Monika Biernacki cuddles Jericho, whose owner tried to drown him, at her animal shelter, Monika's Doggie Rescue in Ingleside. Photo: Janie Barrett

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Over the past two decades, Monika Biernacki has successfully found new homes all over Sydney for 9000 canines whose lives she saved on the days of their intended executions.

The first and the only thing Biernacki usually learns about each animal’s history is when a council employee rings asking her to take an almost invariably cute and affectionate dog from a miserable concrete pound to avoid a lethal needle.

A lack of knowledge about the dog never fazes the slim, smart blonde with a geology degree – she readily admits she’s a dog person.

But one arrival has a partially known back-story: a two-year-old brown and tan spaniel cross, recently renamed Jericho – assuming, that is, he ever had any other name – who came to Monika’s Doggie Rescue at Ingleside in Sydney’s north in mid-2009.

“I nicknamed him the river dog because the pound told us that we’d have to do a lot of work with this dog because someone tried to drown him in a river,” says Biernacki, as dogs bark all around her during her preparations for weekend visits by prospective adopters.

“He was running scared along a river bank but finally the rangers managed to catch him and he came to us in a very thin state.”

Biernacki brings Jericho into her site office, a portable aluminium building. Most times, she agrees to take the proffered pound dog to her cheery rented grounds abutting the green hills of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, where her no-kill service, funded by corporate and private donations, houses more than 100 small to small-ish dogs in large pens at any one time.

The service won’t take dogs surrendered directly by owners, preferring to invest its energies in the “last chance” dogs from the pounds.

Jericho steps gingerly forward, uncertain as I place my hand in front of his nose for a sniff before I pat him. He’s medium sized and has a scruffy, wiry terrier coat. His long tail wags tentatively, and he makes to retreat a couple of times behind Biernacki’s legs, but comes back for another pat.

Why would someone try to drown a dog? “To try to get rid of it without any trace? I don’t know – why do people try to drown people? You know, it’s the same sort of people. They starve animals, and then they progress.” A look of steely resolve spreads over her face. “I mean, animal abuse is just one step before child abuse.”

Jericho has improved nicely. “Yesterday I had him out with a family with teenage children – harnessed him up, he walked with a family. He was skittish, but you know, that was huge, to enable strangers to walk this dog.”

Indeed, following this interview, a kind woman who had a lot of experience with abused dogs adopted Jericho and he now has a happy home.

Dogs are so forgiving, says Biernacki, because they live in the now. “People remember things in the past and still try to hang onto them. Dogs move forward – which is a much more healthy way to live, to be honest with you,” she laughs.

Biernacki is the daughter of a Polish father and German mother, which was “all very sad and sordid”.

“You can imagine, German and Polish hated one another, so neither family was comfortable with the idea of marriage,” Biernacki says. Her parents set out for a fresh life in Australia in 1949.

Monika, their only child, was born on January 2, 1956, and was raised in Rydalmere: “I grew up learning life is hard, and you keep on going, and you don’t give up.”

Biernacki “had to hassle” as a child: “I wanted a dog, as all kids do, and finally we had a little silky [terrier] . . . my mother said I should do vet school but I couldn’t handle putting animals down, or vivisection.”

Instead, she studied geology at university, specialising in mineral economics, “because it was really removed from emotional things – animals, feelings, things like that”. She looks ready to cry. “This [rescue] work is so hard, emotionally.”

One day, Biernacki’s vet mentioned he had two unwanted healthy dogs – one a dachsund-corgi cross, the other’s breed she can’t recall – whom he would have to euthanase. Biernacki took the dogs to her Turramurra home, from where she found them new owners.

Before long she gained a reputation as someone who would rescue dogs, with up to 10 living at her home – neighbours complained about the barking – and pasting “dogs for good home” signs on telegraph poles.

It took a quiet spell in the minerals industry to prompt Biernacki to set up a pet minding business, but her dog re-homing operations continued, with Doggie Rescue registered as a charity in 1991.

Yet there’s only so much one 53-year-old woman and her dedicated regular band of several hundred volunteers can do while people continue to dump animals.

