Worldlog Week 04 – 2009

Tuesday was a historical day, it was the inauguration of the first black president of the United States. And he understands more about nutrition than our Minister of Agriculture, just look at this clip.

On Wednesday we took part in the debate on measures to restrict the negative consequences of the credit crisis. I found it striking that the Minister of Finance wrote in an opinion piece on Tuesday that not only should we work on the credit crisis, but also the climate and food crises. That's wonderful! This is something we've been arguing for since before the crisis.

Minister Verburg of Agriculture announced her intent on Thursday to relax the rules surrounding hunting with falcons. The minister wants to make more use of trained birds of prey to fight the damage and nuisance caused by birds and other animals. People in the Netherlands may only hunt using the hawk and peregrine and hunting in most nature reserves is banned. There can be no more than 200 falconer's permits in the Netherlands at any time. Falconers may only hunt rabbits, hares, wild ducks, pheasants and wood pigeon. The minister announced the relaxed rules at the opening of the falconry museum in Valkenswaard. That is where falconry belongs – in a museum and not in our modern times.

Birds of prey are widely poached, especially the peregrine as they are worth their weight in gold on the black markets in countries such as Saudi Arabia. Birds of prey are not meant to be kept in captivity and used against other animals in the service of man. We will do everything we can do stop this relaxation of the rules.

If hunters haven't expended their blood lust on the geese in Noord-Holland, the fallow deer in Zeeland's nature reserves or the pigs in de Veluwe, they can always book a hunting trip to Africa.

This website has a promotional film for just this sort of murderous holiday. They show, without the least bit of shame, how wonderful they think it is to shoot an animal (crocodile, elephant, zebra, wildebeest) and then show off the corpse. This is the real reason a handful of hunters here in the Netherlands are lobbying hard to shoot deer, stag and swine to their heart's content. The English word for wild animals is “game” – something I think that's very telling. The site encourages hunters to let children of16 years old and younger to “get in on the sport” because ‘Global Sporting Safaris believes that the young hunters today are the future of the sport for tomorrow.’ Children are even given a special discount…

Niewsblad.be published a Dutch language article about elephant hunting. It reported that Hunter Geert had said in Belgian television programme called Telefacts, (April 2008) that shooting an elephant was “pure relaxation”. The World Wide Fund for Nature has no problem with this “as long as their license is valid”

See you next week!