PETA calls for Swiss agricultural and food fair to drop animals
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PETA calls for Swiss agricultural and food fair to drop animals
The animal welfare organisation PETA has called on the organisers of the OLMA agricultural and food fair in St Gallen to remove animals from its programme.
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This follows an incident on Wednesday when three cattle escaped from the exhibition centre and fled through the city in a state of stress. Two children were injured. OLMA is Switzerland’s largest public fair.
One of the escaped animals was finally shot by a gamekeeper. The attempts to catch the animal were futile and the animal was very aggressive and stressed, the St Gallen city police reported on Thursday.
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PETA wrote in a statement on Friday that high noise levels, crowds of people “and aggressive guests” put the animals at the fair under enormous stress. “We demand that the organisers finally remove animals from the programme and focus the fair on vegan and sustainable agriculture,” the statement continued.
“We are not planning an OLMA without animals”, Katrin Meyerhans, head of products, OLMA Messen St Gallen, told Swiss public broadcaster SRF. Animal welfare is a very high priority for those responsible for the fair, she said, adding that animal husbandry is constantly monitored.
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The reasons why the cattle were able to escape from the exhibition centre are still unclear to those responsible at OLMA, Meyerhans explained on Thursday when asked by the Keystone-SDA news agency. “We are reviewing our procedures at the OLMA animal exhibition and, if necessary, making additional structural and organisational adjustments to ensure that such an incident does not happen again.”
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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