Green Party National Ball- Carlow

by john and mary Tue Oct 28, 2008 16:13

We are very pleased to see that the Green Party has a veggie option on the menu for its Grand Ball and that it has the sensitivity to alert possible attendees of the conference to the unsavoury duck down pillows provided by the Lord Bagenal Hotel . The Greens have come under fire from some quarters recently , but surely deserve congratulations on their ethical consistency in this regard .

by john and mary Tue Oct 28, 2008 17:20

My brother John and I have decided to write to the management of the Lord Bagenall Hotel requesting that they stop the use of duck down pillows in their bedrooms . We had originally intended to ask the Lord Bagenall to provide guests with the option of non-animal based pillows but decided that such a course of action would be something of a moral cop out . It would be more ethical if the hotel stopped the use of duck down altogether : duck feathers normally come from slaughtered, factory farmed birds.
Can I say that apart from these ethical considerations - which are of course primary - synthetic materials are very advanced nowadays and are often warmer, lighter and less allergenic than goose or duck down products. We would urge anybody booking into the hotel for the conference weekend to bring the issue of animal abuse to the attention of the management .

by Confused Green Tue Oct 28, 2008 18:02

Something for ball attendees to chew on while chewing the five course meal (veggie option or not)

From Green Party Manifesto 2007

"Education - Invest €1 billion in education for the first year of the next Government to front-load educational priorities. Provide 2,400 extra teachers at primary and secondary levels."

Now exactly how does getting rid of 2,000 posts at primary and second level assist in fulfilling this promise?

by Michael Hogan Tue Oct 28, 2008 20:56

I would have thought it more beneficial that the Green Party examine what's going on in their heads, rather than what they lay their head on??

Sheeps wool filling in pillows would be preferable to synthetic material, which during manufacture damages the air that we breathe.

At least then the Green Party folk would then have the excuse of following FF like sheep to the slaughter ;-)

by john and Mary Wed Oct 29, 2008 17:37

We cannot allow Michael Hogan's post to go unanswered .Michael would appear to be labouring under a popularly held misconception regarding wool production – that sheep need humans to shear them - and that pillows made from sheeps' wool are therefore more acceptable to those made from duck down. In fact the woollen industry purposely breeds sheep so as to maximize their wool yield just as in the dairy industry cows are raised to yield maximum quantities of milk without regard for the suffering of the animals .The breeding for wool is anything but benign . Merino sheep for instance , as a consequence of being bred to have wrinkles in their skin so as to yield large quantities of wool , suffer painful maggot infestation . Sheep farmers counter this by a practice known as “mulesing” -cutting large chunks of the sheep’s flesh off without any anaesthetics.
Green Party delegates staying overnight at the Lord Bagenall Hotel should therefore be urged to reject any proposal to replace duck down pillows with pillows made from sheeps’ wool first and foremost on animal rights grounds . But there are also sound environmental reasons to opt for pillows that are not made from wool . Methane emissions from sheep contribute significantly to the output of greenhouse gases . Australia's livestock herds -23 million cows and 170 million sheep - discharge more than three million tons of methane a year, accounting for 14 per cent of the country’s output of greenhouse gases.