January 2013 – The Order of The Way

19th January 2013

Horse Abattoir Film Reveals Welfare Breaches

By Jason Farrell, Sky Correspondent

Sky News has uncovered shocking animal welfare conditions at a UK horse abattoir.

They include animals being beaten, neglected and illegal procedures in the process of slaughtering British horses destined for European food markets.

It comes amid public anger that some of our biggest supermarkets have been selling beef burgers and other products that contained horse meat.

Sky News visited the Red Lion Abattoir near Nantwich in Cheshire after concerns were raised by Animal Welfare Group Hillside Animal Sanctuary.

Investigators at Hillside fitted secret cameras which filmed horses being beaten with an iron rod to encourage them into the pens.

Something to consider: Almost half of the world’s food thrown away, report finds

Figures from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers show as much as 2bn tonnes of food never makes it on to a plate.

Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 January 2013 07.55 GMT

etween 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

As much as half of all the food produced in the world ,“ equivalent to 2bn tonnes ,“ ends up as waste every year, engineers warned in a report published on Thursday.

The UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) blames the “staggering” new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with “poor engineering and agricultural practices”, inadequate infrastructure and poor storage facilities.

In the face of United Nations predictions that there could be about an extra 3 billion people to feed by the end of the century and growing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the IMechE is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.

Their report, Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not, found that between 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate.

In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers’ exacting standards on physical appearance, it says, while up to half of the food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers.

Way thought for the day 6th January 2012: Value, Part II

For a man to calculate his value, should his conceit require him to do so, he calculates that which he does not have in natural fashion. He has it only in pretences; yet not accepting that he can never sustain that which is only pretended.

A truly valuable person is valuable according to his or her true nature. They are not concerned with his or her value. Knowing that they are not the centre of the world, they are instead concerned with the effect they have on the problems and or situations of his life, his fellow man and the world as a whole.

Such people know justice naturally; and some never get the idea, as their self-seeking attitudes prevent it. Many view those that they consider to be wise, aping them, hoping it will somehow pass to them. They shall know only disappointment, and look foolish.

The wise lead; lesser must learn to assist, not hinder. Not through jealousy or envy, but in caring study and self control.

5th January 20135th January 2013

Way thought for the day 5th January 2012: Value, Part I

When a man is concerned with his value, he is not concerned with the actions and psychological patterns that create his true value, but only in that which is imagined.

Mankind seeks to improve himself only according to that which he thinks he is, which is according to his fancy; not knowing that the valueless person cannot attain value through deceit, either of the self, or of others.

He may calculate his true value, or his false value, either real or just imagined, according to his baseness. In such manner he confuses himself, losing the self in his own confusion and disappointments, as he shall surely fail.

The wise one is always aware of his or her imagination; not letting it rule him or her, but managing it with care. He or she uses it to good purpose.

Imagination can lead you to destruction, or take you to higher levels of knowledge, according to its management, which is self chosen, and often according to ego.

Many imagine themselves to be Caulbearers, knowing that they are not. They then invent things to give them a sense of self importance. By doing so they are dishonest with themselves, as well as with all that they come into contact with.

So do they reduce themselves; and so, in search for higher value, they achieve a level of total worthlessness.