The state government still allows pet shops to sell puppies and kittens pumped out by profit-driven breeders for impulse buyers. Each year in NSW, about 30,000 otherwise healthy dogs (and roughly 33,000 cats) are put down at council pounds.

That’s not to say Doggie Rescue will give animals out to just anyone. All members of an adoptive human family are required to come to the service to make sure the dog is comfortable with each of them – all the animals can be viewed at www.doggierescue.com – and potential adopters are interviewed to see if their lifestyles match that of their chosen dog’s temperament and needs.

Having previously been located at Duffys Forest and Homebush, Monika’s Doggie Rescue narrowly avoided closure at Ingleside at the start of 2009 because of a financial collapse brought on with the recession.

The state government stepped in and dramatically slashed the site’s rent while members of the public flooded the service with donations.

Biernacki’s husband, Rod Elvish, shares the burden: he’s chairman of Doggie Rescue, and she is stepmother to his two adult children. But she’s so busy saving dogs, she has little time for anything else. “Sometimes this work is so . . . overpowering. I do this stuff 24-7.

“I have eight dogs of my own, but they don’t get a lot of my time, most of them are elderly, with behavioural or medical problems too difficult for most people to handle.”

She’s meant to work six days a week at Doggie Rescue but finds herself working on her supposed one day off.

“I don’t really do much else,” she notes, absent-mindedly touching her blonde locks. “I really unwind at the hairdresser, I must say.”

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Tim Lang

During this time consumer choice has massively increased but choice is part of the problem – it is not part of the solution. Waste, over-consumption and unhealthy diets are rife, we can’t go on like this.

Food security (the term used to refer to the task of ensuring enough food to feed all) is now frequently in the media. Unlike previous food crises, what troubles analysts today is that, this time there are at least eight features of the 20th century food revolution whose fundamentals are now under threat in the 21st century.

The first is the energy crisis. Oil hit $100 a barrel in 2007. 95% of food products are oil-dependent , and agricultural productivity gains rely on fertilisers and mechanisation . The first rush to biofuels as substitute oil is now looking thin. If land goes to biofuels, that’s less land for food. The OECD calculated that the USA, Canada and European Union would need to switch between 30% and 70% of their current crop areas to provide just 10% of their transport fuel needs . Only Brazil’s use of sugarcane has decent efficiencies.

Secondly, world food commodities prices are rocketing. This is more than speculation. Buffer stocks are at their lowest status for decades. Per capita availability has faltered since the 1980s The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that imported foodstuffs exceeded US$ 400 billion in 2007, 5% above the 2006 record. Most of this increase is due to rising prices of imported coarse grains and vegetable oils – the commodity groups which feature most heavily in bio-fuel production. FAO forecasts these to rise by 13% in 2008 – difficult for rich country importers but dire for developing countries.

Thirdly, world population is rising rapidly. 6.6 billion in 2007, it will be 9.1 billion by 2050 . Urbanisation appears unstoppable. In 1961, one billion lived in towns; it was two billion by 1986; three billion by 2003, and is projected to be four billion by 2018 and five billion by 2030 . The scale of the population’s growth and its food requirements are unprecedented.

This raises the fourth problem, labour: if urbanization is inexorable, who will be the rural labour force? An estimated 50% of world’s workforce works in agriculture . Of this 1.1 billion workers, 450m (40%) are waged labour, 170m are children and 20-30% are women working for lower wages, often in the export trade . This is the reality the fair-trade movement has set out to counter, arguing that urban consumers who barely know where their food comes from need to be re-engaged with the sometimes dire and hazardous reality of working on the land. Half the 355,000 workplace fatalities which the International Labour Organisation estimates occur each year are in agriculture.

The fifth fundamental is land. Available productive land depends on sea levels, drainage and investment. Optimists propose that the world could bring into use about 12% more land than is currently under cultivation. This might well be so, but marginal lands tend to be less productive and more expensive to use. Climate change is highly likely to change which lands can grow most. But the politics will probably centre on national ‘footprints’. By the 1990s each US citizen had a notional 1.9 ha of cropland and pasture land from which to be fed. In China, each person’s footprint was already a fifth of that, 0.4 ha/person . But land availability per person has dropped significantly since. A recent UK study showed consumers actually use food as though they have six times more land and sea available to them than they do . And far from being efficient, the UK Government calculates that consumers throw away about a quarter of all food produced. One form of waste (spoilage on farm and in store) has been replaced by another (waste in homes).

