New Zealand Cat Ban? Gareth Morgan, Anti-Kitty Economist, Wants Strays Euthanized, Pets Neutered

欧米では著名な、ニュージーランドの経済学者ガレス・モーガンが　愛猫家が聞いたら腰を抜かしそうな提言をしている

ニュージーランドのネコを根絶やしにしよう　という提言をしている

New Zealand has one of the highest cat ownership rates on the planet
の通り　ニュージーランドの全世帯の48％がネコを飼っている　という統計がある


ネコを駆逐する理由は　1769年10月のキャプテンクックのニュージーランド上陸以降、わずか240年で

ニュージーランドの固有の鳥類のうち　9種類がすでに絶滅し　さらに多数の著類が絶滅に瀕している　という調査結果があるため

その原因が人間によって持ち込まれた、ネコや犬などによる捕食が主な原因とされること




ということで


モーガンの主張によれば・・


いま飼われている家ネコが死んだら　もう次のネコを飼わない

野良ネコは無条件で安楽死


オスの精巣　メスの卵巣を除去は当然のこと


さらに　それだけでは手ぬるい　ということだ

生殖能力のないネコも　小鳥などをスポーツ感覚でなぶり殺して楽しむからだ



自由気ままで気品あふれるネコ　よりも　鳴きわめいて糞を撒き散らす鳥類を　ただニュージー固有種だから　という理由で生存を優先させるのは　

ネコの『基本的生存権』を否定する暴挙とも思えるのだが・・





（引用）




New Zealand Cat Ban? Gareth Morgan, Anti-Kitty Economist, Wants Strays Euthanized, Pets Neutered


Cats of New Zealand. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In an interview that appeared in the Atlantic on Thursday, prominent economist and environmentalist Gareth Morgan said that he hopes residents in his native New Zealand will not only neuter their pet kitties but will also start turning over strays to local authorities for euthanization.

As the New York Times noted earlier this week, Morgan has ignited a controversy in New Zealand and elsewhere with his suggestion that cats should be gradually eradicated from his country. Morgan claims that the feline is a "friendly neighborhood serial killer" that poses a serious threat to New Zealand's native birds and other animal species.

Morgan's website "Cats To Go" explains that New Zealand has one of the highest cat ownership rates on the planet and that these animals have already "contributed to the extinction of 9 native bird species." He also says that cats have had a negative impact on dozens of other endangered bird species.

Morgan's proposal may sound startling, but perhaps he's on to something. The Associated Press reports that "[f]or thousands of years, New Zealand's native birds had no predators and flourished," but that humans, their household pets and the vermin that infest populated areas are now threatening the country's avian inhabitants. "[T]he arrival of mankind and its introduction of predators like cats, dogs and rodents have wiped out some native bird species altogether and endangered many others," writes the AP.

To combat this, Morgan has suggested that cat owners should neuter their cats and not replace them when they die. He also says that people should keep their cats indoors and that registration of them should be made mandatory.

In his interview with the Atlantic this week, Morgan took an even more extreme stance, saying that citizens should set up "cage-traps" on their properties to catch wandering cats. He added that these animals should then be turned over to a local authority, which would euthanize the animals if they were found to be unregistered.

Morgan also said that the government should "offer free disposal of cats," as vets can be "prohibitively expensive." Neutering, he insisted, is simply not enough.

"Neutered cats still kill for pleasure," he said.

As might be expected, Morgan's suggestions have triggered a firestorm of negative backlash.

Bob Kerridge, president of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told the New Zealand Herald that he finds Morgan's logic to be "a bit radical, over the top and completely wrong," stressing that he's skeptical of the economist's research. According to the AP, other experts have also argued that cats may actually "help native birds by reducing the population of rodents, which sometimes feed on bird eggs."

Still, Morgan is not alone in his beliefs.

Greg Presland, a New Zealand cat owner who lives in the sub-tropical Auckland region of the Waitakere Ranges, said that he's been swayed by the environmentalist's campaign."Gareth has a point in advocating that we rethink our pet choices," Presland wrote on his blog. "I do not have the inclination to euthanize [my cat] but I think that he should be our last... We live in a subtropical rainforest that I care deeply about and have spent much time working to protect. My cat is killing birdlife which is an integral and important part of the ecosystem."

Scientist David Winter also agreed that cats are "indeed a problem in New Zealand," and are a threat to the country's avian diversity. However, Winter wrote on his blog that, while Morgan's campaign may have "start[ed] conversations," his tactic may be doing more harm than good. "What hope is there for environmentalists in conversation where our side wants to take people's kittens away?" he asked.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/new-zealand-cat-ban-gareth-morgan_n_2551243.html



prominent 　very very famous


neuter　pick up ovary or testis

strays cats that doesn't have an owner

flourish　inceasing its numbers , prosperous

avian birds

vets veterinarian


over the top too much excess


advocating supporting

Is Kate Middleton Having a Daughter? ロイアルベビーは女の子

ケイト妃がうっかり口をすべらせたのか？

公務で外出中のケイト妃に婦人がテディベアを差し上げたところ

妃はたいそうよろこび

「お腹の（娘・・）も喜ぶわ」と漏らすのを立ち聞きされた　というTIME web版　２０１３.３．６　の報道


おなかの　赤ちゃん　なら　baby

息子　なら　boy

Kate妃は　' d・・'と言いかけた　というから　daughter なのかな？



（以下引用）



(LONDON) − It’s a royal secret, but the Duchess of Cambridge may have inadvertently dropped a hint about the gender of the baby she and Prince William are expecting.

