of a few short years, the hunt club known as the Oranjejag exterminated 87,570 animals in the Free State alone.  About seventy percent (60,340) were harmless Cape Foxes.  The collateral damage to the Cape Fox population was exploited by declaring it to be a "potential problem animal".  This title made a target out of a non-target species.  It enabled the hunt clubs to conceal the fact that they were wasting taxpayers money and slaughtering useful and harmless animals by the tens of thousands, and to claim substantial successes against a "potential problem animal". 

 Near Bloemhof about 200 kms west of Johannesburg lies a small reserve, the SA Lombard Nature Reserve, a 3,800 hectare stretch of open grassland. This was where taxpayers funds were wasted on experiments on 'problem' animals.  Here is where captured predators, including Cheetah, were fed on meat laced with poisons, while conservation officials callously recorded the time taken by the animals to die.  Here is where dogs were bred (at taxpayers' expense) to supply the dog-packs which scourged the land, killing our wildlife.  This facility has fallen into disuse now owing to diversion of funds into more useful activities, but the legacy lives on in the minds of officials and NGOs in South Africa.  The dreadful experiments conducted over the years at SA Lombard show what happens when poisons are ingested.  Cape Foxes took about 15 hours to die, jackals up to 36 hours.  Horrifying video footage shows the excruciating suffering of the animals in that time; tetanic spasms, convulsions, howling and shrieking.  If taxpayers saw this, they would refuse to pay their taxes.

The treatment of problem animals by farmers, which is facilitated and approved by conservation officials,  involved the lifting of all controls on inhumane methods of hunting.  Gin-traps, snares, poison, you name it and it was legitimate. Recently moves have been made to narrow down these methods but in practice, they are used widely. With or without protective legislation, these practices continue as they are not challenged by the authorities. This gives farmers the clear message that these methods are acceptable. One favourite device for getting animals out of burrows involved the use of barbed wire.  A length of barbed wire is fed into the hole and then twisted until the barbs catch in the coat of the trapped animal.  Twisting continues until the animal's coat has been rolled around the barbs.  Once impaled in this manner, the grotesquely disfigured animal - whether a target animal or a family of bat-eared foxes - is hauled out of the burrow, into the jaws of the waiting dogs. Behind the euphemism of 'problem animal control' lies barbaric cruelty on a scale that the South African public cannot even imagine.

National government has made South Africa a signatory to the Convention on Biodiversity, which makes compulsory extermination of whole species unlawful. Primates and the Caracal for example, are listed on CITES 2 as species that are in danger of being threatened.  Look at the absurdity of the situation.  Here is the international Convention, which has been adopted in SA, doing its best to save the animals, while some provinces (where the animals live) are doing their best to exterminate them. Even if there were a will to protect the animals, the provinces do not have the capacity to do so.  So the vicious war on so-called problem animals goes on remorselessly under the new banner of 'damage causing animals.'

The SA public and the rest of the world needs to be exposed to this issue.

Anyone wanting to lead a cruelty free life has a right to make choices about the food they consume.