The sixth fundamental is water. Globally, of all drinkable freshwater, households use 10%, industry 20% and agriculture 70% . Today 92% of humanity has a relative sufficiency of drinkable water but by 2025 this will be 62% . The notion of ‘embedded water’ is likely to be as important as greenhouse gas emissions. To produce one kilo of grain-fed beef requires 15 cubic metres of water. One kilo of cereals needs 0.4-3 cubic metres . There is talk of labelling foods for their water. A 250 ml glass of beer uses 75 litres of water; a glass of apple juice takes190; a 150 g hamburger takes 2400 . Without knowing it, food trade transfers water across borders. The equivalent of 20 Nile Rivers already move annually from developing to developed countries .

The seventh threat is already high on the agenda, climate change. The Stern report on Climate Change found agriculture responsible for 14% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Of agriculture’s emissions, fertilizers were responsible for 38% . Livestock was the second greatest source of agriculture-related GHGs, accounting for 31%. A 2006 European Union life cycle assessment of consumer impacts found that food and drink sector to be the most significant source of GHGs, accounting for 20-30% of the various environmental impacts of the most common forms of European consumption . The most significant sectors were firstly meat and meat products and secondly the dairy sector.

The eight fundamental is what in health circles is called the nutrition transition. As people become more affluent, they change their diets, eating more sugars, soft drinks, meat and dairy . This in turn is associated with a shift in disease patterns. There is a rise in diet-related ill-health from chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity . If we eat a high meat diet, its impact is far greater than if we eat a plant-based diet. The FAO has calculated that livestock generates 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent), more than transport . I

Each of these eight fundamentals poses a serious challenge to world food capacity. But the truth is that they are linked. Should humans stop treating the planet as a limitless resource? Definitely yes. But hooked onto global growth, can we develop a way of consuming which tread lighter on the earth? Here the answer is ‘it is not clear yet’.

The solutions all depend on whether we want more of the same diet and lifestyle or are prepared to change.

Politicians and business leaders are locked into electoral and consuming cycles. Each bows to consumer sovereignty. But rich consumers show no sign of being prepared to consume both less and differently. So business and politics pander to them. This is why genetic modification (GM) is looked to as the 21st century technical fix, the new Green Revolution. GM plantings are rising globally, despite resistance in some regions. But even the strongest GM proponents know that it cannot resolve all eight of the fundamental challenges. Productivity of biofuels or cereals might rise but still wouldn’t produce oil equivalence sufficient to feed people to ‘Western’ living standards. That’s why there will be more interest in dietary change as a policy focus. If everyone eats meat and dairy like the US or Europe, the world continues walking into a crisis. A recent study of the UK showed how the current six-planet living food profile becomes more sustainable if diet is radically altered. If we eat less, and farm differently, there is room for manoeuvre. The pressure is thus likely to be on consumers to change. The political question is not will they, but when will they and will it take crisis to engender the change?

Source: Sustainable Development Commission Article

Further reading: Setting the Table (paper by the Sustainable Development Commission)

In the new film Forks Over Knives Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn examine the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by adopting a plant-based, whole foods diet. Read: the greenest diet on the planet!

Featured in the film are a plethora of well known doctors and experts…and even appearances by some of our favorite vegan powerhouses, like UFC Fighter Mac Danzig.

Forks over Knives is slated to be released in July, 2010 and we’re pretty sure it’s going to take the world by storm! Sound cool? Check out the trailer below and visit ForksOverKnives.com to learn more!

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Waving goodbye to meat ... Simon Cowell comes in support of vegetarianism.

The music mogul has been persuaded by the Bleeding Lovesinger – who he mentored on UK TV talent show The X Factor in 2006 – to support Sir Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Mondays campaign, in which people give up eating animal products once a week.

Leona – who met the Beatles legend at the end of last year to discuss getting Simon involved – said: “Anything I ask Simon to get involved in regarding my charity and environmental concerns he always does. He’s cool like that.”

