Three people have been arrested after animal rights protesters scaled the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs head office building in London to draw attention to the bird flu crisis and intensive farming practices.
The Metropolitan Police said they were called shortly before 6.30am to reports that two people had scaled the building on Marsham Street, Westminster, which also houses the Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
The pair climbed the outer wall of the building before unfurling a huge nine by 15-foot banner which read: ‘Bird flu: our next pandemic. End animal agriculture.’
Police said two women and a man have been held on suspicion of criminal damage and causing a public nuisance.
Two animal rights activists climbed the outer wall of the DEFRA building before unfurling a huge nine by 15-foot banner which read: ‘Bird flu: our next pandemic. End animal agriculture’
Police said two women and a man have been held on suspicion of criminal damage and causing a public nuisance
Video footage from campaigners showed at least three police riot vans at the scene, as well several ambulances.
It comes after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley spoke yesterday about the impact of recent Just Stop Oil protests on policing on London.
He told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that 12,000 officer shifts had been spent policing the JSO protests in October and November.
The Animal Justice Project, which campaigns for an end to animal farming, said its members had carried out the protest this morning to highlight the ‘catastrophic’ impact of bird flu being spread through chicken sheds.
This year the UK has seen an unprecedented outbreak of avian flu, resulting in the culling of around four million birds.
A spokesperson for the Animal Justice Project said: ‘We’re taking action today to pressure the governmental body responsible for minimising the risk of animal-borne diseases to take meaningful steps to stop bird flu.
‘They’ve declared the UK Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ), enforcing more stringent biosecurity measures, but this is not enough!
‘No amount of safety measures can negate the huge part that cramming thousands of animals into dirty sheds and slaughterhouses plays in the emergence and spread of infectious disease, and so far, the introduction of the AIPZ has not solved our bird flu crisis as deaths of innocent birds increase daily…
Video footage from campaigners showed at least three police riot vans at the scene, as well several ambulances
The Animal Justice Project, which campaigns for an end to animal farming, said its members were calling on Defra to prevent ‘an imminent bird flu pandemic’
‘We must end animal agriculture not only to save humans, but to prevent animal suffering as well.
‘Avian Influenza causes animals to suffer agonising deaths, struggling to breathe as they pass. Whole flocks can be decimated by outbreaks in just a couple of days, without any veterinary attention. Their deaths are recorded, then they are forgotten, as they were never seen as individuals in the first place.
‘But those who haven’t contracted bird flu still suffer enormously. Forced to live in dirty, overcrowded sheds with tens to hundreds of thousands of other animals, they experience painful diseases, untreated injuries and constant stress instead, as their bodies are exploited to meet consumer demand and generate profit.’
The highly contagious avian influenza strain – (HPAI) H5N1 – is currently killing, or resulting in the culling, of tens of thousands of birds each day, following its outbreak in October 2021.
Once one case is confirmed on a farm, the entire flock must be culled, with businesses losing hundreds or thousands of birds at a time.
There are concerns that free range eggs will run out by March as a result of the crisis, while some supermarkets are already rationing boxes.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), however, has down played the influenza’s impact on the egg industry.
Defra minister Mark Spencer, MP for Sherwood, admitted there was a ‘tightening’ of the egg sector but said other external factors were at play, insisting the UK supply chain was ‘resilient’.
He added: ‘We have 38million laying hens across the country and avian flu is not having an impact on the overall supply with only 2 percent of the national flock having died or been culled due to avian flu.
‘The disruption to the supply of eggs we’ve seen recently is mainly due to commercial decisions businesses are taking as a result of rising costs of feed and energy over the past year mainly caused by Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.’