When a wellwisher gave the former Kate Middleton a teddy bear during a rare public appearance Tuesday, one woman in the crowd said she heard Kate respond: “Thank you, I will take that for my d…” before she broke off her comments.

That reported exchange was enough for Britain’s tabloids to trumpet “It’s a girl” in Wednesday’s papers.

Sandra Cook, who was standing near Kate, told reporters that she asked Kate if she had been about to say, ‘daughter’ and was told at first that the royal couple did not know and then that the couple would not reveal the child’s gender.



Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/is-kate-middleton-having-a-daughter-time-will-tell/#ixzz2Mlb6jReF

How the Horse Meat Sneaked Into the Lasagna

先週　CNNやBBC world news で大々的に報道された大事件

ヨーロッパ市場に出回っていた冷凍ラザーニャに馬肉が混入していた事件で　とくにイギリスやアイルランドなど　乗馬が盛んで　馬をこよなく愛す人々に衝撃を与えた


とくに　EU圏内で　ルーマニア　→　オランダ　→　キプロス　→　ルクセンブルク　と馬肉が　4カ国の流通業者を経て　消費者の口に入る複雑さ　がクローズアップされた

食　しょく　に絡んだ事件は　日本でも枚挙に暇がない
ミートホープ社の偽装牛肉の事件

北朝鮮産のシジミを日本産　と偽った事件

台湾産うなぎ　を国産とラベルを変えた事件

あるいは

雪印や　赤福　白い恋人　の賞味期限の改ざん問題など


さらには　加工食物への『遺伝子組み換え作物を使用』の表示をやめる　との今年2013年3月の政府　農水省の決定など


とくに　福島県産の牛肉を国の販売規制がかかる直前に 飼育農家が放出した事件は日本中に衝撃を与えた

茨城県内の小中学校の給食に県内産の野菜をあえて使わず　西日本産の野菜を使用していたのが
読売新聞の報道で批判され　

わざわざセシウム値の高い茨城産の野菜を読売新聞のおかげで茨城県内の小中学生が食している　という事実を読者には知ってもらいたい





（以下引用）




How the Horse Meat Sneaked Into the Lasagna



(Corrects spelling of Monique Goyens' name.)

It’s considered one of the European Union’s great successes: the establishment of a single market in which 27 countries trade freely among themselves in everything from steel to meat. The meat, however, appears to include some horse meat labeled as beef.

Merchants in Britain, France, Ireland, and Sweden are pulling frozen meals and hamburger patties off their shelves after tests showed the presence of horse DNA in what was supposed to be beef. While regulators say there’s no risk to human health, the case underscores the challenge of monitoring the supply of food to the EU’s 500 million consumers.

Horse meat found in frozen lasagna in Britain, for example, apparently came from Romania and passed through intermediaries in four other countries before reaching the shelves of stores owned by Tesco (TESO), Wal-Mart’s (WMT) Asda, and other chains. In a separate case, Burger King’s (BKW) British unit recently found traces of horse DNA in burgers supplied by an Irish company that had imported the meat from Poland.

The suspicion is that unscrupulous suppliers have substituted horse meat, which costs slightly less than beef. But the large number of intermediaries makes it hard to figure out who was responsible. “We need to get out of this fog,” French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll said in an interview today on RTL radio. “That way, we can establish traceability.”

French authorities say that frozen “beef” meals supplied to supermarkets in Britain, France, and Sweden were prepared in a Luxembourg factory owned by a French company, which bought the meat from another French supplier. That supplier, in turn, says it bought the meat from a Cypriot trader, who had subcontracted the order to a Dutch trader, who obtained the meat from a Romanian slaughterhouse. So far, none of the suppliers has admitted knowingly selling horse meat.

Adding to the difficulty of untangling the supply chain is the fact that food-safety regulations in the EU are established and enforced by national governments. “For processed foods, there is no global overview on where the food comes from,” says Monique Goyens, director general of the European Consumer Organization in Brussels.

What’s more, Goyens says, Europe’s financial crisis has led to “a cut in financial resources and human resources” devoted to food inspection and sampling. With vast quantities of foodstuffs passing freely across national borders, “if there is one weak link in supervision, it can go wrong,” she says. The horse meat scandal “was a problem waiting to happen.”

EU officials, though, contend that the system works pretty well. “The simple fact that within a few hours or 48 hours we can already have a first idea of what happened, that shows that the European traceability works,” Fréderic Vincent, the EU spokesman for health and consumers, said at a press conference in Brussels today. “We can trace who has done what. If in the whole process there has been some fraud, the member states will have to take measures at the legal level.”

Goyens of the European Consumer Organization says the response has been far from speedy. “The first elements of the scandal were known in mid-January in Ireland,” when horse meat was found in meat that local suppliers had obtained from Poland, she says. “If this had been a public health issue, it would have been a catastrophe.”

Although many consumers in Britain and Ireland are repelled by the idea, eating horse meat is relatively common on the Continent. The EU’s agriculture directorate estimates that Europeans consume 80,000 metric tons of horse meat annually, about one-third of which is imported from outside the bloc.

With reporting by Rudy Ruitenberg of Bloomberg News

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-11/how-the-horsemeat-sneaked-into-the-lasagna

intermediaries broker go-between

unscrupulous immoral

subcontract

catastrophe disaster

repeldislike

the Continent　continental part of Europe