Simon – who recently got engaged to make-up artist Mezhgan Hussainy – joins other committed vegetarian stars Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, Kevin Spacey and Woody Harrelson in supporting Paul’s cause.

Leona is a long-term vegetarian and has even banned meat from being served on her upcoming tour because she is so against the butchering of animals.

She said: “The meat industry is polluting the environment. I’ve banned meat from all photo shoots to the tour itself simply because I don’t support the meat industry.”

Meanwhile, Simon Cowell’s mother says her son is “glowing with happiness” since he found love.

The music mogul’s mother Julie Cowell, 84, is astonished at the impact his lover Mezhgan Hussainy has had on him after just months of dating.

She said: “I couldn’t believe it when I saw him. He looks exceptionally happy and there’s such a glow about him. I think turning 50 made him reassess his life. I think he would make a wonderful husband.

“I knew it was serious when Simon said he had something important to tell me. I asked if it was good or bad and he replied, ‘That depends which way you look at it.’ ‘Just tell me,’ I said. He explained that he had asked Mezhgan to move in with him. Although girlfriends have stayed with him in the past, he has never done that before. That seemed to make it official.”

Although Mezhgan – a make-up artist who first met the music mogul seven years ago – was spotted wearing a diamond ring on her wedding finger recently, Julie claims they’re not yet engaged.

She told Britain’s Hello! magazine: “I haven’t seen the ring yet, but I do believe they will get engaged. But if you’d asked me this three weeks ago, I would have said, ‘Absolutely not!’

“Now I really think marriage and fatherhood are going to happen for Simon. I would like to see an official engagement, a marriage, and yes, then grandchildren.”

Simon’s representative Max Clifford also insists the American Idol judge is yet to pop the question, but he thinks it will happen soon.

Max  who is getting married himself in a few weeks – revealed: “I said to him, ‘So, there’s going to be two weddings this year?’ Normally he would say, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous’, or, ‘In your wildest dreams.’ But he said, ‘Who knows?’ ”

Max also let slip that Simon and Mezhgan have been romantically involved for some time but kept their relationship secret.

He added to People: “They’ve actually been going out together for the last year. She knows him, she’s been around him. So, she knows the person he is, and he knows the person she is. They are very well suited. She is someone who is independent and says what she thinks and feels, and he likes that. He’s probably the happiest I have ever known him in the nine years I’ve been working with him.”

Source: The Daily Telegraph

PIGS kept in tiny cages, chickens fed antibiotics, tomatoes that won’’t ripen and apples stored for months before they hit the supermarket shelves.

It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi, but in fact, these are the realities of global food production, where farm-fresh food is increasingly difficult to source.

With the vast majority of fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry and fish now produced by multinational agribusinesses, many consumers feel they are losing touch with the source of what they eat.

“People feel insecure about their food sources, and there are a range of reasons for that,” explains organic farming supplier Frances Michaels, from Queensland-based group Green Harvest.

“More and more people are suffering ill health, there is evidence that cancers from pesticides are going to increase, and there’s a general environmental and green movement that is encouraging people to take responsibility for the impact that they’re having on global warming.”

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CAT owners have told the City of Swan that they cannot control their pets, and they should not be held responsible for keeping felines off private property.

Cat owners are the main complainants of a local law introduced in January that allows people to trap straying pets, according to the City of Swan.

The City has received a number of complaints about the law changes, with neighbours allowed to trap cats on private property and take them to the pound without notifying owners.

Ellenbrook’s Rosemary Donald has two cats, and was recently appalled to find one of her neighbours had started trapping without advising nearby cat owners. But, according to the City of Swan’s local law, this is completely legal – people are not required to advise their neighbours they will be trapping cats that stray onto private property.

Mrs Donald is calling on the City of Swan to bring in a bit of common sense to the cat laws to ensure they are not abused.

When her feline Simon went missing on March 18, it took her a week to locate him at a kennel in Malaga, and she isn’t the only one in her street to go through the distress of a missing pet.

“I had a call from a worried neighbour who had been visited by a ranger in response to a neighbour’s complaint.”

While the City recommends people with cat traps should advise their neighbours of their intentions, it is not compulsory.

“There is no legal obligation to advise neighbours they intend to do this,” a City spokesman said.

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Waroona Shire wants kangaroos at Preston beach culled.

THE Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) has still not responded to a second request lodged two months ago by the Shire of Waroona seeking permission to shoot 100 western grey kangaroos that live in bush around Preston Beach Golf Club.

Club members claim the roos damage fairways and threaten golfers.

The council, which uses an appealing photo of a western grey joey on its website home page, first applied for a damage licence last July so it could cull the marsupials but the DEC responded by asking that non-lethal control methods be used.

Last week, the department said it would reach a decision later this month.

In February, 2007, the DEC gave the council permission to cull 50 kangaroos at the golf club, and in May that year, 42 were shot under controlled conditions and processed for pet food.

The DEC has suggested the council employ an environmental consultant to survey the kangaroo population and make recommendations for its control, erect a fauna fence to exclude kangaroos from the course, sedate and move the kangaroos, or install a noise barrier fence to deter them.

Waroona council was presented with a 299-signature petition at its November meeting, appealing for the kangaroos to be saved but the council was unmoved, saying just 34 of the signatures, or 18 per cent, were from Preston Beach electors.

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The carnage of tortoise carcasses at Lake Goollelal.

THE catching of native fish in Perth lakes and wetlands has been suspended after more than 10 long-necked tortoises drowned in Department of Fisheries’ nets at Lake Goollelal last month.

Department of Fisheries principal research scientist Craig Lawrence said the nets were placed to survey the populations of threatened native fish.

“I am saddened and sorry that our recent research work, to check on freshwater fish species at Lake Goollelal, has resulted in the deaths of a number of tortoises,” he said.

“Similar nets to the ones which caused the deaths of the tortoises are used by university and government researchers in WA, Australia and internationally.”

Dr Lawrence said the department was investigating ways to modify the nets to ensure no more tortoises are harmed and the native fish surveys can recommence.

“This testing will be conducted with the involvement of independent tortoise experts,” he said.

Greenwood resident Gary Tate said it was distresssing to see a Fisheries Department officer removing dead tortoises from the nets.

“I had a meeting with people from the Department of Environment and Conservation on January 27 to talk about trapping foxes to protect tortoises, and then two days later I was dumbfounded to see another government department responsible for the deaths of all those tortoises,” he said.

“I’m glad they have stopped using the nets. It’s a good outcome.”

The DEC is conducting an investigation into the incident.

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The Israeli Government approves unanimously a bill that brings Israel one step closer to becoming the first fur-free country

In one of the most important achievements in the combined efforts of the ‘International Anti-Fur Coalition’ and ‘Let the Animals Live’ in their endeavors to protect fur bearing animals, the ministerial committee for legislative affairs accepted their request and approved unanimously the expansion on MK Ronit Tirosh’s bill. The bill prohibiting originally only the trade of cat and dog fur and was approved on its first reading; has been expanded by amendment to include all fur from all mammals. The ban includes an exception on specific fur hats worn by a few people for cultural identity. This bill is a global and historic precedent.

The total ban on all fur from all animals in addition circumvented the anticipated complexity that would have behooved the customs authority in distinguishing the animal of origin of each particular fur item.

Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon and Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Arden addressed the Ministerial Committee with the assistance of Minister of Education, Gideon Saar. Jane Halevy of the International Anti-Fur Coalition and attorney Joshua Rotbert, legal adviser of Let the Animals Live are the ones that initiated the matter with the help of MK Nitzan Horowitz via bringing to the government’s attention the cruel truth behind the needless fur trade.

Now that the legislative committee unanimously approved the amendment, the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry committee will hold a vote on the amendment later in the month and following their approval the bill will be put to a second and then third reading before finally being past into law. The vast majority are hopeful that the Israeli government will continue on the path to end needless animal cruelty.

More information:
International Anti-Fur Coalition

A MAGISTRATE has called for a psychiatric report on a 22-year-old Gosnells woman who faces jail for brutally stabbing to death her partner’s german shepherd dog.

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